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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16040-8.txt b/16040-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2e1e8b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/16040-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11095 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Kenny, by Leona Dalrymple, Illustrated by +Joseph Pierre Nuyttens + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Kenny + + +Author: Leona Dalrymple + +Illustrator: Joseph Pierre Nuyttens + + +Release Date: June 11, 2005 [eBook #16040] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KENNY*** + + +E-text prepared by Al Haines + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 16040-h.htm or 16040-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/4/16040/16040-h/16040-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/4/16040/16040-h.zip) + + + + + +KENNY + +by + +LEONA DALRYMPLE + +Author of _Diane of the Green Van_, _The Lovable Meddler_ + +Illustrated by Joseph Pierre Nuyttens + +The Reilly & Britton Co. +Chicago + +Second Printing September 10, 1917 + + + + + + + +[Frontispiece: Joan] + + + + + +CONTENTS + + I Brian Rebels + II The Unsuccessful Parent + III In the Gay and Golden Weather + IV God's Green World of Spring + V At the Blast of a Horn + VI In the Garret + VII The Blossom Storm + VIII Joan + IX Adam Craig + X A Notebook + XI The Cabin in the Pines + XII Thraldom + XIII Kenny's Truth Crusade + XIV In Somebody's Boat + XV In Which Caliban Scores + XVI Tantrums + XVII Kenny Disappears + XVIII Brian Solves a Problem + XIX Samhain + XX The Chair by the Fire + XXI The Shadow of Death + XXII In the Cabin + XXIII A Miser's Will + XXIV Digging Dots + XXV Checkmate! + XXVI An Inspiration + XXVII Miser's Gold + XXVIII Kenny's Ward + XXIX The Studio Again + XXX Playtime + XXXI Fate Stabs + XXXII On Finlake Mountain + XXXIII In the Span of a Day + XXXIV A Face + XXXV The Penitent + XXXVI April + XXXVII Honeysuckle Days + XXXVIII Arcady Eludes a Seeker + XXXIX The Tension Snaps + XL The King of Youth + XLI When the Isle of Delight Receded + XLII The End of Kenny's Song + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +Joan . . . . . . Frontispiece + +He was sailing across, to romance he hoped, and surely to mystery + +"'Tis Samhain, Adam," said Kenny, "the summer ending of the druids" + +"I love you better than my life," Joan said, "and I may--may never--say +it again" + + + + +KENNY + + +CHAPTER I + +BRIAN REBELS + +"You needn't repeat it," said Brian with a flash of his quiet eyes. +"This time, Kenny, I mean to stay disinherited." + +Kennicott O'Neill stared at his son and gasped. The note of permanency +in the chronic rite of disinheritance was startling. So was something +in the set of Brian's chin and the flush of anger burning steadily +beneath the dark of his skin. Moreover, his eyes, warmly Irish like +his father's, and ordinarily humorous and kind, remained unflinchingly +aggressive. + +With the air of an outraged emperor, the older man strode across the +studio and rapped upon his neighbor's wall for arbitration. + +"Garry may be in bed," said Brian, + +"And he may not." It was much the same to Kenny. + +He was a splendid figure--that Irishman. His gorgeous Persian slippers +curled at the toes and ended in a pair of scarlet heels. The +extraordinary mandarin combination of oriental magnificence and the +rags he affected for a bathrobe, hung from a pair of shoulders +noticeably broad and graceful. If he wore his frayed splendor with a +certain picturesque distinction, it was the way he did all things, even +his delightful brogue which was if anything a shade too mellifluous to +be wholly unaffected. What Kenny liked he kept if he could, even his +irresponsible youth and gayety. + +Time had helped him there. His auburn hair was still bright and thick. +And his eyes were as blue and merry now as when with pagan reverence he +had tramped and sketched as a lad among the ruined altars of the druids. + +He had meant to wither his son with continued dignity and calm. The +vagaries of Irish temper ordained otherwise. Kenny glanced at the +fragments of a statuette conspicuously rearranged on a Louis XV table +almost submerged in the chaotic disorder of the studio, and lost his +head. + +"Look at that!" he flung out furiously. + +Brian had already looked--with guilt--and regretted. + +"I broke it--accidentally," he admitted. + +"Accidentally! You flung a brush at it." + +"I flung a brush across the studio," corrected Brian, "just after you +went out to pawn my shotgun." + +"Damn the shotgun!" + +"I can extend that same courtesy," reminded Brian, "to the statuette." + +Things were going badly when the expected arbitrator rapped upon the +door, and losing ground, Kenny felt that he must needs dramatize his +parental right to authority for the benefit of Garry's ears and his own +pride. + +"Silence!" he thundered, striding toward the door. He flung it back +with the air of a conqueror. His stage play fell rather flat. Garry +Rittenhouse, in bathrobe and slippers, confronted the pair with a look +of weary inquiry. He sometimes regretted that as a peacemaker he had +become an institution. Nobody said anything. Garry hunted cigarettes, +cleared a chair and sat down. + +"It may or may not interest you two to know that I was in bed," he +began irritably. "I wish to Heaven you'd fight in union hours." + +Brian was sorry and said so. Kenny, however, took immediate advantage +of Garry's attitude to sidetrack what he considered the preposterous +irrelevance of the shotgun, the one unessential thing in the studio, +and point with rising temper to the statuette. It had, alas! been a +birthday present from Ann Marvin, whose statuettes, fashionable and +satiric, were famous. + +It was like Kenny to have a grievance. He was hardly ever without one. +But justification was rare indeed and he made the best of it. He said +all that was on his mind without restraint as to duration or intensity, +thunderstruck at Brian's white-hot response. For twenty minutes of +Irish fire and fury, Garry listened in amazement, sensing an +unaccustomed stubbornness in Brian's anger. + +"Just a minute," said Garry, dazed. "Let's get down to brass tacks. +Who and what began it?" + +They both told him. + +"One at a time, please!" he begged. "I gather that you, Kenny, in need +of petty funds, went out to pawn Brian's shotgun. And you, Brian, +losing your temper, flung a brush across the studio and smashed a +valued statuette--" + +Kenny chose indignantly to tell it all again and overshot the mark, +bringing Garry down upon him with a bark. + +"Now, see here, Kenny," he interposed curtly, "that's enough. Brian's +usually sane and regular. It's by no means a criminal offense for him +to pick a row with you about his shotgun. And he didn't mean to smash +the statuette." + +He waited for the voice of thunder in which Kenny, at a disadvantage, +would be sure to disinherit his son and, waiting, glanced a trifle +wryly at the littered studio. What Brian lost by chronic +disinheritance lay ever before the eye, particularly now when Kenny, in +one of his periods of insolvency, was posted downstairs for club debt +and Mrs. Haggerty's insular notions about credit had driven him to +certain frugal devices with the few handkerchiefs he owned, one of +which was spread upon the nearest window pane to dry. + +Garry's disgusted inventory missed nothing: a prayer rug for which +Kenny had toured into the south of Persia and led an Arabian Nights' +existence with pursuing bandits whom, by some extraordinary twist of +genius, he had conciliated and painted; an illuminated manuscript in +Gaelic which he claimed had been used by a warrior to ransom a king; +chain armor, weapons of all kinds, climes and periods; an Alpine horn, +reminiscent of the summer Kenny had saved a young painter's life at the +risk of his own; some old masters, a cittern, a Chinese cheng with +tubes and reeds, an ancient psaltery with wires you struck with a +crooked stick that was always lost (Kenny when the mood was upon him +evolved weird music from them all), an Italian dulcimer, a Welsh crwth +that was unpronounceably interesting (some of the strings you twanged +with your thumb and some you played with a bow); Chinese, Japanese, +Indian vases, some alas! sufficiently small for utilitarian purposes, +Salviati glass, feather embroidery, carved chairs and a chest. + +A prodigal display--Kenny in his shifting periods of affluence was +always prodigal--but there had never been cups enough with handles in +the littered closet, Garry recalled, until Brian inspired had bought +too many bouillon cups, figuring that one handle always would be left; +Kenny could not remember to buy a teapot when he could and made tea in +a chafing dish; and he had been known to serve highballs in vases. + +Garry glanced expectantly at his host and found him but a blur of +oriental color in a film of smoke. As usual, when he was in a temper +or excited, he was smoking furiously. But the threat of disinheritance +was not forthcoming. If anything, the disinheritor was sulking. And +the eyes of the disinheritee were intelligent and disconcerting. + +"Well?" said Garry, amazed. + +"I've already been disinherited," explained Brian dryly. "Twice. And +I'm leaving tonight--for good." + +Garry sat up. + +"You mean?" demanded Kenny coldly. + +"I mean," flung out Brian, "that I'm tired of it all. I'm sick to +death of painting sunsets." + +Garry's startled glance sought and found a mediocre sunset on an easel. +Brian went in for sunsets. He said so himself with an inexplicable air +of weariness and disgust. He knew how to make them. + +Kenny's glance too had found the sunset. It stood beside a landscape, +brilliant and unforgettable, of his own. Both men looked away. Brian +smiled. + +"You see?" he said quietly. + +"Sunsets!" stammered Kenny, perversely taking up the keynote of his +son's rebellion literally. "Sunsets! I warned you, Brian--" + +"Sunsets," said Brian, "and everything else you put on canvas with +paint and brush. I can't paint. You know it. Garry knows it. I know +it. I've painted, Kenny, merely to please you. I've nothing more than +a commonplace skill whipped into shape by an art school. Aerial +battlefields--my sunsets--in more ways than one. I paint 'em because +they happen to be the thing in Nature that thrills me most. And when I +fire to a thing, most always I can manage somehow. You yourself have +engineered for me every profitable commission I've ever had. What's +more, Kenny, if ever once you'd put into real art the dreadful energy +I've put into my mediocrity--" + +"You mean I'm lazy?" interrupted Kenny, bristling. + +"Certainly not," said Brian with acid politeness. "You're merely +subject to periodic fits of indolence. You've said as much yourself." + +It was irrefutable. Kenny, offended, brought his fist down upon the +table with a bang. + +"I know precisely what you're going to say," cut in Brian. "I'm +ungrateful. I'm not. But it's misdirected generosity on your part, +Kenny. And I'm through. I'm tired," he added simply. "I want to live +my own life away from the things I can't do well. I'm tired of +drifting." + +"And to-night?" + +Brian flung out his hands. + +"The last straw!" he said bitterly. + +"You're meaning the shotgun, Brian?" demanded Kenny. + +"I'm meaning the shotgun." + +"What will you do?" interposed the peacemaker in the nick of time. + +"I've done some free-lance reporting for John Whitaker," said Brian. +"I think he'll give me a big chance. He's interested." His voice--it +had in it at times a hint of Kenny's soft and captivating brogue--was +splendidly boyish and eager now. "Foreign perhaps or war. Maybe +Mexico. Anything so I can write the truth, Garry, the big truth that's +down so far you have to dig for it, the passion of humanness--the +humanness of unrest. I can't say it to-night. I can only feel it." + +Alarmed by this time, Kenny came turbulently into the conversation and +abused John Whitaker for his son's defection. Brian, it was plain, had +been decoyed by bromidic tales of cub reporters and "record-smashing +beats." He contrasted art and journalism and found Brian indifferent +to his scorn. + +"It isn't just Whitaker and the sunsets and the desire to exchange the +sham of my 'art' for the truth of something real," said Brian. "It's +everything. It's the studio here and things like--like the shotgun. I +hate the brilliant, disorderly hand-to-mouth sort of Bohemia, Kenny, in +which you seem to thrive. Either we have a lot of money or a lot of +debts--" + +Garry nodded. + +"I suppose," went on Brian wearily, "that my nature must demand an +orderly security in essentials. Plebeian, of course, but comfortable. +I mean, money in sufficient regularity, chairs you can sit down on +without looking first--" he shrugged. + +Further detail and he would be drifting into deep water. Life with +Kenny, who borrowed as freely as he gave, entailed petty harassments +that could not be named. + +"Things," finished Brian. "that are mine without a lock and key." + +He had meant not to say it. Kenny struck his hand fiercely against the +table. + +"You hear that, Garry?" he demanded with an indignant bid for support. +"You hear that? By the Lord Harry, Brian, it's damnable and indecent +to harp so upon the shotgun after smashing the statuette." + +The circle was complete. They were back to Kenny's grievance. Brian +sighed. + +"I wasn't thinking of the shotgun," he said. "There have been times, +Kenny, when I hadn't a collar left--" + +"He's right," put in Garry with quick sympathy. "It's not just the +shotgun--" + +"Garry, you shut up!" snapped Kenny, sweeping the fragments of Ann's +statuette into the table drawer and closing it with a bang. + +"Please remember," reminded Garry, coldly, "that an established +privilege of mine, since I undertook this Hague stuff, is absolute +frankness." + +"Br-r-r-r--" + +"Who rapped for me?" + +"Kenny did," said Brian. + +"Any man," retorted Kenny bitterly, "may have a--a moment of lunacy. I +thought you were impartial." + +"You mean," said Garry keenly, "that when you rapped you'd been +hypnotized by the justice of your own case and felt a little reckless." + +Kenny drew himself up splendidly and glared at Garry through a cloud of +smoke. + +"Piffle!" said Garry. "No stately stuff for me, Kenny, please. It's +late and I'm tired. I'll referee this thing in my own way. I +repeat--it's not just the shotgun. It's everything he owns." + +"What for instance?" inquired Kenny, dangerously polite. + +"His money, his clothes and his girls!" enumerated Garry brutally. +"You even pawned his fishing rods and golf clubs." + +"I sent him a fern," said Kenny, affronted. "Did he even water it? +No!" + +"I think I paid for it," said Brian. + +"Has he ever given me the proper degree of respect. No! He calls +me--Kenny!" + +Garry laughed aloud at the wrathful search for grievance. It was not +always easy to remember that Kenny had eloped at twenty with the young +wife who had died when his son was born; and that his son was +twenty-three. + +"Go on," said Kenny. "Laugh your fool head off. I'm merely stating +facts." + +"As for his tennis racquet," reminded Garry, and Kenny flushed. + +It developed that of studio things the racquet and the shotgun had +seemed the least essential. And the need had been imperative. + +"Nevertheless," interposed Garry, "they and a number of other things +you pawned were Brian's." + +Moreover, reverting to the fishing rods and golf clubs, Kenny would +like to have them both remember that it had been winter and one can +redeem most anything by summer. He'd meant to. He honestly had. + +"But you didn't," said Garry. + +"Great God," thundered Kenny, "you're like a parrot." Fuming he +searched afield for cigarettes and found them at his elbow. A noise at +the open window behind him brought him to his feet with a nervous start. + +"What's that? What's over there?" he demanded petulantly. + +"Oh, it's only H-B," said Garry. "He's come down the fire-escape. +Mac's likely forgotten to chain him." + +The honey-bear, kept secretly in a studio upstairs and christened "H-B" +to cloak his identity--for the club rules denied him hospitality--came +in with a jaunty air of confidence. At the sight of the three men he +turned tail and fled. Kenny speeded his departure with a bouillon cup +and felt better. + +As for clothes, Kenny began with new dignity, he must remind them both +that he had more than Brian, if now and again he did forget a minor +essential and have to forage for it. He added with an air of rebuke +that Brian was welcome to anything he had, anything--to borrow, to wear +and to lose if he chose. + +Brian received the offer with a glance of blank dismay and Garry with +difficulty repressed a smile. Kenny's fashionable wardrobe, portentous +in all truth, had an unmistakable air of originality about it at once +foreign and striking. There were times when he looked irresistibly +theatric and ducal. + +Kenny repeated his willingness to lend his wardrobe. + +"Of course you would," said Garry. "Though it's hardly the point and +difficult to remember when Brian is in a hurry and has to send out a +boy to buy him a collar." + +In the matter of money, to take up another point, Kenny felt that his +son had a peculiar genius for always having money somewhere. Brian had +of necessity been saved considerable inconvenience by a tendency to +economy and resource. As usual, if anybody suffered it was Kenny. + +"For 'tis myself, dear lad," he finished, "that runs the scale a bit. +Faith, I'm that impecunious at times I'm beside myself with fret and +worry." + +Brian steeled himself against the disarming gentleness of the change of +mood. It was inevitably strategic. Wily and magnetic Kenny always had +his way. It was plain he thought to have it now with every instinct up +in arms at the thought of Brian's going. + +"I've less genius, less debt and less money," conceded Brian, "but I've +a lot more capacity for worry and I'm tired of always being on my +guard. I'm tired of bookkeeping--" + +"Bookkeeping!" + +"Bookkeeping lies!" said Brian bluntly. "I've lied myself sometimes, +Kenny, to keep from denying a lie of yours." + +The nature of the thrust was unexpected. Kenny changed color and +resented the hyper-critical word. To his mind it was neither filial +nor aesthetic. + +"Lies!" he repeated indignantly, regarding his son with a look of +paralyzed inquiry. "Lies!" + +"Lies!" insisted Brian. "You know precisely what I mean." + +"I suppose, Kenny," said Garry fairly, "that a certain amount of +romancing is for you the wine of existence. Your wit's insistent and +if a thing presents itself, tempting and warmly colored, you can't +refuse it expression simply because it isn't true. You must make a +good story. I've sometimes thought you'd have a qualm or two of +conscience if you didn't, as if it's an artistic obligation you've +ignored--to delight somebody's ears, even for a moment. Perhaps you +don't realize how far afield you travel. But it's pretty hard on +Brian." + +It was the thing, as Garry knew, that taxed Brian's patience to the +utmost, plunged him into grotesque dilemmas and kept him keyed to an +abnormal alertness of memory. Always his sense of loyalty revolted at +the notion of denying any tale that Kenny told. + +Now Kenny's hurt stare left Brian unrepentant. He lost his temper +utterly. Thereafter he blazed out a hot-headed summary of book-keeping +that made his father gasp. + +Kenny's air of conscious rectitude vanished. In an instant he was +defensive and excited, resenting the unexpected need of the one and the +distraction of the other. The sum of his episodic rambling on Brian's +tongue was appalling. He was willing to concede that his imagination +was wayward and romantic. But why in the name of Heaven must a +man--and an Irishman--justify the indiscretions of his wit? Well, the +lad had always had an unnatural trend for fact. Kenny remembered with +resentment the Irish fairies that even in his childhood Brian had been +unable to accept, excellent fairies with feet so big that in time of +storm they stood on their heads and used them for umbrellas! + +Staggered by Brian's inflexible air of resolution, Kenny, his fingers +clenched in his hair, began another circle. He reverted to his +grievance. The quarrel this time was sharp and brief. Brian hated +repetitions. Hotly impenitent he flung out of the studio and slammed +his bedroom door, leaving Kenny dazed and defensive and utterly unable +to comprehend the twist of fate by which the dignity of his grievance +had been turned to disadvantage. + +Garry glanced at the gray haze in the court beyond the window and rose. + +"It's nearly daybreak," he said. "And I've a model coming at ten. +She's busy and I can't stall." + +He left Kenny amazed and aggrieved at his desertion. Certainly in the +grip of untoward events, a man is entitled to someone with whom he can +talk it over. + +Wakeful and nervous, Kenny smoked, raked his hair with his fingers and +brooded. Brian had been disinherited much too often to resent it all +at once to-night. As for the shotgun, that dispute or its equivalent +was certainly as normal a one as regularity could make it. And he had +related many a tale unhampered by fact that Brian had simply ignored. + +"What on earth has got into the lad?" he wondered impatiently. + +Ah, well, he was a good lad, clean-cut and fine, with Irish eyes and an +Irish temper like his father. Kenny forgot and forgave. Both were a +spontaneity of temperament. Brian and he would begin again. That was +always pleasant. + +He strode remorsefully to Brian's door and knocked. There was no +answer. He knocked again. Ordinarily he would have flung back the +door with a show of temper. Penitential, he opened it with an air of +gentle forbearance. The room, which gave evidence of anger and hurried +packing, was empty, the door that opened into the corridor, ajar. + +Brian was gone. + +White and startled, Kenny unearthed the chafing dish and made himself +some coffee. + +Brian, of course, would return in the morning, whistling and sane. He +would call something back in his big, pleasant voice to the elevator +man who worshipped him, and bang the studio door. The lad was not +given to such definite revolt. Besides, Brian, he must remember, was +an O'Neill, an Irishman and a son of his, an indisputable trio of good +fortune; as such he could be depended upon not to make an ass of +himself. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE UNSUCCESSFUL PARENT + +Kenny slept as he lived, with a genius for dreams and adventure. He +remembered moodily as he rose at noon that he had dreamed a +kaleidoscopic chase, precisely like a moving picture with himself a +star, in which, bolting through one taxi door and out another with a +shotgun in his hand, he had valiantly pursued a youth who had, +miraculously, found the crooked stick of the psaltery and stolen it. +The youth proved to be Brian. That part was reasonable enough. Brian +was the only one who could find the thing long enough to steal it. + +It was not likely to be a day for work. That he felt righteously could +not be expected. Nevertheless, with hurt concession to certain talk of +indolence the night before, he donned a painter's smock and, filled +with a consciousness of tremendous energy to be expended in God's good +time, telephoned John Whitaker. + +Yes, Brian had been there. Where he was now, where he would be, +Whitaker did not feel at liberty to divulge. Frankly he was pledged to +silence. Kenny willing, he would be up to dinner at six. He had a lot +to say. + +Kenny banged the receiver into the hook in a blaze of temper, hurt and +unreasonable, and striding to the rear window flung it up to cool his +face. There were bouillon cups upon the sill. Bouillon cups! +Bouillon cups! Thunder-and-turf! There were bouillon cups everywhere. +Nobody but Brian would have bought so many handles. A future of +handles loomed drearily ahead. Brian could talk of disorder all he +chose. Half of it was bouillon cups. Bitterly resenting the reproach +they seemed to embody, stacked there upon the sill, Kenny passionately +desired to sweep them out of the window once and for all. The desire +of the moment, ever his doom, proved overpowering. The cups crashed +upon a roof below with prompt results. Kenny was appalled at the +number of heads that appeared at studio windows, the head of Sidney +Fahr among them, round-eyed and incredulous. Well, that part at least +was normal. Sid's face advertised a chronic distrust of his senses. + +Moreover, when Pietro appeared after a round of alarmed inquiry, Kenny +perversely chose to be truthful about it, insisted that it was not +accidental and refused to be sorry. Afterward he admitted to Garry, it +was difficult to believe that one spontaneous ebullition of a nature +not untemperamental could provoke so much discussion, frivolous and +otherwise. The thing might grow so, he threatened sulkily, that he'd +leave the club. + +As for the immediate present, Fate had saddled him again with an +afternoon of moody indolence. Certainly no Irishman with nerves strung +to an extraordinary pitch could work with Mike crawling snakily around +the lower roof intent upon china remnants whose freaks of shape seemed +to paralyze him into moments of agreeable interest. Kenny at four +refused an invitation to tea and waited in growing gloom for Reynolds, +a dealer who, prodded always into inconvenient promptness by Kenny's +needs, had promised to combine inspection of the members' exhibition in +the gallery downstairs with the delivery of a check. There were +critical possibilities if he did not appear. + +Mike disappeared with the final fragment and Reynolds became the +grievance of the hour. Kenny, fuming aimlessly around the studio, +resorted desperately at last to an unfailing means of stimulus. He +made a careful toilet, donned a coat with a foreign looking waist-line, +rather high, and experimented with a new and picturesque stock that +fastened beneath his tie with a jeweled link. As six o'clock arrived +and Reynolds' defection became a thing assured, his attitude toward +John Whitaker underwent an imperative change. It would be impossible +now to greet him with hostile dignity. He had become a definite need. + +When at ten minutes past six the studio bell tinkled, Kenny, opening +the door, stared at Whitaker in tragic dismay and struck himself upon +the forehead. + +"Mother of Men!" he groaned. "I thought of course it would be +Reynolds. He's bringing me a check." + +John Whitaker looked unimpressed. He merely blinked his recognition of +a subterfuge. + +There was a parallel in his experience, a weekend arrival at Woodstock +when Kenny, farming in a flurry of enthusiasm, had come riding down to +meet his guest on a singular quadruped whose area of hide had thickened +strangely. Brian called the uncurried quadruped a plush horse. Kenny, +remembered Whitaker, had searched with tragic eyes for an invited +editor who had recklessly agreed to pay in advance for an excursion of +Kenny's into illustrating, ostensibly to pay for a cow. And Kenny's +words had been: "My God, Whitaker! Where's Graham?" Moreover he had +struck himself fiercely on the forehead and Whitaker had grub-staked +his host to provisions until Graham arrived. + +"Can't we eat in the grill?" asked Whitaker. "It's raining." Kenny +regarded him with a look of pained intelligence. + +"I'm posted," he said. + +"Then," said Whitaker, "I'll go out and buy something. I'd rather eat +in the studio. What'll I get?" + +Kenny capriciously banned oysters. + +"If you want a rarebit," he added, "we have some cheese." + +He was still searching excitedly for the cheese when Whitaker returned. + +"Reynolds," he flung out vindictively, "is positively the most +unreliable dealer I know. He's erratic and irresponsible. A man may +work himself to death and wait in the grave for his money. Do you +wonder poor Blakelock met his doom through the cupidity of laggard +dealers? Here am I on the verge of God knows what from overwork--" + +Whitaker spared him disillusion. Painting with Kenny was an +occupation, never work. When it slipped tiresomely into the class of +work and palled, he threw it aside for something more diverting. + +"The cheese in all probability," suggested Whitaker mildly, "wouldn't +be under the piano. Or would it? And don't bother anyway. I took the +liberty of buying an emergency wedge while I was out." + +Kenny wiped his forehead in amazed relief and piously thanked God he +hadn't wasted his appetite on middle-aged cakes. + +"If you hadn't come when you did," he said, "I'd likely had to eat 'em, +thanks to Reynolds. Now I'll send 'em up to H. B." He peered +disgustedly into the bag and removed an irrelevant ace of spades. Its +hibernation there seemed for an instant to annoy him as well it might. +There had been a furore in whist about it barely a week before. Then +he used it irresponsibly for an I.O.U. and impaled it upon a strange +looking spike that seemed to pinion a heterogeneous admission of petty +debt. + +Together they made the rarebit. Whitaker waited with foreboding for +the storm to break. But for some reason, though he was constrained and +impatient and feverishly active, Kenny avoided the subject of Brian. +He lost poise and patience all at once, pushed aside his plate and +challenged Whitaker with a look. + +"Why did you want to eat in the studio?" + +"I came to talk." + +"Whitaker," blustered Kenny, "where's Brian?" + +"Working." + +"On your paper?" + +"No. Brian's left New York. He's driving somebody's car. And I found +the job for him through my paper. When he has money enough he plans to +tramp off into God's green world of spring to get himself in trim. +Says he's stale and tired and thinking wrong. In the fall he's going +abroad for me and that, Kenny, is about all I can tell you." + +"You mean," flared Kenny, rising with a ragged napkin in his hand, "you +mean, John, it's all you will tell me!" + +"Sit down," said Whitaker, toasting a cracker over the alcohol flame. +"I prefer a sensible talk without fireworks." + +Surprised and nettled, Kenny obeyed in spite of himself. + +"Now," went on Whitaker quietly, "I came here to-night because I'm +Brian's friend and yours." He ignored the incredulous arch of Kenny's +eyebrows. "Where Brian is, where he will be, I don't propose to tell +you, now or at any other time. His wheres and his whens are the boy's +own business. His whys I think you know. He won't be back." + +"He will!" thundered Kenny and thumped upon the table with his fist. + +Whitaker patiently reassembled his supper. + +"I think not," he said. + +"You're not here to think," blazed Kenny. "You're here to tell me what +you know." + +"I'm here," corrected John Whitaker, "to get a few facts out of my +system for your own good and Brian's. Kenny, how much of the truth can +you stand?" + +Kenny threw up his hands with a reminiscent gesture of despair. + +"Truth!" he repeated. "Truth!" + +"I know," put in Whitaker, "that you regard the truth as something +sacred, to be handled with delicacy and discretion. But--" + +Kenny told him sullenly to tell it if he could. + +"I don't propose to urge Brian back here for a good many reasons. In +the first place, he's not a painter--" + +"John," interrupted Kenny hotly, "you are no judge of that. I, +Kennicott O'Neill, am his father." + +"And more's the pity," said Whitaker bluntly, "for you've made a mess +of it. That's another reason." + +Kenny turned a dark red. + +"You mean?" + +"I mean, Kenny," said Whitaker, his glance calm and level, "that as a +parent for Brian, you are an abject failure." + +The word stung. It was the first time in his life that Kenny had faced +it. That he, Kennicott O'Neill, Academician, with Heaven knows how +many medals of distinction, could fail at anything, was a new thought, +bewildering and bitter. This time he escaped from the table and flung +up a window. Whitaker, he grumbled, never toasted crackers without +burning them. Whitaker brought him back with a look. + +"Sit down," he said again. "I don't propose to talk while you roam +around the studio and kick things." + +Kenny obeyed. He looked a little white. + +"I've tried to think this thing out fairly," said Whitaker. "Why as a +parent for Brian you're a failure--" + +"Well?" + +"And the first and fundamental cause of your failure is, I think, your +hairbrained, unquenchable youth." + +Kenny stared at him in astounded silence. + +"I remember once around the fire here you told a Celtic tale of some +golden islands--Tirnanoge, wasn't it?--the Land of the Young--" + +Might have been, Kenny said perversely. He didn't remember. + +"Ossian lived there with the daughter of the King of Youth for three +hundred years that seemed but three," reminded Whitaker. "Well, no +matter. The point is this: The Land of the Young and the King of Youth +always make me think of you." + +"It is true," said Kenny with biting sarcasm, "that I still have hair +and teeth. It is also true that I am the respectable if unsuccessful +parent of a son twenty-three years old and I myself am forty-four." + +"Forty-four years young," admitted Whitaker. "And Brian on the other +hand is twenty-three years old. There you have it. You know precisely +what I mean, Kenny. Youth isn't always a matter of years. It's a +state of being. Sometimes it's an affliction and sometimes a gift. +Sometimes it's chronic and sometimes it's contagious enough to start an +epidemic. You're as young and irresponsible as the wind. You've never +grown up. God knows whether or not you ever will. But Brian has. +There's the clash." + +"Go on," said Kenny with a dangerous flash of interest in his eyes. +"You've an undeniable facility, John, with what you call the truth." + +"It's an unfortunate characteristic of highly temperamentalized +individuals--" + +"Painters, Irishmen and O'Neills," put in Kenny with sulky impudence. + +"That they frequently skirt the rocks for themselves with amazing +skill. I mean just this: They don't always shipwreck their own lives." + +Was that, Kenny would like to know, an essential of successful +parenthood? + +"I mean," he paraphrased dryly, "must you wreck your own life, John, to +parent somebody else with skill?" The wording of this rather pleased +him. He brightened visibly. + +Whitaker ignored his brazen air of assurance. It was like Kenny, he +reflected, to find an unexpected loophole and emerge from it with the +air of a conqueror. + +"People with an over-plus of temperament," he said, "wreck the lives of +others. Brian has just stepped out in the nick of time." + +"You mean," flashed Kenny with anger in his eyes, "you mean I've tried +to wreck the life of my own son? By the powers of war, John, that's +too much!" + +"I didn't say you had tried. I mean merely that you were accidentally +succeeding. The sunsets--" + +"Damn the sunsets!" roared Kenny, losing his head. + +"It was time for that," agreed Whitaker. + +"Time for what?" + +"You usually damn the irrefutable thing. Why you wanted Brian to paint +pictures," went on Whitaker, ignoring Kenny's outraged sputter, "when +he couldn't, is and always has been a matter of considerable worry and +mystery to me--" + +"It needn't have been. That, I fancy, John, you can see for yourself. +I worry very little about how your paper is run." + +"But I think I've solved it. It's your vanity." + +"My God!" said Kenny with a gasp. + +"You wanted to have a hand in what he did. Then you could afford to be +gracious. There are some, Kenny, who must always direct in order to +enjoy." + +There was a modicum of enjoyment with Whitaker around, hinted Kenny +sullenly. + +Whitaker found his irrelevant trick of umbrage trying in the extreme. +He lost his temper and said that which he had meant to leave to +inference. + +"Kenny, Brian's success, in which you, curiously enough, seem to have +had a visionary faith, would have linked him to you in a sort of +artistic dependence in which you shone with inferential genius and +generosity." + +It hurt. + +"So!" said Kenny, his color high. + +"It may be," said Whitaker, feeling sorry for him, "that I've put that +rather strongly but I think I've dug into the underlying something +which, linked with your warm-hearted generosity and a real love for +Brian, made you stubborn and unreasonable about his work. Of the big +gap in temperament and the host of petty things that maddened Brian to +the point of distraction, it's unnecessary for me to speak. You must +know that your happy-go-lucky self-indulgence more often than not has +spelled discomfort of a definite sort for Brian. You're generous, I'll +admit. Generous to a fault. But your generosity is always congenial. +It's never the sort that hurts. The only kind of generosity that will +help in this crisis is the kind that hurts. It's up to you, Kenny, to +do some mental house-cleaning, admit the cobwebs and brush them away, +instead of using them fantastically for drapery." + +Whitaker thanked his lucky stars he'd gotten on so well. Kenny, +affronted, was usually more capricious and elusive. + +"Whitaker," said Kenny, his eyes imploring, "you don't--you can't mean +that Brian isn't coming back?" + +Whitaker sighed. After all, Kenny never heard all of anything, just as +he never read all of a letter unless it was asterisked and under-lined +and riveted to his attention by a multitude of pen devices. + +"Kenny, have you been listening?" + +"No!" lied Kenny. + +"Brian," flung out Whitaker wrathfully, "isn't coming back. I thank +God for his sake." + +His loss of temper brought a hornet's nest about his ears. Kenny swung +to his feet in smoldering fury. He expressed his opinion of Whitaker, +editors, Brian and sons. The sum of them merged into an unchristian +melee of officiousness and black ingratitude. He recounted the events +of the night before with stinging sarcasm in proof of Brian's +regularity. He ended magnificently by blaming Brian for the disorder +of the studio. There were handles everywhere. And Brian in an +exuberance of amiability had broken a statuette. Likely Whitaker would +see even in that some form of paternal oppression. + +"Whitaker," flung out Kenny indignantly, "Brian plays but one +instrument in this studio and we have a dozen. Wasn't it precisely +like him to pick out that damned psaltery there with the crooked stick? +I mean--wasn't it like him to pick out something with a fiendish +appendage that could be lost, and keep the studio in an uproar when he +wanted to play it?" + +Whitaker laughed in spite of himself. The psaltery stick was famous. + +Moreover, Brian--Brian, mind you, who talked of truth with +hair-splitting piety--Brian had that very day at noon forced his father +to the telling of a lie. + +"But he wasn't here," said Whitaker, mystified. "He lunched with me." + +"The fact remains," insisted Kenny with dignity. "I myself told Garry +Rittenhouse he'd gone up to Reynolds to collect some money. And Garry, +thinking he had come back, believed it." + +"Kenny," said Whitaker, his patience quite gone, "are you mad? How on +earth did Brian force you into that lie?" + +"By not coming home," said Kenny sulkily. "If he'd come home as a lad +should, I needn't have told it. You can see that for yourself." + +Whitaker dazedly threw up his hands. + +Having successfully baffled his opponent with the brilliancy of his +unreason, Kenny enlarged upon the humiliation he must experience when +Garry learned the truth. At a familiar climax of self-glorification, +in which Kenny claimed he had saved Brian from no end of club-gossip by +his timely evasion of the truth, Whitaker lost his temper and went home. + +He left his host in a dangerous mood of quiet. + +It was a quiet unlike Kenny, who hated to think, and presently he flung +his pipe across the studio, fuming at what seemed to him unprecedented +disorder. It was getting on his nerves. No man could work in such a +hodge-podge. Even inspiration was likely to be chaotic and futuristic. +Small blame to Brian if he resented it all. To-morrow, if Reynolds +deigned to appear with his check, he would summon Mrs. Haggerty, and +the studio should have a cleaning that the mercenary old beldame would +remember. Kenny vaguely coupled Mrs. Haggerty with the present +disorder and resented both, his defiant eyes lingering with new +interest upon a jumble of musical instruments in a corner. + +With a muffled objurgation he fell upon the jumble and began to +overhaul it. The object sought defied his fevered efforts to unearth +it and with teeth set, he ransacked the studio, resentfully flinging a +melee of hindrances right and left. + +The telephone rang. + +"Kenny," said Garry's patient voice, "what in Heaven's name are you +doing? What hit the wall?" + +"I'm hunting the stick to that damned psaltery," snapped Kenny and +banged the receiver into the hook, one hand as usual clenched +frenziedly in his hair. + +Later, with the studio a record of earthquake, he found it under a +model stand and wiping his forehead anchored it to the psaltery for +good and all with a shoestring. + +Horribly depressed he thumped on the wall for Garry, who came at once, +wondering wryly if Brian had come in and the need again was mediation. + +"You might as well know," began Kenny at once, "that Brian didn't go up +to Reynolds for me this noon--" + +Garry stared. + +"It was a lie," flung out Kenny with a jerk, "a damnable, deliberate, +indecent lie. Whitaker says he's gone for good." His look was wistful +and indignant. "Garry, what's wrong?" he demanded. "What on earth +_is_ it? Why couldn't things have gone on as they were, without God +knows how many people picking _me_ for a target? As far as I can see +I'm merely maintaining my usual average of imperfection and all the +rest of the world has gone mad." + +"I suppose, Kenny," began Garry lamely, "you must be starting a new +cycle. Jan could tell you. He talks a lot about the cycle of dates +and the philosophy of vibrations--" + +"I know that I regard the truth as something sacred, to be handled with +delicacy and discretion," began Kenny with bitter fluency. "I'm an +unsuccessful parent with an over-supply of hair and teeth, afflicted +with hairbrained, unquenchable youth. I'd be a perennial in the Land +of the Young and could hobnob indefinitely with his Flighty Highness, +the King of Youth. I'm forty-four years young and highly +temperamentalized. I've made a mess of parenting Brian and I'm an +abject failure." + +Garry looked at him. + +"Just what are you talking about?" he asked. + +"I know," pursued Kenny elaborately, "that it's unfortunate I haven't +wrecked my own life when I'm an accidental success at wrecking Brian's. +I'm full of cobwebs. I damn irrefutable things and I've forced Brian +to a profession of sunsets to gratify my vanity. Can you personally, +Garry, think of anything else?" + +"Sit down!" said Garry. "You're about as logical as a lunatic--" + +"Tell Whitaker, do," begged Kenny. "There's one he missed. Garry, +what's back of all this turmoil? What's the real reason for Brian's +brain-storm? I'm sick to death of Whitaker's wordy arabesque and +abuse. I want facts." + +"Brian said it all last night," reminded Garry. "It's just another +case of a last straw." + +"You honestly mean that the ancestors of the straw are the sunsets, the +disorder here--the--the--" He thumped the table. "Garry, I don't +lie. I swear I don't. I hate a liar. I mean a dishonorable liar. A +lie is an untruth that harms. That's my definition. Any man +embroiders sordid fact on occasion." + +"On occasion!" admitted Garry. + +Kenny, with his eye upon the fern in the window, missed the +significance. It had registered his sincere regret--that fern--at the +need of pawning Brian's fishing rods and golf clubs. Like Brian! He +had failed utterly to comprehend the delicacy of the tribute. + +Finding this point upon which he dwelt with some length equally +over-nice for Garry's perception, Kenny in a huff sent him home, +watered the fern, without in the least understanding the impulse, and +went to bed. And dreaming as usual, he seemed to be hunting cobwebs +with a gun made of ferns. He found them draped over huge pillars of +ice, marked in Brian's familiar sunset colors. Truth. And when +panting and sweating he had swept them all away with a wedge of cheese +he seemed to hear Whitaker's voice--calling him a failure. + +Kenny felt that he had been visited by Far Darrig, the Gaelic bringer +of bad dreams. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +IN THE GAY AND GOLDEN WEATHER + +Spring came early and with the first marsh hawk Brian was on the road, +his eager youth crying out to the spring's hope and laughter. +Everywhere he caught the thrill of it. Brooks released from an armor +of ice went singing by him. Hill and meadow deepened verdantly into +smiles. A little while now and the whole green earth in its tenderness +would dimple exquisitely, with every dimple a flower. Mother Earth, +moistening the bare brown fields for the plough with a capricious tear +or so for the banished winter, was beginning again. And so was he. +Hope swelled wistfully within him like song in the throat of the +bluebird and sap in the trees. With the sun warm upon his face and the +gladness of spring in his veins, he sang with Pippa that "God's in his +Heaven, all's right with the world!" + +Well, New York, thank God, lay to the back of him, veiling her +realities and truth in glitter, defying nearness. Every human thing +that made for life lay there as surely as it lay here in God's quieter +world, but you never came close to it. + +So he tramped away to green fields and hills and winding quiet roads, +spring riding into his heart, invincible and bold. + +An arbutus filled him with the wonder of things, a sense of eternity, a +swift, inexplicable compassion, a longing for service to the needs of +men. His ears thrilled to the song of the earth and the whistle of the +ploughman turning up the fresh brown earth. He filled his lungs with +the wind of the open country, drank in the enchantment of the morning +and the dusk, his nostrils joyously alive to the smell of the furrowed +ground and a hint of burgeoning wild flowers. + +But the first robin brought misgivings and remorse. Brian remembered +Kenny's legend of the thorn ("worst of them all it was," said Kenny +gently, "and prickin' deepest!") and the robin who plucked it from the +bleeding brow of Christ. So by the blood of the Son of Man had the +robin come by his red breast. + +The legend filled Brian with yearning. He softened dangerously to the +memory of a sketching tramp with Kenny fuming at his heels, his +excitement chronic. Adventure had endlessly stalked Kenny for its own, +waylaid him at intervals when he passionately proclaimed his desire for +peace, and saddled Brian with the responsibilities of constant +guardianship. + +Brian stubbornly put it all behind him. Kenny, frantic with tenderness +and resolution, could sweep him credulously back into bondage if he +kept to the siege. His promises were fluent always and alluring. Only +by the courage of utter separation could Brian make his longed for +emancipation a thing assured. + +So he tramped the highway, lingering by fence and rail to talk with +men, living and learning. For the highway meant to him the passion of +life. Hope and sorrow traveled it day and night in homely hearts. + +And often his thoughts harked wistfully back to the words of a modern +poet which Kenny with his usual skill had set to music: + + "And often, often I'm longing still, + This gay and golden weather, + For my father's face by an Irish hill, + And he and I together." + +In the gay and golden weather things were going badly with the +unsuccessful parent. For weeks now his life had been in ferment, his +moods as freakish as the wind. What little regularity his life had +known departed to that limbo that had claimed his peace of mind. That +he felt himself abnormally methodic lay entirely in the fact that he +watered the fern each day. It had for him a morbid fascination. +Incomprehensible forces were sapping his faith in himself and the +future; and viciously at war with them, he nursed his grievance against +Brian only to find that it was less robust than any grievance should +be. At any cost he wanted Brian back. + +"He's taken care of me," remembered Kenny sadly, "since he was a bit of +a lad." + +As ever, the thing withheld, Kenny ardently desired. That thing was +Brian's presence. Any Irishman, he decided fiercely, would understand +his terrified clinging to the things of the heart that belonged to him +by birth. It was part of his race and creed. He hated to be alone. +And Brian was all he had. How lightly he had prized that one +possession until it became a thing denied, Kenny, sentimentalizing his +need, forgot. + +Studio gossip, having concerned itself with Brian's going, almost to +the disruption of the Holbein Club, took up in perturbed detail the +glaring problem of Kenny's tantrums. He was keeping everyone excited. + +"Of course," mused Garry, "you could earn your living as a moving +picture actor--" + +"Adams owes me five thousand dollars for his wife's portrait," +sputtered Kenny. "But I can't get it. He's been sick for weeks. +Typhoid." + +"And in the meantime?" + +The shaft went home. Kenny sent for a model--and sent her home. + +"She was too ornamental and decidedly sympathetic," he explained +gloomily to Garry. "I'm just in the mood to make a colossal fool of +myself. She was the sort of girl you'd invite to tea to meet your +brother's wife." + +"Kenny!" + +"She was!" insisted Kenny. + +"Any number of models are and you know it. And that girl is Jan's +cousin." + +"I make a point of never losing my head over a model," declared Kenny +with an air. "It's a hindrance to work. You concentrate on a type and +every picture you do advertises your devotion. Suppose I married her!" + +"Heaven help her!" snapped Garry, and went out, slamming the door. + +Kenny offended, followed him home. He felt aggrieved and talkative. + +If Kenny had succeeded in propelling himself into one of his nervous +ecstasies of inspiration, thereby normalizing his existence to some +extent, if Reynolds had not appeared and simplified the painter's +credit to a point where he made no further search for unsympathetic +models. Fate, weaving the destiny of two O'Neills, would have changed +her loom. As it was, sick with brooding and pity for himself, Kenny +abandoned all pretense of labor and rushed on blindly to his fate. The +spring was in his blood. What form of midsummer madness lay ahead of +him depended now upon the hairtrigger of impulse. A wind, a sketch, +the perfume of a flower, and he would be off wherever the reminiscence +called him. He whistled constantly. That, as Jan pointed out, was +always a bad sign with Kenny. It meant that he felt perilously +transient and would rocket up in the air when a spark came that pleased +him. He had been much the same, Fahr remembered, the summer he +embarked for Syria upon a tramp steamer--to the captain's frantic +regret. + +In the end, feeling absurdly sorry for him, Garry unwittingly sent the +spark in by Pietro. + +It was a letter from Brian. + + + "Tavern of Stars + Open Country + God's Green World of Spring + +"Dear Garry: + +"The purpose of this letter is primarily a favor. Therefore without +pretense I'll have done with it at once. You'll find in the studio a +scrapbook of clippings which represent my ebullitions in print. +Whitaker wants them, I believe, for purposes of conference. It will +save him running through his files. + +"I've been on the road for weeks, tramping myself into blessed +weariness at night. More often than not I sleep in the open. I'm +writing this with the aid of a pocket searchlight. Mine host, old +Gaffer Moon, smiles down upon the ashes of my camp fire, full-faced and +silver. An excellent host! Never once has he grumbled about light or +pay and he grants me a roof without question. Ah! it's a blessed old +Tavern of Stars, Garry! Ramshackle enough in all faith, for there are +gaps in the tree-walls and Dame Wind's a-sweeping night and day, but +luckily I've a blanket I carry by day and need by night. + +"I've a road-mate. I think in time he'll be my friend, though he isn't +yet. And thereby hangs a tale. + +"I camped to-night in a wood by a river and turned in early, feeling +tired. Voices drifted hazily into my slumber after a while and I awoke +to find the moon riding high above the wood. My fire was out, my room +in the Tavern of Stars still carpeted in shadow. Beyond in the +moonlight two people had halted, a boy who was denouncing someone in a +hard and bitter voice and, clinging to his arm, a girl in a cloak, whom +I judged to be his sister. Her eyes were like pools of ink and tragic +with imploring, Laughter would have made her lovely. As it was, with +her lashes wet I could only think of Niobe and a passion of tears. I +have rarely seen in a woman's face so much of the right kind of +sweetness. It was an exquisite vigor of sweetness, not in the least +the kind that cloys. + +"They were much alike, save that the boy's face was angry and +rebellious. He was the younger of the two, seventeen or so, and would +have been in rags but for an unbelievable amount of mending. + +"When I awoke, he had, I think, been urging his sister to go with him +and she had refused. Before I could even so much as make them aware of +my nearness, things came to a climax. The boy with a curse pushed her +away. The hurt in his heart perhaps had made him rough. But the girl +shrank away from him with a sob and ran back up the hill. He watched +her climb to a hill-farm near the river, with shame and agony in his +eyes, and I thought he would follow. Instead he plunged most +unexpectedly in my direction and finished his tragedy in comedy by +stumbling over me. We both scrambled to our feet a shade resentful. + +"He realized instantly that I had overheard and blazed out at me in a +passion of temper. Running away had plainly given him an arrogant +conviction of manhood. Garry, old dear, I had to thrash him for the +good of his soul and my Irish temper--he was so offensively independent +and unjust. + +"It was a pretty job of thrashing but it did him good. He threw +himself on the ground and sobbed like the kid he is. While he was +pulling himself together, I built up the fire and made him some coffee. + +"The blaze of the fire worried him--he was afraid his sister would see +it and come back. But he drank the coffee and when I had damped the +fire to ease his mind, I explained to him just why I'd felt the need of +thrashing him. For one thing I hadn't cared for the way he spoke to +his sister. And for another I hadn't cared at all for his insults to +me. He listened sullenly to the facts of my eavesdropping and +apologized. When he found that I was disposed to be friendly he +blurted out his justification for running away: an eccentric old +invalid uncle who in all probability is not so evil as the boy claims. + +"I had an odd feeling as we talked that he stands at the parting of the +ways. Chance will make or mar him. And therefore I told him that if +he insisted upon running away, he might as well tramp with me and think +it over. + +"I don't quite know yet why I said it. + +"He reminds me of Kenny somehow, save that Kenny's more of a kid. Both +of them have an overdose of temperament and need a guardian with an +iron hand. And both have a way about them. + +"Likely, after the wind was so pitifully out of his sails I could have +dragged him up the hill home but if he has the notion of escape in his +head, he'd go again. + +"After a good deal of talk, friendly and otherwise, we took turns at +the searchlight and wrote, each of us, a letter to his sister, I in a +sense seeking to guarantee a respectability I do not look or feel since +I am a truant myself with an indifferent amount of worldly goods. +However, I couldn't help thinking how she'd worry and I promised to see +him through. + +"He's asleep now under my blanket, catching his breath at intervals +like a youngster who's carried heartbreak into his sleep. Poor kid! I +suppose he has. I've promised him to be on the road before daybreak. + +"He'll have to work his way, but that, of course, will be good for him. +What pennies I have I'm obliged to count with a provident eye. I've +added to 'em from time to time along the road. So far I've been +intermittently a rotten ploughman, a fair fence-mender and a skillful +whitewasher. My amazing facility there I attribute to an +apprenticeship in sunsets. Once, during a period of rain, I lived in a +corncrib for three days at an average of seven cents a day. I've +reduced my need of kitchen equipment to a can-opener. A can of +anything, I've discovered, provides food as well as a combination +saucepan and coffee pot. + +"I miss Kenny but I dare not write to him. Garry, you know how it is. +Unless I brace myself with a lot of temper, he can twist me around his +finger. Even his letters are dangerous. I can't--I won't go back to +sunsets. + +"I often think these days of Kenny's wood-fire tales of the shrine of +Black Gartan where St. Columba was born. Colomcille, old Kenny called +him around the wood-fire, didn't he? Colomcille, Kenny said, having +been in exile, knew the homesick pangs himself and therefore could give +the good Irishmen who journeyed to his shrine strength to bear them. +I'm not in exile but there are times when I should be journeyin' off, +as Kenny says when the brogue is on him, to Black Gartan. The curse of +the Celt! Kenny swears there's no homesickness in the world like an +Irishman's passionate longing for home and kin. Not that I long for +the studio. God forbid! Kenny's the symbol for it all. + +"I've had some black minutes of remorse. After all I had no earthly +right to blaze out so about the shotgun. And you can't imagine how the +statuette upset me. + +"Say hello to Kenny for me, won't you? Tell him I'm brown and lean +already, and that I like the fortunes of the road." + + +It hurt of course that the letter was Garry's. Nettled at first, Kenny +had half a mind not to read it. Later, why it was Garry's, gave him a +sense of power. Brian was homesick and repentant. And with the fire +of his temper spent he was always manageable. Kenny cursed the miles +between them. + +He read the letter again and the poetry of the open road filled his +veins with the fire of inspiration. Tavern of Stars! Old Gaffer Moon, +full-faced and silver! Tree-walls and Dame Wind a-sweeping! Why, the +lad was a poet--a poet like his father. And the big-hearted kindness +of him, thrashing the runaway into sense. Irish temper there! Kenny +felt a passionate thrill of pride in his offspring. Yes, Brian was +like his father, thank God, even to the Celtic curse of homesickness. + +"But to think of him," he marveled in a wave of tenderness, "living in +a corncrib on seven cents a day!" + +Again and again he read between the lines, finding sanity and sense, +compassion and humor. The inherited charm of Brian's personality +filled him with intense delight. + +"Always," Kenny remembered, "he must be taking care of someone." + +It gave him a sharp pang of jealousy that that someone was a stranger. + +But the thrill of penance was in his blood. If Brian was big enough to +see himself in the wrong, no less was Kennicott O'Neill, his +unsuccessful father. And he had driven Brian forth upon the road. For +that he must atone. + +That the solution of everything now lay at hand, Kenny never doubted. +Already he had rocketed sentimentally into inspiration. If a certain +vagueness of detail sent him roving abstractedly around the studio with +the letter in his hand, the inspiration in itself was amazingly clear. +Yes, he would fare forth and find Brian. He would tramp every mile of +the road as Brian had done. He would find the farmhouse, the wood and +the river! There happily would be some clue or other that he needed. +And Kenny, in rags and penitential, his feet blistered by the hardships +of the road, would overtake his son and apologize for everything. Nay, +more, he would promise anything. After that the rest would be easy. +Brian had written it there in a letter. Kenny could wind his son +around his finger. Yes, it was all quite clear. And Brian helpfully +would be shocked and thrilled at the sacrificial tribute of penance. +Kenny pursed his lips and nodded. He would even concede the sunsets. +That, after John Whitaker's cold-blooded misinterpretation, was +necessary to his own self-respect--and Brian's happiness. + +Ah, love was the only thing in the world that counted, love and art. +Not the love of woman, which was after all but an intermittent +intoxicant, but the love of one's own. + +Kenny pitied in foretaste the ragged parent who would come upon the +camp fire of his son, picturesque and repentant, and dramatized the +meeting, a lump in his throat. Emotionally it was complex to be actor +and audience both. Thank God, he reflected, as he opened a closet +door, dragged forth a battered multitude of bags and suit cases and +began an impatient upheaval of bureau drawers, he was a man of action. +When Garry entered a half hour later he found the studio floor littered +with preparation. + +"I'm off, this morning," he explained. "In an hour now. Garry, how +can I possibly reduce this mass to packing possibility?" + +"Stop running around in circles!" commanded Garry, thunderstruck. +"What's it all about? Where are you going?" + +"I'm going," said Kenny with his chin out and his eyes defiant, "to +hunt Brian." + +Garry stared blankly at the packing litter and the tall Irishman in the +center of it wearily mopping his forehead. It was impossible to locate +the crags he must have leaped to reach his spectacular decision. They +were shrouded in mystery. + +"You mean," said Garry after a while, "that you will tour vaguely off, +seeking a farm on a hill, a wood, a river, a youngster in patches and +Brian's trail of camp fires?" + +"Precisely," said Kenny with detestable confidence. "See, even you +mark the clues with perfect logic." + +"A farm on a hill," exclaimed Garry, "is of course a clue with absolute +individuality. So is a wood and a river." + +"So," supplemented Kenny with the calm, unhurried air of one who scores +an unexpected point, "is a postmark on a letter." + +Startled, Garry reached for the envelope. Kenny put it in his pocket. + +"An obscure village in Pennsylvania," he explained with dignity, "where +your wood and your river will likely have definite individuality. I +shall go there." + +Garry scented danger and considered the outcome in horrified dismay, +regretting his rash flurry of sympathy. It had become a boomerang. +What if Brian's protégé in a fit of remorse saw fit to keep his sister +posted? Kenny would indeed find clues. The possibility filled him +with foreboding. + +"Kenny," he said with some heat, "I consider that you have absolutely +no right to take advantage of my letter to hunt Brian down. I'm sorry +I sent it in. If he wanted you to know where he is, he'd write you. I +wish to Heaven I'd thought of that postmark!" + +"I shall tramp every inch on foot!" swore Kenny proudly. "Brian will +appreciate the spirit of the thing if you do not." + +There was relief at least in that. Garry drew a long breath. If Kenny +tramped his way, another inexplicable factor in his lunacy, by the time +he reached the farmhouse Brian would be well on ahead. And Garry was +bitterly familiar with Kenny's incapacity for steadiness of any kind. +Kenny, it developed, was thinking in similar vein. + +"I take it there will be an interval of waiting before remorse will +lead the kid to write to his sister," he said. "Otherwise I'd proceed +to the farmhouse at once in a flying machine." + +The romance of this seemed to strike him strongly for an interval. +Then, mercifully, he repeated his intention of tramping. + +"And then?" said Garry. + +"Then," said Kenny with the utmost optimism, "I'll pick up his trail at +the farmhouse and from there I'll travel night and day until I overtake +him." + +"And then?" + +"The lad will come home with me." + +"And then?" + +"Good God, Garry," thundered Kenny, "I never knew anybody with such an +'And then?' sort of mind as you seem to have. There's an 'And then?' +doubt after every glorious climax. He'll be home. That's sufficient." + +"What about the scrapbook?" + +"I've already sent it." + +Garry glanced hopelessly at the melee on the floor. + +"I suppose," he said coldly, "that you plan to go sagging along the +highway with a suit case in each hand and a bag or two on your back?" + +"I plan," retorted Kenny, "to depart from here with one suit case which +will eventually become a knapsack. The problem now is entirely one of +elimination. Have you anything to do, Garry?" + +"I have," said Garry distinctly. + +Kenny looked hurt. + +"I'm sorry," he said. "Because you're a jewel at eliminatin'. I mind +me of the sketching trip we took together. You did all of the packing +then in a marvelous way." + +Hopelessly uncertain what he ought to do, Garry lingered. If by a word +he could restrain this madcap penitent from roving off in a fit of +sentimentality it must be spoken forcibly and at once. + +"Brian," he said, "will never forgive me." + +"Brian," said Kenny, "is a jewel for sense. He'll love you for it." + +Garry flung himself into a chair with a muttered imprecation. + +"Now, Kenny," he said, "I want you to tell me precisely what you plan +to do." + +Nothing loathe, Kenny obeyed. He liked to talk. Garry found his plans +indefinite and highly romantic. It was plain the notion of footsore +penance had taken vigorous hold of his imagination and his love of +adventure. Characteristically, since the actor on the highway was +himself, he saw no chance of failure. To Garry's curt "ifs" he turned +a deaf ear and sulked. + +In the end they quarreled badly. Garry, raging inwardly, went home in +despair; and Kenny, after a tumultuous period of indecision, eliminated +a floorful of luggage. In the rebound he took less than he should. +He was ready to go when the door opened and the head of Sidney Fahr +appeared. Instantly his round eyes bulged with inquiry. + +"Lord Almighty, Kenny," he said. "You--you're not off for anywhere, +are you?" + +"I am," said Kenny. + +Sid came in and closed the door. + +"I--I can't believe it!" he sputtered. + +"Don't!" said Kenny. He was out of sorts. Garry, talking of honor and +letters, had given him a bad interval of indecision and guilt. + +"It--it's amazing!" went on Sid. "You were all right at breakfast--" + +Kenny wheeled furiously. + +"Sid," he snorted, "you're amazed when it rains. You're amazed when it +snows. You're amazed when the sun's out and amazed when it isn't. +Thunder-and-turf! you're always amazed!" Whereupon he stalked out with +his suit case and slammed the door. + +Sid pursed his lips and shook his head, his gaze riveted upon the door +panels in round-eyed incredulity. To him Kenny was an incomprehensible +source of turbulence. + +"The spark!" said Sid. "Wonder what it's been?" + +Then sharing the club-feeling of guardianship where Kenny was +concerned, the good-natured little painter embarked upon a tour of +inspection, locked the studio windows and trotted upstairs, still +amazed, to tell Jan all about it. + +Thus Kenny departed from the Holbein Club, forgetting Fahr almost at +once. He had recalled the tale of the Irish piper who added a phrase +to some fairy music he heard below him in a hill; and the fairies, +bursting forth in delight, had struck the hump from his back in reward. + +Kenny himself had the same feeling of relief that the piper must have +had thereafter. He too had lost his hump of worry. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +GOD'S GREEN WORLD OF SPRING + +At a country inn the suit case became a knapsack. Kenny went forth +into a world of old houses, apple blossoms and winding roads, likening +himself to Peredur who had gone in search of the Holy Grail. The Grail +in this case was the holy boon of his son's forgiveness. + +He went with the break of day at a swinging stride, his penitential +inspiration in the full flower of its freshness. If misgiving claimed +him at all, it was merely a matter of shoes. They were the kind, built +for walking, likely to be in a state of unromantic preservation at his +journey's end. Kenny found in them a source of discontent and +speculation. + +For the passion of life which to Brian's fancy haunted the highway, +Kenny had delightful substitute, fairies quaffing nectar from +flower-cups of dew or riding bridle paths of cloud on bits of straw. +In everything he chose to find an augury, from the night of birds to +the way of the wind, the curl of smoke or the color of a cloud. +Thirsty he longed for the drinking horn of Bran Galed or better still +of Finn, for Finn's horn held whatever you wanted. And for a pattern +in moments of diversion, there was always the fairy Conconaugh, who +made love to every pretty shepherdess and milkmaid he met. Many a +farmer's daughter smiled and blushed at the gallant sweep of Kenny's +cap. + +So he tramped, peering delightedly under bushes for the green suits and +red caps of the Clan Shee, and every cleft of rock became the portal to +a fairy dwelling. At sunset he discovered a fairy battle in the clouds +and when the moon rose, silhouettes, fairy-like and frail, scudded +mystically across the face of it. Old Gaffer Moon, full-faced and +silver! + +Brian's world of spring had been the world of men and women; Kenny's +world held Puck and Mab and Una. He called her Oonagh. If once he +remembered with longing that Oonagh's jovial fairy husband, King +Fionvarra, went to his revels on the back of a night-black steed with +nostrils aflame, he dismissed it as disloyal. Brian too had been +tired, though he called it "blissfully weary." That depended something +on the viewpoint. + +When at last beside the embers of his camp fire, he spread his oilskin +and drew a blanket over him, the night sounds of the forest, a-crackle +with mystery, became the woodland spirits of King Arthur's men, blowing +their ghostly horns by the light of the moon. Likely the wee folk +would come and dance beside the embers of his camp fire. + +"By the powers of wildfire!" cried Kenny drowsily, "it is good to be +alive!" + +In the morning there was mist and rain and Kenny tramped the sodden +world in a mood of sadness. Melancholy dripped from the wet white +blossoms along the way. The drenched green of the meadows brought +tragic thoughts of Erin and her fate. Never a maid peeped over an +orchard fence. Kenny bolstered his spirits again and again with some +lines of Wordsworth which as a picturesque part of his road equipment +he had copied into his notebook. + + + "I roved o'er many a hill and many a dale, + . . . . in heat or cold, + Through many a wood, and many an open road, + In sunshine and in shade, in wet and fair, + Drooping or blithe of heart, as might befall, + My best companions now the driving winds, + And now the 'trotting brooks' and whispering trees-- + And now the music of my own sad steps, + With many a short-lived thought that passed between + And disappeared." + + +Never before had the words failed to thrill him with the romance of the +road. Now as the rainy twilight threatened with never an inn in sight, +he lingered on the final lines: "The music of my own sad steps!" + +Sad steps indeed that postponed his meeting with Brian! Did he not owe +it to his son to travel with all possible speed to the farmhouse +instead of plodding belatedly along the highway in rain and gloom and +twilight? Had he after all a right to indulge his passion for tramping +and footsore penance when already word might have come to the sister +with the ink-pool eyes? The runaway was young. His remorse would come +the quicker. For every day he, Kenny, lingered in selfish penance on +the road, he must pay in a widening of distance between Brian and +himself. Kenny quickened his sagging foot-steps. Drenched and hungry, +he felt himself better able to see the thing in sane and unpoetic light. + +It came to this: Would Brian prefer the rags of romantic loitering to +the speed, train or otherwise, of eager affection? Surely not! He +must not be selfish. Foot-sore or foot-fresh, his remorse would be the +same. With Brian it would be the inner things that counted. + +At twilight Kenny found a thrifty farmer who agreed to take him in. He +dried his clothes by the kitchen fire, hating the woolly smell of the +steam. Later he slept in the haymow and lay awake far into the night, +listening in doubt and despair to the drip of the rain on the roof. +Nothing ever went quite right. He must read again in Brian's letter +about the Tavern of Stars. Beldame Rain seemed bent upon a +housecleaning. Kenny, dreaming, departed from the barn in a flying +machine made of lilacs. Its planes, he regretted, seemed merely sheets +of rain, specked foolishly with pine-needles. + +He awoke to a subdued noise of voices in the barn below and wondered +disapprovingly if the farmer was just getting home. It appeared that +he was getting up. Horribly depressed and sorry for him, Kenny went to +sleep again. When he awoke the sun was laughing iridescently from +meadow trails of rain. The fragrance of wet pine came in through the +barn window. The lilac in the garden was ready to flower. Kenny +longed to be off. Nevertheless he breakfasted at some length in the +farm kitchen and paid so handsomely in coin and grace that there was +talk of him for days. + +Already the sun was warm. It lay in a blanket of bright gold +everywhere. Cloud shadows deepened a meadow here and there to +coolness. The air was tonic, deliriously wine-sweet and heady. Kenny +thought of honey and bees and clover and tramped and brooded. + +The sun he hoped would presently abate its unromantic fervor. Meantime +he must think. Penance or the tribute of impatience? Which should it +be? + +It remained for an abandoned corncrib to plunge him into his original +fever of inspiration and remorse. Brian had lived in a corncrib for +seven cents a day. Brian had ploughed and Brian had mended fences. He +had even dabbled in whitewash. No, by the powers that be! It was a +thing for penance after all. Always at the farmhouse the trail would +be waiting. What if he arrived there and the runaway had failed to +write? What would he do then? + +Rags and blisters and a bit of corncrib penance for himself! It was +the only way. It would give his need of Brian invincible weight. + +Kenny climbed a fence and entered the corncrib by a flight of rickety +steps. It was something of a wreck and unspeakably dusty. Sneezing +violently he sat down and ate his supper of bread and cheese with +profound discontent. Each tasted monotonously of the other. Instead +of two articles of diet he appeared to have something heterogeneously +one in flavor. The smell of cheese he hoped wouldn't attract rats and +remembered vaguely that a corncrib was architecturally immune from +rodents. Well, no rat with discrimination would select a corncrib +abode anyway. He'd fall through the floor slats. + +Oppressed by the general air of slatty insecurity and the sight of a +basket of ancient cobs in one corner, Kenny wished passionately that he +hadn't always hated spiders, killed one with a shudder and pensively +watched the sunset through the corncrib bars. It made him think of +flamingoes in flight. One saw that best in India, flocks and flocks of +them in the sky like an exquisite flame of clouds. Ah, India! No, on +second thought he'd rather he in Iceland. + +It sounded cooler. + +When the moon etched silver bars upon the corncrib floor he went to +bed, regretting the preposterous fanlike spread of the corncrib walls. +Nothing walled should be smaller at the floor than it was at the top. +It gave one a hopeless feeling of constriction. The feeling colored +his dreams. Kenny found himself hazily adrift in an inquisitorial +corncrib made of bars of moon-plated silver. They pressed in upon him +ever tighter and tighter until with a mighty sweep of his arms he burst +them all asunder. + +He awoke at an undesirable hour, convinced that another farmer was +getting up. The world was a mournful gray. At the end of the corncrib +a head was peering in. Kenny turned his searchlight on it and had a +moment of doubt. The man was facially endowed for anything but virtue. +He was likely getting in--not up. + +"Hum!" said Kenny suspiciously. "Are you coming in, my good friend, or +are you going out?" + +"I'm comin' into my own corncrib, damn you!" shouted the farmer with +unexpected malevolence, "and you're going out!" + +Kenny, resistant, knew instantly that he was not. He sat up. + +"The acoustics, Silas," he said with cold disapproval, "are excellent. +Therefore--" + +It was impossible to finish. The farmer, finding the name offensively +rustic, roared into the corncrib that Kenny was a hobo without future +hope of heaven. He and the corncrib, it seemed, knew the genus well. +Indeed, he looked in the corncrib for hope-lorn hoboes with the same +regularity that he looked in the hay for eggs. + +He added some infuriated statistics about early rising. + +"Come out of that!" he yelled. + +Thoroughly out of patience Kenny flung the basket of corncobs at the +farmer's head. An instant sputter of cobby profanity and the sound of +a backward scramble gave him grim delight. + +"When I leave any bed at this hour," he called with terrible composure, +"it will be because I haven't a fist to explain a gentleman's habits. +It's of no earthly interest to me if fool farmers are getting up all +over the dawn. So are the roosters. Let 'em!" + +But the basket of cobs had been persuasive. Kenny saw beyond in the +dimness cobs and an empty basket. The farmer was gone. He lay down +again in deep disgust, merely reaching a pleasant stage of drowsiness +when the sound of voices near the corncrib roused him again. + +This time he sat up with a jerk. + +"Silas," he thundered, "is that you again?" + +It was. It was moreover a Silas arrogant and cautious who peered in +through the bars and stated profanely that he had a marshal with him, a +marshal with a badge. + +Kenny considered the new complication with a startled frown. It either +spelled retreat in a harrowing dawn with the marshal and Silas at his +heels or a temporary sojourn in a village jail. And Kenny detested any +form of humiliation or discomfort. + +"Silas," he said wearily, "this is a rotten corncrib. It's sprained +and spavined and Lord knows what. It's full of bugs and ants and +spiders and dust and passé corncobs and it's architecturally incorrect, +but if you and the marshal will hike off somewhere else and brag about +his badge, I'll buy it. I've got to sleep." + +Speechless, Silas stared through the slats and continued to stare until +his stupefied face became a source of irritation. Kenny lost his +temper. He raised his voice. + +"You petrified lout! I said I'd buy it." + +The marshal, whose bravery seemed less in evidence than his badge, +summoned Silas to a point of safety. They conferred in a murmur. +Kenny viciously killed a spider and strained his ears in vain to hear +the purport of the consultation. + +After an interval of heated debate Silas returned and with an air of +scepticism demanded twenty-five dollars. When Kenny, who never +questioned the price of anything, argued the point from motives of pure +antagonism, he called the marshal. The marshal was conservative. He +dallied with the need of coming. Kenny took advantage of a dispute +among the enemy to count out the bills in concessional disgust and +shove them through the slats. Silas, turning, brushed them with his +nose and leaped back in terror. Then his hand shot upwards in an +avaricious clutch. The amazed pair counted the bills and departed, +ever after confusing Kenny's identity with that of a famous lunatic +addicted to escapes. + +Having detected all forms of degeneracy in the farmer's face Kenny +barricaded the door with a loose plank from the upper step, made sure +it would fall easily with a clatter, examined his revolver and had his +sleep out, thanks to the fact that the day proved cloudy. He awoke to +flies and disillusion. His head ached. His back ached. There was a +spider in his hat. He wanted water. He wanted a brook equipped with a +shower-bath and he wanted the luxury of eating what he chose. Never, +never would he eat cheese again unless the hand of famine gripped him. +Perhaps not then. The sum of his discontent plunged him into a black +temper in which he rehearsed the details of his morning's misadventure +with growing spleen and wished sincerely that Silas would appear again +and roar at him. And, then, gingerly descending the rickety steps, +Kenny remembered that the corncrib was his. + +His . . . and not his. For he could not take it with him. It was a +tantalizing thought. Not that he wanted it. God forbid! Ever after +he would hate the sight of a corncrib. He simply resented the notion +of leaving it behind for the vocal entertainment of Silas, who would +likely get up again with the roosters and roar into it at "hoboes." +Yes, the corncrib would revert to Silas, from whom he had merely rented +it for one night at a most appalling price. The improvidence of it +shocked him. Kenny retraced his footsteps in a blaze of indignation +and made a bonfire on the corncrib floor to which in a reckless spasm +of disgust he consigned the remainder of his supper. The crazy +structure caught at once, with a smell of cheese. + +Five minutes later Kenny's corncrib was a mass of flames and Silas had +appeared at the end of the field roaring incomprehensible profanity. +Kenny, waiting, whistled softly with a defiant air of calm. The +corncrib was his. He had a perfect right to burn it. He meant to tell +Silas this in a quiet voice, but lost his temper and thundered it +instead. Then in a fury he advanced to meet the disturber of his +morning sleep and made him pay in full for the disillusion of his days +upon the road. + +He thrashed Silas into a mood of craven apology and left him with his +head in his hands. To Kenny's disgusted glance he was like the Irish +Grogach of folk lore, who tumbles around among the hills with a good +deal of head and a lax body without much hint of bones. Well, Brian +had thrashed somebody too. There were times when it couldn't be +helped. And Brian had lived in a corncrib at seven cents a day. Kenny +whipped out his notebook. + +"One day in a corncrib:" he wrote grimly. "Twenty-five dollars!" + +Brian and he were maintaining their customary scale of contrast. + +The highway he abandoned almost at once and struck off through the +forest, reflecting with a frown that Silas would doubtless look up the +marshal and demand a warrant for his arrest. Fate was at his heels +again obsessed by a mania for disturbing the peace of mind he craved. +He might even be hunted by a village posse. And bloodhounds! The +adventurous side of this rather pleased him. It simply narrowed down +to this--it behooved him to loiter no longer in the green world of +spring. Penance or no penance he must now try penitential speed. How +on earth had he ever managed to blunder into a country all trees and no +rails? + +He found a druid of a brook chanting paganly to trees and moss. +Ordinarily Kenny would have found its music and its shadows infinitely +poetic. Now, wretchedly out of sorts, he plunged his face and hands +into a shady pool with a sigh of vast materialistic content, longed to +linger and cursed the village posse he fancied at his heels. The first +romance of his flight from justice was waning rapidly. With a groan he +plunged on, horribly full of aches and hunger. Always now he would +understand the Gaelic legend of Far Goila, the gaunt Man of Hunger who +goes touring up and down the land in times of famine bringing luck to +those who feed him. Even his taste for cheese was returning. The +holocaust of the morning filled him with bitter regret. As for his +feet, they felt shapeless and huge and fungus-like and full of burning +needles. Oh, for the sandals of power of Fergus Mac Roigh! + +At noon in utter desperation he bought a mule. + +The mule brayed temptation at him from the fence of a forest shanty. A +negress stood in the doorway. Kenny, in no mood for haggling, +recklessly offered what he thought the mule was worth. It looked +incredibly sturdy. His voice evoked a ragged husband who came up out +of a cellar doorway eating a dwarfed banana. The sight of the banana +made Kenny dizzy with emotion. + +He demanded one at any price and bought six, ate them one after the +other without the pretense of a halt and moodily shied the last skin at +a sparrow, realizing then with a shock that the negro had already +untied the mule from the picket fence. The precipitancy of it all made +him slightly uncomfortable. Either the negro was too lazy to bargain +or the offer was out of all proportion to the mule's repute. Kenny +asked. + +"He's got a powahful sight of appetite fo' a po' man," explained the +darky fluently. "I's glad to see him go. Dat mule, sah, even eats de +pickets on de fence." + +Kenny felt sincerely that he could understand. + +"Just give him his haid, sah," called the negro as he climbed aboard, +"and he'll find de road outside fo' yoh." + +Mule and rider disappeared with a sort of plunge. Kenny's spirits +soared. Substance and speed here enough for any man. He remembered in +the first moment of his uplift that Cuchullin, foremost champion of the +Red Branch, had had a magic steed that rose from a lake. Its name was +Leath Macha. + +Very well, he would christen this amazing beast of sinews with the +compass nose, Leath Macha, and make him a gift of his head as the darky +advised. Leath Macha--Kenny later found less poetic names he liked +better--developed a sylvan taste for roving and lost himself in no +time, pursuing elusive glints of greenness. He seemed always seeking +food. It came over his rider with a sickening wave of apprehension and +disgust that the unscrupulous negro, taking advantage of his plight, +had sold him what the southern darky calls an ornery mule, a mule that +charged forward with fiery snorts and halted only when it pleased him, +kicked backward when he did stop and plunged forward immediately +afterward with a horrible air of purpose. + +Kenny groaned. He was between the devil and the deep sea. The +prospect of staying lost in a world of trees filled him with hungry +foreboding. But he dreaded the open highway and pictured himself John +Gilpining through town and village, a thing of ridicule and helpless +progress. Puck in the guise of a hairbrained mule! He would pound +onward into the night and throw his rider with the dawn. + +At dusk the mule came out unexpectedly upon a turnpike and halted with +a snort. Perfectly convinced that he was planning something or other +spectacular and public, Kenny slid instantly from his back and grabbed +his knapsack. He left Leath Macha in an attitude of hairtrigger +contemplation, apparently about to begin something at once. When Kenny +looked back the dusk or the forest had engulfed him. Likely the +latter. Trained for the purpose, he decided in a blaze of wrath, Leath +Macha had returned to the negro and a diet of pickets. + +Kenny, swinging down the turnpike in the vigor of desperation, felt no +single pang of penance. His mood was primitive and pertinacious. He +went forward with bee-like undeviation until he found an inn where he +bathed and shaved and ate. He slept until midnight and ate again. He +slept through the night and the morning and ate again, still with the +mental monotony of a cave-dweller. Then he found a railroad and rode. +Not until he reached the town postmarked upon Brian's letter did he +trouble himself with anything but the primitive needs of primitive man. +Here, however, he permitted himself the luxury of a brief but wholly +satisfactory interval of summary. The fortunes of the road had forced +him into the prodigal acquirement of a corncrib and a mule when he had +meant to please Brian by his economy. He had burned the one and +abandoned the other, wholly necessary irregularities. He had thrashed +a farmer. A fugitive from justice he had suffered hunger and thirst +and every form of bodily torment. And he had tramped through a day of +rain with sodden shoes and steaming garments. + +Glory be to God! he had infused enough penance into his four days upon +the road to last an ancient martyr a lifetime. Happily he had always +had a gift for concentration. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +AT THE BLAST OF A HORN + +The village was old and depressing. Kenny, a conspicuous guest at the +one hotel, awoke at noon to less imaginative interest in the wood, the +farmhouse and the river than he'd known for days. He had walked into +his picture. Now with perspective gone, he felt uncertain and vaguely +alarmed. Well, any quest that led to an inn like this, he felt, must +in itself be preposterous. + +The innkeeper proved to be a mine of general information. He knew +nothing at all specific but evinced a candid willingness to overcome +this by acquiring facts from Kenny. Nobody he knew had run away from +an uncle. Why was Kenny seeking uncles? . . . Hum . . . Joel +Ashley's boy had run away but the uncle there had been a stepmother. +Was the runaway boy anybody's long lost heir? A pity! One read such +things in the papers. Years back there had been a scandal about a girl +who ran away to be an actress. + +Kenny interrupted him long enough to order anything vehicular in the +village that would go. The innkeeper shouted to a boy outside with a +bucket and asked Kenny how far the "rig" would have to travel. + +"I'm going," Kenny told him shortly, "to find a river. I'll keep going +until I find it." + +The innkeeper after an interval of blank astonishment identified the +river at once. Kenny felt encouraged. Pressed to further detail, +however, he admitted a confusing plentitude of woods, hills and +farmhouses. Dangerously near the state of mind Garry called "running +in circles," Kenny fumed out to wait for the hotel phaeton and climbed +into it with a shudder of disgust. It had a mustard colored fringe. + +But the phaeton creaked away into a wind and world of lilacs. Kenny +forgot the inn. He forgot the village. Another gust of warm, sweet +wind, another shower of lilac stars beside a well, another lane and he +would have to paint or go mad. + +He neither painted nor lost his reason. He came instead to the river +and began again to fret. The road that but a moment before had made a +feint of stopping for good and all at a dark and hilly wall of cedars, +swept around a rocky curve and revealed the glint of the river. After +that by all the dictates of convenience it should have curved again and +continued its course to Kenny's destination, pleasantly parallel with +the bends of the river. Instead it crossed the river bridge and went +off at a foolish tangent, disappearing over the crest of a hill. Wild +and wooded country swept steeply down to the river edge. Kenny, who +had made a vow of penitential speed, must continue his search on foot. +The prospect filled him with dismay. + +He dismissed the phaeton at the bridge and stared up and down the river +in gloomy indecision. Upstream or downstream? Heaven alone knew! +Whichever way he elected to go would be the wrong way. Fate, who had +saddled him with Silas and the mule, would see to that. + +Then, having resentfully put his mind to it, he evolved some logic. +Brian, leaving the wood by the river, would not go back the way he had +come. He would travel upstream and mail his letter when he found the +village. Kenny conversely had found the village first. Therefore he +must travel downstream to find the wood; downstream through a +disheartening tangle of bush and tree and brier and maybe snakes and +marshes. + +With a groan he plunged into the wood, keeping well up the slope to +avoid the lower marshes. He must spur himself to the start or he'd +never finish. But his mind was in ferment. What if the boy had +written to his sister? Must he vagabond forth again with the morning +into a world of bucolic dawns, alarm-clock farmers, roosters, corncribs +and mules? By the powers of wildfire, no! He would buy a motorcycle. +On tires or toes he could wind Brian around his finger and he would! + +In a flurry of bitter abstraction, he floundered into a marsh and +emerged mud-spattered and indignant. Briers tore at him. Below the +sun-mottled river glided endlessly on in sylvan peace. The other shore +looked better. There the wind-bent shag of trees was greener save +when, with a hint of rain, the breeze turned up an under-leaf ripple of +silver. He met no one; no one but a madman, he reflected, would +explore the tangled banks of a hermit river. + +At sunset, after seven slow weariful miles downstream in the brooding +quiet of a hot afternoon murmurous with birds and the sound of the +river, he came to the end of his journey--a wood, stretching steeply up +a cliff to a farmhouse lost in trees and ivy. It was on the other side +of the river and there was no bridge. + +Kenny, who believed all things of Fate when the pet or victim was +himself, refused absolutely to credit her crowning whimsy. In a fury +of exasperation he clambered down to the water's edge and washed his +face; moodily mopping it with his handkerchief he stared across the +water. + +The sun in a last blaze was going down behind the higher line of trees. +Roof peaks and chimney lay against a mat of gold. Crows winging toward +the forest to the south speckled the sky behind the chimney. To +Kenny's ardent fancy, the old house, built of gray and ancient stone, +became a rugged cameo set in gold and trees. Whatever arable land +belonged to the hill-farm lay away from the river. North and south +loomed only a primitive maze of trees. + +A path wound steeply down to the river's edge and to a boat. Kenny +stared at it in some resentment. + +Well, if he must hunt a bridge he would rest there first beneath the +willow. The sun had made him drowsy. He might even camp on the river +bank and if ever a foot came down the path and toward the boat, he +would fire his revolver into the air and demand attention. The +prospect pleased him. He went toward the willow. + +Fate having toyed with Kenny tossed him a rose and smiled. + +There was a battered horn upon the willow and below a wooden sign: + + _Craig Farm Ferry + Please blow the horn_ + +A battered horn of adventure! What might it not evoke? Woodland +spirits perhaps, romance, a ferryman! Thank God the tree was old, the +horn battered and the willow naiadic in its grace. A trio of blessing! + +Kenny whistled softly in amazed delight and blew the horn. Its blast +startled him and the wooded hills seemed to fling the echo back upon +him. In better humor he flung himself down beneath a tree to wait for +the ferryman--and went peacefully to sleep. + +St. Kevin had once fallen asleep at a window with his arms outstretched +in prayer; a swallow had made a nest in his hand and the saint had +waited for the swallow's young to hatch. Kenny, with the legend dimly +adrift in his brain, dreamed that he too must wait until a ferryman +grew up. He grew up on the further shore to a youth in patches and +then all at once the dream became a beautiful delight. The youth by a +twist of woodland magic turned to a maid in a glory of old brocade. +Such a maid might have stepped from an ancient tapestry to come in +search of a knight of old. + +"Mr. O'Neill!" + +Kenny did not stir. He must keep the dream to the end. If he moved +now the maid would vanish. + +"Mr. O'Neill!" A hand touched his shoulder. + +A haze of old brocade golden in the sunlight retreated and then loomed +persistently ahead. The dream if anything became a shade more clear. +Well, if a man must dream, let him dream thus, vividly, turning the +clock back to maids unbelievably quaint and winsome in old brocade. +Sweet as an Irish smile, the face of this one, and as haunting. And +beyond, an old flat-bottomed punt and a river, a real river-- + +Scarlet with confusion, Kenny sprang to his feet. Queen of Heaven! the +girl was real. She had stepped from the page of an old romance into +life and laughter, wearing for the mystification of chance beholders, +an old-time gown of gold brocade! The mystery of her gown, the river +setting, the laughing sweetness of her face, rooted him to the spot in +wonder and delight. He knew every subtlety of her coloring in one +glance. Her soft exquisite eyes were brown. Tragic, they might very +well seem pools of ink. Her hair? In the sun there was bronze, deep +and vivid, in the shadows brown. And the sun had deepened her skin to +cream and tan and rose. Thank God he was a Celt, an artist and an +aesthete! + +He did not mean to keep on staring nor could he stop. He was horribly +disturbed. For he knew the signs as the traveler knows the landmarks +of an old, familiar road. Heaven help him, one of his periodic fits of +madness was upon him! It could not be helped. He was falling in love +again. And he was tragically sorry. Brian would get so far ahead. + +Standing there with lunacy in his veins and his head awhirl Kenny +looked ahead with foreboding and foresaw days of delicious torment. He +knew with the profound and sorrowful wisdom of experience that it would +not, could not last. Almost he could have forecast to the day the sad +descent into sanity, reactive, monotonous, unemotional, inevitable as +the end of the road. But even with his conscience up in arms, he +welcomed his surrender. Besides, rebellion, as he knew of old, was +utterly futile. He must let the thing run its course. + +The thought of flight from a peril of sweetness he banished instantly. +To run away was to deny himself the fullness of life men said he needed +as an artist. It was unthinkable. Nay, it was unscrupulous, for the +greatness of his gift Kenny regarded as an obligation. Besides, Kenny +denied himself nothing that he wanted, having considered his wants in +detail and found them human, complex and delightful, and sufficiently +harmless. + +Passionately at war with the new complication in his quest for Brian, +Kenny in frantic excitement blamed everything but himself. He blamed +the girl. A girl with a face like that had absolutely no right to be +loitering in a spot of such enchantment. He blamed the mystery of her +gown. Mystery always did for him. He blamed the river and the sylvan +wildness all around him and went on staring. + +"Please say something!" The girl's laughter had changed to shyness, +then to mystification. + +Kenny brushed his hair back with a sigh. No fault of his if Fate grew +prankish and set the stage with gold brocade and an ancient boat and +such a ferryman. He had evoked romance and mystery with the battered +horn and he could not escape. All of it had fairly leaped at him and +caught him unawares. + +"I--I beg your pardon," he said. + +"For sleeping?" The girl smiled a little. + +"For staring! First," he said, his Irish eyes laughing back at her +with the frank charm of a boy begging her to like him, "first I thought +you had stepped from a tapestry into my dream--" + +The rich hint of rose in her skin deepened. She glanced at her gown. + +"Don't tell me about it!" begged Kenny impetuously. And long afterward +she was to recognize in that eager gallantry the finest of tact. "It's +a delight just to be wonderin'! You called me Mr. O'Neill!" he added +blankly. + +"Some letters had tumbled from your pocket." + +Kenny's brow cleared. + +"Besides, whenever the horn blew lately I thought it might be you." + +This was too amazing. But the girl's eyes were beautiful, ingenuous +and wholly sincere. Dumfounded, Kenny turned away and gathered up his +letters. + +"Mystery," he said, shaking his head, "is the spice of delight. But I +like it diffused. A bit more and I'll be knowing for sure that I'm +dreamin'." + +"It's as simple as the letters," said the girl, smiling. She drew a +letter from the pocket of her gown and held it out to him. He read the +address with frank curiosity. Well, thank Heaven, that was settled. +Her name was Joan West. + +The handwriting was Garry's. + +"For the love of Mike!" said Kenny, staring. + +"Please read it," said Joan. "It makes everything so simple." + +Kenny obeyed. + + +"Dear Miss West: + +"It was like Brian to write so splendidly of his father in an effort to +guarantee his own respectability as a suitable friend for your truant +brother and fix his identity for the sake of your peace of mind. And +I'm glad he told you to write to me. + +"Though at this particular minute I would like best to thrash Kennicott +O'Neill into work and sanity, I might just as well admit the fact that +I'm merely in the chronic state of all men who love him and pass on +cheerfully to a pleasant task. All that Brian has said of his father +is true. As for Brian himself, he's a lovable, hot-headed chap with a +head and a heart and too much of both for his own peace of mind. And +he's so darned level-headed and unaffected he needs a Boswell. I hope +I've made good. + +"The O'Neills, in short, are a splendid pair of fellows with a rush of +Irish to the head. They give each other more admiration and affection +when they're apart and more trouble when they're together than any two +men I have ever known. Personally I think they're miserable apart and +hopeless together. However, I'm no judge. Five minutes of +concentration on their present problems fuddles my brain beyond the +point of intelligent logic. + +"I must warn you that O'Neill senior is roving Heaven-knows-where in +search of your uncle's farm. Knowing him fairly well I am convinced +that he'll rove most of the way in a Pullman, though he distinctly said +not. He hopes to find at your farm a letter from your brother that +will furnish a clue. Whereupon, I take it, he'll rove forth again to +seek his son and patch up a regular ballyhoo of a quarrel that almost +disrupted the Holbein Club. You see, everybody insisted upon taking +both sides, with terrifying results. + +"I pray Heaven that O'Neill senior may not find O'Neill junior, but +from now on I shall have a nervous conviction of the pair of them +quarreling all over the state of Pennsylvania. In view of a certain +sentimental indiscretion of mine in permitting O'Neill to read his +son's letter to me and find the postmark, I feel guilty and +apprehensive. + +"Your brother, I should say, is just a little safer with Brian than he +would be anywhere else in the confines of the universe. + +"I enclose a newspaper article on Kennicott O'Neill, written just after +he had acquired one of the medals that fly up at him wherever he goes. +It's fairly accurate. + +"Sincerely, + +"Garry Rittenhouse." + + +With the girl's soft eyes upon him, Kenny felt that he could not be +expected to read each word of the letter. He never did that anyhow. +He blurred through now with amazing speed, catching enough to gratify +and upset him. The letter, reminiscent of his penitential quest for +Brian, roused voices that he did not want to hear. Nor did he hear +them for long. Joan was holding out the clipping, her slender arm in +its fall of yellowed lace a thing to catch the eye of any Irishman whom +Fate for the good of the world of art had made a painter. + +Kenny took the clipping to insure his future peace of mind. Yes, Garry +had displayed better judgment than, in the circumstances, might have +been expected. The article he saw at a glance was an excellent one and +truthful. He particularly liked the phrase "brilliant painter" and +hoped Garry had troubled to read the thing through himself before he +sent it. It might inspire him to quotation in the grill-room. + +Nevertheless, Kenny, with the clipping in his hand, had a picturesque +moment of confusion. + +"It--it's just the sort of thing we call a 'blurb,' Miss West!" he +protested. + +"It says in print," said the girl, her eyes wide and direct, "what your +son wrote in his letter." + +The heart of the lad! Kenny had a bad minute. Until with his quest +upon the back of him he remembered Peredur and felt better. Peredur +had gone in quest of the Holy Grail. And he had found fair ladies. +History, romance, legend, call it what you please, was merely repeating +itself with the hero again Celtic and chivalrous. + +With Peredur for precedent Kenny laughed softly, his eyes a-twinkle. + +"Ah, well," he said with a hint more of brogue than usual, "we've an +Irish saying that there never was a fool who hadn't another fool to +admire him! Trouble is," he added, saving himself and Brian with a +whimsical air of loyalty, "the lad is no fool!" + +"It's helped so," said Joan, "to know that Don is with someone like +your son. I cried a great deal the first night but the next day there +was Brian's letter and Don's. And later this letter and you." + +Kenny understood. Brian could thank him for arriving in time. The +mere sight of him had certified Brian's respectability and guaranteed +the runaway's welfare. + +And now--he cleared his throat--now he must ask if the brother had +written later and supplied a clue. It was utterly essential. If he +had--Well, if he had, he had. That's all there was to it! And he must +do some thinking afterward, some painful thinking of the kind that +drove him mad. He wondered for a moment, with his fingers by force of +habit traveling through his hair, if it really was dishonorable for him +to take advantage of Garry's letter to hunt his son to earth. There +was a subtlety there in which Garry might be right. + +Inwardly in turmoil Kenny took the plunge. + +"And you--and you've heard from your brother!" + +"No," said the girl sadly. "Not since." + +"Mother of Men!" said Kenny softly and drew a long breath. The next +step in his quest became all at once amazingly clear. And Kennicott +O'Neill was no man to shirk a duty, let John Whitaker say what he +chose. He was an unsuccessful parent, please God, trying to make good. + +"And I," said Kenny, "tramping the footsore, weary miles always with +the hope of a letter and a clue!" + +"I'm sorry," said Joan, her brown eyes gentle. "It would have been +wonderful if I could have sent you straight to your son and Donald." + +"Wonderful!" repeated Kenny with a vague air of enthusiasm. But he +rather wished she hadn't said it. + +"What will you do?" + +"I shall find an inn," said Kenny firmly, "and stay here until you do +hear." + +"There is no inn." + +"Then," said Kenny irresponsibly, "I shall camp here under the willow, +buying beans. I have a can opener." + +He caught in Joan's eyes a glint of gold and laughter and glanced +wistfully across the river at the house upon the cliff. It was +undeniably roomy. + +"If only your house had been an inn!" he said. "An old, old ramshackle +inn, quaint and archaic like the punt yonder and your gown! It's such +a wonderful spot." + +Joan met his eyes and made no pretense of misunderstanding. She could +not. + +"Your uncle!" exclaimed Kenny with an air of inspiration and then +looked apologetic. + +The girl's face flamed. Oddly enough she looked at her gown. Kenny +wondered why. He found her distress and the hot color of her face +mystifying and lovely. + +"I--I know he would!" said Joan in a low voice and looked away. "The +house is large. Rooms and rooms of it. And only Uncle and I, save +Hughie and his family. Hughie works the farm and lives yonder in the +kitchen wing." + +Kenny reached for his knapsack and started toward the boat. + +"Thank Heaven, that's settled!" he said pleasantly. "You saw for +yourself what Garry said about work. Honestly, Miss West, I ought to +work. I ought to put in a summer sketching. I can sketch here and +wait." + +The punt, flat-bottomed and old, he proclaimed a delight. When the +girl did not answer he turned and found her staring. She seemed a +little dazed. + +"I'm thinking," said Joan, her eyes round and grave with astonishment, +"how you seem always to have been here." + +He laughed, his color high. His face, Joan thought, was much too young +and vivid for anybody's father. Their eyes met in new and difficult +readjustment and Kenny, his heart turbulent, turned back to the punt. + +It was in his mind gallantly to scull the thing across. The +announcement brought Joan to the edge of the water in a panic. + +"You'd scull us both into a rock!" she exclaimed. "The river is full +of them. I know the best way over." + +"Professional jealousy!" retorted Kenny, his eyes droll and tender. "I +suppose you belong to the ferryman's union." He dropped his knapsack +into the boat and busied himself with the painter. "If the boat had +two oars," he told her laughing, "or I one arm, I know I could manage. +As it is, one oar and two arms--" + +"It's much better," said Joan sensibly, "than two oars and one arm. +Please get in." + +She went to the stern and stood there, waiting, one hand upon the oar. +Fascinated, Kenny climbed in. + +What a ferryman! he mused as Joan sculled the punt from shore. What a +gown and what a background! The old brocade, flapping in the wind, was +gold like the afterglow behind the gables and the soft, haunting +shadows in the girl's eyes and hair. What an ecstasy of unreality! +Boat and ferryman seemed some exquisite animate medallion of another +age. + +Garry could have told him it was the way he saw his pictures, romantic +in his utter abandon, but Garry was not there and Kenny with his head +in the clouds rushed on to his doom. The punt was a fairy boat sailing +him over a silver river to Hy Brazil, the Isle of Delight. Ah! Hy +Brazil! You saw it on clear days and it receded when you followed. It +was a melancholy thought and true. The madness never lasted. + +There are those for whom the present is merely anticipation of the +future or reminiscence of the past. Kenny had the supreme gift of +living intensely and joyously in the present and the present for him +shone in the soft brown eyes of the ferryman in the stern. Past and +future he shrugged to the winds. For he was sailing across to romance, +he hoped, and surely to mystery. Yes, surely to mystery! Mystery +enough for any Celt in the battered horn, the ferry and the ferryman +yonder in the old-time gown. + +[Illustration: He was sailing across to romance, he hoped, and surely +to mystery.] + +"It was down there," said Joan, nodding, "where the river bends, that +Brian had his camp." + +Brian's name was a shock. Kenny came to earth for an instant. Only +for an instant. The monochrome of gold behind the gables was drifting +into color. Here between the wooded heights where the river ran, +already there was shadow. Twilight and afterglow! Kenny in poetic +vein told of the Gray Man of the Path. The Path was in Ireland, a +fissure in the cliff at Fairhead. If you climbed well you could use +the Gray Man's Path and scale the cliff. Kenny himself had climbed it. +Joan, busy with the single oar, lost nevertheless no single word of it. +She was eager and intent. + +"I suppose," said Kenny, "that the Gray Man is the spirit of the mists +of Benmore. But to me he's always Twilight. Twilight anywhere." + +The girl nodded, quick to catch his mood. + +"And to-night," she said, "his path is the river. He's coming now." + +Kenny's Gray Man of the Twilight was stealing closer when they landed. + +With the feeling of dreams still upon him he followed the girl up the +path. It wound steeply upward among the trees, with here and there a +rude step fashioned of a boulder, and came out in an orchard on a hill. + +Kenny stood stock-still. Fate, he told himself, needed nothing further +for his utter undoing. And if she did, it lay here in the orchard. He +had come in blossom time. + +Well, thanks to the crowded fullness of his emotional life, he knew +precisely what it meant. He had adventured in blossoms before to the +torment of his heart and head. In Spain. He had forgotten the girl's +name but it began with an "I." Now in the dusk he faced gnarled and +glimmering boughs of fleece. The wind, fitful and chill since the +sunset, speckled the grayness beneath the trees with dim white fragrant +rain and stirred the drift of petals on the ground. Stillness and +blossoms and the disillusion of intrusive fact! + +Joan, lovelier to Kenny's eye than any blossom, seemed unaware of the +romance in the orchard. She was intent upon a man coming down the +orchard hill. Kenny sighed as he turned his eyes from her. + +"It's Hughie," she said. "He's watched for you too since the letter +came. We all have. Hughie! Hughie!" + +Hughie came toward them, sturdy, middle-aged and unpoetic for all his +head was under blossoms. + +"Hughie!" called Joan. "It's Mr. O'Neill. He must have some supper. +Tell Hannah. And I'll go speak to Uncle Adam." + +Romance flitted off through the twilight with her. Hungry, Kenny +embarked upon a reactive interval of common sense and followed Hughie, +who seemed inclined to talk of rain, to the kitchen door. It was past +the supper hour. Beyond in a huge, old-fashioned kitchen, yellow with +lamp light, Hughie's daughter, a ruddy-cheeked girl plump and wholesome +as an apple, was washing dishes. Kenny liked her. He liked the +shining kitchen. The wood was dark and old. He liked too the tiny +bird-like wife who trotted to the door at Hughie's call. Her hair was +white and scant, her skin ruddy, her eyes as small and black as berries. + +Kenny made her his slave. He begged to eat in the kitchen. + +Joan found him there a little later with everything in the pantry +spread before him. His voice, gay and charming, sounded as if he had +liked Hannah for a very long time. And Hannah's best lamp was on the +table. There was a pleasant undercurrent of excitement in the kitchen. +Joan found her guest's engaging air of adaptability bewildering. He +seemed all ease and sparkle. + +At the rustle of her gown in the doorway, he sprang to his feet. + +"Please sit down," she said, coloring at the unaccustomed deference. +"I've a message from Uncle Adam. He understands about your son. He +said you may wait here as long as you choose. In any room." + +Trotting flurried paths to the pantry and the stove, Hannah at this +point must needs halt midway between the two with the teapot in her +hand to tell the tale of Kenny's considerate plea for supper in the +kitchen. Though it had been largely a matter of old wood and +lamp-yellow shadows, Kenny wished that a number of people who had never +troubled to be just and call him considerate could hear what she said. +Thank Heaven his self-respect was returning. These simple people were +splendidly intuitional. They understood. An agreeable wave of +confidence in his own judgment filled him with benevolence. He was to +lose that confidence strangely in a little while. It came to him +sitting there that he felt much as he had felt in the old care-free +past before Brian had deserted, plunging him into abysmal despair. + +"Perhaps to-night," Joan said, "you'd better sleep wherever Hannah +says. And then tomorrow you can pick a room for yourself." + +She slipped away with the grace of an elf. Spurred to pictures by the +old brocade, Kenny wished he had some velvet knickerbockers and a satin +coat. The thought of his knapsack wardrobe filled him with discontent. +Hum! To-morrow he must prevail upon someone to conduct him to the +nearest village in wire communication with the outside world. + +To Garry two days later came a telegram from Craig Farm. It covered +three typewritten pages and read like a theatrical manager's costume +instructions to a star. + +Garry stared. + +"Oh, my Lord!" he groaned. "The sister's pretty!" + +After a dazed interval, however, he found comfort in the thought that +the postmark had been harmless. It had served no other purpose than to +lead the penitential lunatic to Craig Farm. He would likely get no +further. + +"The ties in Brian's bureau," read Garry, thunderstruck at the wealth +of detail. "My white flannels. Have cleaned. No place here. Had to +ride seven miles with a milk-man to send this--" + +Garry ran his eye over the rest and groaned again at the hopeless task +ahead. Very well, he decided, reaching for the telephone, if he must +invade the O'Neill studio, excavate and pack, Sid could help and Mac +and Jan. Waiting, he read the telegram again. With Kenny's usual +sense of values there was one brief sentence relative to some materials +for work. He left the responsibility of selection there to Garry. + +"Work, hell!" exclaimed Garry, provoked. "He wants work so he can fill +his time thinking up ways to evade it." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +IN THE GARRET + +Rain came with the dawn. Kenny, waking hours later with a nervous +sense of some unknown delight ahead, found the eaves and orchard +dripping. The valley the old house faced was lost in mist. + +The blossom storm! So Hughie had called the rain he promised. Kenny +liked the name. Out there in the orchard gusty cudgels of wind and +water were beating the blossoms to earth. It was a fancy rife with +poetic melancholy. + +The smell of wet lilac sweeping in from a bush beneath his window made +him think somehow of Joan. He wondered in a wave of tenderness if she +ferried the river too in storm and, glancing at his watch found the +hour disturbing. Unfortunately in a wing remote from Hannah's trot and +bustle where save for the monotonous music of the rain, the brush of +dripping trees or depressing creaks, there was no noise at all, he had +as usual slept too long. And one could never tell. Silas's singular +notion of a rising hour might prevail here. Best perhaps to go down a +little later and combine his breakfast with his lunch. Meantime he +would avail himself of Joan's permission to pick a room for himself. + +The house was big and old and abandoned for the most part to creaks and +dust and cobwebs. Kenny peered into room after room with a fascinated +shiver, reading mystery in every shadow. Thank fortune the room he had +was linked to the fragrant life of blossoms and lilacs. + +A stairway he climbed came out delightfully in a garret musical with +rain and the plaintive chirping of wet birds huddled under dripping +eaves. Unlike the rooms he had left below it was swept and clean. +There were trunks in one corner, a great many, and a cedar chest. +There should be a cedar chest. It was as essential to an old garret +like this as violets in spring or sweetness in a girl's face. The +chest was open. With a low whistle of delight Kenny peered inside and +thought of the ferryman in her quaint brocade. The chest was full to +the brim of old-time gowns, glints of faded satin and yellowed lace, +buckled slippers and old brocade. + +"Mr. O'Neill!" + +Kenny wheeled, his face scarlet with guilt and confusion. Joan was +beside him, her startled eyes dark with reproach. Even in his +stammering moment of apology he was dismayed to find that her gown was +commonplace, old and mended. + +Joan caught his glance and colored. + +"It's the dress I wear to Uncle," she said hurriedly. "I--I meant you +never to see it. He doesn't know. Everything there in the cedar chest +he hates. All of it belonged to my mother. He wouldn't like me to +wear her gowns." + +"In the name of Heaven," demanded Kenny, shocked, "why not? It's a +beautiful thing--like the play-acting of a dryad!" + +"My mother," said the girl in a low voice, "was on the stage." + +Her challenging eyes, big and wistful, fanned his chivalry into +reckless flame. The need of the hour was peculiar. There was little +room for fact. In a moment of wayward impulse he had slipped up a +stairway and blundered on a shrine. He must not make another mistake. +The girl beside him was as timorous and defensive as a doe scenting an +alien breath in the wood of wild things. A wrong step and in spirit +she would bound away from him forever. + +"Odd!" said Kenny gently. "So was mine." And he thought for a +tormented minute of Brian and Garry and John Whitaker. Not one of them +would understand. He wanted only to be kind and in tune. + +Joan caught her breath. The softness and faith in her eyes hurt. + +"You're not ashamed of it!" + +"No," said Kenny, looking away, "Certainly not. Are you?" + +"No," said Joan steadily. "But Uncle is." + +In this second interval of readjustment, yesterday seemed aeons back. +They had traveled far. The peace and peril of the moment were +ineffably sweet. + +"You can be yourself anywhere," said Joan clearly, taking from the +chest an exquisite old lavender gown for which she seemed to have come. +"And if your self is bad, the--the where doesn't matter." + +Her insight rather startled him. Often afterward he was to find in her +that curious ability to detach herself from custom and tradition, skiff +away the husks of cumulative prejudice and find the kernel of truth for +herself. + +Joan went toward the stairs; he followed her with a troubled sigh. The +stage mother bothered him. With her he had bridged a gulf it would +have taken weeks to span, but the trust in Joan's eyes still hurt. If +only he could have begun upon a rock, Brian's rock of fact and not the +shifting sands of his own errant fancy! It would have been a glory to +live up to the faith in the girl's wistful eyes. + +He was sorry he had climbed the stairway, sorry he had solved the +mystery of the brocade gown, sorry he had lied, sorry, frenziedly sorry +that whatever new thing slipped into his life, no matter how simple and +beautiful it seemed, took on the familiar complexity fatal to his peace +of mind. + +But he was passionately grateful for the tense moment when Joan had +seemed to turn to him for sympathy, a wild and lonely dryad of a girl +in a mended gown. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE BLOSSOM STORM + +At nightfall, with his telegram to Garry depressingly linked with a +memory of winding, sodden, lonely roads, dripping woods and the clink +of milk-cans, Kenny was summoned to the sitting room of Adam Craig. + +A fire burned in the open fireplace. Lamp-light softened the +shabbiness of the old room and shone pleasantly on dark wood and a +great many faded books. Later Kenny knew that every book in the +farmhouse was here upon his shelves. Adam Craig sat huddled in a +wheelchair. Kenny thought of the runaway who hated him. He thought of +Joan. He thought of the bleak old rooms that seemed one in spirit with +the man before him. A wrinkled, evil old man, he told himself with a +shudder, with piercing eyes and a face Italian in its subtlety. + +Adam Craig looked steadily at the Irishman in the doorway and found his +stare returned. The gaze of neither faltered. So began what Kenny, +when his singular relations with the old man had goaded him to startled +appraisal, was pleased to call a "friendship that was never a +friendship and a feud that was never a feud." + +"I sent you a message," said Adam Craig. + +"Your niece brought it." + +The old man tapped with slender, wasted fingers upon the arm of his +chair. + +"What was it?" he asked guilelessly. + +"As I remember it," stammered Kenny in surprise, "you were good enough +to say that I might stay here as long as I chose." + +"Like all women and some Irishmen," said Adam Craig, "she lied. I said +you could stay as long as you were willing to pay." + +Kenny changed color. The invalid chose to misinterpret his interval of +constraint. + +"So," he said softly, "you don't always pay!" + +The random shot of inference went home. It was the first of many. +Kenny fought back his temper. Affronted, he crossed the room and laid +a roll of bills upon the table. Craig counted them with an irritating +show of care. + +"That, Mr. O'Neill," he said, "will guarantee my hospitality for the +space of a month!" + +He put the roll of money in the pocket of his bathrobe and Kenny +fancied his fingers loathe to leave it. + +The drip of the rain and the gusty noise of wind that by daylight had +been no more than a melancholy adjunct to the poetry of wet blossoms, +became suddenly sinister and tragic and irresistibly atmospheric. +Kenny stared with new vision at the dreadful old man in the bathrobe. +One by one Kenny was fated to solve his mysteries when he wanted to +keep them. He knew now in a flare of intuition why the old rooms had +been abandoned, why Joan ferried folk from the village in the valley to +the village across the river, why her gown of the morning and the rags +of the runaway had been pitifully patched and mended. And he +remembered the mystery of her color, when, questing an inn, he had +glanced at the house on the cliff and hinted that her uncle might +consent to be his host. + +"I know he would!" Joan's low voice rang in his ears again with new +meaning. + +Adam Craig was a miser. + +He shrank at the thought. Annoyed to find the old man's eyes boring +into him again, he cleared his throat and looked away. + +"So," said Adam Craig, "you are a famous painter!" + +"I am a painter," said Kenny stiffly. + +"With medals," purred Adam. + +"With medals." + +A fit of coughing seemed for an interval to threaten the old man's very +life. + +"Yonder in the closet," he said huskily, "is a bottle and some glasses. +Bring them here." + +Kenny obeyed. + +"Sit down." + +With the old man's eyes upon him, hungry and expectant, as if he +clutched at the thought of companionship, Kenny reluctantly found a +chair for himself and sat down. Pity made him gentle. Year in and +year out, he remembered with a shiver, Adam Craig sat huddled here in +his wheel-chair listening to wind and rain, sleet and snow, the rustle +of summer trees and the wind of autumn. It was a melancholy thought +and true. + +Smoothly hospitable, the invalid poured brandy for himself and his +guest and chatted with an air of courtesy. Kenny found himself in +quieter mood. Reminiscence crackled in the wood-fire. Nights in the +studio by the embers of a log many a Gaelic tale had glowed and +sparkled in his soft, delightful brogue for the ears of men who loved +his tales of folk lore and loved the teller. + +Ah, Ireland, dark rosaleen of myths and mirth and melancholy. The +thought of it all made him tender and sad. + +Well, he would give this lonely man by the fire an hour of unalloyed +delight. He would tell him tales of Ireland when brehons made the laws +and bards and harpers roved the green hills. Kenny made his +opportunity and began. He told a tale of Choulain, the mountain smith +who forged armor for the Ultonians. He told a lighter tale of three +sisters whom he called Fair, Brown and Trembling. With the brogue +strong upon him he told how Finn McCoul had stolen the clothes of a +bathing queen and he told in stirring phrase the exploits of Ireland's +mighty hero, Cuchullin. + +He had never had a better listener. Adam Craig fixed his piercing eyes +inscrutably upon the teller's face, drank glass after glass of brandy, +and remained polite, intent and silent. Kenny, with his heart in the +telling, went on to the tale of Conoclach and the first harp. +Conoclach, he said, hating Cull, her husband, had run away from him +toward the sea. There upon the sand lay the skeleton of a whale and +the wind playing upon the taut sinews made sounds low and soothing +enough to lull her to sleep. And Cull, coming up, marveled at her +slumber, heard the murmuring of the wind through the sinews and made +the first harp. Kenny liked the tale and he liked the way he told it. + +Adam Craig nodded. + +"Lies!" he said, springing the trap it had pleased him to bait with an +air of courtesy, "All lies." + +Kenny flushed with annoyance. The sacrilege of doubt when the tale was +Irish jarred. + +"Lies!" said Adam Craig again, "adapted centuries ago by some Irish +word-thief." + +"You are pleased to be humorous," said Kenny, glancing coldly at his +host. + +"I am pleased," said the old man insolently, "to be truthful, not being +Irish. Fair, Brown and Trembling!" he added with a sneer. "Word for +word, it's the tale of Cinderella." + +"The pattern for Cinderella!" corrected Kenny with a shrug. + +Adam Craig glanced at him with narrowed eyes. + +"And Finn McCoul and the bathing queen. I can find you the German tale +of a stolen veil from which it's--borrowed." + +"You can find me likely the name of a German who chose to delve into +Gaelic for his plot." + +"You've a ready tongue." + +"There are times when it's needed." + +"As for the first harp," snapped Adam Craig, nettled, "there's a +Grecian lyre tale yonder on the shelf like it." + +"Liar tale," said Kenny purposely misunderstanding. Hum! The Greeks, +he remembered regretfully, were clever adapters. + +His air of assurance incensed the old man. + +"As for that fool of a Cuchullin," he rasped, coughing a little, "where +is he different from Achilles?" + +"A little different," said Kenny. "Achilles, poor old scout, was much +the inferior of the two." + +Again in fury Adam Craig coughed until it seemed that his life must +end. Again he drank. Kenny knew by the flurried brightness of his +eyes sunk deep in the yellowed gauntness of his face that he was drunk. +He shuddered and rose. Already the old man's head was drooping toward +his chest in a drunken stupor. With an effort he roused and leered. + +"Cinderella, damn you!" he said. "Cinderella and Achilles!" + +"Cinderella," repeated Kenny pityingly. "Cinderella and Achilles." + +He stood uncertain what to do while Adam Craig slipped down in his +chair. Drunk, perverse and cruel! With the rain beating at the +windows Kenny thought of Joan, compassion in his heart, and rang for +Hughie. + +"I--I'm afraid he's drunk," he whispered with a sense of guilt when +Hughie came. "Perhaps I shouldn't have given him the bottle." + +Hughie glanced at his watch. + +"It's nine o'clock," he said. "He's late." + +"You mean?" + +"Every night," said Hughie. "The doctor gave up fightin' long ago." + +Kenny went to his room filled with pity and disgust. + +Gusts of wind and rain battered at the orchard blossoms the next day +and the next. Kenny found a tuning outfit in a closet and spent his +days with Joan tuning the Craig piano. He was grateful in the gloom of +dark wood and dust for the fantastic thing of lavender she wore. It +was like a bit of iris in a bog, he told her, and was sorry when he saw +her glance with troubled eyes at the dust and cobwebs. + +The river ran high and brown. The horn beneath the willow was silent. +Each night Adam Craig sent for his guest. The rain, he said, made him +lonesome. Each night in a hopeless conflict of pity and dislike Kenny +went, rain and wind and Adam Craig getting horribly upon his nerves. + +He was glad when the sun came and filled the valley, panoramic from the +farmhouse ridge, with a glory of light. Milk-white clouds capped the +western hills. Nearer, dotted peacefully with farms, red barns and +dark, straggling clumps of evergreen, the rolling valley stretched +unevenly among intersecting lines of trees. At the foot of a hill rose +the spire of the village church. To the south a crystal blaze of sun +showed water. + +A world of lilac and dogwood and a few late apple blossoms clinging +bravely through the storm to sunshine. And the world held Joan with +shadows of the sun in her hair and eyes and shadows of the past in her +gowns. + +Ah, truly, it was good to be alive! + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +JOAN + +Thus, warm and fragrant, the summer came with Kenny in the house of Adam +Craig, drifting pleasantly he knew and cared not where; with Brian on the +road with Donald West. + +And Joan? To her summer came with a new incomprehensible delight. Out +of the void a bright spirit had roved into her world, sweeping her, eager +and unresistant, into youth and life and laughter. He came from an +immensity of romantic experience, holding out his hands to her, with +tender eyes and a look of youth and charm and understanding in his vivid +face. + +She had fought through drab and solitude to dreams and formless craving, +this girl of the hills. What things of vigor her life had known were +cruel: a passionate shrinking from her uncle, a fear for the brother who +had hotly rebelled at the meager life around him, a loneliness aloof from +her kind and a vague hunger for some fuller, sweeter life beyond the +hills. And with a blast of a horn the drab had vanished. + +There were times when the girl's soft eyes opened wide in a panic of +incredulity. He was a famous painter, this Irishman who had prevailed +upon her in a laughing moment to call him Kenny; a famous painter with a +personality as vivid as his face. And yet he chose to linger at her +uncle's farm. The color, the gayety, the sparkle, he seemed miraculously +to infuse into existence, left her breathless and startled. And he knew +not one spot and one land. He knew many spots, some wild and remote, and +many lands. Joan marveled at the twist of Fate that had brought him to +the willow. + +His individuality made its own appeal. But there were subtler forces +working to the girl's surrender. One, a deep abiding gratitude to him +and Brian. Though she ran down the lane each morning and peered into the +letter box at the end for word of Donald, her disappointment now had +nothing in it of terror. Donald, Kenny said, was with an O'Neill. He +could not go wrong. She accepted the statement, as she had accepted the +stage mother, with utter faith and gladness. + +And Kenny was kind to her uncle and to her; kind with an infinite +delicacy of tact and feeling. He seemed to understand the instinct for +beauty and adornment that sent her roving to her mother's trunks. He +understood her dreams and her hunger. He understood the spirit that had +led her to make the garret a sort of shrine to be swept and dusted, to be +kept apart and precious. There was another force, subtle and exacting: +the girl's burgeoning womanhood. Wistful for homage, she craved his +gallant tenderness and wanted always to be with him. His frank glance of +admiration and his boyish smile were always a tribute. So was his voice, +deep, gentle, sonorous as a sweet-toned bell. Tones of it she knew were +kept for her alone. The knowledge thrilled her. She did not know why. + +By the time the old wistaria vine outside her window shook in the wind +with a glory of purple, the over-crowded days were gliding one into the +other like a rain of stars. Most of all, wakeful in the dark of her +room, she remembered the hours by the river when Kenny wove for her high, +peaked hats of rushes such as he claimed the Irish fairies wore, and told +her tales of Ireland with a trick of eloquence that made her laugh and +made her cry. Odd! unlike her uncle he understood tears too. A tear, he +said, was always trailing an Irishman's smile. His sympathetic brogue, +smooth and soft and instinct with drollery, held for her a never-ending +fascination. + +And always at the end of the day there was Kenny's Gray Man of the +Twilight stealing up the river all too soon. + +Joan was not the only one to whom the sparkle of the irrepressible +Irishman's wit and humor was an energizing boon. There was Hannah and +Hetty; and Hughie, too, though he stoutly denied it. Life on the Craig +farm was no longer dull. + +Kenny, at a loose end, kept the farm in ferment, evading the work Garry +had sent him, by a conscientious effort to assist others. He was glad he +could paint if the mood seized him. Denied the opportunity he knew he +would have fretted. There was one singular, inexplicable thing about +work. If there was work at hand, one could always find something else to +do, attractive and absorbing. If there wasn't work to do, the sheer +shock of it seemed to dull you into mental vacuity and loose ends of time +came up and hit you in the face. Garry had written something or other +like that sarcastically in a letter. + +He helped Hannah churn and sang with a soft brogue, to her abashed +delight, a song he called "The Gurgling of the Churn." He helped Hetty +milk the roan cow and sang while Hetty's apple-cheeks bloomed redder, an +exquisite folk tune of a pretty girl who milked a cow in Ireland. Later +in the summer he even helped Hughie rake the hay and had a song for that. +As Hannah said, he seemed to have songs for everything and what he +couldn't sing he could play with dazzling skill on the old piano. + +"There's 'lectricity," said Hannah, "in the very air." + +"I wished," grumbled Hughie, "he'd put it in the ground instid. The air +don't need it. Workin' a farm like this on shares is like goin' to a +picnic behind old Nellie and startin' late. You just know you won't git +there. What ground up here ain't worked out is hills and stones and +hollers." + +Hannah sighed. + +Kenny knew with regret that he might have been a helpful factor in the +work of the farm but for a number of unforeseen reasons. When he churned +the butter never came. The roan cow disliked music and kicked over the +milk-pail with inartistic persistence. The sun on the hay made his head +ache. + +As for a picturesque task for which he had no song--well, he had promised +Joan to keep away from the punt when the horn beneath the willow blew for +a ferryman. He had sculled the old white-haired minister into a rock +with delight to no one but Adam Craig, who had spent a whole evening +cackling about it. He must always remember that it had not been his +fault. The rock had merely scraped the punt while he was listening with +politeness to why the old man had "doubled up" his charge and had a +church on either side of the river. And if Mr. Abbott had not risen in +gentle alarm and begun to teeter around, Kenny in an interval of frantic +excitement would not have been forced to fish him out of the stream by +his coattails. He considered always that he saved the old man's life. +Nor had he meant to dab at him with the oar, thereby encouraging the +unfortunate old chap to duck and misinterpret his obvious intention to +save him. + +But Joan had understood. That was the chief essential. Always Joan was +there upon the horizon of his day. Whatever he thought, whatever he did, +was colored by a passionate desire for the girl's approval. Her pleasure +became his delight; her smile his inspiration. In that, he told himself, +pleased to interpret all things here in the sylvan heart of solitude in +the terms of romance and mystery, he was like the chivalrous warrior of +old who found his true happiness in gallantly serving a beautiful maid. +Joan was surely such a type as chivalry conceived. She filled his Celtic +ideal and aroused all his gladness as a woman should. And she was as shy +and beautiful as a wild flower and as unspoiled. He blessed the old +gowns that quaintly framed her loveliness anew from day to day. But they +had been his undoing. He felt that he might have kept his head a little +longer but for the blaze of the gold brocade in the last light of the sun. + +Laughter made her lovely. Ah, there Brian had been right. But then, he +reflected sadly, Brian was always right. That, he could surely concede, +when Fate had put an end to his quest and doomed him to linger here in +the home of a miser, waiting, waiting, yes, waiting in impatience for +word of his son. Well, perhaps he was not impatient, but at least he was +waiting. And Brian had found in Joan's face the vigor of sweetness, not +the kind that cloys. Kenny liked the words. + +It was inevitable, with songs for everything, that he would have songs, +like the tenderer tones of his voice, that he kept for Joan alone, songs +that came softly to his lips when Nature stirred his fancy and Joan was +at his side in an old-time gown. + +A lone pine, a wild geranium, a lark or Joan's garden where the +heliotrope grew; they were sparks to a fire of inspiration that came +forth in song. + +There was one song he sang most often. + +"What is it, Kenny?" Joan asked one sunset when Kenny on the farm porch +was finding the subtleties of color for her in the darkening valley below +them and the western sky above the hills. + +"What's what, Arbutus, dear?" he asked with guile. + +The "dear" didn't bother her. It was frequently "Hannah, dear!" and +"Hetty, dear!" and Hughie was often "Hughie, darlin'." + +"Why," asked Joan, "do you call me Arbutus?" + +"Because you're like one," he said gently. + +"And what was the song?" + +"'My Love's an Arbutus,'" said Kenny demurely. He knew at once that he +must not step so far ahead again. She looked a little frightened. Kenny +instantly called her attention to a gap in the range of hills to the west. + +"Like the Devil's Bit in Ireland," he said. "There the devil, poor lad, +bit a chunk out of a mountain and not liking the morsel over well, +treated it as you and I would treat a cherry pit." + +Joan laughed. + +"True." said Kenny, "every word of it. I myself have seen the chunk he +threw away. Tis the Rock of Cashel. He's been bitin' again over there, +I take it. To-morrow you and I will go down into the valley, seek the +unappetizin' rock he rejected and look it over." + +"I think most likely," said Joan, "the farm's built on it." + +And then the sound of the horn came over the water and Joan ran. + +Kenny as usual cursed the horn. + +With the valley filled with the first haze of twilight and the hills +still aglow, Kenny sat on the farm porch and brooded. He had not meant +to frighten her. The Arbutus gallantry he had considered strategic and +poetic. There was the baffling thing about her that kept him piqued. +She was always shy and elusive. Of convention she knew nothing at all; +yet like the shrine in the garret she kept herself apart and precious. +Always she seemed fluttering just ahead of him, like a will-of-the-wisp. +If he touched her hand ever so gently she drew it away. The caresses +most girls he had known would have understood and accepted as part of the +summer idyl, he knew, instinctively, would be evaded. + +Ah! the truth of it was she was an incomprehensible torment of delight. +For she roamed the fields and woods with him gladly, lunched in glens +remote it seemed from everything but the call of that infernal horn, +yielded to the enthusiasm of his maddest moods, romped with him like a +kitten or a child--and kept miraculously the poise and reticence of a +woman. She talked freely of her brother; never of her uncle. + +He was quick and impressionable, this gifted Irishman, with a trace of +the melancholy of his race and all of its cheer. Melancholy was the one +mood in which Joan did not seem to flutter just ahead. Always then she +followed, gentle, compassionate and shyly tender. He was quick to find +it out and wily enough to feign it when in reality his heart was as light +and buoyant as a feather. + +Save for the call of the horn beneath the willow, the girl was as free to +come and go as an oriole in the orchard; for that he was grateful. But +whether Adam Craig's attitude was one of trust or cold indifference, he +could not fathom. With Hughie and Hannah it was different. They loved +Joan and trusted him. That trust, he resolved, should not be futile. He +could justify it and he would. Joan, of course, was foredoomed to know +the delirium of the heart that had come to him that day beneath the +willow. Fate could not deny him requital. She never had. Equally, of +course, Joan's delirium, like his own, would not last. It could not. +The thought hurt his vanity a little. + +It remained for him who had aroused it to linger here at the farm until +the fancy had run its course and she was quite herself! Even if, long +before, his own madness had waned. That was apt to happen, for he was +handicapped by an earlier start. Yes, he would linger. And he would be +scrupulous and honorable and kind. Joan was young and a woman. She +would nurse the shadows of her summer's idyl long after the idyl was +gone, and would mistake them for reality. There with his wider +experience and the sad memory of much ebb and now he could be helpful. + +Kenny shivered and refused to dwell upon a phase of life that was like +autumn and sere and drifting leaves. It bothered him that the thought of +Hannah and Hughie had driven him to think it out. He liked best in heart +things to think back, not too far, and never forward. + +"Kenny!" It was Joan's voice in the dusk. + +Kenny forgot the sadness of his wisdom and foreboding. He forgot the +future. The thing to do always was to live in the present and now Joan's +voice, joyous and young, filled him with tenderness. + +"Yes, Joan." + +"The Gray Man of the Twilight's here. See, he's climbed up from the +valley and he's coming down the walk." + +From the Gray Man's misty robes came the fragrance of syringa. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +ADAM CRAIG + +Joan, Kenny called his torment of delight in days that were exquisite +intaglios. Adam Craig was a torment of another caliber. He claimed +the evenings of his guest. + +Kenny knew too well for his own peace of mind the pitiful diversions of +the old man's day. It sapped his powers of resistance. In the morning +there was the doctor, a weary little man, untemperamental and +mercifully impervious to insult, who chugged up the lane in a car that +needed but one twist of the crank to release a great many clattering +things. All of them Kenny felt should be anchored more securely. +There was an occasional hour in the open. At nightfall he sent for +Kenny and by nine he was drunk. + +Again and again, wrought to a high pitch of resentment by the traps the +invalid baited with an air of courtesy, Kenny cursed his own weak-kneed +spasms of pity and surrender and resolved to break away. Always when +Hughie rapped at his bedroom door he remembered the melancholy drip of +the blossom storm at Adam's windows, the invalid's hunger for news of +the outside world and the Spartan way he bore his pain. Whatever the +nature of the disease that had wasted his body and etched shadows of +pain upon his subtle face, he never spoke of it. Nor did he speak of +Donald or Joan, whom Kenny felt despairingly he hated and taunted into +secret tears. If he resented the runaway's rebellion, he kept it to +himself. + +One evening when he seemed to be quiet and in pain, and was taking, +Kenny noticed, the medicine that marked vague periods of crisis, Adam +said pensively that he had not meant to impugn the Gaelic folk lore. +He liked it. It reflected the warm, poetic soul of a people. Brandy, +alas, always made him quarrelsome and undependable of mood. When the +rain came again and he had to have a fire, they would have more tales +of the Dark Rose Kenny loved. Ireland, the Dark Rose! The name was +like her history. Yes, folk lore went with the crackle of a log and +the mournful music of rain upon a roof. He could have his brandy later. + +The rain came with its lonely patter and Kenny told him tales of +Ireland, delighted at the sympathetic quiet of his mood. Unbrandied, +the evenings, after all, might become endurable. + +"You see," Adam said once a little sadly, "without the brandy--" + +Kenny nodded his approval. + +When the clock struck nine he was in splendid fettle, brogue and all. + +"For Ireland's harpers," he was boasting with a reckless air of pride, +"were better than any harpers in the world." + +"Liars?" asked Adam blankly. + +Kenny found his occasional pretense of deafness trying in the extreme. + +"Harpers!" he repeated in a loud voice. "And you heard me before." + +Adam nodded. + +"What do you mean," demanded Kenny suspiciously, "that you did hear me +or you didn't?" + +"I did," said Adam suavely. "Both times. Go on with the story." + +Somewhat nettled, Kenny obeyed. Conscious, the minute he began, of a +muffled whistle, he glanced sharply at his host and found his glance +returned with a guileless air of inquiry. + +"Adam," he said, "are you whistling?" + +"My dear Kenny!" protested Adam. "It's the wind. I hear it myself." + +Somewhat suspicious, for he fancied now he read in the invalid's +alertness a feline readiness to pounce, Kenny returned to the tale of +the harper who proved the right of Ireland to lead the world. This +time the insolent whistle, louder and a shade defiant, convinced him +that his listener's mood had changed. Adam was resenting his guest's +insistence upon the merits of his race by whistling "Yankee Doodle." + +Kenny stopped and smiled, and the whistle rang out fiercely. + +"A good old Irish tune, that, Adam," he said languidly. "It's 'All the +way to Galway!' Funny how it came to be known as Yankee Doodle." + +In a fury of exasperation Adam propelled himself in his wheel-chair the +length of the room and back. + +"You damned bragging Irishman!" he hissed. "I think you lie. You're +Irish and you hate to be outdone. But I'll look it up." + +His spirit was unconquerable, his ingenuity persistent and amazing. +Often when the clash of wit was sharp he cackled in perverse delight. +But composure maddened him. Again and again, inwardly provoked to the +point of murder, Kenny threatened to break away from the goad of his +tongue. Always then Adam appealed to his habits of pity and +treacherously on the strength of it wheedled him into other tales of +folk lore merely to refute them. And always he blamed the brandy. +Kenny knew now that he lied. Drunk, the old man was stupid; sober, he +was satanic in his cunning. + +There was one tale of a fairy mill that, in startling circumstances, +Kenny told without interruption. Fairies, in Ireland, said Kenny, had +ground the corn of mortals without pay until someone stole a bag of +meal that belonged to a widow. Then the fairies, shocked at the ways +of men, abandoned the fairy mill forever. + +He braced himself for the usual shaft of insolence, in a mood for +battle. It did not come. Adam had fallen forward in his chair +unconscious. Kenny rang for Hughie and stared at the huddled figure in +the wheel-chair with eyes of new suspicion. Adam Craig, he remembered, +with a sharp unbridled instinct for adding two and two, was a miser and +he hated the children of his widowed sister. There could be a sinister +reason. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +A NOTEBOOK + +It seemed that Adam too could add his two and two. In his quieter +hours of pain, when every warmer instinct of his guest was uppermost, +he was as curious as a woman. His questions, put with the sad, +querulous courtesy of an invalid claiming privileges by reason of his +pain, were sometimes difficult to answer. + +"Paul Pry!" murmured Kenny to himself one night. + +Adam's sharp eyes snapped. + +"Paul Pry, eh?" he quivered. "You impudent devil!" + +"A minute ago," reminded Kenny coldly, "when I told you you were +drinking too much brandy, you said you were deaf to-night." + +"It's an intermittent affliction," purred Adam with a chuckle. "You +struck me in a minute of vacation." + +But the careless sobriquet of Kenny's rankled in the old man's mind and +bore a startling aftermath of fruit. + +Kenny was Irish and conversational. He had as usual talked too much, +unaware that Adam, with fiendish insight, was reading steadily between +the lines, ready to pounce. + +"Paul Pry!" repeated the old man at intervals. "Paul Pry! You are a +selfish, hair-brained Irishman," he blazed suddenly, leaning forward, +baleful and intense. "Some men feel and some men act. But you act +only when you have to. Life's a battle. Do you fight? No! You glide +along and watch the others. That's the way you've kept your youth. +You never linger on the things that prove unpleasant. You think life +an individual adventure to be lived the way you choose. It isn't. +It's a link in a chain that clanks. You can't escape. You won't +escape. You're a play-actor with a gift for staging yourself and +you're as hungry for the limelight as a circus girl in spangles. What +you need is the hurt of sacrifice. You need to suffer and forget +yourself. Damn you and your brogue and your folk lore. You're the +most amazing liar I've ever met." + +But Kenny heard no more. He stumbled out of the sitting room and +slammed the door. + +There was a lamp burning in his bedroom. Kenny walked the floor in +anger and humiliation, his fingers clenched as usual in his hair. Back +there in the studio with Whitaker's arraignment ringing in his ears, he +had been conscious of a terror he refused to face, a curious inner +crash of something vital to his peace of mind. And he had fought it +back for days, plunging into the relief of penance with a gasp of hot +content. + +Now Adam, sitting in separate judgment, had reached out into the void +and linked himself to Whitaker--to Brian, to Garry--and his barbs +stung. That terror of misgiving, lulled into quietude here in the +peace and charm of his life with Joan, stirred within him hydra-headed +and drove the color from his face. Then he blazed into rebellion. + +Failure! Vanity! Self! And Adam to-night had fused the verdict of +the other three. + +Whether or not these things were true was at first of little moment. +The sting lay in the fact that someone had troubled to think them. The +careless illusion, that what he thought of himself the world thought, +lay at his feet pricked into utter collapse. It seemed to him as he +walked the floor in a tumult of hurt pride, that the world must accept +the man he knew himself to be, the man whose light-hearted existence he +loved to dramatize, a brilliant painter with piquant imperfections, +intensely human and delightful. He passionately demanded that it +accept him so without question. Good God! No one had seemed to +question until Brian in a burst of temper had brought the world about +his ears. + +Well, let the world misjudge him if it chose. He was big enough, he +knew, to hold his head above it. + +In a mood of lively irony he whipped forth a notebook and wrote a +sarcastic summary of his shortcomings, his lips curled in hostile +interest. + +"Sunsets and vanity," he wrote with a flourish and lost his temper. +Well, that phase in Brian's life was closed forever, thanks to +Whitaker's meddling tongue. Never again would Kenny lay himself open +to misinterpretation by seeking commissions for his son. Brian could +write truth for Whitaker with a blue pencil and be damned! + +"Hairbrained, unquenchable youth," he wrote next and added airily after +this: "This is likely hair and teeth." + +"Irresponsible." + +"Failure as a parent." This he underlined. + +"Need to suffer and learn something of the psychology of sacrifice." + +"Romantic attitude toward the truth." + +"Improvidence. Need for plebeian regularity in money affairs and petty +debt." + +"Disorder--chairs to sit down on without looking first." + +"I borrow Brian's money and his clothes." + +"Pawned shotgun, tennis racket, some fishing tackle and golf clubs." + +"Note: Look over tickets." + +"A tendency to indolence." + +He had begun with an air of bored amusement; he finished grimly, read +and reread. In the light of the Craig-and-Whitaker analysis, which +dovetailed in the similarity of their venom, the details might, he +fancied with a lifting of his brows, be classified under three general +headings: youth, irresponsibility and a romantic attitude toward the +truth. + +The envious charge of youth he attributed instantly to the thinning of +John Whitaker's grayish hair, and felt better. In irresponsibility he +read, agreeably, needful temperament. And his romantic attitude toward +the truth was merely a brilliant overplus of imagination without which +life would be insufferably dull. + +He read the list again with colors flying and drum beating victory. +Though singly he could refute each item, an unguarded perusal when he +felt complacent, brought the hot blood back to his face in a rush of +mortification and dismay. + +With a curse he flung the book across the room. Then unreasonably he +went after it and wrote at the end: "Life is a battle. I do not fight. +And life is not an individual adventure." + +The final sentence startled him most of all. + +Again he read it all and the memory of Brian, white, aggressive, +desperately intent upon escape, came between him and his quest of +self-content. It always bothered him. It had driven him to hunt the +psaltery stick, repent his lie to Garry and water the fern. It had +driven him out upon the road. Mocking voices rose now from the depths. +Was it--could it all be true? The shock of the thought was cataclysmic +and he longed for the self-respect and confidence in which he had +basked that night in Hannah's kitchen. Must the world side with Brian? +He was sorry about the shotgun. He was sorry about the sunsets. By +the Blessed Bell of Clare, he was willing to be sorry about anything, +little as he felt himself to blame. Was he to blame? Had he not paid +for it all in his days of stormy penance? + +Out of his white-hot revolt clear vision came to him, as it sometimes +did, with incomprehensible, dart-like swiftness, and leveled him to the +dust. Some of it he would not face but he saw his days upon the road +with truth and shame. He had failed in his penance. Garry was right. +He did everything by fits and starts. And he could justify whatever +was most conducive to his comfort and his inclination. His pilgrimage +had been farcical. He had fled from discomfort, magnifying pettiness +into tragedy. And he had been disloyal to the son he loved. For there +under the willow when his startled eyes had found Joan, he had +passionately made up his mind to linger. Nay more, even then in the +dim recesses of his mind, he had hoped there would be no clue to send +him forth again in quest of Brian. And if there had been, Kenny faced +the fact that he would not have gone. . . . No, he would not have +gone. . . . And Adam Craig was a vulture preying upon the unrest in +his heart that he had hoped to stifle. + +He went downstairs with a shudder, craving stars and darkness, unbolted +the front door and went out upon the porch. + +The valley was black. Its lonely points of light vanished early. Up +here on the ridge there was wind and quiet. He peopled the gulf of +blackness ahead with things sinister and evil in spirit like Adam Craig +and turned his back upon it with a shiver. There would be peace in the +voice of the river. + +The starlight, dim and soft, had a sense of silver in its +indistinctness. To Kenny, walking through the orchard, ghosts of +blossoms blew fragrantly above his head. The blossoms were gone like +his peace of mind. He hungered for Joan. + +In the velvet dimness the wistaria vine beneath her window loomed forth +like a shower of shadow; a grotesque ladder of bloom warm to his mind +with invisible color and yet darker to his eye than the night with its +silver sheen of stars. + +A ladder? Kenny caught his breath and stood still, quite still. It +was a ladder. Some one was climbing down. Branch after branch the +climber touched with unerring instinct and ran off noiselessly through +the orchard to the south. + +Kenny's heart throbbed with a ghastly fear. + +It was Joan. + +He knew what lay to the south beyond the orchard: woodlands and +wildness, nothing else. The fields Hughie cultivated stretched to the +north from the kitchen windows. There in the forest to the south where +the river curved off at a tangent and flowed directly east, Brian had +had his camp. On farther Joan had never cared to go. Where did she go +now in the starlit darkness, climbing down the wistaria ladder with a +cloak around her shoulders? To what did she venture through the +solitude of whispering trees and the gloom of the pine forest? + +A lover's tryst? Kenny sickened and choked. He could not follow her. +He would not. + +He turned back instead and went to bed to lie wakeful until dawn with +something new and horrible gnawing at his heartstrings. Then he fell +asleep and dreamed of monsters. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE CABIN IN THE PINES + +He did not mean to go again. He did not mean to watch the wistaria +vine. He went, he told himself wildly, to evade the summons that was +sure to come from Adam Craig. But when the glimmer of wistaria swayed +beneath a footfall, madness came upon him and he went stealthily +through orchard and forest, stalking the flutter of a cloak. + +The river turned. Joan followed the bend for a little way and struck +off again into the thick of the forest through the cloistered gloom of +many pines. She came, after what seemed to Kenny a long, long time, to +a rude cabin made of logs. There was a light in the window. Joan +opened the door and disappeared. + +If he had known definitely what he thought, he told himself with an +Irish twist, the agony of his suspense would have been worse and less. +The sharp intensity of the pain in his heart terrified him. Whatever +lay in the cabin of logs was something apart from him. The night +noises of the forest blared strangely in his ears. He was conscious of +the odor of pines; conscious of a shower of pine-needles when he +brushed back against a tree. And there were cones beneath his feet. +But his madness would not bear him on to the cabin door. At intervals +with fire in his brain he knew he heard the voice of a man. + +In a vague eternity of minutes he waited until the door opened and +lamplight streamed brightly over the sill. A man stepped forth. +Something seemed to snap in Kenny's heart. Relief roared in his ears +and rushed unbidden to his lips. + +"Oh, my God!" he gasped. + +It was the gentle, white-haired minister with a book beneath his arm. + +Startled the old man drew back and peered uncertainly into the +darkness. Kenny approached. + +"I--I beg your pardon," he said, wiping his forehead. "I'm sorry." + +Joan came to the door and stared. + +"Kenny!" she exclaimed. And her voice had in it a note of distress. +She glanced at Mr. Abbott, who glanced in turn at Kenny with an air of +gentle inquiry. His confidence in Mr. O'Neill, never very robust, had +waned that day upon the river. It was weakening more and more. + +Tongue-tied and scarlet, Kenny stared into the cabin. Its single room +with its raftered walls, books and a lamp, an old-fashioned stove, a +work-basket, a faded rag-carpet and the trophies of childhood, boy and +girl, was snug and comfortable. + +"It's Donald's and mine," said Joan. "We've always studied here with +Mr. Abbott." + +"Mr. O'Neill," said the minister stiffly, "it--it has been a sort of +secret. Mr. Craig was strangely opposed to the tuition I offered years +ago. Joan settled the problem for herself." + +It was evident all of it had lain a little sorely on the old man's +conscience. It had been a singular problem, deception or the welfare +of the two children suffering at the hands of Adam Craig; and the need +of choice had driven him to prayer. + +Kenny, glad at last to find his tongue, warmly commended his decision. + +Joan blew out the light and locked the door. + +"How did you find the cabin, Kenny?" she asked wonderingly. "It's off +so in the wilder part of the forest. No one comes this way." + +Kenny told fluently of walking toward a star. + +It was like him. Joan smiled. + +But the faith in her eyes upset him. He wanted to be truthful. Ah! if +only Fate would let him! + +"And I startled you!" marveled Mr. Abbott. + +"Yes," said Kenny. + +He walked back through the silence of the pines with remorse in his +heart, paying little heed to Mr. Abbott's talk of vacation. The +wistaria ladder, the cloister of pines, the lonely cabin where Joan +spent truant hours of peace, were to him things of infinite pathos. +And like the day in the garret, yesterday seemed aeons back. He +wondered why, conscious of a subtle, unforgettable sense of change in +himself. Something mysteriously had altered. + +The memory of the pain and horror in his heart, he dismissed with a +frown. As Adam said, he never dwelt upon the things that failed to +please him. The pain was past. The peace of the present lay in his +heart. It had even crowded out the memory of Adam and the notebook. + +He was glad when Mr. Abbott said good night and took a footpath to the +west. Well, it had been a mystery this time that he hadn't wanted to +keep. But why, Oh, why, he wondered a little sadly, must all his +mysteries end in anticlimax? Absurd, the little man in his frock coat +trotting out of the cabin door! + +"Joan, Joan!" he pleaded. "Why didn't you tell me? Am I then not your +friend?" + +"I'm sorry, Kenny." She laid her hand wistfully upon his arm. "Mr. +Abbott asked me not to tell you." + +"Why?" + +"I don't know." + +"You go there often?" + +"Yes, at night. I sew there and read and study. To Donald and me it +was always a little like a home. I used to patch his clothes there. +He hated them so. You're not hurt?" + +"Not--now." + +"I'm glad." + +At the wistaria ladder Kenny sighed. + +"Must you?" he asked. "I mean, Joan, can't you steal in by the door?" + +"It's better not," said Joan, one hand already on the vine. "Hughie +would scold if he knew. For the wood is lonely. And he would talk so +much of rain and snow. Now I can come and go as I please." + +She caught her cloak up and fastened it to insure the freedom of both +her hands. + +"Good night, Kenny," she said shyly. "I hope you find your star." + +"I did," said Kenny. "'Twas hiding in a cabin. Good night, dear." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THRALDOM + +Hughie met him at the door. + +"He's been askin' for you, Mr. O'Neill," he said. "And he hasn't drank +a drop all evening." + +"I shan't go," said Kenny. "Depend upon it, Hughie, it's another +trick." + +"I don't know," said Hughie hopelessly. "It may be. It's not for me +to deny, with all you take from him." Hughie looked ashamed of +himself. "I--I'm sorry for him." + +Kenny groaned and set his teeth. + +"I think," said Hughie, "he wants to apologize. He wrote you a note +this morning and tore it up. And when I put his brandy bottle on his +chair to-night he flung it at my head." + +"I'll go this once," said Kenny. "But, so help me Heaven, I'll never +go again!" + +He went dully up the stair, cursing the blossom storm. Its monotonous +patter on the roof had inspired Adam Craig to his first plea of +loneliness; it had left Kenny himself with a haunting memory of drab +solitude, pain and melancholy that seeped with a dripping sound into +his very marrow; and it had begun for him the singular thraldom, +inspired by pity, that he could not bring himself to understand. + +Hughie had left the door of Adam's room ajar. The invalid sat by the +table in his wheelchair, a book upon his knees, likely one of the +pirate tales in which he reveled. His face was drawn and haggard, his +eyes closed. With the wine of his excitement gone, he seemed but a +huddled heap of skin and bone. A death's-head! Kenny shuddered. +Unspeakable pity made him kind. The old man yonder was off his guard; +he had pride and spirit that compelled respect. + +Kenny softly closed the door and rapped. + +"Come in!" said Adam Craig. Almost Kenny could see him chirking up +into insolence and the pertness of a bird. It was precisely as he had +expected. When the door swung back, Adam was erect in his wheel-chair, +electric with challenge. His eyes were once more bright and sharp. + +"Kenny," he demanded with asperity, "where have you been?" + +Kenny glanced at the faded books stacked upon the bookshelves; and with +the cabin uppermost in his mind he swung back dangerously to the +hostile mood of the night before. Adam Craig was a miser, cruel and +selfish. He had driven Joan and Donald to a refuge in the pines. + +"I said," repeated Adam in a louder voice, "where have you been?" + +"Picking wild flowers," said Kenny. + +"You lie!" said Adam. "It's your way of telling me to mind my own +business." + +Kenny did not trouble to deny it. + +"You've been sulking." + +"Very well, then," said Kenny evenly, making use of his one weapon of +composure, "let's concede that I've been sulking." + +He was sorry instantly. + +Infuriated, Adam brought his fist down upon the arm of his wheel-chair +and, coughing, propelled himself up and down the room. + +Kenny walked away to the window, sick with remorse. For the old man +had coughed himself into gasping quiet. What could he do? + +A wayward Irish tune, ludicrously fitting, danced into his head and +made him smile. + +"What shall I do with this silly old man?" whistled Kenny softly at the +window. + +"What's that?" demanded Adam suspiciously. + +The insolence in his voice struck fire again. Kenny remembered his +notebook and the hour of accounting. Never again would the forces Adam +had revived sink into the quietude of his first days here at the farm. + +"What's what?" he asked perversely. + +"That asinine tune you're whistling?" + +"It's a song," said Kenny innocently, "about a wild flower. And it was +very wild. It had thorns." + +"I think you lie," said Adam, glaring. "But as I have no womanish +repertoire of songs to prove it, you can whistle it all you want and be +damned to you." + +Kenny at the window availed himself of the privilege. + +"What's the name of it?" snapped Adam after a while, ruffled by his +guest's persistence. + +"'What shall I do with this silly old man?'" explained Kenny with a +grin. + +"You impudent liar!" cried the old man in a high, angry voice. "Do you +ever tell the truth?" + +"Almost never," said Kenny. "Do you?" And he went on with his +whistling. + +Adam ignored his impudence. + +"Well, then," he said, "it's time you began. You're young enough, God +knows. But it's not a youth of years. It's a superficial youth of +spirit. And you're old enough to tell the truth." + +"How shall I learn?" + +"Practice!" + +Kenny wheeled. Adam's careless dart had struck deep and sharp and it +rankled. + +"Very well, Adam," he said, "I'll practice on you." + +Truth! Truth! he reflected passionately at the window. Was the world +mad about it? And what was the matter with himself? Why did the +romantic freaks of his fancy always fill him now with vague worry? + +"What," gasped Adam, staring, "did you say?" + +"I said," flung out Kenny, "that I'd practice telling the truth and I'd +practice on you. And by Heaven I will!" + +He wiped his forehead with a shaky hand. The room was warm, the lamp +flickering hotly in the summer breeze. He thought of Joan and the +ferry. Did she scull the old, flat-bottomed punt back and forth, back +and forth, when the winter wind was howling up the river? What did she +wear when winter settled, sharp and bleak, upon the ridge? Kenny +shivered. He pictured her vividly in furs, warm and rosy, and hated +the lynx-like eyes of the miser in the wheel-chair who doled out +grudging pennies for nothing but his brandy. There was much that he +could say if he told the truth; much the old man must be told if later +Joan with her secret tears was to be saved the brunt of his hellish +torment. He would force Adam Craig to stop the ferry. He would force +him to buy furs. He would force him to endorse Mr. Abbott and his +kindness, force him to grant Joan her books and the right to study, if +she chose. Why in Heaven's name should she creep through rain and snow +and shadows to the refuge in the pines? + +He was dangerously excited with the fever of the old crusader in his +veins. And then he thought of the trust in Joan's eyes when his tongue +rambled, and went cold with shame. He must learn to tell the truth. +He would practice for his own sake--and for the sake of Joan. + +With a sense of shock he realized that he had been very far away. Adam +was choking and wheezing and gasping himself into weakness. + +"For God's sake," exclaimed Kenny with a feeling of guilt, "what's the +matter? Are you laughing or choking?" + +"I'm laughing," said Adam, shaking with mirth. "Kenny, I'm just +laughing." + +"Well," said Kenny huffily, "laugh your head off if you want to. I +mean what I say." + +The old man chuckled. + +"I'd be disappointed," he said, "if you didn't." + +Kenny stared at him in intense disgust. A perverse old lunatic! He +would like his new diversion less perhaps as time went on. + +"I want you to forget," Adam said abruptly, "about last night. I +was--jealous. I hate your health. I--hate your straight legs--Oh, My +God!" he whispered, shuddering, and closed his eyes. When he opened +them his smile was ghastly. + +"Kenny," he said with a pitiful air of bravado, "do you know a tune, an +Irish tune called 'Eileen Aroon'?" + +"Yes," said Kenny, clearing his throat. "Yes." + +"Whistle it." + +Kenny obeyed. His eyes were sympathetic, + +"Well," said Adam in muffled tones, "it isn't Irish. It's Robin Adair +and it came from Scotland." + +But his voice was tired. + +Kenny rummaged in the closet for his brandy. + +"There are times," said Adam queerly, "when you've an open-hearted, +understanding way about you. I believe you even know why I get drunk." + +"Yes," said Kenny, "I think I do." + +Adam dropped hack limply in his chair. + +"It's because," he whispered, "I've--got--to--sleep!" + +Startled at his manner, Kenny remembered the fairy mill and wondered. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +KENNY'S TRUTH CRUSADE + +Kenny began his truth crusade the next night. + +"Adam," he said, halting on the threshold of the old man's sitting room +with one hand carelessly behind him and his attitude expectant and +determined, "I've often wondered why every book in the farmhouse is up +here on your shelves." + +Adam cupped his ear with his hand. + +"Wh-a-a-a-t?" he asked blankly. + +Kenny brought the hand behind his back forward. It held a megaphone. + +"I said," he bellowed through it, "that I've often wondered why all the +books in the farmhouse are here upon your shelves." + +Adam sat up. + +"For God's sake, Kenny," he said. "Close the door. Where did you get +that thing?" he demanded with a scowl. + +"It's Hughie's and the very sight of it was an inspiration." + +"Give it to me!" + +"On the contrary I intend to cure your deafness." + +Adam stared. + +"I mean just this: You can hear as well as I can. You pretend to be +deaf when you don't want to hear." + +"What?" snapped the old man with a glance like lightning. + +"You told me to practice the truth," reminded Kenny, dropping into a +chair. "I'm merely beginning. I've a lot to say. And the health of +your hearing, Adam, is an indispensable adjunct to my practice hour and +my peace of mind. I'm merely insuring myself against your refusing +with a feint of deafness to hear what I have to say." + +"For once," said Adam insolently, "you've scored. But if ever I get my +hands on that damned megaphone, I'll burn it." + +"You won't get your hands on it," retorted Kenny. "And if you do I'll +buy a bigger one." + +It was hard to begin but Kenny with his mouth set thought of Joan. He +told Adam Craig he was a miser. + +In the dreadful silence the tick of the old clock on the mantel seemed +to Kenny's distracted ears a perpetuity of measured taps upon a +death-drum. He thought of Poe and the pit and the pendulum. He +thought of Joan and told himself fiercely that he did it all for her; +for her he was winding around himself a chain foredoomed to clank. And +he wondered why on earth the old man did not speak. + +The suspense became intolerable. Intensely excited, Kenny swung to his +feet. + +"Well?" he said. + +"Well!" said Adam and smiled a curious, inscrutable, twisted sort of +smile. He had never looked so evil-eyed and subtle. "One of your +greatest drawbacks, Kenny, is an Irish temper and a habit of +excitement." + +"A miser!" repeated Kenny with defiance. He must keep his feet upon +the path. It was the prelude to all that he must say for Joan's +emancipation. + +"A miser!" said Adam, nodding. "Well, what of it?" + +Kenny struck himself fiercely on the forehead, wondering if the word +had pleased and not provoked him. The possibility shocked him into +fresh courage. He said everything that was on his mind with deadly +quietness and an air of fixed purpose. Then he picked up his megaphone +and started for the door. + +"Adam," he said, "I've told you the truth, so help me God, in an hour +of practice. Now, you can practice facing facts." + +And he was gone. + +He was courageous and persistent, with the thought of Joan always +spurring him to further effort. Night after night he played his game +of truth and fought with desperation for the happiness of the girl +whose eyes had committed him irrevocably to a vow of honesty and fact. + +He could not see that he was making any headway. + +Adam listened with baffling intentness while his strange guest +practiced strangely the telling of truth. He refuted nothing. He +accepted everything that Kenny said with a corroborative, birdlike nod +of politeness. With the megaphone upon the floor by Kenny's chair, he +made no further pretense of deafness. He said nothing at all and Kenny +found his new inscrutable trick of silence unendurable. One singular +fact loomed out above all others. Adam shamelessly accepted the word +miser with a gloating chuckle. He seemed to like it. For Kenny, +generous to a fault and prodigal with money, the word embodied all +things hideous. + +There were times when Kenny abandoned the hopeless battle and came at +Adam's plea, reserved and sullen. Then with a solicitous air of virtue +the old man urged him to renew it. + +"Kenny," he demanded more than once, "have you got your practicing +done? You lack application. If you're ever to learn truth at your +stage of ignorance you'll have to have it." + +The goad went home. He did lack application. And Joan must not suffer +from that lack. + +But in the end the old man tired him out; and the practice of truth +became a boomerang. + +Adam Craig smoothly demanded reciprocal privileges. Once more he told +Kenny the truth about himself and drove the tormented Irishman again +and again to his notebook. It had for him a morbid fascination. No +matter how resolute the disdain with which he began to read it, he +finished with his color high and his eyes incredulous and indignant. +The barbs failed to lose their sting. They sank deeper and deeper. In +a terror of defense Kenny returned to the fray with added vim. But +Adam had a deftness with his barbs that his opponent lacked. +Compassion drove the younger man to restraint. And Adam did not +scruple to hide behind the bulwark of his own debility. + +Night after night, mutinous at the glaring fact that in this singular +battle of truth, Adam Craig was winning, Kenny rushed out into the +peace and darkness of the night to seek Joan. It was inevitable that +he should see in the wistaria ladder the means to starlit hours of +delight. It was inevitable that Joan, to whom the vine was no more +than an old, familiar stairway, would climb down to him with that shy +oblivion of convention that was as much a part of her as her +will-of-the-wisp charm. + +They roamed in the dark silver of the star-light to the cabin in the +pines and the hours that Joan had spent with Mr. Abbott or the books +she loved, fell tinkling now with new melody into the lap of time. In +the rude room, bright with lamplight and the trophies of childhood, the +girl listened tirelessly to a musical Irish voice that read to her with +brogue and tenderness enough to insure her interest in the reader no +less than in his task. Kenny blessed the village congregation that had +sent Mr. Abbott forth upon his needed month of recreation. + +When the nights were cool enough, they built a fire of pine cones in +the cabin stove and made tea and Kenny talked of Brian to ease his +troubled heart. Joan listened wide-eyed to tales of the son Kenny said +was all things in one. + +"And you quarreled!" said Joan. + +"Yes," said Kenny. + +"So did Donald and I. How queer that is! Was it your fault, Kenny? +Or was it Brian's?" + +"It was my fault," said Kenny and lost his color. "But I know now that +it wasn't the quarrel then that counted. It was the things that had +gone before." + +"How much you love him!" said Joan gently. + +"Yes," said Kenny. "In this world of hideous complexities and +uncertainty and--chains--of that at least I am sure." + +"That," said Joan, "I like." + +Mingled inextricably with this new fervor in his soul for truth, was +the memory of the inspirational stage mother. The idle claim bothered +him more and more. But there he was never brave enough to tell the +truth. + +Well, it was a queer world and he--Kennicott O'Neill--was thrall to a +pitiful old fiend with the soul of a Caliban. He was unspeakably +grateful for the relief of the hours when, with his conscience up in +arms, he could talk to Joan of Brian and ease his misdeeds of the past +by praise and appreciation. + +A jewel of a lad! Everybody loved his humor, his compassion and his +common sense. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +IN SOMEBODY'S BOAT + +The moon came silver in the valley and mingled with shadow among the +trees. Owl's-light was nowhere, Kenny said, and the pines stood like +shaggy druids in the silver dusk. The twilight of the moon he called +it. Restless and poetic he begged Joan to help him find the lake down +yonder in the valley. It was gleaming, to his fancy, with fairies' +fire. + +They found the lake and somebody's boat. Both were in a lonely glen. +Kenny unwillingly conceded the existence of somebody with a claim upon +the boat stronger than his own. + +"But," he went on with an air of inspiration, "somebody is in the world +or he wouldn't be somebody; and the world's my friend. Therefore by +moon-mad deduction somebody's my friend and I may take his boat." + +He released the painter, smiling up into Joan's face. + +"Beside," he added, "he's either a young dub who doesn't know the moon +is shining or an old cynic who doesn't care." + +"Kenny!" said Joan, somewhat shocked by his inconsequent habits of +acquirement. "I'm quite sure we shouldn't." + +"Everything in the world you want to do," reminded Kenny, "you +shouldn't. And everything in the world you shouldn't, you want to do!" + +He flung his cigarette at a frog. + +"The only thing to smoke on such a lake," he said, "is a fairy's pipe. +Come, jewel machree, happiness is the aim of life. And my happiness +for the moment, is to glide forth upon the bosom of that lake with you. +Look, you can even see the gleam of silver shoes where the fairies +dance upon the ripples." + +He was indeed moon-mad in mood and irresistible. Joan smiled +compassionately at the pleading of his eyes. + +"But, Kenny," she said, holding back, "the aim of life isn't just +happiness. That might be very dreadful. It's just happiness with the +least unhappiness to others." + +He stared at her a little startled. It was the sort of thing, he felt +rebelliously, that he should write down in his notebook. Well, it was +no night for notebooks. It was a night, a lake, a boat for lovers. + +"Even granting that, girleen," he said, "it's not going to make +somebody unhappy if we take his boat. For he won't know it. And +therefore it will make us happy with the least possible unhappiness to +anybody else. And, after all, it's more likely to be a fairy's boat, +for it's made of quicksilver. Come, mavourneen, come!" + +She climbed in unconvinced. + +"Lordy! Lordy!" breathed Kenny in delight. "The lake is thatched with +moonbeams!" And he thought of course of the legend of Killarney. +"'Twas a valley like this, Joan," he said, "all rich with fields and +pastures of green and there in the heart of it always was the fairy +fountain covered with a stone to keep the water from rushin' out. And +then came the knight." + +His eyes pleaded. He was staging his legend and begging her to act. + +"And then," said Joan smiling, "came the knight. I think his eyes were +Irish." + +"He saw a maid at the fountain," said Kenny, his eyes tender, "a maid +with a pitcher and her skin was cream and her cheeks were rose and +there were shadows of gold in her bronzy, nut-brown hair. I'm sure she +wore a quaint old gown of blue and silver." + +"Kenny!" + +"And he liked her," said Kenny stubbornly. "You can't deny him that." + +"No," said Joan gently. "And why should I deny it? For the blue and +silver maid liked the knight." + +Kenny's heart leaped to his eyes. + +"They wandered on the hills and they wandered in the valley. And then +the maid in blue and silver, who was all rose petals and sun shadows +and the glory of autumn, ran back to the fountain. She had forgotten +to cover it with the stone and the valley was flooded. There beautiful +and calm stretched the lake of Killarney and I hope it was moonlight." + +"And the knight and the maid?" Joan had forgotten their game of +pretense. She was eager for the end of the story. + +Kenny feathered his oars in silver spray and wondered impatiently why +all love stories ended in an anticlimax. He had finished the story +artistically and well. Luckily Joan had forgotten the stage and the +actors. + +"I suppose," he said gloomily, "that the knight married the maid and +took her to dwell in a castle she must have hated. And they lived +unhappily ever after." + +Joan laughed. She saw in his words merely a perverse dislike for +familiar endings and forgot it at once. The moonlit lake had aroused +in her a yearning tenderness for the brother off somewhere in what, +Kenny said, Brian called his Tavern of Stars. + +"Oh, Kenny," she sighed, "I wish Donald would write!" + +The wish jarred. Kenny frowned. How could he wish it too! And yet, +not wishing was disloyal, disloyal to Brian. Upset, he turned, hurt +and sulky. And presently as Joan, busy with thoughts of the truant +brother, continued unaware of the melancholy in his mood that never +failed to make its appeal to her tenderness, he began to hum. + +Joan looked up. + +"What a queer, wild tune!" she exclaimed. "What is it, Kenny? I've +never heard you sing it before." + +"I never felt the need," said Kenny. "It's called the 'Twisting of the +Rope.' Long, long ago, girleen, a harper's gallantry to a pretty maid +angered her mother and she asked him to help her twist a straw rope. +And he did. And twisting he had to back away and over the threshold +and the mother slammed the door in his face. Faith, 'twas all to get +rid of him!" + +It was impossible to miss the point. Joan's face went scarlet. + +"Oh, Kenny!" she said. "You knew--surely you knew I couldn't mean +that." + +It was a new delight to hear her say it. + +"When Donald writes," reminded Kenny, "then I must go." And watching +the girl's troubled face, he wondered with a thrill of triumph if at +last the madness of the summer was upon her. Well, thank Heaven, he +was honest and honorable. He would stay until the madness waned. +Always he was fated to climb down out of the clouds first. + +Ah! But what if Joan slipped back into sense and sanity first? The +possibility filled him with panic. What on earth would he do? + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +IN WHICH CALIBAN SCORES + +It was a prospect doomed to haunt him more and more as the summer which +had bade fail to be so full of peace, took on an indescribable +atmosphere of complication. Where could he go, he wondered +despairingly, that life would not instantly pour around him a +distracting whirlpool of commotion? Was he fated to rush through life +with his fingers clenched in his hair and his teeth set? Was he +doomed, as Garry had once said, to run forever in circles of excitement? + +Stumbling and tired, Kenny tried to keep his feet unswervingly in the +path of truth, colorless and uninviting as it seemed; but the strategy +of his practice hour in Adam's room he was forced to abandon, heartsick +for Joan and the future. His battle for her he knew had been in vain. +Useless further to bombard with truth that silent, inscrutable Caliban +upstairs, whose fiendish power to drive him to his notebook when he +chose in turn to tell the truth, seemed uncanny. And it was practice +enough to tell the truth to Joan! God grant, in all sincerity, that he +might come to justify the faith in the dear eyes of her. + +He made one last heroic effort to break his chain of thraldom. After +an interval of bitter insubordination which ended each night in +surrender, he set his teeth and vowed by every sacred thing he knew +that to-morrow night, summons or no summons, he would not go to the +sitting room of Adam Craig. He would secretly leave the farmhouse at +dusk with Joan and when Hughie knocked on his bedroom door, ready to +say that the old man was lonely and in pain, he would be safe and +serene in the cabin in the pines. Was it fated to be his refuge too? + +Torrential rain woke him in the morning. Kenny stared out at the wet +valley in tragic unbelief. It simply could not be; for he wanted a +dusk flecked with stars. But the rain gave no promise of abating and +late that afternoon he altered the detail of his rebellion. +Fortunately there were other ways. When the dusk closed in and the old +man watched the clock and waited, he would go boldly downstairs to the +old piano and register his rebellion in music that Adam Craig could +hear. He would spend his evening openly with Joan; he would go through +fire and water; he would ride the whirlwind and direct the storm but +what this time he would assure his emancipation. + +Instinct had warned him to abandon, in his hours with Adam Craig, +certain picturesque forms of attire in which he delighted. To-night, +whistling with a feeling of gayety and unrestraint, he rummaged his +trunks, selecting his clothing with fastidious attention to minor +detail and held the lamp high at the end to afford a better glimpse of +the handsome Irishman smiling back at him from the mirror in the +bureau. No doubt of it, give a fashionable tailor disposed to be +experimental, his head and enough money on account and he could create +a dash and piquancy worth while. Always remembering that such a +creative artisan was fortunate to find a suitable contrast of shoulder +and hip to wear his inspiration. + +Kenny in the best of spirits went downstairs. The lamp in the parlor +was already lighted; soft yellow shadows lay upon the faded walls; dust +and cobwebs had long ago surrendered to the siege of Hannah's broom. +Kenny drew the curtains to close out the splash of rain upon the window +panes and went to the piano. Even the noise of wind and rain left him +calm and cold and invincible. He played brilliantly snatches of +everything he knew. When Joan came and curled up in a chair beside him +with her chin upon her hand, he forgot Adam Craig entirely and went on +playing. Not the music of rebellion; it was more the music of dreams, +dusk-moths of melody that flitted through his memory, curiously +iridescent. + +He drifted dangerously after a while into the tenderness and passion of +the _Liebestraume_, the one thing perhaps that, loving, he knew to the +end; swept through the downward cadenza with exquisite accuracy and +feeling, and forgot the rest. With the girl's soft pensive eyes upon +him he could have forgotten anything; he even forgot that love is +transient. + +"Joan!" he gasped. + +A loud voice rasped through the silence. + +"Kenny!" + +Joan shivered. Kenny stared at her in terror. It was the voice of +Adam Craig. + +"Kenny!" The voice, sharp with indignation, brought them both to their +feet. + +"Yes?" stammered Kenny, his face scarlet. + +"Do you know _all_ of anything?" + +Lamp in hand Kenny went to the foot of the stairway. + +"Adam," he demanded, staring up aghast at the wheel-chair and the +wrinkled, saturnine face bending over the railing with a leer of +triumph, "how in God's name did you get there?" + +"Wheeled myself, you Irish fool!" snapped Adam. + +Kenny went wearily up the stairway and set the lamp in a corner of the +hallway. + +"Well," bristled the old man. "Why don't you say something? What are +you going to do about it?" + +"It's the kind of night," said Kenny, "that you always have a fire. +I'm going to wheel you back where it's safe and warm." + +Adam chuckled. + +"That's what I thought you'd do," he jeered. + +"And then?" + +"Then," thundered Kenny in a blaze of temper, "I'm going back!" + +As usual his show of temper filled the invalid with delight. + +"Humph!" said he. "So am I." + +Kenny stopped the chair with a jerk. + +"What do you mean by that?" he demanded. + +"I mean," said Adam Craig, "that I'll wheel my chair back where I can +listen to music instead of rain. And if you wheel me back I'll do it +again. The hallway's dark and it's full of turns but I'll manage +somehow, if I break my neck." + +There was danger at every turn. A cold sweat came out on Kenny's +forehead. + +"Adam," he said quietly, "how did you manage to get there in the first +place? How did you open the door of your room?" + +"Wheeled myself close to the knob and unlatched it--" + +"Yes?" + +"Then I wheeled myself out of the way and poked at the door with a +stick." + +"Stick! What stick?" + +"A stick out of a shade. Do you think I'm a fool?" + +Kenny groaned. + +"After that," purred the old man with a hint of pride, "until I got +into the dark hallway and began to bump, it was easy." + +The sitting room door was still open. Kenny wheeled his exasperating +old man of the sea over the sill in a terror of foreboding. + +Adam stared at him. + +"Where in the name of Heaven," he said, "did you get that rig? You +look like an actor." + +Kenny turned a dark red and ignored the question. + +"Don't like it!" jeered the old man. + +"There's a Shakespeare quotation," reminded Kenny dangerously, "that +begins--Hum! how does it begin? Yes. 'There was no thought of +pleasing you' and so on. That's it." + +"You impudent devil! Close the door." + +"I'll close it when I go out. And I'll lock it." + +They faced each other in a silence perilously akin to hate. + +"Are you a Christian?" hissed Adam Craig between his teeth. "Or are +you a heartless pagan?" + +"I'm a pagan," said Kenny. "Orthodoxy, Adam," he added bitterly with +thoughts of Joan, "I leave for such compassionate hearts as yours." + +"I don't want it!" said Adam instantly. "It's churchiology, not +Christianity. They are as different, thank God, as you and I." + +A gust of wind and rain tore at the windows. The old man fixed his +piercing eyes on Kenny's face. Kenny shuddered and looked away. + +"Hear the rain!" said Adam. + +"I hear it," said Kenny hopelessly. + +"And you'll lock me in!" + +"Yes!" + +"I'll ring for Hughie and tell him to batter the door down. I would +rather bump myself into eternity down that hallway," flung out Adam +Craig passionately, banging his fist upon the arm of the wheel-chair, +"than sit here, alone, to-night." + +With his hands clenched Kenny choked back his anger and faced his fate. +He could not lock the door. Either he must stay or go back with the +haunting conviction that this hungry-eyed old fiend who could strum +with diabolic skill upon the sensitive strings of his very soul, would +propel himself in his wheel-chair to the stairway, there to sit like a +ghoul at the top. Rain beat in Kenny's ears like a trumpet of doom. +He felt sick and dizzy. No! with the memory of that last wonderful +moment when the music had blended into the fire of his tenderness, he +could not go back. Invisible, Adam Craig would still be pervasive. He +would jar the idyl into a mockery, the indefinable malignity of him, +alert and silent up there at the head of the stairs, floating down like +an evil wind to mingle with the reminiscent sound of rain. + +"Well?" said the old man softly. + +"Oh, my God!" said Kenny, wiping his forehead. "I'll stay!" + +"Good!" said Adam, moistening his lips. "Good! You know, Kenny," he +whispered, shivering, "I--I hate the rain." + +"Yes," said Kenny wretchedly, "so do I." + +"Kenny," said the old man later when Kenny had carried the lamp back +and made sure that Joan had gone to her room, "don't sulk. You're old +enough to know better." + +"I'm not sulking." + +"You are." + +"Very well, then, I am." + +"You've had enough music for one night." + +Kenny did not trouble to reply. Whatever he said would be combated. + +"Music," insisted Adam, "makes you as noisy as a magpie. If you're not +whistling, you're singing some damned rake of an Irish song and if +you're not singing, you're at the piano battering out a scrap-heap of +tunes." + +"From the first day until the last when he goes to sleep with a daisy +quilt over him," said Kenny stiffly, "an Irishman lives his life to +music." + +"Humph!" said the old man, ready for battle, "the music of his own +voice, telling lies." + +Reckless, Kenny used his one weapon of composure. It made the old man +cough with fury and propel himself up and down the room in his +wheel-chair until, with a feeling of whirling fire in his brain, Kenny +wondered if a man could lose his sanity by watching an infuriated +lunatic in a wheel-chair narrowly miss everything in his way. + +But he made no further effort at rebellion. Instead he went each +night, invincible in his determination not to be outdone. When by +playing on his pity Adam trapped him he smiled and shrugged. When the +old man assailed him with shafts of truth, no matter what the aftermath +of communion with himself and his notebook, he accepted it with +composure and an air of interest. When in a fury, Adam reviled him for +his phlegm, he laughed and was cursed for his pains. + +"You told me, Adam," he said, "that my greatest drawback is a habit of +excitement and temper. Excitable I shall probably be all my life. +It's temperamental. But I'm learning to control my temper." + +In a week his coolness and composure were bearing horrible fruit. + +Exhausted by blind fits of rage, racking spells of coughing and more +brandy than usual, the invalid's weakness became pitifully apparent. +He seemed now but a shaking shadow, gray and gaunt. Even the doctor, +who accepted him with fatalistic calm, confessed alarm. And Kenny, +with his teeth set and his fingers clenched in his hair, faced another +problem. He was to blame and he alone! What in the literal name of +mercy was he to do? + +There was one alternative left and one only. Either he must meet the +old man's hunger for battle with a show of temper, the blacker the +better, or leave the farm for good. But even with his thraldom heavy +on his soul the prospect of leaving Joan filled him with pain and +panic. There remained then but the show of temper in which Adam would +be sure to thrive. + +So Kenny set himself to his freak of mercy. Thereafter, when the need +arose, he walked the floor under the piercing battery of Adam's eyes, +blazing forth a fury that, in the circumstances, with his sense of the +ridiculous upper-most, could not be real. He raved and swore when he +wanted to collapse in a chair and rock with nervous laughter. + +Keen, alert, intensely delighted, Adam began to thrive. Chuckling he +slipped back to his normal state of debility. Finding in the stress of +his victim's tempestuous surrender that he forgot the megaphone, he +perversely began again to have trouble with his ears. + +Kenny and his megaphone returned to the fray. + +Thus September came, warm and golden. Haze, soft and indistinct lay in +the valley and on the hills. Summer lingered in the garden but on the +ridge the nights were cool and in the swamplands, Hughie said, already +the maples were coloring with a hint of colder weather. Here and there +on birch and poplar fluttered a yellowing leaf. + +And Donald had not written. + +Kenny, as the days slipped by, faced a new and tragic problem. October +was at hand. Work beckoned with urgent hand. If he did not go soon +somebody would have to balance up his check book for him and tell him +how long he could live without working. Brian, dear lad, had been a +jewel at figures. + +But how _could_ he work with the thought of the winter wind and Joan +tormenting him? And the snow-bound cabin in the pines? And the ferry +and the ladder of icy vine? And Adam Craig? + +He could not, would not go! And where in the name of all lunatics was +Brian? Life in the studio without him would be impossible. What did +he intend to do? Could he, Kenny, settle down to work with the problem +of his penitential quest for his son still unsettled? + +And why in the name of the Sacred Question-mark, was his life a string +of questions! + +In the end he fled from Adam's tongue. So he told himself. In reality +panic plunged him into action. His summer was ending. His madness was +not. And for that alarming fact he blamed Brian. + +"I was worried," he remembered irritably, "and just in the mood to make +a colossal fool of myself. And I have!" + +Otherwise this seizure must have run its course by now. It bothered +him that he had pledged himself to linger at the farm until Joan was +quite herself. Surely the gods of love and honor would understand that +he had foreseen no such troublous dilemma as that which faced him now. +He must take himself in hand. He must find an undisturbing level of +common sense and keep his roving feet upon it. The need was drastic. + +"I'll be back in a month," he told Joan, his lips white with compassion +for himself and her, and stared moodily at the blaze of autumn on the +hills, knowing he would not return. "Often I've longed for a winter of +sketching in such a wild and lonely spot." + +"And then," said Joan, "when Donald writes you must be here." + +"I must be here," said Kenny. + +That he felt was the kindest way. Surely, surely it was the kindest. +It saved Joan the painful thought of permanent separation. In a month +without him she would soon forget. A month, he knew of old, worked +wonders. Absence, he had proved again and again, never made a heart +grow fonder. Propinquity was at once a danger and a cure. + +Joan waved him down the farm lane, her soft eyes wistful. An adorable +will-of-the-wisp! Almost he could not bring himself to leave her. But +for Hughie's eyes, he would have vaulted from the farm buggy, crying +her name. + +"The farm," she had said with frank tears in her eyes, "will be just +like a grave without you." + +Kenny knew it would. + +The studio he found could match it. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +TANTRUMS + +Things went badly from the start. Whitaker for one thing claimed to +have lost track of Brian and Kenny thought he lied. For another, he +could not bring himself to work. A sense in the studio of a presence +gone, he told Garry, haunted him, Brian's lazy authoritative +guardianship and the comparative order to which he could reduce +existence when he chose were indispensable to his daily comfort. + +Ah! unbelievably care-free--those old devil-may-care days when Brian +had been content to work and laugh and quarrel! Kenny, looking back +with longing, likened his plight to that of Ossian returning after +three hundred years of fairy bliss from the fabled delights of +Tirnanoge. Touched earth he had, in spite of warning, and become on +the minute a wrinkled, old, old man. So with Kenny. He had touched +earth, he reflected tragically. Never again would his fairyland be +quite the same. Man talked of his flaws. His fallibility they said +was monumental. There was Adam who had morbidly incited him to a +notebook, a damnable, pervasive notebook which he tried in vain to +ignore. There was Whitaker, to whom, at a loose end, he wrote a great +many letters of rebuke, some stately, some less so. There was Brian, +whose absence had revolutionized his pleasant way of life; and Garry +and Jan and Sid, who at any cost merely wanted him to work. Grievance +enough for any man who resented the disturbance of unneeded change. + +The truth of it was, he owned at times, he was homesick for Joan and +fed his loneliness with letters he felt himself obliged to write. That +was inevitable, for he had fled from an idyl and the memory of its +charm must lessen slowly. Often with an eye upon the clock he found +himself picturing the routine of the farm and longing for its freedom +from the petty need of work. + +He blew the horn beneath the willow and watched Joan cross the river in +the punt. He climbed the garret stairway and helped her pick a gown. +He watched the Gray Man steal along the ridge, lingering in boxwood +paths and in the orchard. And then with night among the pines and the +plaintive voice of autumn wind, Joan was climbing down the vine and +hurrying through the wood to the cabin, and Adam with his eye upon the +brandy was counting wearily when the clock struck. How the wind would +rattle at his windows! How the log would flare! How Adam must be +longing for excitement! And how glad he was that he himself had found +a safe hiding place in a lonely tree-stump for the lantern Joan had +reluctantly agreed to carry since the fall closed in. + +Um . . . Joan would be building a fire in the cabin now and drawing +the shades and Mr. Abbott would be picking his way through the pines +with a book beneath his arm. Kenny glowered some at Mr. Abbott. An +eye for nothing there but duty and even that he saw in a stark and +unromantic way. And he lacked a sense of humor. He'd proved it in the +river. Joan answered his letters with an adorable primness that filled +him with delight. It reflected Mr. Abbott. But her letters ended +always with the naivete of a child. They all missed him. + +It was pleasant to be missed. + +The pleasure was curiously reactive. Kenny's irritability grew too +marked to be ignored. Jan and Sid and Garry met and talked him over. + +"What's wrong with him?" demanded Sid, amazed. "Garry, what is it? +He's as quarrelsome as a magpie and nothing suits him. He barks at the +club-boys and if you drift into the studio you're about as welcome as +the measles." + +"It's not because he's busy," said Garry grimly. "Nothing I've found +is further from his mind than the thought of work." + +"And it's plain Brian isn't coming back," put in Jan. "He might as +well face that fact and have done with it. Personally I've lost +patience with him. He acts like a sulky kid." + +Later Jan improvised a "scarlet fever" placard which Kenny in the +course of time found nailed upon his door. He read with amazed and +offended eyes that he was temporarily in temper quarantine. + +It soon became apparent that life without Brian was maintaining even +more than its usual average of petty complication. The problem of +small change Kenny found a torment. There Brian had been a jewel. It +simply narrowed down to this, he told Garry: No matter how he started, +he never had any. Even a bag of change he had procured from the bank +in a moment of desperation was never to be found. It got under things. +His eventual solution of the difficulty plunged the club into scandal +and uproar. He found the bag of change and sprinkled coins into +everything in the studio that would hold them. + +"Now," he informed Garry with moody satisfaction, "I'll always be able +to put my hand on some when I want it. I wonder I didn't think of it +before. I'm better with big sums. Dimes and nickels and even quarters +make me nervous. You know how it is, Garry. I always have to come in +to you or do one of a number of desperate things. And then if I can't +find a small coin and tip with a big one, Jan gets wind of it somehow +and talks by the hour about demoralizing the club-boys. He's a pest." + +The device at first bade fair to be successful. Later there was +frenzied recourse to Garry to help him remember where on earth the +dimes were likely to be. Later still the pages helped. The sequel +came quickly. The studio attained suspicious popularity with one or +two new untried boys who mined the studio in Kenny's absence and tipped +themselves. Kenny, as scandalized as only Kenny could be, turned +sleuth and reported the thing in wrath. Everybody missed something and +the club buzzed with scandal until the boys departed, likely, Kenny +thought bitterly, to retire for life on the dimes and nickels they had +dug out of his studio. + +Why must he always be the central pivot of a whirlpool of excitement? +God knows he loved peace even if Fate never permitted him to sample it. +He laid the whole thing unconditionally at Brian's door. Let Brian, +instead of shirking his usual numismatic responsibilities in some +indefinite green world of peace and calm, come home as he should. + +As for work, Kenny loved work, Brian and Garry to the contrary. If in +Brian's absence everything conspired against his passionate love of +industry, it was no fault of his. Along with the torment of doubts +that assailed him, thanks to that infernal notebook, the studio kept +catapulting itself into a jungle of nerve-racking disorder in which it +was impossible to work. And when Mrs. Haggerty fell upon it with the +horrible energy of the Philistine and found places for everything, the +studio became a place in which no self-respecting painter could be +expected to keep his inspiration or his temper. Here again, Kenny felt +aggrievedly, was a condition which Brian's presence could have altered. +The lad had a way of mitigating order and disorder with a curious +result of comfort. + +Garry lost his patience. + +"You remind me," he said, "of the English squire who only drank ale on +two occasions; when he had goose for dinner and when he didn't." + +Kenny remarked that the squire by reason of his nativity was a fool. +And the thing couldn't be helped. The studio in order was impossible. +He added with an air of inspiration that it made him think of +mathematics. Mathematics he considered a final argument against +anything. Besides, he was unusually fallible. Garry must always keep +that in mind. Let the infallibles work. If there was only something +he liked well enough, he'd drink himself to death. + +"I suppose you are aware," thundered Garry, thoroughly exasperated, +"that even a painter must work to live? The whole club's buzzing over +your tantrums. There's been some talk of chaining you to an easel with +a brush in your hand for your own good." + +Kenny as usual consigned the club to Gehenna. Nevertheless, as Garry +saw, he winced. Very well, he would work, furiously, as only he knew +how to work and when he had scored another brilliant success-- + +Fate intervened. To his intense excitement Kenny was summoned for jury +duty. He managed after much difficulty to place the blame of this too +at Brian's door. Brian, he remembered, had flirted with the daughter +of an uptown judge. Likely he had boasted about his father's +versatility. + +Inevitably on the morning there was civic need of him at court, Kenny +awoke with a fever for work, shocked at his record of indolence. Garry +found him in a painter's smock, conspicuously busy with a yard-stick +and crayon. Everything in the studio on rollers had been rearranged. +A chafing dish of coffee, sufficient to stimulate him through a day of +fearful labor, stood upon a table beside a supply of cigarettes. + +"Now, Kenny," said Garry, who was finding his responsibilities in +Brian's absence more or less complex, "you know hanged well you have +that jury thing on this morning. I'm going with you." + +Kenny filled a battered tin-cup with something he had to sniff for +purposes of identity, unearthed a number of brushes and defiantly +polished a palette with a wad of cheesecloth. + +"I'll be damned if I go!" he bristled. "I'm too busy." + +Garry looked directly at him and compelled a slight faltering of his +gaze. + +"It's the one day I've felt like work," blustered Kenny, squaring off +his canvas. "You spoke of work, didn't you? And a fool of an English +squire who ate goose? Let the idle rich sit around in squads and swear +they don't read the newspapers. I do. Me on a jury! My dear Garry! +I can't even sit still in my own studio. You know that yourself." + +Nevertheless after a heated argument he went wearily with Garry in a +taxi, particularly individualistic in his attire. And he told the +judge in a richer brogue than usual that he was a painter subject to +irresistible fits of dreaminess and must be excused. Garry, aghast, +stared at the judge and the judge, with peculiar interest stared at the +delinquent and excused him. + +"Fortunately," Garry told him later, "your civic duties haven't spoiled +your day." + +Kenny merely glanced at him with a gentle air of patience. He would +like to remind Garry that he had wanted to work and, thanks to Brian, +the law had intervened. Now the coffee would be cold and he hated the +sight of cold coffee. It depressed him. + +Things thickened alarmingly. At three that afternoon, when he answered +a violent thump upon the wall, Garry found the Louis XV table in a +cloud of smoke; it was littered with vouchers and check books. Kenny, +with his teeth set and one hand clenched in his hair, was figuring with +the speed of an expert without, Garry felt sure, an expert's results. +Brian, Kenny said aggrievedly, had always kept his check book straight. + +"Look!" he flung out, indicating a problematical balance. "Look at +that! And the fool says I'm overdrawn." + +"What particular fool?" + +"Some clod of a mathematician," explained Kenny with contempt, "whom +the bank employs to insult its patrons. Look here, Garry! Look at +that balance. Over a thousand dollars. Do you wonder I told him he +had a sense of humor when he said I was overdrawn? The young popinjay! +Arguing with me about my own balance!" + +"How did it end?" + +"I told him," said Kenny formally, "that the bank would most likely +demand his resignation in a few days. And when he began to grow +mathematical and persistent, I hung up." + +Garry patiently sorted the vouchers and balanced the check book while +Kenny in frenzied consideration of a new complication roved around the +studio and smoked. He was a God-fearing Irishman. He wanted peace. +But if ever a man's destiny knew unheard-of complication! Well, all of +it could be traced to Brian's unscrupulous flight. He must come back. +Kenny felt that his career was menaced. Life in the studio had become +intolerable. He had been embroiled in two scandals, thanks to Brian's +bouillon cups and Brian's unscrupulous shirking of numismatic +responsibility. Everybody was talking about him; he had Garry's word +for it. He couldn't work. When he could he was summoned for jury +duty. His accounts, like the studio, were in a mess and he'd +overdrawn. If something didn't happen soon-- + +"Shut up!" said Garry. "How on earth do you suppose that I can work +with you talking all over the studio? Here are three pages of checks +when you were evidently hitting the high spots, that you've failed to +subtract. Three on a page. That makes your balance overdrawn." + +Kenny struck an attitude of acute despair. "God of my fathers!" he +groaned, changing color. "It can't be. Garry, it simply can not be!" + +"It can and is," said Garry pushing away the book. + +"Adams still owes me five thousand dollars for his wife's portrait," +sputtered Kenny. + +"And now he's out of town." + +"What on earth did you do with Reynolds' last check? You had enough +there to live a year." + +Kenny looked dazed. + +"I recognized the danger with Brian's commercial instinct gone," he +stammered, "and--and conserved my funds." + +"You must have. You bought a lot of clothes," reminded Garry. "And +paid some bills." + +"Some," admitted Kenny. + +"Enough," commented Garry, "to establish, I suppose, one of your +startling flurries of credit." + +Kenny had meant to pay more. But the bank had put an end to that +to-day by intruding into his private affairs. He'd even meant to +redeem Brian's shotgun and anything else he'd pawned. + +"Lucky for Brian," put in Garry, "that you've mesmerized Simon into +holding things indefinitely even when you don't pay the interest. And +of course you blew in a good part of the check on something foolish." + +Kenny said with dignity that he'd bought a rug, nothing foolish. It +hung over there. An exquisite thing, sensuous and soft! Color and +form enough to drive a man mad with delight. He'd dreamt of the thing +for days before he bought it. Indeed he'd meant not to buy it but +something had snapped in his brain when he looked at it. Look at the +design. Never once did it tire the eye, free-flowing and sure. Its +intricate simplicity was amazing. + +"And you paid a small fortune for it," said Garry. "Don't sputter. +The voucher's here." + +Kenny sulked. Finding that Garry still had a tendency to finger +disconcerting checks and jot figures on a pad, he reached for his hat +and went out. + +"I'm going to do some illustrating for Graham," he telephoned a little +later, "if I do it quick. I'm with him now. I presume it's etiquette +to do something financial when you're overdrawn. Brian always watched +the bank to see that they put nothing over on me." + +He disappeared from human ken for several days. Garry, sniffing the +odor of coffee and cigarettes in the corridor outside his door, +pictured his horrible concentration. + +"It's that hazy autumn sort of weather that gets me," he telephoned +nervously one morning. "I don't want to work and I've got to finish +this stuff for Graham to-day. He'll pay at once if I do. Garry, I'm +going to lock the studio door and throw the key over the transom to +you. Don't let me out, no matter what I say." + +Obediently Garry at four ignored a violent thump upon the wall. Then +the telephone rang and Kenny said with some annoyance that the work was +done. + +When on the following day he found that Mr. Adams had returned and +wanted, purposefully perhaps, to come to tea, he lost his temper and +began at once to hunt cups, demanding of Garry why on earth Fate hadn't +smiled upon him before he wasted his vigor and inspiration in endless +hours of torture, doing pot-boilers. + +"If he's coming to tea with a red-blooded check like that," said Garry, +"I'll lend you some decent cups. Those bouillon cups are the limit." + +"Oh, hell!" said Kenny moodily. "I've talked with him. I've even +answered his questions with politeness. A man who wants to know if you +must have a north light to paint by will think it a rule of the guild +to double-handle teacups." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +KENNY DISAPPEARS + +That night Whitaker brought him news of Brian. He was healthy and +happy and wrote no word of coming in. There, Whitaker felt himself, +Brian was over-reticent. + +"And the postmark?" Kenny staring in disgust at a hole in his sock +transferred his glance to Whitaker. + +"That," said Whitaker, "I'm not at liberty to give. I've told you so +before." + +Kenny drew himself up to his full height. + +"John--" he thundered. + +The door opened and Mac Brett, the young sculptor on the floor above +who harbored H. B., came in, somewhat mystified at the warmth of +Whitaker's greeting. + +"Come on down to the grill to dinner," he suggested. "Garry's down +there and Jan. It's drizzling and a lot of men are staying in." + +Kenny, moodily painting the skin beneath the hole in his sock black, +flung down the brush and found his coat. + +"Once," said Mac in a panic of laughter, "he painted hairs on the bald +parts of Frieda Fuller's pony-skin coat. Thick, plutocraticky sort of +hairs. I shan't forget 'em. And they melted and smudged her neck. +Remember, Kenny? You ridged 'em beautifully--" + +Kenny did not answer. He strode toward the door. Mac and Whitaker +exchanged comprehending glances of dismay and followed him down to the +grill. + +It was a pleasant refuge from the autumn storm--that grill. The dark +old wood framed light and color, sketches and a line of paintings. +Mac's sculptured ragamuffin looked wistfully down from his niche near +the open rafters upon a Round Table institutionally fraternal. He +seemed always seeking warmth and food. Kenny's old peasant in wrinkled +apple-faced cheer smiled broadly from the wall, listening to the click +of billiard balls with his painted eyes upon the doorway. + +The hum and clatter at the Round Table stopped as Kenny entered. It +was followed by an immediate scraping of chairs, pushed back, and a +hearty chorus of greeting but Kenny knew, intuitively, that the talk +had been of him. + +He ate but little and went back to the studio to play dummy bridge with +Mac and Whitaker. A loud thump on the studio door and a Morse dot and +dash announcement of identity on the bell just as he had pieced a pack +of cards together, filled him with intense resentment. + +"Max Kreiling!" he said with a sniff. And a little later: "Caesare!" +He thought perhaps, feeling as he did in a mood for murder, he wouldn't +let them in, abuse the door panel and the bell as they would. Whitaker +did it for him. + +"They'll come in and play music on my piano," he insisted sulkily, "and +sing notes into my air and I repeat I'm in no mood for music." + +But Kreiling, big, blond and Teutonic, was already striding in with +Caesare at his heels. They filled the air with joyous greetings, +thumped upon the intervening wall for Garry and unloaded their pockets +and an institutional leather bag. + +"Cheese," rumbled Kreiling, "jam, coffee and mince pies." + +Caesare unsheathed his fiddle and played a preposterous rag-time +interpretation of the Valkyrie's battle-cry. It evoked an instant +response from the telephone. + +"It's Mac," said Whitaker. "He says he'll be down in a jiffy and bring +Jan with him." + +"Tell him," grumbled Kenny, "to bring beer instead. No fault of mine, +Max," he added, "if Jan comes down here and eats your cheese. He's a +cheese lunatic. Blame Tony. He comes into my studio, does a Pied +Piper stunt on his fiddle and the whole building appears." + +To Whitaker's amusement nobody heeded Kenny's petulance. Caesare was +already building a wood-fire in the fireplace, complaining of the +chill. Max Kreiling was furiously hunting missing sheets from a ragged +stack of music on the piano and grumbling in German about his host's +habits. The fire flared. Caesare's dark face, always tense, relaxed +into smiles. When Garry appeared the wood-fire was blazing and Caesare +was plucking in nervous pizzicato at the strings of his fiddle. Later +Mac arrived with beer, a loaf of rye bread and Jan, who gravitated at +once by permanent instinct to the cheese. + +Kenny morosely hunted cigarettes and reflected with raised eyebrows +that the studio was never entirely his, not even when he wanted +vehemently to quarrel with Whitaker. And last came Sidney Fahr, round +and merry, who looked casually in, nibbled at a gumdrop and professed +amazement to find so many there. Kenny unreasonably chose to take +affront at his chronic amazement and withdrew to a corner in a state of +gloom and disgust, whence Kreiling, sensitively alive to atmospheric +dissonances, routed him forth with the heated accusation that he was +not _gemütlich_. + +Whitaker looked on through a film of smoke. Ordinarily he knew it was +the sort of evening that fired Kenny to his maddest mood of fun and +sparkle. It was the romance of his Bohemia, the thing upon which he +fed his sense of the picturesque, ignoring the lesser things that +bothered Brian. Men loved him. In the glow of their camaraderie he +was always at his best, excited, joyous, irresponsibly gay and hearty. +But to-night the fun and sparkle passed him by. Garry was right. He +was surely not himself. Could it be--just Brian? + +"'Pagliacci!'" demanded someone. + +Kreiling laughed indulgently and beckoned Jan to the piano. His big +voice, powerful and tender, swept into the hush like a splendid bird. + +Kenny snapped off the lights, plunged into tragic sadness by the +passion of his voice. Somehow its poignant sweetness hurt. The +droplight over the music and the flare of the fire leaped out of the +darkness like medallions. Faintly from a corner came the whisper of +Caesare's violin, offering obligato. + +Then he closed his eyes to block but the sight of rain splashing on the +window. Enchanted rain surely! For it transformed the single pane +into many, like a checkerboard of glass, and through it he was staring +queerly into the farm. + +Kreiling mopped his forehead at the end and switched on the lights. +The silence he understood and liked but his keen eyes lingered in +surprise on Kenny's face. His color was gone, his eyes curiously tired +and wistful. + +"So!" said Kreiling gently and passed on to the cheese with deliberate +tact, pushing Jan away. A minute later his hand came down with +heartiness on Kenny's shoulder. + +"Spitzbube!" he rumbled affectionately. + +Kenny laughed but Whitaker saw that his cigarette was shaking. + +"Music," he reflected, feeling sympathetic, "always makes him wild and +sentimental. And Max sang like an archangel." + +"Now, Kenny," commanded Kreiling, nibbling cheese and rye bread, "play." + +Kenny sullenly obeyed. After the first effort, something rebellious +touched his sullen mood to fire and he played fragments of the Second +Rhapsodic with madness in his touch. + +Sid, aware of it, stared in round-eyed apprehension at his back. + +"He's just in the mood again for rocketing," he decided. + +From then on Kenny's reckless gayety kept them in an uproar. + +When someone clamored for a wood-fire tale he told them of Finn's love +for Deirdre. But the discussion it provoked bored him and he dropped +back, smoking, in his chair, + +"There is love and love," said Max Kreiling, "and to be in love is +torture and a thing of self, but when the big splendid tenderness comes +after the storm of self and craving, the tenderness that knows more of +giving than of demanding, it comes to stay. But it's not the love of +barbarity like Finn's. It's an evolution." + +"Ask Kenny," said Mac mischievously. "He's an expert." + +"Love, my son," said Kenny wearily, "is poetic like summer lightning. +It flashes, blinds in a glory of light--and then disappears--in time." + +He tired early and sent them home. Whitaker longed to linger but the +moody cordiality of Kenny's good night was only too significant. He +departed with regret. + +"Garry!" called Kenny at the door. + +Garry turned back. + +"I meant you to wait," said Kenny irritably, "but you got out before I +could tell you." He closed the door. "Garry, what were the men in the +grill saying to-night when I came in?" + +Caught unawares Garry flushed and stammered. + +"Why," he evaded uncomfortably, "it began about the peasant picture in +the grillroom. Everybody likes it." + +"And then?" + +"We talked some of the last thing you did--the winter landscape of snow +and pines." + +Garry looked away. + +"Out with it!" said Kenny suspiciously. "For God's sake grant me the +privilege at least of lumping it all in one supreme period of upheaval. +They didn't like the pine picture?" + +"On the contrary," Garry hastened to assure him, "Hazleton said you are +brilliantly skillful." + +"Brilliantly skillful! But?" prompted Kenny and looked a question. +"Brilliant skill," he added moodily, "doesn't always make a big +painter." + +"Hazleton said as much," admitted Garry. + +"I suppose it's best to tell you, Kenny," he added honestly, hoping to +spur the culprit on to more and better work. "It may help. They said +downstairs that you interpret everything, even trees and snow, in terms +of unreality. You over-idealize. I suppose it's your eternal need of +illusion. We've spoken of that before." + +"I'm not a photographer!" blazed Kenny. "Any camera will give you +realistic detail. Artistic too. What else? Go on, Garry. I'm +calloused to the hearing of anything. I merely thank God you've had no +newspaper training." + +"Most of the older painters," Garry said with reluctance, "seem to feel +that--well, there's too colorful a dominance of self in your work. +Your personality always overshadows. You've an extraordinary fluency +with color, a deft assurance, a brilliancy that leaves one rather +breathless and incredulous, but what you do is autocratically, +unforgettably--almost unforgivably--you!" + +"Art," explained Kenny loftily, "is reality plus personality. And +personalities are variously vivid and anaemic. Unreal, over-idealized, +too colorful a dominance of self and personality overshadows," he +summarized after an interval of silence. "And in the face of +that--success. I am successful?" + +"Undeniably." + +"Even Hazleton, with his sordid gangs of Eastsiders nudging each other +on a dirty bench, can't deny it," bristled Kenny. + +He had divided the honors of more than one exhibition with Hazleton and +admired and resented him impartially. + +"It has been said," said Garry, ruffled by his air of triumph, "that +you paint down subtly to the popular fancy where you might paint up to +your own ideals." + +The barb went home. Kenny flushed. + +"Your work," added Garry, "lacks the force and depth of sincerity. +Even in Brian's dreadful East River sunset over there, there's a +quality you lack, an eagerness for reality and truth and life as it is. +Brian has painted poorly what he saw but he painted boats for ragged +sailors. Real boats. You've painted brilliantly, in the pine picture +for instance, what you wanted to see, a dark forest for mystic folk to +dance in when the moonlight lies upon the snow." + +"And what," inquired Kenny with a shade of sarcasm, "was the final +verdict of the grill jury when all the evidence was in?" + +"Remember old Dirk, Kenny? He said that the fullness of life came +through--sacrifice. That all things, good and permanent and true, come +only out of suffering; that men pay for their dreams with pain." He +let the full import of that drive home. "The verdict was, that if +you'd forget your public and look for truth, paint with restraint and +less brilliant illusory abandon, you'd be a big painter." + +"And that," said Kenny with icy politeness, "unalterably defines my +status as a painter. In this club at least." + +"You asked me--" + +Kenny looked tired but he held out his hand. "Dear lad," he said, +"'twas fine brave friendship to tell me--when I asked you." + +Failure! He, Kennicott O'Neill who had been decorated by the French +government! The men in the grill then talked openly of his flaws and +the verdict, officious or otherwise, was failure. Flaws! He was not a +big painter. He was merely a self-centered, impecunious, improvident +Irishman, indifferently skillful, whose vanity and self-indulgence had +driven his son off into a vague green world, God alone knew where. He +_was_ a big painter! Posterity would fling that back in the teeth of +men! + +"Kenny!" + +It was Garry's voice. + +"I'm going." + +"Oh," said Kenny vaguely. "Yes, of course." + +He was grateful when the door closed, though he stood for full a minute +afterward tapping on the table with his fingers. Then indignantly he +looked up the word failure in Brian's dictionary and underscored it +heavily. + +Ah! this world of his was amazingly awry and he himself was hurt and +unhappy. After all, was there any romance, any camaraderie in the +Bohemia he once had loved. By Heaven, no! One had but to stare at the +studio with Brian's vision to see the thing aright. Disorder and +carping tongues and loneliness! God help him, how he longed to escape +somewhere, anywhere where there was peace--and faith and friendliness +in human eyes. + +Afterward, a painter on the floor below, swore that Kenny had tramped +the floor all night and there had been occasional thuds. At daylight +he had gone out hurriedly and banged the door. + +Sid, entering the studio by the door Kenny had forgotten to lock, found +abundant evidence of frenzied packing and carried the news to the grill. + +"I knew it," he said. "I knew it last night. By the Lord Harry, it +was in his eye. Where on earth d'you suppose he's gone?" + +"God knows," said Garry and heartily wished he'd kept the grillroom +verdict to himself. + +At sunset Kenny blew the horn beneath the willow. + +Twilight here among the vivid leaves was softly orange. Where was the +invisible lamp, Kenny wondered with his blood singing, that filled the +world with golden dusk? It lay reflected in the water and in the dim +and yellowed forest paths behind him. And there behind the gables of +the farm, an autumn sunset focussed its softness into a brilliant blaze +of color. + +Later when life was kind and peace was in his heart, Kenny was to paint +that picture with exquisite truth and restraint and call it "Afterglow." + +At the flutter of a cloak on the cliff-path he slipped behind the +willow. + +For an eternity it seemed he traced the forward sweep of the punt until +it grated on the shore. And the surprise perversely came to him. + +"Kenny!" called Joan. + +There was mischief and laughter in her voice--and welcome. And Kenny, +oblivious of the detail of his going, knew only that he stood beside +her in the golden dusk and that her eyes were curiously like shining, +leaf-brown stars. + +"Ah!" he reproached, catching both her hands. "You are a witch. +You're burning an invisible lamp of incense off somewhere in that +yellow wood and out of it comes the twilight and the secrets of the +world. How did you know?" + +"The horn was so excited!" + +"The horn!" + +Joan nodded. + +"I know them all," she said. "Mr. Abbott blows an apology for +disturbing me. Mrs. Lawler is stout and when she's delivering butter +and eggs, her wind doesn't last and she gets no further than a toot, +and the blacksmith's wind is amazing--" + +"Enough!" said Kenny sternly. "You've too much wisdom. But--" + +"Of course," said Joan, "I didn't know you would ride to the village +yonder but I thought you might. Uncle said you wouldn't come." + +Kenny laughed. Joan never knew that he had not meant to come again. + +He found home in the farm kitchen and joyously pumping homely hands, +stepped at once on the tail of Hannah's cat. Toby, after a vocal +minute of terror, fixed a hard eye upon his heel and withdrew at once +to a sheltered spot behind the stove. He had learned before that Mr. +O'Neill with his head in the clouds was frequently unaware of feet +things. + +Kenny went of his own accord to Adam's sitting room. + +Almost he surprised a glint of welcome in the old man's piercing eye. + +"Well, Adam," he said happily, "I'm back!" + +"Humph!" said Adam ungraciously. "I knew you would be." + +By the end of the week Kenny forgot that he had been away. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +BRIAN SOLVES A PROBLEM + +To Brian had come a problem of his own. His vagabond days were nearly +over. Now with the wind cool at twilight and the dawns sharp, the two +wayfarers, lean and brown as gypsies, were tramping back over the trail +of the summer, finding old fires and the delight of reminiscence. + +"Don," said Brian one twilight as they swung along in the dust of a +country road, "if I'm not mistaken back yonder is the field where you +barked for a summer show. Man alive," he added with a laugh, "how you +did bark! Now with a summerful of health in your system and your voice +full of fresh air, I could understand it, but then! Honestly, old top, +I didn't know it was in you!" + +The boy looked up and laughed. + +"It wasn't," he said with utter truth. "You told me I could do it and +I--I just did." + +"I knew you could do it!" said Brian with the vigor of confidence that +had made the boy his slave. "Still, when you unleashed that first roar +and the crowd began to collect, I confess I thought you'd busted +something vital and were yelling for help." + +Don glanced at this clothes. The summer show had freed him from the +mended rags he hated. Shirt and trousers, hat and shoes were as near +like Brian's as they could be. So was the coat upon his arm and the +knapsack on his back. + +"Whenever you tell me I can do a thing," he said, "and hang around to +see me do it, I can always somehow seem to make myself do it. Look!" +he broke off with a boyish grin, pointing at a farmhouse on a distant +hill. "There's the farm where you threw the can of whitewash at the +farmer when he swore at his wife for dropping the eggs and threatened +to lick her. Wasn't he a sight!" + +"He was!" admitted Brian. "And wasn't he mad? If he hadn't been a +coward he would have licked me instead. As it was, I never fully +understood why his wife shied an egg at me. However, that's all rather +a shady part of my past. I'm not reminding you of the self-winding +blunderbuss you got in part payment for chopping wood, am I? Or that +it went off by itself and shot a cabbage?" + +Laughing they struck off into a twilight stretch of woods, found a +familiar clearing near a spring and made a fire. + +"Well," said Brian when the fire was down to embers, "what's the +schedule? You're road manager this week. What do we eat?" + +"Sausages," said Donald, unloading his pockets. "A can of macaroni and +an apple pie." + +"You disgraceful kid!" exclaimed Brian. "Whenever you get into a +country store without a guard you kick over the traces and appear with +something in your pocket that busts a road rule and obligates me to a +sermon when I hate 'em. Pie, my son, is effete and civilized. It's +like feeding cream puffs to a wandering Arab. You're apt to make him +stop his Arabing and hang around the spot where the cream puff grows. +However, now that you've brought the thing into camp, it would be +improvident not to eat it. What am I, Don, wood-scout or cook?" + +"Cook," said Donald. "All day," he added, "you've been limping." + +Brian made a fence of forked twigs, hung the sausages up to toast, +opened the can of macaroni and set it in the embers. That Don had +noticed the limp gratified him immensely, even though it had been a +mere and prosaic matter of a blistered heel. + +Whistling softly, he watched the boy gather wood. Well, thank God! he +was as unlike that white-faced moody lad who had stumbled into his +Tavern of Stars as a boy could be. He whistled a good deal. He was as +slim as a sapling, the slimness of muscle and health. His eyes were +clear and boyish. And there was color in his face. Best of all, to +Brian's mind, after the first sullen period of readjustment he had +worked his own salvation and reverted by wholesome instinct to boyhood +with its inexhaustible animal vigor, its gaucheries and its boisterous +minutes of frolic heretofore denied. Now save for the hours by the +camp fire when he passionately blurted out again and again the tale of +his rebellion until Brian knew his life as he knew the weather-lore of +the open road, he seemed ever on the verge of laughter. + +Brian smiled. Attuned to the mood he summed up the achievement of his +own summer. The brawn of splendid health and a clear head! For the +one he could thank his gypsying; for the other, in a measure, he could +thank the boy. + +In the lonely hours before he came with his problems there had been +solitude less soothing than Brian had expected. There has been an +inclination to smoke and brood and nurse certain sentimental misgivings +about Kenny when the fire was low and the owls hooting in the forest. +After, mercifully--for they might have driven him back to +sunsets--there had been no time. The life of another had made its +demand and sympathy with Brian was never passive. Impossible somehow +not to romp with the young savage yonder rejoicing in his freedom, with +even work a lark! Impossible not to laugh with him, fight out his +battles with him and surrender with a sigh of content to the weariness +and hunger of a caveman! + +If now with autumn at hand the fortunes of the road had in them a grain +more of hardship and less of romance, it was to be expected. Brian had +tramped to his goal. The staleness was gone. It was time to be up and +off, seeking Whitaker. + +A sausage burst its casing with an appetizing sizzle and leaped, it +seemed of its own accord, into suicidal embers. Brian rescued it with +a stick and looked up. Don had come back with the wood. + +"It's fall," said Brian. "The wind's full of it to-night. Last night +I was cold." + +"So was I," said Don. Brian thought he looked a little out-of-sorts. + +"It narrows down to two things," said Brian, fishing in his pocket for +some forks and spoons. "Either we must acquire another blanket or two +or get a job and sleep under cover until--" + +The boy's imploring eyes upset him. Brian turned a charred sausage and +sighed. There was his problem, he knew: Don and his future. And they +were barely twenty miles away from his uncle's farm. + +"Remember the mountain quarry somewhere over there to the west?" he +asked. "Suppose we hike over there in the morning and see if they need +some brawny arms to help 'em crush stone. Seems to me there were a lot +of shacks up back of it on the mountain. We could live in one of them." + +"Yes." + +"What's the matter?" + +"Oh," said Don with an effort, "I'm a little blue. I suppose it's the +fall." + +They tramped west in the morning and climbed a winding road. The +quarry lay ahead in the rocky wall of a mountain. + +"Lord, what an out-of-the world spot!" exclaimed Brian in dismay. +"Don, you thought we were getting too close to your uncle's farm but +nobody'd find us here. I suspect they have to build shacks to keep the +men contented. That basin of stone looks as if it had been gouged out +of the mountainside by the hand of a giant." + +A drill-runner was shouting to a man with a red flag as Brian climbed +into the pit. The flagman waved him back. A second later a dull blast +shook the quarry, earth and stone crumbled out of a fissure in the +cliff ahead, and the suspended labor of men awaiting the Titan aid of +inanimate force, turned to noise and bustle. + +"Hum!" said Brian, glinting, "mostly dago labor. Well, that doesn't +need to worry us, does it? You stay here, Don, while I find the boss." + +Don obeyed. Derricks hung above the cars upon the spur track. Farther +back a screen revolved and sorted stone. Men were feeding the crusher +and men were busy at the drills but the boy's eyes, with an instinct +for adventure, followed a man who drove a mule-cart along an +overhanging ledge above the pit. The task held for him a fearful +fascination. + +"Needs men to load cars," announced Brian coming back, "and feed the +crusher. In quarry caste I imagine that's about at the bottom. The +shacks are furnished and four of them are empty. We can take our pick. +What do you say?" + +"Whatever you say," said Don. + +"Well," said Brian, "to tell you the truth, I have the keys." + +The quarry, he fancied as he climbed the path to the cluster of shacks, +would solve his problem for him and when the time was ripe he would +have his say. + +The time ripened with frost in the morning and a harvest moon at night; +and Brian had failed to have his say. A letter came from John Whitaker +definite in detail and a shade impatient. Why was he loitering when +God's green world of spring had turned to autumn? Was he still stale +and thinking wrong? + +Brian set his lips to his task and spoke. + +"Don," he said one night when the dishes were washed, the shack swept +and the lamp lighted, "I've been thinking a lot about you and what +you're going to do this winter." + +The boy, who had been sparring with a kitten that had strayed into the +shack the day before, rose abruptly. + +"You say you won't write to your sister until you've made good?" + +"It isn't just that," stammered Donald, changing color. "I--I don't +dare. She'd beg me to come back--" + +Brian nodded. + +"Yes," he said. "I know the feeling." + +"And I won't go back!" flung out Donald passionately. "I won't go +back. I simply can't." + +"It's better," said Brian sensibly, "if you don't. For a number of +reasons. But you must do something. I mean something with the future +in view." + +"Yes." + +"As far as I can make out," went on Brian, puffing at his pipe, "you're +wildly unhappy and discontented at the farm and that worries your +sister. Of course your absence worries her too but the two letters we +wrote that night you tumbled into my camp fire must have made her feel +a lot better, particularly since we both expressed our intention of +making the best of ourselves. You say she won't leave your uncle +because he's an invalid. That leaves you without any string to your +bow but your own inclination. In a sense you've followed that too +long. I mean, Don, shirking the course of study the old minister +mapped out for you when your sister kept on plugging. You need it." + +"Nothing mattered," said the boy bitterly. "I knew I wouldn't stay. I +didn't dare. Once," he added in a low voice, "when Uncle cursed my +sister and threw a bottle of brandy at her, I made up my mind to kill +him." + +"Good Lord!" said Brian, shocked. + +"That's one of the reasons I don't dare go back. I'm afraid. You +can't guess what it is," he choked. "He taunts and jeers and curses in +a breath and he gets drunk every night. I wish to God he would die!" + +The wish was horrible in its sincerity. Brian ignored it. + +"If you were older," said Brian, "and your chief need wasn't school, +I'd take you abroad with me, free lancing. But in the circumstances, +with your welfare somewhere else, that's impossible." + +Donald hung his head. + +"I--I wish it wasn't," he blurted. "I want to go wherever you go." + +"That first night when I asked you to tramp along with me," said Brian +gently, "I said, in my letter to your sister, that I'd see you through. +That I'm going to do. But you've got to help me. I want you, after +I'm gone, to stay up here at the quarry, study nights, and next year +work your way through college." + +The boy stared, blank terror in his eyes. + +"A year's work will put you on your feet--your kind of work when the +mood is on you--and you can enter in the fall. I know a chap who's +working his way through Yale. He'd show you the ropes." + +"Here!" said Donald. "Alone!" + +"Here," said Brian quietly, "alone. I know you can do it." + +Don brushed his hair back heavily from his forehead. It was but little +browner than his face. The gesture reminded Brian irresistibly of +Kenny, Kenny in rebellion. + +"It isn't the college part," Don said hopelessly. "There I think I'd +get through. And I'd like to be an engineer. It's the year here. An +entrance examination would be stiff, wouldn't it, Brian?" + +"Yes." + +"I know chunks of a lot of things I don't need, almost nothing of +things I ought to know a lot about. When I liked a thing, I studied. +And when I didn't I let it slide. It worried my sister. And I work by +fits and starts when there's nobody around to keep me at it. Up here +alone, working all day and studying half the night, I'd never swing it. +It would mean the hardest kind of work." + +"Once," said Brian, "I saw you chop wood for thirteen hours." + +"You were there." + +"And down there in the quarry Grogan says you can load more stone to +the hour than two wops." + +"You're there feeding the crusher. And you work as hard as I do." + +Brian rose. His pipe was out. He knew as he knocked the ashes into a +saucer and filled again from a bowl of tobacco upon the mantel, that +Donald's eyes were upon him, abject with misery and remorse. But +neither spoke. + +Irritable and upset, Brian went out upon the porch. + +The straggling cluster of shacks around the rude store were dark. +Grogan's weary men found bed early. The moonlight was calm and cold +and weirdly bright. A wind mournful with the rustle of dead leaves +came sharply from the trees behind the shack where by day the autumn +sun touched russet into gold and scarlet. A bleak spot up here! The +solitude of stone and struggle. Could he expect Don to linger here and +fight his battle? Brian, with the weight of his years heavy on his +shoulders, said honestly no. And the problem still was with him. + +He went down the steps and walked aimlessly along the ridge above the +quarry. The bright emptiness below was grotesque with shadow, shadows +of ghost-like derricks, screens and drills. On the spur track lay a +car half full of stone. Standing there with the trainload of Donald's +labor at his feet, it came sharply to Brian that the boy stood again at +the parting of the ways. And the year would tell. + +To the right from the dank water of a quarry pool abandoned long since +to catfish and willows, a milk-white mist was rising eerily into the +moonlight. Brian saw it but he saw it indistinctly. He was thinking +of the boy's sister, her sweet face tragic with imploring. It lay in +the mist and yet not in the mist, and it was binding him to obligation. +He had written a promise. That promise he must keep. The face his +memory etched upon the mist made its appeal to every finer instinct of +his courage. + +Brian did not face his problem with excitement. He faced it with +ruthless concentration. All summer he had been groping through fog and +disillusion to the meaning of service, service to his fellowmen, and he +had groped through to something vague and lofty. Service lay across +the water where men raved in the red fever of destruction, service and +inclination. Could not one be mercifully the religion of the other? +Must service spring from the bitter dregs of self-denial? Brian stared +wretchedly into the dank white mist curling in the moonlight like a +fallen cloud. And again with his conscience up in arms he remembered +the face of Donald's sister. In a sense he could thank the boy for the +peace of his summer. And he had written his promise. He was like +Kenny, that boy, inflammable of purpose, erratic in his vigor, and +likable. And he needed a friend, inflexible and kindly. + +"Always," said Brian, "I am slated to be somebody's keeper." + +Could he shirk? Had he shirked when he left the studio in anger? Had +he a right to live his life his own way? Had anybody? His common +sense endorsed his earlier rebellion. This was different. + +"Whenever you tell me I can do a thing and hang around to see me do it, +I can seem to make myself do it somehow!" + +The words echoed harshly in his ears; and at first Brian refused to +hear them. Then inexorably he faced his fact. He and he alone was the +spur to the boy's amazing energy. A year? Well, after all what was a +year? + +He went back through the autumn moonlight with a sigh. + +"Don," he said, "you're right. You couldn't swing it up here alone. +I'll stick and see you through it." + +Don looked up, his face scarlet with emotion. Brian's hand was on his +shoulder. And Brian's eyes were half humorous, half quizzical and +wholly tender. + +"No, no, Brian, no!" he choked. "I--I didn't mean that--" + +"Of course you didn't," said Brian. "I thought that much of it out for +myself." + +Don's head went down upon his hands with a sob. + +That night Brian wrote to Whitaker. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +SAMHAIN + +To Kenny in poetic mood the seasons were druidic. There was May Eve +with its Bel fires when summer peeped over the hilltops at the cattle +driven through the sacred flames to protect them from disease. There +was Midsummer's Eve with more fires, and if St. Patrick in unpagan zeal +had chosen to kindle his fires in honor of St. John, he could. To +Kenny the festival was still druidic. There was Samhain or summer +ending, when the November wind speeded the waning season with a flurry +of dead leaves; and to Kenny, Samhain came and drove him forth in the +chill dusk to face another problem. + +He had come to the farm in blossom time and he had stared ahead to +sanity--in September at the latest. Now with branches dark and bare +against the glorious sunsets that burned at night in the west long +after the valley was in shadow, even with talk in Hannah's kitchen of +early snow, his madness was if anything a trifle more acute. Even the +dreaded hours with Adam ceased to trouble him in the joy of his days. +There was peace here and, thanks to Mr. Adams, who had simplified his +relations with the bank, freedom from work and worry. + +The November twilight, scintillant with stars, lay darkly ahead. He +forged through it in excitement. He who could forecast with the wisdom +of experience the duration of his own enslavement had gone over his +time. And, powers of wild-fire, he still kept going! Something +emotionally was wrong. + +It pleased him in a moody moment to busy himself with mathematics, much +as he hated them, and deduce a singular fact. He had spent delicious +hours of many a day with many a maid. But days and days and days with +one? Not ever! + +For one hour he had spent with some forgotten object of his adoration +in the past, he had spent five with Joan. The thought alarmed him. It +came to this. If by rational reduction you translated each flare into +hours, the vertigo of his summer with Joan became at once in contrast +equivalent to years. And by every law his infatuation should have +stopped the sooner. How much longer would it linger? What if +Christmas still found him turbulent and upset--and hating the thought +of the studio? This furlough of his from work and worry must come to +an end in time! + +Paralyzed by an infinite variety of prospects he stopped dead and +stared at the fading red behind the hills. When had it altered--this +madness of his? Why was it stronger? Any man addicted to falling in +love knew well enough it shouldn't be. + +It was his fate to remember as he stood there the talk of love around +the wood-fire. He had barely listened. Yet now his memory cast up +Kreiling's words and took his breath away. + +"There is love and love and to be in love is torture and a thing of +self but when the big splendid tenderness comes after the storm of self +and craving, the tenderness that knows more of giving than of +demanding, it comes to stay. But it's not the love of barbarity like +Finn's. It's an evolution." + +To stay! . . . The thought was volcanic. . . . _To stay_! + +And yet . . . how different that first dizzy sweep of delight at the +sight of Joan's loveliness, from this big, nameless something that +filled his heart with humility and longing! . . . How far away that +day beneath the willow when he had blown the horn! . . . An eternity +lay between. + +This love of his--no, it was no longer merely a storm of unrest. It +was no longer merely a delirium of the senses in which he knew +suffering no less than ecstasy. It was a big, kind, selfless +tenderness that grew from day to day. A thing perhaps for eternity! + +Kreiling was right. + +Kenny's irreverent philosophy of the heart crumbled into ashes at his +feet. Love he had once believed was poetic like summer lightning. It +flashed, blinded in a glory of light and disappeared. If it lingered +it would lose its mystery, It was a quest in which the emotion was +paramount; the object that inspired it merely essential and +subordinate. Love was the only thing in the world worth while but +though a poet's love might fill his life with a perpetuity of delight +the object was bound to be a variant. Kenny had often mourned for +departed madness. He had never mourned the girl whom Chance had +appointed to inspire it. Why mourn a flower that has bloomed and faded +when the bush is full? + +And marriage? That uncomfortable essential, legalists said, to +civilization and the transmission of property? To Kenny marriage had +always seemed a little like the Land of the Ever-Young. Mortals +imprisoned there soon tired of exile and longed for freedom and +distraction. His own marriage was but a memory he refused to face, dim +and distant, an inexplicable flurry of sentimentality that had ended +tragically with Brian in his arms. The brief year of it had been +poignant and at the end he had gone forth upon the hills, praying for +death. That girl of long ago with the black-lashed eyes of Irish blue +like Brian's, he had loved with all the passionate tumult of boyhood; +and in the end he had lived for Brian, coming to believe as life +carelessly unfolded for him its book of heart-things that in time he +must have tired. Lived for Brian! Had he? Or had he lived for +himself? + +The memory he had crushed out of his heart in a panic long ago, now +left him with a terrified sense of obligation. Why in this dreadful +moment of crisis when he had to think must even his memories accuse +him? Brian! Brian! Always Brian! + +The pang was spasmodic. The immensity of his love for Joan swept +everything before it and filled him with terror and amazement. To +stay! Any other thought was a profanation. And he must face another +problem. If Joan's madness was the kind that waned, if for her there +was no madness, if the summer had left her tranquil and +indifferent. . . . The uncertainty maddened him. + +He struck a match and glanced at his watch. It was supper time. In an +hour now Joan likely would be coming to the cabin. So, alas! would Mr. +Abbott. Kenny struck off hurriedly toward the south. + +The cabin was dark and silent. He waited near it, endlessly it seemed, +smoking and wondering if his heart would ever stop its nervous +thumping. If only she would come! His head had begun to ache. His +hand was shaking. Where the blood pounded in his wrists there was a +flurried sense of pain. And somehow the heavy odor of the pines and +the chill silence was depressing. + +It was his fate to see Mr. Abbott come first. Unaware of the Irishman +who drew back at his approach, his hot heart sick with disappointment, +he opened the door of the cabin and went in, the inevitable book under +his arm. A second later the cabin window with its shade drawn, sprang +out of the shadow, a yellow checkerpane of light. Kenny stalked off, +chafing intolerantly at the anticlimacteric tenor of his summer. + +He saw her coming a long way off, her lantern bobbing along like a +firefly, and walked faster. Impatience brought a cold sweat out upon +his forehead and then he needs must call her name before she could hear. + +"Joan!" he called a little later. The tenderness in his heart hurt. + +The light faltered and became a fixed point in the darkness ahead. + +"It is I, Kenny!" he called again. + +Once more the firefly glimmer glided toward him. + +"Kenny," called Joan in the darkness, "is it really you? You +frightened me a little. And why in the world didn't you come home to +supper? Hannah's wondering where you are." + +But his voice failed him and with shaking hand he took the lantern and +held it high above her head. If he could but read her eyes! + +Joan glanced up at him in wonder and the hood of her cloak tumbling +back upon her shoulders, bared her hair. It shone, in the lantern +light, with an odd dark gold. She had never seemed so lovely--or so +much a part of the lonely wood. + +"Why do you stare so, Kenny?" she asked. "And why are you so--quiet?" + +"Mavourneen!" said Kenny. And his eyes implored. + +It was not at all what he had meant to say. The word, tell-tale in its +tenderness, had seemed to speak itself. + +Joan's face flamed. But her eyes were beautiful and kind. + +Kenny dropped the lantern with a crash and caught her in his arms. She +cried and clung to him in the darkness. + +"Joan! Joan!" he said and kissed her. + +He did not remember how long he stood there under the bright November +stars with Joan in his arms and his face upon her hair. He knew his +eyes were wet. He knew there was peace in his heart and a vast +content. But something made him dumb and tongue-tied. + +"Kenny!" exclaimed Joan. "The lantern!" + +"I know, colleen," said Kenny, "but one lantern more or less in an +epoch doesn't matter." + +"Mr. Abbott will be waiting. Suppose he came to look for me." + +"God forbid! I can't--I won't let you go." + +"You must!" + +"Joan, you are sure, _sure_ you love me?" + +"I know," said Joan steadily, "that I love you. I've known it since +that night upon the lake when you first spoke of--going. I knew it +when you went. And then when you came again. When I think of the farm +without you it turns my heart to stone. Every minute that I--I am away +from you, I am eager to be back." + +"Bless your heart!" + +She slipped out of his arms with a sigh. His hands clung to her. + +"Truly, truly, Kenny, I must go!" + +"I'll come back with another lantern after supper." + +"No," said Joan. "Please don't. Mr. Abbott might scold. Besides, +every star is a lantern to-night. And Uncle sent Hughie for you long +ago." + +Kenny groaned. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE CHAIR BY THE FIRE + +He went with her as far as he dared, and turned back with shining eyes +and stumbling feet. He did not afterward remember his supper or what +he had eaten, though Hannah at his command had set the table in the +kitchen and Hughie had talked sensibly of pumpkins. He did not +remember climbing the stairs to Adam's room. The one thing that jarred +through his dreamy feeling of detachment was the old man's face. + +"You're late!" he said. + +"Yes," said Kenny happily, "I am." Even now with Adam's piercing eyes +upon him, he had a feeling of invincibility; as if, aloof in the aerial +sphere in which he seemed to float, he could shut the old man out. + +Adam stared at him with eagle-like intentness and a puzzled frown. His +face said plainly that Kenny's mood was without precedent and therefore +strategical. It behooved him to get to the bottom of it at once and be +on his guard. + +"'Tis Samhain, Adam," said Kenny, "the summer ending of the druids. +And to-night the hills are open and the fairies are all out a-temptin' +mortals. I myself have heard the fairy pipes showerin' sweetness +everywhere. Wonderful music, Adam! Silver-soft and allurin' and the +kind you can't forget! It throws you into a trance and fills you with +beautiful longing. I forgot to come home. There! I must tell Hannah +to put a light under the churn to-night. Then the fairies, hating +fire, can't bewitch it." + +[Illustration: "'Tis Samhain, Adam," said Kenny, "the summer ending of +the druids."] + +Adam stared at him blankly. He was in mad mood, this Irishman. His +eyes, ardently blue and tender and intense, danced with incautious +gleams of laughter. His color was high. He was gay and utterly +friendly. + +An odd jealous hunger sprang up in the invalid's eyes. + +"Are you mad?" he demanded. + +"Quite!" said Kenny. + +"More like," said the old man tartly, "you're drunk." + +"Drunk," nodded Kenny, "with heather ale. Only the fairies know how to +make it now. And who wouldn't be drunk in the head of him to-night +with the Good People dancing on the hills and the dead dancing with +them." + +Adam frowned and shivered. + +"You Irish," he said harshly, "are as morbid as you are poetic." + +"'Tis all a part of the night," cried Kenny gayly and poured himself +some brandy. "The druids," he remembered, "poured libations on the +ground to propitiate the evil spirits and the spirits of the dead; but, +Adam, I'm drinking to-night to Destiny! To Destiny," he added under +his breath, "and the foreverness of her gift!" + +"What gift," demanded Adam Craig, "are you trying to clinch with a gift +to yourself of my brandy?" + +"The gift," said Kenny cryptically, "of--Life!" + +Well, he had spoken truth there. Life was love and love was life and +perhaps until now he'd known neither. + +Still the old man stared at him in dazed and sullen envy. His wild +vitality seemed a barrier impossible to surmount. + +"And it isn't just Samhain," said Kenny, setting down his glass. "Ugh, +Adam, your brandy's abominable! It's the Eve of All Souls. To-night +the dead revisit their homes. Once I remember when I was tramping +through Ireland, an old woman left a chair by the fireside that the +spirit of her son might come back to her. She even left some embers in +the fire." + +"That," said Adam Craig with a shudder, "will be enough of your damned +ghosts and fairies." + +Afterward to Kenny the evening was always a blur but he knew they had +gotten on badly. And Adam, quiet and sullen, had drunk more than usual. + +Kenny sparkled through the evening in a baffling, dreamlike oblivion to +everything but his thoughts, and floated away to his room, feeling +curiously light and iridescent. + +He meant not to sleep. He meant to roll the shades to the top and with +the cold wind upon his face and the stars winking in silver beneficence +overhead, to lie awake and think until the dawn came. He slept +soundly, dreaming of thistledown and a little old woman in a green +cloak who came out of a hill and played a tune upon a sort of +lantern-flute. The notes had winged off in bars of music written in +fire against the darkness. He had not finished the dream when he was +awakened by someone knocking at his door. + +It was Hughie, his face pale and disturbed. + +"Mr. O'Neill," he said, "I'm wondering if you'd drive down to the +village and telephone the doctor to come here first. Mr. Craig's had a +bad fall. He's unconscious." + +"Unconscious!" exclaimed Kenny, changing color. "How on earth, Hughie, +did he fall?" + +"I don't know," said Hughie sadly. "He must have climbed out of bed in +the night." + +"But, Hughie, he couldn't!" + +"He could stagger a step or two," explained Hughie. "Not far. The +trouble's in his spine. But he never dragged himself so far before." + +"How far?" + +"From his bed to his sitting room. I found him in a heap by the fire." + +"Poor devil!" said Kenny, shocked. + +He dressed quickly. Hannah helped him hitch the old mare to the buggy +and found him nervous and unfamiliar with his task. Kenny drove off +down the lane, oppressed by the bleak wind and the bare black tangle of +branches ahead of him. The tragic effort of Adam's wasted legs had +left him startled and uneasy. For the life of him he could not put out +of his mind the tale of the old Irish woman and the chair she had left +by the fire on the Eve of All Souls for the visit of her dead son. It +had bothered Adam Craig and made him shudder. It bothered Kenny now. +He wished he hadn't remembered it last night or to-day. But the sound +of Nellie's hoofs plodding along the soft dirt road was no more +recurrent than his own foreboding. It filled him with sadness and +guilt. Adam perhaps had dragged himself to the sitting room fire in a +drunken fit of superstition. Seeking what? Someone he had _wronged_? +The sinister spark inflamed his fancy. His brain whirled. +Inexplicably the tale of the fairy mill and the rascal who stole the +widow's bag of meal linked itself with the mishap of the night before. +Then too Adam had fallen forward in his chair unconscious. + +Nellie stumbled and jolted Kenny into sanity. He put his thoughts +aside in horror. But dreadful strings of mystery converged +persistently to one point: Adam Craig, the pitiful old miser who for +some reason huddled every book in the farmhouse on his shelves. Fate +cruelly had brought melancholy into this, the first morning of his +love. Kenny shivered with resentment. + +He telephoned the doctor's farm and found him ready to start his weary +ambulant day; hamlet to hamlet, farm to farm, until dusk and often +after. The bare thought of it filled Kenny with sympathetic gloom. +Then his brain began again to burn in speculation. Frowning, he turned +back homewards up the hill and through the wood, where the road lay, +rough and lonely. + +With his mind upon it he evolved Nellie from her harness and led her +into the stall. When he had done with her halter he found that Joan +had slipped into the barn and stood a little way off, her soft eyes +intent upon him. + +"Joan!" he exclaimed radiantly. The sight of her was like a lilac wind +in fog. The fog fled and you found the world clear and fragrant. + +She came to him instantly, her face like a colorless flower, a faint +shadow in her eyes. + +"Colleen!" said Kenny. He kissed her gently. Again he was conscious +with a flurried feeling of impatience that the force of his tenderness +would not rise to his lips. He whose words of love had been so fluent +and poetic! + +"Hannah sent me," said Joan. "She was afraid you wouldn't know how to +get Nellie out of the shafts. Oh, Kenny!" There was quick compassion +in her eyes. + +"Let's not think of sorrowful things, dear!" said Kenny swiftly. "I +dreamed of a lantern." + +"And I," said Joan, the rich rose tints he loved flaming in her face, +"I dreamed of you." + +Kenny choked back the tender untruth he would have liked to utter. For +an instant he hated the little old fairy in the green cloak who had +come forth from the hill in his dream. How easy for the dream-god to +have made her--Joan! + +"Joan," he said wistfully, "you're sure you love me!" + +"Yes," said Joan. "There is no one in my life I love so well." + +"And it will last?" + +Disturbed she glanced at him, her eyes dark with rebuke. + +"Until the judgment day!" persisted Kenny. + +"Kenny," she said, "why do you speak so strangely. Love is love, isn't +it? And if you who have known all things love me, how much more must I +who have lived so much alone, love and cling to you?" + +He kissed her hair and pressed his cheek against it where the shadows +were soft and golden. + +"I want you, heart of mine," he said steadily, "to love me in this +wonderful way that I love you. There are ways and ways of loving." + +That, in her girlhood dream of love, she could not see. And Kenny was +passionately glad that his words were a riddle. + +Then the horn came, clear and mellow, through the cold November air and +Joan drew the hood of her cloak about her head. + +Kenny sighed. He clung to her hand as she started away. + +"Girleen," he said soberly, "the wind's cold. Must you ferry the river +in winter, too?" + +"Save when there's ice," said Joan. "The bridge is three long miles +away." + +From the barn doorway he watched the flutter of her cloak as she +hurried down the path to the river. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE SHADOW OF DEATH + +Kenny went back to the kitchen, hungry and depressed. To his fancy, as +eager at times in its morbidity as in its lighter sparkle, the shadow +of death seemed brooding over the farmhouse. This an hour later the +weary little doctor confirmed. He had tired shadows around his eyes, +that doctor; he seemed always bored to death at the proneness of +mankind to ills and aches and babies; and his kind tired voice never +lost its drawl no matter what the crisis. + +"It isn't just the spine trouble, Mr. O'Neill," he said. "With that +alone he'd likely linger on for years. And it isn't the trouble here +in his chest. That's chronic and unimportant. It's the brandy. He +drinks a quart a night and he won't give it up." + +"I know." + +The doctor shook his head and pursed his lips. + +"I think he'll just slip away without regaining consciousness. Pulse +is barely a flutter. Joan can tend him. She's done it before. Every +now and then for a good many years he's had a bedfast spell. Poor +child!" The doctor cleared his throat. "Well, Mr. O'Neill, such is +life! I'll stop back to-night on my way home." + +Distraught and rebellious, Kenny fought the girl's refusal to let +Hannah take her place. She hid the mended gown he hated under an apron +of Hannah's, slipped into his arms and out again with tears upon her +cheeks, and fled from his protestations with her hands upon her ears. +Kenny followed her to the door of Adam's sitting room, frantic with +distress. Verily, he thought, as the door closed gently in his face, +the quality of Joan's mercy was not strained. It came like Portia's +gentle rain from Heaven. It forgot and forgave and condoned. But the +thought of her, flowerlike in the shadow of death, was unendurable. + +Anxious to help, Kenny sculled the old punt back and forth, whenever +the horn blew, until dusk. He had humbly pledged himself to curb a +tendency to speed and excitement and therefore ferried the river well +until a wind rose at twilight, clouds thickened overhead and a spatter +of rain blew into his face. Then his patience waned and he tacked an +enormous sign upon the willow under one of Hughie's lanterns. Owing to +illness, it said, the ferry had been discontinued. Afterward he went +to tell Joan what he had done, and met the doctor on the stairway. + +"By morning," he nodded slowly, answering Kenny's look. "Yes, I'm +afraid he'll be gone. I'd like to stay, Mr. O'Neill, for Joan's sake. +But there's a baby coming over at the Jensen farm. There always is. +And my duty as I see it is more with life than with death." + +"I'll stay with him," said Kenny. "Joan must rest." + +But she would not. + +"Donald should be here too," she said. "We are all he has." + +"Then," said Kenny, his lips white, "I shall stay here with you." + +The night closed in with gusty showers of rain. There was no sound +from the high old-fashioned bed where Adam Craig lay, gray and still. +The silence, the gloom of dark wood, the grotesque shadows from a lamp +burning dimly on the bureau and the loud licking of the clock drove +Kenny with a shudder to the window. Death to him who so passionately +loved life's gayety and its music was more a thing of horror than of +grief. He found no solace in the wind and rain of the autumn night. +They plunged him instead into a mood of morbid imagery. The weird +music of the wind became Ireland's cry of lament for her dead. The +tossing boughs beyond the window, rain-spattered and somber, took on +eerily the outline of dark-cloaked women keeners rocking and chanting +the music of death. The rain was tears. + +Ochone! Ochone! The wind of sorrow rose and fell, rose and fell, with +unearthly cadence. Kenny thought of the horrible Dullahaun who roves +about the country with his head under his arm and a death-warning basin +of blood in his hand ready to dash in the face of the unlucky wight who +answers his knock. + +He shuddered and choked. Then Joan slipped into the shelter of his +arm, terrified at the thought of death, cried and watched the rain with +him. + +Adam Craig died at dawn with the rain he hated beating at the window. +And peace came wanly to his wrinkled face. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +IN THE CABIN + +They were hard days for Kenny, who hated gloom save when it was +picturesque and transient. And they were harder for the pity and +misgiving in his heart. He himself perhaps had hastened the old man's +death with a careless story. Why had it bothered him? Why had it +goaded his wasted legs to horrible effort? + +Ordinarily Kenny knew he would have resented the intrusion of alien +sorrow into his life. He hated sorrow. Now for Joan's sake he made +himself a part of it. If Joan must endure it, so could he. But he +sickened at the need. + +He was doomed to a tragic, unforgettable hour in the churchyard when +the voice of the old minister, conventional in its sadness, droned +wearily into his very soul: + +"Ashes to ashes . . . dust to dust." . . . The clock turned back and +he stood in a church by an Irish hill. White and terrified, Kenny +remembered what in its vivid agony of detail he would fain have +forgotten. Why, now, when Joan was slipping into his life, a lonely +waif of a girl in a black gown he hated, why must he think years back +to that soft-eyed Irish girl and Brian? Had he broken his pledge to +her, driving her son away with a passion of self no less definite for +its careless gayety? Eileen's son! Eileen's son! Sadness tore at +Kenny's heart and twitched at his dry, white lips. Ah! why must he +live again that agonizing day when Eileen had gone out of his life +forever? + +The voice went on, funereal, gentle. Kenny's eyes blurred. Sweat came +coldly forth upon his forehead. At the first thud of earth he choked +and turned away, the pain unbearable. Adam Craig had driven his nephew +away . . . with a passion of self . . . and he had died with mercy at +his bedside, not love. A passionate hunger for Brian stirred in +Kenny's heart and made him lonely. Ah! how farcical his penance! Some +nameless thing of self linked him to Adam Craig. The thought was +horrible. Some nameless thing linked each mournful detail of to-day to +the tragedy of long ago. . . . And then mercifully the thing became a +blur of November wind, a monotonous voice of sorrow, the thud of earth +and the end. + +The coach toiled up the hill and Kenny, with Joan in his arms, forgot. + +"Mavourneen," he said wistfully, "let's slip away, you and I, to the +cabin in the pines. I want you to myself. And there in the house--" +he looked away. The thought of the old house, bleak and desolate at +its best and haunted now by the sense of a presence gone, oppressed him. + +Joan nodded. + +"And not that dress!" begged Kenny with a shudder. + +She laid her cheek against his shoulder. + +"It was just for to-day, Kenny. Hannah thought it best." Her soft +eyes, curiously child-like with the shadow of sadness in them, appealed +to him for understanding. He kissed her, marveling afresh at the +tender miracle of peace and tenderness her presence brought him. + +"Had I loved Uncle a great deal more--it isn't wrong for me to say that +now, Kenny?" + +"It would be wrong, dear, if you made pretense of something you +couldn't feel." + +"I--I meant that even then I could have mourned him better with my +heart than this--this dreadful dress. It would carry gloom wherever I +went. And that would be selfish." + +He blessed her shy intelligence and kissed her again. Then the +carriage stopped at the farmhouse door and Kenny hurried up to his room +to find clothes less formal and depressing. Afterward he went ahead to +the cabin and built a fire. + +The crackle of the wood was lively to his ears and cheerful. The room +grew, warm and homelike. When Joan came a little later, he was +whistling softly and making tea. He liked her dress. It was dark and +soft. He liked the lace fichu at her throat. And he liked the huge +old-fashioned cameo that fastened it. + +"Hughie is hunting the key to the table-drawer," she said. "I told him +about the cabin. It doesn't matter now. Poor Uncle!" She blinked and +wiped her eyes. "He didn't mean to be cruel, Kenny. It was the brandy +and the pain. If Hughie finds the key, he wondered if you'd go over +Uncle's papers to-night. The will is there." + +"The will!" said Kenny. He put wood on the fire in some excitement. A +miser's will! + +Joan's eyes were tender. + +"Kenny, how good you've been!" + +"Nonsense!" he said brusquely. + +"Hughie said so, too. And Hannah and Hetty. Someone had to think and +plan and you did it all so well. And, Kenny, I told Hannah, that I'm +going to marry you and she cried and kissed me and--and poured a +wash-bowl full of tea for Hughie to wash his hands in!" + +"The heart of her!" said Kenny. "Come, girleen. The tea's ready. I +want to see you pour it." + +He watched with his heart in his eyes while she poured his tea. There +was a sense of home in the cabin here and the crackle of the fire was +the music of comfort. Kenny drank a little of his tea and roved off to +the window to light a cigarette. + +Beyond the November monotone of trees blazed the red of a sunset. A +winter sunset! The fall was over. + +"Joan!" he called softly. "Come, jewel machree, the Gray Man is +stealing through the pines." + +She came at once and slipped into the circle of his arm. Kenny held +her tight and found his courage. He was restless, it seemed, and after +months of irresponsibility, the thought of work was bothering him +badly. Kenny must leave the farm. He must go soon; in a week. And +his wife must go with him. + +Joan's breathless amazement made him laugh. + +"But, Kenny, I--I can't!" she said. + +"And I," said Kenny stubbornly, "can't and won't go away and leave you +here. The thought of winter and the hills and that barn of a house +when the wind is blowing would haunt me. No, no, girleen!" + +Joan looked up and smiled and her soft eyes were wistful. + +"Kenny, I must study for another year!" + +"Another year!" said Kenny blankly. "Colleen, you've the wisdom of the +ages in your head right now." + +Joan shook her head. + +"I must learn to be your wife," she said. "Now it--it dazzles and +frightens me--" + +"Joan!" + +"Have you forgotten, Kenny, that I have lived my life up here in hills +and trees. And you--" + +"Joan, please!" he begged in distress. + +"But I can't forget," said the girl steadily. "Whenever I read the +article Garry sent about 'Kennicott O'Neill, brilliant painter'--think +of it, Kenny! 'Brilliant painter!'--I go back and read again just to +be sure I'm not dreaming. I've been so much alone that the thought of +going out into your world with you--terrifies me. I could not bear to +have you--sorry!" + +"Mavourneen!" he said, shocked. + +There were tears upon her cheeks. + +"I would only ask that you be your own dear self," said Kenny gently. +"And every man of my world and every woman will stare and envy!" + +"I must know music and French," said Joan, checking the need upon her +fingers. "I must know how to dance. Now when I talk I must have +something to say. Otherwise I feel shy and quiet. I must learn how to +talk a great deal without saying anything as you do sometimes." + +He laughed in delight at the final need. + +"All of it," declared Kenny happily, "I can teach you." + +"No," said Joan with a definite shake of her head. "You would kiss me. +And I would always be right even when you knew I was wrong." + +His eyes laughed at her mischievously. But he caught her hands and +pressed them to his lips. + +"Listen, dear," he pleaded. "My world isn't a world of social climbers +or snobs or dollar-worshippers. It's a world of gifted men and women +who haven't time to look up your ancestors or your bank balance before +they decide to be friendly and kind. I know a poet whose mother was a +gypsy, a painter who's a baron and he says he can't help it, a French +girl who paints millionaire babies and her father was a tight-rope +walker in a circus. My world, Joan, is the happy-go-lucky Bohemia of +success and the democracy of real talent. We're actors and painters +and sculptors and writers and artists in general and all in all I think +we work a little more and play a little more, enjoy a little more and +suffer a little more than the rest of the world. Once in a while to be +sure a head grows a bit too big and then we all take a bop at it! But +the big thing is we're human; just folks, as a man in the grillroom +said one night. We're human and we're kind. It's not a smart set, +dear. And it's not an ultra-fashionable four-hundredy thing. God +forbid! It's the kind of Bohemia I love. And I'm sure you'll love it +too." + +Her eyes were shining. In the dusk her color came to him like the +glimmer of a flower. + +"Kenny!" she exclaimed. "How wonderful it all is, you and all of it! +And yet if--if I feel as I do, you must let me go for a year. +Otherwise if I lack confidence in myself--Oh, can't you see, Kenny, I +shall be shy and frightened and always ill at ease!" + +"Go!" he echoed blankly. + +"Somewhere," said Joan, "to study music and French and how to talk your +kind of nonsense. Hannah says there must be money enough in Uncle's +estate for that." + +"Where," said Kenny, his heart cold, "would you go?" + +"I thought," said Joan demurely, "that perhaps I could study in New +York where I wouldn't be so--lonesome." + +He caught her in his arms. + +"Heart of mine!" he whispered. "You thought of that." + +"Then," said Joan, "I can learn something of your world before I become +a part of it. Don't you see, Kenny? I can look on and learn to +understand it. I should like that. Come, painter-man! The tea's +cold. And it's growing dark. We'd better light the lamp." + +With the tea-pot singing again on the fire and the lamp lighted, Kenny, +but momentarily tractable, had another interval of rebellion. Joan, in +New York, might better be his wife. Joan, studying, might better have +him near to talk his sort of nonsense, listen to her music and make +love volubly in French to which she needed the practice of reply. His +plea was reckless and tender but Joan shook her head; and Kenny +realized with a sigh that her preposterous notion of unfitness was +strong in her mind and would not be denied. + +"A year, Kenny!" pleaded Joan. "After all, what is a year? And at the +end I shall be so much happier and sure." She came shyly to his chair +and slipped her arms around his neck. "I want so much to do whatever +you want me to do. And yet--and yet, Kenny, feeling as I do, I shall +be--Oh, so much happier if you will wait until I can come and say that +I am ready to be your wife." + +"It will make you happier!" he said abruptly. + +"Yes." + +"Then, mavourneen," said Kenny, "it shall be as you say. I care more +for your happiness than for my own." + +They went back through the darkness hand in hand. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +A MISER'S WILL + +Kenny lingered moodily over his supper. His evening was casting its +shadow ahead. He dreaded the thought of climbing the stairs to Adam's +empty room. If he could have kept his hostile memories in the face of +death, he told himself impatiently, it would have been easier. But +Garry was right. He was wild and sentimental. Only pitiful memories +lingered to haunt him: rain and loneliness and the old man's hunger for +excitement. + +He went at last with a sigh, oppressed by the creak of the banister +where Adam had sat, sinister and silent in his wheel-chair, listening +to the music. Memories were crowding thick upon him. Again and again +he wished that he had never opened the door of the sitting room that +other night and caught the old man off his guard. It had left a +specter in his mind, horrible in its pathos and intense. Strung +fiercely to the thought of emptiness, it came upon him nevertheless, as +he opened the door, with a curious chill sense of palpability; as if +silence and emptiness could strike one in the face and make him falter. + +The room was fireless and silent and unspeakably dreary. Hughie had +left a lamp burning upon the table. The key he had found in the pocket +of the old man's bathrobe lay beside it. + +For an interval Kenny stood stock still, his color gone. He faced +strange ghosts. Here in this faded room, with its mystery of books, he +had known agonizing pity and torment, gusts of temper, selfish and +unselfish, real and feigned, moments of triumphal composure that now in +the emptiness it was his fate to remember with a sickening shudder of +remorse. Here he had battled in vain for Joan, practicing brutally the +telling of much truth; and here with his probing finger, Adam Craig had +roused his slumbering conscience into new doubt and new despair. And +here he must not forget he had told the tale of the fairy mill . . . +and suspicion had come darkly to his mind. Suspicion of what? That, +as ever, he refused to face. + +A chair stood by the fireplace. Kenny with a shudder moved it to a +distant corner. He could not bear the memory of that last night when +he had barred the old man out from his joyous mood of sparkle, telling +Samhain tales of the fairies and the dead. + +After all, had he meant always to be cruel, that keen-eyed old man with +his keener wits? What conflict of spirit and body had lain behind his +fretful fits of temper? + +Kenny turned, blinking, from the wheelchair, and his glance, blurred a +little, found the old man's glasses on the mantel. The shabby case, +left behind while Adam faced the great adventure, was oddly pitiful. +Kenny cleared his throat. He had his moment of rebellion then at the +inevitability of death and doom. It behooved all of us, he remembered +with set lips, to be kind and mend quarrels while the sap of life ran +in our veins, strong and full. + +The sight of the key upon the table sent his thoughts flying off at a +tangent. A miser's will! . . . Mother of Men! It was a thing of +morbid mystery and romance! + +Kenny sat down in wild excitement and opened the drawer. + +He saw at once an orderly packet of papers. The will, which barely a +month ago, Hughie said, he and Hannah had signed without reading, lay +uppermost. Adam had written his will himself, disdaining lawyers. + +Kenny opened the will and began to read. He read as he always read in +moments of excitement, blurring through with a glance. But though the +old man's writing was distinct and almost insolent in its boldness, the +portent of the written words did not filter through at once to his +understanding. He frowned and read again. Once more he read, pacing +the floor with unquiet eyes. A number of things were becoming clearer. +There was in the first place no mention of the fugitive nephew. Joan +was the sole heir. There was one executor. That executor was Joan's +guardian and Joan's guardian was one--Kennicott O'Neill! Kenny read +the name aloud as if it belonged to someone else. Joan's guardian! +Again he read the clause aloud with an exclamation of doubt and +unbelief. It lay there definite and clear. He was the sole executor +of Adam's will and he was Joan's guardian. Startled he read the rest. + +"To Kennicott O'Neill, my friend, my signet ring . . . to my niece, +Joan West, from whom, no matter what the circumstances, I have never +had an unkind word, I bequeath the Craig farm and all the land and all +the rest, residue and remainder of my wealth wheresoever situate, +provided the executor can find it." + +Kenny went back with a feeling of numbness in his brain and read it all +again. + +"The rest of my wealth wheresoever situate . . . provided the executor +can find it!" + +Those words he scanned blankly with a feeling of much fire in his head +and a tantalizing cloud before his eyes. They meant what? Strange +hints and subtle smiles recurred to him. . . . And Adam had been a +miser who read of buccaneers and hidden treasure. . . . Buccaneers and +hidden treasure! . . . He would have hidden pirates' gold, he had +said, under the biggest apple-tree in the orchard, under the lilac bush +or . . . Where else had he said? . . . And . . what . . had . . +he . . meant? + +Kenny struck his head fiercely with his hand, raked his hair in the old +familiar gesture and roamed turbulently around the room with the will +in his hand. He was conscious of that dangerous alertness in his brain +that with him always presaged some unusual clarity of vision, a +startling speed with the adding of two and two. Four came now with +bewildering conviction. Fragments of the puzzle of mystery that had +bothered him for days dropped dizzily into place, even the fairy mill +and the Eve of All Souls. What wonder that in a drunken fit of +superstition Adam had staggered out to seek his dead! + +With his hair in disarray from the frantic combing of his fingers, +Kenny went down to find Joan. He read the will aloud to her, +controlling his voice with an effort. + +"Don shall have the farm," said Joan. "I shouldn't know what to do +with it." + +Kenny read the baffling clause at the end of the will again. + +"'All the rest, residue and remainder of my wealth, wheresoever +situate, provided the executor can find it.'" + +It seemed to him in his excitement that he could not tell her what he +thought--that he could not say it all with care and calm when his head +was whirling. + +"Joan," he said gently, "you must tell me everything you remember about +your mother and your father and your uncle. And whether there was ever +money. Much money," he insisted, his vivid face imploring. + +Joan shook her head sadly. + +"There is so little I remember, Kenny," she said. "So very little. +There was never money. I do not remember my mother or my father. +Neither does Donald. We lived until I was eight with an old cousin, +Nellie Craig. She said that uncle was a miser who loved nothing but +his brandy. Then she died and we came here. We had to come. There +was no other place for us. I remember that Don's clothes and mine were +always ragged until I grew old enough to mend them. Then I found +mother's trunks in the garret. Later Don and I thought of the ferry +and had for the first time some money of our own." + +Kenny looked crestfallen. + +"And there is nothing more?" he said. "Think, Joan, think!" + +"Nothing," said Joan. "Donald and I were afraid of Uncle. We never +dared to ask him questions. And he never spoke of my mother save to +sneer and curse the stage. What is it, Kenny? What are you thinking?" + +"I think," said Kenny, making a colossal effort to speak with the calm +he could not feel, "that somewhere buried on the farm is a great deal +of money. I think it belonged to your mother and that it was left in +trust to your uncle for Donald and you--" + +"Kenny!" + +"I think," went on Kenny steadily, "that this singular clause in your +uncle's will was a miser's struggle between justice and his instinct +for hoarding and hiding. Money he had kept so long he hated to +relinquish. Yet he dared not keep it. And so he buried the money. +God knows how or where, and shunted the responsibility of its finding +upon me. If it was never found, as perhaps he hoped, he had still +fulfilled his trust and the dictates of his conscience in willing the +money back to you." + +"But, Kenny, how could he bury it?" + +"How often," reminded Kenny, "has Hughie in summer wheeled him out to +the orchard and left him there? How often has he wheeled himself +around the walk by the lilac bush? And he was clever and cunning. +Could he not, from time to time, hide the money in his bathrobe and +find some means of digging?" + +Joan looked unconvinced. + +"And where," she said, "would my mother, who earned her living on the +stage, get money? A great deal, I mean?" + +"I--I don't know," said Kenny, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "I +wish I did. Sometime or other, Joan, there has been Craig money and a +lot of it. This old house is the house of an aristocrat with money +enough to gratify expensive whims. Either the money was willed to her +or with the beauty she must have had, she married it. They are the +things you and I must find out somehow. Of one thing I am absolutely +convinced. There is money. It did not belong to your uncle. It is +hidden somewhere on the farm." + +He told her of the fairy mill, of the old man's gloating pride in the +word miser, of All Souls' Eve and Adam Craig's hints about the apple +tree and the lilac bush. + +"And many another place," added Kenny bitterly, "that slipped by me for +I didn't listen!" + +"It is unlikely," Joan said, "that he would find the opportunity for +hiding money in so many places. Why then did he name them all?" + +"His conscience forced him to give some inkling of the spot where he +had hidden money not his own. But he purposely multiplied our chances +of failure. Joan, I've got to get a spade and dig up the apple-tree!" + +His excitement was contagious. Neither of them heard Hughie in the +doorway until he spoke. + +"Mr. O'Neill," he said eagerly, "have you read the will?" + +Kenny struck himself upon the forehead and stared at Hughie in genuine +resentment. Hughie was another problem. But Hughie's quiet eyes +pleaded; and Hughie's ruddy face was honest. Kenny told him all. + +"I'm not surprised," said Hughie. "From the minute I set foot here +three years back, I said, and Hannah said, that Mr. Craig was a miser. +And it's common talk in the village." + +But Kenny was off through the doorway with the will in his hand. Joan +and Hughie followed him to the kitchen. + +Here when the will had been read again commotion seized them all. +Hughie went out to the barn to hunt a spade, Hannah trotted about +talking of wraps, Hetty found a lantern for Kenny and Kenny burned his +fingers lighting it, and stepped on the cat. Joan soothed the outraged +feline with a nervous laugh. There was madness in the air. In an +interval of blank disgust in which he criticized the length of the +cat's tail and the clarion quality of his yell, Kenny fumed off +barnwards in search of Hughie. His excitement was compelling. Hannah +headed a cloaked exodus from the kitchen, chirping an astonishment +which she claimed was unprecedented in her quiet life. + +They straggled up the orchard hill in a flutter. + +It was snowing a little. The coldness of the air was soft and heavy. +Hannah and Hughie held the lanterns high and with a startling attack +that made the dirt fly, Kenny began to dig. + +The lantern light rayed off grotesquely through the leafless orchard +but the silent group, intent upon the energetic digger, watched only +the spot where the fan-like rays converged upon the spade. The wind, +sharp, intermittent and bringing with it now and then a flurry of snow, +flapped their clothes about them. Kenny, pausing to wipe his forehead, +thought the night warm. Joan's eyes, dark, solemn, frightened, spurred +him on to greater effort. He dug furiously, flinging earth in all +directions. Hughie marvelled at his madcap speed and the strength of +his sinewy arms. His jaw was set. His face, dark and vivid in the +lantern light, shone with a boy's excitement. But when the wind came +he looked defiant. They could not know that to him, then, the spirit +of Adam Craig seemed to come with a sigh and a rustle and hover near +them. + +Hughie took his turn at the spade but to Kenny his methodical +competence proved an irritant. He was glad when Hughie's back gave out +and forced him to surrender. + +"Mr. O'Neill," said Hannah flatly after what seemed an interminable +interval of digging, "you've dug a hole big enough to bury yourself. +Mr. Craig's money couldn't be no further down than that. Myself I +think you'd better let it go until morning. It's snowin' harder every +minute and we'll all get our death of cold." + +Kenny shuddered at the homely phrase. But he wiped the dirt and +perspiration from his forehead and went off toward the kitchen in +gloomy silence, his energy and optimism gone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +DIGGING DOTS + +So madness settled down upon the Craig farm. + +Futile, flurried days of digging followed for which Kenny, delving +desperately in his memory, supplied forgotten clues. Fearful lest the +villagers might take it into their heads to climb the hill to Craig +Farm and help them dig, he pledged every one to secrecy and went on +digging, with Hughie at his heels. The suspense became fearful and +depressing. + +On the third day Hannah rebelled. The gloom and mystery were getting +on her nerves. + +"Hetty," she said irritably, "if you're standin' at the window there, +figurin' out where Mr. Craig's money is likely to be buried, you can +stop it this minute and clean the lamps. Your father's out pulling up +the floor-boards in the barn and Mr. O'Neill's digging up the lilac +bush for the third time. And that's enough. It beats me how Mr. +O'Neill can go on rememberin' so much now he's got his memory started. +He just seems to unravel things out of it overnight. It keeps me all +worked up. I feel as if I ought to whisper when I speak and every +night the minute I get to sleep I find myself diggin' in first one +outlandish place and then another. And if I'm not diggin' in my sleep, +your father is, with jerks and starts and grunts enough to wake the +dead. I'm all unstrung. So far as I can see the only thing we're +findin' is nerves. One thing I will say: It was dull and lonesome +before Mr. O'Neill came and I missed him when he went but dear knows, +it was peaceful. It's been one thing right after the other. Who upset +Mr. Abbott in the river, I'd like to know, and almost hit him in the +head with an oar? Who kept Mr. Craig so upset that he threw his brandy +bottle at your father most every morning? Who sang the roan cow into +kickin' at the milk? Who--" + +"Sh!" said Hetty. + +It seemed that Mr. O'Neill at that minute was not digging up the lilac +bush. There was a sound of hurried footsteps in the room beyond and he +came in with a piece of letter paper in his hand. + +"Look, Hannah," he cried. "Look! I found it among Mr. Craig's papers. +It's a rude chart of the farm, picked out here and there in dots." + +Hannah wiped her arms and put on her glasses. The paper filled her +with excitement. + +"Sakes alive, Mr. O'Neill," she exclaimed, "what will you do now?" + +"Do?" said Kenny wildly. "Do? There's only one thing to do, of +course. Hughie and I will dig up the dots. I wish to Heaven I could +find a Leprechaun somewhere under a thorn-bush." + +"What's a Leper John?" demanded Hannah. + +"A fairy shoemaker," explained Kenny absently, "in a red coat and he +wears buckled shoes and knee-breeches and a hat with a peak and always +he's mendin' a shoe that he doesn't finish, find him and never once let +him trick you into lookin' away and he'll tell you where treasure is +hidden, always." + +Hannah blinked. + +"What ye need most to my mind, Mr. O'Neill," she said earnestly, "is a +regiment of grave-diggers and stone-cutters to help you and Hughie get +the thing done." + +Night came upon them with Hughie digging up a dot beside the well and +Kenny again in the orchard. Everything led back somehow to the +orchard, his memory, the chart, even his own conviction. + +That night in a dream Kenny distinctly saw the weary little doctor with +a bag of mystery in his hand and a spade over his shoulder walking down +the orchard hill. + +He awoke at dawn with a shiver of excitement. The doctor! What could +be more reasonable? Adam had known him for a lifetime. Whom else +would he trust? The thought nerved him to heroics. + +Kenny climbed out of bed and dressed, shiveringly conscious that the +morning was cold enough to turn his breath to steam. It was that +period of indistinctness moreover when farmers and roosters, he knew, +were getting up all over the dawn, but Kenny, with little time and no +inclination at all for melancholy rebellion, tip-toed down the stairway +with his shoes in his hand. He put them on by the kitchen fire. There +was water by the window in a milk-pail. He poured some in a basin, +washed his face and hands and found the water cold enough to hurt his +face. Still his excitement kept him keyed to a pitch of singular and +optimistic hilarity. Through the kitchen window came the pale glimmer +of snow. He hoped Hughie wouldn't hear him harnessing Nellie, and +shoot at the barn. The possibility sent him to the kitchen stairway. +It wound upward in an old-fashioned twist to the room above. + +"Hughie!" he called in a low voice. "Hughie!" + +There was a noise of many creaks overhead. + +"I'm going to hitch up Nellie and drive over to Dr. Cole's farm. I--I +feel sure he buried the money!" + +"God Almighty!" exclaimed Hughie. + +But Kenny was already on his way to the kitchen door. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +CHECKMATE! + +Daylight came bleak and cold as Kenny drove rapidly up the doctor's +lane. The aggrieved mare had traveled. Through the farm window, green +with potted begonias, Kenny could see the doctor already at his +breakfast. A young colored girl was pouring out his coffee. The +doctor himself opened the door. + +"Well, Mr. O'Neill," he exclaimed, "who's sick? Not Joan, I hope?" + +"No," said Kenny, following the doctor back to the table. "No, nobody +sick." + +"Sit down," invited the doctor, "I always figure you can talk as well +sitting as standing and you can rest. Won't you have some breakfast?" + +"I couldn't eat," said Kenny. "Doctor," he added hoarsely, "would +it--be possible--for me--to speak to you--alone?" + +The doctor nodded. In a life made up of emergencies as his was, +nothing astonished him. + +"Annie," he said kindly, "just tell Mrs. Cole not to hurry down to +breakfast. And close the door." + +Kenny took the will from his pocket and spread it on the table. + +The doctor wearily fumbled for his glasses and put them on. + +"Hum!" he said. "The old man's will, eh? I've been wondering about +it. Well, he didn't leave much but the farm, did he? And it might +have been better for Don and Joan if he'd taken it with him. Nobody +around here would buy it. A barn of a place! And the land's full of +stone." + +"Ah!" said Kenny significantly. "But Adam Craig was a miser!" + +"Pooh!" said the doctor with a sniff. "Who told you that?" + +Kenny stared. + +"I found it out for myself," he said stiffly. "Since then I have +learned that it is common rumor in the village. And the old man, even +when I--I spoke of it directly to him, never troubled to deny it." + +"Shucks!" said the little doctor crossly. "He liked it. It saved his +pride." + +"Saved--his--pride!" + +The doctor nodded. + +"Mr. O'Neill," he said, "country folks stare less unkindly at a miser +than at some other things. It hurt Adam, knowing his guilt, to see the +old Craig home going to rack and ruin. Had a lot of money when his +father died. A lot. And he wanted folks to think he still had it. +But he didn't. Went through it, Mr. O'Neill, hitting the high spots. +Came home a penniless wreck of a man, body and soul and pocketbook +warped beyond recall. I was there when they settled up his estate. As +a matter of fact my brother was his lawyer. And what he hadn't lost in +gambling and dissipation he lost speculating in Wall Street. Oh, he +never tried the miser stunt with me. He knew that I knew that he +hadn't a cent." + +"Not a cent!" echoed Kenny feebly. "Not a cent!" He cleared his +throat. "Not--a cent." + +"Not a cent," said the doctor cheerfully. "And barely a living from +that farm." + +"Dr. Cole," said Kenny steadily, "he may have lost his own money. Of +that I know nothing. But what about his sister's?" + +"Why," said the doctor at once, "she hadn't any. Old Craig senior left +it all to Adam. She ran away, you know, and went on the stage. He +never forgot it. 'Tisn't much of a story. She was a darned pretty +girl, high-spirited and clever, and the old man was a devil like Adam. +A scandal of that kind fussed us up pretty much in those days. I +remember I went to see Cordelia once in some old-time play. She was +wearing those old gowns that Joan, poor child, wears now. Always had a +feeling after that that I was a part of the scandal. Mother," he added +dryly, "felt so too." + +The doctor shook his head lugubriously. + +"She was a widow when she died," reminded Kenny. + +"Yes." + +"The money I mean must have come from her husband and she entrusted it +to Adam for Joan and Donald." + +"But my dear fellow," said the doctor kindly, "he hadn't any. He was +an actor chap. Cordelia came home to the farm to die while Adam was in +Europe. She hadn't a cent." + +"Not a cent!" said Kenny again. "Not a cent!" + +"Not a cent," repeated the mystified doctor. + +"Oh, my God!" said Kenny. "And I've dug up the farm!" + +It was the doctor's turn to stare. + +"You dug up the farm!" he said blankly. + +Sick with discouragement Kenny pointed to the will. + +"Read it," he said bitterly. "Particularly the 'remainder, residue and +situate' part." + +The doctor read and he read slowly. Before he reached the clause in +question Kenny was on his feet, mopping his forehead. He told of the +fairy mill and the chair by the fire. + +The doctor poured himself another cup of coffee and looked at Kenny +with a shade of asperity. Fairies, it would seem, were a little out of +his line. + +"Adam had a good many spells like that," he said, "'specially when he +was drinking hard. Off like a shot, hanging out of his chair. Mere +coincidence. As for the night he staggered out to the sitting room, it +is possible as you suggest that he did it in a fit of drunken +superstition. But there wasn't any money on his conscience. Couldn't +be for there wasn't any. If he feared at all to have his sister +revisit her home--queer notion, that, Mr. O'Neill! You Irish run to +notions!--it was simply because he hadn't given her kids a square deal +and he knew it." + +Again the doctor adjusted his glasses and went back to the will. + +"Doctor," flung out Kenny desperately, "I myself have seen indisputable +proof in that house that Adam Craig was a miser--even the way he +handled money." + +The doctor sighed and looked up. And he smiled his weary, +understanding smile. + +"What you saw, Mr. O'Neill," he said soberly, "was something very close +to poverty. He was selfish and he had to have his brandy. His economy +in every other way was horrible. Horrible! As for the way he handled +money, as I said before, he wanted you to think he was a miser. It +seems," added the doctor dryly as he went back to his reading, "that he +was a grain too successful." + +"He hated his sister," blurted Kenny. "Why would he hate her and +revile her memory unless he knew he had wronged her? Why did he have +black wakeful hours in bed and have to drink himself to sleep?" + +"Adam," said the doctor with weary sarcasm, "fancied his sister had +brought disgrace upon the grand old family name of Craig. She was a +good girl and clever. But Adam believed in sacrifice and conventional +virtue--for women. Most men do. And he knew the way folks feel up +here about the stage. The world's queer, Mr. O'Neill. And Adam was +just a little queerer than the rest of it. In a sense he had wronged +her. God knows he was cruel enough to those two poor youngsters. As +for his passion for drinking himself to sleep--well, when a man's had +straight legs and plenty of health, such a fate as Adam's hits hard. + +"He hated Joan and Donald," said Kenny. "Why?" + +"He resented their drain upon his pocket-book. He hadn't enough left +for them and brandy too. Though the Lord knows they never cost him +much. Nellie Craig had them for a while after Cordelia died. Good old +soul, Nellie. But her tongue hung in the middle and worked both ways +like a bell-clapper. I always blamed her for the start of the miser +yarn. Adam managed to get it over on her and that was enough." + +He made a final effort to read the will and while Kenny sat in stony +silence, choking back a creepy feeling of despair, reached the clause +pertaining to the residue of Adam's wealth. + +"Ah!" he said. + +"Well?" choked Kenny. "Is there some damned commonplace explanation +for that, too?" + +The doctor tapped the paper with his stubby finger. + +"And you," he marveled, "who knew so well his devilish cunning! That +clause I think was his last cruel jest." + +Kenny turned white. + +"A trap!" he said. + +"A trap," said the doctor. "And you've swallowed bait and trap and +all." + +"How he must have hated me?" + +"On the contrary," said the little doctor warmly, "I think in his way +he was fond of you. He counted the hours until nightfall, that I know." + +"And I--" said Kenny with a sharp intake of his breath, "I killed him +with that story of the chair." + +"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" said the doctor kindly. "Chair or no chair +he would have died just the same. I saw it coming. And your presence +there this summer freed him entirely from money worries. He even paid +me." + +"Yes," said Kenny, "my money helped him drink himself to death." + +The doctor sighed. + +"Oh, well," he said, "that too would have happened just the same." + +Kenny brushed his hair back dazedly from his forehead and rose. He +felt as if he had fallen from a great height and hit his head. It was +numbly aquiver. As he picked up the will and put it in his pocket, +Adam Craig, sinister and unassailable, seemed to mock him from the +grave. His last trap! Almost Kenny could hear him chuckle: +"Checkmate, Kenny, checkmate! And the game is won." How well he had +known his opponent's excitable fancy! + +"Doctor," asked Kenny drearily, "why were all the books in the +farmhouse in Adam's room?" + +"There," said the doctor, "I think he meant to be kind. Cordelia had +had all sorts of schooling and so had he. I think by denying the +youngsters books and too much knowledge, he thought to clip their wings +at the start and keep them contented. In tune with the farm, I mean, +and willing to stay. He'd seen enough of ruinous discontent when his +sister and himself went out in the world and tried their wings. Just a +fancy. I may be wrong. Well, Mr. O'Neill, I'm sorry. There's no +mystery and no money--" + +"No," said Kenny dully, "no mystery and no money." He moved toward the +door with a curious trance-like feeling that this was still a part of +his dream. + +"Just a commonplace story of self," said the doctor, following him to +the door, "with two ragged little kids the victims. Myself I think +it's just as well, Mr. O'Neill, to say as little as possible about +things of this sort. Tales up here grow. And fire that isn't fed goes +out. It's bound to. I never had the heart myself to deny the old +man's miser yarn. When I do talk, I try to say as little as possible +and keep my two feet solidly on the ground." + +He watched Kenny down the steps and into the buggy. + +"Humph!" said the little doctor. "Thought he had his fingers on a +regular swap-dollinger of a mystery, didn't he? To my thinking, the +only mystery in the farmhouse is himself!" + +And Kenny, climbing into the buggy in hot rebellion, felt that he had +come decked out gorgeously in rainbow balloons. And the doctor, +practical and unromantic, had pushed a weary finger through them, one +by one, watching them collapse with his bored and kindly smile of +understanding. Life after all, reflected Kenny irritably, was a matter +of adjectives and any man was at the mercy of his biographer. He +himself could have told that story of Adam and Cordelia Craig until no +man could have called it commonplace and unromantic. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +AN INSPIRATION + +Afterward Kenny thought that Nellie must have ambled into the doctor's +barnyard and turned herself, for he had no memory of guiding her. A +paralyzed conviction of another anti-climax had gripped him. He +remembered turning into the road with a haunting sense of eyes upon +him--Adam's eyes, piercing and bright with malevolent amusement. The +chart! The hints! The will! The cunning of him! What would he tell +Hughie and Hannah and Hetty? What would he tell Joan? What was there +to tell save that he had put two and two together and made five, a +romantic five lurid with melodrama? + +And the brutal practice hour in Adam's room when he had told the truth! +Kenny went sick and cold and shivered. How unwittingly he had flung +the old man's poverty in his teeth! How at times it must have hurt! +The memory made him shrink. And it hadn't been truth. He had battled +for Joan with misinterpretation and cruelty; he had practiced the truth +with the telling of untruth. And the proud old man who veiled his +poverty with pretense, had listened, listened inscrutably and laughed, +ready to thrust from the grave itself. + +Ah! Fate was forever flinging down her gauntlet. + +"To Kennicott O'Neill, my friend, my signet ring." His friend! In +spite of the practice hour--his friend. Kenny's eyes smarted. + +"Oh, Adam, Adam!" he said, sick at heart, "I beg your pardon." + +The snow crunched steadily under Nellie's feet. Kenny stared sadly at +the road ahead. Could he tell Joan what now he knew: that when the few +bills were paid and the estate balanced, there would be no money left +for the year of study? + +Perhaps Joan would marry him now--at once--to-morrow! And they could +leave the farm together. After all there was silver to his cloud. +Kenny brightened. + +A preposterous notion of hers, that unfitness. The memory of the +sunset hour in the cabin came again to darken the silver lining of his +cloud. Joan's arms, Joan's voice, Joan's eyes had pleaded; it would +make her happier to wait and study and watch his world before she came +to it, his wife. + +Kenny sighed. + +It would make her--happier. And the problem still was with him. + +Kenny cursed the evil in the world that had forced men to convention. +If only he could help her! If only-- + +A car was coming up behind him with a familiar noise of rattle. It was +the doctor. Kenny sat up, alert, inspired, excited. + +"Doctor," he called cheerfully, "is there a long distance telephone +near?" + +"A mile on. Road to the right," called the doctor, inwardly amazed at +his visitor's mercurial disposition. "They call it Rink's Hotel. Not +much of a place. Really a road house. But you'll find a telephone." + +Kenny found the telephone at Rink's Hotel in a pantry near the barroom +and closed the door to insure his privacy. It seemed an interminable +interval of waiting, an interval of blankness filled with voices +calling numbers on to further voices, before the Club Central answered. +Again he waited, tapping with impatience on the table. When the voice +came he wanted, it was far away and drowsy. Kenny looked at his watch. +It was not yet eight o'clock. + +"Garry," he said, "is that you?" + +"Yes. Who's calling?" + +"It's I--Kenny." + +"Kenny!" Garry's astonished voice came clearly over the wire. "Kenny, +where on earth did you go?" he demanded. "And what's the matter? Is +anything wrong? What are you doing up in the middle of the night?" + +Kenny snorted. + +"Garry," he said, "I'm mailing to you now in a very few minutes my +check for four thousand dollars--" + +"Say it again." + +"I said--I'm mailing to you--my check--for--four thousand--dollars." + +"Wait a minute, Kenny. This wire must be out of order." + +Kenny swore beneath his teeth. + +"I said," he repeated with withering distinctness, "that +I--am--mailing--to--you--my--check--for--four--thousand--dollars. And +I want you to cash it in old bills. Get, that, Garry, please. Old +bills." + +"Old bills!" repeated Garry in a strangled voice. "For the love of +Mike! . . . _Old bills_!" + +"Garry! For God's sake, listen! This is absolute, unadulterated +common sense. I want you to get that money in old bills, the older the +better. Ragged if you can. And I want you to send it to me, Craig +Farm, by registered package, special delivery." + +"Are you in some mess or other? Because if you are I'll bring it." + +"No, I can wait. I particularly don't want you to bring it. I can't +explain now. I'll write you all the details. Then I want you to get a +statement from the bank. Even with the four thousand gone, my balance +ought to be at least a thousand dollars. See what they make it." + +"Yes." + +"Next I want you to call up Ann Marvin and ask her if she's still +looking for another girl to share her studio with her . . . Ann Marvin." + +"Peggy's with her." + +"I know that. She said she wanted a third girl. If she does, tell her +I'm bringing my ward--" + +"Your--what!" + +"My--ward--" + +"Kenny," came in cold and scandalized tones from the other end, "have +you been to bed at all?" + +"If you make any pretense at all of being my friend," roared Kenny in a +flash of temper, "will you do me the favor of assuming that I'm +serious? I'm not drunk. I'm not insane. I've slept the night +through. And I'm tired and terribly in earnest." + +"You did say your ward." + +"I did. Mr. Craig--the uncle, you remember, an invalid--died. And +he's made me the guardian of his niece--" + +"The poor boob." Garry's voice was sad and sincere. + +"Garry! Are you or are you not my friend?" + +"I am." + +"Then listen. Next I want you to ask Max Kreiling for the name and +address of the French woman he knows who teaches music--" + +"Just a minute, Kenny, old man. Let me say this all after you. I am +to cash your check for four thousand dollars in old bills. Ragged if +possible. I am to send it registered and special delivery to Craig +Farm. I am to call up Ann and tell her about your--your ward. And I'm +to ask Max for the name of the French woman who teaches music." + +"Right. Garry, has Brian been back?" + +"No. John Whitaker may have heard from him. I don't know. I haven't +seen him. Oh, by the way, Kenny, Joe Curtis was in here blazing up and +down my studio. Said you promised to paint his wife's portrait. +What'll I tell him?" + +"Tell him," said Kenny, "to go to--No, never mind. I'll be needing to +work. Tell him I'll be back in New York positively by the end of next +week." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +MISER'S GOLD + +He was passionately glad in the week that followed that Fate, prodigal +in her gifts to him, had made him too an actor with a genius for +convincing. For he had to go on digging dots, feigning wild excitement +when his heart was cold within him. He hated spades. He hated dirt. +He almost hated Hughie, who went from dot to dot upon the chart with +unflagging zeal and system. Kenny himself dug anywhere at any time and +moodily escaped when he could to write letters. He was getting his +plans in line for departure. + +He had settled the problem of the doctor, after an interval of bitter +struggle, with a combination of fact and fancy. He said truthfully +that the doctor had rejected all notions of buried money with his usual +air of weariness. He added untruthfully--and with set teeth he +challenged the Angel Gabriel to settle the tormenting problem in any +other way--that the doctor had conceded the probability of Adam's +burying money though he had had but a few thousand dollars at best to +bury. + +"That," said Hughie, "is enough to dig for!" And he went on with his +digging. + +The need was desperate and Kenny did his best. Of the doctor's story +of Adam and Cordelia Craig he told enough. And he kept on talking +miser's gold when he hated the name of it. His air of excitement, said +Hughie who talked endlessly of dots, dug and dreamed them, kept them +all upon their toes. + +At nightfall of the third day when Kenny's hatred of dots was +approaching a frenzy and a ballet of spades danced with horrible rhythm +through his dreams, the package came from Garry. Kenny took it with a +careless whistle and went slowly up the stairs. + +The closing of his bedroom door transformed him. He found matches and +a lamp and marveled at the erratic pounding of his heart. It was a +muffled beat of triumph. Mad laughter, tender and joyous, lurked +perilously in his throat. His feet would have pirouetted in gay +abandon had he not, with much responsible feeling of control, forced +himself to walk with dignity and calm. But his nervous flying fingers +fumbled clumsily with string and paper and taxed his patience to the +utmost. + +The bills were incredibly old and ragged. Kenny stared at them with a +low whistle of delight, blessing Garry. Moreover, Fate and Garry had +chosen to solve a problem for him by packing the bills in a strong tin +box. To unpack the money and dent the tin was the work of a moment. +When he had darkened the shining surface with lamp-smoke and rubbed it +clean with a handkerchief which he burned, the box, discolored and +dented, had an inescapable look of age, like the ragged bills. + +Kenny went through the dark hallway to Adam's room with cat-like tread, +the searchlight that had been a part of his road equipment in his +pocket, a bag of wood-ash, purloined the day before from Hannah's +kitchen, and the battered box tucked unobtrusively beneath his coat. +He locked himself in and drew a long, gasping breath of intense relief. + +Though wind creaks startled him again and again as he made a pedestal +of faded books for his searchlight and directed its glaring circle upon +the blackened wall of the fireplace, no dreaded hand upon the knob +disturbed him. + +He worked noiselessly and with care, removing the lower bricks with his +penknife. + +Brick after brick he loosened, burrowing deep in the solid wall; then +with infinite care and patience he walled the money in, filled the +crevices with wood-ash and hid the remaining bricks in the chimney. + +He went down to supper with an unusual air of calm, but his head was +aching badly. Hughie, Joan said, was nearing the last dot. He was +discouraged and Hannah was cross. Kenny toyed absently with the food +upon his plate. + +"Mavourneen," he said, "I'm wondering." + +"Wondering what, Kenny?" + +"If perhaps the chart isn't purposely misleading--" + +"Like Uncle's hints to you?" + +"Yes." + +"I hadn't thought of it." + +"Every clue we have found has sent us out of doors." + +"Would he, I wonder, Kenny, hide the money in the house?" + +"I'm wondering too." + +"The sitting room!" + +"There," admitted Kenny, "he was often alone." + +"Kenny, shall we look to-night?" + +Kenny had his moment of doubt. + +"We'll ask Hughie," he said. + +And so with Hannah scoffing but noticeably on ahead with the lamp, they +climbed the stairs and tore the room to pieces--to no avail. In a +final burst of inspiration Hughie dragged the faded carpet from its +tacks and filled the room with dust. Sneezing and coughing, they faced +each other in the melee with looks of blank discouragement. Even +Kenny's inexhaustible energy and excitement seemed on the point of +waning. He stared drearily at the fireplace. + +"It's cold in here," he said, shivering. + +"Yes," said Joan, "we should have built a fire." + +"The fireplace!" cried Hughie hoarsely. + +"It's too late now," said Kenny irritably. "I'm chilled through." + +"No, no, Mr. O'Neill, I'm not meaning the fire. It's the one place we +haven't looked." + +"It won't hurt none to look, Mr. O'Neill," urged Hannah, who knew that +Kenny's energy was subject to undependable ebb and now. "If Hughie +goes out of here with that fireplace on his mind, he'll dream all night +about it." + +Kenny strode to the fireplace with Hughie at his heels and jerked +impatiently at the mantel. It was sturdy and unyielding. + +"I feared so," he said with a shrug. + +Hughie seized the lamp. + +"Hold the lamp, Mr. O'Neill," he begged, crouching. "I've got to look +at them bricks. Careful, sir! You're tipping it." + +Huddled in the glare of the lamp they stared in fascination at the +smoky bricks. + +"The bricks are loose!" exclaimed Hughie. "Look here!" He rattled one +with his finger. + +Kenny emitted a long low whistle of intense amazement. + +"Hughie, where's your knife?" he flung out wildly. "I think we're on +the trail!" + +"The lamp's shaking!" warned Hannah. "Let me hold it." + +"Oh, my God!" gasped Hughie with the dot fever flaring in his honest +eyes. "That ain't mortar. It's only ashes. Look!" + +Kenny frantically pulled out a brick and dropped it with a clatter. +Another and another. + +"Hold the lamp closer, Hannah!" directed Hughie, reaching within. +"There's something here!" + +Shaking violently he pulled forth a battered box and flung back the +lid. It was stuffed to the brim with ragged money. + +"Glory be to God!" cried Kenny and proceeded to pull the mantel down. + +But he found no more. + +"And to think of him burrowin' there in the bricks," marveled Hannah, +"and him that weak a child could push him over." + +"Ah!" said Kenny, "but his will was strong." + +He counted the money with trembling fingers and a smile, curiously +pleased and tender, and declared his belief that the doctor was right. +The ragged hoarding--he shivered slightly with revulsion as he touched +a tattered bill--represented the rest, residue and remainder of Adam's +wealth wheresoever situate. And thanks to Hughie's inspiration the +executor had found it. + +"Four thousand dollars!" he announced at last in a voice of +disappointment. + +"And a lucky thing," said Hughie with an air of pride, "that I thought +of the fireplace. For it might have laid there buried for the rest of +time." + +"Four thousand dollars!" gasped Hannah in a reverential voice. "Four +thousand dollars! Well, Mr. O'Neill, it may not be much, as you seem +to think after all the dots you and Hughie have been a-diggin', but I +say it's a lot. It ought to buy the child all the frocks and teachers +in New York." + +"It will see her through the year," said Kenny. + +Joan's eyes widened. + +"It would see me through a decade!" she exclaimed. + +Kenny smiled. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +KENNY'S WARD + +Peace came mercifully to Craig farm with the finding of Adam's money. + +"Toby," Joan whispered to the cat, her soft cheek pressed against his +fur, "I'm going away. And I can't believe it! I can't! I can't! I +can't!" + +"Toby will miss you," said Hannah. "And so will I. And so will Hughie +and Hetty." She cleared her throat. "As for Mr. O'Neill, Toby won't +be likely to miss him at all. He's stepped too many inches off his +tail. Hughie thinks it must be paralyzed. I never saw Mr. O'Neill +headin' for a new dot but what I knew Toby would be sure to stick his +tail in the way and start a row." + +Joan's face clouded. + +"Oh, Hannah, if only I knew where Donald is!" + +Hannah sighed. + +"I wish you did, dear." + +"It seems so dreadful with Uncle gone and everything changed. And +Donald doesn't even know. Think, Hannah, I may pass him in the train." + +"You may," said Hannah. "And then again you mayn't." + +"What if he comes home? What if he writes? It seems that I just +should be here." + +"If he writes, I'll send the letter. And if he comes, Hughie can ride +down and telegraph you word." + +"It's snowing," exclaimed Joan at the kitchen window. "Harder and +harder. Oh, Hannah, if it keeps up we shan't be able to go to Briston +to-morrow for my suit." + +"We'll go in the sleigh. Hughie spoke of it at breakfast." + +"A brown suit," mused Joan with shining eyes. "A brown hat and furs! +Think, Hannah! _Furs_! I do hope I shall look well in them." + +"Mr. O'Neill said you would and he ought to know." + +Joan laughed and blushed. + +At twilight the next night she came home dressed warmly in furs and a +suit the color of her eyes. + +"She would wear it home, Mr. O'Neill," whispered Hannah on ahead. "And +all, I think, to surprise you." + +Often afterward Kenny remembered her there in the half twilight of the +kitchen, joyously crying out his name. There had been a glimmer of +shining tin, a halo of light from the tilted stove-lids, purple at the +window panes and beyond snow and the distant tinkle of sleighbells in +the barn. Hetty, he remembered, had lighted the kitchen lamp and +gasped. A lovely child, proud and mischievous! Her youth startled him. + +In a week she was ready and eager to go but the day of farewell found +her clinging to Hannah in a panic. + +When at last the old Craig carriage creaked slowly away down the lane +with Hannah and Hetty waving from the farm-porch, the spirit of +adventure flickered forlornly out and left her sobbing. + +"Good-bye, Hannah dear!" she called, her eyes wet and wistful. +"Good-bye, Hetty! And--and don't forget to write me _all_ the news! +And don't let Toby catch the birds!" + +Hughie, blinking and upset, stared straight ahead at Nellie's ears. + +Kenny sobered. How great his trust! Hannah, waving her apron back +there and wiping her eyes, trusted him. And so did Hughie and Joan and +even perhaps old Adam Craig; and Mr. Abbott whose gentle grilling he +had endured with merely surface patience. + +"Don't cry, Joan, please!" he begged, understanding how dear familiar +things are apt to loom in the pain of separation. And then with her +hand to his lips, he pledged himself to make her happiness the religion +of his love. It was a pledge he was destined to keep inviolate. + +Ordinarily to Kenny, impatient in intervals of discomfort and delay, +the trip with its rural junctions and branch roads would have been +interminable torture. But to-day, with Joan's eyes, wide, dark, +intent, he chose to marvel with her. + +They lunched at noon between trains in a little country inn. At seven, +having come after much fragmentary travel into a comforting world of +express trains and Pullmans, they dined in the train itself. Joan +watched the flying landscape, dotted with snow and vanishing lights, +smiled with the shining wonder of it all in her eyes, and could not +eat. Kenny tried scolding and found her sorry, but she could not eat. + +By eleven, when the train thundered into the terminal at Thirty-third +Street, New York was wrapped in a scudding whirl of white dotted +dizzily with lights. Already to Kenny, buoyant, excited and inclined +to stride around in purposeless circles, the lonely farm was very far +away. He was back again in his own world with the roar of the city in +his ears--and Joan beside him. Ah! there he knew was the reason for +his gladness. Joan was beside him. + +The taxi he commandeered threaded its way south through a maze of +lights, hurrying crowds and noisy, weaving traffic to a tenement in +Greenwich Village. Joan, searching for the unknown sparkle of that +Bohemian world she had been unable to envisage, stared at the +unromantic basement doors ahead and clung to Kenny's hand. + +"It's quite all right, mavourneen," he assured her mischievously. +"Bohemia and poverty rub shoulders down here. It's picturesque. And +my club is only five blocks east. Beyond this door there's a +mysterious magic tunnel that runs straight through the house to +Somebody's back-yard. And in the back-yard is a castle and in the +castle studios and skylights, electricity and steam heat and wide, +old-fashioned fireplaces. Once it was a tenement--just like this with +fifty dirty people in it--but Ann with her magic wand has changed it +all." + +The basement door at which he had been ringing a prolonged Morse dot +and dash announcement of identity clicked back and revealed a dimly +lighted tunnel. At the end a flight of steps led up into a courtyard. + +Kenny closed the outer door and blocked out the roar of the city. New +York receded, its hum very far away. Their heels clanked loudly in the +quiet. + +As they climbed the steps and came out in the courtyard, Ann's windows, +trimly curtained, twinkled pleasantly through the snow ahead. + +A girl stood waiting in the doorway. + +"Hello, Ann!" called Kenny joyously. "Is it you?" + +"Hello, Kenny!" cried a pleasant contralto voice. "Hurry up. It's +snowing like fury." + +Kenny seized Joan's hand and raced her across the courtyard and up the +steps. When she came to a halt, shy and breathless, she was standing +by a crackling wood-fire in a room that seemed all coziness and color +and soft light. + +A tall girl with black hair, a clear skin and intelligent eyes was +smiling at them both. + +"Kenny," exclaimed Ann Marvin, "you Irish will-of-the-wisp! Where have +you been? Everybody's talking about you. Joan, dear, shake the snow +off your coat. You're beginning to melt." + +Joan's eyes opened wide at the sound of her name. Ann laughed and +pinched her flushed cheek. + +"My dear," she said drolly, "I know more than your name. Kenny sent me +a letter of measures, spiritual, mental and physical that would turn +Bertillon green with envy. If ever you default with all the foolish +hearts in New York I'll turn you over to the police. And you'll never +escape." + +Joan clung to her with a smile and a sigh of relief that made them both +laugh. + +"Ann," said Kenny in heartfelt gratitude, "you're a brick. I don't +wonder Frank Barrington's head over heels in love with you. You'll not +be mindin', Ann, dear, if I use your telephone?" + +"Sure, no!" mimicked Ann broadly. "It's yonder in the den." + +Kenny at the telephone called the Players' Club and with his lips set +for battle, asked for John Whitaker, whose methodical habits of +diversion for once in his life he blessed. When Whitaker's voice came, +brief and somewhat bored, he forgot to say: "Hello." + +"Whitaker," he demanded, "where's Brian? You must know by now." + +"Kenny! Is that you?" + +"Yes." + +"Where on earth have you been?" + +"Away. Where's Brian?" + +"Where's Brian?" Whitaker snorted. "He ought to be in a lunatic asylum +if you want my honest opinion. As to where he is, I told you before +and I'm telling you again, I'm pledged to secrecy. I've even destroyed +his address so I wouldn't be tempted--and my memory couldn't be worse. +I'd like to say right now, however, that he's more of an O'Neill than I +thought and I'm through with him." + +"Phew!" whistled Kenny, much too astonished for battle. "What--what's +up, John?" + +"What's up?" barked Whitaker, his voice tinged with acid. "Just this: +I handed the young fool a job that ten of the best newspaper men in New +York were pursuing and he turned me down cold to stay all winter in +some God-forsaken quarry where he's hacking up stone--" + +"Hacking up stone!" + +"Feels philanthropic. Grinds stone all day and at night helps a kid +he's known six months cram for a college exam. Damon and Pythias stuff +and I'm the goat. Pythias is seventeen by the way and wants to work +his way through college." + +"Mother of men!" said Kenny softly and thought of Joan's relief. + +"Sounds very beautiful and lofty in a letter," went on Whitaker, +angling for sympathy, "but of all the damned, high-falutin' lunacy I've +ever seen in men, that's the limit." + +He waited, confident in his expectation that Kenny would agree. The +voice that came back fairly bristled with virtue and approval. + +"You filled his head with notions about service, didn't you, Whitaker?" +demanded Kenny indignantly. "What's your idea of service anyway that +now when Brian's got a chance to be of absolute service to a kid who +needs him, you kick up your hind-heels and howl your head off. Sort of +a boomerang, isn't it? You came up to my studio, old man, and unloaded +some facts. Let me unload one right now. I'm with Brian. I think +he's a brick and a jewel for sense. And you can go to thunder!" + +And Kenny, with a gasping gurgle in his receiver ear, smiled sweetly +into the telephone and hung up with Whitaker roaring his name. He was +amazed, delighted and triumphant, uppermost in his mind the thought of +Joan's peace of mind. No further need to worry over Donald. + +He kissed his finger-tips to Ann who appeared in the doorway. + +"Your ward," she said, "is toasting her toes by the sitting-room fire. +Kenny, she's a dear!" + +"As sweet," said Kenny proudly, "as an Irish smile!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +THE STUDIO AGAIN + +The night-watchman at the Holbein Club greeted the prodigal with a +broad smile of welcome. + +"Wonder, I says, to the new bell-hop, I do wonder where Mr. O'Neill's +got to. Everybody's been wonderin'. Mr. Rittenhouse most of all," he +added, stopping the elevator at Kenny's floor. "I heard him grumblin' +just last night in the elevator to Mr. Fahr. Mr. Fahr seemed to feel +that you were off with the heathen somewhere paintin' 'em all up into +pictures." + +Kenny found the studio in a soulless state of order and blamed it +instantly upon Garry. Fifteen minutes later, gorgeous in his frayed +oriental bathrobe and his Persian slippers, he banged on the wall and +evoked a muffled shout of greeting. As usual Garry might or might not +be in bed. Kenny's time values had not altered. + +Garry came at once in bathrobe and slippers. + +"Lord, Kenny," he exclaimed warmly, "I'm glad you're back and sane. +But I'm mad as a wet hen!" + +"At me? My dear Garry!" + +"You didn't write, you know, after you said you would. You never +do--" + +"I telegraphed instead." + +"Your telegram," reminded Garry, "said 'O.K. Kenny.' And I'm chuck +full of curiosity and questions. Sit down. Every chair in the +studio's on a furlough." + +"So I see." + +"You left the studio in something of a mess. Sid tried to straighten +it out and nearly had brain fever. Got to babbling and wringing his +hands and we sent for Haggerty. She went on an order bust for two +days." + +"The old shrew! I suppose everything in the place is under something." + +He found cigarettes and a chair and settled back with an air of lazy +comfort. + +Garry made no attempt to disguise his impatience. + +"Kenny," he said, "you're the limit. If I'd ever telephoned into your +slumber and asked you to find four thousand ragged dollars and mail +them to me, and if I'd said I'd accidentally acquired a ward and was +bringing her back with me, you wouldn't sit there in patience and wait +for facts. Mind, old dear, I want the truth. It's likely to be a lot +queerer than anything you can make up." + +Kenny sighed--and told the truth. Garry listened in amazement. + +"Kenny," he said slowly, "you've roamed off before and gotten yourself +into some extraordinary messes and I honestly thought that summer in +China had taught you a lesson. But this tale of Adam Craig and the +miser money is the king-pin of them all. You've absolutely got to +house-clean that instinct for melodrama out of existence. It's a +peril; and furthermore expensive." + +"Don't rub it in," said Kenny. "Whatever you can think to say, I've +already told myself. Though," he added pensively, "it's queer, Garry. +Wherever I go, things begin to thicken up before I've had a chance to +be at fault in any way. And I'm so darned sick of anticlimaxes." + +"You keep yourself keyed up to such a pitch that anything normal's got +to be an anticlimax! Think of you digging dots when you knew there +wasn't any money! Think of you with a ward! Oh, my Lord!" finished +Garry with a gasp. "It's incredible. It--it really is." + +Kenny flushed and gnawed nervously at his lips. Could he tell Garry of +Samhain? + +"And think of you," said Garry, his voice changing, "salting the old +man's fireplace with your own money so that his niece could come down +here and study French and music! You wonderful, soft-hearted Irish +lunatic! I love you for it!" + +Kenny rose at once and began to bluster around the studio, damning +Haggerty. There was something disturbingly warm and honest in Garry's +eyes. Then with a sudden gesture of impatience he came back and his +troubled glance begged for understanding. + +"Garry," he blurted, "there's one thing that probably we shan't be +telling people for a year at least. And that is--that I love this girl +better than my life and I'm going to marry her." + +He waited with a fierce hurt challenge in his eyes for irreverence and +incredulity and even perhaps good-natured jeers, but Garry, sensing +something big and unfamiliar, held out his hand. Kenny wrung it in +passionate relief. + +"What's my balance?" he demanded. + +"I'm sorry I forgot that, Kenny. It's eight hundred and forty odd +dollars." + +"As usual," bristled Kenny, "they're lying." + +Garry refused to discuss the point. + +"And Brian, another Irish lunatic!" he marveled, shaking his head. +"Did Max write you the name of the French woman?" + +"Yes. 'Twas a Madame Morny. I've written her. Garry, darlin', where +on earth did you find that inspired collection of green rags?" + +"The bank managed somehow." + +"Weren't they curious?" + +"They were until I said the commission came from you. After that +nobody asked anything." + +Kenny went with him to the door, dreading the emptiness of the studio. +He was a little homesick for the farm. + +The order was irresistibly reminiscent of Brian, of the notebook and +the struggle that had driven him forth, a penitent, upon the road. The +fern was dead, like the first fever of his penance. The thought upset +him. Then something drew him to the door of Brian's room and he peered +in and closed it with a bang. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +PLAYTIME + +December found Joan with dark, happy eyes intent upon the rose-colored +phantasmagoria of existence, her worriment past. Donald was safe with +Brian. It hurt her a little that he did not write. + +"I think, girleen," said Kenny, intuitional as always, "that he fears +to write, thinking of course you are still at the farm and would try to +tempt him back. And I haven't a doubt he's set his teeth and vowed not +to come to you until he's made good." As indeed he had. + +After that, save for a wistful moment now and then, she seemed content, +trusting Brian. + +Unhappiness lay behind her like a forgotten shadow. After the +loneliness and the dreams and the hills, her playtime too had come as +Donald's had come to him in Brian's world of spring; and life was +whirling around her, brilliant, breathless, kaleidoscopic and +altogether beautiful, a fantastic fairyland that kept her dazzled and +delighted. + +It had no shadows for her wondering eyes; the shadows lay behind her. +New York with its shops where with Ann she had gasped and laughed and +colored and stared into mirrors, its lights, its crowds, its theaters, +its opera where Max Kreiling sang and left her with a sob in her heart, +its amazing Bohemia of success of which Kenny was a part, seemed to her +but a never-ending sparkle of romance and kindness. She spent +unwearied hours in Ann's studio, masquerading in a sculptor's smock and +staring at clay and marble with eyes of unbelief. And she tarried for +amazed intervals in the studio upstairs where Margot Gilberte plied +Cellini's art, embedding pennyweights of metal in hot pitch that, +cooling, held it like a dark and shapeless hand while Margot sculptured +elfin leaves and scrolls upon it. Curious things came to the jeweler's +desk where Margot worked; jewels cut and uncut, soft-colored +sea-pebbles, natural lumps of greenish copper, silver and gold and +brass (to Margot's eye there were no baser metals) malachite and coral +and New Zealand jade. Joan handled them all with gasps of reverence. + +"And this, Margot? How green it is!" + +"A peridot for a dewdrop in a leaf of gold. And there, Question-mark, +are the pink tourmalines I propose to use for rosebuds in this necklace +of silver leaves." + +"And blue sapphires!" + +"They are for pools of sea-water in some golden seaweed and the pearls +are for buds in some cherry leaves." + +"What an odd frail little tool, Margot!" + +"I made it myself," said Margot. "And now, cherie, if you don't run +along to Madame Morny, Kenny will scold me." + +She delighted Madame Morny with her willingness to work. She delighted +Kenny with her willingness to play. Nothing tired her. Together they +roamed to the quaint little restaurants of Bohemia; the Italian table +d'hotes where Kenny was inclined to twinkle at the youthful art +students who affected pretentious ties, the quiet old German restaurant +that once had been a church, Chinatown where you ate unskillfully with +chopsticks upon a table of onyx, and the Turkish restaurant where +everything, Sid said, was lamb. + +"Garry found it," he insisted. "I didn't. I'm glad I didn't, though a +lot of the Salmagundi men go over there and like it. The art students +too. Forty cents. Proprietor's the real thing--he wears a fizz." + +"Fuzz, darlin'," corrected Kenny gently. + +"Fez!" sputtered Sid in disgust. "Fez, of course. Everything's got +lamb in it, even the pastry and the coffee. I swear it has! I--I hate +lamb. Didn't know the Turks went in for it so much, did you, Kenny? +Jan computed a table of lamb percentages on the menu and I felt like +bleating. 'Pon my word I did. Menu's got a glossary and needs it. +Pilaf--that's rice. Lamb's something else. No, pilaf's lamb, and rice +is something else. Oh, hanged if I know. Lamb's lamb no matter how +you spell it." + +"Come along with us," suggested Kenny. His kindliness of late had +startled more than one, accustomed to his irresponsible caprices. + +"Please do!" said Joan; and Sid, delighted, and amazed as always, +repudiated at once his hatred of lamb. It was nourishing, he recalled +at once with a brazen air of sincerity, and the Turks disguise it in +amazingly enticing ways. + +Joan laughed. + +"Sid," she said, "you're a dear, blessed fibber and we want you with +us." + +Her poise and adaptability were startling. Her simplicity won them +all. To the girls who lived in Ann's studio building she seemed all +laughter and happiness and breathless eagerness to please. + +"She's just herself," said Peggy Jarvis, who lived with Ann and smiled +over the footlights each night in comedy that was comedy and to crowds +that were crowds, "She doesn't know that half the world is posing." + +Joan spent an afternoon in Peggy's dressing room during a matinee and +came home with moist, excited eyes. + +"Think, Peggy, think!" she exclaimed. "Once long ago that was my +mother's life." + +Peggy kissed her and rummaged for cigarettes. Joan's eyes rested upon +her pretty face with troubled indulgence. + +"Oh, Peggy," she pouted. "Why do you smoke?" + +"Because," said Peggy honestly, "I like it. Does it shock you, dear?" + +"It did at first," admitted Joan. "And even now I shouldn't care to +smoke myself. But then when that old painter Kenny likes so came here +with his wife, and her hair was so white and her face so kind, and she +smoked like a chimney--" + +"Joan!" + +"She did," insisted Joan. "Well, then, Peggy, I just stayed awake +that night and thought it all out. Peggy, do all painters' wives +smoke? I mean--" she flushed and stammered. + +Peggy's eyes were demure and roguish. + +"You ridiculous child!" she said. "Who's the painter?" + +Joan turned scarlet and bit her lip. + +"And what, sweetheart," begged Peggy with ready tact, "did you think +out?" + +"If you smoke," said Joan, "because you really want to, Peggy, it's all +right. But if a girl smokes just to--to appear startling and make men +look at her, then it's all wrong!" + +Peggy kissed her. + +"Joan, dear," she said, "you've the most amazing intelligence in that +small head that I ever met. Hum. If I'm not mistaken that's Kenny at +the door. He never stops ringing until he's sure you know he's there." + +Joan raced away to change her dress. + +With excitement in her cheeks and eyes she was extraordinarily lovely. +Kenny with difficulty kept his feet firmly upon the floor a yard away +from her. Peggy laughed up at him, her piquant face impudent and +understanding. + +"Kenny," she said under her breath, "I suppose you know you're in love +with your ward?" + +Kenny had had his flare with Peggy; and he had come out of it with +wounded vanity, somewhat baffled at Peggy's professed belief in the +transiency of feminine love. After all, Peggy said pensively, she knew +too many charming men to promise an indeterminate interval of +concentration upon one. Kenny deemed such a viewpoint heretical and +masculine; women were meant to be faithful. + +Now he stared at the girl's saucy face with a startled flush. + +"Peggy!" he said, "you little wretch!" + +It was growing harder day by day to keep his love a secret. + +Joan's first dance at the Holbein Club brought a train of complications. + +Ann, interpretative, dressed her in snow-white tulle with here and +there a glint of silver. The soft full skirt floated out above her +silver slippers like a cloud, but little whiter than her throat and +arms. Peggy and Ann never told the tale of her rebellion or her +frantic wail: + +"Oh, Peggy, Peggy! I can't go. They forgot the sleeves." + +She came down the stairway like a flower, but her eyes were wistful and +troubled. + +"Kenny, should I?" + +"Should you what, dear?" + +"Dance when--when Uncle--" + +"If your heart is glad and your feet want to dance, mavourneen," said +Kenny gently, "then no conventional pretense of mourning shall stop +them. You were kind and merciful while he lived. Even he, dear, would +not ask more." + +"If my Victrola arm has been winding in vain while you two practiced +half the floor off the studio," put in Ann, "I shall be offended. I +dreamed last night that I was an organ-grinder teaching Sid to dance." + +Joan laughed and kissed her. + +The Holbein Club accepted her with a hum of delight. + +"She _is_ beautiful!" said Jan. + +"Beautiful, of course," said Somebody. "Any girl in Kenny's life would +be beautiful or she wouldn't be there." + +As for Kenny, his path was pleasant, as it always was. If a waving arm +was not bidding for his attention, it was a laughing hail or a hearty +hand upon his shoulder. His bright dark face sparkled with the zest of +popularity. + +Joan thought him as care-free as a boy. + +"We dance in the club gallery," he told her, smiling at the look of +wonder in her eyes. + +"And the paintings and sculpture?" + +"A members' exhibition. The sculptured lion staring from his pedestal +at us is Jan's. Look at the superb muscle play of his flank! The +midsummer woods--see, how well the lad has painted _air_!--is Garry's. +And my pine picture's over there." + +"And Sid?" + +Kenny danced her the length of the gallery. A white line of sculpture +gleamed on either side behind a rail of brass. + +"Down here," he said. "I saved it for the last. The beggar's +painted--me!" + +It was Kenny in a painter's smock intent upon a palette, vividly, +whimsically, delightfully Kenny. There was tenderness and sympathy in +Sid's portrayal. + +Joan clung to his hand in delight. + +And was it all Bohemia, she asked. + +Ah! admitted Kenny twinkling, there you had him. Bohemia, he fancied, +was always wherever you yourself were not. The men and women who did +big things were too busy for picturesque posing. Bohemia, as legend +read it, had to do with rags and dreams and ambition without effort, a +shabby, down-at-heel pretension that glittered without gratifying. The +Bohemians of to-day were the failures of to-morrow. And the crowd who +lived at the Holbein Club lived, loved, worked and died much in the +fashion of less gifted folk. If there was a Bohemia of success, +however, it danced here to-night. + +But, girleen, the music was urging! And who could resist the sweet +wild delirium of a violin's call? Certainly not an Irishman intent +upon a moonbeam imprisoned in a girl's bright hair. But one sound +sweeter! + +"And that?" asked Joan as they glided away again among the dancers. + +Kenny threw back his head and his eyes laughed. + +"A robin singing in a blackthorn!" + +Joan smiled at the boyish sparkle of his face. He was so charmingly, +so irresponsibly young and gay. + +His Bohemia of success she found a startling triumph. + +"Joan's horribly disturbed," Ann telephoned in the morning. "As her +guardian you'll have to settle a number of infatuated young men. The +telephone's been ringing all morning. I think it's a case of 'The line +forms on the right, gentlemen, on the right!'" + +Kenny faced the problem with his fingers in his hair. + +"Who's bothering her?" he demanded bluntly. + +"The Art Students' League," said Ann demurely, "the Federation of Arts, +National Society of Portrait Painters, Architectural League, Watercolor +Society, Authors' League and the Prince who thinks he's a playwright." + +"He's a piece of cheese!" said Kenny in intense disgust. "What did +Joan think of him?" + +"She said she didn't like him nearly so well as the art student who +plays a banjo in the orchestra because he needs the money. Peggy knows +him." + +"That was wholesome," admitted Kenny. "But I don't think much of him +either. He has absolutely no right when he's playing a banjo +commercially to recognize the girls on the floor. I'll be over to +lunch." + +It was a nerve-racking hour for Ann. Kenny, pensive, ate but little. +He seemed very sorry for himself and eyed Joan with melancholy +tenderness. When at last the dreadful subject was broached, Ann +stoutly defended everybody. + +Frantic, Kenny pushed back his plate and began to stride around. + +"Sit down," said Ann. "You're making everybody nervous. Of course you +don't blame Joan. And of course you can't blame--" + +"I'm not blaming anybody," sputtered Kenny. "That club is a hot-bed of +shallow-minded, impressionable, fickle-minded boobs. I can see plainly +that we'll have to be married to-day. To-morrow at the latest." + +"Kenny, please!" said Joan and the conflict began. + +Finding the year still strongly in her mind, he surrendered with a +sigh, hurt and unhappy, remembering his vow that Joan's happiness +should be the religion of his love. + +"Oh, you dear foolish people!" cried Ann in despair. "Why don't you +announce your engagement in the Times and discourage the line once and +for all?" + +"Of course!" said Kenny and looked at Joan. + +"I shouldn't mind at all," said Joan, coloring. + +Whereat Kenny called up the Times office, and the Holbein Club went mad +with delight. Jan, without meaning to, got very drunk and shocked +himself, and Margot made the ring. She did not know why Kenny wanted +the golden circlet barred crosswise like a frail ladder. Nor why he +insisted upon a cluster of wistaria set in amethysts. + +Even then misgivings sent him to Ann in a panic of conscience. + +"Am I ungenerous?" he demanded. "Perhaps Joan should have had a year +of utter freedom. You know what I mean, Ann. To come and go as she +pleases and with whom she pleases. She's so young." He flushed. + +"Joan wouldn't have it different," said Ann, touched by the boyish +wistfulness of his eyes. "She clings to you. And she's as shy and +unspoiled as the day you brought her here. This flurry of admiration +to her means nothing at all. She's unhappy with strangers." + +Kenny knew it was true and marveled. + +"I would like to be generous," he admitted with an effort. "But I +can't. It's the simple truth, Ann, I can't. Even the thought of her +liking other men--bothers me." + +December was fated to hold for him another startling anticlimax. It +came one snowy morning when he had slept even later than usual, +dreaming of an iridescent balloon that climbed higher and higher with +Joan peeping radiantly over the edge until at the peal of the telephone +bell it disappeared entirely. + +Joan's voice instantly dispelled his irritation. + +"Mavourneen!" he exclaimed. "Up already! And you danced half the +night." + +"It's eleven o'clock," said Joan. "Besides, I couldn't sleep. I've +been thinking. Remember, Kenny, when you read the will and I said that +Donald should have the farm?" + +"Yes," said Kenny, somewhat mystified. "I remember." + +"If he's going to study and work his way through college, I don't think +he'd want it, do you?" + +"No, dear, I doubt if he would. What's in your mind, girleen?" + +"Oh, I'm so glad you think so too! Kenny--" + +"Yes?" + +"Do you know Jan's cousin, the pretty girl who's a model? I know that +doesn't sound at all as if it had anything to do with the farm but it +has. Jan's cousin said--I hardly know how to tell you, Kenny. I don't +think I like telephones. If I could see your face--" + +"I'm wearing my guardian's face!" + +"Oh!" + +"And evidently it isn't popular." + +"I like you--different. Jan's cousin said that she could get me a +great deal of work if I wanted it--posing for head and shoulders--" + +"Joan!" + +"Oh, dear!" wailed Joan. "That was a guardian's voice. Please wait, +Kenny." + +"I'm waiting." + +"I'm going to keep the farm and give Don the rest of the four thousand +dollars. . . . Did you say anything, Kenny?" + +"No. . . . No, I was just clearing my throat." + +"I've only spent a little of it yet. From now on I want to earn my +living like Peggy and Ann and Margot and all the others. I'll still +have plenty of time to study and practice. I wonder I didn't think of +it before. It was selfish when I had the farm and Don not even +mentioned in the will. I suppose I didn't think of it because here +things seem to happen so--so fast. I'm always in a whirl." + +"Yes," said Kenny sincerely. "Things do happen fast." + +She waited his approval and was the first to speak, a wondering hint of +reproach in her voice. + +"Kenny, please say something!" + +"To be truthful, dear," said Kenny in a queer voice, "you've taken my +breath away. I'm thinking--just thinking." + +"It's fair--" + +"Yes, dear, it's fair enough." + +"You don't disapprove? Oh, I hope you won't. It will make me so happy +to help Don through college." + +"It will make you happy!" said Kenny and sighed. + +"Ann had so many, many things to say against it. She said she was +trying to see it all with your eyes--as a guardian. But I told her +you're hardly ever--a guardian. And your Bohemia is democratic, isn't +it? And painters are respectable and worthy men and nothing like so +flighty as you read. You've said so yourself. And I like to work. +And there are so many charming girls who are models and Jan's cousin is +a Vassar girl--" In her eagerness to convince him she lost her +breath. + +"I'll come for you at Madame Morny's at four," Kenny told her, sick at +heart. "And then, dear, I'll tell you exactly what I think." + +And when he had rung off, he sat down weakly and laughed, his laugh +unmusical and sad. The dreadful, dreadful irony of it! How could he +deny her? How _could_ he? He who had surrounded her with women +friends, talented and independent, who believed in the gospel of work! +He liked her generosity. He liked her willingness to work. He blessed +the dear, selfless instincts of her heart, his eyes moist and tender. +And yet . . . and yet! Kenny laughed again. He had hidden his own +money in the fireplace to send through college a runaway youth he had +never seen! + +On the way home from Madame Morny's in a taxi, for the snow had become +a blizzard, he made one final desperate effort to break her resolution. +It was futile. Again she was passionately eager to please him. Again +he found it a problem that involved her happiness and peace of mind. +Again, with his heart sore, be kissed her and surrendered to her wishes +with a sigh. + +But he found the work for her himself with the older painters. + +"Kenny, I'm so glad you asked me to bring mother's trunks with me," +Joan told him. "Aranyi has asked me to pose in the gold brocade." + +Something sharp stabbed at Kenny's heart. + +"I meant them," he said with a sigh, "for costume dances, but Aranyi +paints the texture of things with marvelous skill." + +By the end of the month Joan's work day was full and he was seeing her +less than he had, save at night. Garry begged her to pose for him, +carried his case to Kenny and met with blank refusal. + +"I'm sorry, old man," Kenny finished inexorably, "but nothing under +forty need apply. You, my son, are particularly flighty and fickle. +Just now you happen to be raving about Peggy, but every pretty face, +I've noticed, makes you forget the one before." + +And Garry, who had been trying to marry Peggy for a year and was by no +means as uncertain and mercurial in his affections as Kenny would have +him believe, stared with eyes intelligent and reminiscent. + +"Well," he said softly, "I'll be jiggered. That's the limit!" + +"Be jiggered!" Kenny told him shortly. "And have done with it." + +Garry raised his eyebrows and departed. And Kenny, reverting to one of +his old frantic minutes, walked the floor. He had accepted portrait +commissions that would keep him busy for months; for the ragged money +he had hidden in the fireplace had made his need of work imperative. +Otherwise he himself could have painted Joan in the gold brocade and in +all the others. + +What had the money in the fireplace done for him? It had doomed him to +work apart while other men painted the golden shadows in her hair. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +FATE STABS + +March came to Kenny and found his studio with its haunting odor of +coffee and cigarettes, his brushes, his head and his heart, furiously +at work. He was giving himself up to love and labor with a Celtic +intensity that Garry found appalling. He planned endlessly to one +purpose: Joan's happiness, Joan's pleasure, Joan's future with him. +The memory of the ragged money laid aside for Don he dismissed with a +wry smile, gritting his teeth. What mattered in the face of the +splendid fact that he was so joyously, so recklessly, so absurdly happy? + +His life, with its deadly singleness of purpose, should have been +simple. It attained a complexity at times at which he marveled. An +inclination to blurt out the truth with panicky abruptness when he +wanted to lie, plunged him into more than one predicament. + +"I'm always explaining to somebody," he complained bitterly to Garry, +"why I tell the truth--" + +"You told Kenneth his dancing urchin was rotten--" + +"It was," insisted Kenny. "Garry, why is truth always unpleasant? Why +can't it be as romantic and agreeable as the things you want to say?" + +"Why," countered Garry, "isn't peace as romantic as war? Ask somebody +who knows. I don't." + +He stared curiously at Kenny and shook his head. A heavy hand with the +truth, that Irishman; and about as understandable in these splendid, +tender days of his idiocy and bliss, as March wind, comets or +star-dust. His passion for truth was literally a passion, relentless +and exact. He worked harder. His steadiness, as Jan said, was grim +and conscious and a thing of terror to anything in his path. He +wrestled with his check book and managed somehow to keep his studio in +order. And he was kinder. Fahr, in particular, remarked it; and Fahr, +worshipping Kenny, had sputtered and endured the brunt of many tempests. + +"But, Garry," he confided, round-eyed and apprehensive, "honest Injun, +I don't think he ought to bottle up his temper that way. Sometimes I +can almost see him swelling up and then when he speaks and I'm waiting +for an Irish roar, his voice is so quiet and pleasant that I feel +queer. I--I swear I do. Damn it all, I'm liking him more every day." + +"So am I," said Garry honestly. "But--" + +"But what?" + +"I wish he'd be less turbulently happy." + +"Let him," said Sid sagely, "Darn few can." + +"A pendulum," reminded Garry, "swings both ways. And he's an +extremist. If he'd just plant his two feet solidly on the ground and +get his head out of the clouds. He's got to do it sometime." + +"Oh, hell," said Sid. "Give him time. If that girl was going to marry +me I'd climb up a few air-steps myself and stick my head into any old +cloud." + +"Good old Sid!" said Garry affectionately. "You'd be sure to hit your +head on a star and then you'd be amazed and--" + +"Oh, you go to thunder!" blustered Sid. + +By now Kenny's Bohemia was rushing through its yearly cycle of costume +dances. Motley groups emerged at times from Ann's castle and departed +in taxis. + +"And Gawd knows where," said Mrs. Ryan from the third floor front of +the tenement that faced the street. "They're a wild bunch and my +Cassie'll never travel wid 'em. Last week the architeks rigged up +somethin' fierce and danced in 'the streets of Paris,' wid bullyvard +cafes, they called 'em, built into the dance hall, an actress singin' +the Marseillaise in a flag, and a Roosian hussy dancin' in boots. And +Mr. O'Neill, God save him for a pleasant gentleman though a bit wild in +the eye, took my Dinny up to be a gamin. Gay-min. I thought myself he +said a 'gay mon' and Dinny's a bit young; but I found he meant him to +peddle cigarettes about among the tables." + +In the quaint old gowns that were delighting the older painters, Joan +glided through the shifting blare and color unaware of the eyes that +watched and liked her. Not so Kenny. + +He knew who stared and smiled and he knew who stared too long. He was +inordinately proud of her. + +"Kenny, please!" begged Garry. "Let me paint her. I'm going to +California in April and I won't have another chance. I won't be back +until fall." + +"My son--" began Kenny wearily. Then he smiled. "Oh, go ahead, +Garry, darlin'. I'll not be mindin' a bit." + +And Garry curiously enough caught the tantalizing charm of her +sweetness that had baffled many an older and wiser man. + +Shadows had no part in the wonder of Kenny's winter, but an inclination +to forget his quarrel with Brian and his flare of penance, violent and +incomplete--for he had never reached the longed-for grail of his son's +forgiveness--troubled him vaguely. In spasmodic moments of remorse he +read his notebook, tremendously buoyed up by an augmenting +consciousness of evolution. Faint inner voices warned him at times not +to misinterpret his exultant happiness in terms of infallibility and +when they called to him he had his moments of humility and panic. + +In one of them he tried to coax the fern back to life; once with an +alarming air of energy and importance, he departed in a taxi and bought +a great many things for Brian's room; once when miraculously the bank +and he agreed for a brief period upon his balance, he succumbed to a +mathematical fit of uplift and conscience, dashed off a bewildering +number of checks and left the overladen slate of his credit unmarked by +even an I.O.U. His brilliant air of calm and satisfaction thereafter +was distinctly noticeable. + +On the whole he was much too happy to be lonely or introspective. +Brian's absence and his splendid, sacrificial freak of service, had +been the price of Joan's content and the welfare of her brother. + +Whitaker, journalism and God's green world of spring he had chosen +jealously to resent. The thought of Donald West and a dim conviction +of quarry hardships filled him with a new sense of solidarity in Brian +and a passionate respect. The current of his affection for his son was +subtly altering. It was no longer careless and frenzied and +sentimental. Nor was it selfish. Something big and abiding had sprung +up out of the ashes of his penance. + +By the end of March, with a record-breaking period of work behind him +and a furore of notoriety over his striking portrait of a famous beauty +compelling him to a radiant admission of success, Kenny found himself +lulled into the self-respecting quietude he craved. + +Days back self-confidence had come to him in Hannah's kitchen and Adam +Craig, in the course of time, had crushed it out with a keen and +understanding leer. Later it had returned with Adam's death, and the +weary voice of Doctor Cole had shattered it. + +So now on a March night of wind and hail--and this time by telephone +after much tedious trouble with the wire, Doctor Cole's voice, tired, +sorrowful and kind, came stabbing intrusively into his full-blown +equanimity with a message of terror. + +"Mr. O'Neill--" + +"Yes." + +"This is Doctor Cole of Briston, Pennsylvania." + +Kenny stiffened. He had never quite forgiven the doctor for that +bleak, anticlimacteric morning when he had driven dazedly away with +Nellie. Adjectives, like a man's laughter, were to him an irrefutable +test. With one you could definitely prefigure a man's degree of +refinement; with the other the aesthetic color of his soul. And gray +was no color for any mortal's soul. + +"Yes?" + +"Mr. O'Neill," came the kind, tired voice, "I'm sorry, sorrier than I +can tell. I've bad news for you. There has been an accident, a quarry +explosion, and your son is badly injured." + +A hot quiver swept through Kenny's body, ended at his face in a +stinging rush of blood and left him icy cold. + +"Brian!" + +"Yes. . . . Are you there, Mr. O'Neill?" + +"Yes. . . . Yes, I am here. Doctor. . . . How--badly?" + +"He is--well, conscious. I can hardly say more," owned the doctor. +"Thank God he's young and strong. There are no developed symptoms of +fracture yet but his skull--" + +"Fracture! Skull!" + +"There's a chance. Contusion now merely and a swollen condition. The +soft parts are unbroken and that makes an accurate diagnosis difficult, +but I must warn you that there is an immediate risk to his life from +shock and perhaps compression--" + +"Oh, my God!" said Kenny, his eyes wet. + +"You see, Mr. O'Neill," said the doctor sadly, "there may be depressed +fragments of bone or effused blood. We are watching closely. But I +think you had better come to him at once. There is a possibility--" + +But there were some things that even the little doctor could not say. + +"Still there, Mr. O'Neill?" he asked a little later. + +"Yes. Where is Brian now?" + +"In a quarry shack on what we call up here the Finlake mountain." + +"Finlake mountain!" + +"Yes, barely eighteen miles across the valley from the farm. They +couldn't find a doctor. Carson is nearer but he was out. Has a widely +scattered farm practice like my own and Don, frantic with terror, +telephoned to me. We've done everything possible for him, Mr. O'Neill, +but his pulse is pretty feeble and it's difficult to rouse him. +Sensibility of course is blunted. Bound to be--" + +"I will be there," said Kenny, "as soon--as soon as it is possible. +There are but three north-bound trains at Briston?" + +"Morning--eight-ten. Noon, one-twenty-nine and night, seven-fifteen. +But don't get off at Briston, Mr. O'Neill. Finlake, fifteen miles on, +is nearer--" + +"I can not possibly make the morning train. The changes make the trip +long. Twelve hours. . . . God!" + +"I myself will meet you at Finlake. It's three miles farther to the +quarry. If you are not on the noon train I will meet the night--" + +"I--I cannot thank you, Doctor Cole." Kenny hung up, unaware that the +doctor was adding further detail. + +Almost at once he unhooked the receiver and summoned the club central. +Afterward Pietro, who took his turn at the switchboard when the day +operator departed, spoke of the quiet curtness of his voice. + +"Pietro? Mr. O'Neill speaking. I want you, at once, to look up the +earliest connecting train with Finlake, Pennsylvania, any road." + +"Yes, sir," began Pietro. "What--" but the receiver had clicked into +place. + +Kenny stared with a shudder at the withered fern, his face as white as +chalk. + +A tearing hand seemed clinging to his brain. + +In the face of this grief-stricken terror that quaked and burned in his +soul, etching unforgettable scars, the recollection of his unsteady +spurts of penance rose to mock him with their artificiality. His +remorse had been but a pale, theatric spree! And now in this forgetful +winter of his love, Fate had decoyed him into optimistic quietude only +to thrust savagely and deep. Remorse in the raw! Was it +punishment--punishment for the farcical penitent on the highway who had +smiled into a woman's soft eyes, forgetting-- + +He answered Pietro's ring with a throbbing sense of confusion in his +forehead. + +The best connecting train and the earliest left the Pennsylvania +Terminal at eleven. It was now but five. How could he wait? + +"Pietro," he said, "give me now Doctor Barrington's office. And tell +the operator to put me through to his private wire. It's urgent. I do +not want the nurse in the anteroom. When you ring for me I want Dr. +Barrington ready at the other end and I want you yourself, Pietro, to +be sure he's there." + +Pietro, obeyed, amazed and loyal. + +"Frank?" Hot relief surged in Kenny's heart at the chance ease of +connection. "Kenny speaking." + +"Hello, Kenny. Nothing doing for me tonight, old man. I've got to +sleep." + +"I need you, Frank. Brian has been injured--badly--in a quarry +explosion." + +"Kenny!" + +"A chance of skull fracture," said Kenny steadily. "That means?" + +"A possible operation." + +"Can you leave with me at eleven o'clock to-night, Pennsylvania +Terminal? It will mean at least two days. He's at Finlake, +Pennsylvania, barely conscious--in the hands of a country doctor." + +The brilliant industrious young surgeon on the other end gasped and +whistled. He worked and played at heavy pressure. + +"Kenny, old man," he said, "nothing is impossible. Almost this is. +But it's you and Brian and that's enough, I'll meet you at quarter of +eleven. I'll go--thoroughly prepared. Do you feel like telling me +more?" + +"No." + +Two receivers clicked and Kenny, remembering that he could not +definitely locate Joan until six, felt the tautness of his control slip +dangerously. + +Eleven o'clock. . . . How could he wait? He paced the floor, his mind +in its chaotic desperation, numb and inelastic. With his glance upon +the psaltery stick, a dim notion of accounting filtered curiously into +his mind and became obsessional. He went shaking to Brian's room and +put the key of the chiffonier in his pocket. Thank God the studio was +in order, save a chair or two. Brian . . . would . . . be . . . +pleased. Kenny stared at the withered fern and blinked. An augury? +God forbid! Then he flung the bill-file with its heterogeneous +collection of receipted I.O.U.'s into his bulging suit case and called +up Simon Meyer. + +"Simon," he said, "whatever I happen to have there--there's a shotgun, +I know, and a tennis racket and some fishing rods. . . . The rest for +the moment I can't recall. . . . I want you to put all of it in a +bundle and send it here at once by special messenger. I have the +tickets here. . . . I'll have them ready. . . . Yes, I'll give him a +check. . . . No, Simon, it won't be certified and he'll take it as it +is." + +He rang off and searched impatiently for pawn tickets. Simon's +messenger arrived and, strained and hostile, Kenny looked over the +contents of the bundle and wrote a check. + +Alone in the studio again, he flung up a window, his mind pushing ahead +to eleven o'clock. It seemed to him then that he could not possibly +wait and go on fighting for his self-control. A gust of sleet and hail +swept in with a pattering sound upon the floor. Its cold, stinging +contact with his face refreshed him. Kenny's brain cleared. He gulped +and gasped. Garry's car! He would not wait. + +"Frank," he telephoned after an unavailing interval of search for +Garry, "if you're willing we'll motor to Finlake in Garry's car. He'll +not be mindin'. I borrow it often. It's a bad night of course--but we +could start now. And we can make time on the road. It's barely two +hundred and fifty miles but the branch roads and changes make +unendurable delay. Shall I come for you in half an hour?" + +Again Barrington gasped. Again he whistled. "Make it three quarters," +he said, "and I think I can swing it." + +"You're a jewel for sense," Kenny told him, a passionate note of +gratitude in his voice. "I love you for it." + +He called Ann's studio at six. Joan had not returned. Ann took the +message, startled and sympathetic. + +"I'll wire her in the morning," he said and, hanging up, found that +Sidney Fahr had come in. He stood with his back against the door, his +round face blank with terror. + +"Kenny," he stammered, "I--I couldn't help hearing." The hot sympathy +he could not bring himself to utter, flamed desperately in his +face--almost to the ruin of Kenny's iron control. "I--I--I can do +something, can't I, Kenny?" + +"Yes, Sid, darlin', you can," said Kenny gently. "I'm taking Garry's +car. You can square me with him." + +"I--I'd even thrash him," mumbled Sid. + +"Then if you will I'd like you to get in touch with Westcott's wife and +tell her. I'm painting her portrait. She comes to-morrow at ten. +Sid, could you--could you clean off those two chairs?" + +Sid fell upon the nearest chair with fearful energy. At the table +Kenny hurriedly wrote a check. + +"And to-morrow I want you to deposit this to Brian's account. I'm +paying back--what I owe him." His mouth worked. + +"Oh, Sid!" he said, his face scarlet. + +"Now, now, now, Kenny," choked the little painter, winking and making +horrible faces at the littered chair, "don't you go to taking on. +Don't you do it. I'll call up Westcott. The old gladiator!" Somehow +he turned his sniffle to a snort. "What in thunder does she want to be +painted for anyway? She's got a nose like a triangle and the +composition of her face is all wrong." + +He blinked away the wetness on his lashes and wondered why, with every +other chair in the studio clear, Kenny should make a point of the +littered two. But he did not ask. Instead he entered upon a period of +fruitless and agitated trotting that lasted until Kenny came hack from +the garage with Garry's car. Then Sid packed him in, made one last +terrible face and bolted across the sidewalk for the door. + +Beyond the threshold he bolted for a telephone. + +"Jan," he said in shocked tones, "I want you to come down to the bar +and watch me. I--I've made up my mind to get drunk. I've got to." He +gulped. "I'll tell you why when you come down." + +"Oh, fiddlesticks!" said Jan in a bored voice. "Go down to the grill +and eat something. And order me an English mutton chop and some +macaroni. I'll be down to dinner in five minutes." + +Sid aggrievedly obeyed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +ON FINLAKE MOUNTAIN + +Frank Barrington was to tell wryly in the grillroom of that night-ride +in the sleety wind through a polar world of ghostly, ice-hung trees. +Every flying rod of the sleazy road he knew was a peril. Even the +chains failed at times to grip. For eight hours the whir of the motor +and the tearing sound of the wind blared in his ears. For eight hours +he marveled at the silence and efficiency of the muffled driver beside +him who had apparently said all he intended to say upon the ferry. He +drove even faster than Frank had anticipated; and he drove with more +care, as if, defiantly, he feared the traps of an evil destiny to keep +him from his goal. At times he turned the swiveled searchlight upon a +road-sign and evoked a glistening play of silver on the trees. Once, +cursing, he changed a tire; once the car skidded dangerously in a +circle but to Frank his air of confidence was hypnotically convincing. +The final stretch of the journey became a dim and frosty blur of sleety +trees. + +At Finlake they began to climb. It was after three when the headlights +blazed upon the quarry. + +"I wired the doctor to wait," said Kenny. "He knows you're with me." + +"We leave the car here?" + +"We'll have to." He turned his searchlight on the cliff ahead. +"There's a path yonder." + +"And which shack, I wonder?" + +"There's a light in only one." + +Frank worked his stiffened face to relieve the feeling of cold +contorted rubber and followed Kenny up the path. Light glimmered dimly +through the jungle of frost upon the shack window. Fronded whitely by +the sleet, the panes loomed out of the dark like an incandescent series +of camera plates, bizarre and oriental. Frank shivered in the wind. + +Doctor Cole opened the door. Beyond in the rude room of the shack a +lamp flared smokily. + +"Brian?" said Kenny, his color gone. + +"Why," said Doctor Cole, "his pulse is a lot stronger, Mr. O'Neill, and +he complains now of pain--" + +"That means?" + +"It means, Kenny," said Frank Barrington, "that he has passed on +normally to the stage of reaction." But his keen, intelligent eyes +sought Doctor Cole with a furtive lifting of his brows and asked a +question. + +"Not a sign," said the little doctor gladly. "If anything he's a shade +too wide awake. And irritable. I've been setting his leg--" + +Kenny wheeled fiercely. + +"His leg!" he said. "His leg!" + +"I'm sorry," stammered the doctor. "I--I quite forgot you didn't +know. . . . Broken between the knee and the hip," he added, turning to +Barrington. "I thought it merely paresis of the muscles until--" + +"Where is he?" put in Kenny sharply. "What room?" + +"There are only two rooms here," said Doctor Cole. "The stairway's +yonder." + +"Just a minute, Kenny." Frank checked him with a gesture. "I'm going +up first with Doctor Cole." + +Kenny groaned. + +"Sit down," said Frank kindly. "Where's some brandy? Thank you, +Doctor. Now, Kenny, listen, please. The first risk to Brian's life is +past. I mean death from shock. He's not drowsy and he's feeling pain. +His leg, in the face of other possibilities, is merely painful. But I +must look at his head--" + +"Frank, darlin'," said Kenny patiently, "I brought you up here to order +us all around. Go to it." + +He flung himself into a chair by the stove and drowsing after a while +in a reactive sweep of exhaustion, awakened with a terrified jerk. A +boy was banking the red-hot stove, his white face like and yet +unlike--Joan's. + +"Mr. O'Neill," he blurted with a boyish sob, "I--I did it. I was +driving the mule-cart up the path. Grogan told me not to but I--I +coaxed Tony. And when some earth crumbled ahead I jerked back--too +quickly--and scared the mule. I've got to tell somebody. I've got +to. . . . And nobody listens--" + +"Tell me the rest," said Kenny wanly. "I've been wonderin'." + +"You see, Mr. O'Neill," he gulped, his eyes dark with grief and horror, +"the mule went back upon his haunches and drove the cart against a +boulder. It came out and crashed over the ledge and through the roof +of the dynamite shack--" + +"God!" In that vivid moment of his picturing, Kenny wondered why he +should think of bouillon cups crashing loudly on a roof. + +"And the other men were only scratched. A while ago--when Brian sent +for me--he thought of it through all his pain--" + +"He would," said Kenny. + +"I--I wanted to kill myself." + +"Oh, nonsense," said Kenny kindly. + +Don flung his arm across his eyes and sobbed aloud. + +"Oh," he choked, "if someone would only swear at me!" + +"I--I'd like to," said Kenny wryly, "for your sake and for my own, but +I'm all--in." + +He stared dully at the fire until the stair creaked and Frank came in +with Doctor Cole. + +"There isn't yet," Frank told him, "a single pressure symptom that I +consider alarming and Doctor Cole has done wonders with his leg. But +any emotional excitement is a danger. Three minutes, old man." He +followed Kenny up the stairway, watch in hand. + +The raftered room was dim and quiet. Kenny sickened at the faint odor +of antiseptics and softly closed the door. + +Brian opened his eyes. + +"Kenny, old dear," he said softly, "all these doctors are boobs. Frank +in particular is an awful ass. I told him so. He's loaded with fool +questions. One look at the Irish face of you is worth them all." + +Kenny, staring at the pallid face upon the pillow, blinked and smiled. + +"Frank told me you drove up here through the sleet," marveled Brian, +clinging to his hand. "A god-forsaken spot! I'm sorry--" + +"Three minutes!" warned Frank Barrington at the door. He knew Kenny +much too well to trust him further. + +And Kenny made a wry face and departed--with torture in his throat. +His voice had failed him utterly. + +A sleety dawn was graying at the windows. + +"Bed!" commanded Barrington briefly. + +"Doctor Cole has found another shack. He's waiting for you." + +"And you?" + +"I'll sleep to-morrow." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +IN THE SPAN OF A DAY + +Kenny slept heavily until three that afternoon. Don wakened him. + +"My sister is here," he said. + +"Joan!" + +Don stared a little at his quick, astonished warmth. + +"She wired Doctor Cole," he said, "and went to the farm. He brought +her back with him at noon." + +"The heart of her! I might have known. And Brian?" + +Brian, it seemed, was wakeful and nervous, his pain intense. The +pressure symptoms had not advanced. + +"Head's better," Don finished. "They've watched him like a hawk. But +they're letting up a bit now--" + +"And Dr. Barrington?" + +"Asleep downstairs." + +"Here?" + +"Yes. We found another cot. The car's in Grogan's shed." + +From the quarry below came the rumble of a blast. + +"Would you think--" he demanded, but the futility of his protest made +him dumb. + +"The world keeps on going," said Kenny. He dressed hurriedly. + +"Women," commented Don gloomily, following him down the stairs, "are +queer. My sister wept all over me. As if I hadn't had enough +shocks--" + +He caught his breath and stumbled. In the room below Barrington +stirred. + +"Quiet, Don!" warned Kenny, sensing the tears of heartbreak that +quivered on his lashes. He read the boy's hot heart with a renewed +shock of understanding; they were namelessly akin. + +Cold sunlight lay upon the cluster of shacks. The wind that bore the +rumble of the quarry upward was sharp and gusty and laden with stinging +particles of grit. A group of Italian women, chattering and +gesticulating in, apparently, unheeded unison, lingered near the shack +where Brian lay, agonizingly conscious of nerve and body, irritably +weary of the inevitable doctor at his bedside. Kenny charged them with +a look of indignation and shooed them to retreat in maledictory Italian. + +Inside Joan was busy at the stove. + +Kenny caught her hands, protesting, praising, thanking in a breath, and +Don, regarding them with a look of frank and bitter comprehension, +moved off toward the window with all a boy's disgust. In the span of a +day he had learned and suffered over-much. Grogan's world of drills +and noise down there was heartless and insistent. . . . It went on and +on, puffing, drilling, sorting rattling stone. Up here in the shack +was the lunacy of heart-things apart from him. The thought filled him +with jealous anger. And upstairs-- He wheeled and glared, fighting +down the agony in his throat. Kenny was moving toward the stairway. + +"Mr. O'Neill," barked Don, "Dr. Barrington particularly said you--you +were not to go up there. He said that Brian's got to have the--the +quiet kind around--" + +Joan's quick stare of reproach brought the color to his face. + +"I--I beg your pardon, Mr. O'Neill," he blurted. "He said--he said he +must have quiet." + +"It's all right," said Kenny ruefully. "Quite all right. You've been +up?" he added quietly. + +Don dug his toe into the floor and a hot flush suffused his forehead. + +"To tell you the truth," he said with some annoyance, "Doctor +Barrington wouldn't let me in. He seems to be able to manage a good +many things at once." + +"Ah!" said Kenny. + +"We must find still another cot," said Joan, pouring coffee at the +stove. + +So in the dark hours of nervous unrestraint that marked for Don and +Kenny that lagging period of terror and suspense, Joan stepped to the +helm and steered. And there was need of steering. + +Chaos would have reigned without it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +A FACE + +Vagueness lay for Brian in that shack room where the noise of forest +trees mourned always at the window. Only pain was sharp . . . +colossal, rearing misshapen out of the blur induced by an awful +weakness. Sleep wrenched him for horrible dreaming minutes from his +world of pain. Pain wrenched him back. At times a mammoth terror lay +in his soul, undefined yet grotesquely positive, as if, pushing back, +his consciousness foresaw that horrific catastrophe of noise and +belching terror, and waited, unable to sense any of its details save +the single one of personal tragedy and pain. There were cramped +minutes when the rafters of the peaked roof seemed pressing down upon +him . . . and minutes of a diffused reaching out when the world, torn +by internal explosion, seemed flying away from him in fragments, even +walls receding from his cot which stayed, by a miracle, alone upon a +wind-swept moor. + +Intervals were an eternity. Familiarity with the detail of the room +engendered frantic loathing. His brain conned over the faded colors in +the rag rug and encountered the unchangeable, bayonet-like crack in the +mirror with nervous fury. No peace came with the darkness. Each +familiar thing persisted, looming clearer to his tired mind by the very +effort his straining eyes made to reach it. There was the table +clogged with doctors' litter . . . and there the other cot where Frank +pretended to sleep and kept his vigil . . . there the chair . . . and +there the dab of yellow in the rug that the sun struck into faded +gayety in the morning . . . and there the crack across the mirror, the +wriggling, distorted, foolish crack that seemed alive for all its +sameness. And there was always the noise of wind which became a +corollary of his pain, pulsing with it, never quiet, an overtone that +tragically would not yield. + +Into the blur of wind and weakness and pain came two miracles--a red +geranium peering out of the dusk of the room like a glowing coal, +unfamiliar and therefore a delight--a bit of velvet laughter in the +drab that caught his whole attention . . . the other a face. The face +came first in a cloud of flower-spotted purple that he knew clearly was +in some way related to the hypodermic needle Frank had plunged into his +arm while the sunset still lay painted on the window. . . . It took +form in the purple like a pansy--that face--grew sweet and vivid and +very real. Mercifully its loveliness was changeable, losing its pansy +purples and gaining glints of gold . . . becoming less a pansy . . . +more a face flower-like with compassion. + +"And now?" wondered Brian when the face came again. + +"It is morning," said Joan. + +At the sound of her voice there came within him an extraordinary +fusing, at once a pain and a delight . . . fragments of memory . . . a +moonbeam . . . tears . . . the crackle of a fire . . . a quarry +mist . . . the glory of stars . . . a meaning . . . a motive that +startled and defied him. + +"There should be moonlight on your hair," said Brian, drifting slowly +back to a knowledge of reality and pain. + +"Moonlight?" + +"You are Joan." + +"Yes. At least until Doctor Cole finds someone else, I am at times +your nurse. The pain, Brian?" She bent over him, straightening a +pillow, touching his forehead with cool, questioning fingers. + +"Not worse," said Brian. + +"I am glad." + +"There was a purple cloud," he said, frowning. + +"The drug. Doctor Barrington wanted you to sleep." + +"And the geranium?" His eyes sought it with relief. + +"Kenny found it. Grogan's wife had it in her window. I think he must +have bullied her a little--" + +"Bless him! . . . Where's the mirror?" + +"Downstairs. I'm sleeping there." + +"Thank God!" He closed his eyes, his color ebbing. "This plaster +cast," he apologized, "is like a suit of armor. It bothers me." + +"Poor fellow! . . . Can you eat?" + +"Not--yet. . . . Who's cooking?" + +"Sometimes Don; sometimes I--unless the doctor sends me here. +Once--Kenny." + +Brian smiled. + +"You are very good," he said simply. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +THE PENITENT + +Brian's skull was young and elastic. It saved him much, but Barrington +lingered until the period of suspense was at an end. Kenny drove him +to the Finlake station. + +"This car has been a godsend," he said. + +"And Garry's wired me to keep it. He's going to the coast." + +"When?" + +"Thursday." + +Kenny's eyes were moist and grateful. + +"Ah, Frank, darlin', you're a jewel!" + +"Piffle!" countered Frank. "Kenny, old dear, I think you hit a +chicken. If at any time," he added at the station, "you feel the need +of me, I want you to wire. He's bound to be nervous. And if his +convalescence seems slow and irksome, remember that the reaction of a +shock like that isn't merely physical." + +Kenny wrung his hand in silence. He motored home, oppressed by the +bare line of hills and the noise of the quarry. + +As usual the sight of Joan dispelled his gloom. Brian's pain was less. +He had fallen asleep of his own accord. + +"He asked for you," she added. + +"You told him Frank wouldn't let me in?" + +"Yes." + +"Hum. . . . Where's Don?" + +"I sent him to the store." + +Kenny darted away with an air of expectancy to the other shack, whence, +after an excited period of foraging, he emerged, carrying a bundle. +Frank, knowing him well enough to read his shining enthusiasm aright, +would have turned him back at Brian's door without a qualm. But Frank +was not at hand. + +"You look like a kid sneaking home with a stray cat!" Brian told him +with a grin. + +"What's in the bundle?" + +"I've tried so many times to get in," admitted Kenny, "with Frank +nippin' me just as my hand was on the knob, that I'm feelin' a bit +surreptitious." He held up a tennis racket and a shotgun. + +"And everything else," he boasted with an air of triumph, "that I took +to Simon." + +"And the bill-file!" exclaimed Brian, staring at the litter on the +floor. "Jemima!" + +"You remember it, Brian? You hated the sight of it. 'Tis the stiletto +I stuck in a chunk of wax--" + +"Lord, yes! And you wrote the I.O.U.'s on anything from a playing card +to the end of a shirt." + +"And never paid 'em until I had to," said Kenny with an unyielding air +of self-contempt. "Many the time you checked 'em off, Brian, and +rebuked me as you should. But that, by the Blessed Bell of Clare, is +all behind me." + +He proudly exhibited the bizarre collection of scraps, initialed in +token of debt and reinitialed in token of payment. + +"Brian--I--I--" + +"Go ahead, old boy," said Brian, his eyes tender. "I can see you've +got a lot on your mind." + +"I paid 'em--every one!" + +"So I see." + +"And never again will you have to bookkeep lies. I'm that truthful now +Sid worries a bit!" + +Brian's amazed eyes twinkled. + +"You delicious lunatic!" he said. + +"I practiced," went on Kenny with his lips compressed. "I practiced +hard--up at the farm with Adam." + +"Joan's told me you were there. I can't quite hitch things together +yet, but I will in time." + +"A landslide of things seemed to happen the minute you went--" + +"I always had a feeling," admitted Brian, "that if I didn't stick +around and keep an eye on you, a lot of things would happen." + +"They did. They've been happenin' ever since." + +Brian flushed and put out his hand. + +"Kenny, surely you guessed. I was sorry--" + +"Jewel machree, I was fair sick about the shotgun. And after you went +I was willing to be sorry about anything--to get you back." + +"And Ann's statuette. Lord, I burn when I think of it." + +"You couldn't be blamed for a bit of temper. You're Irish, lad, and an +O'Neill. 'Tis a splendid inheritance but volcanic too." He changed +color and began to roam around the room, his mind casting up a painful +memory. + +"You'll never guess," he went on moodily, "what fell upon the head of +me after you went. John Whitaker came up and took a shot at me. And +Garry. And then after a while when I was quieter, old Adam, stirring +me up afresh. My ears are as used to the truth as my tongue." + +"It's a darned shame!" said Brian warmly. Kenny sighed. + +"Ah, Brian," he said wistfully, "I was needin' it all. You can't +conceive until you put your mind to it or--or write it down, what a +failure I've been--" + +"Failure!" + +"As a parent. Even my penance on the road was--was like the rest." + +"Your _penance_!" + +"I bought a corncrib and a mule," flung out Kenny, roaming turbulently +around the room, "and thrashed a farmer. And I hated the rain and the +smell of cheese and burned up the corn-crib--" + +"Kenny, what are you talking about?" + +Inexorably intent upon the easing of his conscience Kenny told the tale +of his penance with terrifying honesty and truth. + +Brian listened and dared not smile. + +"At first I--I hoped to find a clue," finished Kenny, wiping the sweat +from his forehead. "And then after I--I saw Joan I hoped I wouldn't. +You're not blamin' me, Brian?" + +"Not a bit. I'd have lingered myself." + +"The heart of you!" said Kenny, biting his lips. "I don't deserve it. +Lad, dear, the sunsets are past. I'm understandin'. And if you want +Whitaker's job, I--I'm willing. If you'd rather come back to the +studio and free-lance, I--I want you to know--" he gulped--"that +things are different. There's order there and the--the chairs are +cleared. Never a chair but what you can sit down on without staring +behind you. You wished that, Brian--" + +Brian turned his head. + +"Yes," he said. There were tears and laughter in his voice. + +"The money and clothes I borrowed," went on Kenny fervidly, "are paid +back. The clothes are safe in a new chiffonier and here's the key. I +sealed it in an envelope and well I did. I was badly needin' some +things you had and Pietro went out and bought them for me. As for my +temper, it's a lot better. A lot! Sid marvels at it. I--I do myself. +It all comes from the hell up there on the ridge with Adam." He drew a +long breath. "I've a record of work that will fill you with pride. +And though I seem to have a lot of money, I haven't bought a foolish +thing since the corncrib. There's plebeian regularity enough in my +money affairs now, Brian, to please even you! Though I'm havin' a bit +of a struggle with my check book. You can see for yourself, can't you, +Brian, 'twould not be the disorderly Bohemia you seem to hate? 'Twould +not be hand-to-mouth. Mind, I'm not seekin' to persuade you. So help +me God, I--I want you to do just what you want to do yourself--" + +"Kenny," said Brian dangerously, "if you go on one second more, you'll +have me sniffling--" + +Horrified and guilty, Kenny bolted for the door, his hand clenched in +his hair. + +"One thing more, Brian," he said, wheeling, "I--I've got to say it. +I've anchored that damned stick to the psaltery with a shoestring. +We--we couldn't lose it!" + +And closing the door, Kenny again wiped his forehead, remembering sadly +that he had planned to wind his son around his finger and induce him to +return. It had been the trend of all his preparation and resolve. And +now--what? He had choked back his inclination and begged Brian, with +impassioned sincerity, to do precisely what would please him most. + +He wondered why the anticlimax brought him--peace. + +When Doctor Cole arrived an hour later he found the shack in turmoil. +The truant hour of laughter and excitement, Kenny told him in a panic +of remorse, had sharpened Brian's pain. His pulse was galloping. With +a sigh the little doctor drugged his tossing patient into troubled +sleep. + + +Again through a cloud of flower-spotted purple shot now with gleams of +light as from a camp fire, Brian drifted unquietly, conscious of odd +and unrelated things, stars that turned to eyes, a moonbeam that broke +upon a pine-bough and fell in a shower of moon-silvered tears; in the +tears a face that turned perversely to a pansy. Then something snapped +and crackled sharply and he sat beside a camp fire, conscious of an +indefinable fusing within him. Beyond in a curling milk-white mist lay +the pansy, half a flower--half a face. It floated toward him, +sometimes part of the smoke from his fire, sometimes but a +flower-shadow in the cloud of purple. Brian strained to see it clearly +and could not until the inner fusing came again and Joan stood by the +fire, the sheen of moonlight on her hair. + +"You did so much for him," she said, "and now--the boulder!" + +Brian furrowed his forehead in painful concentration. + +"I thought I did it all for Don," he said. "For months I've thought so +but since something fused here in my heart, something linked to tears +and stars and moonlight and the crackle of a fire, I know I did it all +for you." + +"For me, Brian!" + +"For you!" + +In the cloud of purple Joan's eyes grew round and unbelieving. + +"Your face, all tears and sorrow and sweetness," said Brian stubbornly, +"etched itself on my memory the night Don ran away." + +"I--I did not know you saw me." + +"I know now that all I did that night I did for you. Don swore at +you--remember?" + +The flower-like face in the purple cloud saddened. Brian distinctly +heard the crackle of the camp fire. + +"I thrashed him for it!" + +"You said in your letter--" + +"I said I would help him, yes, but I wrote and I made Don write because +I could not bear to have you hurt and worried. And even at the quarry, +when I was keen to be off to Whitaker, I saw your face in the mist, +urging me to stay--to stay and help Don. And I did--for you. I know +that all these things I did for you. I _know_!" + +But again he was staring at a pansy and the cloud of purple floated +hazily away. Tired, ill and aeons old, Brian opened his eyes. + +"I'm glad you're awake," said Joan gently. "You were dreaming. Drugs +frighten me." + +"Nothing was clear," said Brian, touching his forehead, "but the pansy +and you. And purple--like that." He pointed to her ring. "What an +odd ring it is, Joan! Wistaria?" + +Joan nodded, her color bright. + +"Wistaria on a ladder. It's the ring Kenny gave me." + +Brian's startled eyes met and held her own. "Why?" he asked. + +"I'm going to marry him. Didn't you know?" + +"No," said Brian. "I--I didn't know." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +APRIL + +April with its tender flame of green brought lagging days of worry. +Brian, said Kenny wistfully, was just--not Brian. He was an irritable +convalescent in a plaster cast, too nervous to be patient. His pain +had been intense, the shock disastrous to his self-control. The +haggard mark of it upon his face Don read with scalding heart and +brooded. When after a refractory week of undisciplined nerves and +temper that strained the doctor's endurance to the breaking point, +Brian went out of his head for forty-eight hours and babbled like a +madman about a face in the mist, Kenny in terror wired for Frank +Barrington. Brian, he thought, must be frantic with pain. + +Frank came, mystified and apprehensive. He found a white and apathetic +patient who, with his delirium gone, denied abnormal pain. + +"It isn't pain," Frank reported. "Of that I'm convinced. His head's +in excellent condition and his danger of lameness is at an end. Though +he resented the suggestion, I think there's something on his mind. And +whatever it is, he's much too shattered nervously to give it a normal +valuation." + +"Keep that kid out of his room," advised Kenny hotly. "I can't. He +moons around up there like a ghost. Brian admits that he's so sorry +for him at times that it makes him feel sick." + +"Hum!" said Frank and went in search of Don. + +"I suppose you think I'm too much of a kid to have an opinion," Don +told him, his face white and fierce, "but I--I did it. And I watch him +more than anybody else--" He choked and blinked back boyish tears of +indignation. + +"Keep Mr. O'Neill out of Brian's room," he snorted. "He'd excite +anybody!" + +"I intend to keep you all out," was Frank's verdict in the end. "All +but the nurse and Joan. Joan's not temperamental and she has nothing +on her conscience. She has moreover a sedative convincing type of +cheer that's a mighty good influence. The rest of you are simply on a +sentimental spree of penance. You, Kenny, are so anxious to square +yourself that you make him nervous and he fumes and blames himself. +And Don can't look at him without remorse in his eyes. You're both too +flighty and penitential for Brian's good." + +Frank departed and Joan compassionately set herself to sentinel the +sickroom. There were trying hours when her voice alone had power to +soothe the querulous young savage whose tired eyes begged them all to +forgive him. + +Nurses came and nurses hopelessly departed. Brian hated and hounded +them all with savage and impartial persistence. He was jarring even +the little doctor out of his normal weary calm. + +"I've seen him flat on the back of him before," Kenny confided to Joan +in some distress, "a lamb for sense! But now he's tiring you out." + +"You mustn't blame him," urged Joan. "He never asks me to come. I go +always of my own accord and oftener now since Frank scolded. He's +lonely without you and Donald and he hates the nurse--" + +"He hates 'em all," said Kenny. + +"No matter how nervous he is, I can read him to sleep." + +"Ah, colleen!" There was a flash of reverence in Kenny's eyes. It +mutely thanked her. + +"I can't forget what he did for Don. Nor can I forget that Don's +impulse--" + +"Don remembers too." + +Joan sighed. + +"He worries me, Kenny--Don, I mean. Sometimes I think he sees in my +help the one atonement he can make: he fumes and reproaches so when +Brian is nervous or lonely. He even dreams of the boulder." + +"And the year of study, mavourneen?" + +Joan's face clouded. + +"Don needs me," she said. "He would be frantic here alone. I cannot +desert him." + +"Nor I," said Kenny. "But the year of waiting ends at Samhain." + +"Yes," said Joan, coloring. "I have given Don the money," she added. +"If now he would only study!" + +"He shall!" said Kenny and set himself to the finishing of Brian's +winter task. That sacrifice, at least, he decided, nagging Don into +hours of study that were a godsend to them both, should not become an +anticlimax. He had paid once--in ragged money. For Joan's sake he +would pay willingly again in time. Brian and Joan and Don--and he +himself, with indolence for once in his life unwelcome, would be +happier for the effort. But there were moments of clash and irritation +when Don's energy flagged and he flung his books aside in black disgust. + +"No use," he said moodily. "I can't work. I've got too much on my +mind." + +Kenny merely looked at him. + +Don flushed. + +"Mr. O'Neill," he barked. + +"Shut up!" thundered Kenny, "I don't propose to quarrel now or at any +other time." + +They glared at each other in nervous indignation. + +"Brian," Kenny added with a sniff, "was sure you could swing it. I +never was. You need balance and a sense of responsibility." + +Don gritted his teeth and worked in an inexhaustible spurt of endurance. + +"Stop wandering around the room and kicking things," Kenny commanded +more than once with his own hand clenched in his hair. "If you don't +remember, you don't remember, and that's an end of it. Here's the +book. Look it over while I'm smoking." + +Once when the clash had a suspicious ring of familiarity, he grinned. + +"What's the matter?" demanded Don huffily. "What are you laughing at? +Me?" + +"No," said Kenny. "I was just thinking of a man I know. Name's +Whitaker." + +Thus May came with a warm wind of spice and fresh misgivings furrowed +the doctor's brow. + +"Now that the windows are opened so much," he fretted, "the rumble of +that quarry is inferno. The blasts bother him?" + +"He jumps," said Joan. + +"I thought so. He must have peace and quiet. If Mr. O'Neill is +willing, we'll move him to the farm." + +By the time the orchard flung out its white prayer of blossoms to the +sun, the doctor had his patient at the farm. + +And summer dreamed again upon the hills. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +HONEYSUCKLE DAYS + +Pine-sweet wind still blew around the cabin, the sylvan river laughed +in the sun, wistaria hung grape-like on the ladder of vine; but over it +all, to Kenny, brooded the pathos of change. + +He longed wistfully for the gay vitality of that other summer when +every day had been an exquisite intaglio of laughter. There were times +when unreasonably he even missed Adam. How the nights in contrast had +sharpened the joy of his days! And he hated the village boy who +ferried the punt back and forth upon the river, hated the horn with its +transforming miracles of reminiscence, for it pointed the nameless lack +of sparkle now that struck melancholy into his soul. He had lived in +Arcady and jealously he would have hoarded each detail of its charm. + +The days were long and quiet. Life for all of them centered around the +wheel-chair on the porch. There Joan read aloud while the nurse kept +wisely in the background, and Hannah at meal-times set the table on the +porch. + +In the long afternoons of study that Kenny spent with Don, Brian +asserted his independence and banished books. He seemed content to +talk. Joan listened eagerly to his tales of the road, never tiring of +Don's vagabond adventures. After the worried months of monotony and +pain, the afternoons of reminiscence were tonic for them both. Lazy +humor crept back to Brian's eyes. At times he whistled. Wind and sun +were tanning his skin to the hue of health. + +He had his dark hours. Every effort then to cheer him left him tired +and quiet. Talk of the chain of circumstances that had, oddly, brought +them all together, he avoided with a frown. Any reference to her life +in New York, Joan found, plunged him into gloom. Was it, she wondered, +because he knew his accident had brought her year of play and study to +an end? She longed passionately to tell him how easy it had been for +her--how trifling, as a sacrifice, in the face of his kindness to Don; +but shyness held her back. + +"Honeysuckle days!" Brian called his days of convalescence, for the +vine upon the porch hung full. + +"Is it so hot in the pines?" he wondered one sultry afternoon. + +"No," said Joan. "There it's always dark and cool and quiet. When you +can walk, Brian, you must see the cabin." + +Heat quivered visibly in the valley. A faint breeze frolicked now and +then upon the ridge, fluttering the honeysuckle and the pages of an +open book upon the table. + +"I'm glad it isn't," said Brian in relief. "Somehow I can't imagine +Kenny off there in a hot cabin striding up and down and grilling Don. +He's so--so combustible. As a matter of fact," he added, "I can't +imagine him in any sort of cabin grilling Don. Soft-hearted lunatic!" + +"Don gets awfully on his nerves," said Joan, shaking her head. "If it +wasn't that he's doing it for you--" + +"For me, Joan!" + +Joan nodded. + +"What you began, he'll finish for you. He said so. It bothered him +that all those dreary months you spent at the quarry just to help Don +might be in vain. Don went so dreadfully to pieces." + +"Sentimental old hothead," grumbled Brian, touched and pleased. "I +love him for it." + +"I wonder if you realize how much he cares!" + +"For--you?" asked Brian quietly. "Yes." + +"No, no," said Joan, coloring. "For you. For you he has worked +through splendidly to--to less of self. And so has Don. It's a +wonderful tribute, Brian. To inspire something fine and beautiful is +fine and beautiful itself." + +Brian stared uncomfortably at a red barn in the valley. + +"To have something dormant inside that catches fire and burns up +splendidly into unselfishness is better," he said. "This porch is like +a throne. One sits up here among the honeysuckles and finds a world of +summer at his feet." + +"Last summer," remembered Joan, "Kenny used to tell me over and over +again that you were all things in one. All, Brian. Think of it! +Almost," she finished demurely, "I came to believe it." + +Brian glanced at her in droll suspicion. Her eyes laughed at him with +the wholesome mischief of a child. + +"Almost!" he countered. "I insist upon my full meed of perfection. +When did I lose it?" + +"When you hounded the nurse--" + +"Plural noun," amended Brian wryly. + +"Plural," agreed Joan. "I knew then that the idol had clay feet." + +Brian groaned. + +"Haven't you?" + +"Yes," he said. "And a clay head. But I was never an idol." + +"Oh, yes you were!" said Joan. "When you gave up your trip abroad to +help Don, you became to me a wonderful sort of--of selfless young +god--" + +"Joan!" He stared at her in panic. + +"Truly. And I'd rather have you human. I always thought of you with +thankful worship--" + +"I approve the attitude," said Brian mischievously. "Please state +when and why discontinued." + +"The minute I met you." + +"Phew! That I consider unnecessarily heartless candor. Did you ever +hear of tempering the wind to the shorn lamb?" + +"If I had met you in the end, alive and well," said Joan thoughtfully, +"I would have kept you up there on your pedestal out of mortal reach +but you came into my life, hurt and pitiful, and you needed help, my +sort of help, and something humanized you. You were no longer a god. +You were something human--" + +"Thank God for that!" said Brian. + +"Besides," added Joan, twinkling, "you had clay feet. Garry wrote me +that you had an Irish temper--" + +"And I told you to write him!" + +"I asked him _all_ about you," said Joan. "He wrote me such a splendid +letter. It made me like you--more. And you can't know what it meant +when you wrote and pledged yourself to help Don." + +"Garry is my press agent," said Brian with a sniff, "I pay him. And +I'll dock him for the part about my temper." + +"Brian, so often I--I've wanted to thank you!" + +"Don't," he begged. "Please don't. What I did--you see," he +stammered, "it just--happened." + +"Like the letter you wrote to me, praising someone else to guarantee +your own respectability. Is it always someone else, Brian? Don't you +ever think of yourself?" + +"Lying here," said Brian moodily, "I've thought of little else. +There's Hannah with the tablecloth. It can't be six o'clock." + +"It is," said Joan. "And Mr. Abbott's coming to supper." + +She fled in a panic. + +"Will the child never have done with chains?" Hannah demanded as the +weeks slipped by. + +"When it wasn't Don, it was old Adam. And now it's someone else. And +Mr. O'Neill's got more patience, Hughie, than I ever thought was in +him." + +"I like him better t'other way," said Hughie. "Things is livelier. +I'd sooner be diggin' dots than dronin' along so poky." + +"It's my opinion," put in Hannah tartly, "that last summer just about +spoiled your taste for anything but the life of a pirate. If you must +have somebody throwin' a bottle at your head or dumpin' ministers into +the river or diggin' treasure, things have come to a pretty pass." + +Hughie whistled. + +"I ain't the only one that's restless," he defended. "Don's as +contraptious as a mule. And I've caught a look in young O'Neill's eye +once or twice like old Sim's black mare, mettlesome and anxious to +bolt." + +"Until Joan slips into a chair with a book or some work," snapped +Hannah. "Then he's a lamb. If I was Mr. O'Neill I'd thrash Don into +common sense and I'd remind t'other young man, son or no son, that the +nurse ain't earnin' her keep. Joan's earnin' it for her." + +Alone, Kenny owned, one can not be gay and lunch in glens where the wee +folk hide and whisper. And Joan and he himself had chains. He +accepted the summer with a wry grimace, reading in its irksome demands +a chance for real requital. He found no bitterness in the cup he had +set himself to drink. It was the price of Brian's welfare and Brian's +peace of mind. But he hungered for Joan and the long, gay days of +another summer. When had she grown up so, he wondered impatiently. He +missed the romping child with the sun shadows in her hair; he missed +her eager tears and laughter. To his skillful touch they had been but +strings of a beautiful harp, subtly, unfailingly responsive. Ah! she +had been a beautiful promise--that starved child of a summer ago--but +the promise fulfilled in the woman, he owned with a rush of feeling, he +loved more. Her essential tenderness, strumming kindred chords in his +sensitive Celtic soul, aroused an unfamiliar sense of the holiness of +love. + +And he was splendidly afire with dreams. + +In July the little doctor found his patient strong enough for crutches +and dismissed the nurse. And unexpectedly John Whitaker arrived, +growling his opinion of the rural trains. + +"Can you walk without your crutches?" he barked, his glasses oddly +moist. + +"A little," said Brian. + +Whitaker sat down and blinked. + +"You don't deserve a job," he grumbled, "turning me down for a dynamite +spree, but I'm going to send you to Ireland in the fall. There's a +story there--a big one. If," he added grimly, "you can manage to get +in." + +Late August found the tension of worry at an end. Brian at last was +walking. And Don had fought a battle with his books and won. + +Kenny's spirits soared. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +ARCADY ELUDES A SEEKER + +"Come," Kenny begged one night when the dusk lay thick in the valley. +"Let's pace the Gray Man, Joan, in Garry's car. Nobody needs you now +as much as I." + +His bright dark face pleaded. + +The girl smiled. + +"Kenny, Kenny, Kenny," she said, "will you ever grow up?" + +"Did Peter Pan? Better get your cloak, dear. You may need it." + +He went off whistling to the barn. Kenny had blessed the car and Garry +many times. He blessed them again as the engine throbbed in the dusk. +Hot silence lay upon the ridge, broken only by the noise of insects. + +"A long road and a straight road and Samhain at the end!" he sang as +Joan climbed in. "And bless the Irish heart of me, dear, there's a +moon scrambling up behind the hill and peeping over. Lordy, Lordy!" he +added under his breath, "what a moon!" + + "'On such a night + Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew + And with an unthrift love did run to Venice + As far as--' + +"Hum! I've forgotten. Wonder why Shakespeare looked ahead and +harpooned me with that word unthrift. Where to, Jessica? Where shall +the unthrift lover drive on such a night?" + +Joan stared absently at the road ahead. + +"To Ireland," she said. + +The answer pleased him. + +"I mind me," he said instantly, "of an Irish tale of Finn McCoul." + +Joan did not answer. + +"Tell me," she said at last. "Finn and you are always delightful." + +Kenny stared at her in marked reproach. + +"Joan!" he exclaimed. + +"What--what is it, Kenny?" + +"That's just the sort of polite nothing you learned in New York!" + +"I'm sorry, Kenny. I'm--tired. And just for a minute I wasn't +listening. You know how it is. You hear an echo in your mind a long +while after and answer in a panic." She brushed her cheek against his +sleeve with a remorseful gesture of appeal. His arm went round her. + +"There!" he said with a sigh of relief. "That's better. I'm lonesome +when we're not in tune." + +"And the story?" + +Kenny told of a fairy face that Finn had seen in a lake among the +heather. + +"Leaf-brown eyes had the nymph, I take it, and satin-cream skin with a +rose showin' through and allurin' lashes maybe dipped in the ink-pots +of the fairies." + +"What," said Joan from the shelter of his arm, "is a blarney stone?" + +"A substitute for lips!" said Kenny instantly and kissed her. + +"And Finn?" + +"Plunged into the waters of the lake, he did, as any son of Erin +would--and found the maid." + +But Joan's eyes were absently fixed upon the road again and Kenny +abandoned his legend with a sigh until he bethought himself to use its +climax in reproach. + +"And when Finn reappeared, he was an old, old man, as old as a man may +feel when his lady's attention wanders." + +Joan colored and laughed, her eyes faintly mischievous, wholly +apologetic. + +"Finn's youth," Kenny gallantly assured her, "was restored to him by +magic and surely there is magic in a woman's smile." + +They motored on in a silence that Kenny found depressing. When would +Arcady come again, he wondered rebelliously, wistful for the sparkle of +that other summer when fairies, silver-shod, had danced upon the +moonlit lake. The strain of worry had tired them both. + +The wind swept coolly toward them sweet with pine. Wind and pine up +here were always mingling. A night--a moon for lovers! The clasp of +his arm tightened. + +The peace of the night was insistent. After all with worry at an end +Arcady might not lie so very far away--it was creeping into his heart, +sweet with the music of many trees. Joan too perhaps--he stole a +glance at the girl's face, colorless in the moonlight like some soft, +exquisite flower--and drew up the emergency brake with a jerk. Her +lashes were wet. + +"Joan," he exclaimed, "you're not crying!" + +She tried to smile and buried her face on his shoulder. + +"I think," she said forlornly, "it--it's just because everything has +turned out so--so nicely." + +He motored homeward, ill at ease, aware after a time that the girl +cradled in his arm had fallen asleep. Her tears worried him. + +"But I'm quite all right now, Kenny," she protested as they drove up +the lane. "It's partly the heat. Why didn't you wake me?" + +He swung her lightly to the ground. + +"I liked to think I was helping you rest," he said gently. "You need +it. Don't wait, dear. It's late." + +He climbed back in the car and glided off barnwards, waving his arm. +Joan went slowly up the stairway to her room. + +Latticed moonlight lay upon a chair by the window. She dropped into +it, weary and inert, grateful for the rushing sound of the river; it +soothed her with familiar music. A clock downstairs chimed the hour, +then the half--and then another hour. Below in the moonlight a man was +climbing up from the river. + +"Brian," she called breathlessly, "is it you?" + +"Yes." + +"Dr. Cole will scold. It's twelve o'clock." + +Brian tossed his cigarette away with a sigh. + +"He'll never know. I've been sitting down there in the punt. The +river's silver. Come down for a while," he implored. "All evening +I've been as lonely as a leper. Ever since you motored off with Kenny, +Don's been a grouch. Can't you climb down the vine?" + +"I--I can't, Brian." + +"Please, Joan. I'll tell Kenny myself in the morning." + +"No," said Joan. "I--can't. I--I wish I could." + +"So do I," said Brian. He walked away. + +Shaking and sobbing, Joan flung herself upon the bed. + +"Sid writes me you're home," Kenny wrote to Garry in September. "What +about the car? Come up for a while and drive it home. We can do some +sketching. Brian's full of Irish melancholy and waiting for word from +Whitaker. He may go any time. Joan's tired and busy with clothes. +Don's cranky and I'm rather at a loose end, hunting things to do." + +Puzzled, Garry went. + +"I can't make out what's wrong," he wrote to Sid, "Kenny's rational +enough, but Brian's strung to the breaking point. I suspect it's just +as it always has been--they're miserable apart and hopeless together. +But the year has been a sobering one, and what used to flash, they +bottle up. In my opinion the sooner Brian gets away the better. He's +not himself." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +THE TENSION SNAPS + +Months back Fate had flung out a skein of broken threads to the wind of +Chance. In mid September she chose to bring the flying ends together. + +It began when Hannah dropped a dipper. Hughie on his way to the +wood-box with an armful of kindlings jumped and dropped them with a +clatter. And he stepped on Toby's tail and swore. Hannah and Hughie +and Toby, startled, shared a sharp moment of resentment. + +"Hughie," Hannah's impatience keyed her voice a trifle high, "'pon my +honor I don't know what gets into you. Ever since you took to diggin' +dots you've been as nervous as a cat. You're full of jumps. It's my +opinion if the doctor hadn't told you that Mr. O'Neill himself buried +the money in the fireplace, you'd be diggin' dots in a lunatic asylum!" + +Hughie's horrified face of warning turned her cold with foreboding. +Hannah turned and gasped. + +Joan stood behind her. + +"Hannah," she asked, "what did you say?" + +"I--I don't know," said Hannah, scarlet with confusion. "I'm all +unstrung and my head's queer--" + +Hughie went out and slammed the door. + +"You said that Mr. O'Neill--buried--the money--in Uncle's fireplace!" +repeated Joan distinctly. She caught Hannah's arm, her dark frightened +eyes imploring. "Hannah, did he?" + +Shaking, Hannah put her apron to her eyes. "Hannah, you must tell me. +It is important that I know. No, don't cry. Did Mr. O'Neill bury the +money--in Uncle's fireplace?" + +"Yes," choked Hannah in a low voice. "Oh, Hughie will never forgive +me!" + +"How do you know?" + +"The doctor. Hughie went on diggin', thinking there must be more, +until he was sick with nerves. The doctor had to tell him." + +"And how did the doctor know?" + +The girl's strained quiet helped Hannah to regain her self-control. + +"Mr. O'Neill went to Rink's hotel to telephone," she faltered, wiping +her eyes, "and Sam Acker put his ear to the door. He--he telephoned +for a lot of ragged money--" + +Joan caught her breath. + +"And then a week later," gulped Hannah, "when the doctor came to tend +his wife, Sam told it, for Mr. O'Neill had said the doctor sent him +there to telephone. And the doctor never would have told but for +Hughie's nerves. He said so when he pledged us both to keep it secret. +He spoke wonderful about Mr. O'Neill. That I must say. And he called +him somebody Donkeyhote--" + +"Where is Mr. O'Neill?" + +"He drove down to the village with Mr. Rittenhouse for the mail." + +Joan glided away like a shadow. + +Don Quixote! And so he had done that strange, fantastic thing for +her--and she had given the money away to Don! Joan stopped at the foot +of the stairway, her face colorless and unbelieving, her mind casting +up a vivid picture of the night of search in the sitting room. +It--could--not--be! + +Ah, but it could! For Kenny, reckless and on his mettle, was a +finished actor. And the morning at the telephone! His silence and +constraint had bothered her then not a little. Later, whirling through +the blizzard in a taxi, he had begged her not to do it. And he had +surrendered in the end with a sigh and smiled and kissed her. His +eyes, warmly blue, irresistibly Irish in their tenderness, seemed now +to stare at her with sad reproach. Ah, the kindness of him! Hot +stinging tears rolled slowly down the girl's white cheeks. + +"Joan!" It was Brian's voice behind her. + +Joan turned, trembling, blinked and smiled. + +Something in her face drove his memory back to the moonlit wood. Niobe +on the verge of a passion of tears! + +"You look like a sad little brown thrush," he said gently. + +His voice, his eyes chilled her with foreboding. They stood in utter +silence. + +Joan touched the throbbing veins in her throat and moistened her lips. + +"You have heard from Mr. Whitaker--" + +"Yes, Garry brought the letter up." + +"When--" + +"I'm sailing in a week. I go from here--to-morrow." + +"Brian!" + +The terror in her eyes startled him and the tension snapped. An +instant later she was crying wildly in his arms. Brian crushed his +lips against her cheek, conscious only of an agonizing stab of joy, +then Joan pulled away, her eyes dark with grief and shame. + +"Oh, Brian, Brian," she whispered passionately, "I--want--to die." + +"I've wanted to die for weeks," said Brian. "Almost I think I did." + +Joan caught her breath with a shuddering gasp. + +"Don't!" said Brian. "I--can't bear to hear you cry. I've always +known that I was a pretty poor sort but this--" + +His honest eyes begged for understanding, + +Joan's face, wet with tears, condoned. + +"I--I am worse," she said unsteadily. + +He caught her hands rebelliously. + +"But you love me," he said wistfully. "That, at least--" + +Joan slipped into his arms again with a sob. + +"I love you better than my life," she said, "and I may--never--say it +again." + +[Illustration: "I love you better than my life," Joan said, "and I +may--never--say it again."] + +Brian pressed his cheek against her hair. + +"No," he said. "No. I would not have you say it again, Joan, dear as +it is to hear it." + +An eternity of minutes seemed to tick away in the silence. + +"Brian, you must believe I meant to be true to Kenny--" + +"Don't!" he choked, paling at the sound of Kenny's name. "Oh, Kenny, +Kenny!" + +Joan buried her face in his arm. Both were thinking with hot +remorseful hearts of that stormy penitent with the laughing, tender +Irish eyes. Both loved him well. And both were pledging themselves to +keep his happiness intact. + +Joan's tormented memory was busy with pictures: Kenny disastrously +sculling the punt to help her, Kenny in the death-chamber shuddering +and patient and passionately resolved to stay by her to the end, Kenny +with the lantern held high above her head, Kenny digging dots and +helping Don to study and Kenny tearing bricks from the ancient +fireplace. + +She slipped out of his arms in a panic, her face, Brian thought, as +white as the old-fashioned lilies in the garden. + +"Brian, go--" she choked. + +With the truth of the ragged money burning itself into her mind--with +Brian so near and yet so far--the touch of his arms was torment. + +Hungry for the peace of the pines and the lonely cabin, Joan fled +out-of-doors. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + +THE KING OF YOUTH + +Ten minutes later Kenny, coming into the dark, old-fashioned library +where Adam's books were once more arrayed upon the shelves, found Don +wandering turbulently around the room. + +Was this boy ever anything but turbulent, he wondered with impatience. +Must he always brood about the boulder and atonement? + +Don stopped dead in his tracks, his fingers clenched in his hair, his +white face staring queerly; and Kenny, irresistibly reminded of himself +in minutes of turmoil, stared back, knowing in a flash of inspiration +why the tale of the boulder had made him think of the crash of bouillon +cups. The desire of the moment that marked men for disaster! The +tongue-tied youngster there with his feet rooted to the ground and his +face pale with agitation, was indeed something like himself. Kenny had +a moment of pity. + +"Mr. O'Neill," said Don with a hard, dry sob, "you know I've wanted to +make up to Brian somehow about that boulder. If I hadn't been crazy to +drive up the ledge once and if I hadn't lied to Grogan and bullied +Tony, Brian wouldn't have spent the rest of the winter in a plaster +cast. I--I want to do something for him, something big, and I--I've +got to do it in a queer way." He shuddered and wiped his face. Kenny +saw that his hands were shaking wildly, and pitied him again. "Mr. +O'Neill," he blurted, "Brian loves my sister and she loves him." + +It seemed to Kenny that lightning struck with a sinister flare of fire +at his feet and hot blinding pieces of the floor were flying all about +him. + +"How do you know?" he said fiercely. "How _do_ you know? How can you +know such a thing as that? You can't! You can't possibly." + +"I do," said Don. "I heard them say it." + +"Heard them!" + +"I was on the porch," said Don, "and I came through the window there to +get a book. They were in the hall." + +"You listened!" + +Don flushed. + +"I--I wanted to," he said sullenly. "And I did." + +"Ah, yes," said Kenny, wiping his hair back and wondering vaguely why +it felt so wet, "you wanted to and you did." + +"I wanted to," said Don fiercely, "because I knew Brian loved her. And +I knew my sister wasn't happy. She's looked sad and tired and +frightened a lot of times, Joan has, and she's cried a lot--" + +"Yes," said Kenny, "she has." + +Don's challenging eyes swept with stormy suspicion over Kenny's face. + +"Mr. O'Neill," he flung out, "don't you blame her. Don't you do it. +She was a kid, an awful kid when you came here first, and lonesome. +She wanted to be flattered and loved. All girls do. She wasn't happy. +She wanted to play and you gave her a chance. You're famous and you've +been everywhere and you're a good looker," he gulped courageously, "and +maybe you turned her head. I--don't know. I think she loves you an +awful lot anyway. But not--not that way. You could have been her +father--" + +"Yes," said Kenny wincing. "She's younger than Brian." Where had he +read that youth was cruel? "Yes, I could have been her father." + +"I don't mean you're old," stammered Don, flushing. "I mean--Oh, Mr. +O'Neill--" and now Don slipped back into childhood for a second and +sobbed aloud--"I--I don't know what I mean. You just--just mustn't +blame her. She's my sister. She even patched my clothes." + +"I'm not blaming her, Don. God knows I'm not. I'm just wonderin'." + +"Joan's going to marry you just the same. She said so. Mr. O'Neill, +you've got to do something. You--you've got to!" He clenched his +hands and bolted for the door. + +"Yes," said Kenny, frowning, "I--I've got to do something. I +can't--think--what. Where's Joan?" + +"I think she's gone to the cabin. She often went there when Uncle made +her cry. Mr. O'Neill," Don clenched one hand and struck it fiercely +against the palm of the other, "you've been good to me. I--I'm awful +sorry--" + +He fled with a sob and Kenny put his hand to his throat to still a +painful throbbing. + +There was a clanking in his ears. Or was it in his memory? Ah, yes, +Adam had said that life was a link in a chain that clanks, and he +couldn't escape. Well, he hadn't. + +Kenny sat down, conscious of a tired irresolution in his head and a +numbness. Nothing seemed clearly defined, save somewhere within him a +monumental sharpness as of pain. Joan's happiness he remembered must +be the religion of his love. + +After that things blurred--curiously. Superstition, ordinarily +within him but an artificial twist of fancy, reared a mocking head and +reminded him of omens. Sailing over the river long ago he had thought +of Hy Brazil, the Isle of Delight that receded always when you +followed. Receded! It was very true. Later the wind among the +blossoms had been chill and fitful and Joan had been unaware of the +romance in the white, sweet drift. Omens! And rain had come, the +blossom storm. And Death had spread its sable wing over the first day +of his love. He shuddered and closed his eyes. + +Separate thoughts rose quiveringly from the blur. He thought of a +lantern and Samhain. Samhain, the summer-ending of the druids! +Perhaps this was the summer ending of his youth and hope. And he had +drank in Adam's room that Samhain night to Destiny--Destiny who had +brought him--this! + +Still the blur and the separate thoughts stinging into his +consciousness like poisoned arrows. Whitaker's voice, persistent and +analytical, rang in his ears. The King of Youth! Kenny laughed aloud +and tears stung at his eyes. He blinked and laughed again. Why, he +was growing up all at once! John would be pleased. Thoughts of +Whitaker, Brian, his farcical penance and Joan, became a brilliant +phantasmagoria from which for an interval nothing emerged separate or +distinct. Then sharp and clear came the dread of Brian's death and the +ride over the sleet with Frank. The steering wheel strained in his +aching hands and the wheels slid dangerously . . . He did not want to +be a failure . . . He wanted passionately after all the turmoil to be +Brian's successful parent. If in this instance there was a curious +need to wreck his own life in order that he might parent Brian with +success, he must not make a mess of it. Once, accidentally, John said, +he had almost shipwrecked Brian's life and Brian had stepped out--just +in the nick of time. He must not do that again. Brian had suffered +enough from self rampant in others. + +The King of Youth! . . . The King of Youth! . . . And Brian was +twenty-four years _old_. He must not make him--older. This sharp +aging all in a moment was fraught with pain. + +His weary ears resented the mocking persistence of Whitaker's +voice. Kenny's happy-go-lucky self-indulgence, it said, had often +spelled for Brian discomfort of a definite sort. . . . Well, +it--should--not--spell--pain. . . . And if in the past his generosity +had always been congenial, now it should hurt. Was he about to learn +something of the psychology of sacrifice that Adam had said he ought to +know? + +He swung rebelliously to his feet. Why must the fullness of life come +through sacrifice? Why must all things good and permanent and true +come only out of suffering? Why must men pay for their dreams with +pain? + +He moved mechanically toward the door. . . . Yes, he cared more for +Joan's happiness than for his own. And she was suffering. Why, the +tired truth of it was, he loved them both enough to want to see them +happy . . . And he would be a part of Don's erratic atonement. + +He smiled wryly and realized with a start that he was already +out-of-doors, walking dazedly toward the cabin in the pines. The +fresh, sweet wind blew through his hair and into his face, but the blur +persisted, filled with voices and memories and promptings from God +alone knew where. + +The odor of pine was sharply reminiscent. . . . And then with a shock +that stung him out of inhibition he was staring in at the cabin window. +Joan sat by the table, her head upon her arm, her shoulders heaving. + +"Poor child!" he said heavily. "Poor child!" And savagely cursed the +summer pictures that flamed in his mind at the sight of her. The +cabin, the wistaria ladder, the punt, the girl by the willow in the +gold brocade-- + +Well, he must go hurriedly toward that door or not at all. His courage +was failing. + +The sound of the door startled her. Joan leaped to her feet and stood, +shaking violently, by the table, one hand clutching at the edge of it +in terror. + +In that tongue-tied minute, if he had but known, with his fingers +clenched in his hair and his face scarlet, he was like that turbulent +boy who such a little while ago had crashed into his life with a sob. + +Joan's agonized eyes, wet with tears, brought home to him the need of a +steady head . . . and responsibility. Yes, he must keep his two feet +solidly on the ground and face a gigantic responsibility. + +"Don't cry, dear, please!" he said gently. "It's just one of the +things that can't be helped. Don told me. He overheard." + +Her low cry hurt--viciously. And she came flying wildly across the +room to his arms, sobbing out her grief and remorse. + +"Oh, Kenny, Kenny." she sobbed. "I--want--you--both." + +His shaking arms sheltered her. A heart-broken child! He must +remember that. And, as Don said, he could have been her father. + +"Happiness with the least unhappiness to others, girleen," he reminded +with his cheek against her hair. "Remember?" + +"Yes," she choked. + +"You must go to Brian. Any foolish notion of sacrifice now will only +tangle the lives of all of us." + +"But--I cannot forget! Kenny, if only you would hate me!" + +"I didn't mean to love you, mavourneen. It was like the tale of +Killarney. I left a cover off in my heart and a spring gushed out and +flooded my life." + +"I am blaming myself!" + +"You must not do that. You were in love with love. You must now know +how different it--" But he could not say it, courageous as he felt. + +"And the money!" choked Joan. "Oh, Kenny, Kenny, the ragged money! +And I gave it away. And you were so good--so good!" + +He frowned, unable to understand at once the relevance of the ragged +money and realized that Joan was sobbing into his shoulder the tale of +an eavesdropping bartender and a doctor. He accepted it, dazedly, +thunderstruck at the alertness of his Nemesis who missed no single +chance to shoot an arrow. + +"And Don must give that money back. I will tell him--" + +"No," said Kenny. "No, he must not." + +She stared at him in wonder. + +"Mavourneen," he pleaded wistfully, "may I--not do that at least for +someone who is yours? Don needs it." + +He could not know that his kindness was to her more poignant torment +than his bitterest reproach. He thought as the color fled from her +lips and left her gray and trembling, that she was fainting. He held +her closely in his arms. + +She slipped away from him and sat down weakly in a chair. Dusk lay +beyond the windows. Joan covered her face with her hands. + +"The Gray Man," she whispered. "He's peeping in." + +Pain flared intolerably in Kenny's throat and stabbed into his heart. +He drew the shades with a shudder and lighted the lamp. + +In the supreme moment of his agony, came inspiration. He must save +them all with a lie! Queer that, queer and contradictory! Yes, after +practicing the truth, he must save them all from shipwreck with a lie. + +"Girleen," he said, "there is something now that I must tell you. I +thought never to say it. You came into my dream that day beneath the +willow in gold brocade, with afterglow behind you and an ancient boat. +I am an Irishman--and a painter. 'Twas a spot of rare enchantment and +I said to myself, I am falling in love--again." + +"Again!" echoed Joan a little blankly. + +"Again!" said Kenny inexorably. "You see, Joan, dear, I was used to +falling in love. There are men like that. You and Brian would never +understand." + +"No," said the girl, shocked. "No." + +"You made a mistake, the sort of mistake that drives half the lifeboats +on the rocks. I mean, dear, falling in love with love. But you're +over that. It was--a different sort of love with me. I knew as we +crossed the river that first day in the punt that the madness could not +last. You see--it never had." + +"Kenny!" + +If Joan in that moment had remembered the Irishman tearing bricks from +the fireplace in a spasm of histrionic zeal, she might have distrusted +the steadiness of his level, kindly glance. She might have guessed +that again he was reckless and on his mettle. But she did not remember. + +"Romance and mystery," said Kenny, lighting a cigarette and smiling at +her through a cloud of smoke, "were always the death of me. My fancy's +wayward and romantic. Afterward your will-of-the-wisp charm held me +oddly. You kept yourself apart and precious. And I was always +pursuing. It was provocative--and unfamiliar. And then came Samhain, +the--the summer-ending." There was an odd note in his voice. "I faced +a new experience. I had gone over the usual duration of my madness and +I thought," he smiled, "I thought I was loving you for good. But--" + +Her dark eyes stared at him, wistful and yet in the moment of her hope +a shade reproachful. + +"And--your love--did not last, Kenny?" It was a forlorn little voice, +for all its unmistakable note of rejoicing. How very young she +was--and childlike! + +"It--did--not--last!" said Kenny deliberately. "It never does with me. +I should have known it. I love you sincerely, girleen. I always +shall. But I love you as I would have loved--my daughter." + +"Your daughter! Kenny, why then did you speak so of the flood of +Killarney?" + +"I was testing you. You can see for yourself. I could not honorably +tell you this, dear, if you still cared." + +"But I do care," cried Joan, flinging out her hands with a gesture of +appeal. "I love you so much, Kenny, that it hurts." + +"But not in the way you love Brian." + +"No." + +"And that, mavourneen, is as it should be." + +He told her of the stage mother. Let the lie go with the castle he had +built upon it. And he would begin afresh. + +"Ah," said Joan, dismissing it with shining eyes, "there, Kenny, you +meant only to be kind." + +He wondered wearily why the lie with all its torment had not shocked +her. Truth was queer. + +Joan glided toward the door. He caught in her face the look of a white +flame and dropped his eyes. A Botticelli look. Ah, well, it was +beautiful to be young and joyous! + +"I must tell Brian," she said. + +"Yes," said Kenny. "Of course." + +And she was gone. Kenny lay back in his chair and closed his eyes; the +sound of her flying feet death in his ears. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + +WHEN THE ISLE OF DELIGHT RECEDED + +Often Kenny had appreciatively dramatized for himself possible minutes of +tragedy. They were always opportunities for Shakespearian soliloquy and +gesture. + +Now he lay back in his chair much too tired for tragedy and gesture. And +the need of soliloquy would have found him dumb. Upper-most in his mind +was a dream in which Joan had peeped down at him from a balloon that went +ever and ever higher--like the Isle of Delight that was always--receding. +He had sensed in her to-night that aerial aloofness he had felt when he +blocked old Adam out from his dream of love. Liebestraum! The stabbing +pain in his heart grew hotter. + +It was lonely here in the pines. He wondered why he had never caught +before that chill pervading sense of solitude--sad solitude. The pines +whispered. It was not merely poetry. They whispered plaintively. . . . +And he was very tired. + +Rebellion came flaming into his apathy and Kenny caught his breath and +held it, fiercely striking his hands together again and again. Sacrifice +and suffering! Must it be like this? What had he written in his +notebook anyway? He seemed almost to have forgotten. + +The book opened at a touch to the page he wanted. + +"Sunsets and vanity," he read drearily and penciled the rebuke away with +a faint smile. Like his hairbrained, unquenchable youth, bright with +folly, the sunsets and vanity lay in the past. Vanity! Ah, dear God! he +could not feel humbler. + +Nor was he irresponsible--or a failure as a parent. He had made good +to-night. Surely, surely, he had made good to-night. The one thing that +he might not mark out was his failure as a painter. + +"Need to suffer and learn something of the psychology of sacrifice." +Well, he was--learning. . . . Nay, he had learned. Kenny fiercely drew +his pencil through the sentence and read the rest. + +The truth, though he did not fully understand it, he would always try to +tell. He had no debts. The chairs in the studio were cleared of litter. +A plebeian regularity had made him uncomfortably provident. + +So much for that part of his self-arraignment. One by one he marked the +items out and stared with a twisted smile at the next. + +"I borrow Brian's girls, his money and his clothes!" Hum! Once Garry +had barked at him for sending orchids to a girl or two whom Brian liked. + +The money, the clothes, the paraphernalia he had pawned, were returned. +As for the girls--well, Brian had retaliated in kind and perhaps the debt +in its concentration of payment, was abundantly squared. + +"Indolence." That the record of his winter could disprove. + +And finally, he read what, after Adam's telling of the truth, he had +scribbled at the end. + +"Life is a battle. I do not fight. And life is not an individual +adventure." + +It wasn't. It was a chain that clanked. + +"I do not fight," he read again and crossed it out. + +"Adam, old man," he said wryly, "I think to-night I've done some +fighting. And the fight has just begun." + +He tore the page out, struck a match and burned it. Again he dropped +back in his chair and closed his eyes. + +Into the blur came Garry. + +"Kenny!" he called. "Kenny!" + +Kenny opened his eyes with a start. Garry stood by the cabin door, his +hand upon the knob. + +"Don asked me to come. Kenny, I was on the porch. Great God! the kid +must have gone crazy." + +"You heard?" + +"Yes." + +"He wanted to--atone." + +"And now that he's cooled down enough to remember your kindness, Kenny, +he's breaking his heart over you. A queer kid! I almost thrashed him. +He's tramping off his brain-storm." + +"And Joan?" + +"With Brian." Garry looked away. "They have forgotten the world," he +added bitterly. + +"Kenny, how did you manage? That look in her face--" + +"I lied." + +"Gallant liar!" said Garry huskily. "I knew you would. It was the only +kind way." + +"Almost," said Kenny, "I did not remember to lie in time. Truth is a +thing I cannot understand." + +The sympathy in Garry's eyes unnerved him. + +"Garry," he flamed, "why did I practice the telling of truth to end now +with a lie? Why did Joan plead for a year to learn to be my wife and +learn in it--not to be?" + +"God knows!" said Garry gently. "Why did agony come to Brian at the +hands of a boy he'd befriended? And then--to you?" + +"It is the Samhain of my life," said Kenny rising. "And I am no longer +John Whitaker's King of Youth. I think my youth died back there when Don +thrust it aside, not meaning, I take it, to be cruel. But I grew up all +at once." He frowned. "Drowning men, they say, have a kaleidoscopic +vision of the past. I think sitting here that came to me. Perhaps, +Garry, if Eileen had lived I would have been different--steadier. I +think I loved her. I think it would have lasted. A child is a beautiful +link. Perhaps that fever of vanity that grew to a burning in my veins +would never have started. Started, it was like a conflagration. It +drove Brian to sunsets. God knows what it didn't do. I thought only of +myself--always. That desire for adulation in a woman's eyes, that +curious persistent fever was, I'm sure, a sort of sex vanity. It has +nearly ruined many another man's life. It nearly ruined mine. Always +when I was drifting into new madness, I couldn't work. I dreamed. The +Isle of Delight, always receding! I sang and whistled. The King of +Youth! Only when I was drifting out again, could I bend myself to +concentration and sanity. And then another look in a girl's soft +eyes--and more vanity and self and delirium. But I'm tired. I want to +look ahead to--to quiet and steadiness and work." + +Garry, with the husk still in his throat, wandered off to the window. + +"Garry!" + +Garry wheeled and found a wistful, boyish Kenny with his fingers in his +hair. + +"I'm no longer a failure as a parent?" + +"No!" said Garry with decision. + +"And God knows I haven't been a failure as a lover. I'm prayin' I shan't +always be a failure as a painter. It's the one thing left. Somewhere in +Ireland, Garry, nine silent fairies blow beneath a caldron. They know +the secrets of the future. I'd like to be peepin'." + +He was to know in time that the caldron held for him peace and big +achievement. + +"I wish I could help!" said Garry. + +"Garry, could you--would you drive me home to-night?" + +"Anything!" + +"You'll not be mindin'?" + +"No. It's better." + +"Come," said Kenny, his color high. "We'll be facin' it now." + +They went in silence through the pines. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII + +THE END OF KENNY'S SONG + +A light flickered on the porch where Hannah hovered around the supper +table, puzzled and annoyed. + +"I'm glad somebody's come at last," she exclaimed a trifle tartly. +"Every bug on the ridge has been staring at the supper table through +the screens. And I promised Mis' Owen to drive over there to-night +with Hughie." + +"Where's Brian?" + +"He went down to the village with Joan." + +"And Don?" + +"Don said he'd eat his supper when he came. It might be late." + +Kenny, whistling a madcap hornpipe, glinted at the table with approval. + +"Off with ye, now, Hannah, darlin'," he said. "I'll stare the bugs +down until they come." + +"They ought to be here now." Hannah's eyes strained, frowning, toward +the lane. + +"Ho, Brian!" Kenny called. + +"Ho!" came a distant shout. And then: "Coming, Kenny." + +Had Kenny's call been one of reassurance? To Garry, miserably intent +upon the ordeal ahead, the big Irishman, whistling softly in his chair, +had sent a message through the dark to ease the tension. Already the +daredevil light danced wantonly in his eyes. + +Hannah trotted off in better humor. + +Dreading the supper hour, dreading the sound of steps upon the walk, +Garry smoked and gnawed his lips. The meeting must be painful. . . . +Now they were coming along the gravel . . . and now . . . He had +undervalued Kenny's tact. + +The latch of the screen door clicked. Kenny rummaged for cigarettes +and struck a match. Joan had slipped to her place at the table before +he threw the match away. Then he smiled. His eyes were a curious +droll confessional that Brian seemed at once to understand. They +deplored the fickle strain in his blood that doomed all madness of the +heart to end in time. Brian had seen that look too many times to doubt +it now. + +"Come, Garry." Joan brought him into the circle at the table with a +smile. Garry joined it with a sinking heart. He would have had that +shining look of wonder in her eyes less unrestrained. But the shadows +for Joan, thanks to Kenny's lie, lay already dimly in the past. + +The merriment of the supper hour Garry thought of later with a pang. +He ate but little, fascinated by the reckless spontaneity of Kenny's +mood. It put them all at ease. The big kind Spartan will behind it +brought a catch to Garry's throat. Daredevil glints laughed in Kenny's +eyes. Again and again Garry found himself staring at the actor's vivid +face in a panic of unbelief. + +"Garry's had a letter," said Kenny presently. "He's driving back +to-night." + +"Garry!" + +"I'm sorry." Garry rose. "I'm afraid," he added, glancing at his +watch, "that I'll have to slip upstairs and sling some odds and ends in +my suit case. Mind, Kenny?" + +"Run along," said Kenny. "I'll be up in a minute." He drummed an +irresponsible tune upon the table and looked apologetic. + +"If you'll not be mindin', Brian," he began, "I'll go along. He +doesn't know the roads--" + +Brian eyed him with a familiar glint of authority. + +"I thought so," he said slowly. "I saw it coming. You're just in the +mood for what Jan calls 'rocketing' and Garry's letter, of course, was +the spark. Luckily, old boy, I'm on the job again. You've been +tearing around unguarded a shade too long." + +"I've got to go," barked Kenny, pushing back his chair. "I've had his +car for months. Do you suppose I want him losing his way all night--" + +He fumed off rebelliously, talking as he went. + +Brian's eyes followed him through the doorway. + +"Hum!" he said grimly. "'Richard is himself again!' You mustn't blame +him, Joan," he added. "He was always like that. He can't help it. I +mean, dear, tumbling in and out of love. I always knew the symptoms. +Falling in, he'd whistle softly and his eyes would shine. He'd be up +in the clouds and altogether gay and charming, his work would begin to +pall and he'd put it aside until he began to run down. I always knew +when he came to disillusion. His conscience would begin to bother him +about work. He'd be moody and discontented and a desperate flurry of +painting would follow until the next girl smiled." + +He reached across the table and caught her hands. + +"It is hard to believe it all," he said simply. "And Ireland for a +honeymoon!" + +The look of shining content in Joan's eyes deepened. + +"Oh, Brian," she said. "I shall love it, I know!" + +Kenny climbed the stairway in a daze and packed his suit case. +Everywhere he felt the eyes of Adam Craig upon him--less and less +unkind. They stared at him from the windows by the orchard. They +stared over the creaking banister as he stumbled down the stairway with +his courage ebbing. They stared from the library where the porch light +glimmered through the windows. . . . Fall was in the wind to-night. +The old house creaked. Adam's spirit swept in always with a sighing +wind. Kenny shivered. A bleak place--the ridge--and haunted. + +With a shock he found himself upon the porch. At the foot of the steps +Garry waited in the car, his gauntleted hands drumming nervously upon +the wheel. If for a minute stark, incredulous terror swept through +Kenny's veins, his laughing lips belied it. Then he kissed Joan +lightly on the cheek and went, whistling, down the steps with Brian. + +"And you, Brian?" he said, halting on the lower step to light a +cigarette. "What shall I tell John?" + +"Tell him all," said Brian. He talked hurriedly of his plans. + +Kenny held out his hand. + +"God speed, boy!" he said. + +Garry--unsentimental Garry--blinked as the car shot down the lane. He +clashed his gears and shuddered. + +Brian stared. + +"Phew!" he whistled as Joan came down the steps. "Garry's driving like +a blacksmith." + +They clung to each other in the dark and watched the headlights play +upon the trees. + +From the end of the lane came Kenny's final gift of reassurance. His +rollicking voice swept into the quiet, soft with brogue, as care-free +in song as it had been earlier in laughter: + + "'I'll love thee evermore + Eileen a roon! + I'll bless thee o'er and o'er + Eileen a roon!'" + +Brian laughed softly. + +"Joan! Joan!" he exclaimed in a rush of feeling. Their lips met. + + "'Oh! for thy sake I'll tread + Where plains of Mayo spread.'" + +Brian's heart went out to the irresponsible penitent rocketing in song. + +"Dear lunatic!" he said. + +Fainter in the night wind came the end of Kenny's song: + + "'By hope still fondly led, + Eileen a roon.'" + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KENNY*** + + +******* This file should be named 16040-8.txt or 16040-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/4/16040 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Kenny</p> +<p>Author: Leona Dalrymple</p> +<p>Illustrator: Joseph Pierre Nuyttens</p> +<p>Release Date: June 11, 2005 [eBook #16040]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KENNY***</p> +<br><br><center><h3>E-text prepared by Al Haines</h3></center><br><br> +<hr class="full" noshade> +<A NAME="img-front"></A> +<br> +<br> +<CENTER> +<IMG SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="Frontispiece: Joan" BORDER="2" WIDTH="367" HEIGHT="574"> +<H5> +[Frontispiece: Joan] +</H5> +</CENTER> +<br> + +<BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +KENNY +</H1> + +<BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +By +</H5> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Leona Dalrymple +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +Author of +<BR><BR> +<I>Diane of the Green Van</I> +<BR><BR> +<I>The Lovable Meddler</I> +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +Illustrated by +<BR><BR> +<I>Joseph Pierre Nuyttens</I> +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +The Reilly & Britton Co. +</H4> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +Chicago +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +Second Printing September 10, 1917 +</H5> +<br> +<br> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CONTENTS +</H2> + +<CENTER> + +<TABLE BORDER=0 WIDTH="100%"> +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%"><B>Chapter</B></TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"> </TD> + +<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%"><B>Chapter</B></TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"> </TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">I </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap01">Brian Rebels </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap22">In the Cabin</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">II </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%"><A HREF="#chap02">The Unsuccessful Parent </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap23">A Miser's Will </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">III </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap03">In the Gay and Golden Weather </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXIV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap24">Digging Dots </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">IV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap04">God's Green World of Spring </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap25">Checkmate! </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">V </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap05">At the Blast of a Horn </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXVI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap26">An Inspiration </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">VI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap06">In the Garret </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXVII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap27">Miser's Gold </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">VII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap07">The Blossom Storm </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXVIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap28">Kenny's Ward </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">VIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap08">Joan </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXIX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap29">The Studio Again </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">IX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap09">Adam Craig </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap30">Playtime </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">X </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap10">A Notebook </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXXI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap31">Fate Stabs </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap11">The Cabin in the Pines </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXXII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap32">On Finlake Mountain </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap12">Thraldom </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXXIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap33">In the Span of a Day </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap13">Kenny's Truth Crusade </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXXIV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap34">A Face </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XIV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap14">In Somebody's Boat </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXXV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap35">The Penitent </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap15">In Which Caliban Scores </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXXVI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap36">April </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XVI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap16">Tantrums </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXXVII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap37">Honeysuckle Days </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XVII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap17">Kenny Disappears </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXXVIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap38">Arcady Eludes a Seeker </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XVIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap18">Brian Solves a Problem </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXXIX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap39">The Tension Snaps </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XIX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap19">Samhain </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XL </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap40">The King of Youth </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap20">The Chair by the Fire </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XLI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap41">When the Isle of Delight Receded </A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XXI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap21">The Shadow of Death </A></TD> + +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="10%">XLII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="40%"><A HREF="#chap42">The End of Kenny's Song </A></TD> +</TR> + +</TABLE> + +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS +</H2> + +<H4> +<a href="#img-front"> +Joan . . . . . . Frontispiece +</A> +</H4> + +<H4> +<a href="#img-114"> +He was sailing across, to romance he hoped, and surely to mystery +</A> +</H4> + +<H4> +<a href="#img-272"> +"'Tis Samhain, Adam," said Kenny, "the summer ending of the druids" +</A> +</H4> + +<H4> +<a href="#img-448"> +"I love you better than my life," Joan said, "and I may—may never—say it again" +</A> +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +KENNY +</H1> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER I +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +BRIAN REBELS +</H2> + +<P> +"You needn't repeat it," said Brian with a flash of his quiet eyes. +"This time, Kenny, I mean to stay disinherited." + +Kennicott O'Neill stared at his son and gasped. The note of permanency +in the chronic rite of disinheritance was startling. So was something +in the set of Brian's chin and the flush of anger burning steadily +beneath the dark of his skin. Moreover, his eyes, warmly Irish like +his father's, and ordinarily humorous and kind, remained unflinchingly +aggressive. +</P> + +<P> +With the air of an outraged emperor, the older man strode across the +studio and rapped upon his neighbor's wall for arbitration. +</P> + +<P> +"Garry may be in bed," said Brian, +</P> + +<P> +"And he may not." It was much the same to Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +He was a splendid figure—that Irishman. His gorgeous Persian slippers +curled at the toes and ended in a pair of scarlet heels. The +extraordinary mandarin combination of oriental magnificence and the +rags he affected for a bathrobe, hung from a pair of shoulders +noticeably broad and graceful. If he wore his frayed splendor with a +certain picturesque distinction, it was the way he did all things, even +his delightful brogue which was if anything a shade too mellifluous to +be wholly unaffected. What Kenny liked he kept if he could, even his +irresponsible youth and gayety. +</P> + +<P> +Time had helped him there. His auburn hair was still bright and thick. +And his eyes were as blue and merry now as when with pagan reverence he +had tramped and sketched as a lad among the ruined altars of the druids. +</P> + +<P> +He had meant to wither his son with continued dignity and calm. The +vagaries of Irish temper ordained otherwise. Kenny glanced at the +fragments of a statuette conspicuously rearranged on a Louis XV table +almost submerged in the chaotic disorder of the studio, and lost his +head. +</P> + +<P> +"Look at that!" he flung out furiously. +</P> + +<P> +Brian had already looked—with guilt—and regretted. +</P> + +<P> +"I broke it—accidentally," he admitted. +</P> + +<P> +"Accidentally! You flung a brush at it." +</P> + +<P> +"I flung a brush across the studio," corrected Brian, "just after you +went out to pawn my shotgun." +</P> + +<P> +"Damn the shotgun!" +</P> + +<P> +"I can extend that same courtesy," reminded Brian, "to the statuette." +</P> + +<P> +Things were going badly when the expected arbitrator rapped upon the +door, and losing ground, Kenny felt that he must needs dramatize his +parental right to authority for the benefit of Garry's ears and his own +pride. +</P> + +<P> +"Silence!" he thundered, striding toward the door. He flung it back +with the air of a conqueror. His stage play fell rather flat. Garry +Rittenhouse, in bathrobe and slippers, confronted the pair with a look +of weary inquiry. He sometimes regretted that as a peacemaker he had +become an institution. Nobody said anything. Garry hunted cigarettes, +cleared a chair and sat down. +</P> + +<P> +"It may or may not interest you two to know that I was in bed," he +began irritably. "I wish to Heaven you'd fight in union hours." +</P> + +<P> +Brian was sorry and said so. Kenny, however, took immediate advantage +of Garry's attitude to sidetrack what he considered the preposterous +irrelevance of the shotgun, the one unessential thing in the studio, +and point with rising temper to the statuette. It had, alas! been a +birthday present from Ann Marvin, whose statuettes, fashionable and +satiric, were famous. +</P> + +<P> +It was like Kenny to have a grievance. He was hardly ever without one. +But justification was rare indeed and he made the best of it. He said +all that was on his mind without restraint as to duration or intensity, +thunderstruck at Brian's white-hot response. For twenty minutes of +Irish fire and fury, Garry listened in amazement, sensing an +unaccustomed stubbornness in Brian's anger. +</P> + +<P> +"Just a minute," said Garry, dazed. "Let's get down to brass tacks. +Who and what began it?" +</P> + +<P> +They both told him. +</P> + +<P> +"One at a time, please!" he begged. "I gather that you, Kenny, in need +of petty funds, went out to pawn Brian's shotgun. And you, Brian, +losing your temper, flung a brush across the studio and smashed a +valued statuette—" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny chose indignantly to tell it all again and overshot the mark, +bringing Garry down upon him with a bark. +</P> + +<P> +"Now, see here, Kenny," he interposed curtly, "that's enough. Brian's +usually sane and regular. It's by no means a criminal offense for him +to pick a row with you about his shotgun. And he didn't mean to smash +the statuette." +</P> + +<P> +He waited for the voice of thunder in which Kenny, at a disadvantage, +would be sure to disinherit his son and, waiting, glanced a trifle +wryly at the littered studio. What Brian lost by chronic +disinheritance lay ever before the eye, particularly now when Kenny, in +one of his periods of insolvency, was posted downstairs for club debt +and Mrs. Haggerty's insular notions about credit had driven him to +certain frugal devices with the few handkerchiefs he owned, one of +which was spread upon the nearest window pane to dry. +</P> + +<P> +Garry's disgusted inventory missed nothing: a prayer rug for which +Kenny had toured into the south of Persia and led an Arabian Nights' +existence with pursuing bandits whom, by some extraordinary twist of +genius, he had conciliated and painted; an illuminated manuscript in +Gaelic which he claimed had been used by a warrior to ransom a king; +chain armor, weapons of all kinds, climes and periods; an Alpine horn, +reminiscent of the summer Kenny had saved a young painter's life at the +risk of his own; some old masters, a cittern, a Chinese cheng with +tubes and reeds, an ancient psaltery with wires you struck with a +crooked stick that was always lost (Kenny when the mood was upon him +evolved weird music from them all), an Italian dulcimer, a Welsh crwth +that was unpronounceably interesting (some of the strings you twanged +with your thumb and some you played with a bow); Chinese, Japanese, +Indian vases, some alas! sufficiently small for utilitarian purposes, +Salviati glass, feather embroidery, carved chairs and a chest. +</P> + +<P> +A prodigal display—Kenny in his shifting periods of affluence was +always prodigal—but there had never been cups enough with handles in +the littered closet, Garry recalled, until Brian inspired had bought +too many bouillon cups, figuring that one handle always would be left; +Kenny could not remember to buy a teapot when he could and made tea in +a chafing dish; and he had been known to serve highballs in vases. +</P> + +<P> +Garry glanced expectantly at his host and found him but a blur of +oriental color in a film of smoke. As usual, when he was in a temper +or excited, he was smoking furiously. But the threat of disinheritance +was not forthcoming. If anything, the disinheritor was sulking. And +the eyes of the disinheritee were intelligent and disconcerting. +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" said Garry, amazed. +</P> + +<P> +"I've already been disinherited," explained Brian dryly. "Twice. And +I'm leaving tonight—for good." +</P> + +<P> +Garry sat up. +</P> + +<P> +"You mean?" demanded Kenny coldly. +</P> + +<P> +"I mean," flung out Brian, "that I'm tired of it all. I'm sick to +death of painting sunsets." +</P> + +<P> +Garry's startled glance sought and found a mediocre sunset on an easel. +Brian went in for sunsets. He said so himself with an inexplicable air +of weariness and disgust. He knew how to make them. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny's glance too had found the sunset. It stood beside a landscape, +brilliant and unforgettable, of his own. Both men looked away. Brian +smiled. +</P> + +<P> +"You see?" he said quietly. +</P> + +<P> +"Sunsets!" stammered Kenny, perversely taking up the keynote of his +son's rebellion literally. "Sunsets! I warned you, Brian—" +</P> + +<P> +"Sunsets," said Brian, "and everything else you put on canvas with +paint and brush. I can't paint. You know it. Garry knows it. I know +it. I've painted, Kenny, merely to please you. I've nothing more than +a commonplace skill whipped into shape by an art school. Aerial +battlefields—my sunsets—in more ways than one. I paint 'em because +they happen to be the thing in Nature that thrills me most. And when I +fire to a thing, most always I can manage somehow. You yourself have +engineered for me every profitable commission I've ever had. What's +more, Kenny, if ever once you'd put into real art the dreadful energy +I've put into my mediocrity—" +</P> + +<P> +"You mean I'm lazy?" interrupted Kenny, bristling. +</P> + +<P> +"Certainly not," said Brian with acid politeness. "You're merely +subject to periodic fits of indolence. You've said as much yourself." +</P> + +<P> +It was irrefutable. Kenny, offended, brought his fist down upon the +table with a bang. +</P> + +<P> +"I know precisely what you're going to say," cut in Brian. "I'm +ungrateful. I'm not. But it's misdirected generosity on your part, +Kenny. And I'm through. I'm tired," he added simply. "I want to live +my own life away from the things I can't do well. I'm tired of +drifting." +</P> + +<P> +"And to-night?" +</P> + +<P> +Brian flung out his hands. +</P> + +<P> +"The last straw!" he said bitterly. +</P> + +<P> +"You're meaning the shotgun, Brian?" demanded Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm meaning the shotgun." +</P> + +<P> +"What will you do?" interposed the peacemaker in the nick of time. +</P> + +<P> +"I've done some free-lance reporting for John Whitaker," said Brian. +"I think he'll give me a big chance. He's interested." His voice—it +had in it at times a hint of Kenny's soft and captivating brogue—was +splendidly boyish and eager now. "Foreign perhaps or war. Maybe +Mexico. Anything so I can write the truth, Garry, the big truth that's +down so far you have to dig for it, the passion of humanness—the +humanness of unrest. I can't say it to-night. I can only feel it." +</P> + +<P> +Alarmed by this time, Kenny came turbulently into the conversation and +abused John Whitaker for his son's defection. Brian, it was plain, had +been decoyed by bromidic tales of cub reporters and "record-smashing +beats." He contrasted art and journalism and found Brian indifferent +to his scorn. +</P> + +<P> +"It isn't just Whitaker and the sunsets and the desire to exchange the +sham of my 'art' for the truth of something real," said Brian. "It's +everything. It's the studio here and things like—like the shotgun. I +hate the brilliant, disorderly hand-to-mouth sort of Bohemia, Kenny, in +which you seem to thrive. Either we have a lot of money or a lot of +debts—" +</P> + +<P> +Garry nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose," went on Brian wearily, "that my nature must demand an +orderly security in essentials. Plebeian, of course, but comfortable. +I mean, money in sufficient regularity, chairs you can sit down on +without looking first—" he shrugged. +</P> + +<P> +Further detail and he would be drifting into deep water. Life with +Kenny, who borrowed as freely as he gave, entailed petty harassments +that could not be named. +</P> + +<P> +"Things," finished Brian. "that are mine without a lock and key." +</P> + +<P> +He had meant not to say it. Kenny struck his hand fiercely against the +table. +</P> + +<P> +"You hear that, Garry?" he demanded with an indignant bid for support. +"You hear that? By the Lord Harry, Brian, it's damnable and indecent +to harp so upon the shotgun after smashing the statuette." +</P> + +<P> +The circle was complete. They were back to Kenny's grievance. Brian +sighed. +</P> + +<P> +"I wasn't thinking of the shotgun," he said. "There have been times, +Kenny, when I hadn't a collar left—" +</P> + +<P> +"He's right," put in Garry with quick sympathy. "It's not just the +shotgun—" +</P> + +<P> +"Garry, you shut up!" snapped Kenny, sweeping the fragments of Ann's +statuette into the table drawer and closing it with a bang. +</P> + +<P> +"Please remember," reminded Garry, coldly, "that an established +privilege of mine, since I undertook this Hague stuff, is absolute +frankness." +</P> + +<P> +"Br-r-r-r—" +</P> + +<P> +"Who rapped for me?" +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny did," said Brian. +</P> + +<P> +"Any man," retorted Kenny bitterly, "may have a—a moment of lunacy. I +thought you were impartial." +</P> + +<P> +"You mean," said Garry keenly, "that when you rapped you'd been +hypnotized by the justice of your own case and felt a little reckless." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny drew himself up splendidly and glared at Garry through a cloud of +smoke. +</P> + +<P> +"Piffle!" said Garry. "No stately stuff for me, Kenny, please. It's +late and I'm tired. I'll referee this thing in my own way. I +repeat—it's not just the shotgun. It's everything he owns." +</P> + +<P> +"What for instance?" inquired Kenny, dangerously polite. +</P> + +<P> +"His money, his clothes and his girls!" enumerated Garry brutally. +"You even pawned his fishing rods and golf clubs." +</P> + +<P> +"I sent him a fern," said Kenny, affronted. "Did he even water it? +No!" +</P> + +<P> +"I think I paid for it," said Brian. +</P> + +<P> +"Has he ever given me the proper degree of respect. No! He calls +me—Kenny!" +</P> + +<P> +Garry laughed aloud at the wrathful search for grievance. It was not +always easy to remember that Kenny had eloped at twenty with the young +wife who had died when his son was born; and that his son was +twenty-three. +</P> + +<P> +"Go on," said Kenny. "Laugh your fool head off. I'm merely stating +facts." +</P> + +<P> +"As for his tennis racquet," reminded Garry, and Kenny flushed. +</P> + +<P> +It developed that of studio things the racquet and the shotgun had +seemed the least essential. And the need had been imperative. +</P> + +<P> +"Nevertheless," interposed Garry, "they and a number of other things +you pawned were Brian's." +</P> + +<P> +Moreover, reverting to the fishing rods and golf clubs, Kenny would +like to have them both remember that it had been winter and one can +redeem most anything by summer. He'd meant to. He honestly had. +</P> + +<P> +"But you didn't," said Garry. +</P> + +<P> +"Great God," thundered Kenny, "you're like a parrot." Fuming he +searched afield for cigarettes and found them at his elbow. A noise at +the open window behind him brought him to his feet with a nervous start. +</P> + +<P> +"What's that? What's over there?" he demanded petulantly. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it's only H-B," said Garry. "He's come down the fire-escape. +Mac's likely forgotten to chain him." +</P> + +<P> +The honey-bear, kept secretly in a studio upstairs and christened "H-B" +to cloak his identity—for the club rules denied him hospitality—came +in with a jaunty air of confidence. At the sight of the three men he +turned tail and fled. Kenny speeded his departure with a bouillon cup +and felt better. +</P> + +<P> +As for clothes, Kenny began with new dignity, he must remind them both +that he had more than Brian, if now and again he did forget a minor +essential and have to forage for it. He added with an air of rebuke +that Brian was welcome to anything he had, anything—to borrow, to wear +and to lose if he chose. +</P> + +<P> +Brian received the offer with a glance of blank dismay and Garry with +difficulty repressed a smile. Kenny's fashionable wardrobe, portentous +in all truth, had an unmistakable air of originality about it at once +foreign and striking. There were times when he looked irresistibly +theatric and ducal. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny repeated his willingness to lend his wardrobe. +</P> + +<P> +"Of course you would," said Garry. "Though it's hardly the point and +difficult to remember when Brian is in a hurry and has to send out a +boy to buy him a collar." +</P> + +<P> +In the matter of money, to take up another point, Kenny felt that his +son had a peculiar genius for always having money somewhere. Brian had +of necessity been saved considerable inconvenience by a tendency to +economy and resource. As usual, if anybody suffered it was Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"For 'tis myself, dear lad," he finished, "that runs the scale a bit. +Faith, I'm that impecunious at times I'm beside myself with fret and +worry." +</P> + +<P> +Brian steeled himself against the disarming gentleness of the change of +mood. It was inevitably strategic. Wily and magnetic Kenny always had +his way. It was plain he thought to have it now with every instinct up +in arms at the thought of Brian's going. +</P> + +<P> +"I've less genius, less debt and less money," conceded Brian, "but I've +a lot more capacity for worry and I'm tired of always being on my +guard. I'm tired of bookkeeping—" +</P> + +<P> +"Bookkeeping!" +</P> + +<P> +"Bookkeeping lies!" said Brian bluntly. "I've lied myself sometimes, +Kenny, to keep from denying a lie of yours." + +The nature of the thrust was unexpected. Kenny changed color and +resented the hyper-critical word. To his mind it was neither filial +nor aesthetic. +</P> + +<P> +"Lies!" he repeated indignantly, regarding his son with a look of +paralyzed inquiry. "Lies!" +</P> + +<P> +"Lies!" insisted Brian. "You know precisely what I mean." +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose, Kenny," said Garry fairly, "that a certain amount of +romancing is for you the wine of existence. Your wit's insistent and +if a thing presents itself, tempting and warmly colored, you can't +refuse it expression simply because it isn't true. You must make a +good story. I've sometimes thought you'd have a qualm or two of +conscience if you didn't, as if it's an artistic obligation you've +ignored—to delight somebody's ears, even for a moment. Perhaps you +don't realize how far afield you travel. But it's pretty hard on +Brian." +</P> + +<P> +It was the thing, as Garry knew, that taxed Brian's patience to the +utmost, plunged him into grotesque dilemmas and kept him keyed to an +abnormal alertness of memory. Always his sense of loyalty revolted at +the notion of denying any tale that Kenny told. +</P> + +<P> +Now Kenny's hurt stare left Brian unrepentant. He lost his temper +utterly. Thereafter he blazed out a hot-headed summary of book-keeping +that made his father gasp. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny's air of conscious rectitude vanished. In an instant he was +defensive and excited, resenting the unexpected need of the one and the +distraction of the other. The sum of his episodic rambling on Brian's +tongue was appalling. He was willing to concede that his imagination +was wayward and romantic. But why in the name of Heaven must a +man—and an Irishman—justify the indiscretions of his wit? Well, the +lad had always had an unnatural trend for fact. Kenny remembered with +resentment the Irish fairies that even in his childhood Brian had been +unable to accept, excellent fairies with feet so big that in time of +storm they stood on their heads and used them for umbrellas! +</P> + +<P> +Staggered by Brian's inflexible air of resolution, Kenny, his fingers +clenched in his hair, began another circle. He reverted to his +grievance. The quarrel this time was sharp and brief. Brian hated +repetitions. Hotly impenitent he flung out of the studio and slammed +his bedroom door, leaving Kenny dazed and defensive and utterly unable +to comprehend the twist of fate by which the dignity of his grievance +had been turned to disadvantage. +</P> + +<P> +Garry glanced at the gray haze in the court beyond the window and rose. +</P> + +<P> +"It's nearly daybreak," he said. "And I've a model coming at ten. +She's busy and I can't stall." +</P> + +<P> +He left Kenny amazed and aggrieved at his desertion. Certainly in the +grip of untoward events, a man is entitled to someone with whom he can +talk it over. +</P> + +<P> +Wakeful and nervous, Kenny smoked, raked his hair with his fingers and +brooded. Brian had been disinherited much too often to resent it all +at once to-night. As for the shotgun, that dispute or its equivalent +was certainly as normal a one as regularity could make it. And he had +related many a tale unhampered by fact that Brian had simply ignored. +</P> + +<P> +"What on earth has got into the lad?" he wondered impatiently. +</P> + +<P> +Ah, well, he was a good lad, clean-cut and fine, with Irish eyes and an +Irish temper like his father. Kenny forgot and forgave. Both were a +spontaneity of temperament. Brian and he would begin again. That was +always pleasant. +</P> + +<P> +He strode remorsefully to Brian's door and knocked. There was no +answer. He knocked again. Ordinarily he would have flung back the +door with a show of temper. Penitential, he opened it with an air of +gentle forbearance. The room, which gave evidence of anger and hurried +packing, was empty, the door that opened into the corridor, ajar. +</P> + +<P> +Brian was gone. +</P> + +<P> +White and startled, Kenny unearthed the chafing dish and made himself +some coffee. +</P> + +<P> +Brian, of course, would return in the morning, whistling and sane. He +would call something back in his big, pleasant voice to the elevator +man who worshipped him, and bang the studio door. The lad was not +given to such definite revolt. Besides, Brian, he must remember, was +an O'Neill, an Irishman and a son of his, an indisputable trio of good +fortune; as such he could be depended upon not to make an ass of +himself. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER II +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE UNSUCCESSFUL PARENT +</H2> + +<P> +Kenny slept as he lived, with a genius for dreams and adventure. He +remembered moodily as he rose at noon that he had dreamed a +kaleidoscopic chase, precisely like a moving picture with himself a +star, in which, bolting through one taxi door and out another with a +shotgun in his hand, he had valiantly pursued a youth who had, +miraculously, found the crooked stick of the psaltery and stolen it. +The youth proved to be Brian. That part was reasonable enough. Brian +was the only one who could find the thing long enough to steal it. +</P> + +<P> +It was not likely to be a day for work. That he felt righteously could +not be expected. Nevertheless, with hurt concession to certain talk of +indolence the night before, he donned a painter's smock and, filled +with a consciousness of tremendous energy to be expended in God's good +time, telephoned John Whitaker. +</P> + +<P> +Yes, Brian had been there. Where he was now, where he would be, +Whitaker did not feel at liberty to divulge. Frankly he was pledged to +silence. Kenny willing, he would be up to dinner at six. He had a lot +to say. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny banged the receiver into the hook in a blaze of temper, hurt and +unreasonable, and striding to the rear window flung it up to cool his +face. There were bouillon cups upon the sill. Bouillon cups! +Bouillon cups! Thunder-and-turf! There were bouillon cups everywhere. +Nobody but Brian would have bought so many handles. A future of +handles loomed drearily ahead. Brian could talk of disorder all he +chose. Half of it was bouillon cups. Bitterly resenting the reproach +they seemed to embody, stacked there upon the sill, Kenny passionately +desired to sweep them out of the window once and for all. The desire +of the moment, ever his doom, proved overpowering. The cups crashed +upon a roof below with prompt results. Kenny was appalled at the +number of heads that appeared at studio windows, the head of Sidney +Fahr among them, round-eyed and incredulous. Well, that part at least +was normal. Sid's face advertised a chronic distrust of his senses. +</P> + +<P> +Moreover, when Pietro appeared after a round of alarmed inquiry, Kenny +perversely chose to be truthful about it, insisted that it was not +accidental and refused to be sorry. Afterward he admitted to Garry, it +was difficult to believe that one spontaneous ebullition of a nature +not untemperamental could provoke so much discussion, frivolous and +otherwise. The thing might grow so, he threatened sulkily, that he'd +leave the club. +</P> + +<P> +As for the immediate present, Fate had saddled him again with an +afternoon of moody indolence. Certainly no Irishman with nerves strung +to an extraordinary pitch could work with Mike crawling snakily around +the lower roof intent upon china remnants whose freaks of shape seemed +to paralyze him into moments of agreeable interest. Kenny at four +refused an invitation to tea and waited in growing gloom for Reynolds, +a dealer who, prodded always into inconvenient promptness by Kenny's +needs, had promised to combine inspection of the members' exhibition in +the gallery downstairs with the delivery of a check. There were +critical possibilities if he did not appear. +</P> + +<P> +Mike disappeared with the final fragment and Reynolds became the +grievance of the hour. Kenny, fuming aimlessly around the studio, +resorted desperately at last to an unfailing means of stimulus. He +made a careful toilet, donned a coat with a foreign looking waist-line, +rather high, and experimented with a new and picturesque stock that +fastened beneath his tie with a jeweled link. As six o'clock arrived +and Reynolds' defection became a thing assured, his attitude toward +John Whitaker underwent an imperative change. It would be impossible +now to greet him with hostile dignity. He had become a definite need. +</P> + +<P> +When at ten minutes past six the studio bell tinkled, Kenny, opening +the door, stared at Whitaker in tragic dismay and struck himself upon +the forehead. +</P> + +<P> +"Mother of Men!" he groaned. "I thought of course it would be +Reynolds. He's bringing me a check." +</P> + +<P> +John Whitaker looked unimpressed. He merely blinked his recognition of +a subterfuge. +</P> + +<P> +There was a parallel in his experience, a weekend arrival at Woodstock +when Kenny, farming in a flurry of enthusiasm, had come riding down to +meet his guest on a singular quadruped whose area of hide had thickened +strangely. Brian called the uncurried quadruped a plush horse. Kenny, +remembered Whitaker, had searched with tragic eyes for an invited +editor who had recklessly agreed to pay in advance for an excursion of +Kenny's into illustrating, ostensibly to pay for a cow. And Kenny's +words had been: "My God, Whitaker! Where's Graham?" Moreover he had +struck himself fiercely on the forehead and Whitaker had grub-staked +his host to provisions until Graham arrived. +</P> + +<P> +"Can't we eat in the grill?" asked Whitaker. "It's raining." Kenny +regarded him with a look of pained intelligence. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm posted," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"Then," said Whitaker, "I'll go out and buy something. I'd rather eat +in the studio. What'll I get?" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny capriciously banned oysters. +</P> + +<P> +"If you want a rarebit," he added, "we have some cheese." +</P> + +<P> +He was still searching excitedly for the cheese when Whitaker returned. +</P> + +<P> +"Reynolds," he flung out vindictively, "is positively the most +unreliable dealer I know. He's erratic and irresponsible. A man may +work himself to death and wait in the grave for his money. Do you +wonder poor Blakelock met his doom through the cupidity of laggard +dealers? Here am I on the verge of God knows what from overwork—" +</P> + +<P> +Whitaker spared him disillusion. Painting with Kenny was an +occupation, never work. When it slipped tiresomely into the class of +work and palled, he threw it aside for something more diverting. +</P> + +<P> +"The cheese in all probability," suggested Whitaker mildly, "wouldn't +be under the piano. Or would it? And don't bother anyway. I took the +liberty of buying an emergency wedge while I was out." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny wiped his forehead in amazed relief and piously thanked God he +hadn't wasted his appetite on middle-aged cakes. +</P> + +<P> +"If you hadn't come when you did," he said, "I'd likely had to eat 'em, +thanks to Reynolds. Now I'll send 'em up to H. B." He peered +disgustedly into the bag and removed an irrelevant ace of spades. Its +hibernation there seemed for an instant to annoy him as well it might. +There had been a furore in whist about it barely a week before. Then +he used it irresponsibly for an I.O.U. and impaled it upon a strange +looking spike that seemed to pinion a heterogeneous admission of petty +debt. +</P> + +<P> +Together they made the rarebit. Whitaker waited with foreboding for +the storm to break. But for some reason, though he was constrained and +impatient and feverishly active, Kenny avoided the subject of Brian. +He lost poise and patience all at once, pushed aside his plate and +challenged Whitaker with a look. +</P> + +<P> +"Why did you want to eat in the studio?" +</P> + +<P> +"I came to talk." +</P> + +<P> +"Whitaker," blustered Kenny, "where's Brian?" +</P> + +<P> +"Working." +</P> + +<P> +"On your paper?" + +"No. Brian's left New York. He's driving somebody's car. And I found +the job for him through my paper. When he has money enough he plans to +tramp off into God's green world of spring to get himself in trim. +Says he's stale and tired and thinking wrong. In the fall he's going +abroad for me and that, Kenny, is about all I can tell you." +</P> + +<P> +"You mean," flared Kenny, rising with a ragged napkin in his hand, "you +mean, John, it's all you will tell me!" +</P> + +<P> +"Sit down," said Whitaker, toasting a cracker over the alcohol flame. +"I prefer a sensible talk without fireworks." +</P> + +<P> +Surprised and nettled, Kenny obeyed in spite of himself. +</P> + +<P> +"Now," went on Whitaker quietly, "I came here to-night because I'm +Brian's friend and yours." He ignored the incredulous arch of Kenny's +eyebrows. "Where Brian is, where he will be, I don't propose to tell +you, now or at any other time. His wheres and his whens are the boy's +own business. His whys I think you know. He won't be back." +</P> + +<P> +"He will!" thundered Kenny and thumped upon the table with his fist. +</P> + +<P> +Whitaker patiently reassembled his supper. +</P> + +<P> +"I think not," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"You're not here to think," blazed Kenny. "You're here to tell me what +you know." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm here," corrected John Whitaker, "to get a few facts out of my +system for your own good and Brian's. Kenny, how much of the truth can +you stand?" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny threw up his hands with a reminiscent gesture of despair. +</P> + +<P> +"Truth!" he repeated. "Truth!" +</P> + +<P> +"I know," put in Whitaker, "that you regard the truth as something +sacred, to be handled with delicacy and discretion. But—" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny told him sullenly to tell it if he could. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't propose to urge Brian back here for a good many reasons. In +the first place, he's not a painter—" +</P> + +<P> +"John," interrupted Kenny hotly, "you are no judge of that. I, +Kennicott O'Neill, am his father." +</P> + +<P> +"And more's the pity," said Whitaker bluntly, "for you've made a mess +of it. That's another reason." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny turned a dark red. +</P> + +<P> +"You mean?" +</P> + +<P> +"I mean, Kenny," said Whitaker, his glance calm and level, "that as a +parent for Brian, you are an abject failure." +</P> + +<P> +The word stung. It was the first time in his life that Kenny had faced +it. That he, Kennicott O'Neill, Academician, with Heaven knows how +many medals of distinction, could fail at anything, was a new thought, +bewildering and bitter. This time he escaped from the table and flung +up a window. Whitaker, he grumbled, never toasted crackers without +burning them. Whitaker brought him back with a look. +</P> + +<P> +"Sit down," he said again. "I don't propose to talk while you roam +around the studio and kick things." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny obeyed. He looked a little white. +</P> + +<P> +"I've tried to think this thing out fairly," said Whitaker. "Why as a +parent for Brian you're a failure—" +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" +</P> + +<P> +"And the first and fundamental cause of your failure is, I think, your +hairbrained, unquenchable youth." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny stared at him in astounded silence. +</P> + +<P> +"I remember once around the fire here you told a Celtic tale of some +golden islands—Tirnanoge, wasn't it?—the Land of the Young—" +</P> + +<P> +Might have been, Kenny said perversely. He didn't remember. +</P> + +<P> +"Ossian lived there with the daughter of the King of Youth for three +hundred years that seemed but three," reminded Whitaker. "Well, no +matter. The point is this: The Land of the Young and the King of Youth +always make me think of you." +</P> + +<P> +"It is true," said Kenny with biting sarcasm, "that I still have hair +and teeth. It is also true that I am the respectable if unsuccessful +parent of a son twenty-three years old and I myself am forty-four." +</P> + +<P> +"Forty-four years young," admitted Whitaker. "And Brian on the other +hand is twenty-three years old. There you have it. You know precisely +what I mean, Kenny. Youth isn't always a matter of years. It's a +state of being. Sometimes it's an affliction and sometimes a gift. +Sometimes it's chronic and sometimes it's contagious enough to start an +epidemic. You're as young and irresponsible as the wind. You've never +grown up. God knows whether or not you ever will. But Brian has. +There's the clash." +</P> + +<P> +"Go on," said Kenny with a dangerous flash of interest in his eyes. +"You've an undeniable facility, John, with what you call the truth." +</P> + +<P> +"It's an unfortunate characteristic of highly temperamentalized +individuals—" +</P> + +<P> +"Painters, Irishmen and O'Neills," put in Kenny with sulky impudence. +</P> + +<P> +"That they frequently skirt the rocks for themselves with amazing +skill. I mean just this: They don't always shipwreck their own lives." +</P> + +<P> +Was that, Kenny would like to know, an essential of successful +parenthood? +</P> + +<P> +"I mean," he paraphrased dryly, "must you wreck your own life, John, to +parent somebody else with skill?" The wording of this rather pleased +him. He brightened visibly. +</P> + +<P> +Whitaker ignored his brazen air of assurance. It was like Kenny, he +reflected, to find an unexpected loophole and emerge from it with the +air of a conqueror. +</P> + +<P> +"People with an over-plus of temperament," he said, "wreck the lives of +others. Brian has just stepped out in the nick of time." +</P> + +<P> +"You mean," flashed Kenny with anger in his eyes, "you mean I've tried +to wreck the life of my own son? By the powers of war, John, that's +too much!" +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't say you had tried. I mean merely that you were accidentally +succeeding. The sunsets—" +</P> + +<P> +"Damn the sunsets!" roared Kenny, losing his head. +</P> + +<P> +"It was time for that," agreed Whitaker. +</P> + +<P> +"Time for what?" +</P> + +<P> +"You usually damn the irrefutable thing. Why you wanted Brian to paint +pictures," went on Whitaker, ignoring Kenny's outraged sputter, "when +he couldn't, is and always has been a matter of considerable worry and +mystery to me—" +</P> + +<P> +"It needn't have been. That, I fancy, John, you can see for yourself. +I worry very little about how your paper is run." +</P> + +<P> +"But I think I've solved it. It's your vanity." +</P> + +<P> +"My God!" said Kenny with a gasp. +</P> + +<P> +"You wanted to have a hand in what he did. Then you could afford to be +gracious. There are some, Kenny, who must always direct in order to +enjoy." +</P> + +<P> +There was a modicum of enjoyment with Whitaker around, hinted Kenny +sullenly. +</P> + +<P> +Whitaker found his irrelevant trick of umbrage trying in the extreme. +He lost his temper and said that which he had meant to leave to +inference. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, Brian's success, in which you, curiously enough, seem to have +had a visionary faith, would have linked him to you in a sort of +artistic dependence in which you shone with inferential genius and +generosity." +</P> + +<P> +It hurt. +</P> + +<P> +"So!" said Kenny, his color high. +</P> + +<P> +"It may be," said Whitaker, feeling sorry for him, "that I've put that +rather strongly but I think I've dug into the underlying something +which, linked with your warm-hearted generosity and a real love for +Brian, made you stubborn and unreasonable about his work. Of the big +gap in temperament and the host of petty things that maddened Brian to +the point of distraction, it's unnecessary for me to speak. You must +know that your happy-go-lucky self-indulgence more often than not has +spelled discomfort of a definite sort for Brian. You're generous, I'll +admit. Generous to a fault. But your generosity is always congenial. +It's never the sort that hurts. The only kind of generosity that will +help in this crisis is the kind that hurts. It's up to you, Kenny, to +do some mental house-cleaning, admit the cobwebs and brush them away, +instead of using them fantastically for drapery." +</P> + +<P> +Whitaker thanked his lucky stars he'd gotten on so well. Kenny, +affronted, was usually more capricious and elusive. +</P> + +<P> +"Whitaker," said Kenny, his eyes imploring, "you don't—you can't mean +that Brian isn't coming back?" +</P> + +<P> +Whitaker sighed. After all, Kenny never heard all of anything, just as +he never read all of a letter unless it was asterisked and under-lined +and riveted to his attention by a multitude of pen devices. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, have you been listening?" +</P> + +<P> +"No!" lied Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"Brian," flung out Whitaker wrathfully, "isn't coming back. I thank +God for his sake." +</P> + +<P> +His loss of temper brought a hornet's nest about his ears. Kenny swung +to his feet in smoldering fury. He expressed his opinion of Whitaker, +editors, Brian and sons. The sum of them merged into an unchristian +melee of officiousness and black ingratitude. He recounted the events +of the night before with stinging sarcasm in proof of Brian's +regularity. He ended magnificently by blaming Brian for the disorder +of the studio. There were handles everywhere. And Brian in an +exuberance of amiability had broken a statuette. Likely Whitaker would +see even in that some form of paternal oppression. +</P> + +<P> +"Whitaker," flung out Kenny indignantly, "Brian plays but one +instrument in this studio and we have a dozen. Wasn't it precisely +like him to pick out that damned psaltery there with the crooked stick? +I mean—wasn't it like him to pick out something with a fiendish +appendage that could be lost, and keep the studio in an uproar when he +wanted to play it?" +</P> + +<P> +Whitaker laughed in spite of himself. The psaltery stick was famous. +</P> + +<P> +Moreover, Brian—Brian, mind you, who talked of truth with +hair-splitting piety—Brian had that very day at noon forced his father +to the telling of a lie. +</P> + +<P> +"But he wasn't here," said Whitaker, mystified. "He lunched with me." +</P> + +<P> +"The fact remains," insisted Kenny with dignity. "I myself told Garry +Rittenhouse he'd gone up to Reynolds to collect some money. And Garry, +thinking he had come back, believed it." +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," said Whitaker, his patience quite gone, "are you mad? How on +earth did Brian force you into that lie?" +</P> + +<P> +"By not coming home," said Kenny sulkily. "If he'd come home as a lad +should, I needn't have told it. You can see that for yourself." +</P> + +<P> +Whitaker dazedly threw up his hands. +</P> + +<P> +Having successfully baffled his opponent with the brilliancy of his +unreason, Kenny enlarged upon the humiliation he must experience when +Garry learned the truth. At a familiar climax of self-glorification, +in which Kenny claimed he had saved Brian from no end of club-gossip by +his timely evasion of the truth, Whitaker lost his temper and went home. +</P> + +<P> +He left his host in a dangerous mood of quiet. +</P> + +<P> +It was a quiet unlike Kenny, who hated to think, and presently he flung +his pipe across the studio, fuming at what seemed to him unprecedented +disorder. It was getting on his nerves. No man could work in such a +hodge-podge. Even inspiration was likely to be chaotic and futuristic. +Small blame to Brian if he resented it all. To-morrow, if Reynolds +deigned to appear with his check, he would summon Mrs. Haggerty, and +the studio should have a cleaning that the mercenary old beldame would +remember. Kenny vaguely coupled Mrs. Haggerty with the present +disorder and resented both, his defiant eyes lingering with new +interest upon a jumble of musical instruments in a corner. +</P> + +<P> +With a muffled objurgation he fell upon the jumble and began to +overhaul it. The object sought defied his fevered efforts to unearth +it and with teeth set, he ransacked the studio, resentfully flinging a +melee of hindrances right and left. +</P> + +<P> +The telephone rang. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," said Garry's patient voice, "what in Heaven's name are you +doing? What hit the wall?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm hunting the stick to that damned psaltery," snapped Kenny and +banged the receiver into the hook, one hand as usual clenched +frenziedly in his hair. +</P> + +<P> +Later, with the studio a record of earthquake, he found it under a +model stand and wiping his forehead anchored it to the psaltery for +good and all with a shoestring. +</P> + +<P> +Horribly depressed he thumped on the wall for Garry, who came at once, +wondering wryly if Brian had come in and the need again was mediation. +</P> + +<P> +"You might as well know," began Kenny at once, "that Brian didn't go up +to Reynolds for me this noon—" +</P> + +<P> +Garry stared. +</P> + +<P> +"It was a lie," flung out Kenny with a jerk, "a damnable, deliberate, +indecent lie. Whitaker says he's gone for good." His look was wistful +and indignant. "Garry, what's wrong?" he demanded. "What on earth +<I>is</I> it? Why couldn't things have gone on as they were, without God +knows how many people picking <I>me</I> for a target? As far as I can see +I'm merely maintaining my usual average of imperfection and all the +rest of the world has gone mad." +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose, Kenny," began Garry lamely, "you must be starting a new +cycle. Jan could tell you. He talks a lot about the cycle of dates +and the philosophy of vibrations—" +</P> + +<P> +"I know that I regard the truth as something sacred, to be handled with +delicacy and discretion," began Kenny with bitter fluency. "I'm an +unsuccessful parent with an over-supply of hair and teeth, afflicted +with hairbrained, unquenchable youth. I'd be a perennial in the Land +of the Young and could hobnob indefinitely with his Flighty Highness, +the King of Youth. I'm forty-four years young and highly +temperamentalized. I've made a mess of parenting Brian and I'm an +abject failure." +</P> + +<P> +Garry looked at him. +</P> + +<P> +"Just what are you talking about?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"I know," pursued Kenny elaborately, "that it's unfortunate I haven't +wrecked my own life when I'm an accidental success at wrecking Brian's. +I'm full of cobwebs. I damn irrefutable things and I've forced Brian +to a profession of sunsets to gratify my vanity. Can you personally, +Garry, think of anything else?" +</P> + +<P> +"Sit down!" said Garry. "You're about as logical as a lunatic—" +</P> + +<P> +"Tell Whitaker, do," begged Kenny. "There's one he missed. Garry, +what's back of all this turmoil? What's the real reason for Brian's +brain-storm? I'm sick to death of Whitaker's wordy arabesque and +abuse. I want facts." +</P> + +<P> +"Brian said it all last night," reminded Garry. "It's just another +case of a last straw." +</P> + +<P> +"You honestly mean that the ancestors of the straw are the sunsets, the +disorder here—the—the—" He thumped the table. "Garry, I don't +lie. I swear I don't. I hate a liar. I mean a dishonorable liar. A +lie is an untruth that harms. That's my definition. Any man +embroiders sordid fact on occasion." +</P> + +<P> +"On occasion!" admitted Garry. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny, with his eye upon the fern in the window, missed the +significance. It had registered his sincere regret—that fern—at the +need of pawning Brian's fishing rods and golf clubs. Like Brian! He +had failed utterly to comprehend the delicacy of the tribute. +</P> + +<P> +Finding this point upon which he dwelt with some length equally +over-nice for Garry's perception, Kenny in a huff sent him home, +watered the fern, without in the least understanding the impulse, and +went to bed. And dreaming as usual, he seemed to be hunting cobwebs +with a gun made of ferns. He found them draped over huge pillars of +ice, marked in Brian's familiar sunset colors. Truth. And when +panting and sweating he had swept them all away with a wedge of cheese +he seemed to hear Whitaker's voice—calling him a failure. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny felt that he had been visited by Far Darrig, the Gaelic bringer +of bad dreams. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER III +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +IN THE GAY AND GOLDEN WEATHER +</H2> + +<P> +Spring came early and with the first marsh hawk Brian was on the road, +his eager youth crying out to the spring's hope and laughter. +Everywhere he caught the thrill of it. Brooks released from an armor +of ice went singing by him. Hill and meadow deepened verdantly into +smiles. A little while now and the whole green earth in its tenderness +would dimple exquisitely, with every dimple a flower. Mother Earth, +moistening the bare brown fields for the plough with a capricious tear +or so for the banished winter, was beginning again. And so was he. +Hope swelled wistfully within him like song in the throat of the +bluebird and sap in the trees. With the sun warm upon his face and the +gladness of spring in his veins, he sang with Pippa that "God's in his +Heaven, all's right with the world!" +</P> + +<P> +Well, New York, thank God, lay to the back of him, veiling her +realities and truth in glitter, defying nearness. Every human thing +that made for life lay there as surely as it lay here in God's quieter +world, but you never came close to it. +</P> + +<P> +So he tramped away to green fields and hills and winding quiet roads, +spring riding into his heart, invincible and bold. +</P> + +<P> +An arbutus filled him with the wonder of things, a sense of eternity, a +swift, inexplicable compassion, a longing for service to the needs of +men. His ears thrilled to the song of the earth and the whistle of the +ploughman turning up the fresh brown earth. He filled his lungs with +the wind of the open country, drank in the enchantment of the morning +and the dusk, his nostrils joyously alive to the smell of the furrowed +ground and a hint of burgeoning wild flowers. +</P> + +<P> +But the first robin brought misgivings and remorse. Brian remembered +Kenny's legend of the thorn ("worst of them all it was," said Kenny +gently, "and prickin' deepest!") and the robin who plucked it from the +bleeding brow of Christ. So by the blood of the Son of Man had the +robin come by his red breast. +</P> + +<P> +The legend filled Brian with yearning. He softened dangerously to the +memory of a sketching tramp with Kenny fuming at his heels, his +excitement chronic. Adventure had endlessly stalked Kenny for its own, +waylaid him at intervals when he passionately proclaimed his desire for +peace, and saddled Brian with the responsibilities of constant +guardianship. +</P> + +<P> +Brian stubbornly put it all behind him. Kenny, frantic with tenderness +and resolution, could sweep him credulously back into bondage if he +kept to the siege. His promises were fluent always and alluring. Only +by the courage of utter separation could Brian make his longed for +emancipation a thing assured. +</P> + +<P> +So he tramped the highway, lingering by fence and rail to talk with +men, living and learning. For the highway meant to him the passion of +life. Hope and sorrow traveled it day and night in homely hearts. +</P> + +<P> +And often his thoughts harked wistfully back to the words of a modern +poet which Kenny with his usual skill had set to music: +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> + "And often, often I'm longing still,<BR> + This gay and golden weather,<BR> + For my father's face by an Irish hill,<BR> + And he and I together." +</P> + +<P> +In the gay and golden weather things were going badly with the +unsuccessful parent. For weeks now his life had been in ferment, his +moods as freakish as the wind. What little regularity his life had +known departed to that limbo that had claimed his peace of mind. That +he felt himself abnormally methodic lay entirely in the fact that he +watered the fern each day. It had for him a morbid fascination. +Incomprehensible forces were sapping his faith in himself and the +future; and viciously at war with them, he nursed his grievance against +Brian only to find that it was less robust than any grievance should +be. At any cost he wanted Brian back. +</P> + +<P> +"He's taken care of me," remembered Kenny sadly, "since he was a bit of +a lad." +</P> + +<P> +As ever, the thing withheld, Kenny ardently desired. That thing was +Brian's presence. Any Irishman, he decided fiercely, would understand +his terrified clinging to the things of the heart that belonged to him +by birth. It was part of his race and creed. He hated to be alone. +And Brian was all he had. How lightly he had prized that one +possession until it became a thing denied, Kenny, sentimentalizing his +need, forgot. +</P> + +<P> +Studio gossip, having concerned itself with Brian's going, almost to +the disruption of the Holbein Club, took up in perturbed detail the +glaring problem of Kenny's tantrums. He was keeping everyone excited. +</P> + +<P> +"Of course," mused Garry, "you could earn your living as a moving +picture actor—" +</P> + +<P> +"Adams owes me five thousand dollars for his wife's portrait," +sputtered Kenny. "But I can't get it. He's been sick for weeks. +Typhoid." +</P> + +<P> +"And in the meantime?" +</P> + +<P> +The shaft went home. Kenny sent for a model—and sent her home. +</P> + +<P> +"She was too ornamental and decidedly sympathetic," he explained +gloomily to Garry. "I'm just in the mood to make a colossal fool of +myself. She was the sort of girl you'd invite to tea to meet your +brother's wife." +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" +</P> + +<P> +"She was!" insisted Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"Any number of models are and you know it. And that girl is Jan's +cousin." +</P> + +<P> +"I make a point of never losing my head over a model," declared Kenny +with an air. "It's a hindrance to work. You concentrate on a type and +every picture you do advertises your devotion. Suppose I married her!" +</P> + +<P> +"Heaven help her!" snapped Garry, and went out, slamming the door. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny offended, followed him home. He felt aggrieved and talkative. +</P> + +<P> +If Kenny had succeeded in propelling himself into one of his nervous +ecstasies of inspiration, thereby normalizing his existence to some +extent, if Reynolds had not appeared and simplified the painter's +credit to a point where he made no further search for unsympathetic +models. Fate, weaving the destiny of two O'Neills, would have changed +her loom. As it was, sick with brooding and pity for himself, Kenny +abandoned all pretense of labor and rushed on blindly to his fate. The +spring was in his blood. What form of midsummer madness lay ahead of +him depended now upon the hairtrigger of impulse. A wind, a sketch, +the perfume of a flower, and he would be off wherever the reminiscence +called him. He whistled constantly. That, as Jan pointed out, was +always a bad sign with Kenny. It meant that he felt perilously +transient and would rocket up in the air when a spark came that pleased +him. He had been much the same, Fahr remembered, the summer he +embarked for Syria upon a tramp steamer—to the captain's frantic +regret. +</P> + +<P> +In the end, feeling absurdly sorry for him, Garry unwittingly sent the +spark in by Pietro. +</P> + +<P> +It was a letter from Brian. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> + "Tavern of Stars<BR> + Open Country<BR> + God's Green World of Spring +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +"Dear Garry: +</P> + +<P> +"The purpose of this letter is primarily a favor. Therefore without +pretense I'll have done with it at once. You'll find in the studio a +scrapbook of clippings which represent my ebullitions in print. +Whitaker wants them, I believe, for purposes of conference. It will +save him running through his files. +</P> + +<P> +"I've been on the road for weeks, tramping myself into blessed +weariness at night. More often than not I sleep in the open. I'm +writing this with the aid of a pocket searchlight. Mine host, old +Gaffer Moon, smiles down upon the ashes of my camp fire, full-faced and +silver. An excellent host! Never once has he grumbled about light or +pay and he grants me a roof without question. Ah! it's a blessed old +Tavern of Stars, Garry! Ramshackle enough in all faith, for there are +gaps in the tree-walls and Dame Wind's a-sweeping night and day, but +luckily I've a blanket I carry by day and need by night. +</P> + +<P> +"I've a road-mate. I think in time he'll be my friend, though he isn't +yet. And thereby hangs a tale. +</P> + +<P> +"I camped to-night in a wood by a river and turned in early, feeling +tired. Voices drifted hazily into my slumber after a while and I awoke +to find the moon riding high above the wood. My fire was out, my room +in the Tavern of Stars still carpeted in shadow. Beyond in the +moonlight two people had halted, a boy who was denouncing someone in a +hard and bitter voice and, clinging to his arm, a girl in a cloak, whom +I judged to be his sister. Her eyes were like pools of ink and tragic +with imploring, Laughter would have made her lovely. As it was, with +her lashes wet I could only think of Niobe and a passion of tears. I +have rarely seen in a woman's face so much of the right kind of +sweetness. It was an exquisite vigor of sweetness, not in the least +the kind that cloys. +</P> + +<P> +"They were much alike, save that the boy's face was angry and +rebellious. He was the younger of the two, seventeen or so, and would +have been in rags but for an unbelievable amount of mending. +</P> + +<P> +"When I awoke, he had, I think, been urging his sister to go with him +and she had refused. Before I could even so much as make them aware of +my nearness, things came to a climax. The boy with a curse pushed her +away. The hurt in his heart perhaps had made him rough. But the girl +shrank away from him with a sob and ran back up the hill. He watched +her climb to a hill-farm near the river, with shame and agony in his +eyes, and I thought he would follow. Instead he plunged most +unexpectedly in my direction and finished his tragedy in comedy by +stumbling over me. We both scrambled to our feet a shade resentful. +</P> + +<P> +"He realized instantly that I had overheard and blazed out at me in a +passion of temper. Running away had plainly given him an arrogant +conviction of manhood. Garry, old dear, I had to thrash him for the +good of his soul and my Irish temper—he was so offensively independent +and unjust. +</P> + +<P> +"It was a pretty job of thrashing but it did him good. He threw +himself on the ground and sobbed like the kid he is. While he was +pulling himself together, I built up the fire and made him some coffee. +</P> + +<P> +"The blaze of the fire worried him—he was afraid his sister would see +it and come back. But he drank the coffee and when I had damped the +fire to ease his mind, I explained to him just why I'd felt the need of +thrashing him. For one thing I hadn't cared for the way he spoke to +his sister. And for another I hadn't cared at all for his insults to +me. He listened sullenly to the facts of my eavesdropping and +apologized. When he found that I was disposed to be friendly he +blurted out his justification for running away: an eccentric old +invalid uncle who in all probability is not so evil as the boy claims. +</P> + +<P> +"I had an odd feeling as we talked that he stands at the parting of the +ways. Chance will make or mar him. And therefore I told him that if +he insisted upon running away, he might as well tramp with me and think +it over. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't quite know yet why I said it. +</P> + +<P> +"He reminds me of Kenny somehow, save that Kenny's more of a kid. Both +of them have an overdose of temperament and need a guardian with an +iron hand. And both have a way about them. +</P> + +<P> +"Likely, after the wind was so pitifully out of his sails I could have +dragged him up the hill home but if he has the notion of escape in his +head, he'd go again. +</P> + +<P> +"After a good deal of talk, friendly and otherwise, we took turns at +the searchlight and wrote, each of us, a letter to his sister, I in a +sense seeking to guarantee a respectability I do not look or feel since +I am a truant myself with an indifferent amount of worldly goods. +However, I couldn't help thinking how she'd worry and I promised to see +him through. +</P> + +<P> +"He's asleep now under my blanket, catching his breath at intervals +like a youngster who's carried heartbreak into his sleep. Poor kid! I +suppose he has. I've promised him to be on the road before daybreak. +</P> + +<P> +"He'll have to work his way, but that, of course, will be good for him. +What pennies I have I'm obliged to count with a provident eye. I've +added to 'em from time to time along the road. So far I've been +intermittently a rotten ploughman, a fair fence-mender and a skillful +whitewasher. My amazing facility there I attribute to an +apprenticeship in sunsets. Once, during a period of rain, I lived in a +corncrib for three days at an average of seven cents a day. I've +reduced my need of kitchen equipment to a can-opener. A can of +anything, I've discovered, provides food as well as a combination +saucepan and coffee pot. +</P> + +<P> +"I miss Kenny but I dare not write to him. Garry, you know how it is. +Unless I brace myself with a lot of temper, he can twist me around his +finger. Even his letters are dangerous. I can't—I won't go back to +sunsets. +</P> + +<P> +"I often think these days of Kenny's wood-fire tales of the shrine of +Black Gartan where St. Columba was born. Colomcille, old Kenny called +him around the wood-fire, didn't he? Colomcille, Kenny said, having +been in exile, knew the homesick pangs himself and therefore could give +the good Irishmen who journeyed to his shrine strength to bear them. +I'm not in exile but there are times when I should be journeyin' off, +as Kenny says when the brogue is on him, to Black Gartan. The curse of +the Celt! Kenny swears there's no homesickness in the world like an +Irishman's passionate longing for home and kin. Not that I long for +the studio. God forbid! Kenny's the symbol for it all. +</P> + +<P> +"I've had some black minutes of remorse. After all I had no earthly +right to blaze out so about the shotgun. And you can't imagine how the +statuette upset me. +</P> + +<P> +"Say hello to Kenny for me, won't you? Tell him I'm brown and lean +already, and that I like the fortunes of the road." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +It hurt of course that the letter was Garry's. Nettled at first, Kenny +had half a mind not to read it. Later, why it was Garry's, gave him a +sense of power. Brian was homesick and repentant. And with the fire +of his temper spent he was always manageable. Kenny cursed the miles +between them. +</P> + +<P> +He read the letter again and the poetry of the open road filled his +veins with the fire of inspiration. Tavern of Stars! Old Gaffer Moon, +full-faced and silver! Tree-walls and Dame Wind a-sweeping! Why, the +lad was a poet—a poet like his father. And the big-hearted kindness +of him, thrashing the runaway into sense. Irish temper there! Kenny +felt a passionate thrill of pride in his offspring. Yes, Brian was +like his father, thank God, even to the Celtic curse of homesickness. +</P> + +<P> +"But to think of him," he marveled in a wave of tenderness, "living in +a corncrib on seven cents a day!" +</P> + +<P> +Again and again he read between the lines, finding sanity and sense, +compassion and humor. The inherited charm of Brian's personality +filled him with intense delight. +</P> + +<P> +"Always," Kenny remembered, "he must be taking care of someone." +</P> + +<P> +It gave him a sharp pang of jealousy that that someone was a stranger. +</P> + +<P> +But the thrill of penance was in his blood. If Brian was big enough to +see himself in the wrong, no less was Kennicott O'Neill, his +unsuccessful father. And he had driven Brian forth upon the road. For +that he must atone. +</P> + +<P> +That the solution of everything now lay at hand, Kenny never doubted. +Already he had rocketed sentimentally into inspiration. If a certain +vagueness of detail sent him roving abstractedly around the studio with +the letter in his hand, the inspiration in itself was amazingly clear. +Yes, he would fare forth and find Brian. He would tramp every mile of +the road as Brian had done. He would find the farmhouse, the wood and +the river! There happily would be some clue or other that he needed. +And Kenny, in rags and penitential, his feet blistered by the hardships +of the road, would overtake his son and apologize for everything. Nay, +more, he would promise anything. After that the rest would be easy. +Brian had written it there in a letter. Kenny could wind his son +around his finger. Yes, it was all quite clear. And Brian helpfully +would be shocked and thrilled at the sacrificial tribute of penance. +Kenny pursed his lips and nodded. He would even concede the sunsets. +That, after John Whitaker's cold-blooded misinterpretation, was +necessary to his own self-respect—and Brian's happiness. +</P> + +<P> +Ah, love was the only thing in the world that counted, love and art. +Not the love of woman, which was after all but an intermittent +intoxicant, but the love of one's own. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny pitied in foretaste the ragged parent who would come upon the +camp fire of his son, picturesque and repentant, and dramatized the +meeting, a lump in his throat. Emotionally it was complex to be actor +and audience both. Thank God, he reflected, as he opened a closet +door, dragged forth a battered multitude of bags and suit cases and +began an impatient upheaval of bureau drawers, he was a man of action. +When Garry entered a half hour later he found the studio floor littered +with preparation. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm off, this morning," he explained. "In an hour now. Garry, how +can I possibly reduce this mass to packing possibility?" +</P> + +<P> +"Stop running around in circles!" commanded Garry, thunderstruck. +"What's it all about? Where are you going?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going," said Kenny with his chin out and his eyes defiant, "to +hunt Brian." +</P> + +<P> +Garry stared blankly at the packing litter and the tall Irishman in the +center of it wearily mopping his forehead. It was impossible to locate +the crags he must have leaped to reach his spectacular decision. They +were shrouded in mystery. +</P> + +<P> +"You mean," said Garry after a while, "that you will tour vaguely off, +seeking a farm on a hill, a wood, a river, a youngster in patches and +Brian's trail of camp fires?" +</P> + +<P> +"Precisely," said Kenny with detestable confidence. "See, even you +mark the clues with perfect logic." +</P> + +<P> +"A farm on a hill," exclaimed Garry, "is of course a clue with absolute +individuality. So is a wood and a river." +</P> + +<P> +"So," supplemented Kenny with the calm, unhurried air of one who scores +an unexpected point, "is a postmark on a letter." +</P> + +<P> +Startled, Garry reached for the envelope. Kenny put it in his pocket. +</P> + +<P> +"An obscure village in Pennsylvania," he explained with dignity, "where +your wood and your river will likely have definite individuality. I +shall go there." +</P> + +<P> +Garry scented danger and considered the outcome in horrified dismay, +regretting his rash flurry of sympathy. It had become a boomerang. +What if Brian's protégé in a fit of remorse saw fit to keep his sister +posted? Kenny would indeed find clues. The possibility filled him +with foreboding. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," he said with some heat, "I consider that you have absolutely +no right to take advantage of my letter to hunt Brian down. I'm sorry +I sent it in. If he wanted you to know where he is, he'd write you. I +wish to Heaven I'd thought of that postmark!" +</P> + +<P> +"I shall tramp every inch on foot!" swore Kenny proudly. "Brian will +appreciate the spirit of the thing if you do not." +</P> + +<P> +There was relief at least in that. Garry drew a long breath. If Kenny +tramped his way, another inexplicable factor in his lunacy, by the time +he reached the farmhouse Brian would be well on ahead. And Garry was +bitterly familiar with Kenny's incapacity for steadiness of any kind. +Kenny, it developed, was thinking in similar vein. +</P> + +<P> +"I take it there will be an interval of waiting before remorse will +lead the kid to write to his sister," he said. "Otherwise I'd proceed +to the farmhouse at once in a flying machine." +</P> + +<P> +The romance of this seemed to strike him strongly for an interval. +Then, mercifully, he repeated his intention of tramping. +</P> + +<P> +"And then?" said Garry. +</P> + +<P> +"Then," said Kenny with the utmost optimism, "I'll pick up his trail at +the farmhouse and from there I'll travel night and day until I overtake +him." +</P> + +<P> +"And then?" +</P> + +<P> +"The lad will come home with me." +</P> + +<P> +"And then?" +</P> + +<P> +"Good God, Garry," thundered Kenny, "I never knew anybody with such an +'And then?' sort of mind as you seem to have. There's an 'And then?' +doubt after every glorious climax. He'll be home. That's sufficient." +</P> + +<P> +"What about the scrapbook?" +</P> + +<P> +"I've already sent it." +</P> + +<P> +Garry glanced hopelessly at the melee on the floor. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose," he said coldly, "that you plan to go sagging along the +highway with a suit case in each hand and a bag or two on your back?" +</P> + +<P> +"I plan," retorted Kenny, "to depart from here with one suit case which +will eventually become a knapsack. The problem now is entirely one of +elimination. Have you anything to do, Garry?" +</P> + +<P> +"I have," said Garry distinctly. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny looked hurt. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sorry," he said. "Because you're a jewel at eliminatin'. I mind +me of the sketching trip we took together. You did all of the packing +then in a marvelous way." +</P> + +<P> +Hopelessly uncertain what he ought to do, Garry lingered. If by a word +he could restrain this madcap penitent from roving off in a fit of +sentimentality it must be spoken forcibly and at once. +</P> + +<P> +"Brian," he said, "will never forgive me." +</P> + +<P> +"Brian," said Kenny, "is a jewel for sense. He'll love you for it." +</P> + +<P> +Garry flung himself into a chair with a muttered imprecation. +</P> + +<P> +"Now, Kenny," he said, "I want you to tell me precisely what you plan +to do." +</P> + +<P> +Nothing loathe, Kenny obeyed. He liked to talk. Garry found his plans +indefinite and highly romantic. It was plain the notion of footsore +penance had taken vigorous hold of his imagination and his love of +adventure. Characteristically, since the actor on the highway was +himself, he saw no chance of failure. To Garry's curt "ifs" he turned +a deaf ear and sulked. +</P> + +<P> +In the end they quarreled badly. Garry, raging inwardly, went home in +despair; and Kenny, after a tumultuous period of indecision, eliminated +a floorful of luggage. In the rebound he took less than he should. +He was ready to go when the door opened and the head of Sidney Fahr +appeared. Instantly his round eyes bulged with inquiry. +</P> + +<P> +"Lord Almighty, Kenny," he said. "You—you're not off for anywhere, +are you?" +</P> + +<P> +"I am," said Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +Sid came in and closed the door. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I can't believe it!" he sputtered. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't!" said Kenny. He was out of sorts. Garry, talking of honor and +letters, had given him a bad interval of indecision and guilt. +</P> + +<P> +"It—it's amazing!" went on Sid. "You were all right at breakfast—" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny wheeled furiously. +</P> + +<P> +"Sid," he snorted, "you're amazed when it rains. You're amazed when it +snows. You're amazed when the sun's out and amazed when it isn't. +Thunder-and-turf! you're always amazed!" Whereupon he stalked out with +his suit case and slammed the door. +</P> + +<P> +Sid pursed his lips and shook his head, his gaze riveted upon the door +panels in round-eyed incredulity. To him Kenny was an incomprehensible +source of turbulence. +</P> + +<P> +"The spark!" said Sid. "Wonder what it's been?" +</P> + +<P> +Then sharing the club-feeling of guardianship where Kenny was +concerned, the good-natured little painter embarked upon a tour of +inspection, locked the studio windows and trotted upstairs, still +amazed, to tell Jan all about it. +</P> + +<P> +Thus Kenny departed from the Holbein Club, forgetting Fahr almost at +once. He had recalled the tale of the Irish piper who added a phrase +to some fairy music he heard below him in a hill; and the fairies, +bursting forth in delight, had struck the hump from his back in reward. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny himself had the same feeling of relief that the piper must have +had thereafter. He too had lost his hump of worry. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER IV +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +GOD'S GREEN WORLD OF SPRING +</H2> + +<P> +At a country inn the suit case became a knapsack. Kenny went forth +into a world of old houses, apple blossoms and winding roads, likening +himself to Peredur who had gone in search of the Holy Grail. The Grail +in this case was the holy boon of his son's forgiveness. +</P> + +<P> +He went with the break of day at a swinging stride, his penitential +inspiration in the full flower of its freshness. If misgiving claimed +him at all, it was merely a matter of shoes. They were the kind, built +for walking, likely to be in a state of unromantic preservation at his +journey's end. Kenny found in them a source of discontent and +speculation. +</P> + +<P> +For the passion of life which to Brian's fancy haunted the highway, +Kenny had delightful substitute, fairies quaffing nectar from +flower-cups of dew or riding bridle paths of cloud on bits of straw. +In everything he chose to find an augury, from the night of birds to +the way of the wind, the curl of smoke or the color of a cloud. +Thirsty he longed for the drinking horn of Bran Galed or better still +of Finn, for Finn's horn held whatever you wanted. And for a pattern +in moments of diversion, there was always the fairy Conconaugh, who +made love to every pretty shepherdess and milkmaid he met. Many a +farmer's daughter smiled and blushed at the gallant sweep of Kenny's +cap. +</P> + +<P> +So he tramped, peering delightedly under bushes for the green suits and +red caps of the Clan Shee, and every cleft of rock became the portal to +a fairy dwelling. At sunset he discovered a fairy battle in the clouds +and when the moon rose, silhouettes, fairy-like and frail, scudded +mystically across the face of it. Old Gaffer Moon, full-faced and +silver! +</P> + +<P> +Brian's world of spring had been the world of men and women; Kenny's +world held Puck and Mab and Una. He called her Oonagh. If once he +remembered with longing that Oonagh's jovial fairy husband, King +Fionvarra, went to his revels on the back of a night-black steed with +nostrils aflame, he dismissed it as disloyal. Brian too had been +tired, though he called it "blissfully weary." That depended something +on the viewpoint. +</P> + +<P> +When at last beside the embers of his camp fire, he spread his oilskin +and drew a blanket over him, the night sounds of the forest, a-crackle +with mystery, became the woodland spirits of King Arthur's men, blowing +their ghostly horns by the light of the moon. Likely the wee folk +would come and dance beside the embers of his camp fire. +</P> + +<P> +"By the powers of wildfire!" cried Kenny drowsily, "it is good to be +alive!" +</P> + +<P> +In the morning there was mist and rain and Kenny tramped the sodden +world in a mood of sadness. Melancholy dripped from the wet white +blossoms along the way. The drenched green of the meadows brought +tragic thoughts of Erin and her fate. Never a maid peeped over an +orchard fence. Kenny bolstered his spirits again and again with some +lines of Wordsworth which as a picturesque part of his road equipment +he had copied into his notebook. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> + "I roved o'er many a hill and many a dale,<BR> + . . . . in heat or cold,<BR> + Through many a wood, and many an open road,<BR> + In sunshine and in shade, in wet and fair,<BR> + Drooping or blithe of heart, as might befall,<BR> + My best companions now the driving winds,<BR> + And now the 'trotting brooks' and whispering trees—<BR> + And now the music of my own sad steps,<BR> + With many a short-lived thought that passed between<BR> + And disappeared." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Never before had the words failed to thrill him with the romance of the +road. Now as the rainy twilight threatened with never an inn in sight, +he lingered on the final lines: "The music of my own sad steps!" +</P> + +<P> +Sad steps indeed that postponed his meeting with Brian! Did he not owe +it to his son to travel with all possible speed to the farmhouse +instead of plodding belatedly along the highway in rain and gloom and +twilight? Had he after all a right to indulge his passion for tramping +and footsore penance when already word might have come to the sister +with the ink-pool eyes? The runaway was young. His remorse would come +the quicker. For every day he, Kenny, lingered in selfish penance on +the road, he must pay in a widening of distance between Brian and +himself. Kenny quickened his sagging foot-steps. Drenched and hungry, +he felt himself better able to see the thing in sane and unpoetic light. +</P> + +<P> +It came to this: Would Brian prefer the rags of romantic loitering to +the speed, train or otherwise, of eager affection? Surely not! He +must not be selfish. Foot-sore or foot-fresh, his remorse would be the +same. With Brian it would be the inner things that counted. +</P> + +<P> +At twilight Kenny found a thrifty farmer who agreed to take him in. He +dried his clothes by the kitchen fire, hating the woolly smell of the +steam. Later he slept in the haymow and lay awake far into the night, +listening in doubt and despair to the drip of the rain on the roof. +Nothing ever went quite right. He must read again in Brian's letter +about the Tavern of Stars. Beldame Rain seemed bent upon a +housecleaning. Kenny, dreaming, departed from the barn in a flying +machine made of lilacs. Its planes, he regretted, seemed merely sheets +of rain, specked foolishly with pine-needles. +</P> + +<P> +He awoke to a subdued noise of voices in the barn below and wondered +disapprovingly if the farmer was just getting home. It appeared that +he was getting up. Horribly depressed and sorry for him, Kenny went to +sleep again. When he awoke the sun was laughing iridescently from +meadow trails of rain. The fragrance of wet pine came in through the +barn window. The lilac in the garden was ready to flower. Kenny +longed to be off. Nevertheless he breakfasted at some length in the +farm kitchen and paid so handsomely in coin and grace that there was +talk of him for days. +</P> + +<P> +Already the sun was warm. It lay in a blanket of bright gold +everywhere. Cloud shadows deepened a meadow here and there to +coolness. The air was tonic, deliriously wine-sweet and heady. Kenny +thought of honey and bees and clover and tramped and brooded. +</P> + +<P> +The sun he hoped would presently abate its unromantic fervor. Meantime +he must think. Penance or the tribute of impatience? Which should it +be? +</P> + +<P> +It remained for an abandoned corncrib to plunge him into his original +fever of inspiration and remorse. Brian had lived in a corncrib for +seven cents a day. Brian had ploughed and Brian had mended fences. He +had even dabbled in whitewash. No, by the powers that be! It was a +thing for penance after all. Always at the farmhouse the trail would +be waiting. What if he arrived there and the runaway had failed to +write? What would he do then? + +Rags and blisters and a bit of corncrib penance for himself! It was +the only way. It would give his need of Brian invincible weight. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny climbed a fence and entered the corncrib by a flight of rickety +steps. It was something of a wreck and unspeakably dusty. Sneezing +violently he sat down and ate his supper of bread and cheese with +profound discontent. Each tasted monotonously of the other. Instead +of two articles of diet he appeared to have something heterogeneously +one in flavor. The smell of cheese he hoped wouldn't attract rats and +remembered vaguely that a corncrib was architecturally immune from +rodents. Well, no rat with discrimination would select a corncrib +abode anyway. He'd fall through the floor slats. +</P> + +<P> +Oppressed by the general air of slatty insecurity and the sight of a +basket of ancient cobs in one corner, Kenny wished passionately that he +hadn't always hated spiders, killed one with a shudder and pensively +watched the sunset through the corncrib bars. It made him think of +flamingoes in flight. One saw that best in India, flocks and flocks of +them in the sky like an exquisite flame of clouds. Ah, India! No, on +second thought he'd rather he in Iceland. +</P> + +<P> +It sounded cooler. +</P> + +<P> +When the moon etched silver bars upon the corncrib floor he went to +bed, regretting the preposterous fanlike spread of the corncrib walls. +Nothing walled should be smaller at the floor than it was at the top. +It gave one a hopeless feeling of constriction. The feeling colored +his dreams. Kenny found himself hazily adrift in an inquisitorial +corncrib made of bars of moon-plated silver. They pressed in upon him +ever tighter and tighter until with a mighty sweep of his arms he burst +them all asunder. +</P> + +<P> +He awoke at an undesirable hour, convinced that another farmer was +getting up. The world was a mournful gray. At the end of the corncrib +a head was peering in. Kenny turned his searchlight on it and had a +moment of doubt. The man was facially endowed for anything but virtue. +He was likely getting in—not up. +</P> + +<P> +"Hum!" said Kenny suspiciously. "Are you coming in, my good friend, or +are you going out?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm comin' into my own corncrib, damn you!" shouted the farmer with +unexpected malevolence, "and you're going out!" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny, resistant, knew instantly that he was not. He sat up. +</P> + +<P> +"The acoustics, Silas," he said with cold disapproval, "are excellent. +Therefore—" +</P> + +<P> +It was impossible to finish. The farmer, finding the name offensively +rustic, roared into the corncrib that Kenny was a hobo without future +hope of heaven. He and the corncrib, it seemed, knew the genus well. +Indeed, he looked in the corncrib for hope-lorn hoboes with the same +regularity that he looked in the hay for eggs. +</P> + +<P> +He added some infuriated statistics about early rising. +</P> + +<P> +"Come out of that!" he yelled. +</P> + +<P> +Thoroughly out of patience Kenny flung the basket of corncobs at the +farmer's head. An instant sputter of cobby profanity and the sound of +a backward scramble gave him grim delight. +</P> + +<P> +"When I leave any bed at this hour," he called with terrible composure, +"it will be because I haven't a fist to explain a gentleman's habits. +It's of no earthly interest to me if fool farmers are getting up all +over the dawn. So are the roosters. Let 'em!" +</P> + +<P> +But the basket of cobs had been persuasive. Kenny saw beyond in the +dimness cobs and an empty basket. The farmer was gone. He lay down +again in deep disgust, merely reaching a pleasant stage of drowsiness +when the sound of voices near the corncrib roused him again. +</P> + +<P> +This time he sat up with a jerk. +</P> + +<P> +"Silas," he thundered, "is that you again?" +</P> + +<P> +It was. It was moreover a Silas arrogant and cautious who peered in +through the bars and stated profanely that he had a marshal with him, a +marshal with a badge. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny considered the new complication with a startled frown. It either +spelled retreat in a harrowing dawn with the marshal and Silas at his +heels or a temporary sojourn in a village jail. And Kenny detested any +form of humiliation or discomfort. +</P> + +<P> +"Silas," he said wearily, "this is a rotten corncrib. It's sprained +and spavined and Lord knows what. It's full of bugs and ants and +spiders and dust and passé corncobs and it's architecturally incorrect, +but if you and the marshal will hike off somewhere else and brag about +his badge, I'll buy it. I've got to sleep." +</P> + +<P> +Speechless, Silas stared through the slats and continued to stare until +his stupefied face became a source of irritation. Kenny lost his +temper. He raised his voice. +</P> + +<P> +"You petrified lout! I said I'd buy it." +</P> + +<P> +The marshal, whose bravery seemed less in evidence than his badge, +summoned Silas to a point of safety. They conferred in a murmur. +Kenny viciously killed a spider and strained his ears in vain to hear +the purport of the consultation. +</P> + +<P> +After an interval of heated debate Silas returned and with an air of +scepticism demanded twenty-five dollars. When Kenny, who never +questioned the price of anything, argued the point from motives of pure +antagonism, he called the marshal. The marshal was conservative. He +dallied with the need of coming. Kenny took advantage of a dispute +among the enemy to count out the bills in concessional disgust and +shove them through the slats. Silas, turning, brushed them with his +nose and leaped back in terror. Then his hand shot upwards in an +avaricious clutch. The amazed pair counted the bills and departed, +ever after confusing Kenny's identity with that of a famous lunatic +addicted to escapes. +</P> + +<P> +Having detected all forms of degeneracy in the farmer's face Kenny +barricaded the door with a loose plank from the upper step, made sure +it would fall easily with a clatter, examined his revolver and had his +sleep out, thanks to the fact that the day proved cloudy. He awoke to +flies and disillusion. His head ached. His back ached. There was a +spider in his hat. He wanted water. He wanted a brook equipped with a +shower-bath and he wanted the luxury of eating what he chose. Never, +never would he eat cheese again unless the hand of famine gripped him. +Perhaps not then. The sum of his discontent plunged him into a black +temper in which he rehearsed the details of his morning's misadventure +with growing spleen and wished sincerely that Silas would appear again +and roar at him. And, then, gingerly descending the rickety steps, +Kenny remembered that the corncrib was his. +</P> + +<P> +His … and not his. For he could not take it with him. It was a +tantalizing thought. Not that he wanted it. God forbid! Ever after +he would hate the sight of a corncrib. He simply resented the notion +of leaving it behind for the vocal entertainment of Silas, who would +likely get up again with the roosters and roar into it at "hoboes." +Yes, the corncrib would revert to Silas, from whom he had merely rented +it for one night at a most appalling price. The improvidence of it +shocked him. Kenny retraced his footsteps in a blaze of indignation +and made a bonfire on the corncrib floor to which in a reckless spasm +of disgust he consigned the remainder of his supper. The crazy +structure caught at once, with a smell of cheese. +</P> + +<P> +Five minutes later Kenny's corncrib was a mass of flames and Silas had +appeared at the end of the field roaring incomprehensible profanity. +Kenny, waiting, whistled softly with a defiant air of calm. The +corncrib was his. He had a perfect right to burn it. He meant to tell +Silas this in a quiet voice, but lost his temper and thundered it +instead. Then in a fury he advanced to meet the disturber of his +morning sleep and made him pay in full for the disillusion of his days +upon the road. +</P> + +<P> +He thrashed Silas into a mood of craven apology and left him with his +head in his hands. To Kenny's disgusted glance he was like the Irish +Grogach of folk lore, who tumbles around among the hills with a good +deal of head and a lax body without much hint of bones. Well, Brian +had thrashed somebody too. There were times when it couldn't be +helped. And Brian had lived in a corncrib at seven cents a day. Kenny +whipped out his notebook. +</P> + +<P> +"One day in a corncrib:" he wrote grimly. "Twenty-five dollars!" +</P> + +<P> +Brian and he were maintaining their customary scale of contrast. +</P> + +<P> +The highway he abandoned almost at once and struck off through the +forest, reflecting with a frown that Silas would doubtless look up the +marshal and demand a warrant for his arrest. Fate was at his heels +again obsessed by a mania for disturbing the peace of mind he craved. +He might even be hunted by a village posse. And bloodhounds! The +adventurous side of this rather pleased him. It simply narrowed down +to this—it behooved him to loiter no longer in the green world of +spring. Penance or no penance he must now try penitential speed. How +on earth had he ever managed to blunder into a country all trees and no +rails? +</P> + +<P> +He found a druid of a brook chanting paganly to trees and moss. +Ordinarily Kenny would have found its music and its shadows infinitely +poetic. Now, wretchedly out of sorts, he plunged his face and hands +into a shady pool with a sigh of vast materialistic content, longed to +linger and cursed the village posse he fancied at his heels. The first +romance of his flight from justice was waning rapidly. With a groan he +plunged on, horribly full of aches and hunger. Always now he would +understand the Gaelic legend of Far Goila, the gaunt Man of Hunger who +goes touring up and down the land in times of famine bringing luck to +those who feed him. Even his taste for cheese was returning. The +holocaust of the morning filled him with bitter regret. As for his +feet, they felt shapeless and huge and fungus-like and full of burning +needles. Oh, for the sandals of power of Fergus Mac Roigh! +</P> + +<P> +At noon in utter desperation he bought a mule. +</P> + +<P> +The mule brayed temptation at him from the fence of a forest shanty. A +negress stood in the doorway. Kenny, in no mood for haggling, +recklessly offered what he thought the mule was worth. It looked +incredibly sturdy. His voice evoked a ragged husband who came up out +of a cellar doorway eating a dwarfed banana. The sight of the banana +made Kenny dizzy with emotion. +</P> + +<P> +He demanded one at any price and bought six, ate them one after the +other without the pretense of a halt and moodily shied the last skin at +a sparrow, realizing then with a shock that the negro had already +untied the mule from the picket fence. The precipitancy of it all made +him slightly uncomfortable. Either the negro was too lazy to bargain +or the offer was out of all proportion to the mule's repute. Kenny +asked. +</P> + +<P> +"He's got a powahful sight of appetite fo' a po' man," explained the +darky fluently. "I's glad to see him go. Dat mule, sah, even eats de +pickets on de fence." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny felt sincerely that he could understand. +</P> + +<P> +"Just give him his haid, sah," called the negro as he climbed aboard, +"and he'll find de road outside fo' yoh." +</P> + +<P> +Mule and rider disappeared with a sort of plunge. Kenny's spirits +soared. Substance and speed here enough for any man. He remembered in +the first moment of his uplift that Cuchullin, foremost champion of the +Red Branch, had had a magic steed that rose from a lake. Its name was +Leath Macha. +</P> + +<P> +Very well, he would christen this amazing beast of sinews with the +compass nose, Leath Macha, and make him a gift of his head as the darky +advised. Leath Macha—Kenny later found less poetic names he liked +better—developed a sylvan taste for roving and lost himself in no +time, pursuing elusive glints of greenness. He seemed always seeking +food. It came over his rider with a sickening wave of apprehension and +disgust that the unscrupulous negro, taking advantage of his plight, +had sold him what the southern darky calls an ornery mule, a mule that +charged forward with fiery snorts and halted only when it pleased him, +kicked backward when he did stop and plunged forward immediately +afterward with a horrible air of purpose. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny groaned. He was between the devil and the deep sea. The +prospect of staying lost in a world of trees filled him with hungry +foreboding. But he dreaded the open highway and pictured himself John +Gilpining through town and village, a thing of ridicule and helpless +progress. Puck in the guise of a hairbrained mule! He would pound +onward into the night and throw his rider with the dawn. +</P> + +<P> +At dusk the mule came out unexpectedly upon a turnpike and halted with +a snort. Perfectly convinced that he was planning something or other +spectacular and public, Kenny slid instantly from his back and grabbed +his knapsack. He left Leath Macha in an attitude of hairtrigger +contemplation, apparently about to begin something at once. When Kenny +looked back the dusk or the forest had engulfed him. Likely the +latter. Trained for the purpose, he decided in a blaze of wrath, Leath +Macha had returned to the negro and a diet of pickets. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny, swinging down the turnpike in the vigor of desperation, felt no +single pang of penance. His mood was primitive and pertinacious. He +went forward with bee-like undeviation until he found an inn where he +bathed and shaved and ate. He slept until midnight and ate again. He +slept through the night and the morning and ate again, still with the +mental monotony of a cave-dweller. Then he found a railroad and rode. +Not until he reached the town postmarked upon Brian's letter did he +trouble himself with anything but the primitive needs of primitive man. +Here, however, he permitted himself the luxury of a brief but wholly +satisfactory interval of summary. The fortunes of the road had forced +him into the prodigal acquirement of a corncrib and a mule when he had +meant to please Brian by his economy. He had burned the one and +abandoned the other, wholly necessary irregularities. He had thrashed +a farmer. A fugitive from justice he had suffered hunger and thirst +and every form of bodily torment. And he had tramped through a day of +rain with sodden shoes and steaming garments. +</P> + +<P> +Glory be to God! he had infused enough penance into his four days upon +the road to last an ancient martyr a lifetime. Happily he had always +had a gift for concentration. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER V +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +AT THE BLAST OF A HORN +</H2> + +<P> +The village was old and depressing. Kenny, a conspicuous guest at the +one hotel, awoke at noon to less imaginative interest in the wood, the +farmhouse and the river than he'd known for days. He had walked into +his picture. Now with perspective gone, he felt uncertain and vaguely +alarmed. Well, any quest that led to an inn like this, he felt, must +in itself be preposterous. +</P> + +<P> +The innkeeper proved to be a mine of general information. He knew +nothing at all specific but evinced a candid willingness to overcome +this by acquiring facts from Kenny. Nobody he knew had run away from +an uncle. Why was Kenny seeking uncles? … Hum … Joel +Ashley's boy had run away but the uncle there had been a stepmother. +Was the runaway boy anybody's long lost heir? A pity! One read such +things in the papers. Years back there had been a scandal about a girl +who ran away to be an actress. + +Kenny interrupted him long enough to order anything vehicular in the +village that would go. The innkeeper shouted to a boy outside with a +bucket and asked Kenny how far the "rig" would have to travel. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going," Kenny told him shortly, "to find a river. I'll keep going +until I find it." +</P> + +<P> +The innkeeper after an interval of blank astonishment identified the +river at once. Kenny felt encouraged. Pressed to further detail, +however, he admitted a confusing plentitude of woods, hills and +farmhouses. Dangerously near the state of mind Garry called "running +in circles," Kenny fumed out to wait for the hotel phaeton and climbed +into it with a shudder of disgust. It had a mustard colored fringe. +</P> + +<P> +But the phaeton creaked away into a wind and world of lilacs. Kenny +forgot the inn. He forgot the village. Another gust of warm, sweet +wind, another shower of lilac stars beside a well, another lane and he +would have to paint or go mad. +</P> + +<P> +He neither painted nor lost his reason. He came instead to the river +and began again to fret. The road that but a moment before had made a +feint of stopping for good and all at a dark and hilly wall of cedars, +swept around a rocky curve and revealed the glint of the river. After +that by all the dictates of convenience it should have curved again and +continued its course to Kenny's destination, pleasantly parallel with +the bends of the river. Instead it crossed the river bridge and went +off at a foolish tangent, disappearing over the crest of a hill. Wild +and wooded country swept steeply down to the river edge. Kenny, who +had made a vow of penitential speed, must continue his search on foot. +The prospect filled him with dismay. +</P> + +<P> +He dismissed the phaeton at the bridge and stared up and down the river +in gloomy indecision. Upstream or downstream? Heaven alone knew! +Whichever way he elected to go would be the wrong way. Fate, who had +saddled him with Silas and the mule, would see to that. +</P> + +<P> +Then, having resentfully put his mind to it, he evolved some logic. +Brian, leaving the wood by the river, would not go back the way he had +come. He would travel upstream and mail his letter when he found the +village. Kenny conversely had found the village first. Therefore he +must travel downstream to find the wood; downstream through a +disheartening tangle of bush and tree and brier and maybe snakes and +marshes. +</P> + +<P> +With a groan he plunged into the wood, keeping well up the slope to +avoid the lower marshes. He must spur himself to the start or he'd +never finish. But his mind was in ferment. What if the boy had +written to his sister? Must he vagabond forth again with the morning +into a world of bucolic dawns, alarm-clock farmers, roosters, corncribs +and mules? By the powers of wildfire, no! He would buy a motorcycle. +On tires or toes he could wind Brian around his finger and he would! +</P> + +<P> +In a flurry of bitter abstraction, he floundered into a marsh and +emerged mud-spattered and indignant. Briers tore at him. Below the +sun-mottled river glided endlessly on in sylvan peace. The other shore +looked better. There the wind-bent shag of trees was greener save +when, with a hint of rain, the breeze turned up an under-leaf ripple of +silver. He met no one; no one but a madman, he reflected, would +explore the tangled banks of a hermit river. +</P> + +<P> +At sunset, after seven slow weariful miles downstream in the brooding +quiet of a hot afternoon murmurous with birds and the sound of the +river, he came to the end of his journey—a wood, stretching steeply up +a cliff to a farmhouse lost in trees and ivy. It was on the other side +of the river and there was no bridge. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny, who believed all things of Fate when the pet or victim was +himself, refused absolutely to credit her crowning whimsy. In a fury +of exasperation he clambered down to the water's edge and washed his +face; moodily mopping it with his handkerchief he stared across the +water. +</P> + +<P> +The sun in a last blaze was going down behind the higher line of trees. +Roof peaks and chimney lay against a mat of gold. Crows winging toward +the forest to the south speckled the sky behind the chimney. To +Kenny's ardent fancy, the old house, built of gray and ancient stone, +became a rugged cameo set in gold and trees. Whatever arable land +belonged to the hill-farm lay away from the river. North and south +loomed only a primitive maze of trees. +</P> + +<P> +A path wound steeply down to the river's edge and to a boat. Kenny +stared at it in some resentment. +</P> + +<P> +Well, if he must hunt a bridge he would rest there first beneath the +willow. The sun had made him drowsy. He might even camp on the river +bank and if ever a foot came down the path and toward the boat, he +would fire his revolver into the air and demand attention. The +prospect pleased him. He went toward the willow. +</P> + +<P> +Fate having toyed with Kenny tossed him a rose and smiled. +</P> + +<P> +There was a battered horn upon the willow and below a wooden sign: +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> + <I>Craig Farm Ferry<BR> + Please blow the horn</I> +</P> + +<P> +A battered horn of adventure! What might it not evoke? Woodland +spirits perhaps, romance, a ferryman! Thank God the tree was old, the +horn battered and the willow naiadic in its grace. A trio of blessing! +</P> + +<P> +Kenny whistled softly in amazed delight and blew the horn. Its blast +startled him and the wooded hills seemed to fling the echo back upon +him. In better humor he flung himself down beneath a tree to wait for +the ferryman—and went peacefully to sleep. +</P> + +<P> +St. Kevin had once fallen asleep at a window with his arms outstretched +in prayer; a swallow had made a nest in his hand and the saint had +waited for the swallow's young to hatch. Kenny, with the legend dimly +adrift in his brain, dreamed that he too must wait until a ferryman +grew up. He grew up on the further shore to a youth in patches and +then all at once the dream became a beautiful delight. The youth by a +twist of woodland magic turned to a maid in a glory of old brocade. +Such a maid might have stepped from an ancient tapestry to come in +search of a knight of old. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill!" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny did not stir. He must keep the dream to the end. If he moved +now the maid would vanish. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill!" A hand touched his shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +A haze of old brocade golden in the sunlight retreated and then loomed +persistently ahead. The dream if anything became a shade more clear. +Well, if a man must dream, let him dream thus, vividly, turning the +clock back to maids unbelievably quaint and winsome in old brocade. +Sweet as an Irish smile, the face of this one, and as haunting. And +beyond, an old flat-bottomed punt and a river, a real river— +</P> + +<P> +Scarlet with confusion, Kenny sprang to his feet. Queen of Heaven! the +girl was real. She had stepped from the page of an old romance into +life and laughter, wearing for the mystification of chance beholders, +an old-time gown of gold brocade! The mystery of her gown, the river +setting, the laughing sweetness of her face, rooted him to the spot in +wonder and delight. He knew every subtlety of her coloring in one +glance. Her soft exquisite eyes were brown. Tragic, they might very +well seem pools of ink. Her hair? In the sun there was bronze, deep +and vivid, in the shadows brown. And the sun had deepened her skin to +cream and tan and rose. Thank God he was a Celt, an artist and an +aesthete! +</P> + +<P> +He did not mean to keep on staring nor could he stop. He was horribly +disturbed. For he knew the signs as the traveler knows the landmarks +of an old, familiar road. Heaven help him, one of his periodic fits of +madness was upon him! It could not be helped. He was falling in love +again. And he was tragically sorry. Brian would get so far ahead. +</P> + +<P> +Standing there with lunacy in his veins and his head awhirl Kenny +looked ahead with foreboding and foresaw days of delicious torment. He +knew with the profound and sorrowful wisdom of experience that it would +not, could not last. Almost he could have forecast to the day the sad +descent into sanity, reactive, monotonous, unemotional, inevitable as +the end of the road. But even with his conscience up in arms, he +welcomed his surrender. Besides, rebellion, as he knew of old, was +utterly futile. He must let the thing run its course. +</P> + +<P> +The thought of flight from a peril of sweetness he banished instantly. +To run away was to deny himself the fullness of life men said he needed +as an artist. It was unthinkable. Nay, it was unscrupulous, for the +greatness of his gift Kenny regarded as an obligation. Besides, Kenny +denied himself nothing that he wanted, having considered his wants in +detail and found them human, complex and delightful, and sufficiently +harmless. +</P> + +<P> +Passionately at war with the new complication in his quest for Brian, +Kenny in frantic excitement blamed everything but himself. He blamed +the girl. A girl with a face like that had absolutely no right to be +loitering in a spot of such enchantment. He blamed the mystery of her +gown. Mystery always did for him. He blamed the river and the sylvan +wildness all around him and went on staring. +</P> + +<P> +"Please say something!" The girl's laughter had changed to shyness, +then to mystification. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny brushed his hair back with a sigh. No fault of his if Fate grew +prankish and set the stage with gold brocade and an ancient boat and +such a ferryman. He had evoked romance and mystery with the battered +horn and he could not escape. All of it had fairly leaped at him and +caught him unawares. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I beg your pardon," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"For sleeping?" The girl smiled a little. +</P> + +<P> +"For staring! First," he said, his Irish eyes laughing back at her +with the frank charm of a boy begging her to like him, "first I thought +you had stepped from a tapestry into my dream—" +</P> + +<P> +The rich hint of rose in her skin deepened. She glanced at her gown. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't tell me about it!" begged Kenny impetuously. And long afterward +she was to recognize in that eager gallantry the finest of tact. "It's +a delight just to be wonderin'! You called me Mr. O'Neill!" he added +blankly. +</P> + +<P> +"Some letters had tumbled from your pocket." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny's brow cleared. +</P> + +<P> +"Besides, whenever the horn blew lately I thought it might be you." +</P> + +<P> +This was too amazing. But the girl's eyes were beautiful, ingenuous +and wholly sincere. Dumfounded, Kenny turned away and gathered up his +letters. +</P> + +<P> +"Mystery," he said, shaking his head, "is the spice of delight. But I +like it diffused. A bit more and I'll be knowing for sure that I'm +dreamin'." +</P> + +<P> +"It's as simple as the letters," said the girl, smiling. She drew a +letter from the pocket of her gown and held it out to him. He read the +address with frank curiosity. Well, thank Heaven, that was settled. +Her name was Joan West. +</P> + +<P> +The handwriting was Garry's. +</P> + +<P> +"For the love of Mike!" said Kenny, staring. +</P> + +<P> +"Please read it," said Joan. "It makes everything so simple." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny obeyed. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +"Dear Miss West: +</P> + +<P> +"It was like Brian to write so splendidly of his father in an effort to +guarantee his own respectability as a suitable friend for your truant +brother and fix his identity for the sake of your peace of mind. And +I'm glad he told you to write to me. +</P> + +<P> +"Though at this particular minute I would like best to thrash Kennicott +O'Neill into work and sanity, I might just as well admit the fact that +I'm merely in the chronic state of all men who love him and pass on +cheerfully to a pleasant task. All that Brian has said of his father +is true. As for Brian himself, he's a lovable, hot-headed chap with a +head and a heart and too much of both for his own peace of mind. And +he's so darned level-headed and unaffected he needs a Boswell. I hope +I've made good. +</P> + +<P> +"The O'Neills, in short, are a splendid pair of fellows with a rush of +Irish to the head. They give each other more admiration and affection +when they're apart and more trouble when they're together than any two +men I have ever known. Personally I think they're miserable apart and +hopeless together. However, I'm no judge. Five minutes of +concentration on their present problems fuddles my brain beyond the +point of intelligent logic. +</P> + +<P> +"I must warn you that O'Neill senior is roving Heaven-knows-where in +search of your uncle's farm. Knowing him fairly well I am convinced +that he'll rove most of the way in a Pullman, though he distinctly said +not. He hopes to find at your farm a letter from your brother that +will furnish a clue. Whereupon, I take it, he'll rove forth again to +seek his son and patch up a regular ballyhoo of a quarrel that almost +disrupted the Holbein Club. You see, everybody insisted upon taking +both sides, with terrifying results. +</P> + +<P> +"I pray Heaven that O'Neill senior may not find O'Neill junior, but +from now on I shall have a nervous conviction of the pair of them +quarreling all over the state of Pennsylvania. In view of a certain +sentimental indiscretion of mine in permitting O'Neill to read his +son's letter to me and find the postmark, I feel guilty and +apprehensive. +</P> + +<P> +"Your brother, I should say, is just a little safer with Brian than he +would be anywhere else in the confines of the universe. +</P> + +<P> +"I enclose a newspaper article on Kennicott O'Neill, written just after +he had acquired one of the medals that fly up at him wherever he goes. +It's fairly accurate. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +"Sincerely, +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +"Garry Rittenhouse." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +With the girl's soft eyes upon him, Kenny felt that he could not be +expected to read each word of the letter. He never did that anyhow. +He blurred through now with amazing speed, catching enough to gratify +and upset him. The letter, reminiscent of his penitential quest for +Brian, roused voices that he did not want to hear. Nor did he hear +them for long. Joan was holding out the clipping, her slender arm in +its fall of yellowed lace a thing to catch the eye of any Irishman whom +Fate for the good of the world of art had made a painter. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny took the clipping to insure his future peace of mind. Yes, Garry +had displayed better judgment than, in the circumstances, might have +been expected. The article he saw at a glance was an excellent one and +truthful. He particularly liked the phrase "brilliant painter" and +hoped Garry had troubled to read the thing through himself before he +sent it. It might inspire him to quotation in the grill-room. +</P> + +<P> +Nevertheless, Kenny, with the clipping in his hand, had a picturesque +moment of confusion. +</P> + +<P> +"It—it's just the sort of thing we call a 'blurb,' Miss West!" he +protested. +</P> + +<P> +"It says in print," said the girl, her eyes wide and direct, "what your +son wrote in his letter." +</P> + +<P> +The heart of the lad! Kenny had a bad minute. Until with his quest +upon the back of him he remembered Peredur and felt better. Peredur +had gone in quest of the Holy Grail. And he had found fair ladies. +History, romance, legend, call it what you please, was merely repeating +itself with the hero again Celtic and chivalrous. +</P> + +<P> +With Peredur for precedent Kenny laughed softly, his eyes a-twinkle. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, well," he said with a hint more of brogue than usual, "we've an +Irish saying that there never was a fool who hadn't another fool to +admire him! Trouble is," he added, saving himself and Brian with a +whimsical air of loyalty, "the lad is no fool!" +</P> + +<P> +"It's helped so," said Joan, "to know that Don is with someone like +your son. I cried a great deal the first night but the next day there +was Brian's letter and Don's. And later this letter and you." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny understood. Brian could thank him for arriving in time. The +mere sight of him had certified Brian's respectability and guaranteed +the runaway's welfare. +</P> + +<P> +And now—he cleared his throat—now he must ask if the brother had +written later and supplied a clue. It was utterly essential. If he +had—Well, if he had, he had. That's all there was to it! And he must +do some thinking afterward, some painful thinking of the kind that +drove him mad. He wondered for a moment, with his fingers by force of +habit traveling through his hair, if it really was dishonorable for him +to take advantage of Garry's letter to hunt his son to earth. There +was a subtlety there in which Garry might be right. +</P> + +<P> +Inwardly in turmoil Kenny took the plunge. +</P> + +<P> +"And you—and you've heard from your brother!" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said the girl sadly. "Not since." +</P> + +<P> +"Mother of Men!" said Kenny softly and drew a long breath. The next +step in his quest became all at once amazingly clear. And Kennicott +O'Neill was no man to shirk a duty, let John Whitaker say what he +chose. He was an unsuccessful parent, please God, trying to make good. +</P> + +<P> +"And I," said Kenny, "tramping the footsore, weary miles always with +the hope of a letter and a clue!" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sorry," said Joan, her brown eyes gentle. "It would have been +wonderful if I could have sent you straight to your son and Donald." +</P> + +<P> +"Wonderful!" repeated Kenny with a vague air of enthusiasm. But he +rather wished she hadn't said it. +</P> + +<P> +"What will you do?" +</P> + +<P> +"I shall find an inn," said Kenny firmly, "and stay here until you do +hear." +</P> + +<P> +"There is no inn." +</P> + +<P> +"Then," said Kenny irresponsibly, "I shall camp here under the willow, +buying beans. I have a can opener." +</P> + +<P> +He caught in Joan's eyes a glint of gold and laughter and glanced +wistfully across the river at the house upon the cliff. It was +undeniably roomy. +</P> + +<P> +"If only your house had been an inn!" he said. "An old, old ramshackle +inn, quaint and archaic like the punt yonder and your gown! It's such +a wonderful spot." +</P> + +<P> +Joan met his eyes and made no pretense of misunderstanding. She could +not. +</P> + +<P> +"Your uncle!" exclaimed Kenny with an air of inspiration and then +looked apologetic. +</P> + +<P> +The girl's face flamed. Oddly enough she looked at her gown. Kenny +wondered why. He found her distress and the hot color of her face +mystifying and lovely. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I know he would!" said Joan in a low voice and looked away. "The +house is large. Rooms and rooms of it. And only Uncle and I, save +Hughie and his family. Hughie works the farm and lives yonder in the +kitchen wing." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny reached for his knapsack and started toward the boat. +</P> + +<P> +"Thank Heaven, that's settled!" he said pleasantly. "You saw for +yourself what Garry said about work. Honestly, Miss West, I ought to +work. I ought to put in a summer sketching. I can sketch here and +wait." +</P> + +<P> +The punt, flat-bottomed and old, he proclaimed a delight. When the +girl did not answer he turned and found her staring. She seemed a +little dazed. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm thinking," said Joan, her eyes round and grave with astonishment, +"how you seem always to have been here." +</P> + +<P> +He laughed, his color high. His face, Joan thought, was much too young +and vivid for anybody's father. Their eyes met in new and difficult +readjustment and Kenny, his heart turbulent, turned back to the punt. +</P> + +<P> +It was in his mind gallantly to scull the thing across. The +announcement brought Joan to the edge of the water in a panic. +</P> + +<P> +"You'd scull us both into a rock!" she exclaimed. "The river is full +of them. I know the best way over." +</P> + +<P> +"Professional jealousy!" retorted Kenny, his eyes droll and tender. "I +suppose you belong to the ferryman's union." He dropped his knapsack +into the boat and busied himself with the painter. "If the boat had +two oars," he told her laughing, "or I one arm, I know I could manage. +As it is, one oar and two arms—" +</P> + +<P> +"It's much better," said Joan sensibly, "than two oars and one arm. +Please get in." +</P> + +<P> +She went to the stern and stood there, waiting, one hand upon the oar. +Fascinated, Kenny climbed in. +</P> + +<P> +What a ferryman! he mused as Joan sculled the punt from shore. What a +gown and what a background! The old brocade, flapping in the wind, was +gold like the afterglow behind the gables and the soft, haunting +shadows in the girl's eyes and hair. What an ecstasy of unreality! +Boat and ferryman seemed some exquisite animate medallion of another +age. +</P> + +<P> +Garry could have told him it was the way he saw his pictures, romantic +in his utter abandon, but Garry was not there and Kenny with his head +in the clouds rushed on to his doom. The punt was a fairy boat sailing +him over a silver river to Hy Brazil, the Isle of Delight. Ah! Hy +Brazil! You saw it on clear days and it receded when you followed. It +was a melancholy thought and true. The madness never lasted. +</P> + +<P> +There are those for whom the present is merely anticipation of the +future or reminiscence of the past. Kenny had the supreme gift of +living intensely and joyously in the present and the present for him +shone in the soft brown eyes of the ferryman in the stern. Past and +future he shrugged to the winds. For he was sailing across to romance, +he hoped, and surely to mystery. Yes, surely to mystery! Mystery +enough for any Celt in the battered horn, the ferry and the ferryman +yonder in the old-time gown. +</P> + +<A NAME="img-114"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG SRC="images/img-114.jpg" ALT="He was sailing across to romance..." BORDER="2" WIDTH="377" HEIGHT="591"> +<H5> +[Illustration: He was sailing across to romance, he hoped, and surely to mystery.] +</H5> +</CENTER> + +<P> +"It was down there," said Joan, nodding, "where the river bends, that +Brian had his camp." +</P> + +<P> +Brian's name was a shock. Kenny came to earth for an instant. Only +for an instant. The monochrome of gold behind the gables was drifting +into color. Here between the wooded heights where the river ran, +already there was shadow. Twilight and afterglow! Kenny in poetic +vein told of the Gray Man of the Path. The Path was in Ireland, a +fissure in the cliff at Fairhead. If you climbed well you could use +the Gray Man's Path and scale the cliff. Kenny himself had climbed it. +Joan, busy with the single oar, lost nevertheless no single word of it. +She was eager and intent. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose," said Kenny, "that the Gray Man is the spirit of the mists +of Benmore. But to me he's always Twilight. Twilight anywhere." +</P> + +<P> +The girl nodded, quick to catch his mood. +</P> + +<P> +"And to-night," she said, "his path is the river. He's coming now." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny's Gray Man of the Twilight was stealing closer when they landed. +</P> + +<P> +With the feeling of dreams still upon him he followed the girl up the +path. It wound steeply upward among the trees, with here and there a +rude step fashioned of a boulder, and came out in an orchard on a hill. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny stood stock-still. Fate, he told himself, needed nothing further +for his utter undoing. And if she did, it lay here in the orchard. He +had come in blossom time. +</P> + +<P> +Well, thanks to the crowded fullness of his emotional life, he knew +precisely what it meant. He had adventured in blossoms before to the +torment of his heart and head. In Spain. He had forgotten the girl's +name but it began with an "I." Now in the dusk he faced gnarled and +glimmering boughs of fleece. The wind, fitful and chill since the +sunset, speckled the grayness beneath the trees with dim white fragrant +rain and stirred the drift of petals on the ground. Stillness and +blossoms and the disillusion of intrusive fact! +</P> + +<P> +Joan, lovelier to Kenny's eye than any blossom, seemed unaware of the +romance in the orchard. She was intent upon a man coming down the +orchard hill. Kenny sighed as he turned his eyes from her. +</P> + +<P> +"It's Hughie," she said. "He's watched for you too since the letter +came. We all have. Hughie! Hughie!" +</P> + +<P> +Hughie came toward them, sturdy, middle-aged and unpoetic for all his +head was under blossoms. +</P> + +<P> +"Hughie!" called Joan. "It's Mr. O'Neill. He must have some supper. +Tell Hannah. And I'll go speak to Uncle Adam." +</P> + +<P> +Romance flitted off through the twilight with her. Hungry, Kenny +embarked upon a reactive interval of common sense and followed Hughie, +who seemed inclined to talk of rain, to the kitchen door. It was past +the supper hour. Beyond in a huge, old-fashioned kitchen, yellow with +lamp light, Hughie's daughter, a ruddy-cheeked girl plump and wholesome +as an apple, was washing dishes. Kenny liked her. He liked the +shining kitchen. The wood was dark and old. He liked too the tiny +bird-like wife who trotted to the door at Hughie's call. Her hair was +white and scant, her skin ruddy, her eyes as small and black as berries. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny made her his slave. He begged to eat in the kitchen. +</P> + +<P> +Joan found him there a little later with everything in the pantry +spread before him. His voice, gay and charming, sounded as if he had +liked Hannah for a very long time. And Hannah's best lamp was on the +table. There was a pleasant undercurrent of excitement in the kitchen. +Joan found her guest's engaging air of adaptability bewildering. He +seemed all ease and sparkle. +</P> + +<P> +At the rustle of her gown in the doorway, he sprang to his feet. +</P> + +<P> +"Please sit down," she said, coloring at the unaccustomed deference. +"I've a message from Uncle Adam. He understands about your son. He +said you may wait here as long as you choose. In any room." +</P> + +<P> +Trotting flurried paths to the pantry and the stove, Hannah at this +point must needs halt midway between the two with the teapot in her +hand to tell the tale of Kenny's considerate plea for supper in the +kitchen. Though it had been largely a matter of old wood and +lamp-yellow shadows, Kenny wished that a number of people who had never +troubled to be just and call him considerate could hear what she said. +Thank Heaven his self-respect was returning. These simple people were +splendidly intuitional. They understood. An agreeable wave of +confidence in his own judgment filled him with benevolence. He was to +lose that confidence strangely in a little while. It came to him +sitting there that he felt much as he had felt in the old care-free +past before Brian had deserted, plunging him into abysmal despair. +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps to-night," Joan said, "you'd better sleep wherever Hannah +says. And then tomorrow you can pick a room for yourself." +</P> + +<P> +She slipped away with the grace of an elf. Spurred to pictures by the +old brocade, Kenny wished he had some velvet knickerbockers and a satin +coat. The thought of his knapsack wardrobe filled him with discontent. +Hum! To-morrow he must prevail upon someone to conduct him to the +nearest village in wire communication with the outside world. +</P> + +<P> +To Garry two days later came a telegram from Craig Farm. It covered +three typewritten pages and read like a theatrical manager's costume +instructions to a star. +</P> + +<P> +Garry stared. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, my Lord!" he groaned. "The sister's pretty!" +</P> + +<P> +After a dazed interval, however, he found comfort in the thought that +the postmark had been harmless. It had served no other purpose than to +lead the penitential lunatic to Craig Farm. He would likely get no +further. +</P> + +<P> +"The ties in Brian's bureau," read Garry, thunderstruck at the wealth +of detail. "My white flannels. Have cleaned. No place here. Had to +ride seven miles with a milk-man to send this—" +</P> + +<P> +Garry ran his eye over the rest and groaned again at the hopeless task +ahead. Very well, he decided, reaching for the telephone, if he must +invade the O'Neill studio, excavate and pack, Sid could help and Mac +and Jan. Waiting, he read the telegram again. With Kenny's usual +sense of values there was one brief sentence relative to some materials +for work. He left the responsibility of selection there to Garry. +</P> + +<P> +"Work, hell!" exclaimed Garry, provoked. "He wants work so he can fill +his time thinking up ways to evade it." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VI +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +IN THE GARRET +</H2> + +<P> +Rain came with the dawn. Kenny, waking hours later with a nervous +sense of some unknown delight ahead, found the eaves and orchard +dripping. The valley the old house faced was lost in mist. +</P> + +<P> +The blossom storm! So Hughie had called the rain he promised. Kenny +liked the name. Out there in the orchard gusty cudgels of wind and +water were beating the blossoms to earth. It was a fancy rife with +poetic melancholy. +</P> + +<P> +The smell of wet lilac sweeping in from a bush beneath his window made +him think somehow of Joan. He wondered in a wave of tenderness if she +ferried the river too in storm and, glancing at his watch found the +hour disturbing. Unfortunately in a wing remote from Hannah's trot and +bustle where save for the monotonous music of the rain, the brush of +dripping trees or depressing creaks, there was no noise at all, he had +as usual slept too long. And one could never tell. Silas's singular +notion of a rising hour might prevail here. Best perhaps to go down a +little later and combine his breakfast with his lunch. Meantime he +would avail himself of Joan's permission to pick a room for himself. +</P> + +<P> +The house was big and old and abandoned for the most part to creaks and +dust and cobwebs. Kenny peered into room after room with a fascinated +shiver, reading mystery in every shadow. Thank fortune the room he had +was linked to the fragrant life of blossoms and lilacs. +</P> + +<P> +A stairway he climbed came out delightfully in a garret musical with +rain and the plaintive chirping of wet birds huddled under dripping +eaves. Unlike the rooms he had left below it was swept and clean. +There were trunks in one corner, a great many, and a cedar chest. +There should be a cedar chest. It was as essential to an old garret +like this as violets in spring or sweetness in a girl's face. The +chest was open. With a low whistle of delight Kenny peered inside and +thought of the ferryman in her quaint brocade. The chest was full to +the brim of old-time gowns, glints of faded satin and yellowed lace, +buckled slippers and old brocade. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill!" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny wheeled, his face scarlet with guilt and confusion. Joan was +beside him, her startled eyes dark with reproach. Even in his +stammering moment of apology he was dismayed to find that her gown was +commonplace, old and mended. +</P> + +<P> +Joan caught his glance and colored. +</P> + +<P> +"It's the dress I wear to Uncle," she said hurriedly. "I—I meant you +never to see it. He doesn't know. Everything there in the cedar chest +he hates. All of it belonged to my mother. He wouldn't like me to +wear her gowns." +</P> + +<P> +"In the name of Heaven," demanded Kenny, shocked, "why not? It's a +beautiful thing—like the play-acting of a dryad!" +</P> + +<P> +"My mother," said the girl in a low voice, "was on the stage." +</P> + +<P> +Her challenging eyes, big and wistful, fanned his chivalry into +reckless flame. The need of the hour was peculiar. There was little +room for fact. In a moment of wayward impulse he had slipped up a +stairway and blundered on a shrine. He must not make another mistake. +The girl beside him was as timorous and defensive as a doe scenting an +alien breath in the wood of wild things. A wrong step and in spirit +she would bound away from him forever. +</P> + +<P> +"Odd!" said Kenny gently. "So was mine." And he thought for a +tormented minute of Brian and Garry and John Whitaker. Not one of them +would understand. He wanted only to be kind and in tune. +</P> + +<P> +Joan caught her breath. The softness and faith in her eyes hurt. +</P> + +<P> +"You're not ashamed of it!" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Kenny, looking away, "Certainly not. Are you?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Joan steadily. "But Uncle is." +</P> + +<P> +In this second interval of readjustment, yesterday seemed aeons back. +They had traveled far. The peace and peril of the moment were +ineffably sweet. +</P> + +<P> +"You can be yourself anywhere," said Joan clearly, taking from the +chest an exquisite old lavender gown for which she seemed to have come. +"And if your self is bad, the—the where doesn't matter." +</P> + +<P> +Her insight rather startled him. Often afterward he was to find in her +that curious ability to detach herself from custom and tradition, skiff +away the husks of cumulative prejudice and find the kernel of truth for +herself. +</P> + +<P> +Joan went toward the stairs; he followed her with a troubled sigh. The +stage mother bothered him. With her he had bridged a gulf it would +have taken weeks to span, but the trust in Joan's eyes still hurt. If +only he could have begun upon a rock, Brian's rock of fact and not the +shifting sands of his own errant fancy! It would have been a glory to +live up to the faith in the girl's wistful eyes. +</P> + +<P> +He was sorry he had climbed the stairway, sorry he had solved the +mystery of the brocade gown, sorry he had lied, sorry, frenziedly sorry +that whatever new thing slipped into his life, no matter how simple and +beautiful it seemed, took on the familiar complexity fatal to his peace +of mind. +</P> + +<P> +But he was passionately grateful for the tense moment when Joan had +seemed to turn to him for sympathy, a wild and lonely dryad of a girl +in a mended gown. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE BLOSSOM STORM +</H2> + +<P> +At nightfall, with his telegram to Garry depressingly linked with a +memory of winding, sodden, lonely roads, dripping woods and the clink +of milk-cans, Kenny was summoned to the sitting room of Adam Craig. +</P> + +<P> +A fire burned in the open fireplace. Lamp-light softened the +shabbiness of the old room and shone pleasantly on dark wood and a +great many faded books. Later Kenny knew that every book in the +farmhouse was here upon his shelves. Adam Craig sat huddled in a +wheelchair. Kenny thought of the runaway who hated him. He thought of +Joan. He thought of the bleak old rooms that seemed one in spirit with +the man before him. A wrinkled, evil old man, he told himself with a +shudder, with piercing eyes and a face Italian in its subtlety. +</P> + +<P> +Adam Craig looked steadily at the Irishman in the doorway and found his +stare returned. The gaze of neither faltered. So began what Kenny, +when his singular relations with the old man had goaded him to startled +appraisal, was pleased to call a "friendship that was never a +friendship and a feud that was never a feud." +</P> + +<P> +"I sent you a message," said Adam Craig. +</P> + +<P> +"Your niece brought it." +</P> + +<P> +The old man tapped with slender, wasted fingers upon the arm of his +chair. +</P> + +<P> +"What was it?" he asked guilelessly. +</P> + +<P> +"As I remember it," stammered Kenny in surprise, "you were good enough +to say that I might stay here as long as I chose." +</P> + +<P> +"Like all women and some Irishmen," said Adam Craig, "she lied. I said +you could stay as long as you were willing to pay." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny changed color. The invalid chose to misinterpret his interval of +constraint. +</P> + +<P> +"So," he said softly, "you don't always pay!" +</P> + +<P> +The random shot of inference went home. It was the first of many. +Kenny fought back his temper. Affronted, he crossed the room and laid +a roll of bills upon the table. Craig counted them with an irritating +show of care. +</P> + +<P> +"That, Mr. O'Neill," he said, "will guarantee my hospitality for the +space of a month!" +</P> + +<P> +He put the roll of money in the pocket of his bathrobe and Kenny +fancied his fingers loathe to leave it. +</P> + +<P> +The drip of the rain and the gusty noise of wind that by daylight had +been no more than a melancholy adjunct to the poetry of wet blossoms, +became suddenly sinister and tragic and irresistibly atmospheric. +Kenny stared with new vision at the dreadful old man in the bathrobe. +One by one Kenny was fated to solve his mysteries when he wanted to +keep them. He knew now in a flare of intuition why the old rooms had +been abandoned, why Joan ferried folk from the village in the valley to +the village across the river, why her gown of the morning and the rags +of the runaway had been pitifully patched and mended. And he +remembered the mystery of her color, when, questing an inn, he had +glanced at the house on the cliff and hinted that her uncle might +consent to be his host. +</P> + +<P> +"I know he would!" Joan's low voice rang in his ears again with new +meaning. +</P> + +<P> +Adam Craig was a miser. +</P> + +<P> +He shrank at the thought. Annoyed to find the old man's eyes boring +into him again, he cleared his throat and looked away. +</P> + +<P> +"So," said Adam Craig, "you are a famous painter!" +</P> + +<P> +"I am a painter," said Kenny stiffly. +</P> + +<P> +"With medals," purred Adam. +</P> + +<P> +"With medals." +</P> + +<P> +A fit of coughing seemed for an interval to threaten the old man's very +life. +</P> + +<P> +"Yonder in the closet," he said huskily, "is a bottle and some glasses. +Bring them here." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny obeyed. +</P> + +<P> +"Sit down." +</P> + +<P> +With the old man's eyes upon him, hungry and expectant, as if he +clutched at the thought of companionship, Kenny reluctantly found a +chair for himself and sat down. Pity made him gentle. Year in and +year out, he remembered with a shiver, Adam Craig sat huddled here in +his wheel-chair listening to wind and rain, sleet and snow, the rustle +of summer trees and the wind of autumn. It was a melancholy thought +and true. +</P> + +<P> +Smoothly hospitable, the invalid poured brandy for himself and his +guest and chatted with an air of courtesy. Kenny found himself in +quieter mood. Reminiscence crackled in the wood-fire. Nights in the +studio by the embers of a log many a Gaelic tale had glowed and +sparkled in his soft, delightful brogue for the ears of men who loved +his tales of folk lore and loved the teller. +</P> + +<P> +Ah, Ireland, dark rosaleen of myths and mirth and melancholy. The +thought of it all made him tender and sad. +</P> + +<P> +Well, he would give this lonely man by the fire an hour of unalloyed +delight. He would tell him tales of Ireland when brehons made the laws +and bards and harpers roved the green hills. Kenny made his +opportunity and began. He told a tale of Choulain, the mountain smith +who forged armor for the Ultonians. He told a lighter tale of three +sisters whom he called Fair, Brown and Trembling. With the brogue +strong upon him he told how Finn McCoul had stolen the clothes of a +bathing queen and he told in stirring phrase the exploits of Ireland's +mighty hero, Cuchullin. +</P> + +<P> +He had never had a better listener. Adam Craig fixed his piercing eyes +inscrutably upon the teller's face, drank glass after glass of brandy, +and remained polite, intent and silent. Kenny, with his heart in the +telling, went on to the tale of Conoclach and the first harp. +Conoclach, he said, hating Cull, her husband, had run away from him +toward the sea. There upon the sand lay the skeleton of a whale and +the wind playing upon the taut sinews made sounds low and soothing +enough to lull her to sleep. And Cull, coming up, marveled at her +slumber, heard the murmuring of the wind through the sinews and made +the first harp. Kenny liked the tale and he liked the way he told it. +</P> + +<P> +Adam Craig nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"Lies!" he said, springing the trap it had pleased him to bait with an +air of courtesy, "All lies." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny flushed with annoyance. The sacrilege of doubt when the tale was +Irish jarred. +</P> + +<P> +"Lies!" said Adam Craig again, "adapted centuries ago by some Irish +word-thief." +</P> + +<P> +"You are pleased to be humorous," said Kenny, glancing coldly at his +host. +</P> + +<P> +"I am pleased," said the old man insolently, "to be truthful, not being +Irish. Fair, Brown and Trembling!" he added with a sneer. "Word for +word, it's the tale of Cinderella." +</P> + +<P> +"The pattern for Cinderella!" corrected Kenny with a shrug. +</P> + +<P> +Adam Craig glanced at him with narrowed eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"And Finn McCoul and the bathing queen. I can find you the German tale +of a stolen veil from which it's—borrowed." +</P> + +<P> +"You can find me likely the name of a German who chose to delve into +Gaelic for his plot." +</P> + +<P> +"You've a ready tongue." +</P> + +<P> +"There are times when it's needed." +</P> + +<P> +"As for the first harp," snapped Adam Craig, nettled, "there's a +Grecian lyre tale yonder on the shelf like it." +</P> + +<P> +"Liar tale," said Kenny purposely misunderstanding. Hum! The Greeks, +he remembered regretfully, were clever adapters. +</P> + +<P> +His air of assurance incensed the old man. +</P> + +<P> +"As for that fool of a Cuchullin," he rasped, coughing a little, "where +is he different from Achilles?" +</P> + +<P> +"A little different," said Kenny. "Achilles, poor old scout, was much +the inferior of the two." +</P> + +<P> +Again in fury Adam Craig coughed until it seemed that his life must +end. Again he drank. Kenny knew by the flurried brightness of his +eyes sunk deep in the yellowed gauntness of his face that he was drunk. +He shuddered and rose. Already the old man's head was drooping toward +his chest in a drunken stupor. With an effort he roused and leered. +</P> + +<P> +"Cinderella, damn you!" he said. "Cinderella and Achilles!" +</P> + +<P> +"Cinderella," repeated Kenny pityingly. "Cinderella and Achilles." +</P> + +<P> +He stood uncertain what to do while Adam Craig slipped down in his +chair. Drunk, perverse and cruel! With the rain beating at the +windows Kenny thought of Joan, compassion in his heart, and rang for +Hughie. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I'm afraid he's drunk," he whispered with a sense of guilt when +Hughie came. "Perhaps I shouldn't have given him the bottle." +</P> + +<P> +Hughie glanced at his watch. +</P> + +<P> +"It's nine o'clock," he said. "He's late." +</P> + +<P> +"You mean?" +</P> + +<P> +"Every night," said Hughie. "The doctor gave up fightin' long ago." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny went to his room filled with pity and disgust. +</P> + +<P> +Gusts of wind and rain battered at the orchard blossoms the next day +and the next. Kenny found a tuning outfit in a closet and spent his +days with Joan tuning the Craig piano. He was grateful in the gloom of +dark wood and dust for the fantastic thing of lavender she wore. It +was like a bit of iris in a bog, he told her, and was sorry when he saw +her glance with troubled eyes at the dust and cobwebs. +</P> + +<P> +The river ran high and brown. The horn beneath the willow was silent. +Each night Adam Craig sent for his guest. The rain, he said, made him +lonesome. Each night in a hopeless conflict of pity and dislike Kenny +went, rain and wind and Adam Craig getting horribly upon his nerves. +</P> + +<P> +He was glad when the sun came and filled the valley, panoramic from the +farmhouse ridge, with a glory of light. Milk-white clouds capped the +western hills. Nearer, dotted peacefully with farms, red barns and +dark, straggling clumps of evergreen, the rolling valley stretched +unevenly among intersecting lines of trees. At the foot of a hill rose +the spire of the village church. To the south a crystal blaze of sun +showed water. +</P> + +<P> +A world of lilac and dogwood and a few late apple blossoms clinging +bravely through the storm to sunshine. And the world held Joan with +shadows of the sun in her hair and eyes and shadows of the past in her +gowns. +</P> + +<P> +Ah, truly, it was good to be alive! +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap08"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VIII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +JOAN +</H2> + +<P> +Thus, warm and fragrant, the summer came with Kenny in the house of Adam +Craig, drifting pleasantly he knew and cared not where; with Brian on the +road with Donald West. +</P> + +<P> +And Joan? To her summer came with a new incomprehensible delight. Out +of the void a bright spirit had roved into her world, sweeping her, eager +and unresistant, into youth and life and laughter. He came from an +immensity of romantic experience, holding out his hands to her, with +tender eyes and a look of youth and charm and understanding in his vivid +face. +</P> + +<P> +She had fought through drab and solitude to dreams and formless craving, +this girl of the hills. What things of vigor her life had known were +cruel: a passionate shrinking from her uncle, a fear for the brother who +had hotly rebelled at the meager life around him, a loneliness aloof from +her kind and a vague hunger for some fuller, sweeter life beyond the +hills. And with a blast of a horn the drab had vanished. +</P> + +<P> +There were times when the girl's soft eyes opened wide in a panic of +incredulity. He was a famous painter, this Irishman who had prevailed +upon her in a laughing moment to call him Kenny; a famous painter with a +personality as vivid as his face. And yet he chose to linger at her +uncle's farm. The color, the gayety, the sparkle, he seemed miraculously +to infuse into existence, left her breathless and startled. And he knew +not one spot and one land. He knew many spots, some wild and remote, and +many lands. Joan marveled at the twist of Fate that had brought him to +the willow. +</P> + +<P> +His individuality made its own appeal. But there were subtler forces +working to the girl's surrender. One, a deep abiding gratitude to him +and Brian. Though she ran down the lane each morning and peered into the +letter box at the end for word of Donald, her disappointment now had +nothing in it of terror. Donald, Kenny said, was with an O'Neill. He +could not go wrong. She accepted the statement, as she had accepted the +stage mother, with utter faith and gladness. +</P> + +<P> +And Kenny was kind to her uncle and to her; kind with an infinite +delicacy of tact and feeling. He seemed to understand the instinct for +beauty and adornment that sent her roving to her mother's trunks. He +understood her dreams and her hunger. He understood the spirit that had +led her to make the garret a sort of shrine to be swept and dusted, to be +kept apart and precious. There was another force, subtle and exacting: +the girl's burgeoning womanhood. Wistful for homage, she craved his +gallant tenderness and wanted always to be with him. His frank glance of +admiration and his boyish smile were always a tribute. So was his voice, +deep, gentle, sonorous as a sweet-toned bell. Tones of it she knew were +kept for her alone. The knowledge thrilled her. She did not know why. +</P> + +<P> +By the time the old wistaria vine outside her window shook in the wind +with a glory of purple, the over-crowded days were gliding one into the +other like a rain of stars. Most of all, wakeful in the dark of her +room, she remembered the hours by the river when Kenny wove for her high, +peaked hats of rushes such as he claimed the Irish fairies wore, and told +her tales of Ireland with a trick of eloquence that made her laugh and +made her cry. Odd! unlike her uncle he understood tears too. A tear, he +said, was always trailing an Irishman's smile. His sympathetic brogue, +smooth and soft and instinct with drollery, held for her a never-ending +fascination. +</P> + +<P> +And always at the end of the day there was Kenny's Gray Man of the +Twilight stealing up the river all too soon. +</P> + +<P> +Joan was not the only one to whom the sparkle of the irrepressible +Irishman's wit and humor was an energizing boon. There was Hannah and +Hetty; and Hughie, too, though he stoutly denied it. Life on the Craig +farm was no longer dull. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny, at a loose end, kept the farm in ferment, evading the work Garry +had sent him, by a conscientious effort to assist others. He was glad he +could paint if the mood seized him. Denied the opportunity he knew he +would have fretted. There was one singular, inexplicable thing about +work. If there was work at hand, one could always find something else to +do, attractive and absorbing. If there wasn't work to do, the sheer +shock of it seemed to dull you into mental vacuity and loose ends of time +came up and hit you in the face. Garry had written something or other +like that sarcastically in a letter. +</P> + +<P> +He helped Hannah churn and sang with a soft brogue, to her abashed +delight, a song he called "The Gurgling of the Churn." He helped Hetty +milk the roan cow and sang while Hetty's apple-cheeks bloomed redder, an +exquisite folk tune of a pretty girl who milked a cow in Ireland. Later +in the summer he even helped Hughie rake the hay and had a song for that. +As Hannah said, he seemed to have songs for everything and what he +couldn't sing he could play with dazzling skill on the old piano. +</P> + +<P> +"There's 'lectricity," said Hannah, "in the very air." +</P> + +<P> +"I wished," grumbled Hughie, "he'd put it in the ground instid. The air +don't need it. Workin' a farm like this on shares is like goin' to a +picnic behind old Nellie and startin' late. You just know you won't git +there. What ground up here ain't worked out is hills and stones and +hollers." +</P> + +<P> +Hannah sighed. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny knew with regret that he might have been a helpful factor in the +work of the farm but for a number of unforeseen reasons. When he churned +the butter never came. The roan cow disliked music and kicked over the +milk-pail with inartistic persistence. The sun on the hay made his head +ache. +</P> + +<P> +As for a picturesque task for which he had no song—well, he had promised +Joan to keep away from the punt when the horn beneath the willow blew for +a ferryman. He had sculled the old white-haired minister into a rock +with delight to no one but Adam Craig, who had spent a whole evening +cackling about it. He must always remember that it had not been his +fault. The rock had merely scraped the punt while he was listening with +politeness to why the old man had "doubled up" his charge and had a +church on either side of the river. And if Mr. Abbott had not risen in +gentle alarm and begun to teeter around, Kenny in an interval of frantic +excitement would not have been forced to fish him out of the stream by +his coattails. He considered always that he saved the old man's life. +Nor had he meant to dab at him with the oar, thereby encouraging the +unfortunate old chap to duck and misinterpret his obvious intention to +save him. +</P> + +<P> +But Joan had understood. That was the chief essential. Always Joan was +there upon the horizon of his day. Whatever he thought, whatever he did, +was colored by a passionate desire for the girl's approval. Her pleasure +became his delight; her smile his inspiration. In that, he told himself, +pleased to interpret all things here in the sylvan heart of solitude in +the terms of romance and mystery, he was like the chivalrous warrior of +old who found his true happiness in gallantly serving a beautiful maid. +Joan was surely such a type as chivalry conceived. She filled his Celtic +ideal and aroused all his gladness as a woman should. And she was as shy +and beautiful as a wild flower and as unspoiled. He blessed the old +gowns that quaintly framed her loveliness anew from day to day. But they +had been his undoing. He felt that he might have kept his head a little +longer but for the blaze of the gold brocade in the last light of the sun. +</P> + +<P> +Laughter made her lovely. Ah, there Brian had been right. But then, he +reflected sadly, Brian was always right. That, he could surely concede, +when Fate had put an end to his quest and doomed him to linger here in +the home of a miser, waiting, waiting, yes, waiting in impatience for +word of his son. Well, perhaps he was not impatient, but at least he was +waiting. And Brian had found in Joan's face the vigor of sweetness, not +the kind that cloys. Kenny liked the words. +</P> + +<P> +It was inevitable, with songs for everything, that he would have songs, +like the tenderer tones of his voice, that he kept for Joan alone, songs +that came softly to his lips when Nature stirred his fancy and Joan was +at his side in an old-time gown. +</P> + +<P> +A lone pine, a wild geranium, a lark or Joan's garden where the +heliotrope grew; they were sparks to a fire of inspiration that came +forth in song. +</P> + +<P> +There was one song he sang most often. +</P> + +<P> +"What is it, Kenny?" Joan asked one sunset when Kenny on the farm porch +was finding the subtleties of color for her in the darkening valley below +them and the western sky above the hills. +</P> + +<P> +"What's what, Arbutus, dear?" he asked with guile. +</P> + +<P> +The "dear" didn't bother her. It was frequently "Hannah, dear!" and +"Hetty, dear!" and Hughie was often "Hughie, darlin'." +</P> + +<P> +"Why," asked Joan, "do you call me Arbutus?" +</P> + +<P> +"Because you're like one," he said gently. +</P> + +<P> +"And what was the song?" +</P> + +<P> +"'My Love's an Arbutus,'" said Kenny demurely. He knew at once that he +must not step so far ahead again. She looked a little frightened. Kenny +instantly called her attention to a gap in the range of hills to the west. +</P> + +<P> +"Like the Devil's Bit in Ireland," he said. "There the devil, poor lad, +bit a chunk out of a mountain and not liking the morsel over well, +treated it as you and I would treat a cherry pit." +</P> + +<P> +Joan laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"True." said Kenny, "every word of it. I myself have seen the chunk he +threw away. Tis the Rock of Cashel. He's been bitin' again over there, +I take it. To-morrow you and I will go down into the valley, seek the +unappetizin' rock he rejected and look it over." +</P> + +<P> +"I think most likely," said Joan, "the farm's built on it." +</P> + +<P> +And then the sound of the horn came over the water and Joan ran. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny as usual cursed the horn. +</P> + +<P> +With the valley filled with the first haze of twilight and the hills +still aglow, Kenny sat on the farm porch and brooded. He had not meant +to frighten her. The Arbutus gallantry he had considered strategic and +poetic. There was the baffling thing about her that kept him piqued. +She was always shy and elusive. Of convention she knew nothing at all; +yet like the shrine in the garret she kept herself apart and precious. +Always she seemed fluttering just ahead of him, like a will-of-the-wisp. +If he touched her hand ever so gently she drew it away. The caresses +most girls he had known would have understood and accepted as part of the +summer idyl, he knew, instinctively, would be evaded. +</P> + +<P> +Ah! the truth of it was she was an incomprehensible torment of delight. +For she roamed the fields and woods with him gladly, lunched in glens +remote it seemed from everything but the call of that infernal horn, +yielded to the enthusiasm of his maddest moods, romped with him like a +kitten or a child—and kept miraculously the poise and reticence of a +woman. She talked freely of her brother; never of her uncle. +</P> + +<P> +He was quick and impressionable, this gifted Irishman, with a trace of +the melancholy of his race and all of its cheer. Melancholy was the one +mood in which Joan did not seem to flutter just ahead. Always then she +followed, gentle, compassionate and shyly tender. He was quick to find +it out and wily enough to feign it when in reality his heart was as light +and buoyant as a feather. +</P> + +<P> +Save for the call of the horn beneath the willow, the girl was as free to +come and go as an oriole in the orchard; for that he was grateful. But +whether Adam Craig's attitude was one of trust or cold indifference, he +could not fathom. With Hughie and Hannah it was different. They loved +Joan and trusted him. That trust, he resolved, should not be futile. He +could justify it and he would. Joan, of course, was foredoomed to know +the delirium of the heart that had come to him that day beneath the +willow. Fate could not deny him requital. She never had. Equally, of +course, Joan's delirium, like his own, would not last. It could not. +The thought hurt his vanity a little. +</P> + +<P> +It remained for him who had aroused it to linger here at the farm until +the fancy had run its course and she was quite herself! Even if, long +before, his own madness had waned. That was apt to happen, for he was +handicapped by an earlier start. Yes, he would linger. And he would be +scrupulous and honorable and kind. Joan was young and a woman. She +would nurse the shadows of her summer's idyl long after the idyl was +gone, and would mistake them for reality. There with his wider +experience and the sad memory of much ebb and now he could be helpful. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny shivered and refused to dwell upon a phase of life that was like +autumn and sere and drifting leaves. It bothered him that the thought of +Hannah and Hughie had driven him to think it out. He liked best in heart +things to think back, not too far, and never forward. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" It was Joan's voice in the dusk. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny forgot the sadness of his wisdom and foreboding. He forgot the +future. The thing to do always was to live in the present and now Joan's +voice, joyous and young, filled him with tenderness. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, Joan." +</P> + +<P> +"The Gray Man of the Twilight's here. See, he's climbed up from the +valley and he's coming down the walk." +</P> + +<P> +From the Gray Man's misty robes came the fragrance of syringa. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap09"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER IX +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +ADAM CRAIG +</H2> + +<P> +Joan, Kenny called his torment of delight in days that were exquisite +intaglios. Adam Craig was a torment of another caliber. He claimed +the evenings of his guest. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny knew too well for his own peace of mind the pitiful diversions of +the old man's day. It sapped his powers of resistance. In the morning +there was the doctor, a weary little man, untemperamental and +mercifully impervious to insult, who chugged up the lane in a car that +needed but one twist of the crank to release a great many clattering +things. All of them Kenny felt should be anchored more securely. +There was an occasional hour in the open. At nightfall he sent for +Kenny and by nine he was drunk. +</P> + +<P> +Again and again, wrought to a high pitch of resentment by the traps the +invalid baited with an air of courtesy, Kenny cursed his own weak-kneed +spasms of pity and surrender and resolved to break away. Always when +Hughie rapped at his bedroom door he remembered the melancholy drip of +the blossom storm at Adam's windows, the invalid's hunger for news of +the outside world and the Spartan way he bore his pain. Whatever the +nature of the disease that had wasted his body and etched shadows of +pain upon his subtle face, he never spoke of it. Nor did he speak of +Donald or Joan, whom Kenny felt despairingly he hated and taunted into +secret tears. If he resented the runaway's rebellion, he kept it to +himself. +</P> + +<P> +One evening when he seemed to be quiet and in pain, and was taking, +Kenny noticed, the medicine that marked vague periods of crisis, Adam +said pensively that he had not meant to impugn the Gaelic folk lore. +He liked it. It reflected the warm, poetic soul of a people. Brandy, +alas, always made him quarrelsome and undependable of mood. When the +rain came again and he had to have a fire, they would have more tales +of the Dark Rose Kenny loved. Ireland, the Dark Rose! The name was +like her history. Yes, folk lore went with the crackle of a log and +the mournful music of rain upon a roof. He could have his brandy later. +</P> + +<P> +The rain came with its lonely patter and Kenny told him tales of +Ireland, delighted at the sympathetic quiet of his mood. Unbrandied, +the evenings, after all, might become endurable. +</P> + +<P> +"You see," Adam said once a little sadly, "without the brandy—" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny nodded his approval. +</P> + +<P> +When the clock struck nine he was in splendid fettle, brogue and all. +</P> + +<P> +"For Ireland's harpers," he was boasting with a reckless air of pride, +"were better than any harpers in the world." +</P> + +<P> +"Liars?" asked Adam blankly. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny found his occasional pretense of deafness trying in the extreme. +</P> + +<P> +"Harpers!" he repeated in a loud voice. "And you heard me before." +</P> + +<P> +Adam nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"What do you mean," demanded Kenny suspiciously, "that you did hear me +or you didn't?" +</P> + +<P> +"I did," said Adam suavely. "Both times. Go on with the story." +</P> + +<P> +Somewhat nettled, Kenny obeyed. Conscious, the minute he began, of a +muffled whistle, he glanced sharply at his host and found his glance +returned with a guileless air of inquiry. +</P> + +<P> +"Adam," he said, "are you whistling?" +</P> + +<P> +"My dear Kenny!" protested Adam. "It's the wind. I hear it myself." +</P> + +<P> +Somewhat suspicious, for he fancied now he read in the invalid's +alertness a feline readiness to pounce, Kenny returned to the tale of +the harper who proved the right of Ireland to lead the world. This +time the insolent whistle, louder and a shade defiant, convinced him +that his listener's mood had changed. Adam was resenting his guest's +insistence upon the merits of his race by whistling "Yankee Doodle." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny stopped and smiled, and the whistle rang out fiercely. +</P> + +<P> +"A good old Irish tune, that, Adam," he said languidly. "It's 'All the +way to Galway!' Funny how it came to be known as Yankee Doodle." +</P> + +<P> +In a fury of exasperation Adam propelled himself in his wheel-chair the +length of the room and back. +</P> + +<P> +"You damned bragging Irishman!" he hissed. "I think you lie. You're +Irish and you hate to be outdone. But I'll look it up." +</P> + +<P> +His spirit was unconquerable, his ingenuity persistent and amazing. +Often when the clash of wit was sharp he cackled in perverse delight. +But composure maddened him. Again and again, inwardly provoked to the +point of murder, Kenny threatened to break away from the goad of his +tongue. Always then Adam appealed to his habits of pity and +treacherously on the strength of it wheedled him into other tales of +folk lore merely to refute them. And always he blamed the brandy. +Kenny knew now that he lied. Drunk, the old man was stupid; sober, he +was satanic in his cunning. +</P> + +<P> +There was one tale of a fairy mill that, in startling circumstances, +Kenny told without interruption. Fairies, in Ireland, said Kenny, had +ground the corn of mortals without pay until someone stole a bag of +meal that belonged to a widow. Then the fairies, shocked at the ways +of men, abandoned the fairy mill forever. +</P> + +<P> +He braced himself for the usual shaft of insolence, in a mood for +battle. It did not come. Adam had fallen forward in his chair +unconscious. Kenny rang for Hughie and stared at the huddled figure in +the wheel-chair with eyes of new suspicion. Adam Craig, he remembered, +with a sharp unbridled instinct for adding two and two, was a miser and +he hated the children of his widowed sister. There could be a sinister +reason. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap10"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER X +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +A NOTEBOOK +</H2> + +<P> +It seemed that Adam too could add his two and two. In his quieter +hours of pain, when every warmer instinct of his guest was uppermost, +he was as curious as a woman. His questions, put with the sad, +querulous courtesy of an invalid claiming privileges by reason of his +pain, were sometimes difficult to answer. +</P> + +<P> +"Paul Pry!" murmured Kenny to himself one night. +</P> + +<P> +Adam's sharp eyes snapped. +</P> + +<P> +"Paul Pry, eh?" he quivered. "You impudent devil!" +</P> + +<P> +"A minute ago," reminded Kenny coldly, "when I told you you were +drinking too much brandy, you said you were deaf to-night." +</P> + +<P> +"It's an intermittent affliction," purred Adam with a chuckle. "You +struck me in a minute of vacation." +</P> + +<P> +But the careless sobriquet of Kenny's rankled in the old man's mind and +bore a startling aftermath of fruit. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny was Irish and conversational. He had as usual talked too much, +unaware that Adam, with fiendish insight, was reading steadily between +the lines, ready to pounce. +</P> + +<P> +"Paul Pry!" repeated the old man at intervals. "Paul Pry! You are a +selfish, hair-brained Irishman," he blazed suddenly, leaning forward, +baleful and intense. "Some men feel and some men act. But you act +only when you have to. Life's a battle. Do you fight? No! You glide +along and watch the others. That's the way you've kept your youth. +You never linger on the things that prove unpleasant. You think life +an individual adventure to be lived the way you choose. It isn't. +It's a link in a chain that clanks. You can't escape. You won't +escape. You're a play-actor with a gift for staging yourself and +you're as hungry for the limelight as a circus girl in spangles. What +you need is the hurt of sacrifice. You need to suffer and forget +yourself. Damn you and your brogue and your folk lore. You're the +most amazing liar I've ever met." +</P> + +<P> +But Kenny heard no more. He stumbled out of the sitting room and +slammed the door. +</P> + +<P> +There was a lamp burning in his bedroom. Kenny walked the floor in +anger and humiliation, his fingers clenched as usual in his hair. Back +there in the studio with Whitaker's arraignment ringing in his ears, he +had been conscious of a terror he refused to face, a curious inner +crash of something vital to his peace of mind. And he had fought it +back for days, plunging into the relief of penance with a gasp of hot +content. +</P> + +<P> +Now Adam, sitting in separate judgment, had reached out into the void +and linked himself to Whitaker—to Brian, to Garry—and his barbs +stung. That terror of misgiving, lulled into quietude here in the +peace and charm of his life with Joan, stirred within him hydra-headed +and drove the color from his face. Then he blazed into rebellion. +</P> + +<P> +Failure! Vanity! Self! And Adam to-night had fused the verdict of +the other three. +</P> + +<P> +Whether or not these things were true was at first of little moment. +The sting lay in the fact that someone had troubled to think them. The +careless illusion, that what he thought of himself the world thought, +lay at his feet pricked into utter collapse. It seemed to him as he +walked the floor in a tumult of hurt pride, that the world must accept +the man he knew himself to be, the man whose light-hearted existence he +loved to dramatize, a brilliant painter with piquant imperfections, +intensely human and delightful. He passionately demanded that it +accept him so without question. Good God! No one had seemed to +question until Brian in a burst of temper had brought the world about +his ears. +</P> + +<P> +Well, let the world misjudge him if it chose. He was big enough, he +knew, to hold his head above it. +</P> + +<P> +In a mood of lively irony he whipped forth a notebook and wrote a +sarcastic summary of his shortcomings, his lips curled in hostile +interest. +</P> + +<P> +"Sunsets and vanity," he wrote with a flourish and lost his temper. +Well, that phase in Brian's life was closed forever, thanks to +Whitaker's meddling tongue. Never again would Kenny lay himself open +to misinterpretation by seeking commissions for his son. Brian could +write truth for Whitaker with a blue pencil and be damned! +</P> + +<P> +"Hairbrained, unquenchable youth," he wrote next and added airily after +this: "This is likely hair and teeth." +</P> + +<P> +"Irresponsible." +</P> + +<P> +"Failure as a parent." This he underlined. +</P> + +<P> +"Need to suffer and learn something of the psychology of sacrifice." +</P> + +<P> +"Romantic attitude toward the truth." +</P> + +<P> +"Improvidence. Need for plebeian regularity in money affairs and petty +debt." +</P> + +<P> +"Disorder—chairs to sit down on without looking first." +</P> + +<P> +"I borrow Brian's money and his clothes." +</P> + +<P> +"Pawned shotgun, tennis racket, some fishing tackle and golf clubs." +</P> + +<P> +"Note: Look over tickets." +</P> + +<P> +"A tendency to indolence." +</P> + +<P> +He had begun with an air of bored amusement; he finished grimly, read +and reread. In the light of the Craig-and-Whitaker analysis, which +dovetailed in the similarity of their venom, the details might, he +fancied with a lifting of his brows, be classified under three general +headings: youth, irresponsibility and a romantic attitude toward the +truth. +</P> + +<P> +The envious charge of youth he attributed instantly to the thinning of +John Whitaker's grayish hair, and felt better. In irresponsibility he +read, agreeably, needful temperament. And his romantic attitude toward +the truth was merely a brilliant overplus of imagination without which +life would be insufferably dull. +</P> + +<P> +He read the list again with colors flying and drum beating victory. +Though singly he could refute each item, an unguarded perusal when he +felt complacent, brought the hot blood back to his face in a rush of +mortification and dismay. +</P> + +<P> +With a curse he flung the book across the room. Then unreasonably he +went after it and wrote at the end: "Life is a battle. I do not fight. +And life is not an individual adventure." +</P> + +<P> +The final sentence startled him most of all. +</P> + +<P> +Again he read it all and the memory of Brian, white, aggressive, +desperately intent upon escape, came between him and his quest of +self-content. It always bothered him. It had driven him to hunt the +psaltery stick, repent his lie to Garry and water the fern. It had +driven him out upon the road. Mocking voices rose now from the depths. +Was it—could it all be true? The shock of the thought was cataclysmic +and he longed for the self-respect and confidence in which he had +basked that night in Hannah's kitchen. Must the world side with Brian? +He was sorry about the shotgun. He was sorry about the sunsets. By +the Blessed Bell of Clare, he was willing to be sorry about anything, +little as he felt himself to blame. Was he to blame? Had he not paid +for it all in his days of stormy penance? +</P> + +<P> +Out of his white-hot revolt clear vision came to him, as it sometimes +did, with incomprehensible, dart-like swiftness, and leveled him to the +dust. Some of it he would not face but he saw his days upon the road +with truth and shame. He had failed in his penance. Garry was right. +He did everything by fits and starts. And he could justify whatever +was most conducive to his comfort and his inclination. His pilgrimage +had been farcical. He had fled from discomfort, magnifying pettiness +into tragedy. And he had been disloyal to the son he loved. For there +under the willow when his startled eyes had found Joan, he had +passionately made up his mind to linger. Nay more, even then in the +dim recesses of his mind, he had hoped there would be no clue to send +him forth again in quest of Brian. And if there had been, Kenny faced +the fact that he would not have gone. … No, he would not have +gone. … And Adam Craig was a vulture preying upon the unrest in +his heart that he had hoped to stifle. +</P> + +<P> +He went downstairs with a shudder, craving stars and darkness, unbolted +the front door and went out upon the porch. +</P> + +<P> +The valley was black. Its lonely points of light vanished early. Up +here on the ridge there was wind and quiet. He peopled the gulf of +blackness ahead with things sinister and evil in spirit like Adam Craig +and turned his back upon it with a shiver. There would be peace in the +voice of the river. +</P> + +<P> +The starlight, dim and soft, had a sense of silver in its +indistinctness. To Kenny, walking through the orchard, ghosts of +blossoms blew fragrantly above his head. The blossoms were gone like +his peace of mind. He hungered for Joan. +</P> + +<P> +In the velvet dimness the wistaria vine beneath her window loomed forth +like a shower of shadow; a grotesque ladder of bloom warm to his mind +with invisible color and yet darker to his eye than the night with its +silver sheen of stars. +</P> + +<P> +A ladder? Kenny caught his breath and stood still, quite still. It +was a ladder. Some one was climbing down. Branch after branch the +climber touched with unerring instinct and ran off noiselessly through +the orchard to the south. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny's heart throbbed with a ghastly fear. +</P> + +<P> +It was Joan. +</P> + +<P> +He knew what lay to the south beyond the orchard: woodlands and +wildness, nothing else. The fields Hughie cultivated stretched to the +north from the kitchen windows. There in the forest to the south where +the river curved off at a tangent and flowed directly east, Brian had +had his camp. On farther Joan had never cared to go. Where did she go +now in the starlit darkness, climbing down the wistaria ladder with a +cloak around her shoulders? To what did she venture through the +solitude of whispering trees and the gloom of the pine forest? +</P> + +<P> +A lover's tryst? Kenny sickened and choked. He could not follow her. +He would not. +</P> + +<P> +He turned back instead and went to bed to lie wakeful until dawn with +something new and horrible gnawing at his heartstrings. Then he fell +asleep and dreamed of monsters. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap11"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XI +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE CABIN IN THE PINES +</H2> + +<P> +He did not mean to go again. He did not mean to watch the wistaria +vine. He went, he told himself wildly, to evade the summons that was +sure to come from Adam Craig. But when the glimmer of wistaria swayed +beneath a footfall, madness came upon him and he went stealthily +through orchard and forest, stalking the flutter of a cloak. +</P> + +<P> +The river turned. Joan followed the bend for a little way and struck +off again into the thick of the forest through the cloistered gloom of +many pines. She came, after what seemed to Kenny a long, long time, to +a rude cabin made of logs. There was a light in the window. Joan +opened the door and disappeared. +</P> + +<P> +If he had known definitely what he thought, he told himself with an +Irish twist, the agony of his suspense would have been worse and less. +The sharp intensity of the pain in his heart terrified him. Whatever +lay in the cabin of logs was something apart from him. The night +noises of the forest blared strangely in his ears. He was conscious of +the odor of pines; conscious of a shower of pine-needles when he +brushed back against a tree. And there were cones beneath his feet. +But his madness would not bear him on to the cabin door. At intervals +with fire in his brain he knew he heard the voice of a man. +</P> + +<P> +In a vague eternity of minutes he waited until the door opened and +lamplight streamed brightly over the sill. A man stepped forth. +Something seemed to snap in Kenny's heart. Relief roared in his ears +and rushed unbidden to his lips. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, my God!" he gasped. +</P> + +<P> +It was the gentle, white-haired minister with a book beneath his arm. +</P> + +<P> +Startled the old man drew back and peered uncertainly into the +darkness. Kenny approached. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I beg your pardon," he said, wiping his forehead. "I'm sorry." +</P> + +<P> +Joan came to the door and stared. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" she exclaimed. And her voice had in it a note of distress. +She glanced at Mr. Abbott, who glanced in turn at Kenny with an air of +gentle inquiry. His confidence in Mr. O'Neill, never very robust, had +waned that day upon the river. It was weakening more and more. +</P> + +<P> +Tongue-tied and scarlet, Kenny stared into the cabin. Its single room +with its raftered walls, books and a lamp, an old-fashioned stove, a +work-basket, a faded rag-carpet and the trophies of childhood, boy and +girl, was snug and comfortable. +</P> + +<P> +"It's Donald's and mine," said Joan. "We've always studied here with +Mr. Abbott." +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill," said the minister stiffly, "it—it has been a sort of +secret. Mr. Craig was strangely opposed to the tuition I offered years +ago. Joan settled the problem for herself." +</P> + +<P> +It was evident all of it had lain a little sorely on the old man's +conscience. It had been a singular problem, deception or the welfare +of the two children suffering at the hands of Adam Craig; and the need +of choice had driven him to prayer. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny, glad at last to find his tongue, warmly commended his decision. +</P> + +<P> +Joan blew out the light and locked the door. +</P> + +<P> +"How did you find the cabin, Kenny?" she asked wonderingly. "It's off +so in the wilder part of the forest. No one comes this way." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny told fluently of walking toward a star. +</P> + +<P> +It was like him. Joan smiled. +</P> + +<P> +But the faith in her eyes upset him. He wanted to be truthful. Ah! if +only Fate would let him! +</P> + +<P> +"And I startled you!" marveled Mr. Abbott. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +He walked back through the silence of the pines with remorse in his +heart, paying little heed to Mr. Abbott's talk of vacation. The +wistaria ladder, the cloister of pines, the lonely cabin where Joan +spent truant hours of peace, were to him things of infinite pathos. +And like the day in the garret, yesterday seemed aeons back. He +wondered why, conscious of a subtle, unforgettable sense of change in +himself. Something mysteriously had altered. +</P> + +<P> +The memory of the pain and horror in his heart, he dismissed with a +frown. As Adam said, he never dwelt upon the things that failed to +please him. The pain was past. The peace of the present lay in his +heart. It had even crowded out the memory of Adam and the notebook. +</P> + +<P> +He was glad when Mr. Abbott said good night and took a footpath to the +west. Well, it had been a mystery this time that he hadn't wanted to +keep. But why, Oh, why, he wondered a little sadly, must all his +mysteries end in anticlimax? Absurd, the little man in his frock coat +trotting out of the cabin door! +</P> + +<P> +"Joan, Joan!" he pleaded. "Why didn't you tell me? Am I then not your +friend?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sorry, Kenny." She laid her hand wistfully upon his arm. "Mr. +Abbott asked me not to tell you." +</P> + +<P> +"Why?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know." +</P> + +<P> +"You go there often?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, at night. I sew there and read and study. To Donald and me it +was always a little like a home. I used to patch his clothes there. +He hated them so. You're not hurt?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not—now." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm glad." +</P> + +<P> +At the wistaria ladder Kenny sighed. +</P> + +<P> +"Must you?" he asked. "I mean, Joan, can't you steal in by the door?" +</P> + +<P> +"It's better not," said Joan, one hand already on the vine. "Hughie +would scold if he knew. For the wood is lonely. And he would talk so +much of rain and snow. Now I can come and go as I please." +</P> + +<P> +She caught her cloak up and fastened it to insure the freedom of both +her hands. +</P> + +<P> +"Good night, Kenny," she said shyly. "I hope you find your star." +</P> + +<P> +"I did," said Kenny. "'Twas hiding in a cabin. Good night, dear." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap12"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THRALDOM +</H2> + +<P> +Hughie met him at the door. +</P> + +<P> +"He's been askin' for you, Mr. O'Neill," he said. "And he hasn't drank +a drop all evening." +</P> + +<P> +"I shan't go," said Kenny. "Depend upon it, Hughie, it's another +trick." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," said Hughie hopelessly. "It may be. It's not for me +to deny, with all you take from him." Hughie looked ashamed of +himself. "I—I'm sorry for him." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny groaned and set his teeth. +</P> + +<P> +"I think," said Hughie, "he wants to apologize. He wrote you a note +this morning and tore it up. And when I put his brandy bottle on his +chair to-night he flung it at my head." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll go this once," said Kenny. "But, so help me Heaven, I'll never +go again!" +</P> + +<P> +He went dully up the stair, cursing the blossom storm. Its monotonous +patter on the roof had inspired Adam Craig to his first plea of +loneliness; it had left Kenny himself with a haunting memory of drab +solitude, pain and melancholy that seeped with a dripping sound into +his very marrow; and it had begun for him the singular thraldom, +inspired by pity, that he could not bring himself to understand. +</P> + +<P> +Hughie had left the door of Adam's room ajar. The invalid sat by the +table in his wheelchair, a book upon his knees, likely one of the +pirate tales in which he reveled. His face was drawn and haggard, his +eyes closed. With the wine of his excitement gone, he seemed but a +huddled heap of skin and bone. A death's-head! Kenny shuddered. +Unspeakable pity made him kind. The old man yonder was off his guard; +he had pride and spirit that compelled respect. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny softly closed the door and rapped. +</P> + +<P> +"Come in!" said Adam Craig. Almost Kenny could see him chirking up +into insolence and the pertness of a bird. It was precisely as he had +expected. When the door swung back, Adam was erect in his wheel-chair, +electric with challenge. His eyes were once more bright and sharp. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," he demanded with asperity, "where have you been?" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny glanced at the faded books stacked upon the bookshelves; and with +the cabin uppermost in his mind he swung back dangerously to the +hostile mood of the night before. Adam Craig was a miser, cruel and +selfish. He had driven Joan and Donald to a refuge in the pines. +</P> + +<P> +"I said," repeated Adam in a louder voice, "where have you been?" +</P> + +<P> +"Picking wild flowers," said Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"You lie!" said Adam. "It's your way of telling me to mind my own +business." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny did not trouble to deny it. +</P> + +<P> +"You've been sulking." +</P> + +<P> +"Very well, then," said Kenny evenly, making use of his one weapon of +composure, "let's concede that I've been sulking." +</P> + +<P> +He was sorry instantly. +</P> + +<P> +Infuriated, Adam brought his fist down upon the arm of his wheel-chair +and, coughing, propelled himself up and down the room. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny walked away to the window, sick with remorse. For the old man +had coughed himself into gasping quiet. What could he do? +</P> + +<P> +A wayward Irish tune, ludicrously fitting, danced into his head and +made him smile. +</P> + +<P> +"What shall I do with this silly old man?" whistled Kenny softly at the +window. +</P> + +<P> +"What's that?" demanded Adam suspiciously. +</P> + +<P> +The insolence in his voice struck fire again. Kenny remembered his +notebook and the hour of accounting. Never again would the forces Adam +had revived sink into the quietude of his first days here at the farm. +</P> + +<P> +"What's what?" he asked perversely. +</P> + +<P> +"That asinine tune you're whistling?" +</P> + +<P> +"It's a song," said Kenny innocently, "about a wild flower. And it was +very wild. It had thorns." +</P> + +<P> +"I think you lie," said Adam, glaring. "But as I have no womanish +repertoire of songs to prove it, you can whistle it all you want and be +damned to you." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny at the window availed himself of the privilege. +</P> + +<P> +"What's the name of it?" snapped Adam after a while, ruffled by his +guest's persistence. +</P> + +<P> +"'What shall I do with this silly old man?'" explained Kenny with a +grin. +</P> + +<P> +"You impudent liar!" cried the old man in a high, angry voice. "Do you +ever tell the truth?" +</P> + +<P> +"Almost never," said Kenny. "Do you?" And he went on with his +whistling. +</P> + +<P> +Adam ignored his impudence. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then," he said, "it's time you began. You're young enough, God +knows. But it's not a youth of years. It's a superficial youth of +spirit. And you're old enough to tell the truth." +</P> + +<P> +"How shall I learn?" +</P> + +<P> +"Practice!" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny wheeled. Adam's careless dart had struck deep and sharp and it +rankled. +</P> + +<P> +"Very well, Adam," he said, "I'll practice on you." +</P> + +<P> +Truth! Truth! he reflected passionately at the window. Was the world +mad about it? And what was the matter with himself? Why did the +romantic freaks of his fancy always fill him now with vague worry? +</P> + +<P> +"What," gasped Adam, staring, "did you say?" +</P> + +<P> +"I said," flung out Kenny, "that I'd practice telling the truth and I'd +practice on you. And by Heaven I will!" +</P> + +<P> +He wiped his forehead with a shaky hand. The room was warm, the lamp +flickering hotly in the summer breeze. He thought of Joan and the +ferry. Did she scull the old, flat-bottomed punt back and forth, back +and forth, when the winter wind was howling up the river? What did she +wear when winter settled, sharp and bleak, upon the ridge? Kenny +shivered. He pictured her vividly in furs, warm and rosy, and hated +the lynx-like eyes of the miser in the wheel-chair who doled out +grudging pennies for nothing but his brandy. There was much that he +could say if he told the truth; much the old man must be told if later +Joan with her secret tears was to be saved the brunt of his hellish +torment. He would force Adam Craig to stop the ferry. He would force +him to buy furs. He would force him to endorse Mr. Abbott and his +kindness, force him to grant Joan her books and the right to study, if +she chose. Why in Heaven's name should she creep through rain and snow +and shadows to the refuge in the pines? +</P> + +<P> +He was dangerously excited with the fever of the old crusader in his +veins. And then he thought of the trust in Joan's eyes when his tongue +rambled, and went cold with shame. He must learn to tell the truth. +He would practice for his own sake—and for the sake of Joan. +</P> + +<P> +With a sense of shock he realized that he had been very far away. Adam +was choking and wheezing and gasping himself into weakness. +</P> + +<P> +"For God's sake," exclaimed Kenny with a feeling of guilt, "what's the +matter? Are you laughing or choking?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm laughing," said Adam, shaking with mirth. "Kenny, I'm just +laughing." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Kenny huffily, "laugh your head off if you want to. I +mean what I say." +</P> + +<P> +The old man chuckled. +</P> + +<P> +"I'd be disappointed," he said, "if you didn't." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny stared at him in intense disgust. A perverse old lunatic! He +would like his new diversion less perhaps as time went on. +</P> + +<P> +"I want you to forget," Adam said abruptly, "about last night. I +was—jealous. I hate your health. I—hate your straight legs—Oh, My +God!" he whispered, shuddering, and closed his eyes. When he opened +them his smile was ghastly. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," he said with a pitiful air of bravado, "do you know a tune, an +Irish tune called 'Eileen Aroon'?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny, clearing his throat. "Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"Whistle it." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny obeyed. His eyes were sympathetic, +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Adam in muffled tones, "it isn't Irish. It's Robin Adair +and it came from Scotland." +</P> + +<P> +But his voice was tired. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny rummaged in the closet for his brandy. +</P> + +<P> +"There are times," said Adam queerly, "when you've an open-hearted, +understanding way about you. I believe you even know why I get drunk." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny, "I think I do." +</P> + +<P> +Adam dropped hack limply in his chair. +</P> + +<P> +"It's because," he whispered, "I've—got—to—sleep!" +</P> + +<P> +Startled at his manner, Kenny remembered the fairy mill and wondered. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap13"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XIII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +KENNY'S TRUTH CRUSADE +</H2> + +<P> +Kenny began his truth crusade the next night. +</P> + +<P> +"Adam," he said, halting on the threshold of the old man's sitting room +with one hand carelessly behind him and his attitude expectant and +determined, "I've often wondered why every book in the farmhouse is up +here on your shelves." +</P> + +<P> +Adam cupped his ear with his hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Wh-a-a-a-t?" he asked blankly. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny brought the hand behind his back forward. It held a megaphone. +</P> + +<P> +"I said," he bellowed through it, "that I've often wondered why all the +books in the farmhouse are here upon your shelves." +</P> + +<P> +Adam sat up. +</P> + +<P> +"For God's sake, Kenny," he said. "Close the door. Where did you get +that thing?" he demanded with a scowl. +</P> + +<P> +"It's Hughie's and the very sight of it was an inspiration." +</P> + +<P> +"Give it to me!" +</P> + +<P> +"On the contrary I intend to cure your deafness." +</P> + +<P> +Adam stared. +</P> + +<P> +"I mean just this: You can hear as well as I can. You pretend to be +deaf when you don't want to hear." +</P> + +<P> +"What?" snapped the old man with a glance like lightning. +</P> + +<P> +"You told me to practice the truth," reminded Kenny, dropping into a +chair. "I'm merely beginning. I've a lot to say. And the health of +your hearing, Adam, is an indispensable adjunct to my practice hour and +my peace of mind. I'm merely insuring myself against your refusing +with a feint of deafness to hear what I have to say." +</P> + +<P> +"For once," said Adam insolently, "you've scored. But if ever I get my +hands on that damned megaphone, I'll burn it." +</P> + +<P> +"You won't get your hands on it," retorted Kenny. "And if you do I'll +buy a bigger one." +</P> + +<P> +It was hard to begin but Kenny with his mouth set thought of Joan. He +told Adam Craig he was a miser. +</P> + +<P> +In the dreadful silence the tick of the old clock on the mantel seemed +to Kenny's distracted ears a perpetuity of measured taps upon a +death-drum. He thought of Poe and the pit and the pendulum. He +thought of Joan and told himself fiercely that he did it all for her; +for her he was winding around himself a chain foredoomed to clank. And +he wondered why on earth the old man did not speak. +</P> + +<P> +The suspense became intolerable. Intensely excited, Kenny swung to his +feet. +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" he said. +</P> + +<P> +"Well!" said Adam and smiled a curious, inscrutable, twisted sort of +smile. He had never looked so evil-eyed and subtle. "One of your +greatest drawbacks, Kenny, is an Irish temper and a habit of +excitement." +</P> + +<P> +"A miser!" repeated Kenny with defiance. He must keep his feet upon +the path. It was the prelude to all that he must say for Joan's +emancipation. +</P> + +<P> +"A miser!" said Adam, nodding. "Well, what of it?" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny struck himself fiercely on the forehead, wondering if the word +had pleased and not provoked him. The possibility shocked him into +fresh courage. He said everything that was on his mind with deadly +quietness and an air of fixed purpose. Then he picked up his megaphone +and started for the door. +</P> + +<P> +"Adam," he said, "I've told you the truth, so help me God, in an hour +of practice. Now, you can practice facing facts." +</P> + +<P> +And he was gone. +</P> + +<P> +He was courageous and persistent, with the thought of Joan always +spurring him to further effort. Night after night he played his game +of truth and fought with desperation for the happiness of the girl +whose eyes had committed him irrevocably to a vow of honesty and fact. +</P> + +<P> +He could not see that he was making any headway. +</P> + +<P> +Adam listened with baffling intentness while his strange guest +practiced strangely the telling of truth. He refuted nothing. He +accepted everything that Kenny said with a corroborative, birdlike nod +of politeness. With the megaphone upon the floor by Kenny's chair, he +made no further pretense of deafness. He said nothing at all and Kenny +found his new inscrutable trick of silence unendurable. One singular +fact loomed out above all others. Adam shamelessly accepted the word +miser with a gloating chuckle. He seemed to like it. For Kenny, +generous to a fault and prodigal with money, the word embodied all +things hideous. +</P> + +<P> +There were times when Kenny abandoned the hopeless battle and came at +Adam's plea, reserved and sullen. Then with a solicitous air of virtue +the old man urged him to renew it. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," he demanded more than once, "have you got your practicing +done? You lack application. If you're ever to learn truth at your +stage of ignorance you'll have to have it." +</P> + +<P> +The goad went home. He did lack application. And Joan must not suffer +from that lack. +</P> + +<P> +But in the end the old man tired him out; and the practice of truth +became a boomerang. +</P> + +<P> +Adam Craig smoothly demanded reciprocal privileges. Once more he told +Kenny the truth about himself and drove the tormented Irishman again +and again to his notebook. It had for him a morbid fascination. No +matter how resolute the disdain with which he began to read it, he +finished with his color high and his eyes incredulous and indignant. +The barbs failed to lose their sting. They sank deeper and deeper. In +a terror of defense Kenny returned to the fray with added vim. But +Adam had a deftness with his barbs that his opponent lacked. +Compassion drove the younger man to restraint. And Adam did not +scruple to hide behind the bulwark of his own debility. +</P> + +<P> +Night after night, mutinous at the glaring fact that in this singular +battle of truth, Adam Craig was winning, Kenny rushed out into the +peace and darkness of the night to seek Joan. It was inevitable that +he should see in the wistaria ladder the means to starlit hours of +delight. It was inevitable that Joan, to whom the vine was no more +than an old, familiar stairway, would climb down to him with that shy +oblivion of convention that was as much a part of her as her +will-of-the-wisp charm. +</P> + +<P> +They roamed in the dark silver of the star-light to the cabin in the +pines and the hours that Joan had spent with Mr. Abbott or the books +she loved, fell tinkling now with new melody into the lap of time. In +the rude room, bright with lamplight and the trophies of childhood, the +girl listened tirelessly to a musical Irish voice that read to her with +brogue and tenderness enough to insure her interest in the reader no +less than in his task. Kenny blessed the village congregation that had +sent Mr. Abbott forth upon his needed month of recreation. +</P> + +<P> +When the nights were cool enough, they built a fire of pine cones in +the cabin stove and made tea and Kenny talked of Brian to ease his +troubled heart. Joan listened wide-eyed to tales of the son Kenny said +was all things in one. +</P> + +<P> +"And you quarreled!" said Joan. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"So did Donald and I. How queer that is! Was it your fault, Kenny? +Or was it Brian's?" +</P> + +<P> +"It was my fault," said Kenny and lost his color. "But I know now that +it wasn't the quarrel then that counted. It was the things that had +gone before." +</P> + +<P> +"How much you love him!" said Joan gently. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny. "In this world of hideous complexities and +uncertainty and—chains—of that at least I am sure." +</P> + +<P> +"That," said Joan, "I like." +</P> + +<P> +Mingled inextricably with this new fervor in his soul for truth, was +the memory of the inspirational stage mother. The idle claim bothered +him more and more. But there he was never brave enough to tell the +truth. +</P> + +<P> +Well, it was a queer world and he—Kennicott O'Neill—was thrall to a +pitiful old fiend with the soul of a Caliban. He was unspeakably +grateful for the relief of the hours when, with his conscience up in +arms, he could talk to Joan of Brian and ease his misdeeds of the past +by praise and appreciation. +</P> + +<P> +A jewel of a lad! Everybody loved his humor, his compassion and his +common sense. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap14"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XIV +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +IN SOMEBODY'S BOAT +</H2> + +<P> +The moon came silver in the valley and mingled with shadow among the +trees. Owl's-light was nowhere, Kenny said, and the pines stood like +shaggy druids in the silver dusk. The twilight of the moon he called +it. Restless and poetic he begged Joan to help him find the lake down +yonder in the valley. It was gleaming, to his fancy, with fairies' +fire. +</P> + +<P> +They found the lake and somebody's boat. Both were in a lonely glen. +Kenny unwillingly conceded the existence of somebody with a claim upon +the boat stronger than his own. +</P> + +<P> +"But," he went on with an air of inspiration, "somebody is in the world +or he wouldn't be somebody; and the world's my friend. Therefore by +moon-mad deduction somebody's my friend and I may take his boat." +</P> + +<P> +He released the painter, smiling up into Joan's face. +</P> + +<P> +"Beside," he added, "he's either a young dub who doesn't know the moon +is shining or an old cynic who doesn't care." +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" said Joan, somewhat shocked by his inconsequent habits of +acquirement. "I'm quite sure we shouldn't." +</P> + +<P> +"Everything in the world you want to do," reminded Kenny, "you +shouldn't. And everything in the world you shouldn't, you want to do!" +</P> + +<P> +He flung his cigarette at a frog. +</P> + +<P> +"The only thing to smoke on such a lake," he said, "is a fairy's pipe. +Come, jewel machree, happiness is the aim of life. And my happiness +for the moment, is to glide forth upon the bosom of that lake with you. +Look, you can even see the gleam of silver shoes where the fairies +dance upon the ripples." +</P> + +<P> +He was indeed moon-mad in mood and irresistible. Joan smiled +compassionately at the pleading of his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"But, Kenny," she said, holding back, "the aim of life isn't just +happiness. That might be very dreadful. It's just happiness with the +least unhappiness to others." +</P> + +<P> +He stared at her a little startled. It was the sort of thing, he felt +rebelliously, that he should write down in his notebook. Well, it was +no night for notebooks. It was a night, a lake, a boat for lovers. +</P> + +<P> +"Even granting that, girleen," he said, "it's not going to make +somebody unhappy if we take his boat. For he won't know it. And +therefore it will make us happy with the least possible unhappiness to +anybody else. And, after all, it's more likely to be a fairy's boat, +for it's made of quicksilver. Come, mavourneen, come!" +</P> + +<P> +She climbed in unconvinced. +</P> + +<P> +"Lordy! Lordy!" breathed Kenny in delight. "The lake is thatched with +moonbeams!" And he thought of course of the legend of Killarney. +"'Twas a valley like this, Joan," he said, "all rich with fields and +pastures of green and there in the heart of it always was the fairy +fountain covered with a stone to keep the water from rushin' out. And +then came the knight." +</P> + +<P> +His eyes pleaded. He was staging his legend and begging her to act. +</P> + +<P> +"And then," said Joan smiling, "came the knight. I think his eyes were +Irish." +</P> + +<P> +"He saw a maid at the fountain," said Kenny, his eyes tender, "a maid +with a pitcher and her skin was cream and her cheeks were rose and +there were shadows of gold in her bronzy, nut-brown hair. I'm sure she +wore a quaint old gown of blue and silver." +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" +</P> + +<P> +"And he liked her," said Kenny stubbornly. "You can't deny him that." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Joan gently. "And why should I deny it? For the blue and +silver maid liked the knight." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny's heart leaped to his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"They wandered on the hills and they wandered in the valley. And then +the maid in blue and silver, who was all rose petals and sun shadows +and the glory of autumn, ran back to the fountain. She had forgotten +to cover it with the stone and the valley was flooded. There beautiful +and calm stretched the lake of Killarney and I hope it was moonlight." +</P> + +<P> +"And the knight and the maid?" Joan had forgotten their game of +pretense. She was eager for the end of the story. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny feathered his oars in silver spray and wondered impatiently why +all love stories ended in an anticlimax. He had finished the story +artistically and well. Luckily Joan had forgotten the stage and the +actors. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose," he said gloomily, "that the knight married the maid and +took her to dwell in a castle she must have hated. And they lived +unhappily ever after." +</P> + +<P> +Joan laughed. She saw in his words merely a perverse dislike for +familiar endings and forgot it at once. The moonlit lake had aroused +in her a yearning tenderness for the brother off somewhere in what, +Kenny said, Brian called his Tavern of Stars. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Kenny," she sighed, "I wish Donald would write!" +</P> + +<P> +The wish jarred. Kenny frowned. How could he wish it too! And yet, +not wishing was disloyal, disloyal to Brian. Upset, he turned, hurt +and sulky. And presently as Joan, busy with thoughts of the truant +brother, continued unaware of the melancholy in his mood that never +failed to make its appeal to her tenderness, he began to hum. +</P> + +<P> +Joan looked up. +</P> + +<P> +"What a queer, wild tune!" she exclaimed. "What is it, Kenny? I've +never heard you sing it before." +</P> + +<P> +"I never felt the need," said Kenny. "It's called the 'Twisting of the +Rope.' Long, long ago, girleen, a harper's gallantry to a pretty maid +angered her mother and she asked him to help her twist a straw rope. +And he did. And twisting he had to back away and over the threshold +and the mother slammed the door in his face. Faith, 'twas all to get +rid of him!" +</P> + +<P> +It was impossible to miss the point. Joan's face went scarlet. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Kenny!" she said. "You knew—surely you knew I couldn't mean +that." +</P> + +<P> +It was a new delight to hear her say it. +</P> + +<P> +"When Donald writes," reminded Kenny, "then I must go." And watching +the girl's troubled face, he wondered with a thrill of triumph if at +last the madness of the summer was upon her. Well, thank Heaven, he +was honest and honorable. He would stay until the madness waned. +Always he was fated to climb down out of the clouds first. +</P> + +<P> +Ah! But what if Joan slipped back into sense and sanity first? The +possibility filled him with panic. What on earth would he do? +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap15"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XV +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +IN WHICH CALIBAN SCORES +</H2> + +<P> +It was a prospect doomed to haunt him more and more as the summer which +had bade fail to be so full of peace, took on an indescribable +atmosphere of complication. Where could he go, he wondered +despairingly, that life would not instantly pour around him a +distracting whirlpool of commotion? Was he fated to rush through life +with his fingers clenched in his hair and his teeth set? Was he +doomed, as Garry had once said, to run forever in circles of excitement? +</P> + +<P> +Stumbling and tired, Kenny tried to keep his feet unswervingly in the +path of truth, colorless and uninviting as it seemed; but the strategy +of his practice hour in Adam's room he was forced to abandon, heartsick +for Joan and the future. His battle for her he knew had been in vain. +Useless further to bombard with truth that silent, inscrutable Caliban +upstairs, whose fiendish power to drive him to his notebook when he +chose in turn to tell the truth, seemed uncanny. And it was practice +enough to tell the truth to Joan! God grant, in all sincerity, that he +might come to justify the faith in the dear eyes of her. +</P> + +<P> +He made one last heroic effort to break his chain of thraldom. After +an interval of bitter insubordination which ended each night in +surrender, he set his teeth and vowed by every sacred thing he knew +that to-morrow night, summons or no summons, he would not go to the +sitting room of Adam Craig. He would secretly leave the farmhouse at +dusk with Joan and when Hughie knocked on his bedroom door, ready to +say that the old man was lonely and in pain, he would be safe and +serene in the cabin in the pines. Was it fated to be his refuge too? +</P> + +<P> +Torrential rain woke him in the morning. Kenny stared out at the wet +valley in tragic unbelief. It simply could not be; for he wanted a +dusk flecked with stars. But the rain gave no promise of abating and +late that afternoon he altered the detail of his rebellion. +Fortunately there were other ways. When the dusk closed in and the old +man watched the clock and waited, he would go boldly downstairs to the +old piano and register his rebellion in music that Adam Craig could +hear. He would spend his evening openly with Joan; he would go through +fire and water; he would ride the whirlwind and direct the storm but +what this time he would assure his emancipation. +</P> + +<P> +Instinct had warned him to abandon, in his hours with Adam Craig, +certain picturesque forms of attire in which he delighted. To-night, +whistling with a feeling of gayety and unrestraint, he rummaged his +trunks, selecting his clothing with fastidious attention to minor +detail and held the lamp high at the end to afford a better glimpse of +the handsome Irishman smiling back at him from the mirror in the +bureau. No doubt of it, give a fashionable tailor disposed to be +experimental, his head and enough money on account and he could create +a dash and piquancy worth while. Always remembering that such a +creative artisan was fortunate to find a suitable contrast of shoulder +and hip to wear his inspiration. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny in the best of spirits went downstairs. The lamp in the parlor +was already lighted; soft yellow shadows lay upon the faded walls; dust +and cobwebs had long ago surrendered to the siege of Hannah's broom. +Kenny drew the curtains to close out the splash of rain upon the window +panes and went to the piano. Even the noise of wind and rain left him +calm and cold and invincible. He played brilliantly snatches of +everything he knew. When Joan came and curled up in a chair beside him +with her chin upon her hand, he forgot Adam Craig entirely and went on +playing. Not the music of rebellion; it was more the music of dreams, +dusk-moths of melody that flitted through his memory, curiously +iridescent. +</P> + +<P> +He drifted dangerously after a while into the tenderness and passion of +the <I>Liebestraume</I>, the one thing perhaps that, loving, he knew to the +end; swept through the downward cadenza with exquisite accuracy and +feeling, and forgot the rest. With the girl's soft pensive eyes upon +him he could have forgotten anything; he even forgot that love is +transient. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan!" he gasped. +</P> + +<P> +A loud voice rasped through the silence. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" +</P> + +<P> +Joan shivered. Kenny stared at her in terror. It was the voice of +Adam Craig. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" The voice, sharp with indignation, brought them both to their +feet. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes?" stammered Kenny, his face scarlet. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you know <I>all</I> of anything?" +</P> + +<P> +Lamp in hand Kenny went to the foot of the stairway. +</P> + +<P> +"Adam," he demanded, staring up aghast at the wheel-chair and the +wrinkled, saturnine face bending over the railing with a leer of +triumph, "how in God's name did you get there?" +</P> + +<P> +"Wheeled myself, you Irish fool!" snapped Adam. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny went wearily up the stairway and set the lamp in a corner of the +hallway. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," bristled the old man. "Why don't you say something? What are +you going to do about it?" +</P> + +<P> +"It's the kind of night," said Kenny, "that you always have a fire. +I'm going to wheel you back where it's safe and warm." +</P> + +<P> +Adam chuckled. +</P> + +<P> +"That's what I thought you'd do," he jeered. +</P> + +<P> +"And then?" +</P> + +<P> +"Then," thundered Kenny in a blaze of temper, "I'm going back!" +</P> + +<P> +As usual his show of temper filled the invalid with delight. +</P> + +<P> +"Humph!" said he. "So am I." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny stopped the chair with a jerk. +</P> + +<P> +"What do you mean by that?" he demanded. +</P> + +<P> +"I mean," said Adam Craig, "that I'll wheel my chair back where I can +listen to music instead of rain. And if you wheel me back I'll do it +again. The hallway's dark and it's full of turns but I'll manage +somehow, if I break my neck." +</P> + +<P> +There was danger at every turn. A cold sweat came out on Kenny's +forehead. +</P> + +<P> +"Adam," he said quietly, "how did you manage to get there in the first +place? How did you open the door of your room?" +</P> + +<P> +"Wheeled myself close to the knob and unlatched it—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes?" +</P> + +<P> +"Then I wheeled myself out of the way and poked at the door with a +stick." +</P> + +<P> +"Stick! What stick?" +</P> + +<P> +"A stick out of a shade. Do you think I'm a fool?" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny groaned. +</P> + +<P> +"After that," purred the old man with a hint of pride, "until I got +into the dark hallway and began to bump, it was easy." +</P> + +<P> +The sitting room door was still open. Kenny wheeled his exasperating +old man of the sea over the sill in a terror of foreboding. +</P> + +<P> +Adam stared at him. +</P> + +<P> +"Where in the name of Heaven," he said, "did you get that rig? You +look like an actor." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny turned a dark red and ignored the question. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't like it!" jeered the old man. +</P> + +<P> +"There's a Shakespeare quotation," reminded Kenny dangerously, "that +begins—Hum! how does it begin? Yes. 'There was no thought of +pleasing you' and so on. That's it." +</P> + +<P> +"You impudent devil! Close the door." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll close it when I go out. And I'll lock it." +</P> + +<P> +They faced each other in a silence perilously akin to hate. +</P> + +<P> +"Are you a Christian?" hissed Adam Craig between his teeth. "Or are +you a heartless pagan?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm a pagan," said Kenny. "Orthodoxy, Adam," he added bitterly with +thoughts of Joan, "I leave for such compassionate hearts as yours." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't want it!" said Adam instantly. "It's churchiology, not +Christianity. They are as different, thank God, as you and I." +</P> + +<P> +A gust of wind and rain tore at the windows. The old man fixed his +piercing eyes on Kenny's face. Kenny shuddered and looked away. +</P> + +<P> +"Hear the rain!" said Adam. +</P> + +<P> +"I hear it," said Kenny hopelessly. +</P> + +<P> +"And you'll lock me in!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes!" +</P> + +<P> +"I'll ring for Hughie and tell him to batter the door down. I would +rather bump myself into eternity down that hallway," flung out Adam +Craig passionately, banging his fist upon the arm of the wheel-chair, +"than sit here, alone, to-night." +</P> + +<P> +With his hands clenched Kenny choked back his anger and faced his fate. +He could not lock the door. Either he must stay or go back with the +haunting conviction that this hungry-eyed old fiend who could strum +with diabolic skill upon the sensitive strings of his very soul, would +propel himself in his wheel-chair to the stairway, there to sit like a +ghoul at the top. Rain beat in Kenny's ears like a trumpet of doom. +He felt sick and dizzy. No! with the memory of that last wonderful +moment when the music had blended into the fire of his tenderness, he +could not go back. Invisible, Adam Craig would still be pervasive. He +would jar the idyl into a mockery, the indefinable malignity of him, +alert and silent up there at the head of the stairs, floating down like +an evil wind to mingle with the reminiscent sound of rain. +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" said the old man softly. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, my God!" said Kenny, wiping his forehead. "I'll stay!" +</P> + +<P> +"Good!" said Adam, moistening his lips. "Good! You know, Kenny," he +whispered, shivering, "I—I hate the rain." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny wretchedly, "so do I." +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," said the old man later when Kenny had carried the lamp back +and made sure that Joan had gone to her room, "don't sulk. You're old +enough to know better." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not sulking." +</P> + +<P> +"You are." +</P> + +<P> +"Very well, then, I am." +</P> + +<P> +"You've had enough music for one night." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny did not trouble to reply. Whatever he said would be combated. +</P> + +<P> +"Music," insisted Adam, "makes you as noisy as a magpie. If you're not +whistling, you're singing some damned rake of an Irish song and if +you're not singing, you're at the piano battering out a scrap-heap of +tunes." +</P> + +<P> +"From the first day until the last when he goes to sleep with a daisy +quilt over him," said Kenny stiffly, "an Irishman lives his life to +music." +</P> + +<P> +"Humph!" said the old man, ready for battle, "the music of his own +voice, telling lies." +</P> + +<P> +Reckless, Kenny used his one weapon of composure. It made the old man +cough with fury and propel himself up and down the room in his +wheel-chair until, with a feeling of whirling fire in his brain, Kenny +wondered if a man could lose his sanity by watching an infuriated +lunatic in a wheel-chair narrowly miss everything in his way. +</P> + +<P> +But he made no further effort at rebellion. Instead he went each +night, invincible in his determination not to be outdone. When by +playing on his pity Adam trapped him he smiled and shrugged. When the +old man assailed him with shafts of truth, no matter what the aftermath +of communion with himself and his notebook, he accepted it with +composure and an air of interest. When in a fury, Adam reviled him for +his phlegm, he laughed and was cursed for his pains. +</P> + +<P> +"You told me, Adam," he said, "that my greatest drawback is a habit of +excitement and temper. Excitable I shall probably be all my life. +It's temperamental. But I'm learning to control my temper." +</P> + +<P> +In a week his coolness and composure were bearing horrible fruit. +</P> + +<P> +Exhausted by blind fits of rage, racking spells of coughing and more +brandy than usual, the invalid's weakness became pitifully apparent. +He seemed now but a shaking shadow, gray and gaunt. Even the doctor, +who accepted him with fatalistic calm, confessed alarm. And Kenny, +with his teeth set and his fingers clenched in his hair, faced another +problem. He was to blame and he alone! What in the literal name of +mercy was he to do? +</P> + +<P> +There was one alternative left and one only. Either he must meet the +old man's hunger for battle with a show of temper, the blacker the +better, or leave the farm for good. But even with his thraldom heavy +on his soul the prospect of leaving Joan filled him with pain and +panic. There remained then but the show of temper in which Adam would +be sure to thrive. +</P> + +<P> +So Kenny set himself to his freak of mercy. Thereafter, when the need +arose, he walked the floor under the piercing battery of Adam's eyes, +blazing forth a fury that, in the circumstances, with his sense of the +ridiculous upper-most, could not be real. He raved and swore when he +wanted to collapse in a chair and rock with nervous laughter. +</P> + +<P> +Keen, alert, intensely delighted, Adam began to thrive. Chuckling he +slipped back to his normal state of debility. Finding in the stress of +his victim's tempestuous surrender that he forgot the megaphone, he +perversely began again to have trouble with his ears. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny and his megaphone returned to the fray. +</P> + +<P> +Thus September came, warm and golden. Haze, soft and indistinct lay in +the valley and on the hills. Summer lingered in the garden but on the +ridge the nights were cool and in the swamplands, Hughie said, already +the maples were coloring with a hint of colder weather. Here and there +on birch and poplar fluttered a yellowing leaf. +</P> + +<P> +And Donald had not written. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny, as the days slipped by, faced a new and tragic problem. October +was at hand. Work beckoned with urgent hand. If he did not go soon +somebody would have to balance up his check book for him and tell him +how long he could live without working. Brian, dear lad, had been a +jewel at figures. +</P> + +<P> +But how <I>could</I> he work with the thought of the winter wind and Joan +tormenting him? And the snow-bound cabin in the pines? And the ferry +and the ladder of icy vine? And Adam Craig? +</P> + +<P> +He could not, would not go! And where in the name of all lunatics was +Brian? Life in the studio without him would be impossible. What did +he intend to do? Could he, Kenny, settle down to work with the problem +of his penitential quest for his son still unsettled? +</P> + +<P> +And why in the name of the Sacred Question-mark, was his life a string +of questions! +</P> + +<P> +In the end he fled from Adam's tongue. So he told himself. In reality +panic plunged him into action. His summer was ending. His madness was +not. And for that alarming fact he blamed Brian. +</P> + +<P> +"I was worried," he remembered irritably, "and just in the mood to make +a colossal fool of myself. And I have!" +</P> + +<P> +Otherwise this seizure must have run its course by now. It bothered +him that he had pledged himself to linger at the farm until Joan was +quite herself. Surely the gods of love and honor would understand that +he had foreseen no such troublous dilemma as that which faced him now. +He must take himself in hand. He must find an undisturbing level of +common sense and keep his roving feet upon it. The need was drastic. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll be back in a month," he told Joan, his lips white with compassion +for himself and her, and stared moodily at the blaze of autumn on the +hills, knowing he would not return. "Often I've longed for a winter of +sketching in such a wild and lonely spot." +</P> + +<P> +"And then," said Joan, "when Donald writes you must be here." +</P> + +<P> +"I must be here," said Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +That he felt was the kindest way. Surely, surely it was the kindest. +It saved Joan the painful thought of permanent separation. In a month +without him she would soon forget. A month, he knew of old, worked +wonders. Absence, he had proved again and again, never made a heart +grow fonder. Propinquity was at once a danger and a cure. +</P> + +<P> +Joan waved him down the farm lane, her soft eyes wistful. An adorable +will-of-the-wisp! Almost he could not bring himself to leave her. But +for Hughie's eyes, he would have vaulted from the farm buggy, crying +her name. +</P> + +<P> +"The farm," she had said with frank tears in her eyes, "will be just +like a grave without you." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny knew it would. +</P> + +<P> +The studio he found could match it. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap16"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XVI +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +TANTRUMS +</H2> + +<P> +Things went badly from the start. Whitaker for one thing claimed to +have lost track of Brian and Kenny thought he lied. For another, he +could not bring himself to work. A sense in the studio of a presence +gone, he told Garry, haunted him, Brian's lazy authoritative +guardianship and the comparative order to which he could reduce +existence when he chose were indispensable to his daily comfort. +</P> + +<P> +Ah! unbelievably care-free—those old devil-may-care days when Brian +had been content to work and laugh and quarrel! Kenny, looking back +with longing, likened his plight to that of Ossian returning after +three hundred years of fairy bliss from the fabled delights of +Tirnanoge. Touched earth he had, in spite of warning, and become on +the minute a wrinkled, old, old man. So with Kenny. He had touched +earth, he reflected tragically. Never again would his fairyland be +quite the same. Man talked of his flaws. His fallibility they said +was monumental. There was Adam who had morbidly incited him to a +notebook, a damnable, pervasive notebook which he tried in vain to +ignore. There was Whitaker, to whom, at a loose end, he wrote a great +many letters of rebuke, some stately, some less so. There was Brian, +whose absence had revolutionized his pleasant way of life; and Garry +and Jan and Sid, who at any cost merely wanted him to work. Grievance +enough for any man who resented the disturbance of unneeded change. +</P> + +<P> +The truth of it was, he owned at times, he was homesick for Joan and +fed his loneliness with letters he felt himself obliged to write. That +was inevitable, for he had fled from an idyl and the memory of its +charm must lessen slowly. Often with an eye upon the clock he found +himself picturing the routine of the farm and longing for its freedom +from the petty need of work. +</P> + +<P> +He blew the horn beneath the willow and watched Joan cross the river in +the punt. He climbed the garret stairway and helped her pick a gown. +He watched the Gray Man steal along the ridge, lingering in boxwood +paths and in the orchard. And then with night among the pines and the +plaintive voice of autumn wind, Joan was climbing down the vine and +hurrying through the wood to the cabin, and Adam with his eye upon the +brandy was counting wearily when the clock struck. How the wind would +rattle at his windows! How the log would flare! How Adam must be +longing for excitement! And how glad he was that he himself had found +a safe hiding place in a lonely tree-stump for the lantern Joan had +reluctantly agreed to carry since the fall closed in. +</P> + +<P> +Um … Joan would be building a fire in the cabin now and drawing +the shades and Mr. Abbott would be picking his way through the pines +with a book beneath his arm. Kenny glowered some at Mr. Abbott. An +eye for nothing there but duty and even that he saw in a stark and +unromantic way. And he lacked a sense of humor. He'd proved it in the +river. Joan answered his letters with an adorable primness that filled +him with delight. It reflected Mr. Abbott. But her letters ended +always with the naivete of a child. They all missed him. +</P> + +<P> +It was pleasant to be missed. +</P> + +<P> +The pleasure was curiously reactive. Kenny's irritability grew too +marked to be ignored. Jan and Sid and Garry met and talked him over. +</P> + +<P> +"What's wrong with him?" demanded Sid, amazed. "Garry, what is it? +He's as quarrelsome as a magpie and nothing suits him. He barks at the +club-boys and if you drift into the studio you're about as welcome as +the measles." +</P> + +<P> +"It's not because he's busy," said Garry grimly. "Nothing I've found +is further from his mind than the thought of work." +</P> + +<P> +"And it's plain Brian isn't coming back," put in Jan. "He might as +well face that fact and have done with it. Personally I've lost +patience with him. He acts like a sulky kid." +</P> + +<P> +Later Jan improvised a "scarlet fever" placard which Kenny in the +course of time found nailed upon his door. He read with amazed and +offended eyes that he was temporarily in temper quarantine. +</P> + +<P> +It soon became apparent that life without Brian was maintaining even +more than its usual average of petty complication. The problem of +small change Kenny found a torment. There Brian had been a jewel. It +simply narrowed down to this, he told Garry: No matter how he started, +he never had any. Even a bag of change he had procured from the bank +in a moment of desperation was never to be found. It got under things. +His eventual solution of the difficulty plunged the club into scandal +and uproar. He found the bag of change and sprinkled coins into +everything in the studio that would hold them. +</P> + +<P> +"Now," he informed Garry with moody satisfaction, "I'll always be able +to put my hand on some when I want it. I wonder I didn't think of it +before. I'm better with big sums. Dimes and nickels and even quarters +make me nervous. You know how it is, Garry. I always have to come in +to you or do one of a number of desperate things. And then if I can't +find a small coin and tip with a big one, Jan gets wind of it somehow +and talks by the hour about demoralizing the club-boys. He's a pest." +</P> + +<P> +The device at first bade fair to be successful. Later there was +frenzied recourse to Garry to help him remember where on earth the +dimes were likely to be. Later still the pages helped. The sequel +came quickly. The studio attained suspicious popularity with one or +two new untried boys who mined the studio in Kenny's absence and tipped +themselves. Kenny, as scandalized as only Kenny could be, turned +sleuth and reported the thing in wrath. Everybody missed something and +the club buzzed with scandal until the boys departed, likely, Kenny +thought bitterly, to retire for life on the dimes and nickels they had +dug out of his studio. +</P> + +<P> +Why must he always be the central pivot of a whirlpool of excitement? +God knows he loved peace even if Fate never permitted him to sample it. +He laid the whole thing unconditionally at Brian's door. Let Brian, +instead of shirking his usual numismatic responsibilities in some +indefinite green world of peace and calm, come home as he should. +</P> + +<P> +As for work, Kenny loved work, Brian and Garry to the contrary. If in +Brian's absence everything conspired against his passionate love of +industry, it was no fault of his. Along with the torment of doubts +that assailed him, thanks to that infernal notebook, the studio kept +catapulting itself into a jungle of nerve-racking disorder in which it +was impossible to work. And when Mrs. Haggerty fell upon it with the +horrible energy of the Philistine and found places for everything, the +studio became a place in which no self-respecting painter could be +expected to keep his inspiration or his temper. Here again, Kenny felt +aggrievedly, was a condition which Brian's presence could have altered. +The lad had a way of mitigating order and disorder with a curious +result of comfort. +</P> + +<P> +Garry lost his patience. +</P> + +<P> +"You remind me," he said, "of the English squire who only drank ale on +two occasions; when he had goose for dinner and when he didn't." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny remarked that the squire by reason of his nativity was a fool. +And the thing couldn't be helped. The studio in order was impossible. +He added with an air of inspiration that it made him think of +mathematics. Mathematics he considered a final argument against +anything. Besides, he was unusually fallible. Garry must always keep +that in mind. Let the infallibles work. If there was only something +he liked well enough, he'd drink himself to death. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose you are aware," thundered Garry, thoroughly exasperated, +"that even a painter must work to live? The whole club's buzzing over +your tantrums. There's been some talk of chaining you to an easel with +a brush in your hand for your own good." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny as usual consigned the club to Gehenna. Nevertheless, as Garry +saw, he winced. Very well, he would work, furiously, as only he knew +how to work and when he had scored another brilliant success— +</P> + +<P> +Fate intervened. To his intense excitement Kenny was summoned for jury +duty. He managed after much difficulty to place the blame of this too +at Brian's door. Brian, he remembered, had flirted with the daughter +of an uptown judge. Likely he had boasted about his father's +versatility. +</P> + +<P> +Inevitably on the morning there was civic need of him at court, Kenny +awoke with a fever for work, shocked at his record of indolence. Garry +found him in a painter's smock, conspicuously busy with a yard-stick +and crayon. Everything in the studio on rollers had been rearranged. +A chafing dish of coffee, sufficient to stimulate him through a day of +fearful labor, stood upon a table beside a supply of cigarettes. +</P> + +<P> +"Now, Kenny," said Garry, who was finding his responsibilities in +Brian's absence more or less complex, "you know hanged well you have +that jury thing on this morning. I'm going with you." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny filled a battered tin-cup with something he had to sniff for +purposes of identity, unearthed a number of brushes and defiantly +polished a palette with a wad of cheesecloth. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll be damned if I go!" he bristled. "I'm too busy." +</P> + +<P> +Garry looked directly at him and compelled a slight faltering of his +gaze. +</P> + +<P> +"It's the one day I've felt like work," blustered Kenny, squaring off +his canvas. "You spoke of work, didn't you? And a fool of an English +squire who ate goose? Let the idle rich sit around in squads and swear +they don't read the newspapers. I do. Me on a jury! My dear Garry! +I can't even sit still in my own studio. You know that yourself." +</P> + +<P> +Nevertheless after a heated argument he went wearily with Garry in a +taxi, particularly individualistic in his attire. And he told the +judge in a richer brogue than usual that he was a painter subject to +irresistible fits of dreaminess and must be excused. Garry, aghast, +stared at the judge and the judge, with peculiar interest stared at the +delinquent and excused him. +</P> + +<P> +"Fortunately," Garry told him later, "your civic duties haven't spoiled +your day." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny merely glanced at him with a gentle air of patience. He would +like to remind Garry that he had wanted to work and, thanks to Brian, +the law had intervened. Now the coffee would be cold and he hated the +sight of cold coffee. It depressed him. +</P> + +<P> +Things thickened alarmingly. At three that afternoon, when he answered +a violent thump upon the wall, Garry found the Louis XV table in a +cloud of smoke; it was littered with vouchers and check books. Kenny, +with his teeth set and one hand clenched in his hair, was figuring with +the speed of an expert without, Garry felt sure, an expert's results. +Brian, Kenny said aggrievedly, had always kept his check book straight. +</P> + +<P> +"Look!" he flung out, indicating a problematical balance. "Look at +that! And the fool says I'm overdrawn." +</P> + +<P> +"What particular fool?" +</P> + +<P> +"Some clod of a mathematician," explained Kenny with contempt, "whom +the bank employs to insult its patrons. Look here, Garry! Look at +that balance. Over a thousand dollars. Do you wonder I told him he +had a sense of humor when he said I was overdrawn? The young popinjay! +Arguing with me about my own balance!" +</P> + +<P> +"How did it end?" +</P> + +<P> +"I told him," said Kenny formally, "that the bank would most likely +demand his resignation in a few days. And when he began to grow +mathematical and persistent, I hung up." +</P> + +<P> +Garry patiently sorted the vouchers and balanced the check book while +Kenny in frenzied consideration of a new complication roved around the +studio and smoked. He was a God-fearing Irishman. He wanted peace. +But if ever a man's destiny knew unheard-of complication! Well, all of +it could be traced to Brian's unscrupulous flight. He must come back. +Kenny felt that his career was menaced. Life in the studio had become +intolerable. He had been embroiled in two scandals, thanks to Brian's +bouillon cups and Brian's unscrupulous shirking of numismatic +responsibility. Everybody was talking about him; he had Garry's word +for it. He couldn't work. When he could he was summoned for jury +duty. His accounts, like the studio, were in a mess and he'd +overdrawn. If something didn't happen soon— +</P> + +<P> +"Shut up!" said Garry. "How on earth do you suppose that I can work +with you talking all over the studio? Here are three pages of checks +when you were evidently hitting the high spots, that you've failed to +subtract. Three on a page. That makes your balance overdrawn." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny struck an attitude of acute despair. "God of my fathers!" he +groaned, changing color. "It can't be. Garry, it simply can not be!" +</P> + +<P> +"It can and is," said Garry pushing away the book. +</P> + +<P> +"Adams still owes me five thousand dollars for his wife's portrait," +sputtered Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"And now he's out of town." +</P> + +<P> +"What on earth did you do with Reynolds' last check? You had enough +there to live a year." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny looked dazed. +</P> + +<P> +"I recognized the danger with Brian's commercial instinct gone," he +stammered, "and—and conserved my funds." +</P> + +<P> +"You must have. You bought a lot of clothes," reminded Garry. "And +paid some bills." +</P> + +<P> +"Some," admitted Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"Enough," commented Garry, "to establish, I suppose, one of your +startling flurries of credit." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny had meant to pay more. But the bank had put an end to that +to-day by intruding into his private affairs. He'd even meant to +redeem Brian's shotgun and anything else he'd pawned. +</P> + +<P> +"Lucky for Brian," put in Garry, "that you've mesmerized Simon into +holding things indefinitely even when you don't pay the interest. And +of course you blew in a good part of the check on something foolish." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny said with dignity that he'd bought a rug, nothing foolish. It +hung over there. An exquisite thing, sensuous and soft! Color and +form enough to drive a man mad with delight. He'd dreamt of the thing +for days before he bought it. Indeed he'd meant not to buy it but +something had snapped in his brain when he looked at it. Look at the +design. Never once did it tire the eye, free-flowing and sure. Its +intricate simplicity was amazing. +</P> + +<P> +"And you paid a small fortune for it," said Garry. "Don't sputter. +The voucher's here." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny sulked. Finding that Garry still had a tendency to finger +disconcerting checks and jot figures on a pad, he reached for his hat +and went out. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going to do some illustrating for Graham," he telephoned a little +later, "if I do it quick. I'm with him now. I presume it's etiquette +to do something financial when you're overdrawn. Brian always watched +the bank to see that they put nothing over on me." +</P> + +<P> +He disappeared from human ken for several days. Garry, sniffing the +odor of coffee and cigarettes in the corridor outside his door, +pictured his horrible concentration. +</P> + +<P> +"It's that hazy autumn sort of weather that gets me," he telephoned +nervously one morning. "I don't want to work and I've got to finish +this stuff for Graham to-day. He'll pay at once if I do. Garry, I'm +going to lock the studio door and throw the key over the transom to +you. Don't let me out, no matter what I say." +</P> + +<P> +Obediently Garry at four ignored a violent thump upon the wall. Then +the telephone rang and Kenny said with some annoyance that the work was +done. +</P> + +<P> +When on the following day he found that Mr. Adams had returned and +wanted, purposefully perhaps, to come to tea, he lost his temper and +began at once to hunt cups, demanding of Garry why on earth Fate hadn't +smiled upon him before he wasted his vigor and inspiration in endless +hours of torture, doing pot-boilers. +</P> + +<P> +"If he's coming to tea with a red-blooded check like that," said Garry, +"I'll lend you some decent cups. Those bouillon cups are the limit." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, hell!" said Kenny moodily. "I've talked with him. I've even +answered his questions with politeness. A man who wants to know if you +must have a north light to paint by will think it a rule of the guild +to double-handle teacups." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap17"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XVII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +KENNY DISAPPEARS +</H2> + +<P> +That night Whitaker brought him news of Brian. He was healthy and +happy and wrote no word of coming in. There, Whitaker felt himself, +Brian was over-reticent. +</P> + +<P> +"And the postmark?" Kenny staring in disgust at a hole in his sock +transferred his glance to Whitaker. +</P> + +<P> +"That," said Whitaker, "I'm not at liberty to give. I've told you so +before." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny drew himself up to his full height. +</P> + +<P> +"John—" he thundered. +</P> + +<P> +The door opened and Mac Brett, the young sculptor on the floor above +who harbored H. B., came in, somewhat mystified at the warmth of +Whitaker's greeting. +</P> + +<P> +"Come on down to the grill to dinner," he suggested. "Garry's down +there and Jan. It's drizzling and a lot of men are staying in." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny, moodily painting the skin beneath the hole in his sock black, +flung down the brush and found his coat. +</P> + +<P> +"Once," said Mac in a panic of laughter, "he painted hairs on the bald +parts of Frieda Fuller's pony-skin coat. Thick, plutocraticky sort of +hairs. I shan't forget 'em. And they melted and smudged her neck. +Remember, Kenny? You ridged 'em beautifully—" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny did not answer. He strode toward the door. Mac and Whitaker +exchanged comprehending glances of dismay and followed him down to the +grill. +</P> + +<P> +It was a pleasant refuge from the autumn storm—that grill. The dark +old wood framed light and color, sketches and a line of paintings. +Mac's sculptured ragamuffin looked wistfully down from his niche near +the open rafters upon a Round Table institutionally fraternal. He +seemed always seeking warmth and food. Kenny's old peasant in wrinkled +apple-faced cheer smiled broadly from the wall, listening to the click +of billiard balls with his painted eyes upon the doorway. +</P> + +<P> +The hum and clatter at the Round Table stopped as Kenny entered. It +was followed by an immediate scraping of chairs, pushed back, and a +hearty chorus of greeting but Kenny knew, intuitively, that the talk +had been of him. +</P> + +<P> +He ate but little and went back to the studio to play dummy bridge with +Mac and Whitaker. A loud thump on the studio door and a Morse dot and +dash announcement of identity on the bell just as he had pieced a pack +of cards together, filled him with intense resentment. +</P> + +<P> +"Max Kreiling!" he said with a sniff. And a little later: "Caesare!" +He thought perhaps, feeling as he did in a mood for murder, he wouldn't +let them in, abuse the door panel and the bell as they would. Whitaker +did it for him. +</P> + +<P> +"They'll come in and play music on my piano," he insisted sulkily, "and +sing notes into my air and I repeat I'm in no mood for music." +</P> + +<P> +But Kreiling, big, blond and Teutonic, was already striding in with +Caesare at his heels. They filled the air with joyous greetings, +thumped upon the intervening wall for Garry and unloaded their pockets +and an institutional leather bag. +</P> + +<P> +"Cheese," rumbled Kreiling, "jam, coffee and mince pies." +</P> + +<P> +Caesare unsheathed his fiddle and played a preposterous rag-time +interpretation of the Valkyrie's battle-cry. It evoked an instant +response from the telephone. +</P> + +<P> +"It's Mac," said Whitaker. "He says he'll be down in a jiffy and bring +Jan with him." +</P> + +<P> +"Tell him," grumbled Kenny, "to bring beer instead. No fault of mine, +Max," he added, "if Jan comes down here and eats your cheese. He's a +cheese lunatic. Blame Tony. He comes into my studio, does a Pied +Piper stunt on his fiddle and the whole building appears." +</P> + +<P> +To Whitaker's amusement nobody heeded Kenny's petulance. Caesare was +already building a wood-fire in the fireplace, complaining of the +chill. Max Kreiling was furiously hunting missing sheets from a ragged +stack of music on the piano and grumbling in German about his host's +habits. The fire flared. Caesare's dark face, always tense, relaxed +into smiles. When Garry appeared the wood-fire was blazing and Caesare +was plucking in nervous pizzicato at the strings of his fiddle. Later +Mac arrived with beer, a loaf of rye bread and Jan, who gravitated at +once by permanent instinct to the cheese. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny morosely hunted cigarettes and reflected with raised eyebrows +that the studio was never entirely his, not even when he wanted +vehemently to quarrel with Whitaker. And last came Sidney Fahr, round +and merry, who looked casually in, nibbled at a gumdrop and professed +amazement to find so many there. Kenny unreasonably chose to take +affront at his chronic amazement and withdrew to a corner in a state of +gloom and disgust, whence Kreiling, sensitively alive to atmospheric +dissonances, routed him forth with the heated accusation that he was +not <I>gemütlich</I>. +</P> + +<P> +Whitaker looked on through a film of smoke. Ordinarily he knew it was +the sort of evening that fired Kenny to his maddest mood of fun and +sparkle. It was the romance of his Bohemia, the thing upon which he +fed his sense of the picturesque, ignoring the lesser things that +bothered Brian. Men loved him. In the glow of their camaraderie he +was always at his best, excited, joyous, irresponsibly gay and hearty. +But to-night the fun and sparkle passed him by. Garry was right. He +was surely not himself. Could it be—just Brian? +</P> + +<P> +"'Pagliacci!'" demanded someone. +</P> + +<P> +Kreiling laughed indulgently and beckoned Jan to the piano. His big +voice, powerful and tender, swept into the hush like a splendid bird. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny snapped off the lights, plunged into tragic sadness by the +passion of his voice. Somehow its poignant sweetness hurt. The +droplight over the music and the flare of the fire leaped out of the +darkness like medallions. Faintly from a corner came the whisper of +Caesare's violin, offering obligato. +</P> + +<P> +Then he closed his eyes to block but the sight of rain splashing on the +window. Enchanted rain surely! For it transformed the single pane +into many, like a checkerboard of glass, and through it he was staring +queerly into the farm. +</P> + +<P> +Kreiling mopped his forehead at the end and switched on the lights. +The silence he understood and liked but his keen eyes lingered in +surprise on Kenny's face. His color was gone, his eyes curiously tired +and wistful. +</P> + +<P> +"So!" said Kreiling gently and passed on to the cheese with deliberate +tact, pushing Jan away. A minute later his hand came down with +heartiness on Kenny's shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +"Spitzbube!" he rumbled affectionately. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny laughed but Whitaker saw that his cigarette was shaking. +</P> + +<P> +"Music," he reflected, feeling sympathetic, "always makes him wild and +sentimental. And Max sang like an archangel." +</P> + +<P> +"Now, Kenny," commanded Kreiling, nibbling cheese and rye bread, "play." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny sullenly obeyed. After the first effort, something rebellious +touched his sullen mood to fire and he played fragments of the Second +Rhapsodic with madness in his touch. +</P> + +<P> +Sid, aware of it, stared in round-eyed apprehension at his back. +</P> + +<P> +"He's just in the mood again for rocketing," he decided. +</P> + +<P> +From then on Kenny's reckless gayety kept them in an uproar. +</P> + +<P> +When someone clamored for a wood-fire tale he told them of Finn's love +for Deirdre. But the discussion it provoked bored him and he dropped +back, smoking, in his chair, +</P> + +<P> +"There is love and love," said Max Kreiling, "and to be in love is +torture and a thing of self, but when the big splendid tenderness comes +after the storm of self and craving, the tenderness that knows more of +giving than of demanding, it comes to stay. But it's not the love of +barbarity like Finn's. It's an evolution." +</P> + +<P> +"Ask Kenny," said Mac mischievously. "He's an expert." +</P> + +<P> +"Love, my son," said Kenny wearily, "is poetic like summer lightning. +It flashes, blinds in a glory of light—and then disappears—in time." +</P> + +<P> +He tired early and sent them home. Whitaker longed to linger but the +moody cordiality of Kenny's good night was only too significant. He +departed with regret. +</P> + +<P> +"Garry!" called Kenny at the door. +</P> + +<P> +Garry turned back. +</P> + +<P> +"I meant you to wait," said Kenny irritably, "but you got out before I +could tell you." He closed the door. "Garry, what were the men in the +grill saying to-night when I came in?" +</P> + +<P> +Caught unawares Garry flushed and stammered. +</P> + +<P> +"Why," he evaded uncomfortably, "it began about the peasant picture in +the grillroom. Everybody likes it." +</P> + +<P> +"And then?" +</P> + +<P> +"We talked some of the last thing you did—the winter landscape of snow +and pines." +</P> + +<P> +Garry looked away. +</P> + +<P> +"Out with it!" said Kenny suspiciously. "For God's sake grant me the +privilege at least of lumping it all in one supreme period of upheaval. +They didn't like the pine picture?" +</P> + +<P> +"On the contrary," Garry hastened to assure him, "Hazleton said you are +brilliantly skillful." +</P> + +<P> +"Brilliantly skillful! But?" prompted Kenny and looked a question. +"Brilliant skill," he added moodily, "doesn't always make a big +painter." +</P> + +<P> +"Hazleton said as much," admitted Garry. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose it's best to tell you, Kenny," he added honestly, hoping to +spur the culprit on to more and better work. "It may help. They said +downstairs that you interpret everything, even trees and snow, in terms +of unreality. You over-idealize. I suppose it's your eternal need of +illusion. We've spoken of that before." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not a photographer!" blazed Kenny. "Any camera will give you +realistic detail. Artistic too. What else? Go on, Garry. I'm +calloused to the hearing of anything. I merely thank God you've had no +newspaper training." +</P> + +<P> +"Most of the older painters," Garry said with reluctance, "seem to feel +that—well, there's too colorful a dominance of self in your work. +Your personality always overshadows. You've an extraordinary fluency +with color, a deft assurance, a brilliancy that leaves one rather +breathless and incredulous, but what you do is autocratically, +unforgettably—almost unforgivably—you!" +</P> + +<P> +"Art," explained Kenny loftily, "is reality plus personality. And +personalities are variously vivid and anaemic. Unreal, over-idealized, +too colorful a dominance of self and personality overshadows," he +summarized after an interval of silence. "And in the face of +that—success. I am successful?" +</P> + +<P> +"Undeniably." +</P> + +<P> +"Even Hazleton, with his sordid gangs of Eastsiders nudging each other +on a dirty bench, can't deny it," bristled Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +He had divided the honors of more than one exhibition with Hazleton and +admired and resented him impartially. +</P> + +<P> +"It has been said," said Garry, ruffled by his air of triumph, "that +you paint down subtly to the popular fancy where you might paint up to +your own ideals." +</P> + +<P> +The barb went home. Kenny flushed. +</P> + +<P> +"Your work," added Garry, "lacks the force and depth of sincerity. +Even in Brian's dreadful East River sunset over there, there's a +quality you lack, an eagerness for reality and truth and life as it is. +Brian has painted poorly what he saw but he painted boats for ragged +sailors. Real boats. You've painted brilliantly, in the pine picture +for instance, what you wanted to see, a dark forest for mystic folk to +dance in when the moonlight lies upon the snow." +</P> + +<P> +"And what," inquired Kenny with a shade of sarcasm, "was the final +verdict of the grill jury when all the evidence was in?" +</P> + +<P> +"Remember old Dirk, Kenny? He said that the fullness of life came +through—sacrifice. That all things, good and permanent and true, come +only out of suffering; that men pay for their dreams with pain." He +let the full import of that drive home. "The verdict was, that if +you'd forget your public and look for truth, paint with restraint and +less brilliant illusory abandon, you'd be a big painter." +</P> + +<P> +"And that," said Kenny with icy politeness, "unalterably defines my +status as a painter. In this club at least." +</P> + +<P> +"You asked me—" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny looked tired but he held out his hand. "Dear lad," he said, +"'twas fine brave friendship to tell me—when I asked you." +</P> + +<P> +Failure! He, Kennicott O'Neill who had been decorated by the French +government! The men in the grill then talked openly of his flaws and +the verdict, officious or otherwise, was failure. Flaws! He was not a +big painter. He was merely a self-centered, impecunious, improvident +Irishman, indifferently skillful, whose vanity and self-indulgence had +driven his son off into a vague green world, God alone knew where. He +<I>was</I> a big painter! Posterity would fling that back in the teeth of +men! +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" +</P> + +<P> +It was Garry's voice. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," said Kenny vaguely. "Yes, of course." +</P> + +<P> +He was grateful when the door closed, though he stood for full a minute +afterward tapping on the table with his fingers. Then indignantly he +looked up the word failure in Brian's dictionary and underscored it +heavily. +</P> + +<P> +Ah! this world of his was amazingly awry and he himself was hurt and +unhappy. After all, was there any romance, any camaraderie in the +Bohemia he once had loved. By Heaven, no! One had but to stare at the +studio with Brian's vision to see the thing aright. Disorder and +carping tongues and loneliness! God help him, how he longed to escape +somewhere, anywhere where there was peace—and faith and friendliness +in human eyes. +</P> + +<P> +Afterward, a painter on the floor below, swore that Kenny had tramped +the floor all night and there had been occasional thuds. At daylight +he had gone out hurriedly and banged the door. +</P> + +<P> +Sid, entering the studio by the door Kenny had forgotten to lock, found +abundant evidence of frenzied packing and carried the news to the grill. +</P> + +<P> +"I knew it," he said. "I knew it last night. By the Lord Harry, it +was in his eye. Where on earth d'you suppose he's gone?" +</P> + +<P> +"God knows," said Garry and heartily wished he'd kept the grillroom +verdict to himself. +</P> + +<P> +At sunset Kenny blew the horn beneath the willow. +</P> + +<P> +Twilight here among the vivid leaves was softly orange. Where was the +invisible lamp, Kenny wondered with his blood singing, that filled the +world with golden dusk? It lay reflected in the water and in the dim +and yellowed forest paths behind him. And there behind the gables of +the farm, an autumn sunset focussed its softness into a brilliant blaze +of color. +</P> + +<P> +Later when life was kind and peace was in his heart, Kenny was to paint +that picture with exquisite truth and restraint and call it "Afterglow." +</P> + +<P> +At the flutter of a cloak on the cliff-path he slipped behind the +willow. +</P> + +<P> +For an eternity it seemed he traced the forward sweep of the punt until +it grated on the shore. And the surprise perversely came to him. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" called Joan. +</P> + +<P> +There was mischief and laughter in her voice—and welcome. And Kenny, +oblivious of the detail of his going, knew only that he stood beside +her in the golden dusk and that her eyes were curiously like shining, +leaf-brown stars. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah!" he reproached, catching both her hands. "You are a witch. +You're burning an invisible lamp of incense off somewhere in that +yellow wood and out of it comes the twilight and the secrets of the +world. How did you know?" +</P> + +<P> +"The horn was so excited!" +</P> + +<P> +"The horn!" +</P> + +<P> +Joan nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"I know them all," she said. "Mr. Abbott blows an apology for +disturbing me. Mrs. Lawler is stout and when she's delivering butter +and eggs, her wind doesn't last and she gets no further than a toot, +and the blacksmith's wind is amazing—" +</P> + +<P> +"Enough!" said Kenny sternly. "You've too much wisdom. But—" +</P> + +<P> +"Of course," said Joan, "I didn't know you would ride to the village +yonder but I thought you might. Uncle said you wouldn't come." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny laughed. Joan never knew that he had not meant to come again. +</P> + +<P> +He found home in the farm kitchen and joyously pumping homely hands, +stepped at once on the tail of Hannah's cat. Toby, after a vocal +minute of terror, fixed a hard eye upon his heel and withdrew at once +to a sheltered spot behind the stove. He had learned before that Mr. +O'Neill with his head in the clouds was frequently unaware of feet +things. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny went of his own accord to Adam's sitting room. +</P> + +<P> +Almost he surprised a glint of welcome in the old man's piercing eye. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Adam," he said happily, "I'm back!" +</P> + +<P> +"Humph!" said Adam ungraciously. "I knew you would be." +</P> + +<P> +By the end of the week Kenny forgot that he had been away. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap18"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XVIII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +BRIAN SOLVES A PROBLEM +</H2> + +<P> +To Brian had come a problem of his own. His vagabond days were nearly +over. Now with the wind cool at twilight and the dawns sharp, the two +wayfarers, lean and brown as gypsies, were tramping back over the trail +of the summer, finding old fires and the delight of reminiscence. +</P> + +<P> +"Don," said Brian one twilight as they swung along in the dust of a +country road, "if I'm not mistaken back yonder is the field where you +barked for a summer show. Man alive," he added with a laugh, "how you +did bark! Now with a summerful of health in your system and your voice +full of fresh air, I could understand it, but then! Honestly, old top, +I didn't know it was in you!" +</P> + +<P> +The boy looked up and laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"It wasn't," he said with utter truth. "You told me I could do it and +I—I just did." +</P> + +<P> +"I knew you could do it!" said Brian with the vigor of confidence that +had made the boy his slave. "Still, when you unleashed that first roar +and the crowd began to collect, I confess I thought you'd busted +something vital and were yelling for help." +</P> + +<P> +Don glanced at this clothes. The summer show had freed him from the +mended rags he hated. Shirt and trousers, hat and shoes were as near +like Brian's as they could be. So was the coat upon his arm and the +knapsack on his back. +</P> + +<P> +"Whenever you tell me I can do a thing," he said, "and hang around to +see me do it, I can always somehow seem to make myself do it. Look!" +he broke off with a boyish grin, pointing at a farmhouse on a distant +hill. "There's the farm where you threw the can of whitewash at the +farmer when he swore at his wife for dropping the eggs and threatened +to lick her. Wasn't he a sight!" +</P> + +<P> +"He was!" admitted Brian. "And wasn't he mad? If he hadn't been a +coward he would have licked me instead. As it was, I never fully +understood why his wife shied an egg at me. However, that's all rather +a shady part of my past. I'm not reminding you of the self-winding +blunderbuss you got in part payment for chopping wood, am I? Or that +it went off by itself and shot a cabbage?" +</P> + +<P> +Laughing they struck off into a twilight stretch of woods, found a +familiar clearing near a spring and made a fire. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Brian when the fire was down to embers, "what's the +schedule? You're road manager this week. What do we eat?" +</P> + +<P> +"Sausages," said Donald, unloading his pockets. "A can of macaroni and +an apple pie." +</P> + +<P> +"You disgraceful kid!" exclaimed Brian. "Whenever you get into a +country store without a guard you kick over the traces and appear with +something in your pocket that busts a road rule and obligates me to a +sermon when I hate 'em. Pie, my son, is effete and civilized. It's +like feeding cream puffs to a wandering Arab. You're apt to make him +stop his Arabing and hang around the spot where the cream puff grows. +However, now that you've brought the thing into camp, it would be +improvident not to eat it. What am I, Don, wood-scout or cook?" +</P> + +<P> +"Cook," said Donald. "All day," he added, "you've been limping." +</P> + +<P> +Brian made a fence of forked twigs, hung the sausages up to toast, +opened the can of macaroni and set it in the embers. That Don had +noticed the limp gratified him immensely, even though it had been a +mere and prosaic matter of a blistered heel. +</P> + +<P> +Whistling softly, he watched the boy gather wood. Well, thank God! he +was as unlike that white-faced moody lad who had stumbled into his +Tavern of Stars as a boy could be. He whistled a good deal. He was as +slim as a sapling, the slimness of muscle and health. His eyes were +clear and boyish. And there was color in his face. Best of all, to +Brian's mind, after the first sullen period of readjustment he had +worked his own salvation and reverted by wholesome instinct to boyhood +with its inexhaustible animal vigor, its gaucheries and its boisterous +minutes of frolic heretofore denied. Now save for the hours by the +camp fire when he passionately blurted out again and again the tale of +his rebellion until Brian knew his life as he knew the weather-lore of +the open road, he seemed ever on the verge of laughter. +</P> + +<P> +Brian smiled. Attuned to the mood he summed up the achievement of his +own summer. The brawn of splendid health and a clear head! For the +one he could thank his gypsying; for the other, in a measure, he could +thank the boy. +</P> + +<P> +In the lonely hours before he came with his problems there had been +solitude less soothing than Brian had expected. There has been an +inclination to smoke and brood and nurse certain sentimental misgivings +about Kenny when the fire was low and the owls hooting in the forest. +After, mercifully—for they might have driven him back to +sunsets—there had been no time. The life of another had made its +demand and sympathy with Brian was never passive. Impossible somehow +not to romp with the young savage yonder rejoicing in his freedom, with +even work a lark! Impossible not to laugh with him, fight out his +battles with him and surrender with a sigh of content to the weariness +and hunger of a caveman! +</P> + +<P> +If now with autumn at hand the fortunes of the road had in them a grain +more of hardship and less of romance, it was to be expected. Brian had +tramped to his goal. The staleness was gone. It was time to be up and +off, seeking Whitaker. +</P> + +<P> +A sausage burst its casing with an appetizing sizzle and leaped, it +seemed of its own accord, into suicidal embers. Brian rescued it with +a stick and looked up. Don had come back with the wood. +</P> + +<P> +"It's fall," said Brian. "The wind's full of it to-night. Last night +I was cold." +</P> + +<P> +"So was I," said Don. Brian thought he looked a little out-of-sorts. +</P> + +<P> +"It narrows down to two things," said Brian, fishing in his pocket for +some forks and spoons. "Either we must acquire another blanket or two +or get a job and sleep under cover until—" +</P> + +<P> +The boy's imploring eyes upset him. Brian turned a charred sausage and +sighed. There was his problem, he knew: Don and his future. And they +were barely twenty miles away from his uncle's farm. +</P> + +<P> +"Remember the mountain quarry somewhere over there to the west?" he +asked. "Suppose we hike over there in the morning and see if they need +some brawny arms to help 'em crush stone. Seems to me there were a lot +of shacks up back of it on the mountain. We could live in one of them." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," said Don with an effort, "I'm a little blue. I suppose it's the +fall." +</P> + +<P> +They tramped west in the morning and climbed a winding road. The +quarry lay ahead in the rocky wall of a mountain. +</P> + +<P> +"Lord, what an out-of-the world spot!" exclaimed Brian in dismay. +"Don, you thought we were getting too close to your uncle's farm but +nobody'd find us here. I suspect they have to build shacks to keep the +men contented. That basin of stone looks as if it had been gouged out +of the mountainside by the hand of a giant." +</P> + +<P> +A drill-runner was shouting to a man with a red flag as Brian climbed +into the pit. The flagman waved him back. A second later a dull blast +shook the quarry, earth and stone crumbled out of a fissure in the +cliff ahead, and the suspended labor of men awaiting the Titan aid of +inanimate force, turned to noise and bustle. +</P> + +<P> +"Hum!" said Brian, glinting, "mostly dago labor. Well, that doesn't +need to worry us, does it? You stay here, Don, while I find the boss." +</P> + +<P> +Don obeyed. Derricks hung above the cars upon the spur track. Farther +back a screen revolved and sorted stone. Men were feeding the crusher +and men were busy at the drills but the boy's eyes, with an instinct +for adventure, followed a man who drove a mule-cart along an +overhanging ledge above the pit. The task held for him a fearful +fascination. +</P> + +<P> +"Needs men to load cars," announced Brian coming back, "and feed the +crusher. In quarry caste I imagine that's about at the bottom. The +shacks are furnished and four of them are empty. We can take our pick. +What do you say?" +</P> + +<P> +"Whatever you say," said Don. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Brian, "to tell you the truth, I have the keys." +</P> + +<P> +The quarry, he fancied as he climbed the path to the cluster of shacks, +would solve his problem for him and when the time was ripe he would +have his say. +</P> + +<P> +The time ripened with frost in the morning and a harvest moon at night; +and Brian had failed to have his say. A letter came from John Whitaker +definite in detail and a shade impatient. Why was he loitering when +God's green world of spring had turned to autumn? Was he still stale +and thinking wrong? +</P> + +<P> +Brian set his lips to his task and spoke. +</P> + +<P> +"Don," he said one night when the dishes were washed, the shack swept +and the lamp lighted, "I've been thinking a lot about you and what +you're going to do this winter." +</P> + +<P> +The boy, who had been sparring with a kitten that had strayed into the +shack the day before, rose abruptly. +</P> + +<P> +"You say you won't write to your sister until you've made good?" +</P> + +<P> +"It isn't just that," stammered Donald, changing color. "I—I don't +dare. She'd beg me to come back—" +</P> + +<P> +Brian nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he said. "I know the feeling." +</P> + +<P> +"And I won't go back!" flung out Donald passionately. "I won't go +back. I simply can't." +</P> + +<P> +"It's better," said Brian sensibly, "if you don't. For a number of +reasons. But you must do something. I mean something with the future +in view." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"As far as I can make out," went on Brian, puffing at his pipe, "you're +wildly unhappy and discontented at the farm and that worries your +sister. Of course your absence worries her too but the two letters we +wrote that night you tumbled into my camp fire must have made her feel +a lot better, particularly since we both expressed our intention of +making the best of ourselves. You say she won't leave your uncle +because he's an invalid. That leaves you without any string to your +bow but your own inclination. In a sense you've followed that too +long. I mean, Don, shirking the course of study the old minister +mapped out for you when your sister kept on plugging. You need it." +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing mattered," said the boy bitterly. "I knew I wouldn't stay. I +didn't dare. Once," he added in a low voice, "when Uncle cursed my +sister and threw a bottle of brandy at her, I made up my mind to kill +him." +</P> + +<P> +"Good Lord!" said Brian, shocked. +</P> + +<P> +"That's one of the reasons I don't dare go back. I'm afraid. You +can't guess what it is," he choked. "He taunts and jeers and curses in +a breath and he gets drunk every night. I wish to God he would die!" +</P> + +<P> +The wish was horrible in its sincerity. Brian ignored it. +</P> + +<P> +"If you were older," said Brian, "and your chief need wasn't school, +I'd take you abroad with me, free lancing. But in the circumstances, +with your welfare somewhere else, that's impossible." +</P> + +<P> +Donald hung his head. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I wish it wasn't," he blurted. "I want to go wherever you go." +</P> + +<P> +"That first night when I asked you to tramp along with me," said Brian +gently, "I said, in my letter to your sister, that I'd see you through. +That I'm going to do. But you've got to help me. I want you, after +I'm gone, to stay up here at the quarry, study nights, and next year +work your way through college." +</P> + +<P> +The boy stared, blank terror in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"A year's work will put you on your feet—your kind of work when the +mood is on you—and you can enter in the fall. I know a chap who's +working his way through Yale. He'd show you the ropes." +</P> + +<P> +"Here!" said Donald. "Alone!" +</P> + +<P> +"Here," said Brian quietly, "alone. I know you can do it." +</P> + +<P> +Don brushed his hair back heavily from his forehead. It was but little +browner than his face. The gesture reminded Brian irresistibly of +Kenny, Kenny in rebellion. +</P> + +<P> +"It isn't the college part," Don said hopelessly. "There I think I'd +get through. And I'd like to be an engineer. It's the year here. An +entrance examination would be stiff, wouldn't it, Brian?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"I know chunks of a lot of things I don't need, almost nothing of +things I ought to know a lot about. When I liked a thing, I studied. +And when I didn't I let it slide. It worried my sister. And I work by +fits and starts when there's nobody around to keep me at it. Up here +alone, working all day and studying half the night, I'd never swing it. +It would mean the hardest kind of work." +</P> + +<P> +"Once," said Brian, "I saw you chop wood for thirteen hours." +</P> + +<P> +"You were there." +</P> + +<P> +"And down there in the quarry Grogan says you can load more stone to +the hour than two wops." +</P> + +<P> +"You're there feeding the crusher. And you work as hard as I do." +</P> + +<P> +Brian rose. His pipe was out. He knew as he knocked the ashes into a +saucer and filled again from a bowl of tobacco upon the mantel, that +Donald's eyes were upon him, abject with misery and remorse. But +neither spoke. +</P> + +<P> +Irritable and upset, Brian went out upon the porch. +</P> + +<P> +The straggling cluster of shacks around the rude store were dark. +Grogan's weary men found bed early. The moonlight was calm and cold +and weirdly bright. A wind mournful with the rustle of dead leaves +came sharply from the trees behind the shack where by day the autumn +sun touched russet into gold and scarlet. A bleak spot up here! The +solitude of stone and struggle. Could he expect Don to linger here and +fight his battle? Brian, with the weight of his years heavy on his +shoulders, said honestly no. And the problem still was with him. +</P> + +<P> +He went down the steps and walked aimlessly along the ridge above the +quarry. The bright emptiness below was grotesque with shadow, shadows +of ghost-like derricks, screens and drills. On the spur track lay a +car half full of stone. Standing there with the trainload of Donald's +labor at his feet, it came sharply to Brian that the boy stood again at +the parting of the ways. And the year would tell. +</P> + +<P> +To the right from the dank water of a quarry pool abandoned long since +to catfish and willows, a milk-white mist was rising eerily into the +moonlight. Brian saw it but he saw it indistinctly. He was thinking +of the boy's sister, her sweet face tragic with imploring. It lay in +the mist and yet not in the mist, and it was binding him to obligation. +He had written a promise. That promise he must keep. The face his +memory etched upon the mist made its appeal to every finer instinct of +his courage. +</P> + +<P> +Brian did not face his problem with excitement. He faced it with +ruthless concentration. All summer he had been groping through fog and +disillusion to the meaning of service, service to his fellowmen, and he +had groped through to something vague and lofty. Service lay across +the water where men raved in the red fever of destruction, service and +inclination. Could not one be mercifully the religion of the other? +Must service spring from the bitter dregs of self-denial? Brian stared +wretchedly into the dank white mist curling in the moonlight like a +fallen cloud. And again with his conscience up in arms he remembered +the face of Donald's sister. In a sense he could thank the boy for the +peace of his summer. And he had written his promise. He was like +Kenny, that boy, inflammable of purpose, erratic in his vigor, and +likable. And he needed a friend, inflexible and kindly. +</P> + +<P> +"Always," said Brian, "I am slated to be somebody's keeper." +</P> + +<P> +Could he shirk? Had he shirked when he left the studio in anger? Had +he a right to live his life his own way? Had anybody? His common +sense endorsed his earlier rebellion. This was different. +</P> + +<P> +"Whenever you tell me I can do a thing and hang around to see me do it, +I can seem to make myself do it somehow!" +</P> + +<P> +The words echoed harshly in his ears; and at first Brian refused to +hear them. Then inexorably he faced his fact. He and he alone was the +spur to the boy's amazing energy. A year? Well, after all what was a +year? +</P> + +<P> +He went back through the autumn moonlight with a sigh. +</P> + +<P> +"Don," he said, "you're right. You couldn't swing it up here alone. +I'll stick and see you through it." +</P> + +<P> +Don looked up, his face scarlet with emotion. Brian's hand was on his +shoulder. And Brian's eyes were half humorous, half quizzical and +wholly tender. +</P> + +<P> +"No, no, Brian, no!" he choked. "I—I didn't mean that—" +</P> + +<P> +"Of course you didn't," said Brian. "I thought that much of it out for +myself." +</P> + +<P> +Don's head went down upon his hands with a sob. +</P> + +<P> +That night Brian wrote to Whitaker. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap19"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XIX +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +SAMHAIN +</H2> + +<P> +To Kenny in poetic mood the seasons were druidic. There was May Eve +with its Bel fires when summer peeped over the hilltops at the cattle +driven through the sacred flames to protect them from disease. There +was Midsummer's Eve with more fires, and if St. Patrick in unpagan zeal +had chosen to kindle his fires in honor of St. John, he could. To +Kenny the festival was still druidic. There was Samhain or summer +ending, when the November wind speeded the waning season with a flurry +of dead leaves; and to Kenny, Samhain came and drove him forth in the +chill dusk to face another problem. +</P> + +<P> +He had come to the farm in blossom time and he had stared ahead to +sanity—in September at the latest. Now with branches dark and bare +against the glorious sunsets that burned at night in the west long +after the valley was in shadow, even with talk in Hannah's kitchen of +early snow, his madness was if anything a trifle more acute. Even the +dreaded hours with Adam ceased to trouble him in the joy of his days. +There was peace here and, thanks to Mr. Adams, who had simplified his +relations with the bank, freedom from work and worry. +</P> + +<P> +The November twilight, scintillant with stars, lay darkly ahead. He +forged through it in excitement. He who could forecast with the wisdom +of experience the duration of his own enslavement had gone over his +time. And, powers of wild-fire, he still kept going! Something +emotionally was wrong. +</P> + +<P> +It pleased him in a moody moment to busy himself with mathematics, much +as he hated them, and deduce a singular fact. He had spent delicious +hours of many a day with many a maid. But days and days and days with +one? Not ever! +</P> + +<P> +For one hour he had spent with some forgotten object of his adoration +in the past, he had spent five with Joan. The thought alarmed him. It +came to this. If by rational reduction you translated each flare into +hours, the vertigo of his summer with Joan became at once in contrast +equivalent to years. And by every law his infatuation should have +stopped the sooner. How much longer would it linger? What if +Christmas still found him turbulent and upset—and hating the thought +of the studio? This furlough of his from work and worry must come to +an end in time! +</P> + +<P> +Paralyzed by an infinite variety of prospects he stopped dead and +stared at the fading red behind the hills. When had it altered—this +madness of his? Why was it stronger? Any man addicted to falling in +love knew well enough it shouldn't be. +</P> + +<P> +It was his fate to remember as he stood there the talk of love around +the wood-fire. He had barely listened. Yet now his memory cast up +Kreiling's words and took his breath away. +</P> + +<P> +"There is love and love and to be in love is torture and a thing of +self but when the big splendid tenderness comes after the storm of self +and craving, the tenderness that knows more of giving than of +demanding, it comes to stay. But it's not the love of barbarity like +Finn's. It's an evolution." +</P> + +<P> +To stay! … The thought was volcanic. … <I>To stay</I>! +</P> + +<P> +And yet … how different that first dizzy sweep of delight at the +sight of Joan's loveliness, from this big, nameless something that +filled his heart with humility and longing! … How far away that +day beneath the willow when he had blown the horn! … An eternity +lay between. +</P> + +<P> +This love of his—no, it was no longer merely a storm of unrest. It +was no longer merely a delirium of the senses in which he knew +suffering no less than ecstasy. It was a big, kind, selfless +tenderness that grew from day to day. A thing perhaps for eternity! +</P> + +<P> +Kreiling was right. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny's irreverent philosophy of the heart crumbled into ashes at his +feet. Love he had once believed was poetic like summer lightning. It +flashed, blinded in a glory of light and disappeared. If it lingered +it would lose its mystery, It was a quest in which the emotion was +paramount; the object that inspired it merely essential and +subordinate. Love was the only thing in the world worth while but +though a poet's love might fill his life with a perpetuity of delight +the object was bound to be a variant. Kenny had often mourned for +departed madness. He had never mourned the girl whom Chance had +appointed to inspire it. Why mourn a flower that has bloomed and faded +when the bush is full? +</P> + +<P> +And marriage? That uncomfortable essential, legalists said, to +civilization and the transmission of property? To Kenny marriage had +always seemed a little like the Land of the Ever-Young. Mortals +imprisoned there soon tired of exile and longed for freedom and +distraction. His own marriage was but a memory he refused to face, dim +and distant, an inexplicable flurry of sentimentality that had ended +tragically with Brian in his arms. The brief year of it had been +poignant and at the end he had gone forth upon the hills, praying for +death. That girl of long ago with the black-lashed eyes of Irish blue +like Brian's, he had loved with all the passionate tumult of boyhood; +and in the end he had lived for Brian, coming to believe as life +carelessly unfolded for him its book of heart-things that in time he +must have tired. Lived for Brian! Had he? Or had he lived for +himself? +</P> + +<P> +The memory he had crushed out of his heart in a panic long ago, now +left him with a terrified sense of obligation. Why in this dreadful +moment of crisis when he had to think must even his memories accuse +him? Brian! Brian! Always Brian! +</P> + +<P> +The pang was spasmodic. The immensity of his love for Joan swept +everything before it and filled him with terror and amazement. To +stay! Any other thought was a profanation. And he must face another +problem. If Joan's madness was the kind that waned, if for her there +was no madness, if the summer had left her tranquil and +indifferent. … The uncertainty maddened him. +</P> + +<P> +He struck a match and glanced at his watch. It was supper time. In an +hour now Joan likely would be coming to the cabin. So, alas! would Mr. +Abbott. Kenny struck off hurriedly toward the south. +</P> + +<P> +The cabin was dark and silent. He waited near it, endlessly it seemed, +smoking and wondering if his heart would ever stop its nervous +thumping. If only she would come! His head had begun to ache. His +hand was shaking. Where the blood pounded in his wrists there was a +flurried sense of pain. And somehow the heavy odor of the pines and +the chill silence was depressing. +</P> + +<P> +It was his fate to see Mr. Abbott come first. Unaware of the Irishman +who drew back at his approach, his hot heart sick with disappointment, +he opened the door of the cabin and went in, the inevitable book under +his arm. A second later the cabin window with its shade drawn, sprang +out of the shadow, a yellow checkerpane of light. Kenny stalked off, +chafing intolerantly at the anticlimacteric tenor of his summer. +</P> + +<P> +He saw her coming a long way off, her lantern bobbing along like a +firefly, and walked faster. Impatience brought a cold sweat out upon +his forehead and then he needs must call her name before she could hear. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan!" he called a little later. The tenderness in his heart hurt. +</P> + +<P> +The light faltered and became a fixed point in the darkness ahead. +</P> + +<P> +"It is I, Kenny!" he called again. +</P> + +<P> +Once more the firefly glimmer glided toward him. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," called Joan in the darkness, "is it really you? You +frightened me a little. And why in the world didn't you come home to +supper? Hannah's wondering where you are." +</P> + +<P> +But his voice failed him and with shaking hand he took the lantern and +held it high above her head. If he could but read her eyes! +</P> + +<P> +Joan glanced up at him in wonder and the hood of her cloak tumbling +back upon her shoulders, bared her hair. It shone, in the lantern +light, with an odd dark gold. She had never seemed so lovely—or so +much a part of the lonely wood. +</P> + +<P> +"Why do you stare so, Kenny?" she asked. "And why are you so—quiet?" +</P> + +<P> +"Mavourneen!" said Kenny. And his eyes implored. +</P> + +<P> +It was not at all what he had meant to say. The word, tell-tale in its +tenderness, had seemed to speak itself. +</P> + +<P> +Joan's face flamed. But her eyes were beautiful and kind. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny dropped the lantern with a crash and caught her in his arms. She +cried and clung to him in the darkness. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan! Joan!" he said and kissed her. +</P> + +<P> +He did not remember how long he stood there under the bright November +stars with Joan in his arms and his face upon her hair. He knew his +eyes were wet. He knew there was peace in his heart and a vast +content. But something made him dumb and tongue-tied. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" exclaimed Joan. "The lantern!" +</P> + +<P> +"I know, colleen," said Kenny, "but one lantern more or less in an +epoch doesn't matter." +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Abbott will be waiting. Suppose he came to look for me." +</P> + +<P> +"God forbid! I can't—I won't let you go." +</P> + +<P> +"You must!" +</P> + +<P> +"Joan, you are sure, <I>sure</I> you love me?" +</P> + +<P> +"I know," said Joan steadily, "that I love you. I've known it since +that night upon the lake when you first spoke of—going. I knew it +when you went. And then when you came again. When I think of the farm +without you it turns my heart to stone. Every minute that I—I am away +from you, I am eager to be back." +</P> + +<P> +"Bless your heart!" +</P> + +<P> +She slipped out of his arms with a sigh. His hands clung to her. +</P> + +<P> +"Truly, truly, Kenny, I must go!" +</P> + +<P> +"I'll come back with another lantern after supper." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Joan. "Please don't. Mr. Abbott might scold. Besides, +every star is a lantern to-night. And Uncle sent Hughie for you long +ago." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny groaned. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap20"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XX +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE CHAIR BY THE FIRE +</H2> + +<P> +He went with her as far as he dared, and turned back with shining eyes +and stumbling feet. He did not afterward remember his supper or what +he had eaten, though Hannah at his command had set the table in the +kitchen and Hughie had talked sensibly of pumpkins. He did not +remember climbing the stairs to Adam's room. The one thing that jarred +through his dreamy feeling of detachment was the old man's face. +</P> + +<P> +"You're late!" he said. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny happily, "I am." Even now with Adam's piercing eyes +upon him, he had a feeling of invincibility; as if, aloof in the aerial +sphere in which he seemed to float, he could shut the old man out. +</P> + +<P> +Adam stared at him with eagle-like intentness and a puzzled frown. His +face said plainly that Kenny's mood was without precedent and therefore +strategical. It behooved him to get to the bottom of it at once and be +on his guard. +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis Samhain, Adam," said Kenny, "the summer ending of the druids. +And to-night the hills are open and the fairies are all out a-temptin' +mortals. I myself have heard the fairy pipes showerin' sweetness +everywhere. Wonderful music, Adam! Silver-soft and allurin' and the +kind you can't forget! It throws you into a trance and fills you with +beautiful longing. I forgot to come home. There! I must tell Hannah +to put a light under the churn to-night. Then the fairies, hating +fire, can't bewitch it." +</P> + +<A NAME="img-272"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG SRC="images/img-272.jpg" ALT=""'Tis Samhain, Adam," said Kenny..." BORDER="2" WIDTH="374" HEIGHT="605"> +<H5> +[Illustration: "'Tis Samhain, Adam," said Kenny, "the summer ending of the druids."] +</H5> +</CENTER> + +<P> +Adam stared at him blankly. He was in mad mood, this Irishman. His +eyes, ardently blue and tender and intense, danced with incautious +gleams of laughter. His color was high. He was gay and utterly +friendly. +</P> + +<P> +An odd jealous hunger sprang up in the invalid's eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Are you mad?" he demanded. +</P> + +<P> +"Quite!" said Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"More like," said the old man tartly, "you're drunk." +</P> + +<P> +"Drunk," nodded Kenny, "with heather ale. Only the fairies know how to +make it now. And who wouldn't be drunk in the head of him to-night +with the Good People dancing on the hills and the dead dancing with +them." +</P> + +<P> +Adam frowned and shivered. +</P> + +<P> +"You Irish," he said harshly, "are as morbid as you are poetic." +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis all a part of the night," cried Kenny gayly and poured himself +some brandy. "The druids," he remembered, "poured libations on the +ground to propitiate the evil spirits and the spirits of the dead; but, +Adam, I'm drinking to-night to Destiny! To Destiny," he added under +his breath, "and the foreverness of her gift!" +</P> + +<P> +"What gift," demanded Adam Craig, "are you trying to clinch with a gift +to yourself of my brandy?" +</P> + +<P> +"The gift," said Kenny cryptically, "of—Life!" +</P> + +<P> +Well, he had spoken truth there. Life was love and love was life and +perhaps until now he'd known neither. +</P> + +<P> +Still the old man stared at him in dazed and sullen envy. His wild +vitality seemed a barrier impossible to surmount. +</P> + +<P> +"And it isn't just Samhain," said Kenny, setting down his glass. "Ugh, +Adam, your brandy's abominable! It's the Eve of All Souls. To-night +the dead revisit their homes. Once I remember when I was tramping +through Ireland, an old woman left a chair by the fireside that the +spirit of her son might come back to her. She even left some embers in +the fire." +</P> + +<P> +"That," said Adam Craig with a shudder, "will be enough of your damned +ghosts and fairies." +</P> + +<P> +Afterward to Kenny the evening was always a blur but he knew they had +gotten on badly. And Adam, quiet and sullen, had drunk more than usual. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny sparkled through the evening in a baffling, dreamlike oblivion to +everything but his thoughts, and floated away to his room, feeling +curiously light and iridescent. +</P> + +<P> +He meant not to sleep. He meant to roll the shades to the top and with +the cold wind upon his face and the stars winking in silver beneficence +overhead, to lie awake and think until the dawn came. He slept +soundly, dreaming of thistledown and a little old woman in a green +cloak who came out of a hill and played a tune upon a sort of +lantern-flute. The notes had winged off in bars of music written in +fire against the darkness. He had not finished the dream when he was +awakened by someone knocking at his door. +</P> + +<P> +It was Hughie, his face pale and disturbed. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill," he said, "I'm wondering if you'd drive down to the +village and telephone the doctor to come here first. Mr. Craig's had a +bad fall. He's unconscious." +</P> + +<P> +"Unconscious!" exclaimed Kenny, changing color. "How on earth, Hughie, +did he fall?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," said Hughie sadly. "He must have climbed out of bed in +the night." +</P> + +<P> +"But, Hughie, he couldn't!" +</P> + +<P> +"He could stagger a step or two," explained Hughie. "Not far. The +trouble's in his spine. But he never dragged himself so far before." +</P> + +<P> +"How far?" +</P> + +<P> +"From his bed to his sitting room. I found him in a heap by the fire." +</P> + +<P> +"Poor devil!" said Kenny, shocked. +</P> + +<P> +He dressed quickly. Hannah helped him hitch the old mare to the buggy +and found him nervous and unfamiliar with his task. Kenny drove off +down the lane, oppressed by the bleak wind and the bare black tangle of +branches ahead of him. The tragic effort of Adam's wasted legs had +left him startled and uneasy. For the life of him he could not put out +of his mind the tale of the old Irish woman and the chair she had left +by the fire on the Eve of All Souls for the visit of her dead son. It +had bothered Adam Craig and made him shudder. It bothered Kenny now. +He wished he hadn't remembered it last night or to-day. But the sound +of Nellie's hoofs plodding along the soft dirt road was no more +recurrent than his own foreboding. It filled him with sadness and +guilt. Adam perhaps had dragged himself to the sitting room fire in a +drunken fit of superstition. Seeking what? Someone he had <I>wronged</I>? +The sinister spark inflamed his fancy. His brain whirled. +Inexplicably the tale of the fairy mill and the rascal who stole the +widow's bag of meal linked itself with the mishap of the night before. +Then too Adam had fallen forward in his chair unconscious. +</P> + +<P> +Nellie stumbled and jolted Kenny into sanity. He put his thoughts +aside in horror. But dreadful strings of mystery converged +persistently to one point: Adam Craig, the pitiful old miser who for +some reason huddled every book in the farmhouse on his shelves. Fate +cruelly had brought melancholy into this, the first morning of his +love. Kenny shivered with resentment. +</P> + +<P> +He telephoned the doctor's farm and found him ready to start his weary +ambulant day; hamlet to hamlet, farm to farm, until dusk and often +after. The bare thought of it filled Kenny with sympathetic gloom. +Then his brain began again to burn in speculation. Frowning, he turned +back homewards up the hill and through the wood, where the road lay, +rough and lonely. +</P> + +<P> +With his mind upon it he evolved Nellie from her harness and led her +into the stall. When he had done with her halter he found that Joan +had slipped into the barn and stood a little way off, her soft eyes +intent upon him. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan!" he exclaimed radiantly. The sight of her was like a lilac wind +in fog. The fog fled and you found the world clear and fragrant. +</P> + +<P> +She came to him instantly, her face like a colorless flower, a faint +shadow in her eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Colleen!" said Kenny. He kissed her gently. Again he was conscious +with a flurried feeling of impatience that the force of his tenderness +would not rise to his lips. He whose words of love had been so fluent +and poetic! +</P> + +<P> +"Hannah sent me," said Joan. "She was afraid you wouldn't know how to +get Nellie out of the shafts. Oh, Kenny!" There was quick compassion +in her eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Let's not think of sorrowful things, dear!" said Kenny swiftly. "I +dreamed of a lantern." +</P> + +<P> +"And I," said Joan, the rich rose tints he loved flaming in her face, +"I dreamed of you." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny choked back the tender untruth he would have liked to utter. For +an instant he hated the little old fairy in the green cloak who had +come forth from the hill in his dream. How easy for the dream-god to +have made her—Joan! +</P> + +<P> +"Joan," he said wistfully, "you're sure you love me!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Joan. "There is no one in my life I love so well." +</P> + +<P> +"And it will last?" +</P> + +<P> +Disturbed she glanced at him, her eyes dark with rebuke. +</P> + +<P> +"Until the judgment day!" persisted Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," she said, "why do you speak so strangely. Love is love, isn't +it? And if you who have known all things love me, how much more must I +who have lived so much alone, love and cling to you?" +</P> + +<P> +He kissed her hair and pressed his cheek against it where the shadows +were soft and golden. +</P> + +<P> +"I want you, heart of mine," he said steadily, "to love me in this +wonderful way that I love you. There are ways and ways of loving." +</P> + +<P> +That, in her girlhood dream of love, she could not see. And Kenny was +passionately glad that his words were a riddle. +</P> + +<P> +Then the horn came, clear and mellow, through the cold November air and +Joan drew the hood of her cloak about her head. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny sighed. He clung to her hand as she started away. +</P> + +<P> +"Girleen," he said soberly, "the wind's cold. Must you ferry the river +in winter, too?" +</P> + +<P> +"Save when there's ice," said Joan. "The bridge is three long miles +away." +</P> + +<P> +From the barn doorway he watched the flutter of her cloak as she +hurried down the path to the river. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap21"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXI +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE SHADOW OF DEATH +</H2> + +<P> +Kenny went back to the kitchen, hungry and depressed. To his fancy, as +eager at times in its morbidity as in its lighter sparkle, the shadow +of death seemed brooding over the farmhouse. This an hour later the +weary little doctor confirmed. He had tired shadows around his eyes, +that doctor; he seemed always bored to death at the proneness of +mankind to ills and aches and babies; and his kind tired voice never +lost its drawl no matter what the crisis. +</P> + +<P> +"It isn't just the spine trouble, Mr. O'Neill," he said. "With that +alone he'd likely linger on for years. And it isn't the trouble here +in his chest. That's chronic and unimportant. It's the brandy. He +drinks a quart a night and he won't give it up." +</P> + +<P> +"I know." +</P> + +<P> +The doctor shook his head and pursed his lips. +</P> + +<P> +"I think he'll just slip away without regaining consciousness. Pulse +is barely a flutter. Joan can tend him. She's done it before. Every +now and then for a good many years he's had a bedfast spell. Poor +child!" The doctor cleared his throat. "Well, Mr. O'Neill, such is +life! I'll stop back to-night on my way home." +</P> + +<P> +Distraught and rebellious, Kenny fought the girl's refusal to let +Hannah take her place. She hid the mended gown he hated under an apron +of Hannah's, slipped into his arms and out again with tears upon her +cheeks, and fled from his protestations with her hands upon her ears. +Kenny followed her to the door of Adam's sitting room, frantic with +distress. Verily, he thought, as the door closed gently in his face, +the quality of Joan's mercy was not strained. It came like Portia's +gentle rain from Heaven. It forgot and forgave and condoned. But the +thought of her, flowerlike in the shadow of death, was unendurable. +</P> + +<P> +Anxious to help, Kenny sculled the old punt back and forth, whenever +the horn blew, until dusk. He had humbly pledged himself to curb a +tendency to speed and excitement and therefore ferried the river well +until a wind rose at twilight, clouds thickened overhead and a spatter +of rain blew into his face. Then his patience waned and he tacked an +enormous sign upon the willow under one of Hughie's lanterns. Owing to +illness, it said, the ferry had been discontinued. Afterward he went +to tell Joan what he had done, and met the doctor on the stairway. +</P> + +<P> +"By morning," he nodded slowly, answering Kenny's look. "Yes, I'm +afraid he'll be gone. I'd like to stay, Mr. O'Neill, for Joan's sake. +But there's a baby coming over at the Jensen farm. There always is. +And my duty as I see it is more with life than with death." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll stay with him," said Kenny. "Joan must rest." +</P> + +<P> +But she would not. +</P> + +<P> +"Donald should be here too," she said. "We are all he has." +</P> + +<P> +"Then," said Kenny, his lips white, "I shall stay here with you." +</P> + +<P> +The night closed in with gusty showers of rain. There was no sound +from the high old-fashioned bed where Adam Craig lay, gray and still. +The silence, the gloom of dark wood, the grotesque shadows from a lamp +burning dimly on the bureau and the loud licking of the clock drove +Kenny with a shudder to the window. Death to him who so passionately +loved life's gayety and its music was more a thing of horror than of +grief. He found no solace in the wind and rain of the autumn night. +They plunged him instead into a mood of morbid imagery. The weird +music of the wind became Ireland's cry of lament for her dead. The +tossing boughs beyond the window, rain-spattered and somber, took on +eerily the outline of dark-cloaked women keeners rocking and chanting +the music of death. The rain was tears. +</P> + +<P> +Ochone! Ochone! The wind of sorrow rose and fell, rose and fell, with +unearthly cadence. Kenny thought of the horrible Dullahaun who roves +about the country with his head under his arm and a death-warning basin +of blood in his hand ready to dash in the face of the unlucky wight who +answers his knock. +</P> + +<P> +He shuddered and choked. Then Joan slipped into the shelter of his +arm, terrified at the thought of death, cried and watched the rain with +him. +</P> + +<P> +Adam Craig died at dawn with the rain he hated beating at the window. +And peace came wanly to his wrinkled face. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap22"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +IN THE CABIN +</H2> + +<P> +They were hard days for Kenny, who hated gloom save when it was +picturesque and transient. And they were harder for the pity and +misgiving in his heart. He himself perhaps had hastened the old man's +death with a careless story. Why had it bothered him? Why had it +goaded his wasted legs to horrible effort? +</P> + +<P> +Ordinarily Kenny knew he would have resented the intrusion of alien +sorrow into his life. He hated sorrow. Now for Joan's sake he made +himself a part of it. If Joan must endure it, so could he. But he +sickened at the need. +</P> + +<P> +He was doomed to a tragic, unforgettable hour in the churchyard when +the voice of the old minister, conventional in its sadness, droned +wearily into his very soul: +</P> + +<P> +"Ashes to ashes … dust to dust." … The clock turned back and +he stood in a church by an Irish hill. White and terrified, Kenny +remembered what in its vivid agony of detail he would fain have +forgotten. Why, now, when Joan was slipping into his life, a lonely +waif of a girl in a black gown he hated, why must he think years back +to that soft-eyed Irish girl and Brian? Had he broken his pledge to +her, driving her son away with a passion of self no less definite for +its careless gayety? Eileen's son! Eileen's son! Sadness tore at +Kenny's heart and twitched at his dry, white lips. Ah! why must he +live again that agonizing day when Eileen had gone out of his life +forever? +</P> + +<P> +The voice went on, funereal, gentle. Kenny's eyes blurred. Sweat came +coldly forth upon his forehead. At the first thud of earth he choked +and turned away, the pain unbearable. Adam Craig had driven his nephew +away … with a passion of self … and he had died with mercy at +his bedside, not love. A passionate hunger for Brian stirred in +Kenny's heart and made him lonely. Ah! how farcical his penance! Some +nameless thing of self linked him to Adam Craig. The thought was +horrible. Some nameless thing linked each mournful detail of to-day to +the tragedy of long ago. … And then mercifully the thing became a +blur of November wind, a monotonous voice of sorrow, the thud of earth +and the end. +</P> + +<P> +The coach toiled up the hill and Kenny, with Joan in his arms, forgot. +</P> + +<P> +"Mavourneen," he said wistfully, "let's slip away, you and I, to the +cabin in the pines. I want you to myself. And there in the house—" +he looked away. The thought of the old house, bleak and desolate at +its best and haunted now by the sense of a presence gone, oppressed him. +</P> + +<P> +Joan nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"And not that dress!" begged Kenny with a shudder. +</P> + +<P> +She laid her cheek against his shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +"It was just for to-day, Kenny. Hannah thought it best." Her soft +eyes, curiously child-like with the shadow of sadness in them, appealed +to him for understanding. He kissed her, marveling afresh at the +tender miracle of peace and tenderness her presence brought him. +</P> + +<P> +"Had I loved Uncle a great deal more—it isn't wrong for me to say that +now, Kenny?" +</P> + +<P> +"It would be wrong, dear, if you made pretense of something you +couldn't feel." +</P> + +<P> +"I—I meant that even then I could have mourned him better with my +heart than this—this dreadful dress. It would carry gloom wherever I +went. And that would be selfish." +</P> + +<P> +He blessed her shy intelligence and kissed her again. Then the +carriage stopped at the farmhouse door and Kenny hurried up to his room +to find clothes less formal and depressing. Afterward he went ahead to +the cabin and built a fire. +</P> + +<P> +The crackle of the wood was lively to his ears and cheerful. The room +grew, warm and homelike. When Joan came a little later, he was +whistling softly and making tea. He liked her dress. It was dark and +soft. He liked the lace fichu at her throat. And he liked the huge +old-fashioned cameo that fastened it. +</P> + +<P> +"Hughie is hunting the key to the table-drawer," she said. "I told him +about the cabin. It doesn't matter now. Poor Uncle!" She blinked and +wiped her eyes. "He didn't mean to be cruel, Kenny. It was the brandy +and the pain. If Hughie finds the key, he wondered if you'd go over +Uncle's papers to-night. The will is there." +</P> + +<P> +"The will!" said Kenny. He put wood on the fire in some excitement. A +miser's will! +</P> + +<P> +Joan's eyes were tender. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, how good you've been!" +</P> + +<P> +"Nonsense!" he said brusquely. +</P> + +<P> +"Hughie said so, too. And Hannah and Hetty. Someone had to think and +plan and you did it all so well. And, Kenny, I told Hannah, that I'm +going to marry you and she cried and kissed me and—and poured a +wash-bowl full of tea for Hughie to wash his hands in!" +</P> + +<P> +"The heart of her!" said Kenny. "Come, girleen. The tea's ready. I +want to see you pour it." +</P> + +<P> +He watched with his heart in his eyes while she poured his tea. There +was a sense of home in the cabin here and the crackle of the fire was +the music of comfort. Kenny drank a little of his tea and roved off to +the window to light a cigarette. +</P> + +<P> +Beyond the November monotone of trees blazed the red of a sunset. A +winter sunset! The fall was over. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan!" he called softly. "Come, jewel machree, the Gray Man is +stealing through the pines." +</P> + +<P> +She came at once and slipped into the circle of his arm. Kenny held +her tight and found his courage. He was restless, it seemed, and after +months of irresponsibility, the thought of work was bothering him +badly. Kenny must leave the farm. He must go soon; in a week. And +his wife must go with him. +</P> + +<P> +Joan's breathless amazement made him laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"But, Kenny, I—I can't!" she said. +</P> + +<P> +"And I," said Kenny stubbornly, "can't and won't go away and leave you +here. The thought of winter and the hills and that barn of a house +when the wind is blowing would haunt me. No, no, girleen!" +</P> + +<P> +Joan looked up and smiled and her soft eyes were wistful. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, I must study for another year!" +</P> + +<P> +"Another year!" said Kenny blankly. "Colleen, you've the wisdom of the +ages in your head right now." +</P> + +<P> +Joan shook her head. +</P> + +<P> +"I must learn to be your wife," she said. "Now it—it dazzles and +frightens me—" +</P> + +<P> +"Joan!" +</P> + +<P> +"Have you forgotten, Kenny, that I have lived my life up here in hills +and trees. And you—" +</P> + +<P> +"Joan, please!" he begged in distress. +</P> + +<P> +"But I can't forget," said the girl steadily. "Whenever I read the +article Garry sent about 'Kennicott O'Neill, brilliant painter'—think +of it, Kenny! 'Brilliant painter!'—I go back and read again just to +be sure I'm not dreaming. I've been so much alone that the thought of +going out into your world with you—terrifies me. I could not bear to +have you—sorry!" +</P> + +<P> +"Mavourneen!" he said, shocked. +</P> + +<P> +There were tears upon her cheeks. +</P> + +<P> +"I would only ask that you be your own dear self," said Kenny gently. +"And every man of my world and every woman will stare and envy!" +</P> + +<P> +"I must know music and French," said Joan, checking the need upon her +fingers. "I must know how to dance. Now when I talk I must have +something to say. Otherwise I feel shy and quiet. I must learn how to +talk a great deal without saying anything as you do sometimes." +</P> + +<P> +He laughed in delight at the final need. +</P> + +<P> +"All of it," declared Kenny happily, "I can teach you." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Joan with a definite shake of her head. "You would kiss me. +And I would always be right even when you knew I was wrong." +</P> + +<P> +His eyes laughed at her mischievously. But he caught her hands and +pressed them to his lips. +</P> + +<P> +"Listen, dear," he pleaded. "My world isn't a world of social climbers +or snobs or dollar-worshippers. It's a world of gifted men and women +who haven't time to look up your ancestors or your bank balance before +they decide to be friendly and kind. I know a poet whose mother was a +gypsy, a painter who's a baron and he says he can't help it, a French +girl who paints millionaire babies and her father was a tight-rope +walker in a circus. My world, Joan, is the happy-go-lucky Bohemia of +success and the democracy of real talent. We're actors and painters +and sculptors and writers and artists in general and all in all I think +we work a little more and play a little more, enjoy a little more and +suffer a little more than the rest of the world. Once in a while to be +sure a head grows a bit too big and then we all take a bop at it! But +the big thing is we're human; just folks, as a man in the grillroom +said one night. We're human and we're kind. It's not a smart set, +dear. And it's not an ultra-fashionable four-hundredy thing. God +forbid! It's the kind of Bohemia I love. And I'm sure you'll love it +too." +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes were shining. In the dusk her color came to him like the +glimmer of a flower. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" she exclaimed. "How wonderful it all is, you and all of it! +And yet if—if I feel as I do, you must let me go for a year. +Otherwise if I lack confidence in myself—Oh, can't you see, Kenny, I +shall be shy and frightened and always ill at ease!" +</P> + +<P> +"Go!" he echoed blankly. +</P> + +<P> +"Somewhere," said Joan, "to study music and French and how to talk your +kind of nonsense. Hannah says there must be money enough in Uncle's +estate for that." +</P> + +<P> +"Where," said Kenny, his heart cold, "would you go?" +</P> + +<P> +"I thought," said Joan demurely, "that perhaps I could study in New +York where I wouldn't be so—lonesome." +</P> + +<P> +He caught her in his arms. +</P> + +<P> +"Heart of mine!" he whispered. "You thought of that." +</P> + +<P> +"Then," said Joan, "I can learn something of your world before I become +a part of it. Don't you see, Kenny? I can look on and learn to +understand it. I should like that. Come, painter-man! The tea's +cold. And it's growing dark. We'd better light the lamp." +</P> + +<P> +With the tea-pot singing again on the fire and the lamp lighted, Kenny, +but momentarily tractable, had another interval of rebellion. Joan, in +New York, might better be his wife. Joan, studying, might better have +him near to talk his sort of nonsense, listen to her music and make +love volubly in French to which she needed the practice of reply. His +plea was reckless and tender but Joan shook her head; and Kenny +realized with a sigh that her preposterous notion of unfitness was +strong in her mind and would not be denied. +</P> + +<P> +"A year, Kenny!" pleaded Joan. "After all, what is a year? And at the +end I shall be so much happier and sure." She came shyly to his chair +and slipped her arms around his neck. "I want so much to do whatever +you want me to do. And yet—and yet, Kenny, feeling as I do, I shall +be—Oh, so much happier if you will wait until I can come and say that +I am ready to be your wife." +</P> + +<P> +"It will make you happier!" he said abruptly. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"Then, mavourneen," said Kenny, "it shall be as you say. I care more +for your happiness than for my own." +</P> + +<P> +They went back through the darkness hand in hand. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap23"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXIII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +A MISER'S WILL +</H2> + +<P> +Kenny lingered moodily over his supper. His evening was casting its +shadow ahead. He dreaded the thought of climbing the stairs to Adam's +empty room. If he could have kept his hostile memories in the face of +death, he told himself impatiently, it would have been easier. But +Garry was right. He was wild and sentimental. Only pitiful memories +lingered to haunt him: rain and loneliness and the old man's hunger for +excitement. +</P> + +<P> +He went at last with a sigh, oppressed by the creak of the banister +where Adam had sat, sinister and silent in his wheel-chair, listening +to the music. Memories were crowding thick upon him. Again and again +he wished that he had never opened the door of the sitting room that +other night and caught the old man off his guard. It had left a +specter in his mind, horrible in its pathos and intense. Strung +fiercely to the thought of emptiness, it came upon him nevertheless, as +he opened the door, with a curious chill sense of palpability; as if +silence and emptiness could strike one in the face and make him falter. +</P> + +<P> +The room was fireless and silent and unspeakably dreary. Hughie had +left a lamp burning upon the table. The key he had found in the pocket +of the old man's bathrobe lay beside it. +</P> + +<P> +For an interval Kenny stood stock still, his color gone. He faced +strange ghosts. Here in this faded room, with its mystery of books, he +had known agonizing pity and torment, gusts of temper, selfish and +unselfish, real and feigned, moments of triumphal composure that now in +the emptiness it was his fate to remember with a sickening shudder of +remorse. Here he had battled in vain for Joan, practicing brutally the +telling of much truth; and here with his probing finger, Adam Craig had +roused his slumbering conscience into new doubt and new despair. And +here he must not forget he had told the tale of the fairy mill … +and suspicion had come darkly to his mind. Suspicion of what? That, +as ever, he refused to face. +</P> + +<P> +A chair stood by the fireplace. Kenny with a shudder moved it to a +distant corner. He could not bear the memory of that last night when +he had barred the old man out from his joyous mood of sparkle, telling +Samhain tales of the fairies and the dead. +</P> + +<P> +After all, had he meant always to be cruel, that keen-eyed old man with +his keener wits? What conflict of spirit and body had lain behind his +fretful fits of temper? +</P> + +<P> +Kenny turned, blinking, from the wheelchair, and his glance, blurred a +little, found the old man's glasses on the mantel. The shabby case, +left behind while Adam faced the great adventure, was oddly pitiful. +Kenny cleared his throat. He had his moment of rebellion then at the +inevitability of death and doom. It behooved all of us, he remembered +with set lips, to be kind and mend quarrels while the sap of life ran +in our veins, strong and full. +</P> + +<P> +The sight of the key upon the table sent his thoughts flying off at a +tangent. A miser's will! … Mother of Men! It was a thing of +morbid mystery and romance! +</P> + +<P> +Kenny sat down in wild excitement and opened the drawer. +</P> + +<P> +He saw at once an orderly packet of papers. The will, which barely a +month ago, Hughie said, he and Hannah had signed without reading, lay +uppermost. Adam had written his will himself, disdaining lawyers. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny opened the will and began to read. He read as he always read in +moments of excitement, blurring through with a glance. But though the +old man's writing was distinct and almost insolent in its boldness, the +portent of the written words did not filter through at once to his +understanding. He frowned and read again. Once more he read, pacing +the floor with unquiet eyes. A number of things were becoming clearer. +There was in the first place no mention of the fugitive nephew. Joan +was the sole heir. There was one executor. That executor was Joan's +guardian and Joan's guardian was one—Kennicott O'Neill! Kenny read +the name aloud as if it belonged to someone else. Joan's guardian! +Again he read the clause aloud with an exclamation of doubt and +unbelief. It lay there definite and clear. He was the sole executor +of Adam's will and he was Joan's guardian. Startled he read the rest. +</P> + +<P> +"To Kennicott O'Neill, my friend, my signet ring … to my niece, +Joan West, from whom, no matter what the circumstances, I have never +had an unkind word, I bequeath the Craig farm and all the land and all +the rest, residue and remainder of my wealth wheresoever situate, +provided the executor can find it." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny went back with a feeling of numbness in his brain and read it all +again. +</P> + +<P> +"The rest of my wealth wheresoever situate … provided the executor +can find it!" +</P> + +<P> +Those words he scanned blankly with a feeling of much fire in his head +and a tantalizing cloud before his eyes. They meant what? Strange +hints and subtle smiles recurred to him. … And Adam had been a +miser who read of buccaneers and hidden treasure. … Buccaneers and +hidden treasure! … He would have hidden pirates' gold, he had +said, under the biggest apple-tree in the orchard, under the lilac bush +or … Where else had he said? … And … what … had … +he … meant? +</P> + +<P> +Kenny struck his head fiercely with his hand, raked his hair in the old +familiar gesture and roamed turbulently around the room with the will +in his hand. He was conscious of that dangerous alertness in his brain +that with him always presaged some unusual clarity of vision, a +startling speed with the adding of two and two. Four came now with +bewildering conviction. Fragments of the puzzle of mystery that had +bothered him for days dropped dizzily into place, even the fairy mill +and the Eve of All Souls. What wonder that in a drunken fit of +superstition Adam had staggered out to seek his dead! +</P> + +<P> +With his hair in disarray from the frantic combing of his fingers, +Kenny went down to find Joan. He read the will aloud to her, +controlling his voice with an effort. +</P> + +<P> +"Don shall have the farm," said Joan. "I shouldn't know what to do +with it." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny read the baffling clause at the end of the will again. +</P> + +<P> +"'All the rest, residue and remainder of my wealth, wheresoever +situate, provided the executor can find it.'" +</P> + +<P> +It seemed to him in his excitement that he could not tell her what he +thought—that he could not say it all with care and calm when his head +was whirling. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan," he said gently, "you must tell me everything you remember about +your mother and your father and your uncle. And whether there was ever +money. Much money," he insisted, his vivid face imploring. +</P> + +<P> +Joan shook her head sadly. +</P> + +<P> +"There is so little I remember, Kenny," she said. "So very little. +There was never money. I do not remember my mother or my father. +Neither does Donald. We lived until I was eight with an old cousin, +Nellie Craig. She said that uncle was a miser who loved nothing but +his brandy. Then she died and we came here. We had to come. There +was no other place for us. I remember that Don's clothes and mine were +always ragged until I grew old enough to mend them. Then I found +mother's trunks in the garret. Later Don and I thought of the ferry +and had for the first time some money of our own." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny looked crestfallen. +</P> + +<P> +"And there is nothing more?" he said. "Think, Joan, think!" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing," said Joan. "Donald and I were afraid of Uncle. We never +dared to ask him questions. And he never spoke of my mother save to +sneer and curse the stage. What is it, Kenny? What are you thinking?" +</P> + +<P> +"I think," said Kenny, making a colossal effort to speak with the calm +he could not feel, "that somewhere buried on the farm is a great deal +of money. I think it belonged to your mother and that it was left in +trust to your uncle for Donald and you—" +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" +</P> + +<P> +"I think," went on Kenny steadily, "that this singular clause in your +uncle's will was a miser's struggle between justice and his instinct +for hoarding and hiding. Money he had kept so long he hated to +relinquish. Yet he dared not keep it. And so he buried the money. +God knows how or where, and shunted the responsibility of its finding +upon me. If it was never found, as perhaps he hoped, he had still +fulfilled his trust and the dictates of his conscience in willing the +money back to you." +</P> + +<P> +"But, Kenny, how could he bury it?" +</P> + +<P> +"How often," reminded Kenny, "has Hughie in summer wheeled him out to +the orchard and left him there? How often has he wheeled himself +around the walk by the lilac bush? And he was clever and cunning. +Could he not, from time to time, hide the money in his bathrobe and +find some means of digging?" +</P> + +<P> +Joan looked unconvinced. +</P> + +<P> +"And where," she said, "would my mother, who earned her living on the +stage, get money? A great deal, I mean?" +</P> + +<P> +"I—I don't know," said Kenny, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "I +wish I did. Sometime or other, Joan, there has been Craig money and a +lot of it. This old house is the house of an aristocrat with money +enough to gratify expensive whims. Either the money was willed to her +or with the beauty she must have had, she married it. They are the +things you and I must find out somehow. Of one thing I am absolutely +convinced. There is money. It did not belong to your uncle. It is +hidden somewhere on the farm." +</P> + +<P> +He told her of the fairy mill, of the old man's gloating pride in the +word miser, of All Souls' Eve and Adam Craig's hints about the apple +tree and the lilac bush. +</P> + +<P> +"And many another place," added Kenny bitterly, "that slipped by me for +I didn't listen!" +</P> + +<P> +"It is unlikely," Joan said, "that he would find the opportunity for +hiding money in so many places. Why then did he name them all?" +</P> + +<P> +"His conscience forced him to give some inkling of the spot where he +had hidden money not his own. But he purposely multiplied our chances +of failure. Joan, I've got to get a spade and dig up the apple-tree!" +</P> + +<P> +His excitement was contagious. Neither of them heard Hughie in the +doorway until he spoke. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill," he said eagerly, "have you read the will?" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny struck himself upon the forehead and stared at Hughie in genuine +resentment. Hughie was another problem. But Hughie's quiet eyes +pleaded; and Hughie's ruddy face was honest. Kenny told him all. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not surprised," said Hughie. "From the minute I set foot here +three years back, I said, and Hannah said, that Mr. Craig was a miser. +And it's common talk in the village." +</P> + +<P> +But Kenny was off through the doorway with the will in his hand. Joan +and Hughie followed him to the kitchen. +</P> + +<P> +Here when the will had been read again commotion seized them all. +Hughie went out to the barn to hunt a spade, Hannah trotted about +talking of wraps, Hetty found a lantern for Kenny and Kenny burned his +fingers lighting it, and stepped on the cat. Joan soothed the outraged +feline with a nervous laugh. There was madness in the air. In an +interval of blank disgust in which he criticized the length of the +cat's tail and the clarion quality of his yell, Kenny fumed off +barnwards in search of Hughie. His excitement was compelling. Hannah +headed a cloaked exodus from the kitchen, chirping an astonishment +which she claimed was unprecedented in her quiet life. +</P> + +<P> +They straggled up the orchard hill in a flutter. +</P> + +<P> +It was snowing a little. The coldness of the air was soft and heavy. +Hannah and Hughie held the lanterns high and with a startling attack +that made the dirt fly, Kenny began to dig. +</P> + +<P> +The lantern light rayed off grotesquely through the leafless orchard +but the silent group, intent upon the energetic digger, watched only +the spot where the fan-like rays converged upon the spade. The wind, +sharp, intermittent and bringing with it now and then a flurry of snow, +flapped their clothes about them. Kenny, pausing to wipe his forehead, +thought the night warm. Joan's eyes, dark, solemn, frightened, spurred +him on to greater effort. He dug furiously, flinging earth in all +directions. Hughie marvelled at his madcap speed and the strength of +his sinewy arms. His jaw was set. His face, dark and vivid in the +lantern light, shone with a boy's excitement. But when the wind came +he looked defiant. They could not know that to him, then, the spirit +of Adam Craig seemed to come with a sigh and a rustle and hover near +them. +</P> + +<P> +Hughie took his turn at the spade but to Kenny his methodical +competence proved an irritant. He was glad when Hughie's back gave out +and forced him to surrender. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill," said Hannah flatly after what seemed an interminable +interval of digging, "you've dug a hole big enough to bury yourself. +Mr. Craig's money couldn't be no further down than that. Myself I +think you'd better let it go until morning. It's snowin' harder every +minute and we'll all get our death of cold." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny shuddered at the homely phrase. But he wiped the dirt and +perspiration from his forehead and went off toward the kitchen in +gloomy silence, his energy and optimism gone. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap24"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXIV +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +DIGGING DOTS +</H2> + +<P> +So madness settled down upon the Craig farm. +</P> + +<P> +Futile, flurried days of digging followed for which Kenny, delving +desperately in his memory, supplied forgotten clues. Fearful lest the +villagers might take it into their heads to climb the hill to Craig +Farm and help them dig, he pledged every one to secrecy and went on +digging, with Hughie at his heels. The suspense became fearful and +depressing. +</P> + +<P> +On the third day Hannah rebelled. The gloom and mystery were getting +on her nerves. +</P> + +<P> +"Hetty," she said irritably, "if you're standin' at the window there, +figurin' out where Mr. Craig's money is likely to be buried, you can +stop it this minute and clean the lamps. Your father's out pulling up +the floor-boards in the barn and Mr. O'Neill's digging up the lilac +bush for the third time. And that's enough. It beats me how Mr. +O'Neill can go on rememberin' so much now he's got his memory started. +He just seems to unravel things out of it overnight. It keeps me all +worked up. I feel as if I ought to whisper when I speak and every +night the minute I get to sleep I find myself diggin' in first one +outlandish place and then another. And if I'm not diggin' in my sleep, +your father is, with jerks and starts and grunts enough to wake the +dead. I'm all unstrung. So far as I can see the only thing we're +findin' is nerves. One thing I will say: It was dull and lonesome +before Mr. O'Neill came and I missed him when he went but dear knows, +it was peaceful. It's been one thing right after the other. Who upset +Mr. Abbott in the river, I'd like to know, and almost hit him in the +head with an oar? Who kept Mr. Craig so upset that he threw his brandy +bottle at your father most every morning? Who sang the roan cow into +kickin' at the milk? Who—" +</P> + +<P> +"Sh!" said Hetty. +</P> + +<P> +It seemed that Mr. O'Neill at that minute was not digging up the lilac +bush. There was a sound of hurried footsteps in the room beyond and he +came in with a piece of letter paper in his hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Look, Hannah," he cried. "Look! I found it among Mr. Craig's papers. +It's a rude chart of the farm, picked out here and there in dots." +</P> + +<P> +Hannah wiped her arms and put on her glasses. The paper filled her +with excitement. +</P> + +<P> +"Sakes alive, Mr. O'Neill," she exclaimed, "what will you do now?" +</P> + +<P> +"Do?" said Kenny wildly. "Do? There's only one thing to do, of +course. Hughie and I will dig up the dots. I wish to Heaven I could +find a Leprechaun somewhere under a thorn-bush." +</P> + +<P> +"What's a Leper John?" demanded Hannah. +</P> + +<P> +"A fairy shoemaker," explained Kenny absently, "in a red coat and he +wears buckled shoes and knee-breeches and a hat with a peak and always +he's mendin' a shoe that he doesn't finish, find him and never once let +him trick you into lookin' away and he'll tell you where treasure is +hidden, always." +</P> + +<P> +Hannah blinked. +</P> + +<P> +"What ye need most to my mind, Mr. O'Neill," she said earnestly, "is a +regiment of grave-diggers and stone-cutters to help you and Hughie get +the thing done." +</P> + +<P> +Night came upon them with Hughie digging up a dot beside the well and +Kenny again in the orchard. Everything led back somehow to the +orchard, his memory, the chart, even his own conviction. +</P> + +<P> +That night in a dream Kenny distinctly saw the weary little doctor with +a bag of mystery in his hand and a spade over his shoulder walking down +the orchard hill. +</P> + +<P> +He awoke at dawn with a shiver of excitement. The doctor! What could +be more reasonable? Adam had known him for a lifetime. Whom else +would he trust? The thought nerved him to heroics. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny climbed out of bed and dressed, shiveringly conscious that the +morning was cold enough to turn his breath to steam. It was that +period of indistinctness moreover when farmers and roosters, he knew, +were getting up all over the dawn, but Kenny, with little time and no +inclination at all for melancholy rebellion, tip-toed down the stairway +with his shoes in his hand. He put them on by the kitchen fire. There +was water by the window in a milk-pail. He poured some in a basin, +washed his face and hands and found the water cold enough to hurt his +face. Still his excitement kept him keyed to a pitch of singular and +optimistic hilarity. Through the kitchen window came the pale glimmer +of snow. He hoped Hughie wouldn't hear him harnessing Nellie, and +shoot at the barn. The possibility sent him to the kitchen stairway. +It wound upward in an old-fashioned twist to the room above. +</P> + +<P> +"Hughie!" he called in a low voice. "Hughie!" +</P> + +<P> +There was a noise of many creaks overhead. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going to hitch up Nellie and drive over to Dr. Cole's farm. I—I +feel sure he buried the money!" +</P> + +<P> +"God Almighty!" exclaimed Hughie. +</P> + +<P> +But Kenny was already on his way to the kitchen door. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap25"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXV +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CHECKMATE! +</H2> + +<P> +Daylight came bleak and cold as Kenny drove rapidly up the doctor's +lane. The aggrieved mare had traveled. Through the farm window, green +with potted begonias, Kenny could see the doctor already at his +breakfast. A young colored girl was pouring out his coffee. The +doctor himself opened the door. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Mr. O'Neill," he exclaimed, "who's sick? Not Joan, I hope?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Kenny, following the doctor back to the table. "No, nobody +sick." +</P> + +<P> +"Sit down," invited the doctor, "I always figure you can talk as well +sitting as standing and you can rest. Won't you have some breakfast?" +</P> + +<P> +"I couldn't eat," said Kenny. "Doctor," he added hoarsely, "would +it—be possible—for me—to speak to you—alone?" +</P> + +<P> +The doctor nodded. In a life made up of emergencies as his was, +nothing astonished him. +</P> + +<P> +"Annie," he said kindly, "just tell Mrs. Cole not to hurry down to +breakfast. And close the door." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny took the will from his pocket and spread it on the table. +</P> + +<P> +The doctor wearily fumbled for his glasses and put them on. +</P> + +<P> +"Hum!" he said. "The old man's will, eh? I've been wondering about +it. Well, he didn't leave much but the farm, did he? And it might +have been better for Don and Joan if he'd taken it with him. Nobody +around here would buy it. A barn of a place! And the land's full of +stone." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah!" said Kenny significantly. "But Adam Craig was a miser!" +</P> + +<P> +"Pooh!" said the doctor with a sniff. "Who told you that?" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny stared. +</P> + +<P> +"I found it out for myself," he said stiffly. "Since then I have +learned that it is common rumor in the village. And the old man, even +when I—I spoke of it directly to him, never troubled to deny it." +</P> + +<P> +"Shucks!" said the little doctor crossly. "He liked it. It saved his +pride." +</P> + +<P> +"Saved—his—pride!" +</P> + +<P> +The doctor nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill," he said, "country folks stare less unkindly at a miser +than at some other things. It hurt Adam, knowing his guilt, to see the +old Craig home going to rack and ruin. Had a lot of money when his +father died. A lot. And he wanted folks to think he still had it. +But he didn't. Went through it, Mr. O'Neill, hitting the high spots. +Came home a penniless wreck of a man, body and soul and pocketbook +warped beyond recall. I was there when they settled up his estate. As +a matter of fact my brother was his lawyer. And what he hadn't lost in +gambling and dissipation he lost speculating in Wall Street. Oh, he +never tried the miser stunt with me. He knew that I knew that he +hadn't a cent." +</P> + +<P> +"Not a cent!" echoed Kenny feebly. "Not a cent!" He cleared his +throat. "Not—a cent." +</P> + +<P> +"Not a cent," said the doctor cheerfully. "And barely a living from +that farm." +</P> + +<P> +"Dr. Cole," said Kenny steadily, "he may have lost his own money. Of +that I know nothing. But what about his sister's?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why," said the doctor at once, "she hadn't any. Old Craig senior left +it all to Adam. She ran away, you know, and went on the stage. He +never forgot it. 'Tisn't much of a story. She was a darned pretty +girl, high-spirited and clever, and the old man was a devil like Adam. +A scandal of that kind fussed us up pretty much in those days. I +remember I went to see Cordelia once in some old-time play. She was +wearing those old gowns that Joan, poor child, wears now. Always had a +feeling after that that I was a part of the scandal. Mother," he added +dryly, "felt so too." +</P> + +<P> +The doctor shook his head lugubriously. +</P> + +<P> +"She was a widow when she died," reminded Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"The money I mean must have come from her husband and she entrusted it +to Adam for Joan and Donald." +</P> + +<P> +"But my dear fellow," said the doctor kindly, "he hadn't any. He was +an actor chap. Cordelia came home to the farm to die while Adam was in +Europe. She hadn't a cent." +</P> + +<P> +"Not a cent!" said Kenny again. "Not a cent!" +</P> + +<P> +"Not a cent," repeated the mystified doctor. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, my God!" said Kenny. "And I've dug up the farm!" +</P> + +<P> +It was the doctor's turn to stare. +</P> + +<P> +"You dug up the farm!" he said blankly. +</P> + +<P> +Sick with discouragement Kenny pointed to the will. +</P> + +<P> +"Read it," he said bitterly. "Particularly the 'remainder, residue and +situate' part." +</P> + +<P> +The doctor read and he read slowly. Before he reached the clause in +question Kenny was on his feet, mopping his forehead. He told of the +fairy mill and the chair by the fire. +</P> + +<P> +The doctor poured himself another cup of coffee and looked at Kenny +with a shade of asperity. Fairies, it would seem, were a little out of +his line. +</P> + +<P> +"Adam had a good many spells like that," he said, "'specially when he +was drinking hard. Off like a shot, hanging out of his chair. Mere +coincidence. As for the night he staggered out to the sitting room, it +is possible as you suggest that he did it in a fit of drunken +superstition. But there wasn't any money on his conscience. Couldn't +be for there wasn't any. If he feared at all to have his sister +revisit her home—queer notion, that, Mr. O'Neill! You Irish run to +notions!—it was simply because he hadn't given her kids a square deal +and he knew it." +</P> + +<P> +Again the doctor adjusted his glasses and went back to the will. +</P> + +<P> +"Doctor," flung out Kenny desperately, "I myself have seen indisputable +proof in that house that Adam Craig was a miser—even the way he +handled money." +</P> + +<P> +The doctor sighed and looked up. And he smiled his weary, +understanding smile. +</P> + +<P> +"What you saw, Mr. O'Neill," he said soberly, "was something very close +to poverty. He was selfish and he had to have his brandy. His economy +in every other way was horrible. Horrible! As for the way he handled +money, as I said before, he wanted you to think he was a miser. It +seems," added the doctor dryly as he went back to his reading, "that he +was a grain too successful." +</P> + +<P> +"He hated his sister," blurted Kenny. "Why would he hate her and +revile her memory unless he knew he had wronged her? Why did he have +black wakeful hours in bed and have to drink himself to sleep?" +</P> + +<P> +"Adam," said the doctor with weary sarcasm, "fancied his sister had +brought disgrace upon the grand old family name of Craig. She was a +good girl and clever. But Adam believed in sacrifice and conventional +virtue—for women. Most men do. And he knew the way folks feel up +here about the stage. The world's queer, Mr. O'Neill. And Adam was +just a little queerer than the rest of it. In a sense he had wronged +her. God knows he was cruel enough to those two poor youngsters. As +for his passion for drinking himself to sleep—well, when a man's had +straight legs and plenty of health, such a fate as Adam's hits hard. +</P> + +<P> +"He hated Joan and Donald," said Kenny. "Why?" +</P> + +<P> +"He resented their drain upon his pocket-book. He hadn't enough left +for them and brandy too. Though the Lord knows they never cost him +much. Nellie Craig had them for a while after Cordelia died. Good old +soul, Nellie. But her tongue hung in the middle and worked both ways +like a bell-clapper. I always blamed her for the start of the miser +yarn. Adam managed to get it over on her and that was enough." +</P> + +<P> +He made a final effort to read the will and while Kenny sat in stony +silence, choking back a creepy feeling of despair, reached the clause +pertaining to the residue of Adam's wealth. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah!" he said. +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" choked Kenny. "Is there some damned commonplace explanation +for that, too?" +</P> + +<P> +The doctor tapped the paper with his stubby finger. +</P> + +<P> +"And you," he marveled, "who knew so well his devilish cunning! That +clause I think was his last cruel jest." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny turned white. +</P> + +<P> +"A trap!" he said. +</P> + +<P> +"A trap," said the doctor. "And you've swallowed bait and trap and +all." +</P> + +<P> +"How he must have hated me?" +</P> + +<P> +"On the contrary," said the little doctor warmly, "I think in his way +he was fond of you. He counted the hours until nightfall, that I know." +</P> + +<P> +"And I—" said Kenny with a sharp intake of his breath, "I killed him +with that story of the chair." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" said the doctor kindly. "Chair or no chair +he would have died just the same. I saw it coming. And your presence +there this summer freed him entirely from money worries. He even paid +me." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny, "my money helped him drink himself to death." +</P> + +<P> +The doctor sighed. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, well," he said, "that too would have happened just the same." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny brushed his hair back dazedly from his forehead and rose. He +felt as if he had fallen from a great height and hit his head. It was +numbly aquiver. As he picked up the will and put it in his pocket, +Adam Craig, sinister and unassailable, seemed to mock him from the +grave. His last trap! Almost Kenny could hear him chuckle: +"Checkmate, Kenny, checkmate! And the game is won." How well he had +known his opponent's excitable fancy! +</P> + +<P> +"Doctor," asked Kenny drearily, "why were all the books in the +farmhouse in Adam's room?" +</P> + +<P> +"There," said the doctor, "I think he meant to be kind. Cordelia had +had all sorts of schooling and so had he. I think by denying the +youngsters books and too much knowledge, he thought to clip their wings +at the start and keep them contented. In tune with the farm, I mean, +and willing to stay. He'd seen enough of ruinous discontent when his +sister and himself went out in the world and tried their wings. Just a +fancy. I may be wrong. Well, Mr. O'Neill, I'm sorry. There's no +mystery and no money—" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Kenny dully, "no mystery and no money." He moved toward the +door with a curious trance-like feeling that this was still a part of +his dream. +</P> + +<P> +"Just a commonplace story of self," said the doctor, following him to +the door, "with two ragged little kids the victims. Myself I think +it's just as well, Mr. O'Neill, to say as little as possible about +things of this sort. Tales up here grow. And fire that isn't fed goes +out. It's bound to. I never had the heart myself to deny the old +man's miser yarn. When I do talk, I try to say as little as possible +and keep my two feet solidly on the ground." +</P> + +<P> +He watched Kenny down the steps and into the buggy. +</P> + +<P> +"Humph!" said the little doctor. "Thought he had his fingers on a +regular swap-dollinger of a mystery, didn't he? To my thinking, the +only mystery in the farmhouse is himself!" +</P> + +<P> +And Kenny, climbing into the buggy in hot rebellion, felt that he had +come decked out gorgeously in rainbow balloons. And the doctor, +practical and unromantic, had pushed a weary finger through them, one +by one, watching them collapse with his bored and kindly smile of +understanding. Life after all, reflected Kenny irritably, was a matter +of adjectives and any man was at the mercy of his biographer. He +himself could have told that story of Adam and Cordelia Craig until no +man could have called it commonplace and unromantic. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap26"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXVI +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +AN INSPIRATION +</H2> + +<P> +Afterward Kenny thought that Nellie must have ambled into the doctor's +barnyard and turned herself, for he had no memory of guiding her. A +paralyzed conviction of another anti-climax had gripped him. He +remembered turning into the road with a haunting sense of eyes upon +him—Adam's eyes, piercing and bright with malevolent amusement. The +chart! The hints! The will! The cunning of him! What would he tell +Hughie and Hannah and Hetty? What would he tell Joan? What was there +to tell save that he had put two and two together and made five, a +romantic five lurid with melodrama? +</P> + +<P> +And the brutal practice hour in Adam's room when he had told the truth! +Kenny went sick and cold and shivered. How unwittingly he had flung +the old man's poverty in his teeth! How at times it must have hurt! +The memory made him shrink. And it hadn't been truth. He had battled +for Joan with misinterpretation and cruelty; he had practiced the truth +with the telling of untruth. And the proud old man who veiled his +poverty with pretense, had listened, listened inscrutably and laughed, +ready to thrust from the grave itself. +</P> + +<P> +Ah! Fate was forever flinging down her gauntlet. +</P> + +<P> +"To Kennicott O'Neill, my friend, my signet ring." His friend! In +spite of the practice hour—his friend. Kenny's eyes smarted. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Adam, Adam!" he said, sick at heart, "I beg your pardon." +</P> + +<P> +The snow crunched steadily under Nellie's feet. Kenny stared sadly at +the road ahead. Could he tell Joan what now he knew: that when the few +bills were paid and the estate balanced, there would be no money left +for the year of study? +</P> + +<P> +Perhaps Joan would marry him now—at once—to-morrow! And they could +leave the farm together. After all there was silver to his cloud. +Kenny brightened. +</P> + +<P> +A preposterous notion of hers, that unfitness. The memory of the +sunset hour in the cabin came again to darken the silver lining of his +cloud. Joan's arms, Joan's voice, Joan's eyes had pleaded; it would +make her happier to wait and study and watch his world before she came +to it, his wife. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny sighed. +</P> + +<P> +It would make her—happier. And the problem still was with him. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny cursed the evil in the world that had forced men to convention. +If only he could help her! If only— +</P> + +<P> +A car was coming up behind him with a familiar noise of rattle. It was +the doctor. Kenny sat up, alert, inspired, excited. +</P> + +<P> +"Doctor," he called cheerfully, "is there a long distance telephone +near?" +</P> + +<P> +"A mile on. Road to the right," called the doctor, inwardly amazed at +his visitor's mercurial disposition. "They call it Rink's Hotel. Not +much of a place. Really a road house. But you'll find a telephone." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny found the telephone at Rink's Hotel in a pantry near the barroom +and closed the door to insure his privacy. It seemed an interminable +interval of waiting, an interval of blankness filled with voices +calling numbers on to further voices, before the Club Central answered. +Again he waited, tapping with impatience on the table. When the voice +came he wanted, it was far away and drowsy. Kenny looked at his watch. +It was not yet eight o'clock. +</P> + +<P> +"Garry," he said, "is that you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. Who's calling?" +</P> + +<P> +"It's I—Kenny." +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" Garry's astonished voice came clearly over the wire. "Kenny, +where on earth did you go?" he demanded. "And what's the matter? Is +anything wrong? What are you doing up in the middle of the night?" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny snorted. +</P> + +<P> +"Garry," he said, "I'm mailing to you now in a very few minutes my +check for four thousand dollars—" +</P> + +<P> +"Say it again." +</P> + +<P> +"I said—I'm mailing to you—my check—for—four thousand—dollars." +</P> + +<P> +"Wait a minute, Kenny. This wire must be out of order." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny swore beneath his teeth. +</P> + +<P> +"I said," he repeated with withering distinctness, "that +I—am—mailing—to—you—my—check—for—four—thousand—dollars. And +I want you to cash it in old bills. Get, that, Garry, please. Old +bills." +</P> + +<P> +"Old bills!" repeated Garry in a strangled voice. "For the love of +Mike! … <I>Old bills</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +"Garry! For God's sake, listen! This is absolute, unadulterated +common sense. I want you to get that money in old bills, the older the +better. Ragged if you can. And I want you to send it to me, Craig +Farm, by registered package, special delivery." +</P> + +<P> +"Are you in some mess or other? Because if you are I'll bring it." +</P> + +<P> +"No, I can wait. I particularly don't want you to bring it. I can't +explain now. I'll write you all the details. Then I want you to get a +statement from the bank. Even with the four thousand gone, my balance +ought to be at least a thousand dollars. See what they make it." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"Next I want you to call up Ann Marvin and ask her if she's still +looking for another girl to share her studio with her … Ann Marvin." +</P> + +<P> +"Peggy's with her." +</P> + +<P> +"I know that. She said she wanted a third girl. If she does, tell her +I'm bringing my ward—" +</P> + +<P> +"Your—what!" +</P> + +<P> +"My—ward—" +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," came in cold and scandalized tones from the other end, "have +you been to bed at all?" +</P> + +<P> +"If you make any pretense at all of being my friend," roared Kenny in a +flash of temper, "will you do me the favor of assuming that I'm +serious? I'm not drunk. I'm not insane. I've slept the night +through. And I'm tired and terribly in earnest." +</P> + +<P> +"You did say your ward." +</P> + +<P> +"I did. Mr. Craig—the uncle, you remember, an invalid—died. And +he's made me the guardian of his niece—" +</P> + +<P> +"The poor boob." Garry's voice was sad and sincere. +</P> + +<P> +"Garry! Are you or are you not my friend?" +</P> + +<P> +"I am." +</P> + +<P> +"Then listen. Next I want you to ask Max Kreiling for the name and +address of the French woman he knows who teaches music—" +</P> + +<P> +"Just a minute, Kenny, old man. Let me say this all after you. I am +to cash your check for four thousand dollars in old bills. Ragged if +possible. I am to send it registered and special delivery to Craig +Farm. I am to call up Ann and tell her about your—your ward. And I'm +to ask Max for the name of the French woman who teaches music." +</P> + +<P> +"Right. Garry, has Brian been back?" +</P> + +<P> +"No. John Whitaker may have heard from him. I don't know. I haven't +seen him. Oh, by the way, Kenny, Joe Curtis was in here blazing up and +down my studio. Said you promised to paint his wife's portrait. +What'll I tell him?" +</P> + +<P> +"Tell him," said Kenny, "to go to—No, never mind. I'll be needing to +work. Tell him I'll be back in New York positively by the end of next +week." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap27"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXVII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +MISER'S GOLD +</H2> + +<P> +He was passionately glad in the week that followed that Fate, prodigal +in her gifts to him, had made him too an actor with a genius for +convincing. For he had to go on digging dots, feigning wild excitement +when his heart was cold within him. He hated spades. He hated dirt. +He almost hated Hughie, who went from dot to dot upon the chart with +unflagging zeal and system. Kenny himself dug anywhere at any time and +moodily escaped when he could to write letters. He was getting his +plans in line for departure. +</P> + +<P> +He had settled the problem of the doctor, after an interval of bitter +struggle, with a combination of fact and fancy. He said truthfully +that the doctor had rejected all notions of buried money with his usual +air of weariness. He added untruthfully—and with set teeth he +challenged the Angel Gabriel to settle the tormenting problem in any +other way—that the doctor had conceded the probability of Adam's +burying money though he had had but a few thousand dollars at best to +bury. +</P> + +<P> +"That," said Hughie, "is enough to dig for!" And he went on with his +digging. +</P> + +<P> +The need was desperate and Kenny did his best. Of the doctor's story +of Adam and Cordelia Craig he told enough. And he kept on talking +miser's gold when he hated the name of it. His air of excitement, said +Hughie who talked endlessly of dots, dug and dreamed them, kept them +all upon their toes. +</P> + +<P> +At nightfall of the third day when Kenny's hatred of dots was +approaching a frenzy and a ballet of spades danced with horrible rhythm +through his dreams, the package came from Garry. Kenny took it with a +careless whistle and went slowly up the stairs. +</P> + +<P> +The closing of his bedroom door transformed him. He found matches and +a lamp and marveled at the erratic pounding of his heart. It was a +muffled beat of triumph. Mad laughter, tender and joyous, lurked +perilously in his throat. His feet would have pirouetted in gay +abandon had he not, with much responsible feeling of control, forced +himself to walk with dignity and calm. But his nervous flying fingers +fumbled clumsily with string and paper and taxed his patience to the +utmost. +</P> + +<P> +The bills were incredibly old and ragged. Kenny stared at them with a +low whistle of delight, blessing Garry. Moreover, Fate and Garry had +chosen to solve a problem for him by packing the bills in a strong tin +box. To unpack the money and dent the tin was the work of a moment. +When he had darkened the shining surface with lamp-smoke and rubbed it +clean with a handkerchief which he burned, the box, discolored and +dented, had an inescapable look of age, like the ragged bills. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny went through the dark hallway to Adam's room with cat-like tread, +the searchlight that had been a part of his road equipment in his +pocket, a bag of wood-ash, purloined the day before from Hannah's +kitchen, and the battered box tucked unobtrusively beneath his coat. +He locked himself in and drew a long, gasping breath of intense relief. +</P> + +<P> +Though wind creaks startled him again and again as he made a pedestal +of faded books for his searchlight and directed its glaring circle upon +the blackened wall of the fireplace, no dreaded hand upon the knob +disturbed him. +</P> + +<P> +He worked noiselessly and with care, removing the lower bricks with his +penknife. +</P> + +<P> +Brick after brick he loosened, burrowing deep in the solid wall; then +with infinite care and patience he walled the money in, filled the +crevices with wood-ash and hid the remaining bricks in the chimney. +</P> + +<P> +He went down to supper with an unusual air of calm, but his head was +aching badly. Hughie, Joan said, was nearing the last dot. He was +discouraged and Hannah was cross. Kenny toyed absently with the food +upon his plate. +</P> + +<P> +"Mavourneen," he said, "I'm wondering." +</P> + +<P> +"Wondering what, Kenny?" +</P> + +<P> +"If perhaps the chart isn't purposely misleading—" +</P> + +<P> +"Like Uncle's hints to you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"I hadn't thought of it." +</P> + +<P> +"Every clue we have found has sent us out of doors." +</P> + +<P> +"Would he, I wonder, Kenny, hide the money in the house?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm wondering too." +</P> + +<P> +"The sitting room!" +</P> + +<P> +"There," admitted Kenny, "he was often alone." +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, shall we look to-night?" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny had his moment of doubt. +</P> + +<P> +"We'll ask Hughie," he said. +</P> + +<P> +And so with Hannah scoffing but noticeably on ahead with the lamp, they +climbed the stairs and tore the room to pieces—to no avail. In a +final burst of inspiration Hughie dragged the faded carpet from its +tacks and filled the room with dust. Sneezing and coughing, they faced +each other in the melee with looks of blank discouragement. Even +Kenny's inexhaustible energy and excitement seemed on the point of +waning. He stared drearily at the fireplace. +</P> + +<P> +"It's cold in here," he said, shivering. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Joan, "we should have built a fire." +</P> + +<P> +"The fireplace!" cried Hughie hoarsely. +</P> + +<P> +"It's too late now," said Kenny irritably. "I'm chilled through." +</P> + +<P> +"No, no, Mr. O'Neill, I'm not meaning the fire. It's the one place we +haven't looked." +</P> + +<P> +"It won't hurt none to look, Mr. O'Neill," urged Hannah, who knew that +Kenny's energy was subject to undependable ebb and now. "If Hughie +goes out of here with that fireplace on his mind, he'll dream all night +about it." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny strode to the fireplace with Hughie at his heels and jerked +impatiently at the mantel. It was sturdy and unyielding. +</P> + +<P> +"I feared so," he said with a shrug. +</P> + +<P> +Hughie seized the lamp. +</P> + +<P> +"Hold the lamp, Mr. O'Neill," he begged, crouching. "I've got to look +at them bricks. Careful, sir! You're tipping it." +</P> + +<P> +Huddled in the glare of the lamp they stared in fascination at the +smoky bricks. +</P> + +<P> +"The bricks are loose!" exclaimed Hughie. "Look here!" He rattled one +with his finger. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny emitted a long low whistle of intense amazement. +</P> + +<P> +"Hughie, where's your knife?" he flung out wildly. "I think we're on +the trail!" +</P> + +<P> +"The lamp's shaking!" warned Hannah. "Let me hold it." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, my God!" gasped Hughie with the dot fever flaring in his honest +eyes. "That ain't mortar. It's only ashes. Look!" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny frantically pulled out a brick and dropped it with a clatter. +Another and another. +</P> + +<P> +"Hold the lamp closer, Hannah!" directed Hughie, reaching within. +"There's something here!" +</P> + +<P> +Shaking violently he pulled forth a battered box and flung back the +lid. It was stuffed to the brim with ragged money. +</P> + +<P> +"Glory be to God!" cried Kenny and proceeded to pull the mantel down. +</P> + +<P> +But he found no more. +</P> + +<P> +"And to think of him burrowin' there in the bricks," marveled Hannah, +"and him that weak a child could push him over." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah!" said Kenny, "but his will was strong." +</P> + +<P> +He counted the money with trembling fingers and a smile, curiously +pleased and tender, and declared his belief that the doctor was right. +The ragged hoarding—he shivered slightly with revulsion as he touched +a tattered bill—represented the rest, residue and remainder of Adam's +wealth wheresoever situate. And thanks to Hughie's inspiration the +executor had found it. +</P> + +<P> +"Four thousand dollars!" he announced at last in a voice of +disappointment. +</P> + +<P> +"And a lucky thing," said Hughie with an air of pride, "that I thought +of the fireplace. For it might have laid there buried for the rest of +time." +</P> + +<P> +"Four thousand dollars!" gasped Hannah in a reverential voice. "Four +thousand dollars! Well, Mr. O'Neill, it may not be much, as you seem +to think after all the dots you and Hughie have been a-diggin', but I +say it's a lot. It ought to buy the child all the frocks and teachers +in New York." +</P> + +<P> +"It will see her through the year," said Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +Joan's eyes widened. +</P> + +<P> +"It would see me through a decade!" she exclaimed. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny smiled. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap28"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXVIII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +KENNY'S WARD +</H2> + +<P> +Peace came mercifully to Craig farm with the finding of Adam's money. +</P> + +<P> +"Toby," Joan whispered to the cat, her soft cheek pressed against his +fur, "I'm going away. And I can't believe it! I can't! I can't! I +can't!" +</P> + +<P> +"Toby will miss you," said Hannah. "And so will I. And so will Hughie +and Hetty." She cleared her throat. "As for Mr. O'Neill, Toby won't +be likely to miss him at all. He's stepped too many inches off his +tail. Hughie thinks it must be paralyzed. I never saw Mr. O'Neill +headin' for a new dot but what I knew Toby would be sure to stick his +tail in the way and start a row." +</P> + +<P> +Joan's face clouded. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Hannah, if only I knew where Donald is!" +</P> + +<P> +Hannah sighed. +</P> + +<P> +"I wish you did, dear." +</P> + +<P> +"It seems so dreadful with Uncle gone and everything changed. And +Donald doesn't even know. Think, Hannah, I may pass him in the train." +</P> + +<P> +"You may," said Hannah. "And then again you mayn't." +</P> + +<P> +"What if he comes home? What if he writes? It seems that I just +should be here." +</P> + +<P> +"If he writes, I'll send the letter. And if he comes, Hughie can ride +down and telegraph you word." +</P> + +<P> +"It's snowing," exclaimed Joan at the kitchen window. "Harder and +harder. Oh, Hannah, if it keeps up we shan't be able to go to Briston +to-morrow for my suit." +</P> + +<P> +"We'll go in the sleigh. Hughie spoke of it at breakfast." +</P> + +<P> +"A brown suit," mused Joan with shining eyes. "A brown hat and furs! +Think, Hannah! <I>Furs</I>! I do hope I shall look well in them." +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill said you would and he ought to know." +</P> + +<P> +Joan laughed and blushed. +</P> + +<P> +At twilight the next night she came home dressed warmly in furs and a +suit the color of her eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"She would wear it home, Mr. O'Neill," whispered Hannah on ahead. "And +all, I think, to surprise you." +</P> + +<P> +Often afterward Kenny remembered her there in the half twilight of the +kitchen, joyously crying out his name. There had been a glimmer of +shining tin, a halo of light from the tilted stove-lids, purple at the +window panes and beyond snow and the distant tinkle of sleighbells in +the barn. Hetty, he remembered, had lighted the kitchen lamp and +gasped. A lovely child, proud and mischievous! Her youth startled him. +</P> + +<P> +In a week she was ready and eager to go but the day of farewell found +her clinging to Hannah in a panic. +</P> + +<P> +When at last the old Craig carriage creaked slowly away down the lane +with Hannah and Hetty waving from the farm-porch, the spirit of +adventure flickered forlornly out and left her sobbing. +</P> + +<P> +"Good-bye, Hannah dear!" she called, her eyes wet and wistful. +"Good-bye, Hetty! And—and don't forget to write me <I>all</I> the news! +And don't let Toby catch the birds!" +</P> + +<P> +Hughie, blinking and upset, stared straight ahead at Nellie's ears. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny sobered. How great his trust! Hannah, waving her apron back +there and wiping her eyes, trusted him. And so did Hughie and Joan and +even perhaps old Adam Craig; and Mr. Abbott whose gentle grilling he +had endured with merely surface patience. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't cry, Joan, please!" he begged, understanding how dear familiar +things are apt to loom in the pain of separation. And then with her +hand to his lips, he pledged himself to make her happiness the religion +of his love. It was a pledge he was destined to keep inviolate. +</P> + +<P> +Ordinarily to Kenny, impatient in intervals of discomfort and delay, +the trip with its rural junctions and branch roads would have been +interminable torture. But to-day, with Joan's eyes, wide, dark, +intent, he chose to marvel with her. +</P> + +<P> +They lunched at noon between trains in a little country inn. At seven, +having come after much fragmentary travel into a comforting world of +express trains and Pullmans, they dined in the train itself. Joan +watched the flying landscape, dotted with snow and vanishing lights, +smiled with the shining wonder of it all in her eyes, and could not +eat. Kenny tried scolding and found her sorry, but she could not eat. +</P> + +<P> +By eleven, when the train thundered into the terminal at Thirty-third +Street, New York was wrapped in a scudding whirl of white dotted +dizzily with lights. Already to Kenny, buoyant, excited and inclined +to stride around in purposeless circles, the lonely farm was very far +away. He was back again in his own world with the roar of the city in +his ears—and Joan beside him. Ah! there he knew was the reason for +his gladness. Joan was beside him. +</P> + +<P> +The taxi he commandeered threaded its way south through a maze of +lights, hurrying crowds and noisy, weaving traffic to a tenement in +Greenwich Village. Joan, searching for the unknown sparkle of that +Bohemian world she had been unable to envisage, stared at the +unromantic basement doors ahead and clung to Kenny's hand. +</P> + +<P> +"It's quite all right, mavourneen," he assured her mischievously. +"Bohemia and poverty rub shoulders down here. It's picturesque. And +my club is only five blocks east. Beyond this door there's a +mysterious magic tunnel that runs straight through the house to +Somebody's back-yard. And in the back-yard is a castle and in the +castle studios and skylights, electricity and steam heat and wide, +old-fashioned fireplaces. Once it was a tenement—just like this with +fifty dirty people in it—but Ann with her magic wand has changed it +all." +</P> + +<P> +The basement door at which he had been ringing a prolonged Morse dot +and dash announcement of identity clicked back and revealed a dimly +lighted tunnel. At the end a flight of steps led up into a courtyard. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny closed the outer door and blocked out the roar of the city. New +York receded, its hum very far away. Their heels clanked loudly in the +quiet. +</P> + +<P> +As they climbed the steps and came out in the courtyard, Ann's windows, +trimly curtained, twinkled pleasantly through the snow ahead. +</P> + +<P> +A girl stood waiting in the doorway. +</P> + +<P> +"Hello, Ann!" called Kenny joyously. "Is it you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Hello, Kenny!" cried a pleasant contralto voice. "Hurry up. It's +snowing like fury." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny seized Joan's hand and raced her across the courtyard and up the +steps. When she came to a halt, shy and breathless, she was standing +by a crackling wood-fire in a room that seemed all coziness and color +and soft light. +</P> + +<P> +A tall girl with black hair, a clear skin and intelligent eyes was +smiling at them both. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," exclaimed Ann Marvin, "you Irish will-of-the-wisp! Where have +you been? Everybody's talking about you. Joan, dear, shake the snow +off your coat. You're beginning to melt." +</P> + +<P> +Joan's eyes opened wide at the sound of her name. Ann laughed and +pinched her flushed cheek. +</P> + +<P> +"My dear," she said drolly, "I know more than your name. Kenny sent me +a letter of measures, spiritual, mental and physical that would turn +Bertillon green with envy. If ever you default with all the foolish +hearts in New York I'll turn you over to the police. And you'll never +escape." +</P> + +<P> +Joan clung to her with a smile and a sigh of relief that made them both +laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"Ann," said Kenny in heartfelt gratitude, "you're a brick. I don't +wonder Frank Barrington's head over heels in love with you. You'll not +be mindin', Ann, dear, if I use your telephone?" +</P> + +<P> +"Sure, no!" mimicked Ann broadly. "It's yonder in the den." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny at the telephone called the Players' Club and with his lips set +for battle, asked for John Whitaker, whose methodical habits of +diversion for once in his life he blessed. When Whitaker's voice came, +brief and somewhat bored, he forgot to say: "Hello." +</P> + +<P> +"Whitaker," he demanded, "where's Brian? You must know by now." +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny! Is that you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"Where on earth have you been?" +</P> + +<P> +"Away. Where's Brian?" +</P> + +<P> +"Where's Brian?" Whitaker snorted. "He ought to be in a lunatic asylum +if you want my honest opinion. As to where he is, I told you before +and I'm telling you again, I'm pledged to secrecy. I've even destroyed +his address so I wouldn't be tempted—and my memory couldn't be worse. +I'd like to say right now, however, that he's more of an O'Neill than I +thought and I'm through with him." +</P> + +<P> +"Phew!" whistled Kenny, much too astonished for battle. "What—what's +up, John?" +</P> + +<P> +"What's up?" barked Whitaker, his voice tinged with acid. "Just this: +I handed the young fool a job that ten of the best newspaper men in New +York were pursuing and he turned me down cold to stay all winter in +some God-forsaken quarry where he's hacking up stone—" +</P> + +<P> +"Hacking up stone!" +</P> + +<P> +"Feels philanthropic. Grinds stone all day and at night helps a kid +he's known six months cram for a college exam. Damon and Pythias stuff +and I'm the goat. Pythias is seventeen by the way and wants to work +his way through college." +</P> + +<P> +"Mother of men!" said Kenny softly and thought of Joan's relief. +</P> + +<P> +"Sounds very beautiful and lofty in a letter," went on Whitaker, +angling for sympathy, "but of all the damned, high-falutin' lunacy I've +ever seen in men, that's the limit." +</P> + +<P> +He waited, confident in his expectation that Kenny would agree. The +voice that came back fairly bristled with virtue and approval. +</P> + +<P> +"You filled his head with notions about service, didn't you, Whitaker?" +demanded Kenny indignantly. "What's your idea of service anyway that +now when Brian's got a chance to be of absolute service to a kid who +needs him, you kick up your hind-heels and howl your head off. Sort of +a boomerang, isn't it? You came up to my studio, old man, and unloaded +some facts. Let me unload one right now. I'm with Brian. I think +he's a brick and a jewel for sense. And you can go to thunder!" +</P> + +<P> +And Kenny, with a gasping gurgle in his receiver ear, smiled sweetly +into the telephone and hung up with Whitaker roaring his name. He was +amazed, delighted and triumphant, uppermost in his mind the thought of +Joan's peace of mind. No further need to worry over Donald. +</P> + +<P> +He kissed his finger-tips to Ann who appeared in the doorway. +</P> + +<P> +"Your ward," she said, "is toasting her toes by the sitting-room fire. +Kenny, she's a dear!" +</P> + +<P> +"As sweet," said Kenny proudly, "as an Irish smile!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap29"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXIX +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE STUDIO AGAIN +</H2> + +<P> +The night-watchman at the Holbein Club greeted the prodigal with a +broad smile of welcome. +</P> + +<P> +"Wonder, I says, to the new bell-hop, I do wonder where Mr. O'Neill's +got to. Everybody's been wonderin'. Mr. Rittenhouse most of all," he +added, stopping the elevator at Kenny's floor. "I heard him grumblin' +just last night in the elevator to Mr. Fahr. Mr. Fahr seemed to feel +that you were off with the heathen somewhere paintin' 'em all up into +pictures." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny found the studio in a soulless state of order and blamed it +instantly upon Garry. Fifteen minutes later, gorgeous in his frayed +oriental bathrobe and his Persian slippers, he banged on the wall and +evoked a muffled shout of greeting. As usual Garry might or might not +be in bed. Kenny's time values had not altered. +</P> + +<P> +Garry came at once in bathrobe and slippers. +</P> + +<P> +"Lord, Kenny," he exclaimed warmly, "I'm glad you're back and sane. +But I'm mad as a wet hen!" +</P> + +<P> +"At me? My dear Garry!" +</P> + +<P> +"You didn't write, you know, after you said you would. You never +do—" +</P> + +<P> +"I telegraphed instead." +</P> + +<P> +"Your telegram," reminded Garry, "said 'O.K. Kenny.' And I'm chuck +full of curiosity and questions. Sit down. Every chair in the +studio's on a furlough." +</P> + +<P> +"So I see." +</P> + +<P> +"You left the studio in something of a mess. Sid tried to straighten +it out and nearly had brain fever. Got to babbling and wringing his +hands and we sent for Haggerty. She went on an order bust for two +days." +</P> + +<P> +"The old shrew! I suppose everything in the place is under something." +</P> + +<P> +He found cigarettes and a chair and settled back with an air of lazy +comfort. +</P> + +<P> +Garry made no attempt to disguise his impatience. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," he said, "you're the limit. If I'd ever telephoned into your +slumber and asked you to find four thousand ragged dollars and mail +them to me, and if I'd said I'd accidentally acquired a ward and was +bringing her back with me, you wouldn't sit there in patience and wait +for facts. Mind, old dear, I want the truth. It's likely to be a lot +queerer than anything you can make up." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny sighed—and told the truth. Garry listened in amazement. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," he said slowly, "you've roamed off before and gotten yourself +into some extraordinary messes and I honestly thought that summer in +China had taught you a lesson. But this tale of Adam Craig and the +miser money is the king-pin of them all. You've absolutely got to +house-clean that instinct for melodrama out of existence. It's a +peril; and furthermore expensive." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't rub it in," said Kenny. "Whatever you can think to say, I've +already told myself. Though," he added pensively, "it's queer, Garry. +Wherever I go, things begin to thicken up before I've had a chance to +be at fault in any way. And I'm so darned sick of anticlimaxes." +</P> + +<P> +"You keep yourself keyed up to such a pitch that anything normal's got +to be an anticlimax! Think of you digging dots when you knew there +wasn't any money! Think of you with a ward! Oh, my Lord!" finished +Garry with a gasp. "It's incredible. It—it really is." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny flushed and gnawed nervously at his lips. Could he tell Garry of +Samhain? +</P> + +<P> +"And think of you," said Garry, his voice changing, "salting the old +man's fireplace with your own money so that his niece could come down +here and study French and music! You wonderful, soft-hearted Irish +lunatic! I love you for it!" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny rose at once and began to bluster around the studio, damning +Haggerty. There was something disturbingly warm and honest in Garry's +eyes. Then with a sudden gesture of impatience he came back and his +troubled glance begged for understanding. +</P> + +<P> +"Garry," he blurted, "there's one thing that probably we shan't be +telling people for a year at least. And that is—that I love this girl +better than my life and I'm going to marry her." +</P> + +<P> +He waited with a fierce hurt challenge in his eyes for irreverence and +incredulity and even perhaps good-natured jeers, but Garry, sensing +something big and unfamiliar, held out his hand. Kenny wrung it in +passionate relief. +</P> + +<P> +"What's my balance?" he demanded. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sorry I forgot that, Kenny. It's eight hundred and forty odd +dollars." +</P> + +<P> +"As usual," bristled Kenny, "they're lying." +</P> + +<P> +Garry refused to discuss the point. +</P> + +<P> +"And Brian, another Irish lunatic!" he marveled, shaking his head. +"Did Max write you the name of the French woman?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. 'Twas a Madame Morny. I've written her. Garry, darlin', where +on earth did you find that inspired collection of green rags?" +</P> + +<P> +"The bank managed somehow." +</P> + +<P> +"Weren't they curious?" +</P> + +<P> +"They were until I said the commission came from you. After that +nobody asked anything." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny went with him to the door, dreading the emptiness of the studio. +He was a little homesick for the farm. +</P> + +<P> +The order was irresistibly reminiscent of Brian, of the notebook and +the struggle that had driven him forth, a penitent, upon the road. The +fern was dead, like the first fever of his penance. The thought upset +him. Then something drew him to the door of Brian's room and he peered +in and closed it with a bang. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap30"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXX +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +PLAYTIME +</H2> + +<P> +December found Joan with dark, happy eyes intent upon the rose-colored +phantasmagoria of existence, her worriment past. Donald was safe with +Brian. It hurt her a little that he did not write. +</P> + +<P> +"I think, girleen," said Kenny, intuitional as always, "that he fears +to write, thinking of course you are still at the farm and would try to +tempt him back. And I haven't a doubt he's set his teeth and vowed not +to come to you until he's made good." As indeed he had. +</P> + +<P> +After that, save for a wistful moment now and then, she seemed content, +trusting Brian. +</P> + +<P> +Unhappiness lay behind her like a forgotten shadow. After the +loneliness and the dreams and the hills, her playtime too had come as +Donald's had come to him in Brian's world of spring; and life was +whirling around her, brilliant, breathless, kaleidoscopic and +altogether beautiful, a fantastic fairyland that kept her dazzled and +delighted. +</P> + +<P> +It had no shadows for her wondering eyes; the shadows lay behind her. +New York with its shops where with Ann she had gasped and laughed and +colored and stared into mirrors, its lights, its crowds, its theaters, +its opera where Max Kreiling sang and left her with a sob in her heart, +its amazing Bohemia of success of which Kenny was a part, seemed to her +but a never-ending sparkle of romance and kindness. She spent +unwearied hours in Ann's studio, masquerading in a sculptor's smock and +staring at clay and marble with eyes of unbelief. And she tarried for +amazed intervals in the studio upstairs where Margot Gilberte plied +Cellini's art, embedding pennyweights of metal in hot pitch that, +cooling, held it like a dark and shapeless hand while Margot sculptured +elfin leaves and scrolls upon it. Curious things came to the jeweler's +desk where Margot worked; jewels cut and uncut, soft-colored +sea-pebbles, natural lumps of greenish copper, silver and gold and +brass (to Margot's eye there were no baser metals) malachite and coral +and New Zealand jade. Joan handled them all with gasps of reverence. +</P> + +<P> +"And this, Margot? How green it is!" +</P> + +<P> +"A peridot for a dewdrop in a leaf of gold. And there, Question-mark, +are the pink tourmalines I propose to use for rosebuds in this necklace +of silver leaves." +</P> + +<P> +"And blue sapphires!" +</P> + +<P> +"They are for pools of sea-water in some golden seaweed and the pearls +are for buds in some cherry leaves." +</P> + +<P> +"What an odd frail little tool, Margot!" +</P> + +<P> +"I made it myself," said Margot. "And now, cherie, if you don't run +along to Madame Morny, Kenny will scold me." +</P> + +<P> +She delighted Madame Morny with her willingness to work. She delighted +Kenny with her willingness to play. Nothing tired her. Together they +roamed to the quaint little restaurants of Bohemia; the Italian table +d'hotes where Kenny was inclined to twinkle at the youthful art +students who affected pretentious ties, the quiet old German restaurant +that once had been a church, Chinatown where you ate unskillfully with +chopsticks upon a table of onyx, and the Turkish restaurant where +everything, Sid said, was lamb. +</P> + +<P> +"Garry found it," he insisted. "I didn't. I'm glad I didn't, though a +lot of the Salmagundi men go over there and like it. The art students +too. Forty cents. Proprietor's the real thing—he wears a fizz." +</P> + +<P> +"Fuzz, darlin'," corrected Kenny gently. +</P> + +<P> +"Fez!" sputtered Sid in disgust. "Fez, of course. Everything's got +lamb in it, even the pastry and the coffee. I swear it has! I—I hate +lamb. Didn't know the Turks went in for it so much, did you, Kenny? +Jan computed a table of lamb percentages on the menu and I felt like +bleating. 'Pon my word I did. Menu's got a glossary and needs it. +Pilaf—that's rice. Lamb's something else. No, pilaf's lamb, and rice +is something else. Oh, hanged if I know. Lamb's lamb no matter how +you spell it." +</P> + +<P> +"Come along with us," suggested Kenny. His kindliness of late had +startled more than one, accustomed to his irresponsible caprices. +</P> + +<P> +"Please do!" said Joan; and Sid, delighted, and amazed as always, +repudiated at once his hatred of lamb. It was nourishing, he recalled +at once with a brazen air of sincerity, and the Turks disguise it in +amazingly enticing ways. +</P> + +<P> +Joan laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"Sid," she said, "you're a dear, blessed fibber and we want you with +us." +</P> + +<P> +Her poise and adaptability were startling. Her simplicity won them +all. To the girls who lived in Ann's studio building she seemed all +laughter and happiness and breathless eagerness to please. +</P> + +<P> +"She's just herself," said Peggy Jarvis, who lived with Ann and smiled +over the footlights each night in comedy that was comedy and to crowds +that were crowds, "She doesn't know that half the world is posing." +</P> + +<P> +Joan spent an afternoon in Peggy's dressing room during a matinee and +came home with moist, excited eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Think, Peggy, think!" she exclaimed. "Once long ago that was my +mother's life." +</P> + +<P> +Peggy kissed her and rummaged for cigarettes. Joan's eyes rested upon +her pretty face with troubled indulgence. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Peggy," she pouted. "Why do you smoke?" +</P> + +<P> +"Because," said Peggy honestly, "I like it. Does it shock you, dear?" +</P> + +<P> +"It did at first," admitted Joan. "And even now I shouldn't care to +smoke myself. But then when that old painter Kenny likes so came here +with his wife, and her hair was so white and her face so kind, and she +smoked like a chimney—" +</P> + +<P> +"Joan!" +</P> + +<P> +"She did," insisted Joan. "Well, then, Peggy, I just stayed awake +that night and thought it all out. Peggy, do all painters' wives +smoke? I mean—" she flushed and stammered. +</P> + +<P> +Peggy's eyes were demure and roguish. +</P> + +<P> +"You ridiculous child!" she said. "Who's the painter?" +</P> + +<P> +Joan turned scarlet and bit her lip. +</P> + +<P> +"And what, sweetheart," begged Peggy with ready tact, "did you think +out?" +</P> + +<P> +"If you smoke," said Joan, "because you really want to, Peggy, it's all +right. But if a girl smokes just to—to appear startling and make men +look at her, then it's all wrong!" +</P> + +<P> +Peggy kissed her. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan, dear," she said, "you've the most amazing intelligence in that +small head that I ever met. Hum. If I'm not mistaken that's Kenny at +the door. He never stops ringing until he's sure you know he's there." +</P> + +<P> +Joan raced away to change her dress. +</P> + +<P> +With excitement in her cheeks and eyes she was extraordinarily lovely. +Kenny with difficulty kept his feet firmly upon the floor a yard away +from her. Peggy laughed up at him, her piquant face impudent and +understanding. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," she said under her breath, "I suppose you know you're in love +with your ward?" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny had had his flare with Peggy; and he had come out of it with +wounded vanity, somewhat baffled at Peggy's professed belief in the +transiency of feminine love. After all, Peggy said pensively, she knew +too many charming men to promise an indeterminate interval of +concentration upon one. Kenny deemed such a viewpoint heretical and +masculine; women were meant to be faithful. +</P> + +<P> +Now he stared at the girl's saucy face with a startled flush. +</P> + +<P> +"Peggy!" he said, "you little wretch!" +</P> + +<P> +It was growing harder day by day to keep his love a secret. +</P> + +<P> +Joan's first dance at the Holbein Club brought a train of complications. +</P> + +<P> +Ann, interpretative, dressed her in snow-white tulle with here and +there a glint of silver. The soft full skirt floated out above her +silver slippers like a cloud, but little whiter than her throat and +arms. Peggy and Ann never told the tale of her rebellion or her +frantic wail: +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Peggy, Peggy! I can't go. They forgot the sleeves." +</P> + +<P> +She came down the stairway like a flower, but her eyes were wistful and +troubled. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, should I?" +</P> + +<P> +"Should you what, dear?" +</P> + +<P> +"Dance when—when Uncle—" +</P> + +<P> +"If your heart is glad and your feet want to dance, mavourneen," said +Kenny gently, "then no conventional pretense of mourning shall stop +them. You were kind and merciful while he lived. Even he, dear, would +not ask more." +</P> + +<P> +"If my Victrola arm has been winding in vain while you two practiced +half the floor off the studio," put in Ann, "I shall be offended. I +dreamed last night that I was an organ-grinder teaching Sid to dance." +</P> + +<P> +Joan laughed and kissed her. +</P> + +<P> +The Holbein Club accepted her with a hum of delight. +</P> + +<P> +"She <I>is</I> beautiful!" said Jan. +</P> + +<P> +"Beautiful, of course," said Somebody. "Any girl in Kenny's life would +be beautiful or she wouldn't be there." +</P> + +<P> +As for Kenny, his path was pleasant, as it always was. If a waving arm +was not bidding for his attention, it was a laughing hail or a hearty +hand upon his shoulder. His bright dark face sparkled with the zest of +popularity. +</P> + +<P> +Joan thought him as care-free as a boy. +</P> + +<P> +"We dance in the club gallery," he told her, smiling at the look of +wonder in her eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"And the paintings and sculpture?" +</P> + +<P> +"A members' exhibition. The sculptured lion staring from his pedestal +at us is Jan's. Look at the superb muscle play of his flank! The +midsummer woods—see, how well the lad has painted <I>air</I>!—is Garry's. +And my pine picture's over there." +</P> + +<P> +"And Sid?" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny danced her the length of the gallery. A white line of sculpture +gleamed on either side behind a rail of brass. +</P> + +<P> +"Down here," he said. "I saved it for the last. The beggar's +painted—me!" +</P> + +<P> +It was Kenny in a painter's smock intent upon a palette, vividly, +whimsically, delightfully Kenny. There was tenderness and sympathy in +Sid's portrayal. +</P> + +<P> +Joan clung to his hand in delight. +</P> + +<P> +And was it all Bohemia, she asked. +</P> + +<P> +Ah! admitted Kenny twinkling, there you had him. Bohemia, he fancied, +was always wherever you yourself were not. The men and women who did +big things were too busy for picturesque posing. Bohemia, as legend +read it, had to do with rags and dreams and ambition without effort, a +shabby, down-at-heel pretension that glittered without gratifying. The +Bohemians of to-day were the failures of to-morrow. And the crowd who +lived at the Holbein Club lived, loved, worked and died much in the +fashion of less gifted folk. If there was a Bohemia of success, +however, it danced here to-night. +</P> + +<P> +But, girleen, the music was urging! And who could resist the sweet +wild delirium of a violin's call? Certainly not an Irishman intent +upon a moonbeam imprisoned in a girl's bright hair. But one sound +sweeter! +</P> + +<P> +"And that?" asked Joan as they glided away again among the dancers. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny threw back his head and his eyes laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"A robin singing in a blackthorn!" +</P> + +<P> +Joan smiled at the boyish sparkle of his face. He was so charmingly, +so irresponsibly young and gay. +</P> + +<P> +His Bohemia of success she found a startling triumph. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan's horribly disturbed," Ann telephoned in the morning. "As her +guardian you'll have to settle a number of infatuated young men. The +telephone's been ringing all morning. I think it's a case of 'The line +forms on the right, gentlemen, on the right!'" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny faced the problem with his fingers in his hair. +</P> + +<P> +"Who's bothering her?" he demanded bluntly. +</P> + +<P> +"The Art Students' League," said Ann demurely, "the Federation of Arts, +National Society of Portrait Painters, Architectural League, Watercolor +Society, Authors' League and the Prince who thinks he's a playwright." +</P> + +<P> +"He's a piece of cheese!" said Kenny in intense disgust. "What did +Joan think of him?" +</P> + +<P> +"She said she didn't like him nearly so well as the art student who +plays a banjo in the orchestra because he needs the money. Peggy knows +him." +</P> + +<P> +"That was wholesome," admitted Kenny. "But I don't think much of him +either. He has absolutely no right when he's playing a banjo +commercially to recognize the girls on the floor. I'll be over to +lunch." +</P> + +<P> +It was a nerve-racking hour for Ann. Kenny, pensive, ate but little. +He seemed very sorry for himself and eyed Joan with melancholy +tenderness. When at last the dreadful subject was broached, Ann +stoutly defended everybody. +</P> + +<P> +Frantic, Kenny pushed back his plate and began to stride around. +</P> + +<P> +"Sit down," said Ann. "You're making everybody nervous. Of course you +don't blame Joan. And of course you can't blame—" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not blaming anybody," sputtered Kenny. "That club is a hot-bed of +shallow-minded, impressionable, fickle-minded boobs. I can see plainly +that we'll have to be married to-day. To-morrow at the latest." +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, please!" said Joan and the conflict began. +</P> + +<P> +Finding the year still strongly in her mind, he surrendered with a +sigh, hurt and unhappy, remembering his vow that Joan's happiness +should be the religion of his love. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you dear foolish people!" cried Ann in despair. "Why don't you +announce your engagement in the Times and discourage the line once and +for all?" +</P> + +<P> +"Of course!" said Kenny and looked at Joan. +</P> + +<P> +"I shouldn't mind at all," said Joan, coloring. +</P> + +<P> +Whereat Kenny called up the Times office, and the Holbein Club went mad +with delight. Jan, without meaning to, got very drunk and shocked +himself, and Margot made the ring. She did not know why Kenny wanted +the golden circlet barred crosswise like a frail ladder. Nor why he +insisted upon a cluster of wistaria set in amethysts. +</P> + +<P> +Even then misgivings sent him to Ann in a panic of conscience. +</P> + +<P> +"Am I ungenerous?" he demanded. "Perhaps Joan should have had a year +of utter freedom. You know what I mean, Ann. To come and go as she +pleases and with whom she pleases. She's so young." He flushed. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan wouldn't have it different," said Ann, touched by the boyish +wistfulness of his eyes. "She clings to you. And she's as shy and +unspoiled as the day you brought her here. This flurry of admiration +to her means nothing at all. She's unhappy with strangers." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny knew it was true and marveled. +</P> + +<P> +"I would like to be generous," he admitted with an effort. "But I +can't. It's the simple truth, Ann, I can't. Even the thought of her +liking other men—bothers me." +</P> + +<P> +December was fated to hold for him another startling anticlimax. It +came one snowy morning when he had slept even later than usual, +dreaming of an iridescent balloon that climbed higher and higher with +Joan peeping radiantly over the edge until at the peal of the telephone +bell it disappeared entirely. +</P> + +<P> +Joan's voice instantly dispelled his irritation. +</P> + +<P> +"Mavourneen!" he exclaimed. "Up already! And you danced half the +night." +</P> + +<P> +"It's eleven o'clock," said Joan. "Besides, I couldn't sleep. I've +been thinking. Remember, Kenny, when you read the will and I said that +Donald should have the farm?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny, somewhat mystified. "I remember." +</P> + +<P> +"If he's going to study and work his way through college, I don't think +he'd want it, do you?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, dear, I doubt if he would. What's in your mind, girleen?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I'm so glad you think so too! Kenny—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes?" +</P> + +<P> +"Do you know Jan's cousin, the pretty girl who's a model? I know that +doesn't sound at all as if it had anything to do with the farm but it +has. Jan's cousin said—I hardly know how to tell you, Kenny. I don't +think I like telephones. If I could see your face—" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm wearing my guardian's face!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh!" +</P> + +<P> +"And evidently it isn't popular." +</P> + +<P> +"I like you—different. Jan's cousin said that she could get me a +great deal of work if I wanted it—posing for head and shoulders—" +</P> + +<P> +"Joan!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, dear!" wailed Joan. "That was a guardian's voice. Please wait, +Kenny." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm waiting." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going to keep the farm and give Don the rest of the four thousand +dollars. … Did you say anything, Kenny?" +</P> + +<P> +"No. … No, I was just clearing my throat." +</P> + +<P> +"I've only spent a little of it yet. From now on I want to earn my +living like Peggy and Ann and Margot and all the others. I'll still +have plenty of time to study and practice. I wonder I didn't think of +it before. It was selfish when I had the farm and Don not even +mentioned in the will. I suppose I didn't think of it because here +things seem to happen so—so fast. I'm always in a whirl." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny sincerely. "Things do happen fast." +</P> + +<P> +She waited his approval and was the first to speak, a wondering hint of +reproach in her voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, please say something!" +</P> + +<P> +"To be truthful, dear," said Kenny in a queer voice, "you've taken my +breath away. I'm thinking—just thinking." +</P> + +<P> +"It's fair—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, dear, it's fair enough." +</P> + +<P> +"You don't disapprove? Oh, I hope you won't. It will make me so happy +to help Don through college." +</P> + +<P> +"It will make you happy!" said Kenny and sighed. +</P> + +<P> +"Ann had so many, many things to say against it. She said she was +trying to see it all with your eyes—as a guardian. But I told her +you're hardly ever—a guardian. And your Bohemia is democratic, isn't +it? And painters are respectable and worthy men and nothing like so +flighty as you read. You've said so yourself. And I like to work. +And there are so many charming girls who are models and Jan's cousin is +a Vassar girl—" In her eagerness to convince him she lost her +breath. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll come for you at Madame Morny's at four," Kenny told her, sick at +heart. "And then, dear, I'll tell you exactly what I think." +</P> + +<P> +And when he had rung off, he sat down weakly and laughed, his laugh +unmusical and sad. The dreadful, dreadful irony of it! How could he +deny her? How <I>could</I> he? He who had surrounded her with women +friends, talented and independent, who believed in the gospel of work! +He liked her generosity. He liked her willingness to work. He blessed +the dear, selfless instincts of her heart, his eyes moist and tender. +And yet … and yet! Kenny laughed again. He had hidden his own +money in the fireplace to send through college a runaway youth he had +never seen! +</P> + +<P> +On the way home from Madame Morny's in a taxi, for the snow had become +a blizzard, he made one final desperate effort to break her resolution. +It was futile. Again she was passionately eager to please him. Again +he found it a problem that involved her happiness and peace of mind. +Again, with his heart sore, be kissed her and surrendered to her wishes +with a sigh. +</P> + +<P> +But he found the work for her himself with the older painters. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, I'm so glad you asked me to bring mother's trunks with me," +Joan told him. "Aranyi has asked me to pose in the gold brocade." +</P> + +<P> +Something sharp stabbed at Kenny's heart. +</P> + +<P> +"I meant them," he said with a sigh, "for costume dances, but Aranyi +paints the texture of things with marvelous skill." +</P> + +<P> +By the end of the month Joan's work day was full and he was seeing her +less than he had, save at night. Garry begged her to pose for him, +carried his case to Kenny and met with blank refusal. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sorry, old man," Kenny finished inexorably, "but nothing under +forty need apply. You, my son, are particularly flighty and fickle. +Just now you happen to be raving about Peggy, but every pretty face, +I've noticed, makes you forget the one before." +</P> + +<P> +And Garry, who had been trying to marry Peggy for a year and was by no +means as uncertain and mercurial in his affections as Kenny would have +him believe, stared with eyes intelligent and reminiscent. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," he said softly, "I'll be jiggered. That's the limit!" +</P> + +<P> +"Be jiggered!" Kenny told him shortly. "And have done with it." +</P> + +<P> +Garry raised his eyebrows and departed. And Kenny, reverting to one of +his old frantic minutes, walked the floor. He had accepted portrait +commissions that would keep him busy for months; for the ragged money +he had hidden in the fireplace had made his need of work imperative. +Otherwise he himself could have painted Joan in the gold brocade and in +all the others. +</P> + +<P> +What had the money in the fireplace done for him? It had doomed him to +work apart while other men painted the golden shadows in her hair. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap31"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXI +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +FATE STABS +</H2> + +<P> +March came to Kenny and found his studio with its haunting odor of +coffee and cigarettes, his brushes, his head and his heart, furiously +at work. He was giving himself up to love and labor with a Celtic +intensity that Garry found appalling. He planned endlessly to one +purpose: Joan's happiness, Joan's pleasure, Joan's future with him. +The memory of the ragged money laid aside for Don he dismissed with a +wry smile, gritting his teeth. What mattered in the face of the +splendid fact that he was so joyously, so recklessly, so absurdly happy? +</P> + +<P> +His life, with its deadly singleness of purpose, should have been +simple. It attained a complexity at times at which he marveled. An +inclination to blurt out the truth with panicky abruptness when he +wanted to lie, plunged him into more than one predicament. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm always explaining to somebody," he complained bitterly to Garry, +"why I tell the truth—" +</P> + +<P> +"You told Kenneth his dancing urchin was rotten—" +</P> + +<P> +"It was," insisted Kenny. "Garry, why is truth always unpleasant? Why +can't it be as romantic and agreeable as the things you want to say?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why," countered Garry, "isn't peace as romantic as war? Ask somebody +who knows. I don't." +</P> + +<P> +He stared curiously at Kenny and shook his head. A heavy hand with the +truth, that Irishman; and about as understandable in these splendid, +tender days of his idiocy and bliss, as March wind, comets or +star-dust. His passion for truth was literally a passion, relentless +and exact. He worked harder. His steadiness, as Jan said, was grim +and conscious and a thing of terror to anything in his path. He +wrestled with his check book and managed somehow to keep his studio in +order. And he was kinder. Fahr, in particular, remarked it; and Fahr, +worshipping Kenny, had sputtered and endured the brunt of many tempests. +</P> + +<P> +"But, Garry," he confided, round-eyed and apprehensive, "honest Injun, +I don't think he ought to bottle up his temper that way. Sometimes I +can almost see him swelling up and then when he speaks and I'm waiting +for an Irish roar, his voice is so quiet and pleasant that I feel +queer. I—I swear I do. Damn it all, I'm liking him more every day." +</P> + +<P> +"So am I," said Garry honestly. "But—" +</P> + +<P> +"But what?" +</P> + +<P> +"I wish he'd be less turbulently happy." +</P> + +<P> +"Let him," said Sid sagely, "Darn few can." +</P> + +<P> +"A pendulum," reminded Garry, "swings both ways. And he's an +extremist. If he'd just plant his two feet solidly on the ground and +get his head out of the clouds. He's got to do it sometime." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, hell," said Sid. "Give him time. If that girl was going to marry +me I'd climb up a few air-steps myself and stick my head into any old +cloud." +</P> + +<P> +"Good old Sid!" said Garry affectionately. "You'd be sure to hit your +head on a star and then you'd be amazed and—" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you go to thunder!" blustered Sid. +</P> + +<P> +By now Kenny's Bohemia was rushing through its yearly cycle of costume +dances. Motley groups emerged at times from Ann's castle and departed +in taxis. +</P> + +<P> +"And Gawd knows where," said Mrs. Ryan from the third floor front of +the tenement that faced the street. "They're a wild bunch and my +Cassie'll never travel wid 'em. Last week the architeks rigged up +somethin' fierce and danced in 'the streets of Paris,' wid bullyvard +cafes, they called 'em, built into the dance hall, an actress singin' +the Marseillaise in a flag, and a Roosian hussy dancin' in boots. And +Mr. O'Neill, God save him for a pleasant gentleman though a bit wild in +the eye, took my Dinny up to be a gamin. Gay-min. I thought myself he +said a 'gay mon' and Dinny's a bit young; but I found he meant him to +peddle cigarettes about among the tables." +</P> + +<P> +In the quaint old gowns that were delighting the older painters, Joan +glided through the shifting blare and color unaware of the eyes that +watched and liked her. Not so Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +He knew who stared and smiled and he knew who stared too long. He was +inordinately proud of her. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, please!" begged Garry. "Let me paint her. I'm going to +California in April and I won't have another chance. I won't be back +until fall." +</P> + +<P> +"My son—" began Kenny wearily. Then he smiled. "Oh, go ahead, +Garry, darlin'. I'll not be mindin' a bit." +</P> + +<P> +And Garry curiously enough caught the tantalizing charm of her +sweetness that had baffled many an older and wiser man. +</P> + +<P> +Shadows had no part in the wonder of Kenny's winter, but an inclination +to forget his quarrel with Brian and his flare of penance, violent and +incomplete—for he had never reached the longed-for grail of his son's +forgiveness—troubled him vaguely. In spasmodic moments of remorse he +read his notebook, tremendously buoyed up by an augmenting +consciousness of evolution. Faint inner voices warned him at times not +to misinterpret his exultant happiness in terms of infallibility and +when they called to him he had his moments of humility and panic. +</P> + +<P> +In one of them he tried to coax the fern back to life; once with an +alarming air of energy and importance, he departed in a taxi and bought +a great many things for Brian's room; once when miraculously the bank +and he agreed for a brief period upon his balance, he succumbed to a +mathematical fit of uplift and conscience, dashed off a bewildering +number of checks and left the overladen slate of his credit unmarked by +even an I.O.U. His brilliant air of calm and satisfaction thereafter +was distinctly noticeable. +</P> + +<P> +On the whole he was much too happy to be lonely or introspective. +Brian's absence and his splendid, sacrificial freak of service, had +been the price of Joan's content and the welfare of her brother. +</P> + +<P> +Whitaker, journalism and God's green world of spring he had chosen +jealously to resent. The thought of Donald West and a dim conviction +of quarry hardships filled him with a new sense of solidarity in Brian +and a passionate respect. The current of his affection for his son was +subtly altering. It was no longer careless and frenzied and +sentimental. Nor was it selfish. Something big and abiding had sprung +up out of the ashes of his penance. +</P> + +<P> +By the end of March, with a record-breaking period of work behind him +and a furore of notoriety over his striking portrait of a famous beauty +compelling him to a radiant admission of success, Kenny found himself +lulled into the self-respecting quietude he craved. +</P> + +<P> +Days back self-confidence had come to him in Hannah's kitchen and Adam +Craig, in the course of time, had crushed it out with a keen and +understanding leer. Later it had returned with Adam's death, and the +weary voice of Doctor Cole had shattered it. +</P> + +<P> +So now on a March night of wind and hail—and this time by telephone +after much tedious trouble with the wire, Doctor Cole's voice, tired, +sorrowful and kind, came stabbing intrusively into his full-blown +equanimity with a message of terror. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"This is Doctor Cole of Briston, Pennsylvania." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny stiffened. He had never quite forgiven the doctor for that +bleak, anticlimacteric morning when he had driven dazedly away with +Nellie. Adjectives, like a man's laughter, were to him an irrefutable +test. With one you could definitely prefigure a man's degree of +refinement; with the other the aesthetic color of his soul. And gray +was no color for any mortal's soul. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes?" +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill," came the kind, tired voice, "I'm sorry, sorrier than I +can tell. I've bad news for you. There has been an accident, a quarry +explosion, and your son is badly injured." +</P> + +<P> +A hot quiver swept through Kenny's body, ended at his face in a +stinging rush of blood and left him icy cold. +</P> + +<P> +"Brian!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. … Are you there, Mr. O'Neill?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. … Yes, I am here. Doctor… How—badly?" +</P> + +<P> +"He is—well, conscious. I can hardly say more," owned the doctor. +"Thank God he's young and strong. There are no developed symptoms of +fracture yet but his skull—" +</P> + +<P> +"Fracture! Skull!" +</P> + +<P> +"There's a chance. Contusion now merely and a swollen condition. The +soft parts are unbroken and that makes an accurate diagnosis difficult, +but I must warn you that there is an immediate risk to his life from +shock and perhaps compression—" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, my God!" said Kenny, his eyes wet. +</P> + +<P> +"You see, Mr. O'Neill," said the doctor sadly, "there may be depressed +fragments of bone or effused blood. We are watching closely. But I +think you had better come to him at once. There is a possibility—" +</P> + +<P> +But there were some things that even the little doctor could not say. +</P> + +<P> +"Still there, Mr. O'Neill?" he asked a little later. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. Where is Brian now?" +</P> + +<P> +"In a quarry shack on what we call up here the Finlake mountain." +</P> + +<P> +"Finlake mountain!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, barely eighteen miles across the valley from the farm. They +couldn't find a doctor. Carson is nearer but he was out. Has a widely +scattered farm practice like my own and Don, frantic with terror, +telephoned to me. We've done everything possible for him, Mr. O'Neill, +but his pulse is pretty feeble and it's difficult to rouse him. +Sensibility of course is blunted. Bound to be—" +</P> + +<P> +"I will be there," said Kenny, "as soon—as soon as it is possible. +There are but three north-bound trains at Briston?" +</P> + +<P> +"Morning—eight-ten. Noon, one-twenty-nine and night, seven-fifteen. +But don't get off at Briston, Mr. O'Neill. Finlake, fifteen miles on, +is nearer—" +</P> + +<P> +"I can not possibly make the morning train. The changes make the trip +long. Twelve hours… God!" +</P> + +<P> +"I myself will meet you at Finlake. It's three miles farther to the +quarry. If you are not on the noon train I will meet the night—" +</P> + +<P> +"I—I cannot thank you, Doctor Cole." Kenny hung up, unaware that the +doctor was adding further detail. +</P> + +<P> +Almost at once he unhooked the receiver and summoned the club central. +Afterward Pietro, who took his turn at the switchboard when the day +operator departed, spoke of the quiet curtness of his voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Pietro? Mr. O'Neill speaking. I want you, at once, to look up the +earliest connecting train with Finlake, Pennsylvania, any road." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir," began Pietro. "What—" but the receiver had clicked into +place. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny stared with a shudder at the withered fern, his face as white as +chalk. +</P> + +<P> +A tearing hand seemed clinging to his brain. +</P> + +<P> +In the face of this grief-stricken terror that quaked and burned in his +soul, etching unforgettable scars, the recollection of his unsteady +spurts of penance rose to mock him with their artificiality. His +remorse had been but a pale, theatric spree! And now in this forgetful +winter of his love, Fate had decoyed him into optimistic quietude only +to thrust savagely and deep. Remorse in the raw! Was it +punishment—punishment for the farcical penitent on the highway who had +smiled into a woman's soft eyes, forgetting— +</P> + +<P> +He answered Pietro's ring with a throbbing sense of confusion in his +forehead. +</P> + +<P> +The best connecting train and the earliest left the Pennsylvania +Terminal at eleven. It was now but five. How could he wait? +</P> + +<P> +"Pietro," he said, "give me now Doctor Barrington's office. And tell +the operator to put me through to his private wire. It's urgent. I do +not want the nurse in the anteroom. When you ring for me I want Dr. +Barrington ready at the other end and I want you yourself, Pietro, to +be sure he's there." +</P> + +<P> +Pietro, obeyed, amazed and loyal. +</P> + +<P> +"Frank?" Hot relief surged in Kenny's heart at the chance ease of +connection. "Kenny speaking." +</P> + +<P> +"Hello, Kenny. Nothing doing for me tonight, old man. I've got to +sleep." +</P> + +<P> +"I need you, Frank. Brian has been injured—badly—in a quarry +explosion." +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" +</P> + +<P> +"A chance of skull fracture," said Kenny steadily. "That means?" +</P> + +<P> +"A possible operation." +</P> + +<P> +"Can you leave with me at eleven o'clock to-night, Pennsylvania +Terminal? It will mean at least two days. He's at Finlake, +Pennsylvania, barely conscious—in the hands of a country doctor." +</P> + +<P> +The brilliant industrious young surgeon on the other end gasped and +whistled. He worked and played at heavy pressure. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, old man," he said, "nothing is impossible. Almost this is. +But it's you and Brian and that's enough, I'll meet you at quarter of +eleven. I'll go—thoroughly prepared. Do you feel like telling me +more?" +</P> + +<P> +"No." +</P> + +<P> +Two receivers clicked and Kenny, remembering that he could not +definitely locate Joan until six, felt the tautness of his control slip +dangerously. +</P> + +<P> +Eleven o'clock… How could he wait? He paced the floor, his mind +in its chaotic desperation, numb and inelastic. With his glance upon +the psaltery stick, a dim notion of accounting filtered curiously into +his mind and became obsessional. He went shaking to Brian's room and +put the key of the chiffonier in his pocket. Thank God the studio was +in order, save a chair or two. Brian … would … be … +pleased. Kenny stared at the withered fern and blinked. An augury? +God forbid! Then he flung the bill-file with its heterogeneous +collection of receipted I.O.U.'s into his bulging suit case and called +up Simon Meyer. +</P> + +<P> +"Simon," he said, "whatever I happen to have there—there's a shotgun, +I know, and a tennis racket and some fishing rods. … The rest for +the moment I can't recall… I want you to put all of it in a +bundle and send it here at once by special messenger. I have the +tickets here… I'll have them ready… Yes, I'll give him a +check… No, Simon, it won't be certified and he'll take it as it +is." +</P> + +<P> +He rang off and searched impatiently for pawn tickets. Simon's +messenger arrived and, strained and hostile, Kenny looked over the +contents of the bundle and wrote a check. +</P> + +<P> +Alone in the studio again, he flung up a window, his mind pushing ahead +to eleven o'clock. It seemed to him then that he could not possibly +wait and go on fighting for his self-control. A gust of sleet and hail +swept in with a pattering sound upon the floor. Its cold, stinging +contact with his face refreshed him. Kenny's brain cleared. He gulped +and gasped. Garry's car! He would not wait. +</P> + +<P> +"Frank," he telephoned after an unavailing interval of search for +Garry, "if you're willing we'll motor to Finlake in Garry's car. He'll +not be mindin'. I borrow it often. It's a bad night of course—but we +could start now. And we can make time on the road. It's barely two +hundred and fifty miles but the branch roads and changes make +unendurable delay. Shall I come for you in half an hour?" +</P> + +<P> +Again Barrington gasped. Again he whistled. "Make it three quarters," +he said, "and I think I can swing it." +</P> + +<P> +"You're a jewel for sense," Kenny told him, a passionate note of +gratitude in his voice. "I love you for it." +</P> + +<P> +He called Ann's studio at six. Joan had not returned. Ann took the +message, startled and sympathetic. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll wire her in the morning," he said and, hanging up, found that +Sidney Fahr had come in. He stood with his back against the door, his +round face blank with terror. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," he stammered, "I—I couldn't help hearing." The hot sympathy +he could not bring himself to utter, flamed desperately in his +face—almost to the ruin of Kenny's iron control. "I—I—I can do +something, can't I, Kenny?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, Sid, darlin', you can," said Kenny gently. "I'm taking Garry's +car. You can square me with him." +</P> + +<P> +"I—I'd even thrash him," mumbled Sid. +</P> + +<P> +"Then if you will I'd like you to get in touch with Westcott's wife and +tell her. I'm painting her portrait. She comes to-morrow at ten. +Sid, could you—could you clean off those two chairs?" +</P> + +<P> +Sid fell upon the nearest chair with fearful energy. At the table +Kenny hurriedly wrote a check. +</P> + +<P> +"And to-morrow I want you to deposit this to Brian's account. I'm +paying back—what I owe him." His mouth worked. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Sid!" he said, his face scarlet. +</P> + +<P> +"Now, now, now, Kenny," choked the little painter, winking and making +horrible faces at the littered chair, "don't you go to taking on. +Don't you do it. I'll call up Westcott. The old gladiator!" Somehow +he turned his sniffle to a snort. "What in thunder does she want to be +painted for anyway? She's got a nose like a triangle and the +composition of her face is all wrong." +</P> + +<P> +He blinked away the wetness on his lashes and wondered why, with every +other chair in the studio clear, Kenny should make a point of the +littered two. But he did not ask. Instead he entered upon a period of +fruitless and agitated trotting that lasted until Kenny came hack from +the garage with Garry's car. Then Sid packed him in, made one last +terrible face and bolted across the sidewalk for the door. +</P> + +<P> +Beyond the threshold he bolted for a telephone. +</P> + +<P> +"Jan," he said in shocked tones, "I want you to come down to the bar +and watch me. I—I've made up my mind to get drunk. I've got to." He +gulped. "I'll tell you why when you come down." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, fiddlesticks!" said Jan in a bored voice. "Go down to the grill +and eat something. And order me an English mutton chop and some +macaroni. I'll be down to dinner in five minutes." +</P> + +<P> +Sid aggrievedly obeyed. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap32"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +ON FINLAKE MOUNTAIN +</H2> + +<P> +Frank Barrington was to tell wryly in the grillroom of that night-ride +in the sleety wind through a polar world of ghostly, ice-hung trees. +Every flying rod of the sleazy road he knew was a peril. Even the +chains failed at times to grip. For eight hours the whir of the motor +and the tearing sound of the wind blared in his ears. For eight hours +he marveled at the silence and efficiency of the muffled driver beside +him who had apparently said all he intended to say upon the ferry. He +drove even faster than Frank had anticipated; and he drove with more +care, as if, defiantly, he feared the traps of an evil destiny to keep +him from his goal. At times he turned the swiveled searchlight upon a +road-sign and evoked a glistening play of silver on the trees. Once, +cursing, he changed a tire; once the car skidded dangerously in a +circle but to Frank his air of confidence was hypnotically convincing. +The final stretch of the journey became a dim and frosty blur of sleety +trees. +</P> + +<P> +At Finlake they began to climb. It was after three when the headlights +blazed upon the quarry. +</P> + +<P> +"I wired the doctor to wait," said Kenny. "He knows you're with me." +</P> + +<P> +"We leave the car here?" +</P> + +<P> +"We'll have to." He turned his searchlight on the cliff ahead. +"There's a path yonder." +</P> + +<P> +"And which shack, I wonder?" +</P> + +<P> +"There's a light in only one." +</P> + +<P> +Frank worked his stiffened face to relieve the feeling of cold +contorted rubber and followed Kenny up the path. Light glimmered dimly +through the jungle of frost upon the shack window. Fronded whitely by +the sleet, the panes loomed out of the dark like an incandescent series +of camera plates, bizarre and oriental. Frank shivered in the wind. +</P> + +<P> +Doctor Cole opened the door. Beyond in the rude room of the shack a +lamp flared smokily. +</P> + +<P> +"Brian?" said Kenny, his color gone. +</P> + +<P> +"Why," said Doctor Cole, "his pulse is a lot stronger, Mr. O'Neill, and +he complains now of pain—" +</P> + +<P> +"That means?" +</P> + +<P> +"It means, Kenny," said Frank Barrington, "that he has passed on +normally to the stage of reaction." But his keen, intelligent eyes +sought Doctor Cole with a furtive lifting of his brows and asked a +question. +</P> + +<P> +"Not a sign," said the little doctor gladly. "If anything he's a shade +too wide awake. And irritable. I've been setting his leg—" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny wheeled fiercely. +</P> + +<P> +"His leg!" he said. "His leg!" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sorry," stammered the doctor. "I—I quite forgot you didn't +know. … Broken between the knee and the hip," he added, turning to +Barrington. "I thought it merely paresis of the muscles until—" +</P> + +<P> +"Where is he?" put in Kenny sharply. "What room?" +</P> + +<P> +"There are only two rooms here," said Doctor Cole. "The stairway's +yonder." +</P> + +<P> +"Just a minute, Kenny." Frank checked him with a gesture. "I'm going +up first with Doctor Cole." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny groaned. +</P> + +<P> +"Sit down," said Frank kindly. "Where's some brandy? Thank you, +Doctor. Now, Kenny, listen, please. The first risk to Brian's life is +past. I mean death from shock. He's not drowsy and he's feeling pain. +His leg, in the face of other possibilities, is merely painful. But I +must look at his head—" +</P> + +<P> +"Frank, darlin'," said Kenny patiently, "I brought you up here to order +us all around. Go to it." +</P> + +<P> +He flung himself into a chair by the stove and drowsing after a while +in a reactive sweep of exhaustion, awakened with a terrified jerk. A +boy was banking the red-hot stove, his white face like and yet +unlike—Joan's. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill," he blurted with a boyish sob, "I—I did it. I was +driving the mule-cart up the path. Grogan told me not to but I—I +coaxed Tony. And when some earth crumbled ahead I jerked back—too +quickly—and scared the mule. I've got to tell somebody. I've got +to… And nobody listens—" +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me the rest," said Kenny wanly. "I've been wonderin'." +</P> + +<P> +"You see, Mr. O'Neill," he gulped, his eyes dark with grief and horror, +"the mule went back upon his haunches and drove the cart against a +boulder. It came out and crashed over the ledge and through the roof +of the dynamite shack—" +</P> + +<P> +"God!" In that vivid moment of his picturing, Kenny wondered why he +should think of bouillon cups crashing loudly on a roof. +</P> + +<P> +"And the other men were only scratched. A while ago—when Brian sent +for me—he thought of it through all his pain—" +</P> + +<P> +"He would," said Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I wanted to kill myself." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, nonsense," said Kenny kindly. +</P> + +<P> +Don flung his arm across his eyes and sobbed aloud. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," he choked, "if someone would only swear at me!" +</P> + +<P> +"I—I'd like to," said Kenny wryly, "for your sake and for my own, but +I'm all—in." +</P> + +<P> +He stared dully at the fire until the stair creaked and Frank came in +with Doctor Cole. +</P> + +<P> +"There isn't yet," Frank told him, "a single pressure symptom that I +consider alarming and Doctor Cole has done wonders with his leg. But +any emotional excitement is a danger. Three minutes, old man." He +followed Kenny up the stairway, watch in hand. +</P> + +<P> +The raftered room was dim and quiet. Kenny sickened at the faint odor +of antiseptics and softly closed the door. +</P> + +<P> +Brian opened his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, old dear," he said softly, "all these doctors are boobs. Frank +in particular is an awful ass. I told him so. He's loaded with fool +questions. One look at the Irish face of you is worth them all." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny, staring at the pallid face upon the pillow, blinked and smiled. +</P> + +<P> +"Frank told me you drove up here through the sleet," marveled Brian, +clinging to his hand. "A god-forsaken spot! I'm sorry—" +</P> + +<P> +"Three minutes!" warned Frank Barrington at the door. He knew Kenny +much too well to trust him further. +</P> + +<P> +And Kenny made a wry face and departed—with torture in his throat. +His voice had failed him utterly. +</P> + +<P> +A sleety dawn was graying at the windows. +</P> + +<P> +"Bed!" commanded Barrington briefly. +</P> + +<P> +"Doctor Cole has found another shack. He's waiting for you." +</P> + +<P> +"And you?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'll sleep to-morrow." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap33"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXIII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +IN THE SPAN OF A DAY +</H2> + +<P> +Kenny slept heavily until three that afternoon. Don wakened him. +</P> + +<P> +"My sister is here," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan!" +</P> + +<P> +Don stared a little at his quick, astonished warmth. +</P> + +<P> +"She wired Doctor Cole," he said, "and went to the farm. He brought +her back with him at noon." +</P> + +<P> +"The heart of her! I might have known. And Brian?" +</P> + +<P> +Brian, it seemed, was wakeful and nervous, his pain intense. The +pressure symptoms had not advanced. +</P> + +<P> +"Head's better," Don finished. "They've watched him like a hawk. But +they're letting up a bit now—" +</P> + +<P> +"And Dr. Barrington?" +</P> + +<P> +"Asleep downstairs." +</P> + +<P> +"Here?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. We found another cot. The car's in Grogan's shed." +</P> + +<P> +From the quarry below came the rumble of a blast. +</P> + +<P> +"Would you think—" he demanded, but the futility of his protest made +him dumb. +</P> + +<P> +"The world keeps on going," said Kenny. He dressed hurriedly. +</P> + +<P> +"Women," commented Don gloomily, following him down the stairs, "are +queer. My sister wept all over me. As if I hadn't had enough +shocks—" +</P> + +<P> +He caught his breath and stumbled. In the room below Barrington +stirred. +</P> + +<P> +"Quiet, Don!" warned Kenny, sensing the tears of heartbreak that +quivered on his lashes. He read the boy's hot heart with a renewed +shock of understanding; they were namelessly akin. +</P> + +<P> +Cold sunlight lay upon the cluster of shacks. The wind that bore the +rumble of the quarry upward was sharp and gusty and laden with stinging +particles of grit. A group of Italian women, chattering and +gesticulating in, apparently, unheeded unison, lingered near the shack +where Brian lay, agonizingly conscious of nerve and body, irritably +weary of the inevitable doctor at his bedside. Kenny charged them with +a look of indignation and shooed them to retreat in maledictory Italian. +</P> + +<P> +Inside Joan was busy at the stove. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny caught her hands, protesting, praising, thanking in a breath, and +Don, regarding them with a look of frank and bitter comprehension, +moved off toward the window with all a boy's disgust. In the span of a +day he had learned and suffered over-much. Grogan's world of drills +and noise down there was heartless and insistent. … It went on and +on, puffing, drilling, sorting rattling stone. Up here in the shack +was the lunacy of heart-things apart from him. The thought filled him +with jealous anger. And upstairs— He wheeled and glared, fighting +down the agony in his throat. Kenny was moving toward the stairway. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill," barked Don, "Dr. Barrington particularly said you—you +were not to go up there. He said that Brian's got to have the—the +quiet kind around—" +</P> + +<P> +Joan's quick stare of reproach brought the color to his face. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I beg your pardon, Mr. O'Neill," he blurted. "He said—he said he +must have quiet." +</P> + +<P> +"It's all right," said Kenny ruefully. "Quite all right. You've been +up?" he added quietly. +</P> + +<P> +Don dug his toe into the floor and a hot flush suffused his forehead. +</P> + +<P> +"To tell you the truth," he said with some annoyance, "Doctor +Barrington wouldn't let me in. He seems to be able to manage a good +many things at once." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah!" said Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"We must find still another cot," said Joan, pouring coffee at the +stove. +</P> + +<P> +So in the dark hours of nervous unrestraint that marked for Don and +Kenny that lagging period of terror and suspense, Joan stepped to the +helm and steered. And there was need of steering. +</P> + +<P> +Chaos would have reigned without it. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap34"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXIV +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +A FACE +</H2> + +<P> +Vagueness lay for Brian in that shack room where the noise of forest +trees mourned always at the window. Only pain was sharp … +colossal, rearing misshapen out of the blur induced by an awful +weakness. Sleep wrenched him for horrible dreaming minutes from his +world of pain. Pain wrenched him back. At times a mammoth terror lay +in his soul, undefined yet grotesquely positive, as if, pushing back, +his consciousness foresaw that horrific catastrophe of noise and +belching terror, and waited, unable to sense any of its details save +the single one of personal tragedy and pain. There were cramped +minutes when the rafters of the peaked roof seemed pressing down upon +him … and minutes of a diffused reaching out when the world, torn +by internal explosion, seemed flying away from him in fragments, even +walls receding from his cot which stayed, by a miracle, alone upon a +wind-swept moor. +</P> + +<P> +Intervals were an eternity. Familiarity with the detail of the room +engendered frantic loathing. His brain conned over the faded colors in +the rag rug and encountered the unchangeable, bayonet-like crack in the +mirror with nervous fury. No peace came with the darkness. Each +familiar thing persisted, looming clearer to his tired mind by the very +effort his straining eyes made to reach it. There was the table +clogged with doctors' litter … and there the other cot where Frank +pretended to sleep and kept his vigil … there the chair … and +there the dab of yellow in the rug that the sun struck into faded +gayety in the morning … and there the crack across the mirror, the +wriggling, distorted, foolish crack that seemed alive for all its +sameness. And there was always the noise of wind which became a +corollary of his pain, pulsing with it, never quiet, an overtone that +tragically would not yield. +</P> + +<P> +Into the blur of wind and weakness and pain came two miracles—a red +geranium peering out of the dusk of the room like a glowing coal, +unfamiliar and therefore a delight—a bit of velvet laughter in the +drab that caught his whole attention … the other a face. The face +came first in a cloud of flower-spotted purple that he knew clearly was +in some way related to the hypodermic needle Frank had plunged into his +arm while the sunset still lay painted on the window. … It took +form in the purple like a pansy—that face—grew sweet and vivid and +very real. Mercifully its loveliness was changeable, losing its pansy +purples and gaining glints of gold … becoming less a pansy … +more a face flower-like with compassion. +</P> + +<P> +"And now?" wondered Brian when the face came again. +</P> + +<P> +"It is morning," said Joan. +</P> + +<P> +At the sound of her voice there came within him an extraordinary +fusing, at once a pain and a delight … fragments of memory … a +moonbeam … tears … the crackle of a fire … a quarry +mist … the glory of stars … a meaning … a motive that +startled and defied him. +</P> + +<P> +"There should be moonlight on your hair," said Brian, drifting slowly +back to a knowledge of reality and pain. +</P> + +<P> +"Moonlight?" +</P> + +<P> +"You are Joan." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. At least until Doctor Cole finds someone else, I am at times +your nurse. The pain, Brian?" She bent over him, straightening a +pillow, touching his forehead with cool, questioning fingers. +</P> + +<P> +"Not worse," said Brian. +</P> + +<P> +"I am glad." +</P> + +<P> +"There was a purple cloud," he said, frowning. +</P> + +<P> +"The drug. Doctor Barrington wanted you to sleep." +</P> + +<P> +"And the geranium?" His eyes sought it with relief. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny found it. Grogan's wife had it in her window. I think he must +have bullied her a little—" +</P> + +<P> +"Bless him! … Where's the mirror?" +</P> + +<P> +"Downstairs. I'm sleeping there." +</P> + +<P> +"Thank God!" He closed his eyes, his color ebbing. "This plaster +cast," he apologized, "is like a suit of armor. It bothers me." +</P> + +<P> +"Poor fellow! … Can you eat?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not—yet… Who's cooking?" +</P> + +<P> +"Sometimes Don; sometimes I—unless the doctor sends me here. +Once—Kenny." +</P> + +<P> +Brian smiled. +</P> + +<P> +"You are very good," he said simply. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap35"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXV +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE PENITENT +</H2> + +<P> +Brian's skull was young and elastic. It saved him much, but Barrington +lingered until the period of suspense was at an end. Kenny drove him +to the Finlake station. +</P> + +<P> +"This car has been a godsend," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"And Garry's wired me to keep it. He's going to the coast." +</P> + +<P> +"When?" +</P> + +<P> +"Thursday." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny's eyes were moist and grateful. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, Frank, darlin', you're a jewel!" +</P> + +<P> +"Piffle!" countered Frank. "Kenny, old dear, I think you hit a +chicken. If at any time," he added at the station, "you feel the need +of me, I want you to wire. He's bound to be nervous. And if his +convalescence seems slow and irksome, remember that the reaction of a +shock like that isn't merely physical." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny wrung his hand in silence. He motored home, oppressed by the +bare line of hills and the noise of the quarry. +</P> + +<P> +As usual the sight of Joan dispelled his gloom. Brian's pain was less. +He had fallen asleep of his own accord. +</P> + +<P> +"He asked for you," she added. +</P> + +<P> +"You told him Frank wouldn't let me in?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"Hum… Where's Don?" +</P> + +<P> +"I sent him to the store." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny darted away with an air of expectancy to the other shack, whence, +after an excited period of foraging, he emerged, carrying a bundle. +Frank, knowing him well enough to read his shining enthusiasm aright, +would have turned him back at Brian's door without a qualm. But Frank +was not at hand. +</P> + +<P> +"You look like a kid sneaking home with a stray cat!" Brian told him +with a grin. +</P> + +<P> +"What's in the bundle?" +</P> + +<P> +"I've tried so many times to get in," admitted Kenny, "with Frank +nippin' me just as my hand was on the knob, that I'm feelin' a bit +surreptitious." He held up a tennis racket and a shotgun. +</P> + +<P> +"And everything else," he boasted with an air of triumph, "that I took +to Simon." +</P> + +<P> +"And the bill-file!" exclaimed Brian, staring at the litter on the +floor. "Jemima!" +</P> + +<P> +"You remember it, Brian? You hated the sight of it. 'Tis the stiletto +I stuck in a chunk of wax—" +</P> + +<P> +"Lord, yes! And you wrote the I.O.U.'s on anything from a playing card +to the end of a shirt." +</P> + +<P> +"And never paid 'em until I had to," said Kenny with an unyielding air +of self-contempt. "Many the time you checked 'em off, Brian, and +rebuked me as you should. But that, by the Blessed Bell of Clare, is +all behind me." +</P> + +<P> +He proudly exhibited the bizarre collection of scraps, initialed in +token of debt and reinitialed in token of payment. +</P> + +<P> +"Brian—I—I—" +</P> + +<P> +"Go ahead, old boy," said Brian, his eyes tender. "I can see you've +got a lot on your mind." +</P> + +<P> +"I paid 'em—every one!" +</P> + +<P> +"So I see." +</P> + +<P> +"And never again will you have to bookkeep lies. I'm that truthful now +Sid worries a bit!" +</P> + +<P> +Brian's amazed eyes twinkled. +</P> + +<P> +"You delicious lunatic!" he said. +</P> + +<P> +"I practiced," went on Kenny with his lips compressed. "I practiced +hard—up at the farm with Adam." +</P> + +<P> +"Joan's told me you were there. I can't quite hitch things together +yet, but I will in time." +</P> + +<P> +"A landslide of things seemed to happen the minute you went—" +</P> + +<P> +"I always had a feeling," admitted Brian, "that if I didn't stick +around and keep an eye on you, a lot of things would happen." +</P> + +<P> +"They did. They've been happenin' ever since." +</P> + +<P> +Brian flushed and put out his hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, surely you guessed. I was sorry—" +</P> + +<P> +"Jewel machree, I was fair sick about the shotgun. And after you went +I was willing to be sorry about anything—to get you back." +</P> + +<P> +"And Ann's statuette. Lord, I burn when I think of it." +</P> + +<P> +"You couldn't be blamed for a bit of temper. You're Irish, lad, and an +O'Neill. 'Tis a splendid inheritance but volcanic too." He changed +color and began to roam around the room, his mind casting up a painful +memory. +</P> + +<P> +"You'll never guess," he went on moodily, "what fell upon the head of +me after you went. John Whitaker came up and took a shot at me. And +Garry. And then after a while when I was quieter, old Adam, stirring +me up afresh. My ears are as used to the truth as my tongue." +</P> + +<P> +"It's a darned shame!" said Brian warmly. Kenny sighed. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, Brian," he said wistfully, "I was needin' it all. You can't +conceive until you put your mind to it or—or write it down, what a +failure I've been—" +</P> + +<P> +"Failure!" +</P> + +<P> +"As a parent. Even my penance on the road was—was like the rest." +</P> + +<P> +"Your <I>penance</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +"I bought a corncrib and a mule," flung out Kenny, roaming turbulently +around the room, "and thrashed a farmer. And I hated the rain and the +smell of cheese and burned up the corn-crib—" +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, what are you talking about?" +</P> + +<P> +Inexorably intent upon the easing of his conscience Kenny told the tale +of his penance with terrifying honesty and truth. +</P> + +<P> +Brian listened and dared not smile. +</P> + +<P> +"At first I—I hoped to find a clue," finished Kenny, wiping the sweat +from his forehead. "And then after I—I saw Joan I hoped I wouldn't. +You're not blamin' me, Brian?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not a bit. I'd have lingered myself." +</P> + +<P> +"The heart of you!" said Kenny, biting his lips. "I don't deserve it. +Lad, dear, the sunsets are past. I'm understandin'. And if you want +Whitaker's job, I—I'm willing. If you'd rather come back to the +studio and free-lance, I—I want you to know—" he gulped—"that +things are different. There's order there and the—the chairs are +cleared. Never a chair but what you can sit down on without staring +behind you. You wished that, Brian—" +</P> + +<P> +Brian turned his head. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he said. There were tears and laughter in his voice. +</P> + +<P> +"The money and clothes I borrowed," went on Kenny fervidly, "are paid +back. The clothes are safe in a new chiffonier and here's the key. I +sealed it in an envelope and well I did. I was badly needin' some +things you had and Pietro went out and bought them for me. As for my +temper, it's a lot better. A lot! Sid marvels at it. I—I do myself. +It all comes from the hell up there on the ridge with Adam." He drew a +long breath. "I've a record of work that will fill you with pride. +And though I seem to have a lot of money, I haven't bought a foolish +thing since the corncrib. There's plebeian regularity enough in my +money affairs now, Brian, to please even you! Though I'm havin' a bit +of a struggle with my check book. You can see for yourself, can't you, +Brian, 'twould not be the disorderly Bohemia you seem to hate? 'Twould +not be hand-to-mouth. Mind, I'm not seekin' to persuade you. So help +me God, I—I want you to do just what you want to do yourself—" +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny," said Brian dangerously, "if you go on one second more, you'll +have me sniffling—" +</P> + +<P> +Horrified and guilty, Kenny bolted for the door, his hand clenched in +his hair. +</P> + +<P> +"One thing more, Brian," he said, wheeling, "I—I've got to say it. +I've anchored that damned stick to the psaltery with a shoestring. +We—we couldn't lose it!" +</P> + +<P> +And closing the door, Kenny again wiped his forehead, remembering sadly +that he had planned to wind his son around his finger and induce him to +return. It had been the trend of all his preparation and resolve. And +now—what? He had choked back his inclination and begged Brian, with +impassioned sincerity, to do precisely what would please him most. +</P> + +<P> +He wondered why the anticlimax brought him—peace. +</P> + +<P> +When Doctor Cole arrived an hour later he found the shack in turmoil. +The truant hour of laughter and excitement, Kenny told him in a panic +of remorse, had sharpened Brian's pain. His pulse was galloping. With +a sigh the little doctor drugged his tossing patient into troubled +sleep. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Again through a cloud of flower-spotted purple shot now with gleams of +light as from a camp fire, Brian drifted unquietly, conscious of odd +and unrelated things, stars that turned to eyes, a moonbeam that broke +upon a pine-bough and fell in a shower of moon-silvered tears; in the +tears a face that turned perversely to a pansy. Then something snapped +and crackled sharply and he sat beside a camp fire, conscious of an +indefinable fusing within him. Beyond in a curling milk-white mist lay +the pansy, half a flower—half a face. It floated toward him, +sometimes part of the smoke from his fire, sometimes but a +flower-shadow in the cloud of purple. Brian strained to see it clearly +and could not until the inner fusing came again and Joan stood by the +fire, the sheen of moonlight on her hair. +</P> + +<P> +"You did so much for him," she said, "and now—the boulder!" +</P> + +<P> +Brian furrowed his forehead in painful concentration. +</P> + +<P> +"I thought I did it all for Don," he said. "For months I've thought so +but since something fused here in my heart, something linked to tears +and stars and moonlight and the crackle of a fire, I know I did it all +for you." +</P> + +<P> +"For me, Brian!" +</P> + +<P> +"For you!" +</P> + +<P> +In the cloud of purple Joan's eyes grew round and unbelieving. +</P> + +<P> +"Your face, all tears and sorrow and sweetness," said Brian stubbornly, +"etched itself on my memory the night Don ran away." +</P> + +<P> +"I—I did not know you saw me." +</P> + +<P> +"I know now that all I did that night I did for you. Don swore at +you—remember?" +</P> + +<P> +The flower-like face in the purple cloud saddened. Brian distinctly +heard the crackle of the camp fire. +</P> + +<P> +"I thrashed him for it!" +</P> + +<P> +"You said in your letter—" +</P> + +<P> +"I said I would help him, yes, but I wrote and I made Don write because +I could not bear to have you hurt and worried. And even at the quarry, +when I was keen to be off to Whitaker, I saw your face in the mist, +urging me to stay—to stay and help Don. And I did—for you. I know +that all these things I did for you. I <I>know</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +But again he was staring at a pansy and the cloud of purple floated +hazily away. Tired, ill and aeons old, Brian opened his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm glad you're awake," said Joan gently. "You were dreaming. Drugs +frighten me." +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing was clear," said Brian, touching his forehead, "but the pansy +and you. And purple—like that." He pointed to her ring. "What an +odd ring it is, Joan! Wistaria?" +</P> + +<P> +Joan nodded, her color bright. +</P> + +<P> +"Wistaria on a ladder. It's the ring Kenny gave me." +</P> + +<P> +Brian's startled eyes met and held her own. "Why?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going to marry him. Didn't you know?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Brian. "I—I didn't know." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap36"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXVI +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +APRIL +</H2> + +<P> +April with its tender flame of green brought lagging days of worry. +Brian, said Kenny wistfully, was just—not Brian. He was an irritable +convalescent in a plaster cast, too nervous to be patient. His pain +had been intense, the shock disastrous to his self-control. The +haggard mark of it upon his face Don read with scalding heart and +brooded. When after a refractory week of undisciplined nerves and +temper that strained the doctor's endurance to the breaking point, +Brian went out of his head for forty-eight hours and babbled like a +madman about a face in the mist, Kenny in terror wired for Frank +Barrington. Brian, he thought, must be frantic with pain. +</P> + +<P> +Frank came, mystified and apprehensive. He found a white and apathetic +patient who, with his delirium gone, denied abnormal pain. +</P> + +<P> +"It isn't pain," Frank reported. "Of that I'm convinced. His head's +in excellent condition and his danger of lameness is at an end. Though +he resented the suggestion, I think there's something on his mind. And +whatever it is, he's much too shattered nervously to give it a normal +valuation." +</P> + +<P> +"Keep that kid out of his room," advised Kenny hotly. "I can't. He +moons around up there like a ghost. Brian admits that he's so sorry +for him at times that it makes him feel sick." +</P> + +<P> +"Hum!" said Frank and went in search of Don. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose you think I'm too much of a kid to have an opinion," Don +told him, his face white and fierce, "but I—I did it. And I watch him +more than anybody else—" He choked and blinked back boyish tears of +indignation. +</P> + +<P> +"Keep Mr. O'Neill out of Brian's room," he snorted. "He'd excite +anybody!" +</P> + +<P> +"I intend to keep you all out," was Frank's verdict in the end. "All +but the nurse and Joan. Joan's not temperamental and she has nothing +on her conscience. She has moreover a sedative convincing type of +cheer that's a mighty good influence. The rest of you are simply on a +sentimental spree of penance. You, Kenny, are so anxious to square +yourself that you make him nervous and he fumes and blames himself. +And Don can't look at him without remorse in his eyes. You're both too +flighty and penitential for Brian's good." +</P> + +<P> +Frank departed and Joan compassionately set herself to sentinel the +sickroom. There were trying hours when her voice alone had power to +soothe the querulous young savage whose tired eyes begged them all to +forgive him. +</P> + +<P> +Nurses came and nurses hopelessly departed. Brian hated and hounded +them all with savage and impartial persistence. He was jarring even +the little doctor out of his normal weary calm. +</P> + +<P> +"I've seen him flat on the back of him before," Kenny confided to Joan +in some distress, "a lamb for sense! But now he's tiring you out." +</P> + +<P> +"You mustn't blame him," urged Joan. "He never asks me to come. I go +always of my own accord and oftener now since Frank scolded. He's +lonely without you and Donald and he hates the nurse—" +</P> + +<P> +"He hates 'em all," said Kenny. +</P> + +<P> +"No matter how nervous he is, I can read him to sleep." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, colleen!" There was a flash of reverence in Kenny's eyes. It +mutely thanked her. +</P> + +<P> +"I can't forget what he did for Don. Nor can I forget that Don's +impulse—" +</P> + +<P> +"Don remembers too." +</P> + +<P> +Joan sighed. +</P> + +<P> +"He worries me, Kenny—Don, I mean. Sometimes I think he sees in my +help the one atonement he can make: he fumes and reproaches so when +Brian is nervous or lonely. He even dreams of the boulder." +</P> + +<P> +"And the year of study, mavourneen?" +</P> + +<P> +Joan's face clouded. +</P> + +<P> +"Don needs me," she said. "He would be frantic here alone. I cannot +desert him." +</P> + +<P> +"Nor I," said Kenny. "But the year of waiting ends at Samhain." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Joan, coloring. "I have given Don the money," she added. +"If now he would only study!" +</P> + +<P> +"He shall!" said Kenny and set himself to the finishing of Brian's +winter task. That sacrifice, at least, he decided, nagging Don into +hours of study that were a godsend to them both, should not become an +anticlimax. He had paid once—in ragged money. For Joan's sake he +would pay willingly again in time. Brian and Joan and Don—and he +himself, with indolence for once in his life unwelcome, would be +happier for the effort. But there were moments of clash and irritation +when Don's energy flagged and he flung his books aside in black disgust. +</P> + +<P> +"No use," he said moodily. "I can't work. I've got too much on my +mind." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny merely looked at him. +</P> + +<P> +Don flushed. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill," he barked. +</P> + +<P> +"Shut up!" thundered Kenny, "I don't propose to quarrel now or at any +other time." +</P> + +<P> +They glared at each other in nervous indignation. +</P> + +<P> +"Brian," Kenny added with a sniff, "was sure you could swing it. I +never was. You need balance and a sense of responsibility." +</P> + +<P> +Don gritted his teeth and worked in an inexhaustible spurt of endurance. +</P> + +<P> +"Stop wandering around the room and kicking things," Kenny commanded +more than once with his own hand clenched in his hair. "If you don't +remember, you don't remember, and that's an end of it. Here's the +book. Look it over while I'm smoking." +</P> + +<P> +Once when the clash had a suspicious ring of familiarity, he grinned. +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter?" demanded Don huffily. "What are you laughing at? +Me?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Kenny. "I was just thinking of a man I know. Name's +Whitaker." +</P> + +<P> +Thus May came with a warm wind of spice and fresh misgivings furrowed +the doctor's brow. +</P> + +<P> +"Now that the windows are opened so much," he fretted, "the rumble of +that quarry is inferno. The blasts bother him?" +</P> + +<P> +"He jumps," said Joan. +</P> + +<P> +"I thought so. He must have peace and quiet. If Mr. O'Neill is +willing, we'll move him to the farm." +</P> + +<P> +By the time the orchard flung out its white prayer of blossoms to the +sun, the doctor had his patient at the farm. +</P> + +<P> +And summer dreamed again upon the hills. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap37"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXVII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +HONEYSUCKLE DAYS +</H2> + +<P> +Pine-sweet wind still blew around the cabin, the sylvan river laughed +in the sun, wistaria hung grape-like on the ladder of vine; but over it +all, to Kenny, brooded the pathos of change. +</P> + +<P> +He longed wistfully for the gay vitality of that other summer when +every day had been an exquisite intaglio of laughter. There were times +when unreasonably he even missed Adam. How the nights in contrast had +sharpened the joy of his days! And he hated the village boy who +ferried the punt back and forth upon the river, hated the horn with its +transforming miracles of reminiscence, for it pointed the nameless lack +of sparkle now that struck melancholy into his soul. He had lived in +Arcady and jealously he would have hoarded each detail of its charm. +</P> + +<P> +The days were long and quiet. Life for all of them centered around the +wheel-chair on the porch. There Joan read aloud while the nurse kept +wisely in the background, and Hannah at meal-times set the table on the +porch. +</P> + +<P> +In the long afternoons of study that Kenny spent with Don, Brian +asserted his independence and banished books. He seemed content to +talk. Joan listened eagerly to his tales of the road, never tiring of +Don's vagabond adventures. After the worried months of monotony and +pain, the afternoons of reminiscence were tonic for them both. Lazy +humor crept back to Brian's eyes. At times he whistled. Wind and sun +were tanning his skin to the hue of health. +</P> + +<P> +He had his dark hours. Every effort then to cheer him left him tired +and quiet. Talk of the chain of circumstances that had, oddly, brought +them all together, he avoided with a frown. Any reference to her life +in New York, Joan found, plunged him into gloom. Was it, she wondered, +because he knew his accident had brought her year of play and study to +an end? She longed passionately to tell him how easy it had been for +her—how trifling, as a sacrifice, in the face of his kindness to Don; +but shyness held her back. +</P> + +<P> +"Honeysuckle days!" Brian called his days of convalescence, for the +vine upon the porch hung full. +</P> + +<P> +"Is it so hot in the pines?" he wondered one sultry afternoon. +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Joan. "There it's always dark and cool and quiet. When you +can walk, Brian, you must see the cabin." +</P> + +<P> +Heat quivered visibly in the valley. A faint breeze frolicked now and +then upon the ridge, fluttering the honeysuckle and the pages of an +open book upon the table. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm glad it isn't," said Brian in relief. "Somehow I can't imagine +Kenny off there in a hot cabin striding up and down and grilling Don. +He's so—so combustible. As a matter of fact," he added, "I can't +imagine him in any sort of cabin grilling Don. Soft-hearted lunatic!" +</P> + +<P> +"Don gets awfully on his nerves," said Joan, shaking her head. "If it +wasn't that he's doing it for you—" +</P> + +<P> +"For me, Joan!" +</P> + +<P> +Joan nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"What you began, he'll finish for you. He said so. It bothered him +that all those dreary months you spent at the quarry just to help Don +might be in vain. Don went so dreadfully to pieces." +</P> + +<P> +"Sentimental old hothead," grumbled Brian, touched and pleased. "I +love him for it." +</P> + +<P> +"I wonder if you realize how much he cares!" +</P> + +<P> +"For—you?" asked Brian quietly. "Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"No, no," said Joan, coloring. "For you. For you he has worked +through splendidly to—to less of self. And so has Don. It's a +wonderful tribute, Brian. To inspire something fine and beautiful is +fine and beautiful itself." +</P> + +<P> +Brian stared uncomfortably at a red barn in the valley. +</P> + +<P> +"To have something dormant inside that catches fire and burns up +splendidly into unselfishness is better," he said. "This porch is like +a throne. One sits up here among the honeysuckles and finds a world of +summer at his feet." +</P> + +<P> +"Last summer," remembered Joan, "Kenny used to tell me over and over +again that you were all things in one. All, Brian. Think of it! +Almost," she finished demurely, "I came to believe it." +</P> + +<P> +Brian glanced at her in droll suspicion. Her eyes laughed at him with +the wholesome mischief of a child. +</P> + +<P> +"Almost!" he countered. "I insist upon my full meed of perfection. +When did I lose it?" +</P> + +<P> +"When you hounded the nurse—" +</P> + +<P> +"Plural noun," amended Brian wryly. +</P> + +<P> +"Plural," agreed Joan. "I knew then that the idol had clay feet." +</P> + +<P> +Brian groaned. +</P> + +<P> +"Haven't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he said. "And a clay head. But I was never an idol." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, yes you were!" said Joan. "When you gave up your trip abroad to +help Don, you became to me a wonderful sort of—of selfless young +god—" +</P> + +<P> +"Joan!" He stared at her in panic. +</P> + +<P> +"Truly. And I'd rather have you human. I always thought of you with +thankful worship—" +</P> + +<P> +"I approve the attitude," said Brian mischievously. "Please state +when and why discontinued." +</P> + +<P> +"The minute I met you." +</P> + +<P> +"Phew! That I consider unnecessarily heartless candor. Did you ever +hear of tempering the wind to the shorn lamb?" +</P> + +<P> +"If I had met you in the end, alive and well," said Joan thoughtfully, +"I would have kept you up there on your pedestal out of mortal reach +but you came into my life, hurt and pitiful, and you needed help, my +sort of help, and something humanized you. You were no longer a god. +You were something human—" +</P> + +<P> +"Thank God for that!" said Brian. +</P> + +<P> +"Besides," added Joan, twinkling, "you had clay feet. Garry wrote me +that you had an Irish temper—" +</P> + +<P> +"And I told you to write him!" +</P> + +<P> +"I asked him <I>all</I> about you," said Joan. "He wrote me such a splendid +letter. It made me like you—more. And you can't know what it meant +when you wrote and pledged yourself to help Don." +</P> + +<P> +"Garry is my press agent," said Brian with a sniff, "I pay him. And +I'll dock him for the part about my temper." +</P> + +<P> +"Brian, so often I—I've wanted to thank you!" +</P> + +<P> +"Don't," he begged. "Please don't. What I did—you see," he +stammered, "it just—happened." +</P> + +<P> +"Like the letter you wrote to me, praising someone else to guarantee +your own respectability. Is it always someone else, Brian? Don't you +ever think of yourself?" +</P> + +<P> +"Lying here," said Brian moodily, "I've thought of little else. +There's Hannah with the tablecloth. It can't be six o'clock." +</P> + +<P> +"It is," said Joan. "And Mr. Abbott's coming to supper." +</P> + +<P> +She fled in a panic. +</P> + +<P> +"Will the child never have done with chains?" Hannah demanded as the +weeks slipped by. +</P> + +<P> +"When it wasn't Don, it was old Adam. And now it's someone else. And +Mr. O'Neill's got more patience, Hughie, than I ever thought was in +him." +</P> + +<P> +"I like him better t'other way," said Hughie. "Things is livelier. +I'd sooner be diggin' dots than dronin' along so poky." +</P> + +<P> +"It's my opinion," put in Hannah tartly, "that last summer just about +spoiled your taste for anything but the life of a pirate. If you must +have somebody throwin' a bottle at your head or dumpin' ministers into +the river or diggin' treasure, things have come to a pretty pass." +</P> + +<P> +Hughie whistled. +</P> + +<P> +"I ain't the only one that's restless," he defended. "Don's as +contraptious as a mule. And I've caught a look in young O'Neill's eye +once or twice like old Sim's black mare, mettlesome and anxious to +bolt." +</P> + +<P> +"Until Joan slips into a chair with a book or some work," snapped +Hannah. "Then he's a lamb. If I was Mr. O'Neill I'd thrash Don into +common sense and I'd remind t'other young man, son or no son, that the +nurse ain't earnin' her keep. Joan's earnin' it for her." +</P> + +<P> +Alone, Kenny owned, one can not be gay and lunch in glens where the wee +folk hide and whisper. And Joan and he himself had chains. He +accepted the summer with a wry grimace, reading in its irksome demands +a chance for real requital. He found no bitterness in the cup he had +set himself to drink. It was the price of Brian's welfare and Brian's +peace of mind. But he hungered for Joan and the long, gay days of +another summer. When had she grown up so, he wondered impatiently. He +missed the romping child with the sun shadows in her hair; he missed +her eager tears and laughter. To his skillful touch they had been but +strings of a beautiful harp, subtly, unfailingly responsive. Ah! she +had been a beautiful promise—that starved child of a summer ago—but +the promise fulfilled in the woman, he owned with a rush of feeling, he +loved more. Her essential tenderness, strumming kindred chords in his +sensitive Celtic soul, aroused an unfamiliar sense of the holiness of +love. +</P> + +<P> +And he was splendidly afire with dreams. +</P> + +<P> +In July the little doctor found his patient strong enough for crutches +and dismissed the nurse. And unexpectedly John Whitaker arrived, +growling his opinion of the rural trains. +</P> + +<P> +"Can you walk without your crutches?" he barked, his glasses oddly +moist. +</P> + +<P> +"A little," said Brian. +</P> + +<P> +Whitaker sat down and blinked. +</P> + +<P> +"You don't deserve a job," he grumbled, "turning me down for a dynamite +spree, but I'm going to send you to Ireland in the fall. There's a +story there—a big one. If," he added grimly, "you can manage to get +in." +</P> + +<P> +Late August found the tension of worry at an end. Brian at last was +walking. And Don had fought a battle with his books and won. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny's spirits soared. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap38"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXVIII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +ARCADY ELUDES A SEEKER +</H2> + +<P> +"Come," Kenny begged one night when the dusk lay thick in the valley. +"Let's pace the Gray Man, Joan, in Garry's car. Nobody needs you now +as much as I." +</P> + +<P> +His bright dark face pleaded. +</P> + +<P> +The girl smiled. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, Kenny, Kenny," she said, "will you ever grow up?" +</P> + +<P> +"Did Peter Pan? Better get your cloak, dear. You may need it." +</P> + +<P> +He went off whistling to the barn. Kenny had blessed the car and Garry +many times. He blessed them again as the engine throbbed in the dusk. +Hot silence lay upon the ridge, broken only by the noise of insects. +</P> + +<P> +"A long road and a straight road and Samhain at the end!" he sang as +Joan climbed in. "And bless the Irish heart of me, dear, there's a +moon scrambling up behind the hill and peeping over. Lordy, Lordy!" he +added under his breath, "what a moon!" +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> + "'On such a night<BR> + Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew<BR> + And with an unthrift love did run to Venice<BR> + As far as—' +</P> + +<P> +"Hum! I've forgotten. Wonder why Shakespeare looked ahead and +harpooned me with that word unthrift. Where to, Jessica? Where shall +the unthrift lover drive on such a night?" +</P> + +<P> +Joan stared absently at the road ahead. +</P> + +<P> +"To Ireland," she said. +</P> + +<P> +The answer pleased him. +</P> + +<P> +"I mind me," he said instantly, "of an Irish tale of Finn McCoul." +</P> + +<P> +Joan did not answer. +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me," she said at last. "Finn and you are always delightful." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny stared at her in marked reproach. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan!" he exclaimed. +</P> + +<P> +"What—what is it, Kenny?" +</P> + +<P> +"That's just the sort of polite nothing you learned in New York!" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sorry, Kenny. I'm—tired. And just for a minute I wasn't +listening. You know how it is. You hear an echo in your mind a long +while after and answer in a panic." She brushed her cheek against his +sleeve with a remorseful gesture of appeal. His arm went round her. +</P> + +<P> +"There!" he said with a sigh of relief. "That's better. I'm lonesome +when we're not in tune." +</P> + +<P> +"And the story?" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny told of a fairy face that Finn had seen in a lake among the +heather. +</P> + +<P> +"Leaf-brown eyes had the nymph, I take it, and satin-cream skin with a +rose showin' through and allurin' lashes maybe dipped in the ink-pots +of the fairies." +</P> + +<P> +"What," said Joan from the shelter of his arm, "is a blarney stone?" +</P> + +<P> +"A substitute for lips!" said Kenny instantly and kissed her. +</P> + +<P> +"And Finn?" +</P> + +<P> +"Plunged into the waters of the lake, he did, as any son of Erin +would—and found the maid." +</P> + +<P> +But Joan's eyes were absently fixed upon the road again and Kenny +abandoned his legend with a sigh until he bethought himself to use its +climax in reproach. +</P> + +<P> +"And when Finn reappeared, he was an old, old man, as old as a man may +feel when his lady's attention wanders." +</P> + +<P> +Joan colored and laughed, her eyes faintly mischievous, wholly +apologetic. +</P> + +<P> +"Finn's youth," Kenny gallantly assured her, "was restored to him by +magic and surely there is magic in a woman's smile." +</P> + +<P> +They motored on in a silence that Kenny found depressing. When would +Arcady come again, he wondered rebelliously, wistful for the sparkle of +that other summer when fairies, silver-shod, had danced upon the +moonlit lake. The strain of worry had tired them both. +</P> + +<P> +The wind swept coolly toward them sweet with pine. Wind and pine up +here were always mingling. A night—a moon for lovers! The clasp of +his arm tightened. +</P> + +<P> +The peace of the night was insistent. After all with worry at an end +Arcady might not lie so very far away—it was creeping into his heart, +sweet with the music of many trees. Joan too perhaps—he stole a +glance at the girl's face, colorless in the moonlight like some soft, +exquisite flower—and drew up the emergency brake with a jerk. Her +lashes were wet. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan," he exclaimed, "you're not crying!" +</P> + +<P> +She tried to smile and buried her face on his shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +"I think," she said forlornly, "it—it's just because everything has +turned out so—so nicely." +</P> + +<P> +He motored homeward, ill at ease, aware after a time that the girl +cradled in his arm had fallen asleep. Her tears worried him. +</P> + +<P> +"But I'm quite all right now, Kenny," she protested as they drove up +the lane. "It's partly the heat. Why didn't you wake me?" +</P> + +<P> +He swung her lightly to the ground. +</P> + +<P> +"I liked to think I was helping you rest," he said gently. "You need +it. Don't wait, dear. It's late." +</P> + +<P> +He climbed back in the car and glided off barnwards, waving his arm. +Joan went slowly up the stairway to her room. +</P> + +<P> +Latticed moonlight lay upon a chair by the window. She dropped into +it, weary and inert, grateful for the rushing sound of the river; it +soothed her with familiar music. A clock downstairs chimed the hour, +then the half—and then another hour. Below in the moonlight a man was +climbing up from the river. +</P> + +<P> +"Brian," she called breathlessly, "is it you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"Dr. Cole will scold. It's twelve o'clock." +</P> + +<P> +Brian tossed his cigarette away with a sigh. +</P> + +<P> +"He'll never know. I've been sitting down there in the punt. The +river's silver. Come down for a while," he implored. "All evening +I've been as lonely as a leper. Ever since you motored off with Kenny, +Don's been a grouch. Can't you climb down the vine?" +</P> + +<P> +"I—I can't, Brian." +</P> + +<P> +"Please, Joan. I'll tell Kenny myself in the morning." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Joan. "I—can't. I—I wish I could." +</P> + +<P> +"So do I," said Brian. He walked away. +</P> + +<P> +Shaking and sobbing, Joan flung herself upon the bed. +</P> + +<P> +"Sid writes me you're home," Kenny wrote to Garry in September. "What +about the car? Come up for a while and drive it home. We can do some +sketching. Brian's full of Irish melancholy and waiting for word from +Whitaker. He may go any time. Joan's tired and busy with clothes. +Don's cranky and I'm rather at a loose end, hunting things to do." +</P> + +<P> +Puzzled, Garry went. +</P> + +<P> +"I can't make out what's wrong," he wrote to Sid, "Kenny's rational +enough, but Brian's strung to the breaking point. I suspect it's just +as it always has been—they're miserable apart and hopeless together. +But the year has been a sobering one, and what used to flash, they +bottle up. In my opinion the sooner Brian gets away the better. He's +not himself." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap39"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXIX +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE TENSION SNAPS +</H2> + +<P> +Months back Fate had flung out a skein of broken threads to the wind of +Chance. In mid September she chose to bring the flying ends together. +</P> + +<P> +It began when Hannah dropped a dipper. Hughie on his way to the +wood-box with an armful of kindlings jumped and dropped them with a +clatter. And he stepped on Toby's tail and swore. Hannah and Hughie +and Toby, startled, shared a sharp moment of resentment. +</P> + +<P> +"Hughie," Hannah's impatience keyed her voice a trifle high, "'pon my +honor I don't know what gets into you. Ever since you took to diggin' +dots you've been as nervous as a cat. You're full of jumps. It's my +opinion if the doctor hadn't told you that Mr. O'Neill himself buried +the money in the fireplace, you'd be diggin' dots in a lunatic asylum!" +</P> + +<P> +Hughie's horrified face of warning turned her cold with foreboding. +Hannah turned and gasped. +</P> + +<P> +Joan stood behind her. +</P> + +<P> +"Hannah," she asked, "what did you say?" +</P> + +<P> +"I—I don't know," said Hannah, scarlet with confusion. "I'm all +unstrung and my head's queer—" +</P> + +<P> +Hughie went out and slammed the door. +</P> + +<P> +"You said that Mr. O'Neill—buried—the money—in Uncle's fireplace!" +repeated Joan distinctly. She caught Hannah's arm, her dark frightened +eyes imploring. "Hannah, did he?" +</P> + +<P> +Shaking, Hannah put her apron to her eyes. "Hannah, you must tell me. +It is important that I know. No, don't cry. Did Mr. O'Neill bury the +money—in Uncle's fireplace?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," choked Hannah in a low voice. "Oh, Hughie will never forgive +me!" +</P> + +<P> +"How do you know?" +</P> + +<P> +"The doctor. Hughie went on diggin', thinking there must be more, +until he was sick with nerves. The doctor had to tell him." +</P> + +<P> +"And how did the doctor know?" +</P> + +<P> +The girl's strained quiet helped Hannah to regain her self-control. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill went to Rink's hotel to telephone," she faltered, wiping +her eyes, "and Sam Acker put his ear to the door. He—he telephoned +for a lot of ragged money—" +</P> + +<P> +Joan caught her breath. +</P> + +<P> +"And then a week later," gulped Hannah, "when the doctor came to tend +his wife, Sam told it, for Mr. O'Neill had said the doctor sent him +there to telephone. And the doctor never would have told but for +Hughie's nerves. He said so when he pledged us both to keep it secret. +He spoke wonderful about Mr. O'Neill. That I must say. And he called +him somebody Donkeyhote—" +</P> + +<P> +"Where is Mr. O'Neill?" + +"He drove down to the village with Mr. Rittenhouse for the mail." +</P> + +<P> +Joan glided away like a shadow. +</P> + +<P> +Don Quixote! And so he had done that strange, fantastic thing for +her—and she had given the money away to Don! Joan stopped at the foot +of the stairway, her face colorless and unbelieving, her mind casting +up a vivid picture of the night of search in the sitting room. +It—could—not—be! +</P> + +<P> +Ah, but it could! For Kenny, reckless and on his mettle, was a +finished actor. And the morning at the telephone! His silence and +constraint had bothered her then not a little. Later, whirling through +the blizzard in a taxi, he had begged her not to do it. And he had +surrendered in the end with a sigh and smiled and kissed her. His +eyes, warmly blue, irresistibly Irish in their tenderness, seemed now +to stare at her with sad reproach. Ah, the kindness of him! Hot +stinging tears rolled slowly down the girl's white cheeks. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan!" It was Brian's voice behind her. +</P> + +<P> +Joan turned, trembling, blinked and smiled. +</P> + +<P> +Something in her face drove his memory back to the moonlit wood. Niobe +on the verge of a passion of tears! +</P> + +<P> +"You look like a sad little brown thrush," he said gently. +</P> + +<P> +His voice, his eyes chilled her with foreboding. They stood in utter +silence. +</P> + +<P> +Joan touched the throbbing veins in her throat and moistened her lips. +</P> + +<P> +"You have heard from Mr. Whitaker—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, Garry brought the letter up." +</P> + +<P> +"When—" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sailing in a week. I go from here—to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +"Brian!" +</P> + +<P> +The terror in her eyes startled him and the tension snapped. An +instant later she was crying wildly in his arms. Brian crushed his +lips against her cheek, conscious only of an agonizing stab of joy, +then Joan pulled away, her eyes dark with grief and shame. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Brian, Brian," she whispered passionately, "I—want—to die." +</P> + +<P> +"I've wanted to die for weeks," said Brian. "Almost I think I did." +</P> + +<P> +Joan caught her breath with a shuddering gasp. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't!" said Brian. "I—can't bear to hear you cry. I've always +known that I was a pretty poor sort but this—" +</P> + +<P> +His honest eyes begged for understanding, +</P> + +<P> +Joan's face, wet with tears, condoned. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I am worse," she said unsteadily. +</P> + +<P> +He caught her hands rebelliously. +</P> + +<P> +"But you love me," he said wistfully. "That, at least—" +</P> + +<P> +Joan slipped into his arms again with a sob. +</P> + +<P> +"I love you better than my life," she said, "and I may—never—say it +again." +</P> + +<A NAME="img-448"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG SRC="images/img-448.jpg" ALT=""I love you better than my life..." BORDER="2" WIDTH="381" HEIGHT="622"> +<H5> +[Illustration: "I love you better than my life," Joan said, "and I may—never—say it again."] +</H5> +</CENTER> + +<P> +Brian pressed his cheek against her hair. +</P> + +<P> +"No," he said. "No. I would not have you say it again, Joan, dear as +it is to hear it." +</P> + +<P> +An eternity of minutes seemed to tick away in the silence. +</P> + +<P> +"Brian, you must believe I meant to be true to Kenny—" +</P> + +<P> +"Don't!" he choked, paling at the sound of Kenny's name. "Oh, Kenny, +Kenny!" +</P> + +<P> +Joan buried her face in his arm. Both were thinking with hot +remorseful hearts of that stormy penitent with the laughing, tender +Irish eyes. Both loved him well. And both were pledging themselves to +keep his happiness intact. +</P> + +<P> +Joan's tormented memory was busy with pictures: Kenny disastrously +sculling the punt to help her, Kenny in the death-chamber shuddering +and patient and passionately resolved to stay by her to the end, Kenny +with the lantern held high above her head, Kenny digging dots and +helping Don to study and Kenny tearing bricks from the ancient +fireplace. +</P> + +<P> +She slipped out of his arms in a panic, her face, Brian thought, as +white as the old-fashioned lilies in the garden. +</P> + +<P> +"Brian, go—" she choked. +</P> + +<P> +With the truth of the ragged money burning itself into her mind—with +Brian so near and yet so far—the touch of his arms was torment. +</P> + +<P> +Hungry for the peace of the pines and the lonely cabin, Joan fled +out-of-doors. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap40"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XL +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE KING OF YOUTH +</H2> + +<P> +Ten minutes later Kenny, coming into the dark, old-fashioned library +where Adam's books were once more arrayed upon the shelves, found Don +wandering turbulently around the room. +</P> + +<P> +Was this boy ever anything but turbulent, he wondered with impatience. +Must he always brood about the boulder and atonement? +</P> + +<P> +Don stopped dead in his tracks, his fingers clenched in his hair, his +white face staring queerly; and Kenny, irresistibly reminded of himself +in minutes of turmoil, stared back, knowing in a flash of inspiration +why the tale of the boulder had made him think of the crash of bouillon +cups. The desire of the moment that marked men for disaster! The +tongue-tied youngster there with his feet rooted to the ground and his +face pale with agitation, was indeed something like himself. Kenny had +a moment of pity. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill," said Don with a hard, dry sob, "you know I've wanted to +make up to Brian somehow about that boulder. If I hadn't been crazy to +drive up the ledge once and if I hadn't lied to Grogan and bullied +Tony, Brian wouldn't have spent the rest of the winter in a plaster +cast. I—I want to do something for him, something big, and I—I've +got to do it in a queer way." He shuddered and wiped his face. Kenny +saw that his hands were shaking wildly, and pitied him again. "Mr. +O'Neill," he blurted, "Brian loves my sister and she loves him." +</P> + +<P> +It seemed to Kenny that lightning struck with a sinister flare of fire +at his feet and hot blinding pieces of the floor were flying all about +him. +</P> + +<P> +"How do you know?" he said fiercely. "How <I>do</I> you know? How can you +know such a thing as that? You can't! You can't possibly." +</P> + +<P> +"I do," said Don. "I heard them say it." +</P> + +<P> +"Heard them!" +</P> + +<P> +"I was on the porch," said Don, "and I came through the window there to +get a book. They were in the hall." +</P> + +<P> +"You listened!" +</P> + +<P> +Don flushed. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I wanted to," he said sullenly. "And I did." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, yes," said Kenny, wiping his hair back and wondering vaguely why +it felt so wet, "you wanted to and you did." +</P> + +<P> +"I wanted to," said Don fiercely, "because I knew Brian loved her. And +I knew my sister wasn't happy. She's looked sad and tired and +frightened a lot of times, Joan has, and she's cried a lot—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny, "she has." +</P> + +<P> +Don's challenging eyes swept with stormy suspicion over Kenny's face. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. O'Neill," he flung out, "don't you blame her. Don't you do it. +She was a kid, an awful kid when you came here first, and lonesome. +She wanted to be flattered and loved. All girls do. She wasn't happy. +She wanted to play and you gave her a chance. You're famous and you've +been everywhere and you're a good looker," he gulped courageously, "and +maybe you turned her head. I—don't know. I think she loves you an +awful lot anyway. But not—not that way. You could have been her +father—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny wincing. "She's younger than Brian." Where had he +read that youth was cruel? "Yes, I could have been her father." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't mean you're old," stammered Don, flushing. "I mean—Oh, Mr. +O'Neill—" and now Don slipped back into childhood for a second and +sobbed aloud—"I—I don't know what I mean. You just—just mustn't +blame her. She's my sister. She even patched my clothes." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not blaming her, Don. God knows I'm not. I'm just wonderin'." +</P> + +<P> +"Joan's going to marry you just the same. She said so. Mr. O'Neill, +you've got to do something. You—you've got to!" He clenched his +hands and bolted for the door. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny, frowning, "I—I've got to do something. I +can't—think—what. Where's Joan?" +</P> + +<P> +"I think she's gone to the cabin. She often went there when Uncle made +her cry. Mr. O'Neill," Don clenched one hand and struck it fiercely +against the palm of the other, "you've been good to me. I—I'm awful +sorry—" +</P> + +<P> +He fled with a sob and Kenny put his hand to his throat to still a +painful throbbing. +</P> + +<P> +There was a clanking in his ears. Or was it in his memory? Ah, yes, +Adam had said that life was a link in a chain that clanks, and he +couldn't escape. Well, he hadn't. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny sat down, conscious of a tired irresolution in his head and a +numbness. Nothing seemed clearly defined, save somewhere within him a +monumental sharpness as of pain. Joan's happiness he remembered must +be the religion of his love. +</P> + +<P> +After that things blurred—curiously. Superstition, ordinarily +within him but an artificial twist of fancy, reared a mocking head and +reminded him of omens. Sailing over the river long ago he had thought +of Hy Brazil, the Isle of Delight that receded always when you +followed. Receded! It was very true. Later the wind among the +blossoms had been chill and fitful and Joan had been unaware of the +romance in the white, sweet drift. Omens! And rain had come, the +blossom storm. And Death had spread its sable wing over the first day +of his love. He shuddered and closed his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +Separate thoughts rose quiveringly from the blur. He thought of a +lantern and Samhain. Samhain, the summer-ending of the druids! +Perhaps this was the summer ending of his youth and hope. And he had +drank in Adam's room that Samhain night to Destiny—Destiny who had +brought him—this! +</P> + +<P> +Still the blur and the separate thoughts stinging into his +consciousness like poisoned arrows. Whitaker's voice, persistent and +analytical, rang in his ears. The King of Youth! Kenny laughed aloud +and tears stung at his eyes. He blinked and laughed again. Why, he +was growing up all at once! John would be pleased. Thoughts of +Whitaker, Brian, his farcical penance and Joan, became a brilliant +phantasmagoria from which for an interval nothing emerged separate or +distinct. Then sharp and clear came the dread of Brian's death and the +ride over the sleet with Frank. The steering wheel strained in his +aching hands and the wheels slid dangerously … He did not want to +be a failure … He wanted passionately after all the turmoil to be +Brian's successful parent. If in this instance there was a curious +need to wreck his own life in order that he might parent Brian with +success, he must not make a mess of it. Once, accidentally, John said, +he had almost shipwrecked Brian's life and Brian had stepped out—just +in the nick of time. He must not do that again. Brian had suffered +enough from self rampant in others. +</P> + +<P> +The King of Youth! … The King of Youth! … And Brian was +twenty-four years <I>old</I>. He must not make him—older. This sharp +aging all in a moment was fraught with pain. +</P> + +<P> +His weary ears resented the mocking persistence of Whitaker's voice. +Kenny's happy-go-lucky self-indulgence, it said, had often spelled for +Brian discomfort of a definite sort… Well, +it—should—not—spell—pain… And if in the past his generosity +had always been congenial, now it should hurt. Was he about to learn +something of the psychology of sacrifice that Adam had said he ought to +know? +</P> + +<P> +He swung rebelliously to his feet. Why must the fullness of life come +through sacrifice? Why must all things good and permanent and true +come only out of suffering? Why must men pay for their dreams with +pain? +</P> + +<P> +He moved mechanically toward the door. … Yes, he cared more for +Joan's happiness than for his own. And she was suffering. Why, the +tired truth of it was, he loved them both enough to want to see them +happy … And he would be a part of Don's erratic atonement. +</P> + +<P> +He smiled wryly and realized with a start that he was already +out-of-doors, walking dazedly toward the cabin in the pines. The +fresh, sweet wind blew through his hair and into his face, but the blur +persisted, filled with voices and memories and promptings from God +alone knew where. +</P> + +<P> +The odor of pine was sharply reminiscent… And then with a shock +that stung him out of inhibition he was staring in at the cabin window. +Joan sat by the table, her head upon her arm, her shoulders heaving. +</P> + +<P> +"Poor child!" he said heavily. "Poor child!" And savagely cursed the +summer pictures that flamed in his mind at the sight of her. The +cabin, the wistaria ladder, the punt, the girl by the willow in the +gold brocade— +</P> + +<P> +Well, he must go hurriedly toward that door or not at all. His courage +was failing. +</P> + +<P> +The sound of the door startled her. Joan leaped to her feet and stood, +shaking violently, by the table, one hand clutching at the edge of it +in terror. +</P> + +<P> +In that tongue-tied minute, if he had but known, with his fingers +clenched in his hair and his face scarlet, he was like that turbulent +boy who such a little while ago had crashed into his life with a sob. +</P> + +<P> +Joan's agonized eyes, wet with tears, brought home to him the need of a +steady head … and responsibility. Yes, he must keep his two feet +solidly on the ground and face a gigantic responsibility. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't cry, dear, please!" he said gently. "It's just one of the +things that can't be helped. Don told me. He overheard." +</P> + +<P> +Her low cry hurt—viciously. And she came flying wildly across the +room to his arms, sobbing out her grief and remorse. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Kenny, Kenny." she sobbed. "I—want—you—both." +</P> + +<P> +His shaking arms sheltered her. A heart-broken child! He must +remember that. And, as Don said, he could have been her father. +</P> + +<P> +"Happiness with the least unhappiness to others, girleen," he reminded +with his cheek against her hair. "Remember?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," she choked. +</P> + +<P> +"You must go to Brian. Any foolish notion of sacrifice now will only +tangle the lives of all of us." +</P> + +<P> +"But—I cannot forget! Kenny, if only you would hate me!" +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't mean to love you, mavourneen. It was like the tale of +Killarney. I left a cover off in my heart and a spring gushed out and +flooded my life." +</P> + +<P> +"I am blaming myself!" +</P> + +<P> +"You must not do that. You were in love with love. You must now know +how different it—" But he could not say it, courageous as he felt. +</P> + +<P> +"And the money!" choked Joan. "Oh, Kenny, Kenny, the ragged money! +And I gave it away. And you were so good—so good!" +</P> + +<P> +He frowned, unable to understand at once the relevance of the ragged +money and realized that Joan was sobbing into his shoulder the tale of +an eavesdropping bartender and a doctor. He accepted it, dazedly, +thunderstruck at the alertness of his Nemesis who missed no single +chance to shoot an arrow. +</P> + +<P> +"And Don must give that money back. I will tell him—" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Kenny. "No, he must not." +</P> + +<P> +She stared at him in wonder. +</P> + +<P> +"Mavourneen," he pleaded wistfully, "may I—not do that at least for +someone who is yours? Don needs it." +</P> + +<P> +He could not know that his kindness was to her more poignant torment +than his bitterest reproach. He thought as the color fled from her +lips and left her gray and trembling, that she was fainting. He held +her closely in his arms. +</P> + +<P> +She slipped away from him and sat down weakly in a chair. Dusk lay +beyond the windows. Joan covered her face with her hands. +</P> + +<P> +"The Gray Man," she whispered. "He's peeping in." +</P> + +<P> +Pain flared intolerably in Kenny's throat and stabbed into his heart. +He drew the shades with a shudder and lighted the lamp. +</P> + +<P> +In the supreme moment of his agony, came inspiration. He must save +them all with a lie! Queer that, queer and contradictory! Yes, after +practicing the truth, he must save them all from shipwreck with a lie. +</P> + +<P> +"Girleen," he said, "there is something now that I must tell you. I +thought never to say it. You came into my dream that day beneath the +willow in gold brocade, with afterglow behind you and an ancient boat. +I am an Irishman—and a painter. 'Twas a spot of rare enchantment and +I said to myself, I am falling in love—again." +</P> + +<P> +"Again!" echoed Joan a little blankly. +</P> + +<P> +"Again!" said Kenny inexorably. "You see, Joan, dear, I was used to +falling in love. There are men like that. You and Brian would never +understand." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said the girl, shocked. "No." +</P> + +<P> +"You made a mistake, the sort of mistake that drives half the lifeboats +on the rocks. I mean, dear, falling in love with love. But you're +over that. It was—a different sort of love with me. I knew as we +crossed the river that first day in the punt that the madness could not +last. You see—it never had." +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" +</P> + +<P> +If Joan in that moment had remembered the Irishman tearing bricks from +the fireplace in a spasm of histrionic zeal, she might have distrusted +the steadiness of his level, kindly glance. She might have guessed +that again he was reckless and on his mettle. But she did not remember. +</P> + +<P> +"Romance and mystery," said Kenny, lighting a cigarette and smiling at +her through a cloud of smoke, "were always the death of me. My fancy's +wayward and romantic. Afterward your will-of-the-wisp charm held me +oddly. You kept yourself apart and precious. And I was always +pursuing. It was provocative—and unfamiliar. And then came Samhain, +the—the summer-ending." There was an odd note in his voice. "I faced +a new experience. I had gone over the usual duration of my madness and +I thought," he smiled, "I thought I was loving you for good. But—" +</P> + +<P> +Her dark eyes stared at him, wistful and yet in the moment of her hope +a shade reproachful. +</P> + +<P> +"And—your love—did not last, Kenny?" It was a forlorn little voice, +for all its unmistakable note of rejoicing. How very young she +was—and childlike! +</P> + +<P> +"It—did—not—last!" said Kenny deliberately. "It never does with me. +I should have known it. I love you sincerely, girleen. I always +shall. But I love you as I would have loved—my daughter." +</P> + +<P> +"Your daughter! Kenny, why then did you speak so of the flood of +Killarney?" +</P> + +<P> +"I was testing you. You can see for yourself. I could not honorably +tell you this, dear, if you still cared." +</P> + +<P> +"But I do care," cried Joan, flinging out her hands with a gesture of +appeal. "I love you so much, Kenny, that it hurts." +</P> + +<P> +"But not in the way you love Brian." +</P> + +<P> +"No." +</P> + +<P> +"And that, mavourneen, is as it should be." +</P> + +<P> +He told her of the stage mother. Let the lie go with the castle he had +built upon it. And he would begin afresh. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah," said Joan, dismissing it with shining eyes, "there, Kenny, you +meant only to be kind." +</P> + +<P> +He wondered wearily why the lie with all its torment had not shocked +her. Truth was queer. +</P> + +<P> +Joan glided toward the door. He caught in her face the look of a white +flame and dropped his eyes. A Botticelli look. Ah, well, it was +beautiful to be young and joyous! +</P> + +<P> +"I must tell Brian," she said. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Kenny. "Of course." +</P> + +<P> +And she was gone. Kenny lay back in his chair and closed his eyes; the +sound of her flying feet death in his ears. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap41"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XLI +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +WHEN THE ISLE OF DELIGHT RECEDED +</H2> + +<P> +Often Kenny had appreciatively dramatized for himself possible minutes of +tragedy. They were always opportunities for Shakespearian soliloquy and +gesture. +</P> + +<P> +Now he lay back in his chair much too tired for tragedy and gesture. And +the need of soliloquy would have found him dumb. Upper-most in his mind +was a dream in which Joan had peeped down at him from a balloon that went +ever and ever higher—like the Isle of Delight that was always—receding. +He had sensed in her to-night that aerial aloofness he had felt when he +blocked old Adam out from his dream of love. Liebestraum! The stabbing +pain in his heart grew hotter. +</P> + +<P> +It was lonely here in the pines. He wondered why he had never caught +before that chill pervading sense of solitude—sad solitude. The pines +whispered. It was not merely poetry. They whispered plaintively… +And he was very tired. +</P> + +<P> +Rebellion came flaming into his apathy and Kenny caught his breath and +held it, fiercely striking his hands together again and again. Sacrifice +and suffering! Must it be like this? What had he written in his +notebook anyway? He seemed almost to have forgotten. +</P> + +<P> +The book opened at a touch to the page he wanted. +</P> + +<P> +"Sunsets and vanity," he read drearily and penciled the rebuke away with +a faint smile. Like his hairbrained, unquenchable youth, bright with +folly, the sunsets and vanity lay in the past. Vanity! Ah, dear God! he +could not feel humbler. + +Nor was he irresponsible—or a failure as a parent. He had made good +to-night. Surely, surely, he had made good to-night. The one thing that +he might not mark out was his failure as a painter. +</P> + +<P> +"Need to suffer and learn something of the psychology of sacrifice." +Well, he was—learning… Nay, he had learned. Kenny fiercely drew +his pencil through the sentence and read the rest. +</P> + +<P> +The truth, though he did not fully understand it, he would always try to +tell. He had no debts. The chairs in the studio were cleared of litter. +A plebeian regularity had made him uncomfortably provident. +</P> + +<P> +So much for that part of his self-arraignment. One by one he marked the +items out and stared with a twisted smile at the next. +</P> + +<P> +"I borrow Brian's girls, his money and his clothes!" Hum! Once Garry +had barked at him for sending orchids to a girl or two whom Brian liked. +</P> + +<P> +The money, the clothes, the paraphernalia he had pawned, were returned. +As for the girls—well, Brian had retaliated in kind and perhaps the debt +in its concentration of payment, was abundantly squared. +</P> + +<P> +"Indolence." That the record of his winter could disprove. +</P> + +<P> +And finally, he read what, after Adam's telling of the truth, he had +scribbled at the end. +</P> + +<P> +"Life is a battle. I do not fight. And life is not an individual +adventure." +</P> + +<P> +It wasn't. It was a chain that clanked. +</P> + +<P> +"I do not fight," he read again and crossed it out. +</P> + +<P> +"Adam, old man," he said wryly, "I think to-night I've done some +fighting. And the fight has just begun." +</P> + +<P> +He tore the page out, struck a match and burned it. Again he dropped +back in his chair and closed his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +Into the blur came Garry. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny!" he called. "Kenny!" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny opened his eyes with a start. Garry stood by the cabin door, his +hand upon the knob. +</P> + +<P> +"Don asked me to come. Kenny, I was on the porch. Great God! the kid +must have gone crazy." +</P> + +<P> +"You heard?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"He wanted to—atone." +</P> + +<P> +"And now that he's cooled down enough to remember your kindness, Kenny, +he's breaking his heart over you. A queer kid! I almost thrashed him. +He's tramping off his brain-storm." +</P> + +<P> +"And Joan?" +</P> + +<P> +"With Brian." Garry looked away. "They have forgotten the world," he +added bitterly. +</P> + +<P> +"Kenny, how did you manage? That look in her face—" +</P> + +<P> +"I lied." +</P> + +<P> +"Gallant liar!" said Garry huskily. "I knew you would. It was the only +kind way." +</P> + +<P> +"Almost," said Kenny, "I did not remember to lie in time. Truth is a +thing I cannot understand." +</P> + +<P> +The sympathy in Garry's eyes unnerved him. +</P> + +<P> +"Garry," he flamed, "why did I practice the telling of truth to end now +with a lie? Why did Joan plead for a year to learn to be my wife and +learn in it—not to be?" +</P> + +<P> +"God knows!" said Garry gently. "Why did agony come to Brian at the +hands of a boy he'd befriended? And then—to you?" +</P> + +<P> +"It is the Samhain of my life," said Kenny rising. "And I am no longer +John Whitaker's King of Youth. I think my youth died back there when Don +thrust it aside, not meaning, I take it, to be cruel. But I grew up all +at once." He frowned. "Drowning men, they say, have a kaleidoscopic +vision of the past. I think sitting here that came to me. Perhaps, +Garry, if Eileen had lived I would have been different—steadier. I +think I loved her. I think it would have lasted. A child is a beautiful +link. Perhaps that fever of vanity that grew to a burning in my veins +would never have started. Started, it was like a conflagration. It +drove Brian to sunsets. God knows what it didn't do. I thought only of +myself—always. That desire for adulation in a woman's eyes, that +curious persistent fever was, I'm sure, a sort of sex vanity. It has +nearly ruined many another man's life. It nearly ruined mine. Always +when I was drifting into new madness, I couldn't work. I dreamed. The +Isle of Delight, always receding! I sang and whistled. The King of +Youth! Only when I was drifting out again, could I bend myself to +concentration and sanity. And then another look in a girl's soft +eyes—and more vanity and self and delirium. But I'm tired. I want to +look ahead to—to quiet and steadiness and work." +</P> + +<P> +Garry, with the husk still in his throat, wandered off to the window. +</P> + +<P> +"Garry!" +</P> + +<P> +Garry wheeled and found a wistful, boyish Kenny with his fingers in his +hair. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm no longer a failure as a parent?" +</P> + +<P> +"No!" said Garry with decision. +</P> + +<P> +"And God knows I haven't been a failure as a lover. I'm prayin' I shan't +always be a failure as a painter. It's the one thing left. Somewhere in +Ireland, Garry, nine silent fairies blow beneath a caldron. They know +the secrets of the future. I'd like to be peepin'." +</P> + +<P> +He was to know in time that the caldron held for him peace and big +achievement. +</P> + +<P> +"I wish I could help!" said Garry. +</P> + +<P> +"Garry, could you—would you drive me home to-night?" +</P> + +<P> +"Anything!" +</P> + +<P> +"You'll not be mindin'?" +</P> + +<P> +"No. It's better." +</P> + +<P> +"Come," said Kenny, his color high. "We'll be facin' it now." +</P> + +<P> +They went in silence through the pines. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap42"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XLII +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE END OF KENNY'S SONG +</H2> + +<P> +A light flickered on the porch where Hannah hovered around the supper +table, puzzled and annoyed. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm glad somebody's come at last," she exclaimed a trifle tartly. +"Every bug on the ridge has been staring at the supper table through +the screens. And I promised Mis' Owen to drive over there to-night +with Hughie." +</P> + +<P> +"Where's Brian?" +</P> + +<P> +"He went down to the village with Joan." +</P> + +<P> +"And Don?" +</P> + +<P> +"Don said he'd eat his supper when he came. It might be late." +</P> + +<P> +Kenny, whistling a madcap hornpipe, glinted at the table with approval. +</P> + +<P> +"Off with ye, now, Hannah, darlin'," he said. "I'll stare the bugs +down until they come." +</P> + +<P> +"They ought to be here now." Hannah's eyes strained, frowning, toward +the lane. +</P> + +<P> +"Ho, Brian!" Kenny called. +</P> + +<P> +"Ho!" came a distant shout. And then: "Coming, Kenny." +</P> + +<P> +Had Kenny's call been one of reassurance? To Garry, miserably intent +upon the ordeal ahead, the big Irishman, whistling softly in his chair, +had sent a message through the dark to ease the tension. Already the +daredevil light danced wantonly in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +Hannah trotted off in better humor. +</P> + +<P> +Dreading the supper hour, dreading the sound of steps upon the walk, +Garry smoked and gnawed his lips. The meeting must be painful… +Now they were coming along the gravel … and now … He had +undervalued Kenny's tact. +</P> + +<P> +The latch of the screen door clicked. Kenny rummaged for cigarettes +and struck a match. Joan had slipped to her place at the table before +he threw the match away. Then he smiled. His eyes were a curious +droll confessional that Brian seemed at once to understand. They +deplored the fickle strain in his blood that doomed all madness of the +heart to end in time. Brian had seen that look too many times to doubt +it now. +</P> + +<P> +"Come, Garry." Joan brought him into the circle at the table with a +smile. Garry joined it with a sinking heart. He would have had that +shining look of wonder in her eyes less unrestrained. But the shadows +for Joan, thanks to Kenny's lie, lay already dimly in the past. +</P> + +<P> +The merriment of the supper hour Garry thought of later with a pang. +He ate but little, fascinated by the reckless spontaneity of Kenny's +mood. It put them all at ease. The big kind Spartan will behind it +brought a catch to Garry's throat. Daredevil glints laughed in Kenny's +eyes. Again and again Garry found himself staring at the actor's vivid +face in a panic of unbelief. +</P> + +<P> +"Garry's had a letter," said Kenny presently. "He's driving back +to-night." +</P> + +<P> +"Garry!" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sorry." Garry rose. "I'm afraid," he added, glancing at his +watch, "that I'll have to slip upstairs and sling some odds and ends in +my suit case. Mind, Kenny?" +</P> + +<P> +"Run along," said Kenny. "I'll be up in a minute." He drummed an +irresponsible tune upon the table and looked apologetic. +</P> + +<P> +"If you'll not be mindin', Brian," he began, "I'll go along. He +doesn't know the roads—" +</P> + +<P> +Brian eyed him with a familiar glint of authority. +</P> + +<P> +"I thought so," he said slowly. "I saw it coming. You're just in the +mood for what Jan calls 'rocketing' and Garry's letter, of course, was +the spark. Luckily, old boy, I'm on the job again. You've been +tearing around unguarded a shade too long." +</P> + +<P> +"I've got to go," barked Kenny, pushing back his chair. "I've had his +car for months. Do you suppose I want him losing his way all night—" +</P> + +<P> +He fumed off rebelliously, talking as he went. +</P> + +<P> +Brian's eyes followed him through the doorway. +</P> + +<P> +"Hum!" he said grimly. "'Richard is himself again!' You mustn't blame +him, Joan," he added. "He was always like that. He can't help it. I +mean, dear, tumbling in and out of love. I always knew the symptoms. +Falling in, he'd whistle softly and his eyes would shine. He'd be up +in the clouds and altogether gay and charming, his work would begin to +pall and he'd put it aside until he began to run down. I always knew +when he came to disillusion. His conscience would begin to bother him +about work. He'd be moody and discontented and a desperate flurry of +painting would follow until the next girl smiled." +</P> + +<P> +He reached across the table and caught her hands. +</P> + +<P> +"It is hard to believe it all," he said simply. "And Ireland for a +honeymoon!" +</P> + +<P> +The look of shining content in Joan's eyes deepened. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Brian," she said. "I shall love it, I know!" +</P> + +<P> +Kenny climbed the stairway in a daze and packed his suit case. +Everywhere he felt the eyes of Adam Craig upon him—less and less +unkind. They stared at him from the windows by the orchard. They +stared over the creaking banister as he stumbled down the stairway with +his courage ebbing. They stared from the library where the porch light +glimmered through the windows. … Fall was in the wind to-night. +The old house creaked. Adam's spirit swept in always with a sighing +wind. Kenny shivered. A bleak place—the ridge—and haunted. +</P> + +<P> +With a shock he found himself upon the porch. At the foot of the steps +Garry waited in the car, his gauntleted hands drumming nervously upon +the wheel. If for a minute stark, incredulous terror swept through +Kenny's veins, his laughing lips belied it. Then he kissed Joan +lightly on the cheek and went, whistling, down the steps with Brian. +</P> + +<P> +"And you, Brian?" he said, halting on the lower step to light a +cigarette. "What shall I tell John?" +</P> + +<P> +"Tell him all," said Brian. He talked hurriedly of his plans. +</P> + +<P> +Kenny held out his hand. +</P> + +<P> +"God speed, boy!" he said. +</P> + +<P> +Garry—unsentimental Garry—blinked as the car shot down the lane. He +clashed his gears and shuddered. +</P> + +<P> +Brian stared. +</P> + +<P> +"Phew!" he whistled as Joan came down the steps. "Garry's driving like +a blacksmith." +</P> + +<P> +They clung to each other in the dark and watched the headlights play +upon the trees. +</P> + +<P> +From the end of the lane came Kenny's final gift of reassurance. His +rollicking voice swept into the quiet, soft with brogue, as care-free +in song as it had been earlier in laughter: +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> + "'I'll love thee evermore<BR> + Eileen a roon!<BR> + I'll bless thee o'er and o'er<BR> + Eileen a roon!'" +</P> + +<P> +Brian laughed softly. +</P> + +<P> +"Joan! Joan!" he exclaimed in a rush of feeling. Their lips met. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> + "'Oh! for thy sake I'll tread<BR> + Where plains of Mayo spread.'" +</P> + +<P> +Brian's heart went out to the irresponsible penitent rocketing in song. +</P> + +<P> +"Dear lunatic!" he said. +</P> + +<P> +Fainter in the night wind came the end of Kenny's song: +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> + "'By hope still fondly led,<BR> + Eileen a roon.'" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + +<hr class="full" noshade> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KENNY***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 16040-h.txt or 16040-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/4/16040">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/0/4/16040</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Kenny + + +Author: Leona Dalrymple + +Illustrator: Joseph Pierre Nuyttens + + +Release Date: June 11, 2005 [eBook #16040] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KENNY*** + + +E-text prepared by Al Haines + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 16040-h.htm or 16040-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/4/16040/16040-h/16040-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/4/16040/16040-h.zip) + + + + + +KENNY + +by + +LEONA DALRYMPLE + +Author of _Diane of the Green Van_, _The Lovable Meddler_ + +Illustrated by Joseph Pierre Nuyttens + +The Reilly & Britton Co. +Chicago + +Second Printing September 10, 1917 + + + + + + + +[Frontispiece: Joan] + + + + + +CONTENTS + + I Brian Rebels + II The Unsuccessful Parent + III In the Gay and Golden Weather + IV God's Green World of Spring + V At the Blast of a Horn + VI In the Garret + VII The Blossom Storm + VIII Joan + IX Adam Craig + X A Notebook + XI The Cabin in the Pines + XII Thraldom + XIII Kenny's Truth Crusade + XIV In Somebody's Boat + XV In Which Caliban Scores + XVI Tantrums + XVII Kenny Disappears + XVIII Brian Solves a Problem + XIX Samhain + XX The Chair by the Fire + XXI The Shadow of Death + XXII In the Cabin + XXIII A Miser's Will + XXIV Digging Dots + XXV Checkmate! + XXVI An Inspiration + XXVII Miser's Gold + XXVIII Kenny's Ward + XXIX The Studio Again + XXX Playtime + XXXI Fate Stabs + XXXII On Finlake Mountain + XXXIII In the Span of a Day + XXXIV A Face + XXXV The Penitent + XXXVI April + XXXVII Honeysuckle Days + XXXVIII Arcady Eludes a Seeker + XXXIX The Tension Snaps + XL The King of Youth + XLI When the Isle of Delight Receded + XLII The End of Kenny's Song + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +Joan . . . . . . Frontispiece + +He was sailing across, to romance he hoped, and surely to mystery + +"'Tis Samhain, Adam," said Kenny, "the summer ending of the druids" + +"I love you better than my life," Joan said, "and I may--may never--say +it again" + + + + +KENNY + + +CHAPTER I + +BRIAN REBELS + +"You needn't repeat it," said Brian with a flash of his quiet eyes. +"This time, Kenny, I mean to stay disinherited." + +Kennicott O'Neill stared at his son and gasped. The note of permanency +in the chronic rite of disinheritance was startling. So was something +in the set of Brian's chin and the flush of anger burning steadily +beneath the dark of his skin. Moreover, his eyes, warmly Irish like +his father's, and ordinarily humorous and kind, remained unflinchingly +aggressive. + +With the air of an outraged emperor, the older man strode across the +studio and rapped upon his neighbor's wall for arbitration. + +"Garry may be in bed," said Brian, + +"And he may not." It was much the same to Kenny. + +He was a splendid figure--that Irishman. His gorgeous Persian slippers +curled at the toes and ended in a pair of scarlet heels. The +extraordinary mandarin combination of oriental magnificence and the +rags he affected for a bathrobe, hung from a pair of shoulders +noticeably broad and graceful. If he wore his frayed splendor with a +certain picturesque distinction, it was the way he did all things, even +his delightful brogue which was if anything a shade too mellifluous to +be wholly unaffected. What Kenny liked he kept if he could, even his +irresponsible youth and gayety. + +Time had helped him there. His auburn hair was still bright and thick. +And his eyes were as blue and merry now as when with pagan reverence he +had tramped and sketched as a lad among the ruined altars of the druids. + +He had meant to wither his son with continued dignity and calm. The +vagaries of Irish temper ordained otherwise. Kenny glanced at the +fragments of a statuette conspicuously rearranged on a Louis XV table +almost submerged in the chaotic disorder of the studio, and lost his +head. + +"Look at that!" he flung out furiously. + +Brian had already looked--with guilt--and regretted. + +"I broke it--accidentally," he admitted. + +"Accidentally! You flung a brush at it." + +"I flung a brush across the studio," corrected Brian, "just after you +went out to pawn my shotgun." + +"Damn the shotgun!" + +"I can extend that same courtesy," reminded Brian, "to the statuette." + +Things were going badly when the expected arbitrator rapped upon the +door, and losing ground, Kenny felt that he must needs dramatize his +parental right to authority for the benefit of Garry's ears and his own +pride. + +"Silence!" he thundered, striding toward the door. He flung it back +with the air of a conqueror. His stage play fell rather flat. Garry +Rittenhouse, in bathrobe and slippers, confronted the pair with a look +of weary inquiry. He sometimes regretted that as a peacemaker he had +become an institution. Nobody said anything. Garry hunted cigarettes, +cleared a chair and sat down. + +"It may or may not interest you two to know that I was in bed," he +began irritably. "I wish to Heaven you'd fight in union hours." + +Brian was sorry and said so. Kenny, however, took immediate advantage +of Garry's attitude to sidetrack what he considered the preposterous +irrelevance of the shotgun, the one unessential thing in the studio, +and point with rising temper to the statuette. It had, alas! been a +birthday present from Ann Marvin, whose statuettes, fashionable and +satiric, were famous. + +It was like Kenny to have a grievance. He was hardly ever without one. +But justification was rare indeed and he made the best of it. He said +all that was on his mind without restraint as to duration or intensity, +thunderstruck at Brian's white-hot response. For twenty minutes of +Irish fire and fury, Garry listened in amazement, sensing an +unaccustomed stubbornness in Brian's anger. + +"Just a minute," said Garry, dazed. "Let's get down to brass tacks. +Who and what began it?" + +They both told him. + +"One at a time, please!" he begged. "I gather that you, Kenny, in need +of petty funds, went out to pawn Brian's shotgun. And you, Brian, +losing your temper, flung a brush across the studio and smashed a +valued statuette--" + +Kenny chose indignantly to tell it all again and overshot the mark, +bringing Garry down upon him with a bark. + +"Now, see here, Kenny," he interposed curtly, "that's enough. Brian's +usually sane and regular. It's by no means a criminal offense for him +to pick a row with you about his shotgun. And he didn't mean to smash +the statuette." + +He waited for the voice of thunder in which Kenny, at a disadvantage, +would be sure to disinherit his son and, waiting, glanced a trifle +wryly at the littered studio. What Brian lost by chronic +disinheritance lay ever before the eye, particularly now when Kenny, in +one of his periods of insolvency, was posted downstairs for club debt +and Mrs. Haggerty's insular notions about credit had driven him to +certain frugal devices with the few handkerchiefs he owned, one of +which was spread upon the nearest window pane to dry. + +Garry's disgusted inventory missed nothing: a prayer rug for which +Kenny had toured into the south of Persia and led an Arabian Nights' +existence with pursuing bandits whom, by some extraordinary twist of +genius, he had conciliated and painted; an illuminated manuscript in +Gaelic which he claimed had been used by a warrior to ransom a king; +chain armor, weapons of all kinds, climes and periods; an Alpine horn, +reminiscent of the summer Kenny had saved a young painter's life at the +risk of his own; some old masters, a cittern, a Chinese cheng with +tubes and reeds, an ancient psaltery with wires you struck with a +crooked stick that was always lost (Kenny when the mood was upon him +evolved weird music from them all), an Italian dulcimer, a Welsh crwth +that was unpronounceably interesting (some of the strings you twanged +with your thumb and some you played with a bow); Chinese, Japanese, +Indian vases, some alas! sufficiently small for utilitarian purposes, +Salviati glass, feather embroidery, carved chairs and a chest. + +A prodigal display--Kenny in his shifting periods of affluence was +always prodigal--but there had never been cups enough with handles in +the littered closet, Garry recalled, until Brian inspired had bought +too many bouillon cups, figuring that one handle always would be left; +Kenny could not remember to buy a teapot when he could and made tea in +a chafing dish; and he had been known to serve highballs in vases. + +Garry glanced expectantly at his host and found him but a blur of +oriental color in a film of smoke. As usual, when he was in a temper +or excited, he was smoking furiously. But the threat of disinheritance +was not forthcoming. If anything, the disinheritor was sulking. And +the eyes of the disinheritee were intelligent and disconcerting. + +"Well?" said Garry, amazed. + +"I've already been disinherited," explained Brian dryly. "Twice. And +I'm leaving tonight--for good." + +Garry sat up. + +"You mean?" demanded Kenny coldly. + +"I mean," flung out Brian, "that I'm tired of it all. I'm sick to +death of painting sunsets." + +Garry's startled glance sought and found a mediocre sunset on an easel. +Brian went in for sunsets. He said so himself with an inexplicable air +of weariness and disgust. He knew how to make them. + +Kenny's glance too had found the sunset. It stood beside a landscape, +brilliant and unforgettable, of his own. Both men looked away. Brian +smiled. + +"You see?" he said quietly. + +"Sunsets!" stammered Kenny, perversely taking up the keynote of his +son's rebellion literally. "Sunsets! I warned you, Brian--" + +"Sunsets," said Brian, "and everything else you put on canvas with +paint and brush. I can't paint. You know it. Garry knows it. I know +it. I've painted, Kenny, merely to please you. I've nothing more than +a commonplace skill whipped into shape by an art school. Aerial +battlefields--my sunsets--in more ways than one. I paint 'em because +they happen to be the thing in Nature that thrills me most. And when I +fire to a thing, most always I can manage somehow. You yourself have +engineered for me every profitable commission I've ever had. What's +more, Kenny, if ever once you'd put into real art the dreadful energy +I've put into my mediocrity--" + +"You mean I'm lazy?" interrupted Kenny, bristling. + +"Certainly not," said Brian with acid politeness. "You're merely +subject to periodic fits of indolence. You've said as much yourself." + +It was irrefutable. Kenny, offended, brought his fist down upon the +table with a bang. + +"I know precisely what you're going to say," cut in Brian. "I'm +ungrateful. I'm not. But it's misdirected generosity on your part, +Kenny. And I'm through. I'm tired," he added simply. "I want to live +my own life away from the things I can't do well. I'm tired of +drifting." + +"And to-night?" + +Brian flung out his hands. + +"The last straw!" he said bitterly. + +"You're meaning the shotgun, Brian?" demanded Kenny. + +"I'm meaning the shotgun." + +"What will you do?" interposed the peacemaker in the nick of time. + +"I've done some free-lance reporting for John Whitaker," said Brian. +"I think he'll give me a big chance. He's interested." His voice--it +had in it at times a hint of Kenny's soft and captivating brogue--was +splendidly boyish and eager now. "Foreign perhaps or war. Maybe +Mexico. Anything so I can write the truth, Garry, the big truth that's +down so far you have to dig for it, the passion of humanness--the +humanness of unrest. I can't say it to-night. I can only feel it." + +Alarmed by this time, Kenny came turbulently into the conversation and +abused John Whitaker for his son's defection. Brian, it was plain, had +been decoyed by bromidic tales of cub reporters and "record-smashing +beats." He contrasted art and journalism and found Brian indifferent +to his scorn. + +"It isn't just Whitaker and the sunsets and the desire to exchange the +sham of my 'art' for the truth of something real," said Brian. "It's +everything. It's the studio here and things like--like the shotgun. I +hate the brilliant, disorderly hand-to-mouth sort of Bohemia, Kenny, in +which you seem to thrive. Either we have a lot of money or a lot of +debts--" + +Garry nodded. + +"I suppose," went on Brian wearily, "that my nature must demand an +orderly security in essentials. Plebeian, of course, but comfortable. +I mean, money in sufficient regularity, chairs you can sit down on +without looking first--" he shrugged. + +Further detail and he would be drifting into deep water. Life with +Kenny, who borrowed as freely as he gave, entailed petty harassments +that could not be named. + +"Things," finished Brian. "that are mine without a lock and key." + +He had meant not to say it. Kenny struck his hand fiercely against the +table. + +"You hear that, Garry?" he demanded with an indignant bid for support. +"You hear that? By the Lord Harry, Brian, it's damnable and indecent +to harp so upon the shotgun after smashing the statuette." + +The circle was complete. They were back to Kenny's grievance. Brian +sighed. + +"I wasn't thinking of the shotgun," he said. "There have been times, +Kenny, when I hadn't a collar left--" + +"He's right," put in Garry with quick sympathy. "It's not just the +shotgun--" + +"Garry, you shut up!" snapped Kenny, sweeping the fragments of Ann's +statuette into the table drawer and closing it with a bang. + +"Please remember," reminded Garry, coldly, "that an established +privilege of mine, since I undertook this Hague stuff, is absolute +frankness." + +"Br-r-r-r--" + +"Who rapped for me?" + +"Kenny did," said Brian. + +"Any man," retorted Kenny bitterly, "may have a--a moment of lunacy. I +thought you were impartial." + +"You mean," said Garry keenly, "that when you rapped you'd been +hypnotized by the justice of your own case and felt a little reckless." + +Kenny drew himself up splendidly and glared at Garry through a cloud of +smoke. + +"Piffle!" said Garry. "No stately stuff for me, Kenny, please. It's +late and I'm tired. I'll referee this thing in my own way. I +repeat--it's not just the shotgun. It's everything he owns." + +"What for instance?" inquired Kenny, dangerously polite. + +"His money, his clothes and his girls!" enumerated Garry brutally. +"You even pawned his fishing rods and golf clubs." + +"I sent him a fern," said Kenny, affronted. "Did he even water it? +No!" + +"I think I paid for it," said Brian. + +"Has he ever given me the proper degree of respect. No! He calls +me--Kenny!" + +Garry laughed aloud at the wrathful search for grievance. It was not +always easy to remember that Kenny had eloped at twenty with the young +wife who had died when his son was born; and that his son was +twenty-three. + +"Go on," said Kenny. "Laugh your fool head off. I'm merely stating +facts." + +"As for his tennis racquet," reminded Garry, and Kenny flushed. + +It developed that of studio things the racquet and the shotgun had +seemed the least essential. And the need had been imperative. + +"Nevertheless," interposed Garry, "they and a number of other things +you pawned were Brian's." + +Moreover, reverting to the fishing rods and golf clubs, Kenny would +like to have them both remember that it had been winter and one can +redeem most anything by summer. He'd meant to. He honestly had. + +"But you didn't," said Garry. + +"Great God," thundered Kenny, "you're like a parrot." Fuming he +searched afield for cigarettes and found them at his elbow. A noise at +the open window behind him brought him to his feet with a nervous start. + +"What's that? What's over there?" he demanded petulantly. + +"Oh, it's only H-B," said Garry. "He's come down the fire-escape. +Mac's likely forgotten to chain him." + +The honey-bear, kept secretly in a studio upstairs and christened "H-B" +to cloak his identity--for the club rules denied him hospitality--came +in with a jaunty air of confidence. At the sight of the three men he +turned tail and fled. Kenny speeded his departure with a bouillon cup +and felt better. + +As for clothes, Kenny began with new dignity, he must remind them both +that he had more than Brian, if now and again he did forget a minor +essential and have to forage for it. He added with an air of rebuke +that Brian was welcome to anything he had, anything--to borrow, to wear +and to lose if he chose. + +Brian received the offer with a glance of blank dismay and Garry with +difficulty repressed a smile. Kenny's fashionable wardrobe, portentous +in all truth, had an unmistakable air of originality about it at once +foreign and striking. There were times when he looked irresistibly +theatric and ducal. + +Kenny repeated his willingness to lend his wardrobe. + +"Of course you would," said Garry. "Though it's hardly the point and +difficult to remember when Brian is in a hurry and has to send out a +boy to buy him a collar." + +In the matter of money, to take up another point, Kenny felt that his +son had a peculiar genius for always having money somewhere. Brian had +of necessity been saved considerable inconvenience by a tendency to +economy and resource. As usual, if anybody suffered it was Kenny. + +"For 'tis myself, dear lad," he finished, "that runs the scale a bit. +Faith, I'm that impecunious at times I'm beside myself with fret and +worry." + +Brian steeled himself against the disarming gentleness of the change of +mood. It was inevitably strategic. Wily and magnetic Kenny always had +his way. It was plain he thought to have it now with every instinct up +in arms at the thought of Brian's going. + +"I've less genius, less debt and less money," conceded Brian, "but I've +a lot more capacity for worry and I'm tired of always being on my +guard. I'm tired of bookkeeping--" + +"Bookkeeping!" + +"Bookkeeping lies!" said Brian bluntly. "I've lied myself sometimes, +Kenny, to keep from denying a lie of yours." + +The nature of the thrust was unexpected. Kenny changed color and +resented the hyper-critical word. To his mind it was neither filial +nor aesthetic. + +"Lies!" he repeated indignantly, regarding his son with a look of +paralyzed inquiry. "Lies!" + +"Lies!" insisted Brian. "You know precisely what I mean." + +"I suppose, Kenny," said Garry fairly, "that a certain amount of +romancing is for you the wine of existence. Your wit's insistent and +if a thing presents itself, tempting and warmly colored, you can't +refuse it expression simply because it isn't true. You must make a +good story. I've sometimes thought you'd have a qualm or two of +conscience if you didn't, as if it's an artistic obligation you've +ignored--to delight somebody's ears, even for a moment. Perhaps you +don't realize how far afield you travel. But it's pretty hard on +Brian." + +It was the thing, as Garry knew, that taxed Brian's patience to the +utmost, plunged him into grotesque dilemmas and kept him keyed to an +abnormal alertness of memory. Always his sense of loyalty revolted at +the notion of denying any tale that Kenny told. + +Now Kenny's hurt stare left Brian unrepentant. He lost his temper +utterly. Thereafter he blazed out a hot-headed summary of book-keeping +that made his father gasp. + +Kenny's air of conscious rectitude vanished. In an instant he was +defensive and excited, resenting the unexpected need of the one and the +distraction of the other. The sum of his episodic rambling on Brian's +tongue was appalling. He was willing to concede that his imagination +was wayward and romantic. But why in the name of Heaven must a +man--and an Irishman--justify the indiscretions of his wit? Well, the +lad had always had an unnatural trend for fact. Kenny remembered with +resentment the Irish fairies that even in his childhood Brian had been +unable to accept, excellent fairies with feet so big that in time of +storm they stood on their heads and used them for umbrellas! + +Staggered by Brian's inflexible air of resolution, Kenny, his fingers +clenched in his hair, began another circle. He reverted to his +grievance. The quarrel this time was sharp and brief. Brian hated +repetitions. Hotly impenitent he flung out of the studio and slammed +his bedroom door, leaving Kenny dazed and defensive and utterly unable +to comprehend the twist of fate by which the dignity of his grievance +had been turned to disadvantage. + +Garry glanced at the gray haze in the court beyond the window and rose. + +"It's nearly daybreak," he said. "And I've a model coming at ten. +She's busy and I can't stall." + +He left Kenny amazed and aggrieved at his desertion. Certainly in the +grip of untoward events, a man is entitled to someone with whom he can +talk it over. + +Wakeful and nervous, Kenny smoked, raked his hair with his fingers and +brooded. Brian had been disinherited much too often to resent it all +at once to-night. As for the shotgun, that dispute or its equivalent +was certainly as normal a one as regularity could make it. And he had +related many a tale unhampered by fact that Brian had simply ignored. + +"What on earth has got into the lad?" he wondered impatiently. + +Ah, well, he was a good lad, clean-cut and fine, with Irish eyes and an +Irish temper like his father. Kenny forgot and forgave. Both were a +spontaneity of temperament. Brian and he would begin again. That was +always pleasant. + +He strode remorsefully to Brian's door and knocked. There was no +answer. He knocked again. Ordinarily he would have flung back the +door with a show of temper. Penitential, he opened it with an air of +gentle forbearance. The room, which gave evidence of anger and hurried +packing, was empty, the door that opened into the corridor, ajar. + +Brian was gone. + +White and startled, Kenny unearthed the chafing dish and made himself +some coffee. + +Brian, of course, would return in the morning, whistling and sane. He +would call something back in his big, pleasant voice to the elevator +man who worshipped him, and bang the studio door. The lad was not +given to such definite revolt. Besides, Brian, he must remember, was +an O'Neill, an Irishman and a son of his, an indisputable trio of good +fortune; as such he could be depended upon not to make an ass of +himself. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE UNSUCCESSFUL PARENT + +Kenny slept as he lived, with a genius for dreams and adventure. He +remembered moodily as he rose at noon that he had dreamed a +kaleidoscopic chase, precisely like a moving picture with himself a +star, in which, bolting through one taxi door and out another with a +shotgun in his hand, he had valiantly pursued a youth who had, +miraculously, found the crooked stick of the psaltery and stolen it. +The youth proved to be Brian. That part was reasonable enough. Brian +was the only one who could find the thing long enough to steal it. + +It was not likely to be a day for work. That he felt righteously could +not be expected. Nevertheless, with hurt concession to certain talk of +indolence the night before, he donned a painter's smock and, filled +with a consciousness of tremendous energy to be expended in God's good +time, telephoned John Whitaker. + +Yes, Brian had been there. Where he was now, where he would be, +Whitaker did not feel at liberty to divulge. Frankly he was pledged to +silence. Kenny willing, he would be up to dinner at six. He had a lot +to say. + +Kenny banged the receiver into the hook in a blaze of temper, hurt and +unreasonable, and striding to the rear window flung it up to cool his +face. There were bouillon cups upon the sill. Bouillon cups! +Bouillon cups! Thunder-and-turf! There were bouillon cups everywhere. +Nobody but Brian would have bought so many handles. A future of +handles loomed drearily ahead. Brian could talk of disorder all he +chose. Half of it was bouillon cups. Bitterly resenting the reproach +they seemed to embody, stacked there upon the sill, Kenny passionately +desired to sweep them out of the window once and for all. The desire +of the moment, ever his doom, proved overpowering. The cups crashed +upon a roof below with prompt results. Kenny was appalled at the +number of heads that appeared at studio windows, the head of Sidney +Fahr among them, round-eyed and incredulous. Well, that part at least +was normal. Sid's face advertised a chronic distrust of his senses. + +Moreover, when Pietro appeared after a round of alarmed inquiry, Kenny +perversely chose to be truthful about it, insisted that it was not +accidental and refused to be sorry. Afterward he admitted to Garry, it +was difficult to believe that one spontaneous ebullition of a nature +not untemperamental could provoke so much discussion, frivolous and +otherwise. The thing might grow so, he threatened sulkily, that he'd +leave the club. + +As for the immediate present, Fate had saddled him again with an +afternoon of moody indolence. Certainly no Irishman with nerves strung +to an extraordinary pitch could work with Mike crawling snakily around +the lower roof intent upon china remnants whose freaks of shape seemed +to paralyze him into moments of agreeable interest. Kenny at four +refused an invitation to tea and waited in growing gloom for Reynolds, +a dealer who, prodded always into inconvenient promptness by Kenny's +needs, had promised to combine inspection of the members' exhibition in +the gallery downstairs with the delivery of a check. There were +critical possibilities if he did not appear. + +Mike disappeared with the final fragment and Reynolds became the +grievance of the hour. Kenny, fuming aimlessly around the studio, +resorted desperately at last to an unfailing means of stimulus. He +made a careful toilet, donned a coat with a foreign looking waist-line, +rather high, and experimented with a new and picturesque stock that +fastened beneath his tie with a jeweled link. As six o'clock arrived +and Reynolds' defection became a thing assured, his attitude toward +John Whitaker underwent an imperative change. It would be impossible +now to greet him with hostile dignity. He had become a definite need. + +When at ten minutes past six the studio bell tinkled, Kenny, opening +the door, stared at Whitaker in tragic dismay and struck himself upon +the forehead. + +"Mother of Men!" he groaned. "I thought of course it would be +Reynolds. He's bringing me a check." + +John Whitaker looked unimpressed. He merely blinked his recognition of +a subterfuge. + +There was a parallel in his experience, a weekend arrival at Woodstock +when Kenny, farming in a flurry of enthusiasm, had come riding down to +meet his guest on a singular quadruped whose area of hide had thickened +strangely. Brian called the uncurried quadruped a plush horse. Kenny, +remembered Whitaker, had searched with tragic eyes for an invited +editor who had recklessly agreed to pay in advance for an excursion of +Kenny's into illustrating, ostensibly to pay for a cow. And Kenny's +words had been: "My God, Whitaker! Where's Graham?" Moreover he had +struck himself fiercely on the forehead and Whitaker had grub-staked +his host to provisions until Graham arrived. + +"Can't we eat in the grill?" asked Whitaker. "It's raining." Kenny +regarded him with a look of pained intelligence. + +"I'm posted," he said. + +"Then," said Whitaker, "I'll go out and buy something. I'd rather eat +in the studio. What'll I get?" + +Kenny capriciously banned oysters. + +"If you want a rarebit," he added, "we have some cheese." + +He was still searching excitedly for the cheese when Whitaker returned. + +"Reynolds," he flung out vindictively, "is positively the most +unreliable dealer I know. He's erratic and irresponsible. A man may +work himself to death and wait in the grave for his money. Do you +wonder poor Blakelock met his doom through the cupidity of laggard +dealers? Here am I on the verge of God knows what from overwork--" + +Whitaker spared him disillusion. Painting with Kenny was an +occupation, never work. When it slipped tiresomely into the class of +work and palled, he threw it aside for something more diverting. + +"The cheese in all probability," suggested Whitaker mildly, "wouldn't +be under the piano. Or would it? And don't bother anyway. I took the +liberty of buying an emergency wedge while I was out." + +Kenny wiped his forehead in amazed relief and piously thanked God he +hadn't wasted his appetite on middle-aged cakes. + +"If you hadn't come when you did," he said, "I'd likely had to eat 'em, +thanks to Reynolds. Now I'll send 'em up to H. B." He peered +disgustedly into the bag and removed an irrelevant ace of spades. Its +hibernation there seemed for an instant to annoy him as well it might. +There had been a furore in whist about it barely a week before. Then +he used it irresponsibly for an I.O.U. and impaled it upon a strange +looking spike that seemed to pinion a heterogeneous admission of petty +debt. + +Together they made the rarebit. Whitaker waited with foreboding for +the storm to break. But for some reason, though he was constrained and +impatient and feverishly active, Kenny avoided the subject of Brian. +He lost poise and patience all at once, pushed aside his plate and +challenged Whitaker with a look. + +"Why did you want to eat in the studio?" + +"I came to talk." + +"Whitaker," blustered Kenny, "where's Brian?" + +"Working." + +"On your paper?" + +"No. Brian's left New York. He's driving somebody's car. And I found +the job for him through my paper. When he has money enough he plans to +tramp off into God's green world of spring to get himself in trim. +Says he's stale and tired and thinking wrong. In the fall he's going +abroad for me and that, Kenny, is about all I can tell you." + +"You mean," flared Kenny, rising with a ragged napkin in his hand, "you +mean, John, it's all you will tell me!" + +"Sit down," said Whitaker, toasting a cracker over the alcohol flame. +"I prefer a sensible talk without fireworks." + +Surprised and nettled, Kenny obeyed in spite of himself. + +"Now," went on Whitaker quietly, "I came here to-night because I'm +Brian's friend and yours." He ignored the incredulous arch of Kenny's +eyebrows. "Where Brian is, where he will be, I don't propose to tell +you, now or at any other time. His wheres and his whens are the boy's +own business. His whys I think you know. He won't be back." + +"He will!" thundered Kenny and thumped upon the table with his fist. + +Whitaker patiently reassembled his supper. + +"I think not," he said. + +"You're not here to think," blazed Kenny. "You're here to tell me what +you know." + +"I'm here," corrected John Whitaker, "to get a few facts out of my +system for your own good and Brian's. Kenny, how much of the truth can +you stand?" + +Kenny threw up his hands with a reminiscent gesture of despair. + +"Truth!" he repeated. "Truth!" + +"I know," put in Whitaker, "that you regard the truth as something +sacred, to be handled with delicacy and discretion. But--" + +Kenny told him sullenly to tell it if he could. + +"I don't propose to urge Brian back here for a good many reasons. In +the first place, he's not a painter--" + +"John," interrupted Kenny hotly, "you are no judge of that. I, +Kennicott O'Neill, am his father." + +"And more's the pity," said Whitaker bluntly, "for you've made a mess +of it. That's another reason." + +Kenny turned a dark red. + +"You mean?" + +"I mean, Kenny," said Whitaker, his glance calm and level, "that as a +parent for Brian, you are an abject failure." + +The word stung. It was the first time in his life that Kenny had faced +it. That he, Kennicott O'Neill, Academician, with Heaven knows how +many medals of distinction, could fail at anything, was a new thought, +bewildering and bitter. This time he escaped from the table and flung +up a window. Whitaker, he grumbled, never toasted crackers without +burning them. Whitaker brought him back with a look. + +"Sit down," he said again. "I don't propose to talk while you roam +around the studio and kick things." + +Kenny obeyed. He looked a little white. + +"I've tried to think this thing out fairly," said Whitaker. "Why as a +parent for Brian you're a failure--" + +"Well?" + +"And the first and fundamental cause of your failure is, I think, your +hairbrained, unquenchable youth." + +Kenny stared at him in astounded silence. + +"I remember once around the fire here you told a Celtic tale of some +golden islands--Tirnanoge, wasn't it?--the Land of the Young--" + +Might have been, Kenny said perversely. He didn't remember. + +"Ossian lived there with the daughter of the King of Youth for three +hundred years that seemed but three," reminded Whitaker. "Well, no +matter. The point is this: The Land of the Young and the King of Youth +always make me think of you." + +"It is true," said Kenny with biting sarcasm, "that I still have hair +and teeth. It is also true that I am the respectable if unsuccessful +parent of a son twenty-three years old and I myself am forty-four." + +"Forty-four years young," admitted Whitaker. "And Brian on the other +hand is twenty-three years old. There you have it. You know precisely +what I mean, Kenny. Youth isn't always a matter of years. It's a +state of being. Sometimes it's an affliction and sometimes a gift. +Sometimes it's chronic and sometimes it's contagious enough to start an +epidemic. You're as young and irresponsible as the wind. You've never +grown up. God knows whether or not you ever will. But Brian has. +There's the clash." + +"Go on," said Kenny with a dangerous flash of interest in his eyes. +"You've an undeniable facility, John, with what you call the truth." + +"It's an unfortunate characteristic of highly temperamentalized +individuals--" + +"Painters, Irishmen and O'Neills," put in Kenny with sulky impudence. + +"That they frequently skirt the rocks for themselves with amazing +skill. I mean just this: They don't always shipwreck their own lives." + +Was that, Kenny would like to know, an essential of successful +parenthood? + +"I mean," he paraphrased dryly, "must you wreck your own life, John, to +parent somebody else with skill?" The wording of this rather pleased +him. He brightened visibly. + +Whitaker ignored his brazen air of assurance. It was like Kenny, he +reflected, to find an unexpected loophole and emerge from it with the +air of a conqueror. + +"People with an over-plus of temperament," he said, "wreck the lives of +others. Brian has just stepped out in the nick of time." + +"You mean," flashed Kenny with anger in his eyes, "you mean I've tried +to wreck the life of my own son? By the powers of war, John, that's +too much!" + +"I didn't say you had tried. I mean merely that you were accidentally +succeeding. The sunsets--" + +"Damn the sunsets!" roared Kenny, losing his head. + +"It was time for that," agreed Whitaker. + +"Time for what?" + +"You usually damn the irrefutable thing. Why you wanted Brian to paint +pictures," went on Whitaker, ignoring Kenny's outraged sputter, "when +he couldn't, is and always has been a matter of considerable worry and +mystery to me--" + +"It needn't have been. That, I fancy, John, you can see for yourself. +I worry very little about how your paper is run." + +"But I think I've solved it. It's your vanity." + +"My God!" said Kenny with a gasp. + +"You wanted to have a hand in what he did. Then you could afford to be +gracious. There are some, Kenny, who must always direct in order to +enjoy." + +There was a modicum of enjoyment with Whitaker around, hinted Kenny +sullenly. + +Whitaker found his irrelevant trick of umbrage trying in the extreme. +He lost his temper and said that which he had meant to leave to +inference. + +"Kenny, Brian's success, in which you, curiously enough, seem to have +had a visionary faith, would have linked him to you in a sort of +artistic dependence in which you shone with inferential genius and +generosity." + +It hurt. + +"So!" said Kenny, his color high. + +"It may be," said Whitaker, feeling sorry for him, "that I've put that +rather strongly but I think I've dug into the underlying something +which, linked with your warm-hearted generosity and a real love for +Brian, made you stubborn and unreasonable about his work. Of the big +gap in temperament and the host of petty things that maddened Brian to +the point of distraction, it's unnecessary for me to speak. You must +know that your happy-go-lucky self-indulgence more often than not has +spelled discomfort of a definite sort for Brian. You're generous, I'll +admit. Generous to a fault. But your generosity is always congenial. +It's never the sort that hurts. The only kind of generosity that will +help in this crisis is the kind that hurts. It's up to you, Kenny, to +do some mental house-cleaning, admit the cobwebs and brush them away, +instead of using them fantastically for drapery." + +Whitaker thanked his lucky stars he'd gotten on so well. Kenny, +affronted, was usually more capricious and elusive. + +"Whitaker," said Kenny, his eyes imploring, "you don't--you can't mean +that Brian isn't coming back?" + +Whitaker sighed. After all, Kenny never heard all of anything, just as +he never read all of a letter unless it was asterisked and under-lined +and riveted to his attention by a multitude of pen devices. + +"Kenny, have you been listening?" + +"No!" lied Kenny. + +"Brian," flung out Whitaker wrathfully, "isn't coming back. I thank +God for his sake." + +His loss of temper brought a hornet's nest about his ears. Kenny swung +to his feet in smoldering fury. He expressed his opinion of Whitaker, +editors, Brian and sons. The sum of them merged into an unchristian +melee of officiousness and black ingratitude. He recounted the events +of the night before with stinging sarcasm in proof of Brian's +regularity. He ended magnificently by blaming Brian for the disorder +of the studio. There were handles everywhere. And Brian in an +exuberance of amiability had broken a statuette. Likely Whitaker would +see even in that some form of paternal oppression. + +"Whitaker," flung out Kenny indignantly, "Brian plays but one +instrument in this studio and we have a dozen. Wasn't it precisely +like him to pick out that damned psaltery there with the crooked stick? +I mean--wasn't it like him to pick out something with a fiendish +appendage that could be lost, and keep the studio in an uproar when he +wanted to play it?" + +Whitaker laughed in spite of himself. The psaltery stick was famous. + +Moreover, Brian--Brian, mind you, who talked of truth with +hair-splitting piety--Brian had that very day at noon forced his father +to the telling of a lie. + +"But he wasn't here," said Whitaker, mystified. "He lunched with me." + +"The fact remains," insisted Kenny with dignity. "I myself told Garry +Rittenhouse he'd gone up to Reynolds to collect some money. And Garry, +thinking he had come back, believed it." + +"Kenny," said Whitaker, his patience quite gone, "are you mad? How on +earth did Brian force you into that lie?" + +"By not coming home," said Kenny sulkily. "If he'd come home as a lad +should, I needn't have told it. You can see that for yourself." + +Whitaker dazedly threw up his hands. + +Having successfully baffled his opponent with the brilliancy of his +unreason, Kenny enlarged upon the humiliation he must experience when +Garry learned the truth. At a familiar climax of self-glorification, +in which Kenny claimed he had saved Brian from no end of club-gossip by +his timely evasion of the truth, Whitaker lost his temper and went home. + +He left his host in a dangerous mood of quiet. + +It was a quiet unlike Kenny, who hated to think, and presently he flung +his pipe across the studio, fuming at what seemed to him unprecedented +disorder. It was getting on his nerves. No man could work in such a +hodge-podge. Even inspiration was likely to be chaotic and futuristic. +Small blame to Brian if he resented it all. To-morrow, if Reynolds +deigned to appear with his check, he would summon Mrs. Haggerty, and +the studio should have a cleaning that the mercenary old beldame would +remember. Kenny vaguely coupled Mrs. Haggerty with the present +disorder and resented both, his defiant eyes lingering with new +interest upon a jumble of musical instruments in a corner. + +With a muffled objurgation he fell upon the jumble and began to +overhaul it. The object sought defied his fevered efforts to unearth +it and with teeth set, he ransacked the studio, resentfully flinging a +melee of hindrances right and left. + +The telephone rang. + +"Kenny," said Garry's patient voice, "what in Heaven's name are you +doing? What hit the wall?" + +"I'm hunting the stick to that damned psaltery," snapped Kenny and +banged the receiver into the hook, one hand as usual clenched +frenziedly in his hair. + +Later, with the studio a record of earthquake, he found it under a +model stand and wiping his forehead anchored it to the psaltery for +good and all with a shoestring. + +Horribly depressed he thumped on the wall for Garry, who came at once, +wondering wryly if Brian had come in and the need again was mediation. + +"You might as well know," began Kenny at once, "that Brian didn't go up +to Reynolds for me this noon--" + +Garry stared. + +"It was a lie," flung out Kenny with a jerk, "a damnable, deliberate, +indecent lie. Whitaker says he's gone for good." His look was wistful +and indignant. "Garry, what's wrong?" he demanded. "What on earth +_is_ it? Why couldn't things have gone on as they were, without God +knows how many people picking _me_ for a target? As far as I can see +I'm merely maintaining my usual average of imperfection and all the +rest of the world has gone mad." + +"I suppose, Kenny," began Garry lamely, "you must be starting a new +cycle. Jan could tell you. He talks a lot about the cycle of dates +and the philosophy of vibrations--" + +"I know that I regard the truth as something sacred, to be handled with +delicacy and discretion," began Kenny with bitter fluency. "I'm an +unsuccessful parent with an over-supply of hair and teeth, afflicted +with hairbrained, unquenchable youth. I'd be a perennial in the Land +of the Young and could hobnob indefinitely with his Flighty Highness, +the King of Youth. I'm forty-four years young and highly +temperamentalized. I've made a mess of parenting Brian and I'm an +abject failure." + +Garry looked at him. + +"Just what are you talking about?" he asked. + +"I know," pursued Kenny elaborately, "that it's unfortunate I haven't +wrecked my own life when I'm an accidental success at wrecking Brian's. +I'm full of cobwebs. I damn irrefutable things and I've forced Brian +to a profession of sunsets to gratify my vanity. Can you personally, +Garry, think of anything else?" + +"Sit down!" said Garry. "You're about as logical as a lunatic--" + +"Tell Whitaker, do," begged Kenny. "There's one he missed. Garry, +what's back of all this turmoil? What's the real reason for Brian's +brain-storm? I'm sick to death of Whitaker's wordy arabesque and +abuse. I want facts." + +"Brian said it all last night," reminded Garry. "It's just another +case of a last straw." + +"You honestly mean that the ancestors of the straw are the sunsets, the +disorder here--the--the--" He thumped the table. "Garry, I don't +lie. I swear I don't. I hate a liar. I mean a dishonorable liar. A +lie is an untruth that harms. That's my definition. Any man +embroiders sordid fact on occasion." + +"On occasion!" admitted Garry. + +Kenny, with his eye upon the fern in the window, missed the +significance. It had registered his sincere regret--that fern--at the +need of pawning Brian's fishing rods and golf clubs. Like Brian! He +had failed utterly to comprehend the delicacy of the tribute. + +Finding this point upon which he dwelt with some length equally +over-nice for Garry's perception, Kenny in a huff sent him home, +watered the fern, without in the least understanding the impulse, and +went to bed. And dreaming as usual, he seemed to be hunting cobwebs +with a gun made of ferns. He found them draped over huge pillars of +ice, marked in Brian's familiar sunset colors. Truth. And when +panting and sweating he had swept them all away with a wedge of cheese +he seemed to hear Whitaker's voice--calling him a failure. + +Kenny felt that he had been visited by Far Darrig, the Gaelic bringer +of bad dreams. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +IN THE GAY AND GOLDEN WEATHER + +Spring came early and with the first marsh hawk Brian was on the road, +his eager youth crying out to the spring's hope and laughter. +Everywhere he caught the thrill of it. Brooks released from an armor +of ice went singing by him. Hill and meadow deepened verdantly into +smiles. A little while now and the whole green earth in its tenderness +would dimple exquisitely, with every dimple a flower. Mother Earth, +moistening the bare brown fields for the plough with a capricious tear +or so for the banished winter, was beginning again. And so was he. +Hope swelled wistfully within him like song in the throat of the +bluebird and sap in the trees. With the sun warm upon his face and the +gladness of spring in his veins, he sang with Pippa that "God's in his +Heaven, all's right with the world!" + +Well, New York, thank God, lay to the back of him, veiling her +realities and truth in glitter, defying nearness. Every human thing +that made for life lay there as surely as it lay here in God's quieter +world, but you never came close to it. + +So he tramped away to green fields and hills and winding quiet roads, +spring riding into his heart, invincible and bold. + +An arbutus filled him with the wonder of things, a sense of eternity, a +swift, inexplicable compassion, a longing for service to the needs of +men. His ears thrilled to the song of the earth and the whistle of the +ploughman turning up the fresh brown earth. He filled his lungs with +the wind of the open country, drank in the enchantment of the morning +and the dusk, his nostrils joyously alive to the smell of the furrowed +ground and a hint of burgeoning wild flowers. + +But the first robin brought misgivings and remorse. Brian remembered +Kenny's legend of the thorn ("worst of them all it was," said Kenny +gently, "and prickin' deepest!") and the robin who plucked it from the +bleeding brow of Christ. So by the blood of the Son of Man had the +robin come by his red breast. + +The legend filled Brian with yearning. He softened dangerously to the +memory of a sketching tramp with Kenny fuming at his heels, his +excitement chronic. Adventure had endlessly stalked Kenny for its own, +waylaid him at intervals when he passionately proclaimed his desire for +peace, and saddled Brian with the responsibilities of constant +guardianship. + +Brian stubbornly put it all behind him. Kenny, frantic with tenderness +and resolution, could sweep him credulously back into bondage if he +kept to the siege. His promises were fluent always and alluring. Only +by the courage of utter separation could Brian make his longed for +emancipation a thing assured. + +So he tramped the highway, lingering by fence and rail to talk with +men, living and learning. For the highway meant to him the passion of +life. Hope and sorrow traveled it day and night in homely hearts. + +And often his thoughts harked wistfully back to the words of a modern +poet which Kenny with his usual skill had set to music: + + "And often, often I'm longing still, + This gay and golden weather, + For my father's face by an Irish hill, + And he and I together." + +In the gay and golden weather things were going badly with the +unsuccessful parent. For weeks now his life had been in ferment, his +moods as freakish as the wind. What little regularity his life had +known departed to that limbo that had claimed his peace of mind. That +he felt himself abnormally methodic lay entirely in the fact that he +watered the fern each day. It had for him a morbid fascination. +Incomprehensible forces were sapping his faith in himself and the +future; and viciously at war with them, he nursed his grievance against +Brian only to find that it was less robust than any grievance should +be. At any cost he wanted Brian back. + +"He's taken care of me," remembered Kenny sadly, "since he was a bit of +a lad." + +As ever, the thing withheld, Kenny ardently desired. That thing was +Brian's presence. Any Irishman, he decided fiercely, would understand +his terrified clinging to the things of the heart that belonged to him +by birth. It was part of his race and creed. He hated to be alone. +And Brian was all he had. How lightly he had prized that one +possession until it became a thing denied, Kenny, sentimentalizing his +need, forgot. + +Studio gossip, having concerned itself with Brian's going, almost to +the disruption of the Holbein Club, took up in perturbed detail the +glaring problem of Kenny's tantrums. He was keeping everyone excited. + +"Of course," mused Garry, "you could earn your living as a moving +picture actor--" + +"Adams owes me five thousand dollars for his wife's portrait," +sputtered Kenny. "But I can't get it. He's been sick for weeks. +Typhoid." + +"And in the meantime?" + +The shaft went home. Kenny sent for a model--and sent her home. + +"She was too ornamental and decidedly sympathetic," he explained +gloomily to Garry. "I'm just in the mood to make a colossal fool of +myself. She was the sort of girl you'd invite to tea to meet your +brother's wife." + +"Kenny!" + +"She was!" insisted Kenny. + +"Any number of models are and you know it. And that girl is Jan's +cousin." + +"I make a point of never losing my head over a model," declared Kenny +with an air. "It's a hindrance to work. You concentrate on a type and +every picture you do advertises your devotion. Suppose I married her!" + +"Heaven help her!" snapped Garry, and went out, slamming the door. + +Kenny offended, followed him home. He felt aggrieved and talkative. + +If Kenny had succeeded in propelling himself into one of his nervous +ecstasies of inspiration, thereby normalizing his existence to some +extent, if Reynolds had not appeared and simplified the painter's +credit to a point where he made no further search for unsympathetic +models. Fate, weaving the destiny of two O'Neills, would have changed +her loom. As it was, sick with brooding and pity for himself, Kenny +abandoned all pretense of labor and rushed on blindly to his fate. The +spring was in his blood. What form of midsummer madness lay ahead of +him depended now upon the hairtrigger of impulse. A wind, a sketch, +the perfume of a flower, and he would be off wherever the reminiscence +called him. He whistled constantly. That, as Jan pointed out, was +always a bad sign with Kenny. It meant that he felt perilously +transient and would rocket up in the air when a spark came that pleased +him. He had been much the same, Fahr remembered, the summer he +embarked for Syria upon a tramp steamer--to the captain's frantic +regret. + +In the end, feeling absurdly sorry for him, Garry unwittingly sent the +spark in by Pietro. + +It was a letter from Brian. + + + "Tavern of Stars + Open Country + God's Green World of Spring + +"Dear Garry: + +"The purpose of this letter is primarily a favor. Therefore without +pretense I'll have done with it at once. You'll find in the studio a +scrapbook of clippings which represent my ebullitions in print. +Whitaker wants them, I believe, for purposes of conference. It will +save him running through his files. + +"I've been on the road for weeks, tramping myself into blessed +weariness at night. More often than not I sleep in the open. I'm +writing this with the aid of a pocket searchlight. Mine host, old +Gaffer Moon, smiles down upon the ashes of my camp fire, full-faced and +silver. An excellent host! Never once has he grumbled about light or +pay and he grants me a roof without question. Ah! it's a blessed old +Tavern of Stars, Garry! Ramshackle enough in all faith, for there are +gaps in the tree-walls and Dame Wind's a-sweeping night and day, but +luckily I've a blanket I carry by day and need by night. + +"I've a road-mate. I think in time he'll be my friend, though he isn't +yet. And thereby hangs a tale. + +"I camped to-night in a wood by a river and turned in early, feeling +tired. Voices drifted hazily into my slumber after a while and I awoke +to find the moon riding high above the wood. My fire was out, my room +in the Tavern of Stars still carpeted in shadow. Beyond in the +moonlight two people had halted, a boy who was denouncing someone in a +hard and bitter voice and, clinging to his arm, a girl in a cloak, whom +I judged to be his sister. Her eyes were like pools of ink and tragic +with imploring, Laughter would have made her lovely. As it was, with +her lashes wet I could only think of Niobe and a passion of tears. I +have rarely seen in a woman's face so much of the right kind of +sweetness. It was an exquisite vigor of sweetness, not in the least +the kind that cloys. + +"They were much alike, save that the boy's face was angry and +rebellious. He was the younger of the two, seventeen or so, and would +have been in rags but for an unbelievable amount of mending. + +"When I awoke, he had, I think, been urging his sister to go with him +and she had refused. Before I could even so much as make them aware of +my nearness, things came to a climax. The boy with a curse pushed her +away. The hurt in his heart perhaps had made him rough. But the girl +shrank away from him with a sob and ran back up the hill. He watched +her climb to a hill-farm near the river, with shame and agony in his +eyes, and I thought he would follow. Instead he plunged most +unexpectedly in my direction and finished his tragedy in comedy by +stumbling over me. We both scrambled to our feet a shade resentful. + +"He realized instantly that I had overheard and blazed out at me in a +passion of temper. Running away had plainly given him an arrogant +conviction of manhood. Garry, old dear, I had to thrash him for the +good of his soul and my Irish temper--he was so offensively independent +and unjust. + +"It was a pretty job of thrashing but it did him good. He threw +himself on the ground and sobbed like the kid he is. While he was +pulling himself together, I built up the fire and made him some coffee. + +"The blaze of the fire worried him--he was afraid his sister would see +it and come back. But he drank the coffee and when I had damped the +fire to ease his mind, I explained to him just why I'd felt the need of +thrashing him. For one thing I hadn't cared for the way he spoke to +his sister. And for another I hadn't cared at all for his insults to +me. He listened sullenly to the facts of my eavesdropping and +apologized. When he found that I was disposed to be friendly he +blurted out his justification for running away: an eccentric old +invalid uncle who in all probability is not so evil as the boy claims. + +"I had an odd feeling as we talked that he stands at the parting of the +ways. Chance will make or mar him. And therefore I told him that if +he insisted upon running away, he might as well tramp with me and think +it over. + +"I don't quite know yet why I said it. + +"He reminds me of Kenny somehow, save that Kenny's more of a kid. Both +of them have an overdose of temperament and need a guardian with an +iron hand. And both have a way about them. + +"Likely, after the wind was so pitifully out of his sails I could have +dragged him up the hill home but if he has the notion of escape in his +head, he'd go again. + +"After a good deal of talk, friendly and otherwise, we took turns at +the searchlight and wrote, each of us, a letter to his sister, I in a +sense seeking to guarantee a respectability I do not look or feel since +I am a truant myself with an indifferent amount of worldly goods. +However, I couldn't help thinking how she'd worry and I promised to see +him through. + +"He's asleep now under my blanket, catching his breath at intervals +like a youngster who's carried heartbreak into his sleep. Poor kid! I +suppose he has. I've promised him to be on the road before daybreak. + +"He'll have to work his way, but that, of course, will be good for him. +What pennies I have I'm obliged to count with a provident eye. I've +added to 'em from time to time along the road. So far I've been +intermittently a rotten ploughman, a fair fence-mender and a skillful +whitewasher. My amazing facility there I attribute to an +apprenticeship in sunsets. Once, during a period of rain, I lived in a +corncrib for three days at an average of seven cents a day. I've +reduced my need of kitchen equipment to a can-opener. A can of +anything, I've discovered, provides food as well as a combination +saucepan and coffee pot. + +"I miss Kenny but I dare not write to him. Garry, you know how it is. +Unless I brace myself with a lot of temper, he can twist me around his +finger. Even his letters are dangerous. I can't--I won't go back to +sunsets. + +"I often think these days of Kenny's wood-fire tales of the shrine of +Black Gartan where St. Columba was born. Colomcille, old Kenny called +him around the wood-fire, didn't he? Colomcille, Kenny said, having +been in exile, knew the homesick pangs himself and therefore could give +the good Irishmen who journeyed to his shrine strength to bear them. +I'm not in exile but there are times when I should be journeyin' off, +as Kenny says when the brogue is on him, to Black Gartan. The curse of +the Celt! Kenny swears there's no homesickness in the world like an +Irishman's passionate longing for home and kin. Not that I long for +the studio. God forbid! Kenny's the symbol for it all. + +"I've had some black minutes of remorse. After all I had no earthly +right to blaze out so about the shotgun. And you can't imagine how the +statuette upset me. + +"Say hello to Kenny for me, won't you? Tell him I'm brown and lean +already, and that I like the fortunes of the road." + + +It hurt of course that the letter was Garry's. Nettled at first, Kenny +had half a mind not to read it. Later, why it was Garry's, gave him a +sense of power. Brian was homesick and repentant. And with the fire +of his temper spent he was always manageable. Kenny cursed the miles +between them. + +He read the letter again and the poetry of the open road filled his +veins with the fire of inspiration. Tavern of Stars! Old Gaffer Moon, +full-faced and silver! Tree-walls and Dame Wind a-sweeping! Why, the +lad was a poet--a poet like his father. And the big-hearted kindness +of him, thrashing the runaway into sense. Irish temper there! Kenny +felt a passionate thrill of pride in his offspring. Yes, Brian was +like his father, thank God, even to the Celtic curse of homesickness. + +"But to think of him," he marveled in a wave of tenderness, "living in +a corncrib on seven cents a day!" + +Again and again he read between the lines, finding sanity and sense, +compassion and humor. The inherited charm of Brian's personality +filled him with intense delight. + +"Always," Kenny remembered, "he must be taking care of someone." + +It gave him a sharp pang of jealousy that that someone was a stranger. + +But the thrill of penance was in his blood. If Brian was big enough to +see himself in the wrong, no less was Kennicott O'Neill, his +unsuccessful father. And he had driven Brian forth upon the road. For +that he must atone. + +That the solution of everything now lay at hand, Kenny never doubted. +Already he had rocketed sentimentally into inspiration. If a certain +vagueness of detail sent him roving abstractedly around the studio with +the letter in his hand, the inspiration in itself was amazingly clear. +Yes, he would fare forth and find Brian. He would tramp every mile of +the road as Brian had done. He would find the farmhouse, the wood and +the river! There happily would be some clue or other that he needed. +And Kenny, in rags and penitential, his feet blistered by the hardships +of the road, would overtake his son and apologize for everything. Nay, +more, he would promise anything. After that the rest would be easy. +Brian had written it there in a letter. Kenny could wind his son +around his finger. Yes, it was all quite clear. And Brian helpfully +would be shocked and thrilled at the sacrificial tribute of penance. +Kenny pursed his lips and nodded. He would even concede the sunsets. +That, after John Whitaker's cold-blooded misinterpretation, was +necessary to his own self-respect--and Brian's happiness. + +Ah, love was the only thing in the world that counted, love and art. +Not the love of woman, which was after all but an intermittent +intoxicant, but the love of one's own. + +Kenny pitied in foretaste the ragged parent who would come upon the +camp fire of his son, picturesque and repentant, and dramatized the +meeting, a lump in his throat. Emotionally it was complex to be actor +and audience both. Thank God, he reflected, as he opened a closet +door, dragged forth a battered multitude of bags and suit cases and +began an impatient upheaval of bureau drawers, he was a man of action. +When Garry entered a half hour later he found the studio floor littered +with preparation. + +"I'm off, this morning," he explained. "In an hour now. Garry, how +can I possibly reduce this mass to packing possibility?" + +"Stop running around in circles!" commanded Garry, thunderstruck. +"What's it all about? Where are you going?" + +"I'm going," said Kenny with his chin out and his eyes defiant, "to +hunt Brian." + +Garry stared blankly at the packing litter and the tall Irishman in the +center of it wearily mopping his forehead. It was impossible to locate +the crags he must have leaped to reach his spectacular decision. They +were shrouded in mystery. + +"You mean," said Garry after a while, "that you will tour vaguely off, +seeking a farm on a hill, a wood, a river, a youngster in patches and +Brian's trail of camp fires?" + +"Precisely," said Kenny with detestable confidence. "See, even you +mark the clues with perfect logic." + +"A farm on a hill," exclaimed Garry, "is of course a clue with absolute +individuality. So is a wood and a river." + +"So," supplemented Kenny with the calm, unhurried air of one who scores +an unexpected point, "is a postmark on a letter." + +Startled, Garry reached for the envelope. Kenny put it in his pocket. + +"An obscure village in Pennsylvania," he explained with dignity, "where +your wood and your river will likely have definite individuality. I +shall go there." + +Garry scented danger and considered the outcome in horrified dismay, +regretting his rash flurry of sympathy. It had become a boomerang. +What if Brian's protege in a fit of remorse saw fit to keep his sister +posted? Kenny would indeed find clues. The possibility filled him +with foreboding. + +"Kenny," he said with some heat, "I consider that you have absolutely +no right to take advantage of my letter to hunt Brian down. I'm sorry +I sent it in. If he wanted you to know where he is, he'd write you. I +wish to Heaven I'd thought of that postmark!" + +"I shall tramp every inch on foot!" swore Kenny proudly. "Brian will +appreciate the spirit of the thing if you do not." + +There was relief at least in that. Garry drew a long breath. If Kenny +tramped his way, another inexplicable factor in his lunacy, by the time +he reached the farmhouse Brian would be well on ahead. And Garry was +bitterly familiar with Kenny's incapacity for steadiness of any kind. +Kenny, it developed, was thinking in similar vein. + +"I take it there will be an interval of waiting before remorse will +lead the kid to write to his sister," he said. "Otherwise I'd proceed +to the farmhouse at once in a flying machine." + +The romance of this seemed to strike him strongly for an interval. +Then, mercifully, he repeated his intention of tramping. + +"And then?" said Garry. + +"Then," said Kenny with the utmost optimism, "I'll pick up his trail at +the farmhouse and from there I'll travel night and day until I overtake +him." + +"And then?" + +"The lad will come home with me." + +"And then?" + +"Good God, Garry," thundered Kenny, "I never knew anybody with such an +'And then?' sort of mind as you seem to have. There's an 'And then?' +doubt after every glorious climax. He'll be home. That's sufficient." + +"What about the scrapbook?" + +"I've already sent it." + +Garry glanced hopelessly at the melee on the floor. + +"I suppose," he said coldly, "that you plan to go sagging along the +highway with a suit case in each hand and a bag or two on your back?" + +"I plan," retorted Kenny, "to depart from here with one suit case which +will eventually become a knapsack. The problem now is entirely one of +elimination. Have you anything to do, Garry?" + +"I have," said Garry distinctly. + +Kenny looked hurt. + +"I'm sorry," he said. "Because you're a jewel at eliminatin'. I mind +me of the sketching trip we took together. You did all of the packing +then in a marvelous way." + +Hopelessly uncertain what he ought to do, Garry lingered. If by a word +he could restrain this madcap penitent from roving off in a fit of +sentimentality it must be spoken forcibly and at once. + +"Brian," he said, "will never forgive me." + +"Brian," said Kenny, "is a jewel for sense. He'll love you for it." + +Garry flung himself into a chair with a muttered imprecation. + +"Now, Kenny," he said, "I want you to tell me precisely what you plan +to do." + +Nothing loathe, Kenny obeyed. He liked to talk. Garry found his plans +indefinite and highly romantic. It was plain the notion of footsore +penance had taken vigorous hold of his imagination and his love of +adventure. Characteristically, since the actor on the highway was +himself, he saw no chance of failure. To Garry's curt "ifs" he turned +a deaf ear and sulked. + +In the end they quarreled badly. Garry, raging inwardly, went home in +despair; and Kenny, after a tumultuous period of indecision, eliminated +a floorful of luggage. In the rebound he took less than he should. +He was ready to go when the door opened and the head of Sidney Fahr +appeared. Instantly his round eyes bulged with inquiry. + +"Lord Almighty, Kenny," he said. "You--you're not off for anywhere, +are you?" + +"I am," said Kenny. + +Sid came in and closed the door. + +"I--I can't believe it!" he sputtered. + +"Don't!" said Kenny. He was out of sorts. Garry, talking of honor and +letters, had given him a bad interval of indecision and guilt. + +"It--it's amazing!" went on Sid. "You were all right at breakfast--" + +Kenny wheeled furiously. + +"Sid," he snorted, "you're amazed when it rains. You're amazed when it +snows. You're amazed when the sun's out and amazed when it isn't. +Thunder-and-turf! you're always amazed!" Whereupon he stalked out with +his suit case and slammed the door. + +Sid pursed his lips and shook his head, his gaze riveted upon the door +panels in round-eyed incredulity. To him Kenny was an incomprehensible +source of turbulence. + +"The spark!" said Sid. "Wonder what it's been?" + +Then sharing the club-feeling of guardianship where Kenny was +concerned, the good-natured little painter embarked upon a tour of +inspection, locked the studio windows and trotted upstairs, still +amazed, to tell Jan all about it. + +Thus Kenny departed from the Holbein Club, forgetting Fahr almost at +once. He had recalled the tale of the Irish piper who added a phrase +to some fairy music he heard below him in a hill; and the fairies, +bursting forth in delight, had struck the hump from his back in reward. + +Kenny himself had the same feeling of relief that the piper must have +had thereafter. He too had lost his hump of worry. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +GOD'S GREEN WORLD OF SPRING + +At a country inn the suit case became a knapsack. Kenny went forth +into a world of old houses, apple blossoms and winding roads, likening +himself to Peredur who had gone in search of the Holy Grail. The Grail +in this case was the holy boon of his son's forgiveness. + +He went with the break of day at a swinging stride, his penitential +inspiration in the full flower of its freshness. If misgiving claimed +him at all, it was merely a matter of shoes. They were the kind, built +for walking, likely to be in a state of unromantic preservation at his +journey's end. Kenny found in them a source of discontent and +speculation. + +For the passion of life which to Brian's fancy haunted the highway, +Kenny had delightful substitute, fairies quaffing nectar from +flower-cups of dew or riding bridle paths of cloud on bits of straw. +In everything he chose to find an augury, from the night of birds to +the way of the wind, the curl of smoke or the color of a cloud. +Thirsty he longed for the drinking horn of Bran Galed or better still +of Finn, for Finn's horn held whatever you wanted. And for a pattern +in moments of diversion, there was always the fairy Conconaugh, who +made love to every pretty shepherdess and milkmaid he met. Many a +farmer's daughter smiled and blushed at the gallant sweep of Kenny's +cap. + +So he tramped, peering delightedly under bushes for the green suits and +red caps of the Clan Shee, and every cleft of rock became the portal to +a fairy dwelling. At sunset he discovered a fairy battle in the clouds +and when the moon rose, silhouettes, fairy-like and frail, scudded +mystically across the face of it. Old Gaffer Moon, full-faced and +silver! + +Brian's world of spring had been the world of men and women; Kenny's +world held Puck and Mab and Una. He called her Oonagh. If once he +remembered with longing that Oonagh's jovial fairy husband, King +Fionvarra, went to his revels on the back of a night-black steed with +nostrils aflame, he dismissed it as disloyal. Brian too had been +tired, though he called it "blissfully weary." That depended something +on the viewpoint. + +When at last beside the embers of his camp fire, he spread his oilskin +and drew a blanket over him, the night sounds of the forest, a-crackle +with mystery, became the woodland spirits of King Arthur's men, blowing +their ghostly horns by the light of the moon. Likely the wee folk +would come and dance beside the embers of his camp fire. + +"By the powers of wildfire!" cried Kenny drowsily, "it is good to be +alive!" + +In the morning there was mist and rain and Kenny tramped the sodden +world in a mood of sadness. Melancholy dripped from the wet white +blossoms along the way. The drenched green of the meadows brought +tragic thoughts of Erin and her fate. Never a maid peeped over an +orchard fence. Kenny bolstered his spirits again and again with some +lines of Wordsworth which as a picturesque part of his road equipment +he had copied into his notebook. + + + "I roved o'er many a hill and many a dale, + . . . . in heat or cold, + Through many a wood, and many an open road, + In sunshine and in shade, in wet and fair, + Drooping or blithe of heart, as might befall, + My best companions now the driving winds, + And now the 'trotting brooks' and whispering trees-- + And now the music of my own sad steps, + With many a short-lived thought that passed between + And disappeared." + + +Never before had the words failed to thrill him with the romance of the +road. Now as the rainy twilight threatened with never an inn in sight, +he lingered on the final lines: "The music of my own sad steps!" + +Sad steps indeed that postponed his meeting with Brian! Did he not owe +it to his son to travel with all possible speed to the farmhouse +instead of plodding belatedly along the highway in rain and gloom and +twilight? Had he after all a right to indulge his passion for tramping +and footsore penance when already word might have come to the sister +with the ink-pool eyes? The runaway was young. His remorse would come +the quicker. For every day he, Kenny, lingered in selfish penance on +the road, he must pay in a widening of distance between Brian and +himself. Kenny quickened his sagging foot-steps. Drenched and hungry, +he felt himself better able to see the thing in sane and unpoetic light. + +It came to this: Would Brian prefer the rags of romantic loitering to +the speed, train or otherwise, of eager affection? Surely not! He +must not be selfish. Foot-sore or foot-fresh, his remorse would be the +same. With Brian it would be the inner things that counted. + +At twilight Kenny found a thrifty farmer who agreed to take him in. He +dried his clothes by the kitchen fire, hating the woolly smell of the +steam. Later he slept in the haymow and lay awake far into the night, +listening in doubt and despair to the drip of the rain on the roof. +Nothing ever went quite right. He must read again in Brian's letter +about the Tavern of Stars. Beldame Rain seemed bent upon a +housecleaning. Kenny, dreaming, departed from the barn in a flying +machine made of lilacs. Its planes, he regretted, seemed merely sheets +of rain, specked foolishly with pine-needles. + +He awoke to a subdued noise of voices in the barn below and wondered +disapprovingly if the farmer was just getting home. It appeared that +he was getting up. Horribly depressed and sorry for him, Kenny went to +sleep again. When he awoke the sun was laughing iridescently from +meadow trails of rain. The fragrance of wet pine came in through the +barn window. The lilac in the garden was ready to flower. Kenny +longed to be off. Nevertheless he breakfasted at some length in the +farm kitchen and paid so handsomely in coin and grace that there was +talk of him for days. + +Already the sun was warm. It lay in a blanket of bright gold +everywhere. Cloud shadows deepened a meadow here and there to +coolness. The air was tonic, deliriously wine-sweet and heady. Kenny +thought of honey and bees and clover and tramped and brooded. + +The sun he hoped would presently abate its unromantic fervor. Meantime +he must think. Penance or the tribute of impatience? Which should it +be? + +It remained for an abandoned corncrib to plunge him into his original +fever of inspiration and remorse. Brian had lived in a corncrib for +seven cents a day. Brian had ploughed and Brian had mended fences. He +had even dabbled in whitewash. No, by the powers that be! It was a +thing for penance after all. Always at the farmhouse the trail would +be waiting. What if he arrived there and the runaway had failed to +write? What would he do then? + +Rags and blisters and a bit of corncrib penance for himself! It was +the only way. It would give his need of Brian invincible weight. + +Kenny climbed a fence and entered the corncrib by a flight of rickety +steps. It was something of a wreck and unspeakably dusty. Sneezing +violently he sat down and ate his supper of bread and cheese with +profound discontent. Each tasted monotonously of the other. Instead +of two articles of diet he appeared to have something heterogeneously +one in flavor. The smell of cheese he hoped wouldn't attract rats and +remembered vaguely that a corncrib was architecturally immune from +rodents. Well, no rat with discrimination would select a corncrib +abode anyway. He'd fall through the floor slats. + +Oppressed by the general air of slatty insecurity and the sight of a +basket of ancient cobs in one corner, Kenny wished passionately that he +hadn't always hated spiders, killed one with a shudder and pensively +watched the sunset through the corncrib bars. It made him think of +flamingoes in flight. One saw that best in India, flocks and flocks of +them in the sky like an exquisite flame of clouds. Ah, India! No, on +second thought he'd rather he in Iceland. + +It sounded cooler. + +When the moon etched silver bars upon the corncrib floor he went to +bed, regretting the preposterous fanlike spread of the corncrib walls. +Nothing walled should be smaller at the floor than it was at the top. +It gave one a hopeless feeling of constriction. The feeling colored +his dreams. Kenny found himself hazily adrift in an inquisitorial +corncrib made of bars of moon-plated silver. They pressed in upon him +ever tighter and tighter until with a mighty sweep of his arms he burst +them all asunder. + +He awoke at an undesirable hour, convinced that another farmer was +getting up. The world was a mournful gray. At the end of the corncrib +a head was peering in. Kenny turned his searchlight on it and had a +moment of doubt. The man was facially endowed for anything but virtue. +He was likely getting in--not up. + +"Hum!" said Kenny suspiciously. "Are you coming in, my good friend, or +are you going out?" + +"I'm comin' into my own corncrib, damn you!" shouted the farmer with +unexpected malevolence, "and you're going out!" + +Kenny, resistant, knew instantly that he was not. He sat up. + +"The acoustics, Silas," he said with cold disapproval, "are excellent. +Therefore--" + +It was impossible to finish. The farmer, finding the name offensively +rustic, roared into the corncrib that Kenny was a hobo without future +hope of heaven. He and the corncrib, it seemed, knew the genus well. +Indeed, he looked in the corncrib for hope-lorn hoboes with the same +regularity that he looked in the hay for eggs. + +He added some infuriated statistics about early rising. + +"Come out of that!" he yelled. + +Thoroughly out of patience Kenny flung the basket of corncobs at the +farmer's head. An instant sputter of cobby profanity and the sound of +a backward scramble gave him grim delight. + +"When I leave any bed at this hour," he called with terrible composure, +"it will be because I haven't a fist to explain a gentleman's habits. +It's of no earthly interest to me if fool farmers are getting up all +over the dawn. So are the roosters. Let 'em!" + +But the basket of cobs had been persuasive. Kenny saw beyond in the +dimness cobs and an empty basket. The farmer was gone. He lay down +again in deep disgust, merely reaching a pleasant stage of drowsiness +when the sound of voices near the corncrib roused him again. + +This time he sat up with a jerk. + +"Silas," he thundered, "is that you again?" + +It was. It was moreover a Silas arrogant and cautious who peered in +through the bars and stated profanely that he had a marshal with him, a +marshal with a badge. + +Kenny considered the new complication with a startled frown. It either +spelled retreat in a harrowing dawn with the marshal and Silas at his +heels or a temporary sojourn in a village jail. And Kenny detested any +form of humiliation or discomfort. + +"Silas," he said wearily, "this is a rotten corncrib. It's sprained +and spavined and Lord knows what. It's full of bugs and ants and +spiders and dust and passe corncobs and it's architecturally incorrect, +but if you and the marshal will hike off somewhere else and brag about +his badge, I'll buy it. I've got to sleep." + +Speechless, Silas stared through the slats and continued to stare until +his stupefied face became a source of irritation. Kenny lost his +temper. He raised his voice. + +"You petrified lout! I said I'd buy it." + +The marshal, whose bravery seemed less in evidence than his badge, +summoned Silas to a point of safety. They conferred in a murmur. +Kenny viciously killed a spider and strained his ears in vain to hear +the purport of the consultation. + +After an interval of heated debate Silas returned and with an air of +scepticism demanded twenty-five dollars. When Kenny, who never +questioned the price of anything, argued the point from motives of pure +antagonism, he called the marshal. The marshal was conservative. He +dallied with the need of coming. Kenny took advantage of a dispute +among the enemy to count out the bills in concessional disgust and +shove them through the slats. Silas, turning, brushed them with his +nose and leaped back in terror. Then his hand shot upwards in an +avaricious clutch. The amazed pair counted the bills and departed, +ever after confusing Kenny's identity with that of a famous lunatic +addicted to escapes. + +Having detected all forms of degeneracy in the farmer's face Kenny +barricaded the door with a loose plank from the upper step, made sure +it would fall easily with a clatter, examined his revolver and had his +sleep out, thanks to the fact that the day proved cloudy. He awoke to +flies and disillusion. His head ached. His back ached. There was a +spider in his hat. He wanted water. He wanted a brook equipped with a +shower-bath and he wanted the luxury of eating what he chose. Never, +never would he eat cheese again unless the hand of famine gripped him. +Perhaps not then. The sum of his discontent plunged him into a black +temper in which he rehearsed the details of his morning's misadventure +with growing spleen and wished sincerely that Silas would appear again +and roar at him. And, then, gingerly descending the rickety steps, +Kenny remembered that the corncrib was his. + +His . . . and not his. For he could not take it with him. It was a +tantalizing thought. Not that he wanted it. God forbid! Ever after +he would hate the sight of a corncrib. He simply resented the notion +of leaving it behind for the vocal entertainment of Silas, who would +likely get up again with the roosters and roar into it at "hoboes." +Yes, the corncrib would revert to Silas, from whom he had merely rented +it for one night at a most appalling price. The improvidence of it +shocked him. Kenny retraced his footsteps in a blaze of indignation +and made a bonfire on the corncrib floor to which in a reckless spasm +of disgust he consigned the remainder of his supper. The crazy +structure caught at once, with a smell of cheese. + +Five minutes later Kenny's corncrib was a mass of flames and Silas had +appeared at the end of the field roaring incomprehensible profanity. +Kenny, waiting, whistled softly with a defiant air of calm. The +corncrib was his. He had a perfect right to burn it. He meant to tell +Silas this in a quiet voice, but lost his temper and thundered it +instead. Then in a fury he advanced to meet the disturber of his +morning sleep and made him pay in full for the disillusion of his days +upon the road. + +He thrashed Silas into a mood of craven apology and left him with his +head in his hands. To Kenny's disgusted glance he was like the Irish +Grogach of folk lore, who tumbles around among the hills with a good +deal of head and a lax body without much hint of bones. Well, Brian +had thrashed somebody too. There were times when it couldn't be +helped. And Brian had lived in a corncrib at seven cents a day. Kenny +whipped out his notebook. + +"One day in a corncrib:" he wrote grimly. "Twenty-five dollars!" + +Brian and he were maintaining their customary scale of contrast. + +The highway he abandoned almost at once and struck off through the +forest, reflecting with a frown that Silas would doubtless look up the +marshal and demand a warrant for his arrest. Fate was at his heels +again obsessed by a mania for disturbing the peace of mind he craved. +He might even be hunted by a village posse. And bloodhounds! The +adventurous side of this rather pleased him. It simply narrowed down +to this--it behooved him to loiter no longer in the green world of +spring. Penance or no penance he must now try penitential speed. How +on earth had he ever managed to blunder into a country all trees and no +rails? + +He found a druid of a brook chanting paganly to trees and moss. +Ordinarily Kenny would have found its music and its shadows infinitely +poetic. Now, wretchedly out of sorts, he plunged his face and hands +into a shady pool with a sigh of vast materialistic content, longed to +linger and cursed the village posse he fancied at his heels. The first +romance of his flight from justice was waning rapidly. With a groan he +plunged on, horribly full of aches and hunger. Always now he would +understand the Gaelic legend of Far Goila, the gaunt Man of Hunger who +goes touring up and down the land in times of famine bringing luck to +those who feed him. Even his taste for cheese was returning. The +holocaust of the morning filled him with bitter regret. As for his +feet, they felt shapeless and huge and fungus-like and full of burning +needles. Oh, for the sandals of power of Fergus Mac Roigh! + +At noon in utter desperation he bought a mule. + +The mule brayed temptation at him from the fence of a forest shanty. A +negress stood in the doorway. Kenny, in no mood for haggling, +recklessly offered what he thought the mule was worth. It looked +incredibly sturdy. His voice evoked a ragged husband who came up out +of a cellar doorway eating a dwarfed banana. The sight of the banana +made Kenny dizzy with emotion. + +He demanded one at any price and bought six, ate them one after the +other without the pretense of a halt and moodily shied the last skin at +a sparrow, realizing then with a shock that the negro had already +untied the mule from the picket fence. The precipitancy of it all made +him slightly uncomfortable. Either the negro was too lazy to bargain +or the offer was out of all proportion to the mule's repute. Kenny +asked. + +"He's got a powahful sight of appetite fo' a po' man," explained the +darky fluently. "I's glad to see him go. Dat mule, sah, even eats de +pickets on de fence." + +Kenny felt sincerely that he could understand. + +"Just give him his haid, sah," called the negro as he climbed aboard, +"and he'll find de road outside fo' yoh." + +Mule and rider disappeared with a sort of plunge. Kenny's spirits +soared. Substance and speed here enough for any man. He remembered in +the first moment of his uplift that Cuchullin, foremost champion of the +Red Branch, had had a magic steed that rose from a lake. Its name was +Leath Macha. + +Very well, he would christen this amazing beast of sinews with the +compass nose, Leath Macha, and make him a gift of his head as the darky +advised. Leath Macha--Kenny later found less poetic names he liked +better--developed a sylvan taste for roving and lost himself in no +time, pursuing elusive glints of greenness. He seemed always seeking +food. It came over his rider with a sickening wave of apprehension and +disgust that the unscrupulous negro, taking advantage of his plight, +had sold him what the southern darky calls an ornery mule, a mule that +charged forward with fiery snorts and halted only when it pleased him, +kicked backward when he did stop and plunged forward immediately +afterward with a horrible air of purpose. + +Kenny groaned. He was between the devil and the deep sea. The +prospect of staying lost in a world of trees filled him with hungry +foreboding. But he dreaded the open highway and pictured himself John +Gilpining through town and village, a thing of ridicule and helpless +progress. Puck in the guise of a hairbrained mule! He would pound +onward into the night and throw his rider with the dawn. + +At dusk the mule came out unexpectedly upon a turnpike and halted with +a snort. Perfectly convinced that he was planning something or other +spectacular and public, Kenny slid instantly from his back and grabbed +his knapsack. He left Leath Macha in an attitude of hairtrigger +contemplation, apparently about to begin something at once. When Kenny +looked back the dusk or the forest had engulfed him. Likely the +latter. Trained for the purpose, he decided in a blaze of wrath, Leath +Macha had returned to the negro and a diet of pickets. + +Kenny, swinging down the turnpike in the vigor of desperation, felt no +single pang of penance. His mood was primitive and pertinacious. He +went forward with bee-like undeviation until he found an inn where he +bathed and shaved and ate. He slept until midnight and ate again. He +slept through the night and the morning and ate again, still with the +mental monotony of a cave-dweller. Then he found a railroad and rode. +Not until he reached the town postmarked upon Brian's letter did he +trouble himself with anything but the primitive needs of primitive man. +Here, however, he permitted himself the luxury of a brief but wholly +satisfactory interval of summary. The fortunes of the road had forced +him into the prodigal acquirement of a corncrib and a mule when he had +meant to please Brian by his economy. He had burned the one and +abandoned the other, wholly necessary irregularities. He had thrashed +a farmer. A fugitive from justice he had suffered hunger and thirst +and every form of bodily torment. And he had tramped through a day of +rain with sodden shoes and steaming garments. + +Glory be to God! he had infused enough penance into his four days upon +the road to last an ancient martyr a lifetime. Happily he had always +had a gift for concentration. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +AT THE BLAST OF A HORN + +The village was old and depressing. Kenny, a conspicuous guest at the +one hotel, awoke at noon to less imaginative interest in the wood, the +farmhouse and the river than he'd known for days. He had walked into +his picture. Now with perspective gone, he felt uncertain and vaguely +alarmed. Well, any quest that led to an inn like this, he felt, must +in itself be preposterous. + +The innkeeper proved to be a mine of general information. He knew +nothing at all specific but evinced a candid willingness to overcome +this by acquiring facts from Kenny. Nobody he knew had run away from +an uncle. Why was Kenny seeking uncles? . . . Hum . . . Joel +Ashley's boy had run away but the uncle there had been a stepmother. +Was the runaway boy anybody's long lost heir? A pity! One read such +things in the papers. Years back there had been a scandal about a girl +who ran away to be an actress. + +Kenny interrupted him long enough to order anything vehicular in the +village that would go. The innkeeper shouted to a boy outside with a +bucket and asked Kenny how far the "rig" would have to travel. + +"I'm going," Kenny told him shortly, "to find a river. I'll keep going +until I find it." + +The innkeeper after an interval of blank astonishment identified the +river at once. Kenny felt encouraged. Pressed to further detail, +however, he admitted a confusing plentitude of woods, hills and +farmhouses. Dangerously near the state of mind Garry called "running +in circles," Kenny fumed out to wait for the hotel phaeton and climbed +into it with a shudder of disgust. It had a mustard colored fringe. + +But the phaeton creaked away into a wind and world of lilacs. Kenny +forgot the inn. He forgot the village. Another gust of warm, sweet +wind, another shower of lilac stars beside a well, another lane and he +would have to paint or go mad. + +He neither painted nor lost his reason. He came instead to the river +and began again to fret. The road that but a moment before had made a +feint of stopping for good and all at a dark and hilly wall of cedars, +swept around a rocky curve and revealed the glint of the river. After +that by all the dictates of convenience it should have curved again and +continued its course to Kenny's destination, pleasantly parallel with +the bends of the river. Instead it crossed the river bridge and went +off at a foolish tangent, disappearing over the crest of a hill. Wild +and wooded country swept steeply down to the river edge. Kenny, who +had made a vow of penitential speed, must continue his search on foot. +The prospect filled him with dismay. + +He dismissed the phaeton at the bridge and stared up and down the river +in gloomy indecision. Upstream or downstream? Heaven alone knew! +Whichever way he elected to go would be the wrong way. Fate, who had +saddled him with Silas and the mule, would see to that. + +Then, having resentfully put his mind to it, he evolved some logic. +Brian, leaving the wood by the river, would not go back the way he had +come. He would travel upstream and mail his letter when he found the +village. Kenny conversely had found the village first. Therefore he +must travel downstream to find the wood; downstream through a +disheartening tangle of bush and tree and brier and maybe snakes and +marshes. + +With a groan he plunged into the wood, keeping well up the slope to +avoid the lower marshes. He must spur himself to the start or he'd +never finish. But his mind was in ferment. What if the boy had +written to his sister? Must he vagabond forth again with the morning +into a world of bucolic dawns, alarm-clock farmers, roosters, corncribs +and mules? By the powers of wildfire, no! He would buy a motorcycle. +On tires or toes he could wind Brian around his finger and he would! + +In a flurry of bitter abstraction, he floundered into a marsh and +emerged mud-spattered and indignant. Briers tore at him. Below the +sun-mottled river glided endlessly on in sylvan peace. The other shore +looked better. There the wind-bent shag of trees was greener save +when, with a hint of rain, the breeze turned up an under-leaf ripple of +silver. He met no one; no one but a madman, he reflected, would +explore the tangled banks of a hermit river. + +At sunset, after seven slow weariful miles downstream in the brooding +quiet of a hot afternoon murmurous with birds and the sound of the +river, he came to the end of his journey--a wood, stretching steeply up +a cliff to a farmhouse lost in trees and ivy. It was on the other side +of the river and there was no bridge. + +Kenny, who believed all things of Fate when the pet or victim was +himself, refused absolutely to credit her crowning whimsy. In a fury +of exasperation he clambered down to the water's edge and washed his +face; moodily mopping it with his handkerchief he stared across the +water. + +The sun in a last blaze was going down behind the higher line of trees. +Roof peaks and chimney lay against a mat of gold. Crows winging toward +the forest to the south speckled the sky behind the chimney. To +Kenny's ardent fancy, the old house, built of gray and ancient stone, +became a rugged cameo set in gold and trees. Whatever arable land +belonged to the hill-farm lay away from the river. North and south +loomed only a primitive maze of trees. + +A path wound steeply down to the river's edge and to a boat. Kenny +stared at it in some resentment. + +Well, if he must hunt a bridge he would rest there first beneath the +willow. The sun had made him drowsy. He might even camp on the river +bank and if ever a foot came down the path and toward the boat, he +would fire his revolver into the air and demand attention. The +prospect pleased him. He went toward the willow. + +Fate having toyed with Kenny tossed him a rose and smiled. + +There was a battered horn upon the willow and below a wooden sign: + + _Craig Farm Ferry + Please blow the horn_ + +A battered horn of adventure! What might it not evoke? Woodland +spirits perhaps, romance, a ferryman! Thank God the tree was old, the +horn battered and the willow naiadic in its grace. A trio of blessing! + +Kenny whistled softly in amazed delight and blew the horn. Its blast +startled him and the wooded hills seemed to fling the echo back upon +him. In better humor he flung himself down beneath a tree to wait for +the ferryman--and went peacefully to sleep. + +St. Kevin had once fallen asleep at a window with his arms outstretched +in prayer; a swallow had made a nest in his hand and the saint had +waited for the swallow's young to hatch. Kenny, with the legend dimly +adrift in his brain, dreamed that he too must wait until a ferryman +grew up. He grew up on the further shore to a youth in patches and +then all at once the dream became a beautiful delight. The youth by a +twist of woodland magic turned to a maid in a glory of old brocade. +Such a maid might have stepped from an ancient tapestry to come in +search of a knight of old. + +"Mr. O'Neill!" + +Kenny did not stir. He must keep the dream to the end. If he moved +now the maid would vanish. + +"Mr. O'Neill!" A hand touched his shoulder. + +A haze of old brocade golden in the sunlight retreated and then loomed +persistently ahead. The dream if anything became a shade more clear. +Well, if a man must dream, let him dream thus, vividly, turning the +clock back to maids unbelievably quaint and winsome in old brocade. +Sweet as an Irish smile, the face of this one, and as haunting. And +beyond, an old flat-bottomed punt and a river, a real river-- + +Scarlet with confusion, Kenny sprang to his feet. Queen of Heaven! the +girl was real. She had stepped from the page of an old romance into +life and laughter, wearing for the mystification of chance beholders, +an old-time gown of gold brocade! The mystery of her gown, the river +setting, the laughing sweetness of her face, rooted him to the spot in +wonder and delight. He knew every subtlety of her coloring in one +glance. Her soft exquisite eyes were brown. Tragic, they might very +well seem pools of ink. Her hair? In the sun there was bronze, deep +and vivid, in the shadows brown. And the sun had deepened her skin to +cream and tan and rose. Thank God he was a Celt, an artist and an +aesthete! + +He did not mean to keep on staring nor could he stop. He was horribly +disturbed. For he knew the signs as the traveler knows the landmarks +of an old, familiar road. Heaven help him, one of his periodic fits of +madness was upon him! It could not be helped. He was falling in love +again. And he was tragically sorry. Brian would get so far ahead. + +Standing there with lunacy in his veins and his head awhirl Kenny +looked ahead with foreboding and foresaw days of delicious torment. He +knew with the profound and sorrowful wisdom of experience that it would +not, could not last. Almost he could have forecast to the day the sad +descent into sanity, reactive, monotonous, unemotional, inevitable as +the end of the road. But even with his conscience up in arms, he +welcomed his surrender. Besides, rebellion, as he knew of old, was +utterly futile. He must let the thing run its course. + +The thought of flight from a peril of sweetness he banished instantly. +To run away was to deny himself the fullness of life men said he needed +as an artist. It was unthinkable. Nay, it was unscrupulous, for the +greatness of his gift Kenny regarded as an obligation. Besides, Kenny +denied himself nothing that he wanted, having considered his wants in +detail and found them human, complex and delightful, and sufficiently +harmless. + +Passionately at war with the new complication in his quest for Brian, +Kenny in frantic excitement blamed everything but himself. He blamed +the girl. A girl with a face like that had absolutely no right to be +loitering in a spot of such enchantment. He blamed the mystery of her +gown. Mystery always did for him. He blamed the river and the sylvan +wildness all around him and went on staring. + +"Please say something!" The girl's laughter had changed to shyness, +then to mystification. + +Kenny brushed his hair back with a sigh. No fault of his if Fate grew +prankish and set the stage with gold brocade and an ancient boat and +such a ferryman. He had evoked romance and mystery with the battered +horn and he could not escape. All of it had fairly leaped at him and +caught him unawares. + +"I--I beg your pardon," he said. + +"For sleeping?" The girl smiled a little. + +"For staring! First," he said, his Irish eyes laughing back at her +with the frank charm of a boy begging her to like him, "first I thought +you had stepped from a tapestry into my dream--" + +The rich hint of rose in her skin deepened. She glanced at her gown. + +"Don't tell me about it!" begged Kenny impetuously. And long afterward +she was to recognize in that eager gallantry the finest of tact. "It's +a delight just to be wonderin'! You called me Mr. O'Neill!" he added +blankly. + +"Some letters had tumbled from your pocket." + +Kenny's brow cleared. + +"Besides, whenever the horn blew lately I thought it might be you." + +This was too amazing. But the girl's eyes were beautiful, ingenuous +and wholly sincere. Dumfounded, Kenny turned away and gathered up his +letters. + +"Mystery," he said, shaking his head, "is the spice of delight. But I +like it diffused. A bit more and I'll be knowing for sure that I'm +dreamin'." + +"It's as simple as the letters," said the girl, smiling. She drew a +letter from the pocket of her gown and held it out to him. He read the +address with frank curiosity. Well, thank Heaven, that was settled. +Her name was Joan West. + +The handwriting was Garry's. + +"For the love of Mike!" said Kenny, staring. + +"Please read it," said Joan. "It makes everything so simple." + +Kenny obeyed. + + +"Dear Miss West: + +"It was like Brian to write so splendidly of his father in an effort to +guarantee his own respectability as a suitable friend for your truant +brother and fix his identity for the sake of your peace of mind. And +I'm glad he told you to write to me. + +"Though at this particular minute I would like best to thrash Kennicott +O'Neill into work and sanity, I might just as well admit the fact that +I'm merely in the chronic state of all men who love him and pass on +cheerfully to a pleasant task. All that Brian has said of his father +is true. As for Brian himself, he's a lovable, hot-headed chap with a +head and a heart and too much of both for his own peace of mind. And +he's so darned level-headed and unaffected he needs a Boswell. I hope +I've made good. + +"The O'Neills, in short, are a splendid pair of fellows with a rush of +Irish to the head. They give each other more admiration and affection +when they're apart and more trouble when they're together than any two +men I have ever known. Personally I think they're miserable apart and +hopeless together. However, I'm no judge. Five minutes of +concentration on their present problems fuddles my brain beyond the +point of intelligent logic. + +"I must warn you that O'Neill senior is roving Heaven-knows-where in +search of your uncle's farm. Knowing him fairly well I am convinced +that he'll rove most of the way in a Pullman, though he distinctly said +not. He hopes to find at your farm a letter from your brother that +will furnish a clue. Whereupon, I take it, he'll rove forth again to +seek his son and patch up a regular ballyhoo of a quarrel that almost +disrupted the Holbein Club. You see, everybody insisted upon taking +both sides, with terrifying results. + +"I pray Heaven that O'Neill senior may not find O'Neill junior, but +from now on I shall have a nervous conviction of the pair of them +quarreling all over the state of Pennsylvania. In view of a certain +sentimental indiscretion of mine in permitting O'Neill to read his +son's letter to me and find the postmark, I feel guilty and +apprehensive. + +"Your brother, I should say, is just a little safer with Brian than he +would be anywhere else in the confines of the universe. + +"I enclose a newspaper article on Kennicott O'Neill, written just after +he had acquired one of the medals that fly up at him wherever he goes. +It's fairly accurate. + +"Sincerely, + +"Garry Rittenhouse." + + +With the girl's soft eyes upon him, Kenny felt that he could not be +expected to read each word of the letter. He never did that anyhow. +He blurred through now with amazing speed, catching enough to gratify +and upset him. The letter, reminiscent of his penitential quest for +Brian, roused voices that he did not want to hear. Nor did he hear +them for long. Joan was holding out the clipping, her slender arm in +its fall of yellowed lace a thing to catch the eye of any Irishman whom +Fate for the good of the world of art had made a painter. + +Kenny took the clipping to insure his future peace of mind. Yes, Garry +had displayed better judgment than, in the circumstances, might have +been expected. The article he saw at a glance was an excellent one and +truthful. He particularly liked the phrase "brilliant painter" and +hoped Garry had troubled to read the thing through himself before he +sent it. It might inspire him to quotation in the grill-room. + +Nevertheless, Kenny, with the clipping in his hand, had a picturesque +moment of confusion. + +"It--it's just the sort of thing we call a 'blurb,' Miss West!" he +protested. + +"It says in print," said the girl, her eyes wide and direct, "what your +son wrote in his letter." + +The heart of the lad! Kenny had a bad minute. Until with his quest +upon the back of him he remembered Peredur and felt better. Peredur +had gone in quest of the Holy Grail. And he had found fair ladies. +History, romance, legend, call it what you please, was merely repeating +itself with the hero again Celtic and chivalrous. + +With Peredur for precedent Kenny laughed softly, his eyes a-twinkle. + +"Ah, well," he said with a hint more of brogue than usual, "we've an +Irish saying that there never was a fool who hadn't another fool to +admire him! Trouble is," he added, saving himself and Brian with a +whimsical air of loyalty, "the lad is no fool!" + +"It's helped so," said Joan, "to know that Don is with someone like +your son. I cried a great deal the first night but the next day there +was Brian's letter and Don's. And later this letter and you." + +Kenny understood. Brian could thank him for arriving in time. The +mere sight of him had certified Brian's respectability and guaranteed +the runaway's welfare. + +And now--he cleared his throat--now he must ask if the brother had +written later and supplied a clue. It was utterly essential. If he +had--Well, if he had, he had. That's all there was to it! And he must +do some thinking afterward, some painful thinking of the kind that +drove him mad. He wondered for a moment, with his fingers by force of +habit traveling through his hair, if it really was dishonorable for him +to take advantage of Garry's letter to hunt his son to earth. There +was a subtlety there in which Garry might be right. + +Inwardly in turmoil Kenny took the plunge. + +"And you--and you've heard from your brother!" + +"No," said the girl sadly. "Not since." + +"Mother of Men!" said Kenny softly and drew a long breath. The next +step in his quest became all at once amazingly clear. And Kennicott +O'Neill was no man to shirk a duty, let John Whitaker say what he +chose. He was an unsuccessful parent, please God, trying to make good. + +"And I," said Kenny, "tramping the footsore, weary miles always with +the hope of a letter and a clue!" + +"I'm sorry," said Joan, her brown eyes gentle. "It would have been +wonderful if I could have sent you straight to your son and Donald." + +"Wonderful!" repeated Kenny with a vague air of enthusiasm. But he +rather wished she hadn't said it. + +"What will you do?" + +"I shall find an inn," said Kenny firmly, "and stay here until you do +hear." + +"There is no inn." + +"Then," said Kenny irresponsibly, "I shall camp here under the willow, +buying beans. I have a can opener." + +He caught in Joan's eyes a glint of gold and laughter and glanced +wistfully across the river at the house upon the cliff. It was +undeniably roomy. + +"If only your house had been an inn!" he said. "An old, old ramshackle +inn, quaint and archaic like the punt yonder and your gown! It's such +a wonderful spot." + +Joan met his eyes and made no pretense of misunderstanding. She could +not. + +"Your uncle!" exclaimed Kenny with an air of inspiration and then +looked apologetic. + +The girl's face flamed. Oddly enough she looked at her gown. Kenny +wondered why. He found her distress and the hot color of her face +mystifying and lovely. + +"I--I know he would!" said Joan in a low voice and looked away. "The +house is large. Rooms and rooms of it. And only Uncle and I, save +Hughie and his family. Hughie works the farm and lives yonder in the +kitchen wing." + +Kenny reached for his knapsack and started toward the boat. + +"Thank Heaven, that's settled!" he said pleasantly. "You saw for +yourself what Garry said about work. Honestly, Miss West, I ought to +work. I ought to put in a summer sketching. I can sketch here and +wait." + +The punt, flat-bottomed and old, he proclaimed a delight. When the +girl did not answer he turned and found her staring. She seemed a +little dazed. + +"I'm thinking," said Joan, her eyes round and grave with astonishment, +"how you seem always to have been here." + +He laughed, his color high. His face, Joan thought, was much too young +and vivid for anybody's father. Their eyes met in new and difficult +readjustment and Kenny, his heart turbulent, turned back to the punt. + +It was in his mind gallantly to scull the thing across. The +announcement brought Joan to the edge of the water in a panic. + +"You'd scull us both into a rock!" she exclaimed. "The river is full +of them. I know the best way over." + +"Professional jealousy!" retorted Kenny, his eyes droll and tender. "I +suppose you belong to the ferryman's union." He dropped his knapsack +into the boat and busied himself with the painter. "If the boat had +two oars," he told her laughing, "or I one arm, I know I could manage. +As it is, one oar and two arms--" + +"It's much better," said Joan sensibly, "than two oars and one arm. +Please get in." + +She went to the stern and stood there, waiting, one hand upon the oar. +Fascinated, Kenny climbed in. + +What a ferryman! he mused as Joan sculled the punt from shore. What a +gown and what a background! The old brocade, flapping in the wind, was +gold like the afterglow behind the gables and the soft, haunting +shadows in the girl's eyes and hair. What an ecstasy of unreality! +Boat and ferryman seemed some exquisite animate medallion of another +age. + +Garry could have told him it was the way he saw his pictures, romantic +in his utter abandon, but Garry was not there and Kenny with his head +in the clouds rushed on to his doom. The punt was a fairy boat sailing +him over a silver river to Hy Brazil, the Isle of Delight. Ah! Hy +Brazil! You saw it on clear days and it receded when you followed. It +was a melancholy thought and true. The madness never lasted. + +There are those for whom the present is merely anticipation of the +future or reminiscence of the past. Kenny had the supreme gift of +living intensely and joyously in the present and the present for him +shone in the soft brown eyes of the ferryman in the stern. Past and +future he shrugged to the winds. For he was sailing across to romance, +he hoped, and surely to mystery. Yes, surely to mystery! Mystery +enough for any Celt in the battered horn, the ferry and the ferryman +yonder in the old-time gown. + +[Illustration: He was sailing across to romance, he hoped, and surely +to mystery.] + +"It was down there," said Joan, nodding, "where the river bends, that +Brian had his camp." + +Brian's name was a shock. Kenny came to earth for an instant. Only +for an instant. The monochrome of gold behind the gables was drifting +into color. Here between the wooded heights where the river ran, +already there was shadow. Twilight and afterglow! Kenny in poetic +vein told of the Gray Man of the Path. The Path was in Ireland, a +fissure in the cliff at Fairhead. If you climbed well you could use +the Gray Man's Path and scale the cliff. Kenny himself had climbed it. +Joan, busy with the single oar, lost nevertheless no single word of it. +She was eager and intent. + +"I suppose," said Kenny, "that the Gray Man is the spirit of the mists +of Benmore. But to me he's always Twilight. Twilight anywhere." + +The girl nodded, quick to catch his mood. + +"And to-night," she said, "his path is the river. He's coming now." + +Kenny's Gray Man of the Twilight was stealing closer when they landed. + +With the feeling of dreams still upon him he followed the girl up the +path. It wound steeply upward among the trees, with here and there a +rude step fashioned of a boulder, and came out in an orchard on a hill. + +Kenny stood stock-still. Fate, he told himself, needed nothing further +for his utter undoing. And if she did, it lay here in the orchard. He +had come in blossom time. + +Well, thanks to the crowded fullness of his emotional life, he knew +precisely what it meant. He had adventured in blossoms before to the +torment of his heart and head. In Spain. He had forgotten the girl's +name but it began with an "I." Now in the dusk he faced gnarled and +glimmering boughs of fleece. The wind, fitful and chill since the +sunset, speckled the grayness beneath the trees with dim white fragrant +rain and stirred the drift of petals on the ground. Stillness and +blossoms and the disillusion of intrusive fact! + +Joan, lovelier to Kenny's eye than any blossom, seemed unaware of the +romance in the orchard. She was intent upon a man coming down the +orchard hill. Kenny sighed as he turned his eyes from her. + +"It's Hughie," she said. "He's watched for you too since the letter +came. We all have. Hughie! Hughie!" + +Hughie came toward them, sturdy, middle-aged and unpoetic for all his +head was under blossoms. + +"Hughie!" called Joan. "It's Mr. O'Neill. He must have some supper. +Tell Hannah. And I'll go speak to Uncle Adam." + +Romance flitted off through the twilight with her. Hungry, Kenny +embarked upon a reactive interval of common sense and followed Hughie, +who seemed inclined to talk of rain, to the kitchen door. It was past +the supper hour. Beyond in a huge, old-fashioned kitchen, yellow with +lamp light, Hughie's daughter, a ruddy-cheeked girl plump and wholesome +as an apple, was washing dishes. Kenny liked her. He liked the +shining kitchen. The wood was dark and old. He liked too the tiny +bird-like wife who trotted to the door at Hughie's call. Her hair was +white and scant, her skin ruddy, her eyes as small and black as berries. + +Kenny made her his slave. He begged to eat in the kitchen. + +Joan found him there a little later with everything in the pantry +spread before him. His voice, gay and charming, sounded as if he had +liked Hannah for a very long time. And Hannah's best lamp was on the +table. There was a pleasant undercurrent of excitement in the kitchen. +Joan found her guest's engaging air of adaptability bewildering. He +seemed all ease and sparkle. + +At the rustle of her gown in the doorway, he sprang to his feet. + +"Please sit down," she said, coloring at the unaccustomed deference. +"I've a message from Uncle Adam. He understands about your son. He +said you may wait here as long as you choose. In any room." + +Trotting flurried paths to the pantry and the stove, Hannah at this +point must needs halt midway between the two with the teapot in her +hand to tell the tale of Kenny's considerate plea for supper in the +kitchen. Though it had been largely a matter of old wood and +lamp-yellow shadows, Kenny wished that a number of people who had never +troubled to be just and call him considerate could hear what she said. +Thank Heaven his self-respect was returning. These simple people were +splendidly intuitional. They understood. An agreeable wave of +confidence in his own judgment filled him with benevolence. He was to +lose that confidence strangely in a little while. It came to him +sitting there that he felt much as he had felt in the old care-free +past before Brian had deserted, plunging him into abysmal despair. + +"Perhaps to-night," Joan said, "you'd better sleep wherever Hannah +says. And then tomorrow you can pick a room for yourself." + +She slipped away with the grace of an elf. Spurred to pictures by the +old brocade, Kenny wished he had some velvet knickerbockers and a satin +coat. The thought of his knapsack wardrobe filled him with discontent. +Hum! To-morrow he must prevail upon someone to conduct him to the +nearest village in wire communication with the outside world. + +To Garry two days later came a telegram from Craig Farm. It covered +three typewritten pages and read like a theatrical manager's costume +instructions to a star. + +Garry stared. + +"Oh, my Lord!" he groaned. "The sister's pretty!" + +After a dazed interval, however, he found comfort in the thought that +the postmark had been harmless. It had served no other purpose than to +lead the penitential lunatic to Craig Farm. He would likely get no +further. + +"The ties in Brian's bureau," read Garry, thunderstruck at the wealth +of detail. "My white flannels. Have cleaned. No place here. Had to +ride seven miles with a milk-man to send this--" + +Garry ran his eye over the rest and groaned again at the hopeless task +ahead. Very well, he decided, reaching for the telephone, if he must +invade the O'Neill studio, excavate and pack, Sid could help and Mac +and Jan. Waiting, he read the telegram again. With Kenny's usual +sense of values there was one brief sentence relative to some materials +for work. He left the responsibility of selection there to Garry. + +"Work, hell!" exclaimed Garry, provoked. "He wants work so he can fill +his time thinking up ways to evade it." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +IN THE GARRET + +Rain came with the dawn. Kenny, waking hours later with a nervous +sense of some unknown delight ahead, found the eaves and orchard +dripping. The valley the old house faced was lost in mist. + +The blossom storm! So Hughie had called the rain he promised. Kenny +liked the name. Out there in the orchard gusty cudgels of wind and +water were beating the blossoms to earth. It was a fancy rife with +poetic melancholy. + +The smell of wet lilac sweeping in from a bush beneath his window made +him think somehow of Joan. He wondered in a wave of tenderness if she +ferried the river too in storm and, glancing at his watch found the +hour disturbing. Unfortunately in a wing remote from Hannah's trot and +bustle where save for the monotonous music of the rain, the brush of +dripping trees or depressing creaks, there was no noise at all, he had +as usual slept too long. And one could never tell. Silas's singular +notion of a rising hour might prevail here. Best perhaps to go down a +little later and combine his breakfast with his lunch. Meantime he +would avail himself of Joan's permission to pick a room for himself. + +The house was big and old and abandoned for the most part to creaks and +dust and cobwebs. Kenny peered into room after room with a fascinated +shiver, reading mystery in every shadow. Thank fortune the room he had +was linked to the fragrant life of blossoms and lilacs. + +A stairway he climbed came out delightfully in a garret musical with +rain and the plaintive chirping of wet birds huddled under dripping +eaves. Unlike the rooms he had left below it was swept and clean. +There were trunks in one corner, a great many, and a cedar chest. +There should be a cedar chest. It was as essential to an old garret +like this as violets in spring or sweetness in a girl's face. The +chest was open. With a low whistle of delight Kenny peered inside and +thought of the ferryman in her quaint brocade. The chest was full to +the brim of old-time gowns, glints of faded satin and yellowed lace, +buckled slippers and old brocade. + +"Mr. O'Neill!" + +Kenny wheeled, his face scarlet with guilt and confusion. Joan was +beside him, her startled eyes dark with reproach. Even in his +stammering moment of apology he was dismayed to find that her gown was +commonplace, old and mended. + +Joan caught his glance and colored. + +"It's the dress I wear to Uncle," she said hurriedly. "I--I meant you +never to see it. He doesn't know. Everything there in the cedar chest +he hates. All of it belonged to my mother. He wouldn't like me to +wear her gowns." + +"In the name of Heaven," demanded Kenny, shocked, "why not? It's a +beautiful thing--like the play-acting of a dryad!" + +"My mother," said the girl in a low voice, "was on the stage." + +Her challenging eyes, big and wistful, fanned his chivalry into +reckless flame. The need of the hour was peculiar. There was little +room for fact. In a moment of wayward impulse he had slipped up a +stairway and blundered on a shrine. He must not make another mistake. +The girl beside him was as timorous and defensive as a doe scenting an +alien breath in the wood of wild things. A wrong step and in spirit +she would bound away from him forever. + +"Odd!" said Kenny gently. "So was mine." And he thought for a +tormented minute of Brian and Garry and John Whitaker. Not one of them +would understand. He wanted only to be kind and in tune. + +Joan caught her breath. The softness and faith in her eyes hurt. + +"You're not ashamed of it!" + +"No," said Kenny, looking away, "Certainly not. Are you?" + +"No," said Joan steadily. "But Uncle is." + +In this second interval of readjustment, yesterday seemed aeons back. +They had traveled far. The peace and peril of the moment were +ineffably sweet. + +"You can be yourself anywhere," said Joan clearly, taking from the +chest an exquisite old lavender gown for which she seemed to have come. +"And if your self is bad, the--the where doesn't matter." + +Her insight rather startled him. Often afterward he was to find in her +that curious ability to detach herself from custom and tradition, skiff +away the husks of cumulative prejudice and find the kernel of truth for +herself. + +Joan went toward the stairs; he followed her with a troubled sigh. The +stage mother bothered him. With her he had bridged a gulf it would +have taken weeks to span, but the trust in Joan's eyes still hurt. If +only he could have begun upon a rock, Brian's rock of fact and not the +shifting sands of his own errant fancy! It would have been a glory to +live up to the faith in the girl's wistful eyes. + +He was sorry he had climbed the stairway, sorry he had solved the +mystery of the brocade gown, sorry he had lied, sorry, frenziedly sorry +that whatever new thing slipped into his life, no matter how simple and +beautiful it seemed, took on the familiar complexity fatal to his peace +of mind. + +But he was passionately grateful for the tense moment when Joan had +seemed to turn to him for sympathy, a wild and lonely dryad of a girl +in a mended gown. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE BLOSSOM STORM + +At nightfall, with his telegram to Garry depressingly linked with a +memory of winding, sodden, lonely roads, dripping woods and the clink +of milk-cans, Kenny was summoned to the sitting room of Adam Craig. + +A fire burned in the open fireplace. Lamp-light softened the +shabbiness of the old room and shone pleasantly on dark wood and a +great many faded books. Later Kenny knew that every book in the +farmhouse was here upon his shelves. Adam Craig sat huddled in a +wheelchair. Kenny thought of the runaway who hated him. He thought of +Joan. He thought of the bleak old rooms that seemed one in spirit with +the man before him. A wrinkled, evil old man, he told himself with a +shudder, with piercing eyes and a face Italian in its subtlety. + +Adam Craig looked steadily at the Irishman in the doorway and found his +stare returned. The gaze of neither faltered. So began what Kenny, +when his singular relations with the old man had goaded him to startled +appraisal, was pleased to call a "friendship that was never a +friendship and a feud that was never a feud." + +"I sent you a message," said Adam Craig. + +"Your niece brought it." + +The old man tapped with slender, wasted fingers upon the arm of his +chair. + +"What was it?" he asked guilelessly. + +"As I remember it," stammered Kenny in surprise, "you were good enough +to say that I might stay here as long as I chose." + +"Like all women and some Irishmen," said Adam Craig, "she lied. I said +you could stay as long as you were willing to pay." + +Kenny changed color. The invalid chose to misinterpret his interval of +constraint. + +"So," he said softly, "you don't always pay!" + +The random shot of inference went home. It was the first of many. +Kenny fought back his temper. Affronted, he crossed the room and laid +a roll of bills upon the table. Craig counted them with an irritating +show of care. + +"That, Mr. O'Neill," he said, "will guarantee my hospitality for the +space of a month!" + +He put the roll of money in the pocket of his bathrobe and Kenny +fancied his fingers loathe to leave it. + +The drip of the rain and the gusty noise of wind that by daylight had +been no more than a melancholy adjunct to the poetry of wet blossoms, +became suddenly sinister and tragic and irresistibly atmospheric. +Kenny stared with new vision at the dreadful old man in the bathrobe. +One by one Kenny was fated to solve his mysteries when he wanted to +keep them. He knew now in a flare of intuition why the old rooms had +been abandoned, why Joan ferried folk from the village in the valley to +the village across the river, why her gown of the morning and the rags +of the runaway had been pitifully patched and mended. And he +remembered the mystery of her color, when, questing an inn, he had +glanced at the house on the cliff and hinted that her uncle might +consent to be his host. + +"I know he would!" Joan's low voice rang in his ears again with new +meaning. + +Adam Craig was a miser. + +He shrank at the thought. Annoyed to find the old man's eyes boring +into him again, he cleared his throat and looked away. + +"So," said Adam Craig, "you are a famous painter!" + +"I am a painter," said Kenny stiffly. + +"With medals," purred Adam. + +"With medals." + +A fit of coughing seemed for an interval to threaten the old man's very +life. + +"Yonder in the closet," he said huskily, "is a bottle and some glasses. +Bring them here." + +Kenny obeyed. + +"Sit down." + +With the old man's eyes upon him, hungry and expectant, as if he +clutched at the thought of companionship, Kenny reluctantly found a +chair for himself and sat down. Pity made him gentle. Year in and +year out, he remembered with a shiver, Adam Craig sat huddled here in +his wheel-chair listening to wind and rain, sleet and snow, the rustle +of summer trees and the wind of autumn. It was a melancholy thought +and true. + +Smoothly hospitable, the invalid poured brandy for himself and his +guest and chatted with an air of courtesy. Kenny found himself in +quieter mood. Reminiscence crackled in the wood-fire. Nights in the +studio by the embers of a log many a Gaelic tale had glowed and +sparkled in his soft, delightful brogue for the ears of men who loved +his tales of folk lore and loved the teller. + +Ah, Ireland, dark rosaleen of myths and mirth and melancholy. The +thought of it all made him tender and sad. + +Well, he would give this lonely man by the fire an hour of unalloyed +delight. He would tell him tales of Ireland when brehons made the laws +and bards and harpers roved the green hills. Kenny made his +opportunity and began. He told a tale of Choulain, the mountain smith +who forged armor for the Ultonians. He told a lighter tale of three +sisters whom he called Fair, Brown and Trembling. With the brogue +strong upon him he told how Finn McCoul had stolen the clothes of a +bathing queen and he told in stirring phrase the exploits of Ireland's +mighty hero, Cuchullin. + +He had never had a better listener. Adam Craig fixed his piercing eyes +inscrutably upon the teller's face, drank glass after glass of brandy, +and remained polite, intent and silent. Kenny, with his heart in the +telling, went on to the tale of Conoclach and the first harp. +Conoclach, he said, hating Cull, her husband, had run away from him +toward the sea. There upon the sand lay the skeleton of a whale and +the wind playing upon the taut sinews made sounds low and soothing +enough to lull her to sleep. And Cull, coming up, marveled at her +slumber, heard the murmuring of the wind through the sinews and made +the first harp. Kenny liked the tale and he liked the way he told it. + +Adam Craig nodded. + +"Lies!" he said, springing the trap it had pleased him to bait with an +air of courtesy, "All lies." + +Kenny flushed with annoyance. The sacrilege of doubt when the tale was +Irish jarred. + +"Lies!" said Adam Craig again, "adapted centuries ago by some Irish +word-thief." + +"You are pleased to be humorous," said Kenny, glancing coldly at his +host. + +"I am pleased," said the old man insolently, "to be truthful, not being +Irish. Fair, Brown and Trembling!" he added with a sneer. "Word for +word, it's the tale of Cinderella." + +"The pattern for Cinderella!" corrected Kenny with a shrug. + +Adam Craig glanced at him with narrowed eyes. + +"And Finn McCoul and the bathing queen. I can find you the German tale +of a stolen veil from which it's--borrowed." + +"You can find me likely the name of a German who chose to delve into +Gaelic for his plot." + +"You've a ready tongue." + +"There are times when it's needed." + +"As for the first harp," snapped Adam Craig, nettled, "there's a +Grecian lyre tale yonder on the shelf like it." + +"Liar tale," said Kenny purposely misunderstanding. Hum! The Greeks, +he remembered regretfully, were clever adapters. + +His air of assurance incensed the old man. + +"As for that fool of a Cuchullin," he rasped, coughing a little, "where +is he different from Achilles?" + +"A little different," said Kenny. "Achilles, poor old scout, was much +the inferior of the two." + +Again in fury Adam Craig coughed until it seemed that his life must +end. Again he drank. Kenny knew by the flurried brightness of his +eyes sunk deep in the yellowed gauntness of his face that he was drunk. +He shuddered and rose. Already the old man's head was drooping toward +his chest in a drunken stupor. With an effort he roused and leered. + +"Cinderella, damn you!" he said. "Cinderella and Achilles!" + +"Cinderella," repeated Kenny pityingly. "Cinderella and Achilles." + +He stood uncertain what to do while Adam Craig slipped down in his +chair. Drunk, perverse and cruel! With the rain beating at the +windows Kenny thought of Joan, compassion in his heart, and rang for +Hughie. + +"I--I'm afraid he's drunk," he whispered with a sense of guilt when +Hughie came. "Perhaps I shouldn't have given him the bottle." + +Hughie glanced at his watch. + +"It's nine o'clock," he said. "He's late." + +"You mean?" + +"Every night," said Hughie. "The doctor gave up fightin' long ago." + +Kenny went to his room filled with pity and disgust. + +Gusts of wind and rain battered at the orchard blossoms the next day +and the next. Kenny found a tuning outfit in a closet and spent his +days with Joan tuning the Craig piano. He was grateful in the gloom of +dark wood and dust for the fantastic thing of lavender she wore. It +was like a bit of iris in a bog, he told her, and was sorry when he saw +her glance with troubled eyes at the dust and cobwebs. + +The river ran high and brown. The horn beneath the willow was silent. +Each night Adam Craig sent for his guest. The rain, he said, made him +lonesome. Each night in a hopeless conflict of pity and dislike Kenny +went, rain and wind and Adam Craig getting horribly upon his nerves. + +He was glad when the sun came and filled the valley, panoramic from the +farmhouse ridge, with a glory of light. Milk-white clouds capped the +western hills. Nearer, dotted peacefully with farms, red barns and +dark, straggling clumps of evergreen, the rolling valley stretched +unevenly among intersecting lines of trees. At the foot of a hill rose +the spire of the village church. To the south a crystal blaze of sun +showed water. + +A world of lilac and dogwood and a few late apple blossoms clinging +bravely through the storm to sunshine. And the world held Joan with +shadows of the sun in her hair and eyes and shadows of the past in her +gowns. + +Ah, truly, it was good to be alive! + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +JOAN + +Thus, warm and fragrant, the summer came with Kenny in the house of Adam +Craig, drifting pleasantly he knew and cared not where; with Brian on the +road with Donald West. + +And Joan? To her summer came with a new incomprehensible delight. Out +of the void a bright spirit had roved into her world, sweeping her, eager +and unresistant, into youth and life and laughter. He came from an +immensity of romantic experience, holding out his hands to her, with +tender eyes and a look of youth and charm and understanding in his vivid +face. + +She had fought through drab and solitude to dreams and formless craving, +this girl of the hills. What things of vigor her life had known were +cruel: a passionate shrinking from her uncle, a fear for the brother who +had hotly rebelled at the meager life around him, a loneliness aloof from +her kind and a vague hunger for some fuller, sweeter life beyond the +hills. And with a blast of a horn the drab had vanished. + +There were times when the girl's soft eyes opened wide in a panic of +incredulity. He was a famous painter, this Irishman who had prevailed +upon her in a laughing moment to call him Kenny; a famous painter with a +personality as vivid as his face. And yet he chose to linger at her +uncle's farm. The color, the gayety, the sparkle, he seemed miraculously +to infuse into existence, left her breathless and startled. And he knew +not one spot and one land. He knew many spots, some wild and remote, and +many lands. Joan marveled at the twist of Fate that had brought him to +the willow. + +His individuality made its own appeal. But there were subtler forces +working to the girl's surrender. One, a deep abiding gratitude to him +and Brian. Though she ran down the lane each morning and peered into the +letter box at the end for word of Donald, her disappointment now had +nothing in it of terror. Donald, Kenny said, was with an O'Neill. He +could not go wrong. She accepted the statement, as she had accepted the +stage mother, with utter faith and gladness. + +And Kenny was kind to her uncle and to her; kind with an infinite +delicacy of tact and feeling. He seemed to understand the instinct for +beauty and adornment that sent her roving to her mother's trunks. He +understood her dreams and her hunger. He understood the spirit that had +led her to make the garret a sort of shrine to be swept and dusted, to be +kept apart and precious. There was another force, subtle and exacting: +the girl's burgeoning womanhood. Wistful for homage, she craved his +gallant tenderness and wanted always to be with him. His frank glance of +admiration and his boyish smile were always a tribute. So was his voice, +deep, gentle, sonorous as a sweet-toned bell. Tones of it she knew were +kept for her alone. The knowledge thrilled her. She did not know why. + +By the time the old wistaria vine outside her window shook in the wind +with a glory of purple, the over-crowded days were gliding one into the +other like a rain of stars. Most of all, wakeful in the dark of her +room, she remembered the hours by the river when Kenny wove for her high, +peaked hats of rushes such as he claimed the Irish fairies wore, and told +her tales of Ireland with a trick of eloquence that made her laugh and +made her cry. Odd! unlike her uncle he understood tears too. A tear, he +said, was always trailing an Irishman's smile. His sympathetic brogue, +smooth and soft and instinct with drollery, held for her a never-ending +fascination. + +And always at the end of the day there was Kenny's Gray Man of the +Twilight stealing up the river all too soon. + +Joan was not the only one to whom the sparkle of the irrepressible +Irishman's wit and humor was an energizing boon. There was Hannah and +Hetty; and Hughie, too, though he stoutly denied it. Life on the Craig +farm was no longer dull. + +Kenny, at a loose end, kept the farm in ferment, evading the work Garry +had sent him, by a conscientious effort to assist others. He was glad he +could paint if the mood seized him. Denied the opportunity he knew he +would have fretted. There was one singular, inexplicable thing about +work. If there was work at hand, one could always find something else to +do, attractive and absorbing. If there wasn't work to do, the sheer +shock of it seemed to dull you into mental vacuity and loose ends of time +came up and hit you in the face. Garry had written something or other +like that sarcastically in a letter. + +He helped Hannah churn and sang with a soft brogue, to her abashed +delight, a song he called "The Gurgling of the Churn." He helped Hetty +milk the roan cow and sang while Hetty's apple-cheeks bloomed redder, an +exquisite folk tune of a pretty girl who milked a cow in Ireland. Later +in the summer he even helped Hughie rake the hay and had a song for that. +As Hannah said, he seemed to have songs for everything and what he +couldn't sing he could play with dazzling skill on the old piano. + +"There's 'lectricity," said Hannah, "in the very air." + +"I wished," grumbled Hughie, "he'd put it in the ground instid. The air +don't need it. Workin' a farm like this on shares is like goin' to a +picnic behind old Nellie and startin' late. You just know you won't git +there. What ground up here ain't worked out is hills and stones and +hollers." + +Hannah sighed. + +Kenny knew with regret that he might have been a helpful factor in the +work of the farm but for a number of unforeseen reasons. When he churned +the butter never came. The roan cow disliked music and kicked over the +milk-pail with inartistic persistence. The sun on the hay made his head +ache. + +As for a picturesque task for which he had no song--well, he had promised +Joan to keep away from the punt when the horn beneath the willow blew for +a ferryman. He had sculled the old white-haired minister into a rock +with delight to no one but Adam Craig, who had spent a whole evening +cackling about it. He must always remember that it had not been his +fault. The rock had merely scraped the punt while he was listening with +politeness to why the old man had "doubled up" his charge and had a +church on either side of the river. And if Mr. Abbott had not risen in +gentle alarm and begun to teeter around, Kenny in an interval of frantic +excitement would not have been forced to fish him out of the stream by +his coattails. He considered always that he saved the old man's life. +Nor had he meant to dab at him with the oar, thereby encouraging the +unfortunate old chap to duck and misinterpret his obvious intention to +save him. + +But Joan had understood. That was the chief essential. Always Joan was +there upon the horizon of his day. Whatever he thought, whatever he did, +was colored by a passionate desire for the girl's approval. Her pleasure +became his delight; her smile his inspiration. In that, he told himself, +pleased to interpret all things here in the sylvan heart of solitude in +the terms of romance and mystery, he was like the chivalrous warrior of +old who found his true happiness in gallantly serving a beautiful maid. +Joan was surely such a type as chivalry conceived. She filled his Celtic +ideal and aroused all his gladness as a woman should. And she was as shy +and beautiful as a wild flower and as unspoiled. He blessed the old +gowns that quaintly framed her loveliness anew from day to day. But they +had been his undoing. He felt that he might have kept his head a little +longer but for the blaze of the gold brocade in the last light of the sun. + +Laughter made her lovely. Ah, there Brian had been right. But then, he +reflected sadly, Brian was always right. That, he could surely concede, +when Fate had put an end to his quest and doomed him to linger here in +the home of a miser, waiting, waiting, yes, waiting in impatience for +word of his son. Well, perhaps he was not impatient, but at least he was +waiting. And Brian had found in Joan's face the vigor of sweetness, not +the kind that cloys. Kenny liked the words. + +It was inevitable, with songs for everything, that he would have songs, +like the tenderer tones of his voice, that he kept for Joan alone, songs +that came softly to his lips when Nature stirred his fancy and Joan was +at his side in an old-time gown. + +A lone pine, a wild geranium, a lark or Joan's garden where the +heliotrope grew; they were sparks to a fire of inspiration that came +forth in song. + +There was one song he sang most often. + +"What is it, Kenny?" Joan asked one sunset when Kenny on the farm porch +was finding the subtleties of color for her in the darkening valley below +them and the western sky above the hills. + +"What's what, Arbutus, dear?" he asked with guile. + +The "dear" didn't bother her. It was frequently "Hannah, dear!" and +"Hetty, dear!" and Hughie was often "Hughie, darlin'." + +"Why," asked Joan, "do you call me Arbutus?" + +"Because you're like one," he said gently. + +"And what was the song?" + +"'My Love's an Arbutus,'" said Kenny demurely. He knew at once that he +must not step so far ahead again. She looked a little frightened. Kenny +instantly called her attention to a gap in the range of hills to the west. + +"Like the Devil's Bit in Ireland," he said. "There the devil, poor lad, +bit a chunk out of a mountain and not liking the morsel over well, +treated it as you and I would treat a cherry pit." + +Joan laughed. + +"True." said Kenny, "every word of it. I myself have seen the chunk he +threw away. Tis the Rock of Cashel. He's been bitin' again over there, +I take it. To-morrow you and I will go down into the valley, seek the +unappetizin' rock he rejected and look it over." + +"I think most likely," said Joan, "the farm's built on it." + +And then the sound of the horn came over the water and Joan ran. + +Kenny as usual cursed the horn. + +With the valley filled with the first haze of twilight and the hills +still aglow, Kenny sat on the farm porch and brooded. He had not meant +to frighten her. The Arbutus gallantry he had considered strategic and +poetic. There was the baffling thing about her that kept him piqued. +She was always shy and elusive. Of convention she knew nothing at all; +yet like the shrine in the garret she kept herself apart and precious. +Always she seemed fluttering just ahead of him, like a will-of-the-wisp. +If he touched her hand ever so gently she drew it away. The caresses +most girls he had known would have understood and accepted as part of the +summer idyl, he knew, instinctively, would be evaded. + +Ah! the truth of it was she was an incomprehensible torment of delight. +For she roamed the fields and woods with him gladly, lunched in glens +remote it seemed from everything but the call of that infernal horn, +yielded to the enthusiasm of his maddest moods, romped with him like a +kitten or a child--and kept miraculously the poise and reticence of a +woman. She talked freely of her brother; never of her uncle. + +He was quick and impressionable, this gifted Irishman, with a trace of +the melancholy of his race and all of its cheer. Melancholy was the one +mood in which Joan did not seem to flutter just ahead. Always then she +followed, gentle, compassionate and shyly tender. He was quick to find +it out and wily enough to feign it when in reality his heart was as light +and buoyant as a feather. + +Save for the call of the horn beneath the willow, the girl was as free to +come and go as an oriole in the orchard; for that he was grateful. But +whether Adam Craig's attitude was one of trust or cold indifference, he +could not fathom. With Hughie and Hannah it was different. They loved +Joan and trusted him. That trust, he resolved, should not be futile. He +could justify it and he would. Joan, of course, was foredoomed to know +the delirium of the heart that had come to him that day beneath the +willow. Fate could not deny him requital. She never had. Equally, of +course, Joan's delirium, like his own, would not last. It could not. +The thought hurt his vanity a little. + +It remained for him who had aroused it to linger here at the farm until +the fancy had run its course and she was quite herself! Even if, long +before, his own madness had waned. That was apt to happen, for he was +handicapped by an earlier start. Yes, he would linger. And he would be +scrupulous and honorable and kind. Joan was young and a woman. She +would nurse the shadows of her summer's idyl long after the idyl was +gone, and would mistake them for reality. There with his wider +experience and the sad memory of much ebb and now he could be helpful. + +Kenny shivered and refused to dwell upon a phase of life that was like +autumn and sere and drifting leaves. It bothered him that the thought of +Hannah and Hughie had driven him to think it out. He liked best in heart +things to think back, not too far, and never forward. + +"Kenny!" It was Joan's voice in the dusk. + +Kenny forgot the sadness of his wisdom and foreboding. He forgot the +future. The thing to do always was to live in the present and now Joan's +voice, joyous and young, filled him with tenderness. + +"Yes, Joan." + +"The Gray Man of the Twilight's here. See, he's climbed up from the +valley and he's coming down the walk." + +From the Gray Man's misty robes came the fragrance of syringa. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +ADAM CRAIG + +Joan, Kenny called his torment of delight in days that were exquisite +intaglios. Adam Craig was a torment of another caliber. He claimed +the evenings of his guest. + +Kenny knew too well for his own peace of mind the pitiful diversions of +the old man's day. It sapped his powers of resistance. In the morning +there was the doctor, a weary little man, untemperamental and +mercifully impervious to insult, who chugged up the lane in a car that +needed but one twist of the crank to release a great many clattering +things. All of them Kenny felt should be anchored more securely. +There was an occasional hour in the open. At nightfall he sent for +Kenny and by nine he was drunk. + +Again and again, wrought to a high pitch of resentment by the traps the +invalid baited with an air of courtesy, Kenny cursed his own weak-kneed +spasms of pity and surrender and resolved to break away. Always when +Hughie rapped at his bedroom door he remembered the melancholy drip of +the blossom storm at Adam's windows, the invalid's hunger for news of +the outside world and the Spartan way he bore his pain. Whatever the +nature of the disease that had wasted his body and etched shadows of +pain upon his subtle face, he never spoke of it. Nor did he speak of +Donald or Joan, whom Kenny felt despairingly he hated and taunted into +secret tears. If he resented the runaway's rebellion, he kept it to +himself. + +One evening when he seemed to be quiet and in pain, and was taking, +Kenny noticed, the medicine that marked vague periods of crisis, Adam +said pensively that he had not meant to impugn the Gaelic folk lore. +He liked it. It reflected the warm, poetic soul of a people. Brandy, +alas, always made him quarrelsome and undependable of mood. When the +rain came again and he had to have a fire, they would have more tales +of the Dark Rose Kenny loved. Ireland, the Dark Rose! The name was +like her history. Yes, folk lore went with the crackle of a log and +the mournful music of rain upon a roof. He could have his brandy later. + +The rain came with its lonely patter and Kenny told him tales of +Ireland, delighted at the sympathetic quiet of his mood. Unbrandied, +the evenings, after all, might become endurable. + +"You see," Adam said once a little sadly, "without the brandy--" + +Kenny nodded his approval. + +When the clock struck nine he was in splendid fettle, brogue and all. + +"For Ireland's harpers," he was boasting with a reckless air of pride, +"were better than any harpers in the world." + +"Liars?" asked Adam blankly. + +Kenny found his occasional pretense of deafness trying in the extreme. + +"Harpers!" he repeated in a loud voice. "And you heard me before." + +Adam nodded. + +"What do you mean," demanded Kenny suspiciously, "that you did hear me +or you didn't?" + +"I did," said Adam suavely. "Both times. Go on with the story." + +Somewhat nettled, Kenny obeyed. Conscious, the minute he began, of a +muffled whistle, he glanced sharply at his host and found his glance +returned with a guileless air of inquiry. + +"Adam," he said, "are you whistling?" + +"My dear Kenny!" protested Adam. "It's the wind. I hear it myself." + +Somewhat suspicious, for he fancied now he read in the invalid's +alertness a feline readiness to pounce, Kenny returned to the tale of +the harper who proved the right of Ireland to lead the world. This +time the insolent whistle, louder and a shade defiant, convinced him +that his listener's mood had changed. Adam was resenting his guest's +insistence upon the merits of his race by whistling "Yankee Doodle." + +Kenny stopped and smiled, and the whistle rang out fiercely. + +"A good old Irish tune, that, Adam," he said languidly. "It's 'All the +way to Galway!' Funny how it came to be known as Yankee Doodle." + +In a fury of exasperation Adam propelled himself in his wheel-chair the +length of the room and back. + +"You damned bragging Irishman!" he hissed. "I think you lie. You're +Irish and you hate to be outdone. But I'll look it up." + +His spirit was unconquerable, his ingenuity persistent and amazing. +Often when the clash of wit was sharp he cackled in perverse delight. +But composure maddened him. Again and again, inwardly provoked to the +point of murder, Kenny threatened to break away from the goad of his +tongue. Always then Adam appealed to his habits of pity and +treacherously on the strength of it wheedled him into other tales of +folk lore merely to refute them. And always he blamed the brandy. +Kenny knew now that he lied. Drunk, the old man was stupid; sober, he +was satanic in his cunning. + +There was one tale of a fairy mill that, in startling circumstances, +Kenny told without interruption. Fairies, in Ireland, said Kenny, had +ground the corn of mortals without pay until someone stole a bag of +meal that belonged to a widow. Then the fairies, shocked at the ways +of men, abandoned the fairy mill forever. + +He braced himself for the usual shaft of insolence, in a mood for +battle. It did not come. Adam had fallen forward in his chair +unconscious. Kenny rang for Hughie and stared at the huddled figure in +the wheel-chair with eyes of new suspicion. Adam Craig, he remembered, +with a sharp unbridled instinct for adding two and two, was a miser and +he hated the children of his widowed sister. There could be a sinister +reason. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +A NOTEBOOK + +It seemed that Adam too could add his two and two. In his quieter +hours of pain, when every warmer instinct of his guest was uppermost, +he was as curious as a woman. His questions, put with the sad, +querulous courtesy of an invalid claiming privileges by reason of his +pain, were sometimes difficult to answer. + +"Paul Pry!" murmured Kenny to himself one night. + +Adam's sharp eyes snapped. + +"Paul Pry, eh?" he quivered. "You impudent devil!" + +"A minute ago," reminded Kenny coldly, "when I told you you were +drinking too much brandy, you said you were deaf to-night." + +"It's an intermittent affliction," purred Adam with a chuckle. "You +struck me in a minute of vacation." + +But the careless sobriquet of Kenny's rankled in the old man's mind and +bore a startling aftermath of fruit. + +Kenny was Irish and conversational. He had as usual talked too much, +unaware that Adam, with fiendish insight, was reading steadily between +the lines, ready to pounce. + +"Paul Pry!" repeated the old man at intervals. "Paul Pry! You are a +selfish, hair-brained Irishman," he blazed suddenly, leaning forward, +baleful and intense. "Some men feel and some men act. But you act +only when you have to. Life's a battle. Do you fight? No! You glide +along and watch the others. That's the way you've kept your youth. +You never linger on the things that prove unpleasant. You think life +an individual adventure to be lived the way you choose. It isn't. +It's a link in a chain that clanks. You can't escape. You won't +escape. You're a play-actor with a gift for staging yourself and +you're as hungry for the limelight as a circus girl in spangles. What +you need is the hurt of sacrifice. You need to suffer and forget +yourself. Damn you and your brogue and your folk lore. You're the +most amazing liar I've ever met." + +But Kenny heard no more. He stumbled out of the sitting room and +slammed the door. + +There was a lamp burning in his bedroom. Kenny walked the floor in +anger and humiliation, his fingers clenched as usual in his hair. Back +there in the studio with Whitaker's arraignment ringing in his ears, he +had been conscious of a terror he refused to face, a curious inner +crash of something vital to his peace of mind. And he had fought it +back for days, plunging into the relief of penance with a gasp of hot +content. + +Now Adam, sitting in separate judgment, had reached out into the void +and linked himself to Whitaker--to Brian, to Garry--and his barbs +stung. That terror of misgiving, lulled into quietude here in the +peace and charm of his life with Joan, stirred within him hydra-headed +and drove the color from his face. Then he blazed into rebellion. + +Failure! Vanity! Self! And Adam to-night had fused the verdict of +the other three. + +Whether or not these things were true was at first of little moment. +The sting lay in the fact that someone had troubled to think them. The +careless illusion, that what he thought of himself the world thought, +lay at his feet pricked into utter collapse. It seemed to him as he +walked the floor in a tumult of hurt pride, that the world must accept +the man he knew himself to be, the man whose light-hearted existence he +loved to dramatize, a brilliant painter with piquant imperfections, +intensely human and delightful. He passionately demanded that it +accept him so without question. Good God! No one had seemed to +question until Brian in a burst of temper had brought the world about +his ears. + +Well, let the world misjudge him if it chose. He was big enough, he +knew, to hold his head above it. + +In a mood of lively irony he whipped forth a notebook and wrote a +sarcastic summary of his shortcomings, his lips curled in hostile +interest. + +"Sunsets and vanity," he wrote with a flourish and lost his temper. +Well, that phase in Brian's life was closed forever, thanks to +Whitaker's meddling tongue. Never again would Kenny lay himself open +to misinterpretation by seeking commissions for his son. Brian could +write truth for Whitaker with a blue pencil and be damned! + +"Hairbrained, unquenchable youth," he wrote next and added airily after +this: "This is likely hair and teeth." + +"Irresponsible." + +"Failure as a parent." This he underlined. + +"Need to suffer and learn something of the psychology of sacrifice." + +"Romantic attitude toward the truth." + +"Improvidence. Need for plebeian regularity in money affairs and petty +debt." + +"Disorder--chairs to sit down on without looking first." + +"I borrow Brian's money and his clothes." + +"Pawned shotgun, tennis racket, some fishing tackle and golf clubs." + +"Note: Look over tickets." + +"A tendency to indolence." + +He had begun with an air of bored amusement; he finished grimly, read +and reread. In the light of the Craig-and-Whitaker analysis, which +dovetailed in the similarity of their venom, the details might, he +fancied with a lifting of his brows, be classified under three general +headings: youth, irresponsibility and a romantic attitude toward the +truth. + +The envious charge of youth he attributed instantly to the thinning of +John Whitaker's grayish hair, and felt better. In irresponsibility he +read, agreeably, needful temperament. And his romantic attitude toward +the truth was merely a brilliant overplus of imagination without which +life would be insufferably dull. + +He read the list again with colors flying and drum beating victory. +Though singly he could refute each item, an unguarded perusal when he +felt complacent, brought the hot blood back to his face in a rush of +mortification and dismay. + +With a curse he flung the book across the room. Then unreasonably he +went after it and wrote at the end: "Life is a battle. I do not fight. +And life is not an individual adventure." + +The final sentence startled him most of all. + +Again he read it all and the memory of Brian, white, aggressive, +desperately intent upon escape, came between him and his quest of +self-content. It always bothered him. It had driven him to hunt the +psaltery stick, repent his lie to Garry and water the fern. It had +driven him out upon the road. Mocking voices rose now from the depths. +Was it--could it all be true? The shock of the thought was cataclysmic +and he longed for the self-respect and confidence in which he had +basked that night in Hannah's kitchen. Must the world side with Brian? +He was sorry about the shotgun. He was sorry about the sunsets. By +the Blessed Bell of Clare, he was willing to be sorry about anything, +little as he felt himself to blame. Was he to blame? Had he not paid +for it all in his days of stormy penance? + +Out of his white-hot revolt clear vision came to him, as it sometimes +did, with incomprehensible, dart-like swiftness, and leveled him to the +dust. Some of it he would not face but he saw his days upon the road +with truth and shame. He had failed in his penance. Garry was right. +He did everything by fits and starts. And he could justify whatever +was most conducive to his comfort and his inclination. His pilgrimage +had been farcical. He had fled from discomfort, magnifying pettiness +into tragedy. And he had been disloyal to the son he loved. For there +under the willow when his startled eyes had found Joan, he had +passionately made up his mind to linger. Nay more, even then in the +dim recesses of his mind, he had hoped there would be no clue to send +him forth again in quest of Brian. And if there had been, Kenny faced +the fact that he would not have gone. . . . No, he would not have +gone. . . . And Adam Craig was a vulture preying upon the unrest in +his heart that he had hoped to stifle. + +He went downstairs with a shudder, craving stars and darkness, unbolted +the front door and went out upon the porch. + +The valley was black. Its lonely points of light vanished early. Up +here on the ridge there was wind and quiet. He peopled the gulf of +blackness ahead with things sinister and evil in spirit like Adam Craig +and turned his back upon it with a shiver. There would be peace in the +voice of the river. + +The starlight, dim and soft, had a sense of silver in its +indistinctness. To Kenny, walking through the orchard, ghosts of +blossoms blew fragrantly above his head. The blossoms were gone like +his peace of mind. He hungered for Joan. + +In the velvet dimness the wistaria vine beneath her window loomed forth +like a shower of shadow; a grotesque ladder of bloom warm to his mind +with invisible color and yet darker to his eye than the night with its +silver sheen of stars. + +A ladder? Kenny caught his breath and stood still, quite still. It +was a ladder. Some one was climbing down. Branch after branch the +climber touched with unerring instinct and ran off noiselessly through +the orchard to the south. + +Kenny's heart throbbed with a ghastly fear. + +It was Joan. + +He knew what lay to the south beyond the orchard: woodlands and +wildness, nothing else. The fields Hughie cultivated stretched to the +north from the kitchen windows. There in the forest to the south where +the river curved off at a tangent and flowed directly east, Brian had +had his camp. On farther Joan had never cared to go. Where did she go +now in the starlit darkness, climbing down the wistaria ladder with a +cloak around her shoulders? To what did she venture through the +solitude of whispering trees and the gloom of the pine forest? + +A lover's tryst? Kenny sickened and choked. He could not follow her. +He would not. + +He turned back instead and went to bed to lie wakeful until dawn with +something new and horrible gnawing at his heartstrings. Then he fell +asleep and dreamed of monsters. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE CABIN IN THE PINES + +He did not mean to go again. He did not mean to watch the wistaria +vine. He went, he told himself wildly, to evade the summons that was +sure to come from Adam Craig. But when the glimmer of wistaria swayed +beneath a footfall, madness came upon him and he went stealthily +through orchard and forest, stalking the flutter of a cloak. + +The river turned. Joan followed the bend for a little way and struck +off again into the thick of the forest through the cloistered gloom of +many pines. She came, after what seemed to Kenny a long, long time, to +a rude cabin made of logs. There was a light in the window. Joan +opened the door and disappeared. + +If he had known definitely what he thought, he told himself with an +Irish twist, the agony of his suspense would have been worse and less. +The sharp intensity of the pain in his heart terrified him. Whatever +lay in the cabin of logs was something apart from him. The night +noises of the forest blared strangely in his ears. He was conscious of +the odor of pines; conscious of a shower of pine-needles when he +brushed back against a tree. And there were cones beneath his feet. +But his madness would not bear him on to the cabin door. At intervals +with fire in his brain he knew he heard the voice of a man. + +In a vague eternity of minutes he waited until the door opened and +lamplight streamed brightly over the sill. A man stepped forth. +Something seemed to snap in Kenny's heart. Relief roared in his ears +and rushed unbidden to his lips. + +"Oh, my God!" he gasped. + +It was the gentle, white-haired minister with a book beneath his arm. + +Startled the old man drew back and peered uncertainly into the +darkness. Kenny approached. + +"I--I beg your pardon," he said, wiping his forehead. "I'm sorry." + +Joan came to the door and stared. + +"Kenny!" she exclaimed. And her voice had in it a note of distress. +She glanced at Mr. Abbott, who glanced in turn at Kenny with an air of +gentle inquiry. His confidence in Mr. O'Neill, never very robust, had +waned that day upon the river. It was weakening more and more. + +Tongue-tied and scarlet, Kenny stared into the cabin. Its single room +with its raftered walls, books and a lamp, an old-fashioned stove, a +work-basket, a faded rag-carpet and the trophies of childhood, boy and +girl, was snug and comfortable. + +"It's Donald's and mine," said Joan. "We've always studied here with +Mr. Abbott." + +"Mr. O'Neill," said the minister stiffly, "it--it has been a sort of +secret. Mr. Craig was strangely opposed to the tuition I offered years +ago. Joan settled the problem for herself." + +It was evident all of it had lain a little sorely on the old man's +conscience. It had been a singular problem, deception or the welfare +of the two children suffering at the hands of Adam Craig; and the need +of choice had driven him to prayer. + +Kenny, glad at last to find his tongue, warmly commended his decision. + +Joan blew out the light and locked the door. + +"How did you find the cabin, Kenny?" she asked wonderingly. "It's off +so in the wilder part of the forest. No one comes this way." + +Kenny told fluently of walking toward a star. + +It was like him. Joan smiled. + +But the faith in her eyes upset him. He wanted to be truthful. Ah! if +only Fate would let him! + +"And I startled you!" marveled Mr. Abbott. + +"Yes," said Kenny. + +He walked back through the silence of the pines with remorse in his +heart, paying little heed to Mr. Abbott's talk of vacation. The +wistaria ladder, the cloister of pines, the lonely cabin where Joan +spent truant hours of peace, were to him things of infinite pathos. +And like the day in the garret, yesterday seemed aeons back. He +wondered why, conscious of a subtle, unforgettable sense of change in +himself. Something mysteriously had altered. + +The memory of the pain and horror in his heart, he dismissed with a +frown. As Adam said, he never dwelt upon the things that failed to +please him. The pain was past. The peace of the present lay in his +heart. It had even crowded out the memory of Adam and the notebook. + +He was glad when Mr. Abbott said good night and took a footpath to the +west. Well, it had been a mystery this time that he hadn't wanted to +keep. But why, Oh, why, he wondered a little sadly, must all his +mysteries end in anticlimax? Absurd, the little man in his frock coat +trotting out of the cabin door! + +"Joan, Joan!" he pleaded. "Why didn't you tell me? Am I then not your +friend?" + +"I'm sorry, Kenny." She laid her hand wistfully upon his arm. "Mr. +Abbott asked me not to tell you." + +"Why?" + +"I don't know." + +"You go there often?" + +"Yes, at night. I sew there and read and study. To Donald and me it +was always a little like a home. I used to patch his clothes there. +He hated them so. You're not hurt?" + +"Not--now." + +"I'm glad." + +At the wistaria ladder Kenny sighed. + +"Must you?" he asked. "I mean, Joan, can't you steal in by the door?" + +"It's better not," said Joan, one hand already on the vine. "Hughie +would scold if he knew. For the wood is lonely. And he would talk so +much of rain and snow. Now I can come and go as I please." + +She caught her cloak up and fastened it to insure the freedom of both +her hands. + +"Good night, Kenny," she said shyly. "I hope you find your star." + +"I did," said Kenny. "'Twas hiding in a cabin. Good night, dear." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THRALDOM + +Hughie met him at the door. + +"He's been askin' for you, Mr. O'Neill," he said. "And he hasn't drank +a drop all evening." + +"I shan't go," said Kenny. "Depend upon it, Hughie, it's another +trick." + +"I don't know," said Hughie hopelessly. "It may be. It's not for me +to deny, with all you take from him." Hughie looked ashamed of +himself. "I--I'm sorry for him." + +Kenny groaned and set his teeth. + +"I think," said Hughie, "he wants to apologize. He wrote you a note +this morning and tore it up. And when I put his brandy bottle on his +chair to-night he flung it at my head." + +"I'll go this once," said Kenny. "But, so help me Heaven, I'll never +go again!" + +He went dully up the stair, cursing the blossom storm. Its monotonous +patter on the roof had inspired Adam Craig to his first plea of +loneliness; it had left Kenny himself with a haunting memory of drab +solitude, pain and melancholy that seeped with a dripping sound into +his very marrow; and it had begun for him the singular thraldom, +inspired by pity, that he could not bring himself to understand. + +Hughie had left the door of Adam's room ajar. The invalid sat by the +table in his wheelchair, a book upon his knees, likely one of the +pirate tales in which he reveled. His face was drawn and haggard, his +eyes closed. With the wine of his excitement gone, he seemed but a +huddled heap of skin and bone. A death's-head! Kenny shuddered. +Unspeakable pity made him kind. The old man yonder was off his guard; +he had pride and spirit that compelled respect. + +Kenny softly closed the door and rapped. + +"Come in!" said Adam Craig. Almost Kenny could see him chirking up +into insolence and the pertness of a bird. It was precisely as he had +expected. When the door swung back, Adam was erect in his wheel-chair, +electric with challenge. His eyes were once more bright and sharp. + +"Kenny," he demanded with asperity, "where have you been?" + +Kenny glanced at the faded books stacked upon the bookshelves; and with +the cabin uppermost in his mind he swung back dangerously to the +hostile mood of the night before. Adam Craig was a miser, cruel and +selfish. He had driven Joan and Donald to a refuge in the pines. + +"I said," repeated Adam in a louder voice, "where have you been?" + +"Picking wild flowers," said Kenny. + +"You lie!" said Adam. "It's your way of telling me to mind my own +business." + +Kenny did not trouble to deny it. + +"You've been sulking." + +"Very well, then," said Kenny evenly, making use of his one weapon of +composure, "let's concede that I've been sulking." + +He was sorry instantly. + +Infuriated, Adam brought his fist down upon the arm of his wheel-chair +and, coughing, propelled himself up and down the room. + +Kenny walked away to the window, sick with remorse. For the old man +had coughed himself into gasping quiet. What could he do? + +A wayward Irish tune, ludicrously fitting, danced into his head and +made him smile. + +"What shall I do with this silly old man?" whistled Kenny softly at the +window. + +"What's that?" demanded Adam suspiciously. + +The insolence in his voice struck fire again. Kenny remembered his +notebook and the hour of accounting. Never again would the forces Adam +had revived sink into the quietude of his first days here at the farm. + +"What's what?" he asked perversely. + +"That asinine tune you're whistling?" + +"It's a song," said Kenny innocently, "about a wild flower. And it was +very wild. It had thorns." + +"I think you lie," said Adam, glaring. "But as I have no womanish +repertoire of songs to prove it, you can whistle it all you want and be +damned to you." + +Kenny at the window availed himself of the privilege. + +"What's the name of it?" snapped Adam after a while, ruffled by his +guest's persistence. + +"'What shall I do with this silly old man?'" explained Kenny with a +grin. + +"You impudent liar!" cried the old man in a high, angry voice. "Do you +ever tell the truth?" + +"Almost never," said Kenny. "Do you?" And he went on with his +whistling. + +Adam ignored his impudence. + +"Well, then," he said, "it's time you began. You're young enough, God +knows. But it's not a youth of years. It's a superficial youth of +spirit. And you're old enough to tell the truth." + +"How shall I learn?" + +"Practice!" + +Kenny wheeled. Adam's careless dart had struck deep and sharp and it +rankled. + +"Very well, Adam," he said, "I'll practice on you." + +Truth! Truth! he reflected passionately at the window. Was the world +mad about it? And what was the matter with himself? Why did the +romantic freaks of his fancy always fill him now with vague worry? + +"What," gasped Adam, staring, "did you say?" + +"I said," flung out Kenny, "that I'd practice telling the truth and I'd +practice on you. And by Heaven I will!" + +He wiped his forehead with a shaky hand. The room was warm, the lamp +flickering hotly in the summer breeze. He thought of Joan and the +ferry. Did she scull the old, flat-bottomed punt back and forth, back +and forth, when the winter wind was howling up the river? What did she +wear when winter settled, sharp and bleak, upon the ridge? Kenny +shivered. He pictured her vividly in furs, warm and rosy, and hated +the lynx-like eyes of the miser in the wheel-chair who doled out +grudging pennies for nothing but his brandy. There was much that he +could say if he told the truth; much the old man must be told if later +Joan with her secret tears was to be saved the brunt of his hellish +torment. He would force Adam Craig to stop the ferry. He would force +him to buy furs. He would force him to endorse Mr. Abbott and his +kindness, force him to grant Joan her books and the right to study, if +she chose. Why in Heaven's name should she creep through rain and snow +and shadows to the refuge in the pines? + +He was dangerously excited with the fever of the old crusader in his +veins. And then he thought of the trust in Joan's eyes when his tongue +rambled, and went cold with shame. He must learn to tell the truth. +He would practice for his own sake--and for the sake of Joan. + +With a sense of shock he realized that he had been very far away. Adam +was choking and wheezing and gasping himself into weakness. + +"For God's sake," exclaimed Kenny with a feeling of guilt, "what's the +matter? Are you laughing or choking?" + +"I'm laughing," said Adam, shaking with mirth. "Kenny, I'm just +laughing." + +"Well," said Kenny huffily, "laugh your head off if you want to. I +mean what I say." + +The old man chuckled. + +"I'd be disappointed," he said, "if you didn't." + +Kenny stared at him in intense disgust. A perverse old lunatic! He +would like his new diversion less perhaps as time went on. + +"I want you to forget," Adam said abruptly, "about last night. I +was--jealous. I hate your health. I--hate your straight legs--Oh, My +God!" he whispered, shuddering, and closed his eyes. When he opened +them his smile was ghastly. + +"Kenny," he said with a pitiful air of bravado, "do you know a tune, an +Irish tune called 'Eileen Aroon'?" + +"Yes," said Kenny, clearing his throat. "Yes." + +"Whistle it." + +Kenny obeyed. His eyes were sympathetic, + +"Well," said Adam in muffled tones, "it isn't Irish. It's Robin Adair +and it came from Scotland." + +But his voice was tired. + +Kenny rummaged in the closet for his brandy. + +"There are times," said Adam queerly, "when you've an open-hearted, +understanding way about you. I believe you even know why I get drunk." + +"Yes," said Kenny, "I think I do." + +Adam dropped hack limply in his chair. + +"It's because," he whispered, "I've--got--to--sleep!" + +Startled at his manner, Kenny remembered the fairy mill and wondered. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +KENNY'S TRUTH CRUSADE + +Kenny began his truth crusade the next night. + +"Adam," he said, halting on the threshold of the old man's sitting room +with one hand carelessly behind him and his attitude expectant and +determined, "I've often wondered why every book in the farmhouse is up +here on your shelves." + +Adam cupped his ear with his hand. + +"Wh-a-a-a-t?" he asked blankly. + +Kenny brought the hand behind his back forward. It held a megaphone. + +"I said," he bellowed through it, "that I've often wondered why all the +books in the farmhouse are here upon your shelves." + +Adam sat up. + +"For God's sake, Kenny," he said. "Close the door. Where did you get +that thing?" he demanded with a scowl. + +"It's Hughie's and the very sight of it was an inspiration." + +"Give it to me!" + +"On the contrary I intend to cure your deafness." + +Adam stared. + +"I mean just this: You can hear as well as I can. You pretend to be +deaf when you don't want to hear." + +"What?" snapped the old man with a glance like lightning. + +"You told me to practice the truth," reminded Kenny, dropping into a +chair. "I'm merely beginning. I've a lot to say. And the health of +your hearing, Adam, is an indispensable adjunct to my practice hour and +my peace of mind. I'm merely insuring myself against your refusing +with a feint of deafness to hear what I have to say." + +"For once," said Adam insolently, "you've scored. But if ever I get my +hands on that damned megaphone, I'll burn it." + +"You won't get your hands on it," retorted Kenny. "And if you do I'll +buy a bigger one." + +It was hard to begin but Kenny with his mouth set thought of Joan. He +told Adam Craig he was a miser. + +In the dreadful silence the tick of the old clock on the mantel seemed +to Kenny's distracted ears a perpetuity of measured taps upon a +death-drum. He thought of Poe and the pit and the pendulum. He +thought of Joan and told himself fiercely that he did it all for her; +for her he was winding around himself a chain foredoomed to clank. And +he wondered why on earth the old man did not speak. + +The suspense became intolerable. Intensely excited, Kenny swung to his +feet. + +"Well?" he said. + +"Well!" said Adam and smiled a curious, inscrutable, twisted sort of +smile. He had never looked so evil-eyed and subtle. "One of your +greatest drawbacks, Kenny, is an Irish temper and a habit of +excitement." + +"A miser!" repeated Kenny with defiance. He must keep his feet upon +the path. It was the prelude to all that he must say for Joan's +emancipation. + +"A miser!" said Adam, nodding. "Well, what of it?" + +Kenny struck himself fiercely on the forehead, wondering if the word +had pleased and not provoked him. The possibility shocked him into +fresh courage. He said everything that was on his mind with deadly +quietness and an air of fixed purpose. Then he picked up his megaphone +and started for the door. + +"Adam," he said, "I've told you the truth, so help me God, in an hour +of practice. Now, you can practice facing facts." + +And he was gone. + +He was courageous and persistent, with the thought of Joan always +spurring him to further effort. Night after night he played his game +of truth and fought with desperation for the happiness of the girl +whose eyes had committed him irrevocably to a vow of honesty and fact. + +He could not see that he was making any headway. + +Adam listened with baffling intentness while his strange guest +practiced strangely the telling of truth. He refuted nothing. He +accepted everything that Kenny said with a corroborative, birdlike nod +of politeness. With the megaphone upon the floor by Kenny's chair, he +made no further pretense of deafness. He said nothing at all and Kenny +found his new inscrutable trick of silence unendurable. One singular +fact loomed out above all others. Adam shamelessly accepted the word +miser with a gloating chuckle. He seemed to like it. For Kenny, +generous to a fault and prodigal with money, the word embodied all +things hideous. + +There were times when Kenny abandoned the hopeless battle and came at +Adam's plea, reserved and sullen. Then with a solicitous air of virtue +the old man urged him to renew it. + +"Kenny," he demanded more than once, "have you got your practicing +done? You lack application. If you're ever to learn truth at your +stage of ignorance you'll have to have it." + +The goad went home. He did lack application. And Joan must not suffer +from that lack. + +But in the end the old man tired him out; and the practice of truth +became a boomerang. + +Adam Craig smoothly demanded reciprocal privileges. Once more he told +Kenny the truth about himself and drove the tormented Irishman again +and again to his notebook. It had for him a morbid fascination. No +matter how resolute the disdain with which he began to read it, he +finished with his color high and his eyes incredulous and indignant. +The barbs failed to lose their sting. They sank deeper and deeper. In +a terror of defense Kenny returned to the fray with added vim. But +Adam had a deftness with his barbs that his opponent lacked. +Compassion drove the younger man to restraint. And Adam did not +scruple to hide behind the bulwark of his own debility. + +Night after night, mutinous at the glaring fact that in this singular +battle of truth, Adam Craig was winning, Kenny rushed out into the +peace and darkness of the night to seek Joan. It was inevitable that +he should see in the wistaria ladder the means to starlit hours of +delight. It was inevitable that Joan, to whom the vine was no more +than an old, familiar stairway, would climb down to him with that shy +oblivion of convention that was as much a part of her as her +will-of-the-wisp charm. + +They roamed in the dark silver of the star-light to the cabin in the +pines and the hours that Joan had spent with Mr. Abbott or the books +she loved, fell tinkling now with new melody into the lap of time. In +the rude room, bright with lamplight and the trophies of childhood, the +girl listened tirelessly to a musical Irish voice that read to her with +brogue and tenderness enough to insure her interest in the reader no +less than in his task. Kenny blessed the village congregation that had +sent Mr. Abbott forth upon his needed month of recreation. + +When the nights were cool enough, they built a fire of pine cones in +the cabin stove and made tea and Kenny talked of Brian to ease his +troubled heart. Joan listened wide-eyed to tales of the son Kenny said +was all things in one. + +"And you quarreled!" said Joan. + +"Yes," said Kenny. + +"So did Donald and I. How queer that is! Was it your fault, Kenny? +Or was it Brian's?" + +"It was my fault," said Kenny and lost his color. "But I know now that +it wasn't the quarrel then that counted. It was the things that had +gone before." + +"How much you love him!" said Joan gently. + +"Yes," said Kenny. "In this world of hideous complexities and +uncertainty and--chains--of that at least I am sure." + +"That," said Joan, "I like." + +Mingled inextricably with this new fervor in his soul for truth, was +the memory of the inspirational stage mother. The idle claim bothered +him more and more. But there he was never brave enough to tell the +truth. + +Well, it was a queer world and he--Kennicott O'Neill--was thrall to a +pitiful old fiend with the soul of a Caliban. He was unspeakably +grateful for the relief of the hours when, with his conscience up in +arms, he could talk to Joan of Brian and ease his misdeeds of the past +by praise and appreciation. + +A jewel of a lad! Everybody loved his humor, his compassion and his +common sense. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +IN SOMEBODY'S BOAT + +The moon came silver in the valley and mingled with shadow among the +trees. Owl's-light was nowhere, Kenny said, and the pines stood like +shaggy druids in the silver dusk. The twilight of the moon he called +it. Restless and poetic he begged Joan to help him find the lake down +yonder in the valley. It was gleaming, to his fancy, with fairies' +fire. + +They found the lake and somebody's boat. Both were in a lonely glen. +Kenny unwillingly conceded the existence of somebody with a claim upon +the boat stronger than his own. + +"But," he went on with an air of inspiration, "somebody is in the world +or he wouldn't be somebody; and the world's my friend. Therefore by +moon-mad deduction somebody's my friend and I may take his boat." + +He released the painter, smiling up into Joan's face. + +"Beside," he added, "he's either a young dub who doesn't know the moon +is shining or an old cynic who doesn't care." + +"Kenny!" said Joan, somewhat shocked by his inconsequent habits of +acquirement. "I'm quite sure we shouldn't." + +"Everything in the world you want to do," reminded Kenny, "you +shouldn't. And everything in the world you shouldn't, you want to do!" + +He flung his cigarette at a frog. + +"The only thing to smoke on such a lake," he said, "is a fairy's pipe. +Come, jewel machree, happiness is the aim of life. And my happiness +for the moment, is to glide forth upon the bosom of that lake with you. +Look, you can even see the gleam of silver shoes where the fairies +dance upon the ripples." + +He was indeed moon-mad in mood and irresistible. Joan smiled +compassionately at the pleading of his eyes. + +"But, Kenny," she said, holding back, "the aim of life isn't just +happiness. That might be very dreadful. It's just happiness with the +least unhappiness to others." + +He stared at her a little startled. It was the sort of thing, he felt +rebelliously, that he should write down in his notebook. Well, it was +no night for notebooks. It was a night, a lake, a boat for lovers. + +"Even granting that, girleen," he said, "it's not going to make +somebody unhappy if we take his boat. For he won't know it. And +therefore it will make us happy with the least possible unhappiness to +anybody else. And, after all, it's more likely to be a fairy's boat, +for it's made of quicksilver. Come, mavourneen, come!" + +She climbed in unconvinced. + +"Lordy! Lordy!" breathed Kenny in delight. "The lake is thatched with +moonbeams!" And he thought of course of the legend of Killarney. +"'Twas a valley like this, Joan," he said, "all rich with fields and +pastures of green and there in the heart of it always was the fairy +fountain covered with a stone to keep the water from rushin' out. And +then came the knight." + +His eyes pleaded. He was staging his legend and begging her to act. + +"And then," said Joan smiling, "came the knight. I think his eyes were +Irish." + +"He saw a maid at the fountain," said Kenny, his eyes tender, "a maid +with a pitcher and her skin was cream and her cheeks were rose and +there were shadows of gold in her bronzy, nut-brown hair. I'm sure she +wore a quaint old gown of blue and silver." + +"Kenny!" + +"And he liked her," said Kenny stubbornly. "You can't deny him that." + +"No," said Joan gently. "And why should I deny it? For the blue and +silver maid liked the knight." + +Kenny's heart leaped to his eyes. + +"They wandered on the hills and they wandered in the valley. And then +the maid in blue and silver, who was all rose petals and sun shadows +and the glory of autumn, ran back to the fountain. She had forgotten +to cover it with the stone and the valley was flooded. There beautiful +and calm stretched the lake of Killarney and I hope it was moonlight." + +"And the knight and the maid?" Joan had forgotten their game of +pretense. She was eager for the end of the story. + +Kenny feathered his oars in silver spray and wondered impatiently why +all love stories ended in an anticlimax. He had finished the story +artistically and well. Luckily Joan had forgotten the stage and the +actors. + +"I suppose," he said gloomily, "that the knight married the maid and +took her to dwell in a castle she must have hated. And they lived +unhappily ever after." + +Joan laughed. She saw in his words merely a perverse dislike for +familiar endings and forgot it at once. The moonlit lake had aroused +in her a yearning tenderness for the brother off somewhere in what, +Kenny said, Brian called his Tavern of Stars. + +"Oh, Kenny," she sighed, "I wish Donald would write!" + +The wish jarred. Kenny frowned. How could he wish it too! And yet, +not wishing was disloyal, disloyal to Brian. Upset, he turned, hurt +and sulky. And presently as Joan, busy with thoughts of the truant +brother, continued unaware of the melancholy in his mood that never +failed to make its appeal to her tenderness, he began to hum. + +Joan looked up. + +"What a queer, wild tune!" she exclaimed. "What is it, Kenny? I've +never heard you sing it before." + +"I never felt the need," said Kenny. "It's called the 'Twisting of the +Rope.' Long, long ago, girleen, a harper's gallantry to a pretty maid +angered her mother and she asked him to help her twist a straw rope. +And he did. And twisting he had to back away and over the threshold +and the mother slammed the door in his face. Faith, 'twas all to get +rid of him!" + +It was impossible to miss the point. Joan's face went scarlet. + +"Oh, Kenny!" she said. "You knew--surely you knew I couldn't mean +that." + +It was a new delight to hear her say it. + +"When Donald writes," reminded Kenny, "then I must go." And watching +the girl's troubled face, he wondered with a thrill of triumph if at +last the madness of the summer was upon her. Well, thank Heaven, he +was honest and honorable. He would stay until the madness waned. +Always he was fated to climb down out of the clouds first. + +Ah! But what if Joan slipped back into sense and sanity first? The +possibility filled him with panic. What on earth would he do? + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +IN WHICH CALIBAN SCORES + +It was a prospect doomed to haunt him more and more as the summer which +had bade fail to be so full of peace, took on an indescribable +atmosphere of complication. Where could he go, he wondered +despairingly, that life would not instantly pour around him a +distracting whirlpool of commotion? Was he fated to rush through life +with his fingers clenched in his hair and his teeth set? Was he +doomed, as Garry had once said, to run forever in circles of excitement? + +Stumbling and tired, Kenny tried to keep his feet unswervingly in the +path of truth, colorless and uninviting as it seemed; but the strategy +of his practice hour in Adam's room he was forced to abandon, heartsick +for Joan and the future. His battle for her he knew had been in vain. +Useless further to bombard with truth that silent, inscrutable Caliban +upstairs, whose fiendish power to drive him to his notebook when he +chose in turn to tell the truth, seemed uncanny. And it was practice +enough to tell the truth to Joan! God grant, in all sincerity, that he +might come to justify the faith in the dear eyes of her. + +He made one last heroic effort to break his chain of thraldom. After +an interval of bitter insubordination which ended each night in +surrender, he set his teeth and vowed by every sacred thing he knew +that to-morrow night, summons or no summons, he would not go to the +sitting room of Adam Craig. He would secretly leave the farmhouse at +dusk with Joan and when Hughie knocked on his bedroom door, ready to +say that the old man was lonely and in pain, he would be safe and +serene in the cabin in the pines. Was it fated to be his refuge too? + +Torrential rain woke him in the morning. Kenny stared out at the wet +valley in tragic unbelief. It simply could not be; for he wanted a +dusk flecked with stars. But the rain gave no promise of abating and +late that afternoon he altered the detail of his rebellion. +Fortunately there were other ways. When the dusk closed in and the old +man watched the clock and waited, he would go boldly downstairs to the +old piano and register his rebellion in music that Adam Craig could +hear. He would spend his evening openly with Joan; he would go through +fire and water; he would ride the whirlwind and direct the storm but +what this time he would assure his emancipation. + +Instinct had warned him to abandon, in his hours with Adam Craig, +certain picturesque forms of attire in which he delighted. To-night, +whistling with a feeling of gayety and unrestraint, he rummaged his +trunks, selecting his clothing with fastidious attention to minor +detail and held the lamp high at the end to afford a better glimpse of +the handsome Irishman smiling back at him from the mirror in the +bureau. No doubt of it, give a fashionable tailor disposed to be +experimental, his head and enough money on account and he could create +a dash and piquancy worth while. Always remembering that such a +creative artisan was fortunate to find a suitable contrast of shoulder +and hip to wear his inspiration. + +Kenny in the best of spirits went downstairs. The lamp in the parlor +was already lighted; soft yellow shadows lay upon the faded walls; dust +and cobwebs had long ago surrendered to the siege of Hannah's broom. +Kenny drew the curtains to close out the splash of rain upon the window +panes and went to the piano. Even the noise of wind and rain left him +calm and cold and invincible. He played brilliantly snatches of +everything he knew. When Joan came and curled up in a chair beside him +with her chin upon her hand, he forgot Adam Craig entirely and went on +playing. Not the music of rebellion; it was more the music of dreams, +dusk-moths of melody that flitted through his memory, curiously +iridescent. + +He drifted dangerously after a while into the tenderness and passion of +the _Liebestraume_, the one thing perhaps that, loving, he knew to the +end; swept through the downward cadenza with exquisite accuracy and +feeling, and forgot the rest. With the girl's soft pensive eyes upon +him he could have forgotten anything; he even forgot that love is +transient. + +"Joan!" he gasped. + +A loud voice rasped through the silence. + +"Kenny!" + +Joan shivered. Kenny stared at her in terror. It was the voice of +Adam Craig. + +"Kenny!" The voice, sharp with indignation, brought them both to their +feet. + +"Yes?" stammered Kenny, his face scarlet. + +"Do you know _all_ of anything?" + +Lamp in hand Kenny went to the foot of the stairway. + +"Adam," he demanded, staring up aghast at the wheel-chair and the +wrinkled, saturnine face bending over the railing with a leer of +triumph, "how in God's name did you get there?" + +"Wheeled myself, you Irish fool!" snapped Adam. + +Kenny went wearily up the stairway and set the lamp in a corner of the +hallway. + +"Well," bristled the old man. "Why don't you say something? What are +you going to do about it?" + +"It's the kind of night," said Kenny, "that you always have a fire. +I'm going to wheel you back where it's safe and warm." + +Adam chuckled. + +"That's what I thought you'd do," he jeered. + +"And then?" + +"Then," thundered Kenny in a blaze of temper, "I'm going back!" + +As usual his show of temper filled the invalid with delight. + +"Humph!" said he. "So am I." + +Kenny stopped the chair with a jerk. + +"What do you mean by that?" he demanded. + +"I mean," said Adam Craig, "that I'll wheel my chair back where I can +listen to music instead of rain. And if you wheel me back I'll do it +again. The hallway's dark and it's full of turns but I'll manage +somehow, if I break my neck." + +There was danger at every turn. A cold sweat came out on Kenny's +forehead. + +"Adam," he said quietly, "how did you manage to get there in the first +place? How did you open the door of your room?" + +"Wheeled myself close to the knob and unlatched it--" + +"Yes?" + +"Then I wheeled myself out of the way and poked at the door with a +stick." + +"Stick! What stick?" + +"A stick out of a shade. Do you think I'm a fool?" + +Kenny groaned. + +"After that," purred the old man with a hint of pride, "until I got +into the dark hallway and began to bump, it was easy." + +The sitting room door was still open. Kenny wheeled his exasperating +old man of the sea over the sill in a terror of foreboding. + +Adam stared at him. + +"Where in the name of Heaven," he said, "did you get that rig? You +look like an actor." + +Kenny turned a dark red and ignored the question. + +"Don't like it!" jeered the old man. + +"There's a Shakespeare quotation," reminded Kenny dangerously, "that +begins--Hum! how does it begin? Yes. 'There was no thought of +pleasing you' and so on. That's it." + +"You impudent devil! Close the door." + +"I'll close it when I go out. And I'll lock it." + +They faced each other in a silence perilously akin to hate. + +"Are you a Christian?" hissed Adam Craig between his teeth. "Or are +you a heartless pagan?" + +"I'm a pagan," said Kenny. "Orthodoxy, Adam," he added bitterly with +thoughts of Joan, "I leave for such compassionate hearts as yours." + +"I don't want it!" said Adam instantly. "It's churchiology, not +Christianity. They are as different, thank God, as you and I." + +A gust of wind and rain tore at the windows. The old man fixed his +piercing eyes on Kenny's face. Kenny shuddered and looked away. + +"Hear the rain!" said Adam. + +"I hear it," said Kenny hopelessly. + +"And you'll lock me in!" + +"Yes!" + +"I'll ring for Hughie and tell him to batter the door down. I would +rather bump myself into eternity down that hallway," flung out Adam +Craig passionately, banging his fist upon the arm of the wheel-chair, +"than sit here, alone, to-night." + +With his hands clenched Kenny choked back his anger and faced his fate. +He could not lock the door. Either he must stay or go back with the +haunting conviction that this hungry-eyed old fiend who could strum +with diabolic skill upon the sensitive strings of his very soul, would +propel himself in his wheel-chair to the stairway, there to sit like a +ghoul at the top. Rain beat in Kenny's ears like a trumpet of doom. +He felt sick and dizzy. No! with the memory of that last wonderful +moment when the music had blended into the fire of his tenderness, he +could not go back. Invisible, Adam Craig would still be pervasive. He +would jar the idyl into a mockery, the indefinable malignity of him, +alert and silent up there at the head of the stairs, floating down like +an evil wind to mingle with the reminiscent sound of rain. + +"Well?" said the old man softly. + +"Oh, my God!" said Kenny, wiping his forehead. "I'll stay!" + +"Good!" said Adam, moistening his lips. "Good! You know, Kenny," he +whispered, shivering, "I--I hate the rain." + +"Yes," said Kenny wretchedly, "so do I." + +"Kenny," said the old man later when Kenny had carried the lamp back +and made sure that Joan had gone to her room, "don't sulk. You're old +enough to know better." + +"I'm not sulking." + +"You are." + +"Very well, then, I am." + +"You've had enough music for one night." + +Kenny did not trouble to reply. Whatever he said would be combated. + +"Music," insisted Adam, "makes you as noisy as a magpie. If you're not +whistling, you're singing some damned rake of an Irish song and if +you're not singing, you're at the piano battering out a scrap-heap of +tunes." + +"From the first day until the last when he goes to sleep with a daisy +quilt over him," said Kenny stiffly, "an Irishman lives his life to +music." + +"Humph!" said the old man, ready for battle, "the music of his own +voice, telling lies." + +Reckless, Kenny used his one weapon of composure. It made the old man +cough with fury and propel himself up and down the room in his +wheel-chair until, with a feeling of whirling fire in his brain, Kenny +wondered if a man could lose his sanity by watching an infuriated +lunatic in a wheel-chair narrowly miss everything in his way. + +But he made no further effort at rebellion. Instead he went each +night, invincible in his determination not to be outdone. When by +playing on his pity Adam trapped him he smiled and shrugged. When the +old man assailed him with shafts of truth, no matter what the aftermath +of communion with himself and his notebook, he accepted it with +composure and an air of interest. When in a fury, Adam reviled him for +his phlegm, he laughed and was cursed for his pains. + +"You told me, Adam," he said, "that my greatest drawback is a habit of +excitement and temper. Excitable I shall probably be all my life. +It's temperamental. But I'm learning to control my temper." + +In a week his coolness and composure were bearing horrible fruit. + +Exhausted by blind fits of rage, racking spells of coughing and more +brandy than usual, the invalid's weakness became pitifully apparent. +He seemed now but a shaking shadow, gray and gaunt. Even the doctor, +who accepted him with fatalistic calm, confessed alarm. And Kenny, +with his teeth set and his fingers clenched in his hair, faced another +problem. He was to blame and he alone! What in the literal name of +mercy was he to do? + +There was one alternative left and one only. Either he must meet the +old man's hunger for battle with a show of temper, the blacker the +better, or leave the farm for good. But even with his thraldom heavy +on his soul the prospect of leaving Joan filled him with pain and +panic. There remained then but the show of temper in which Adam would +be sure to thrive. + +So Kenny set himself to his freak of mercy. Thereafter, when the need +arose, he walked the floor under the piercing battery of Adam's eyes, +blazing forth a fury that, in the circumstances, with his sense of the +ridiculous upper-most, could not be real. He raved and swore when he +wanted to collapse in a chair and rock with nervous laughter. + +Keen, alert, intensely delighted, Adam began to thrive. Chuckling he +slipped back to his normal state of debility. Finding in the stress of +his victim's tempestuous surrender that he forgot the megaphone, he +perversely began again to have trouble with his ears. + +Kenny and his megaphone returned to the fray. + +Thus September came, warm and golden. Haze, soft and indistinct lay in +the valley and on the hills. Summer lingered in the garden but on the +ridge the nights were cool and in the swamplands, Hughie said, already +the maples were coloring with a hint of colder weather. Here and there +on birch and poplar fluttered a yellowing leaf. + +And Donald had not written. + +Kenny, as the days slipped by, faced a new and tragic problem. October +was at hand. Work beckoned with urgent hand. If he did not go soon +somebody would have to balance up his check book for him and tell him +how long he could live without working. Brian, dear lad, had been a +jewel at figures. + +But how _could_ he work with the thought of the winter wind and Joan +tormenting him? And the snow-bound cabin in the pines? And the ferry +and the ladder of icy vine? And Adam Craig? + +He could not, would not go! And where in the name of all lunatics was +Brian? Life in the studio without him would be impossible. What did +he intend to do? Could he, Kenny, settle down to work with the problem +of his penitential quest for his son still unsettled? + +And why in the name of the Sacred Question-mark, was his life a string +of questions! + +In the end he fled from Adam's tongue. So he told himself. In reality +panic plunged him into action. His summer was ending. His madness was +not. And for that alarming fact he blamed Brian. + +"I was worried," he remembered irritably, "and just in the mood to make +a colossal fool of myself. And I have!" + +Otherwise this seizure must have run its course by now. It bothered +him that he had pledged himself to linger at the farm until Joan was +quite herself. Surely the gods of love and honor would understand that +he had foreseen no such troublous dilemma as that which faced him now. +He must take himself in hand. He must find an undisturbing level of +common sense and keep his roving feet upon it. The need was drastic. + +"I'll be back in a month," he told Joan, his lips white with compassion +for himself and her, and stared moodily at the blaze of autumn on the +hills, knowing he would not return. "Often I've longed for a winter of +sketching in such a wild and lonely spot." + +"And then," said Joan, "when Donald writes you must be here." + +"I must be here," said Kenny. + +That he felt was the kindest way. Surely, surely it was the kindest. +It saved Joan the painful thought of permanent separation. In a month +without him she would soon forget. A month, he knew of old, worked +wonders. Absence, he had proved again and again, never made a heart +grow fonder. Propinquity was at once a danger and a cure. + +Joan waved him down the farm lane, her soft eyes wistful. An adorable +will-of-the-wisp! Almost he could not bring himself to leave her. But +for Hughie's eyes, he would have vaulted from the farm buggy, crying +her name. + +"The farm," she had said with frank tears in her eyes, "will be just +like a grave without you." + +Kenny knew it would. + +The studio he found could match it. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +TANTRUMS + +Things went badly from the start. Whitaker for one thing claimed to +have lost track of Brian and Kenny thought he lied. For another, he +could not bring himself to work. A sense in the studio of a presence +gone, he told Garry, haunted him, Brian's lazy authoritative +guardianship and the comparative order to which he could reduce +existence when he chose were indispensable to his daily comfort. + +Ah! unbelievably care-free--those old devil-may-care days when Brian +had been content to work and laugh and quarrel! Kenny, looking back +with longing, likened his plight to that of Ossian returning after +three hundred years of fairy bliss from the fabled delights of +Tirnanoge. Touched earth he had, in spite of warning, and become on +the minute a wrinkled, old, old man. So with Kenny. He had touched +earth, he reflected tragically. Never again would his fairyland be +quite the same. Man talked of his flaws. His fallibility they said +was monumental. There was Adam who had morbidly incited him to a +notebook, a damnable, pervasive notebook which he tried in vain to +ignore. There was Whitaker, to whom, at a loose end, he wrote a great +many letters of rebuke, some stately, some less so. There was Brian, +whose absence had revolutionized his pleasant way of life; and Garry +and Jan and Sid, who at any cost merely wanted him to work. Grievance +enough for any man who resented the disturbance of unneeded change. + +The truth of it was, he owned at times, he was homesick for Joan and +fed his loneliness with letters he felt himself obliged to write. That +was inevitable, for he had fled from an idyl and the memory of its +charm must lessen slowly. Often with an eye upon the clock he found +himself picturing the routine of the farm and longing for its freedom +from the petty need of work. + +He blew the horn beneath the willow and watched Joan cross the river in +the punt. He climbed the garret stairway and helped her pick a gown. +He watched the Gray Man steal along the ridge, lingering in boxwood +paths and in the orchard. And then with night among the pines and the +plaintive voice of autumn wind, Joan was climbing down the vine and +hurrying through the wood to the cabin, and Adam with his eye upon the +brandy was counting wearily when the clock struck. How the wind would +rattle at his windows! How the log would flare! How Adam must be +longing for excitement! And how glad he was that he himself had found +a safe hiding place in a lonely tree-stump for the lantern Joan had +reluctantly agreed to carry since the fall closed in. + +Um . . . Joan would be building a fire in the cabin now and drawing +the shades and Mr. Abbott would be picking his way through the pines +with a book beneath his arm. Kenny glowered some at Mr. Abbott. An +eye for nothing there but duty and even that he saw in a stark and +unromantic way. And he lacked a sense of humor. He'd proved it in the +river. Joan answered his letters with an adorable primness that filled +him with delight. It reflected Mr. Abbott. But her letters ended +always with the naivete of a child. They all missed him. + +It was pleasant to be missed. + +The pleasure was curiously reactive. Kenny's irritability grew too +marked to be ignored. Jan and Sid and Garry met and talked him over. + +"What's wrong with him?" demanded Sid, amazed. "Garry, what is it? +He's as quarrelsome as a magpie and nothing suits him. He barks at the +club-boys and if you drift into the studio you're about as welcome as +the measles." + +"It's not because he's busy," said Garry grimly. "Nothing I've found +is further from his mind than the thought of work." + +"And it's plain Brian isn't coming back," put in Jan. "He might as +well face that fact and have done with it. Personally I've lost +patience with him. He acts like a sulky kid." + +Later Jan improvised a "scarlet fever" placard which Kenny in the +course of time found nailed upon his door. He read with amazed and +offended eyes that he was temporarily in temper quarantine. + +It soon became apparent that life without Brian was maintaining even +more than its usual average of petty complication. The problem of +small change Kenny found a torment. There Brian had been a jewel. It +simply narrowed down to this, he told Garry: No matter how he started, +he never had any. Even a bag of change he had procured from the bank +in a moment of desperation was never to be found. It got under things. +His eventual solution of the difficulty plunged the club into scandal +and uproar. He found the bag of change and sprinkled coins into +everything in the studio that would hold them. + +"Now," he informed Garry with moody satisfaction, "I'll always be able +to put my hand on some when I want it. I wonder I didn't think of it +before. I'm better with big sums. Dimes and nickels and even quarters +make me nervous. You know how it is, Garry. I always have to come in +to you or do one of a number of desperate things. And then if I can't +find a small coin and tip with a big one, Jan gets wind of it somehow +and talks by the hour about demoralizing the club-boys. He's a pest." + +The device at first bade fair to be successful. Later there was +frenzied recourse to Garry to help him remember where on earth the +dimes were likely to be. Later still the pages helped. The sequel +came quickly. The studio attained suspicious popularity with one or +two new untried boys who mined the studio in Kenny's absence and tipped +themselves. Kenny, as scandalized as only Kenny could be, turned +sleuth and reported the thing in wrath. Everybody missed something and +the club buzzed with scandal until the boys departed, likely, Kenny +thought bitterly, to retire for life on the dimes and nickels they had +dug out of his studio. + +Why must he always be the central pivot of a whirlpool of excitement? +God knows he loved peace even if Fate never permitted him to sample it. +He laid the whole thing unconditionally at Brian's door. Let Brian, +instead of shirking his usual numismatic responsibilities in some +indefinite green world of peace and calm, come home as he should. + +As for work, Kenny loved work, Brian and Garry to the contrary. If in +Brian's absence everything conspired against his passionate love of +industry, it was no fault of his. Along with the torment of doubts +that assailed him, thanks to that infernal notebook, the studio kept +catapulting itself into a jungle of nerve-racking disorder in which it +was impossible to work. And when Mrs. Haggerty fell upon it with the +horrible energy of the Philistine and found places for everything, the +studio became a place in which no self-respecting painter could be +expected to keep his inspiration or his temper. Here again, Kenny felt +aggrievedly, was a condition which Brian's presence could have altered. +The lad had a way of mitigating order and disorder with a curious +result of comfort. + +Garry lost his patience. + +"You remind me," he said, "of the English squire who only drank ale on +two occasions; when he had goose for dinner and when he didn't." + +Kenny remarked that the squire by reason of his nativity was a fool. +And the thing couldn't be helped. The studio in order was impossible. +He added with an air of inspiration that it made him think of +mathematics. Mathematics he considered a final argument against +anything. Besides, he was unusually fallible. Garry must always keep +that in mind. Let the infallibles work. If there was only something +he liked well enough, he'd drink himself to death. + +"I suppose you are aware," thundered Garry, thoroughly exasperated, +"that even a painter must work to live? The whole club's buzzing over +your tantrums. There's been some talk of chaining you to an easel with +a brush in your hand for your own good." + +Kenny as usual consigned the club to Gehenna. Nevertheless, as Garry +saw, he winced. Very well, he would work, furiously, as only he knew +how to work and when he had scored another brilliant success-- + +Fate intervened. To his intense excitement Kenny was summoned for jury +duty. He managed after much difficulty to place the blame of this too +at Brian's door. Brian, he remembered, had flirted with the daughter +of an uptown judge. Likely he had boasted about his father's +versatility. + +Inevitably on the morning there was civic need of him at court, Kenny +awoke with a fever for work, shocked at his record of indolence. Garry +found him in a painter's smock, conspicuously busy with a yard-stick +and crayon. Everything in the studio on rollers had been rearranged. +A chafing dish of coffee, sufficient to stimulate him through a day of +fearful labor, stood upon a table beside a supply of cigarettes. + +"Now, Kenny," said Garry, who was finding his responsibilities in +Brian's absence more or less complex, "you know hanged well you have +that jury thing on this morning. I'm going with you." + +Kenny filled a battered tin-cup with something he had to sniff for +purposes of identity, unearthed a number of brushes and defiantly +polished a palette with a wad of cheesecloth. + +"I'll be damned if I go!" he bristled. "I'm too busy." + +Garry looked directly at him and compelled a slight faltering of his +gaze. + +"It's the one day I've felt like work," blustered Kenny, squaring off +his canvas. "You spoke of work, didn't you? And a fool of an English +squire who ate goose? Let the idle rich sit around in squads and swear +they don't read the newspapers. I do. Me on a jury! My dear Garry! +I can't even sit still in my own studio. You know that yourself." + +Nevertheless after a heated argument he went wearily with Garry in a +taxi, particularly individualistic in his attire. And he told the +judge in a richer brogue than usual that he was a painter subject to +irresistible fits of dreaminess and must be excused. Garry, aghast, +stared at the judge and the judge, with peculiar interest stared at the +delinquent and excused him. + +"Fortunately," Garry told him later, "your civic duties haven't spoiled +your day." + +Kenny merely glanced at him with a gentle air of patience. He would +like to remind Garry that he had wanted to work and, thanks to Brian, +the law had intervened. Now the coffee would be cold and he hated the +sight of cold coffee. It depressed him. + +Things thickened alarmingly. At three that afternoon, when he answered +a violent thump upon the wall, Garry found the Louis XV table in a +cloud of smoke; it was littered with vouchers and check books. Kenny, +with his teeth set and one hand clenched in his hair, was figuring with +the speed of an expert without, Garry felt sure, an expert's results. +Brian, Kenny said aggrievedly, had always kept his check book straight. + +"Look!" he flung out, indicating a problematical balance. "Look at +that! And the fool says I'm overdrawn." + +"What particular fool?" + +"Some clod of a mathematician," explained Kenny with contempt, "whom +the bank employs to insult its patrons. Look here, Garry! Look at +that balance. Over a thousand dollars. Do you wonder I told him he +had a sense of humor when he said I was overdrawn? The young popinjay! +Arguing with me about my own balance!" + +"How did it end?" + +"I told him," said Kenny formally, "that the bank would most likely +demand his resignation in a few days. And when he began to grow +mathematical and persistent, I hung up." + +Garry patiently sorted the vouchers and balanced the check book while +Kenny in frenzied consideration of a new complication roved around the +studio and smoked. He was a God-fearing Irishman. He wanted peace. +But if ever a man's destiny knew unheard-of complication! Well, all of +it could be traced to Brian's unscrupulous flight. He must come back. +Kenny felt that his career was menaced. Life in the studio had become +intolerable. He had been embroiled in two scandals, thanks to Brian's +bouillon cups and Brian's unscrupulous shirking of numismatic +responsibility. Everybody was talking about him; he had Garry's word +for it. He couldn't work. When he could he was summoned for jury +duty. His accounts, like the studio, were in a mess and he'd +overdrawn. If something didn't happen soon-- + +"Shut up!" said Garry. "How on earth do you suppose that I can work +with you talking all over the studio? Here are three pages of checks +when you were evidently hitting the high spots, that you've failed to +subtract. Three on a page. That makes your balance overdrawn." + +Kenny struck an attitude of acute despair. "God of my fathers!" he +groaned, changing color. "It can't be. Garry, it simply can not be!" + +"It can and is," said Garry pushing away the book. + +"Adams still owes me five thousand dollars for his wife's portrait," +sputtered Kenny. + +"And now he's out of town." + +"What on earth did you do with Reynolds' last check? You had enough +there to live a year." + +Kenny looked dazed. + +"I recognized the danger with Brian's commercial instinct gone," he +stammered, "and--and conserved my funds." + +"You must have. You bought a lot of clothes," reminded Garry. "And +paid some bills." + +"Some," admitted Kenny. + +"Enough," commented Garry, "to establish, I suppose, one of your +startling flurries of credit." + +Kenny had meant to pay more. But the bank had put an end to that +to-day by intruding into his private affairs. He'd even meant to +redeem Brian's shotgun and anything else he'd pawned. + +"Lucky for Brian," put in Garry, "that you've mesmerized Simon into +holding things indefinitely even when you don't pay the interest. And +of course you blew in a good part of the check on something foolish." + +Kenny said with dignity that he'd bought a rug, nothing foolish. It +hung over there. An exquisite thing, sensuous and soft! Color and +form enough to drive a man mad with delight. He'd dreamt of the thing +for days before he bought it. Indeed he'd meant not to buy it but +something had snapped in his brain when he looked at it. Look at the +design. Never once did it tire the eye, free-flowing and sure. Its +intricate simplicity was amazing. + +"And you paid a small fortune for it," said Garry. "Don't sputter. +The voucher's here." + +Kenny sulked. Finding that Garry still had a tendency to finger +disconcerting checks and jot figures on a pad, he reached for his hat +and went out. + +"I'm going to do some illustrating for Graham," he telephoned a little +later, "if I do it quick. I'm with him now. I presume it's etiquette +to do something financial when you're overdrawn. Brian always watched +the bank to see that they put nothing over on me." + +He disappeared from human ken for several days. Garry, sniffing the +odor of coffee and cigarettes in the corridor outside his door, +pictured his horrible concentration. + +"It's that hazy autumn sort of weather that gets me," he telephoned +nervously one morning. "I don't want to work and I've got to finish +this stuff for Graham to-day. He'll pay at once if I do. Garry, I'm +going to lock the studio door and throw the key over the transom to +you. Don't let me out, no matter what I say." + +Obediently Garry at four ignored a violent thump upon the wall. Then +the telephone rang and Kenny said with some annoyance that the work was +done. + +When on the following day he found that Mr. Adams had returned and +wanted, purposefully perhaps, to come to tea, he lost his temper and +began at once to hunt cups, demanding of Garry why on earth Fate hadn't +smiled upon him before he wasted his vigor and inspiration in endless +hours of torture, doing pot-boilers. + +"If he's coming to tea with a red-blooded check like that," said Garry, +"I'll lend you some decent cups. Those bouillon cups are the limit." + +"Oh, hell!" said Kenny moodily. "I've talked with him. I've even +answered his questions with politeness. A man who wants to know if you +must have a north light to paint by will think it a rule of the guild +to double-handle teacups." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +KENNY DISAPPEARS + +That night Whitaker brought him news of Brian. He was healthy and +happy and wrote no word of coming in. There, Whitaker felt himself, +Brian was over-reticent. + +"And the postmark?" Kenny staring in disgust at a hole in his sock +transferred his glance to Whitaker. + +"That," said Whitaker, "I'm not at liberty to give. I've told you so +before." + +Kenny drew himself up to his full height. + +"John--" he thundered. + +The door opened and Mac Brett, the young sculptor on the floor above +who harbored H. B., came in, somewhat mystified at the warmth of +Whitaker's greeting. + +"Come on down to the grill to dinner," he suggested. "Garry's down +there and Jan. It's drizzling and a lot of men are staying in." + +Kenny, moodily painting the skin beneath the hole in his sock black, +flung down the brush and found his coat. + +"Once," said Mac in a panic of laughter, "he painted hairs on the bald +parts of Frieda Fuller's pony-skin coat. Thick, plutocraticky sort of +hairs. I shan't forget 'em. And they melted and smudged her neck. +Remember, Kenny? You ridged 'em beautifully--" + +Kenny did not answer. He strode toward the door. Mac and Whitaker +exchanged comprehending glances of dismay and followed him down to the +grill. + +It was a pleasant refuge from the autumn storm--that grill. The dark +old wood framed light and color, sketches and a line of paintings. +Mac's sculptured ragamuffin looked wistfully down from his niche near +the open rafters upon a Round Table institutionally fraternal. He +seemed always seeking warmth and food. Kenny's old peasant in wrinkled +apple-faced cheer smiled broadly from the wall, listening to the click +of billiard balls with his painted eyes upon the doorway. + +The hum and clatter at the Round Table stopped as Kenny entered. It +was followed by an immediate scraping of chairs, pushed back, and a +hearty chorus of greeting but Kenny knew, intuitively, that the talk +had been of him. + +He ate but little and went back to the studio to play dummy bridge with +Mac and Whitaker. A loud thump on the studio door and a Morse dot and +dash announcement of identity on the bell just as he had pieced a pack +of cards together, filled him with intense resentment. + +"Max Kreiling!" he said with a sniff. And a little later: "Caesare!" +He thought perhaps, feeling as he did in a mood for murder, he wouldn't +let them in, abuse the door panel and the bell as they would. Whitaker +did it for him. + +"They'll come in and play music on my piano," he insisted sulkily, "and +sing notes into my air and I repeat I'm in no mood for music." + +But Kreiling, big, blond and Teutonic, was already striding in with +Caesare at his heels. They filled the air with joyous greetings, +thumped upon the intervening wall for Garry and unloaded their pockets +and an institutional leather bag. + +"Cheese," rumbled Kreiling, "jam, coffee and mince pies." + +Caesare unsheathed his fiddle and played a preposterous rag-time +interpretation of the Valkyrie's battle-cry. It evoked an instant +response from the telephone. + +"It's Mac," said Whitaker. "He says he'll be down in a jiffy and bring +Jan with him." + +"Tell him," grumbled Kenny, "to bring beer instead. No fault of mine, +Max," he added, "if Jan comes down here and eats your cheese. He's a +cheese lunatic. Blame Tony. He comes into my studio, does a Pied +Piper stunt on his fiddle and the whole building appears." + +To Whitaker's amusement nobody heeded Kenny's petulance. Caesare was +already building a wood-fire in the fireplace, complaining of the +chill. Max Kreiling was furiously hunting missing sheets from a ragged +stack of music on the piano and grumbling in German about his host's +habits. The fire flared. Caesare's dark face, always tense, relaxed +into smiles. When Garry appeared the wood-fire was blazing and Caesare +was plucking in nervous pizzicato at the strings of his fiddle. Later +Mac arrived with beer, a loaf of rye bread and Jan, who gravitated at +once by permanent instinct to the cheese. + +Kenny morosely hunted cigarettes and reflected with raised eyebrows +that the studio was never entirely his, not even when he wanted +vehemently to quarrel with Whitaker. And last came Sidney Fahr, round +and merry, who looked casually in, nibbled at a gumdrop and professed +amazement to find so many there. Kenny unreasonably chose to take +affront at his chronic amazement and withdrew to a corner in a state of +gloom and disgust, whence Kreiling, sensitively alive to atmospheric +dissonances, routed him forth with the heated accusation that he was +not _gemuetlich_. + +Whitaker looked on through a film of smoke. Ordinarily he knew it was +the sort of evening that fired Kenny to his maddest mood of fun and +sparkle. It was the romance of his Bohemia, the thing upon which he +fed his sense of the picturesque, ignoring the lesser things that +bothered Brian. Men loved him. In the glow of their camaraderie he +was always at his best, excited, joyous, irresponsibly gay and hearty. +But to-night the fun and sparkle passed him by. Garry was right. He +was surely not himself. Could it be--just Brian? + +"'Pagliacci!'" demanded someone. + +Kreiling laughed indulgently and beckoned Jan to the piano. His big +voice, powerful and tender, swept into the hush like a splendid bird. + +Kenny snapped off the lights, plunged into tragic sadness by the +passion of his voice. Somehow its poignant sweetness hurt. The +droplight over the music and the flare of the fire leaped out of the +darkness like medallions. Faintly from a corner came the whisper of +Caesare's violin, offering obligato. + +Then he closed his eyes to block but the sight of rain splashing on the +window. Enchanted rain surely! For it transformed the single pane +into many, like a checkerboard of glass, and through it he was staring +queerly into the farm. + +Kreiling mopped his forehead at the end and switched on the lights. +The silence he understood and liked but his keen eyes lingered in +surprise on Kenny's face. His color was gone, his eyes curiously tired +and wistful. + +"So!" said Kreiling gently and passed on to the cheese with deliberate +tact, pushing Jan away. A minute later his hand came down with +heartiness on Kenny's shoulder. + +"Spitzbube!" he rumbled affectionately. + +Kenny laughed but Whitaker saw that his cigarette was shaking. + +"Music," he reflected, feeling sympathetic, "always makes him wild and +sentimental. And Max sang like an archangel." + +"Now, Kenny," commanded Kreiling, nibbling cheese and rye bread, "play." + +Kenny sullenly obeyed. After the first effort, something rebellious +touched his sullen mood to fire and he played fragments of the Second +Rhapsodic with madness in his touch. + +Sid, aware of it, stared in round-eyed apprehension at his back. + +"He's just in the mood again for rocketing," he decided. + +From then on Kenny's reckless gayety kept them in an uproar. + +When someone clamored for a wood-fire tale he told them of Finn's love +for Deirdre. But the discussion it provoked bored him and he dropped +back, smoking, in his chair, + +"There is love and love," said Max Kreiling, "and to be in love is +torture and a thing of self, but when the big splendid tenderness comes +after the storm of self and craving, the tenderness that knows more of +giving than of demanding, it comes to stay. But it's not the love of +barbarity like Finn's. It's an evolution." + +"Ask Kenny," said Mac mischievously. "He's an expert." + +"Love, my son," said Kenny wearily, "is poetic like summer lightning. +It flashes, blinds in a glory of light--and then disappears--in time." + +He tired early and sent them home. Whitaker longed to linger but the +moody cordiality of Kenny's good night was only too significant. He +departed with regret. + +"Garry!" called Kenny at the door. + +Garry turned back. + +"I meant you to wait," said Kenny irritably, "but you got out before I +could tell you." He closed the door. "Garry, what were the men in the +grill saying to-night when I came in?" + +Caught unawares Garry flushed and stammered. + +"Why," he evaded uncomfortably, "it began about the peasant picture in +the grillroom. Everybody likes it." + +"And then?" + +"We talked some of the last thing you did--the winter landscape of snow +and pines." + +Garry looked away. + +"Out with it!" said Kenny suspiciously. "For God's sake grant me the +privilege at least of lumping it all in one supreme period of upheaval. +They didn't like the pine picture?" + +"On the contrary," Garry hastened to assure him, "Hazleton said you are +brilliantly skillful." + +"Brilliantly skillful! But?" prompted Kenny and looked a question. +"Brilliant skill," he added moodily, "doesn't always make a big +painter." + +"Hazleton said as much," admitted Garry. + +"I suppose it's best to tell you, Kenny," he added honestly, hoping to +spur the culprit on to more and better work. "It may help. They said +downstairs that you interpret everything, even trees and snow, in terms +of unreality. You over-idealize. I suppose it's your eternal need of +illusion. We've spoken of that before." + +"I'm not a photographer!" blazed Kenny. "Any camera will give you +realistic detail. Artistic too. What else? Go on, Garry. I'm +calloused to the hearing of anything. I merely thank God you've had no +newspaper training." + +"Most of the older painters," Garry said with reluctance, "seem to feel +that--well, there's too colorful a dominance of self in your work. +Your personality always overshadows. You've an extraordinary fluency +with color, a deft assurance, a brilliancy that leaves one rather +breathless and incredulous, but what you do is autocratically, +unforgettably--almost unforgivably--you!" + +"Art," explained Kenny loftily, "is reality plus personality. And +personalities are variously vivid and anaemic. Unreal, over-idealized, +too colorful a dominance of self and personality overshadows," he +summarized after an interval of silence. "And in the face of +that--success. I am successful?" + +"Undeniably." + +"Even Hazleton, with his sordid gangs of Eastsiders nudging each other +on a dirty bench, can't deny it," bristled Kenny. + +He had divided the honors of more than one exhibition with Hazleton and +admired and resented him impartially. + +"It has been said," said Garry, ruffled by his air of triumph, "that +you paint down subtly to the popular fancy where you might paint up to +your own ideals." + +The barb went home. Kenny flushed. + +"Your work," added Garry, "lacks the force and depth of sincerity. +Even in Brian's dreadful East River sunset over there, there's a +quality you lack, an eagerness for reality and truth and life as it is. +Brian has painted poorly what he saw but he painted boats for ragged +sailors. Real boats. You've painted brilliantly, in the pine picture +for instance, what you wanted to see, a dark forest for mystic folk to +dance in when the moonlight lies upon the snow." + +"And what," inquired Kenny with a shade of sarcasm, "was the final +verdict of the grill jury when all the evidence was in?" + +"Remember old Dirk, Kenny? He said that the fullness of life came +through--sacrifice. That all things, good and permanent and true, come +only out of suffering; that men pay for their dreams with pain." He +let the full import of that drive home. "The verdict was, that if +you'd forget your public and look for truth, paint with restraint and +less brilliant illusory abandon, you'd be a big painter." + +"And that," said Kenny with icy politeness, "unalterably defines my +status as a painter. In this club at least." + +"You asked me--" + +Kenny looked tired but he held out his hand. "Dear lad," he said, +"'twas fine brave friendship to tell me--when I asked you." + +Failure! He, Kennicott O'Neill who had been decorated by the French +government! The men in the grill then talked openly of his flaws and +the verdict, officious or otherwise, was failure. Flaws! He was not a +big painter. He was merely a self-centered, impecunious, improvident +Irishman, indifferently skillful, whose vanity and self-indulgence had +driven his son off into a vague green world, God alone knew where. He +_was_ a big painter! Posterity would fling that back in the teeth of +men! + +"Kenny!" + +It was Garry's voice. + +"I'm going." + +"Oh," said Kenny vaguely. "Yes, of course." + +He was grateful when the door closed, though he stood for full a minute +afterward tapping on the table with his fingers. Then indignantly he +looked up the word failure in Brian's dictionary and underscored it +heavily. + +Ah! this world of his was amazingly awry and he himself was hurt and +unhappy. After all, was there any romance, any camaraderie in the +Bohemia he once had loved. By Heaven, no! One had but to stare at the +studio with Brian's vision to see the thing aright. Disorder and +carping tongues and loneliness! God help him, how he longed to escape +somewhere, anywhere where there was peace--and faith and friendliness +in human eyes. + +Afterward, a painter on the floor below, swore that Kenny had tramped +the floor all night and there had been occasional thuds. At daylight +he had gone out hurriedly and banged the door. + +Sid, entering the studio by the door Kenny had forgotten to lock, found +abundant evidence of frenzied packing and carried the news to the grill. + +"I knew it," he said. "I knew it last night. By the Lord Harry, it +was in his eye. Where on earth d'you suppose he's gone?" + +"God knows," said Garry and heartily wished he'd kept the grillroom +verdict to himself. + +At sunset Kenny blew the horn beneath the willow. + +Twilight here among the vivid leaves was softly orange. Where was the +invisible lamp, Kenny wondered with his blood singing, that filled the +world with golden dusk? It lay reflected in the water and in the dim +and yellowed forest paths behind him. And there behind the gables of +the farm, an autumn sunset focussed its softness into a brilliant blaze +of color. + +Later when life was kind and peace was in his heart, Kenny was to paint +that picture with exquisite truth and restraint and call it "Afterglow." + +At the flutter of a cloak on the cliff-path he slipped behind the +willow. + +For an eternity it seemed he traced the forward sweep of the punt until +it grated on the shore. And the surprise perversely came to him. + +"Kenny!" called Joan. + +There was mischief and laughter in her voice--and welcome. And Kenny, +oblivious of the detail of his going, knew only that he stood beside +her in the golden dusk and that her eyes were curiously like shining, +leaf-brown stars. + +"Ah!" he reproached, catching both her hands. "You are a witch. +You're burning an invisible lamp of incense off somewhere in that +yellow wood and out of it comes the twilight and the secrets of the +world. How did you know?" + +"The horn was so excited!" + +"The horn!" + +Joan nodded. + +"I know them all," she said. "Mr. Abbott blows an apology for +disturbing me. Mrs. Lawler is stout and when she's delivering butter +and eggs, her wind doesn't last and she gets no further than a toot, +and the blacksmith's wind is amazing--" + +"Enough!" said Kenny sternly. "You've too much wisdom. But--" + +"Of course," said Joan, "I didn't know you would ride to the village +yonder but I thought you might. Uncle said you wouldn't come." + +Kenny laughed. Joan never knew that he had not meant to come again. + +He found home in the farm kitchen and joyously pumping homely hands, +stepped at once on the tail of Hannah's cat. Toby, after a vocal +minute of terror, fixed a hard eye upon his heel and withdrew at once +to a sheltered spot behind the stove. He had learned before that Mr. +O'Neill with his head in the clouds was frequently unaware of feet +things. + +Kenny went of his own accord to Adam's sitting room. + +Almost he surprised a glint of welcome in the old man's piercing eye. + +"Well, Adam," he said happily, "I'm back!" + +"Humph!" said Adam ungraciously. "I knew you would be." + +By the end of the week Kenny forgot that he had been away. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +BRIAN SOLVES A PROBLEM + +To Brian had come a problem of his own. His vagabond days were nearly +over. Now with the wind cool at twilight and the dawns sharp, the two +wayfarers, lean and brown as gypsies, were tramping back over the trail +of the summer, finding old fires and the delight of reminiscence. + +"Don," said Brian one twilight as they swung along in the dust of a +country road, "if I'm not mistaken back yonder is the field where you +barked for a summer show. Man alive," he added with a laugh, "how you +did bark! Now with a summerful of health in your system and your voice +full of fresh air, I could understand it, but then! Honestly, old top, +I didn't know it was in you!" + +The boy looked up and laughed. + +"It wasn't," he said with utter truth. "You told me I could do it and +I--I just did." + +"I knew you could do it!" said Brian with the vigor of confidence that +had made the boy his slave. "Still, when you unleashed that first roar +and the crowd began to collect, I confess I thought you'd busted +something vital and were yelling for help." + +Don glanced at this clothes. The summer show had freed him from the +mended rags he hated. Shirt and trousers, hat and shoes were as near +like Brian's as they could be. So was the coat upon his arm and the +knapsack on his back. + +"Whenever you tell me I can do a thing," he said, "and hang around to +see me do it, I can always somehow seem to make myself do it. Look!" +he broke off with a boyish grin, pointing at a farmhouse on a distant +hill. "There's the farm where you threw the can of whitewash at the +farmer when he swore at his wife for dropping the eggs and threatened +to lick her. Wasn't he a sight!" + +"He was!" admitted Brian. "And wasn't he mad? If he hadn't been a +coward he would have licked me instead. As it was, I never fully +understood why his wife shied an egg at me. However, that's all rather +a shady part of my past. I'm not reminding you of the self-winding +blunderbuss you got in part payment for chopping wood, am I? Or that +it went off by itself and shot a cabbage?" + +Laughing they struck off into a twilight stretch of woods, found a +familiar clearing near a spring and made a fire. + +"Well," said Brian when the fire was down to embers, "what's the +schedule? You're road manager this week. What do we eat?" + +"Sausages," said Donald, unloading his pockets. "A can of macaroni and +an apple pie." + +"You disgraceful kid!" exclaimed Brian. "Whenever you get into a +country store without a guard you kick over the traces and appear with +something in your pocket that busts a road rule and obligates me to a +sermon when I hate 'em. Pie, my son, is effete and civilized. It's +like feeding cream puffs to a wandering Arab. You're apt to make him +stop his Arabing and hang around the spot where the cream puff grows. +However, now that you've brought the thing into camp, it would be +improvident not to eat it. What am I, Don, wood-scout or cook?" + +"Cook," said Donald. "All day," he added, "you've been limping." + +Brian made a fence of forked twigs, hung the sausages up to toast, +opened the can of macaroni and set it in the embers. That Don had +noticed the limp gratified him immensely, even though it had been a +mere and prosaic matter of a blistered heel. + +Whistling softly, he watched the boy gather wood. Well, thank God! he +was as unlike that white-faced moody lad who had stumbled into his +Tavern of Stars as a boy could be. He whistled a good deal. He was as +slim as a sapling, the slimness of muscle and health. His eyes were +clear and boyish. And there was color in his face. Best of all, to +Brian's mind, after the first sullen period of readjustment he had +worked his own salvation and reverted by wholesome instinct to boyhood +with its inexhaustible animal vigor, its gaucheries and its boisterous +minutes of frolic heretofore denied. Now save for the hours by the +camp fire when he passionately blurted out again and again the tale of +his rebellion until Brian knew his life as he knew the weather-lore of +the open road, he seemed ever on the verge of laughter. + +Brian smiled. Attuned to the mood he summed up the achievement of his +own summer. The brawn of splendid health and a clear head! For the +one he could thank his gypsying; for the other, in a measure, he could +thank the boy. + +In the lonely hours before he came with his problems there had been +solitude less soothing than Brian had expected. There has been an +inclination to smoke and brood and nurse certain sentimental misgivings +about Kenny when the fire was low and the owls hooting in the forest. +After, mercifully--for they might have driven him back to +sunsets--there had been no time. The life of another had made its +demand and sympathy with Brian was never passive. Impossible somehow +not to romp with the young savage yonder rejoicing in his freedom, with +even work a lark! Impossible not to laugh with him, fight out his +battles with him and surrender with a sigh of content to the weariness +and hunger of a caveman! + +If now with autumn at hand the fortunes of the road had in them a grain +more of hardship and less of romance, it was to be expected. Brian had +tramped to his goal. The staleness was gone. It was time to be up and +off, seeking Whitaker. + +A sausage burst its casing with an appetizing sizzle and leaped, it +seemed of its own accord, into suicidal embers. Brian rescued it with +a stick and looked up. Don had come back with the wood. + +"It's fall," said Brian. "The wind's full of it to-night. Last night +I was cold." + +"So was I," said Don. Brian thought he looked a little out-of-sorts. + +"It narrows down to two things," said Brian, fishing in his pocket for +some forks and spoons. "Either we must acquire another blanket or two +or get a job and sleep under cover until--" + +The boy's imploring eyes upset him. Brian turned a charred sausage and +sighed. There was his problem, he knew: Don and his future. And they +were barely twenty miles away from his uncle's farm. + +"Remember the mountain quarry somewhere over there to the west?" he +asked. "Suppose we hike over there in the morning and see if they need +some brawny arms to help 'em crush stone. Seems to me there were a lot +of shacks up back of it on the mountain. We could live in one of them." + +"Yes." + +"What's the matter?" + +"Oh," said Don with an effort, "I'm a little blue. I suppose it's the +fall." + +They tramped west in the morning and climbed a winding road. The +quarry lay ahead in the rocky wall of a mountain. + +"Lord, what an out-of-the world spot!" exclaimed Brian in dismay. +"Don, you thought we were getting too close to your uncle's farm but +nobody'd find us here. I suspect they have to build shacks to keep the +men contented. That basin of stone looks as if it had been gouged out +of the mountainside by the hand of a giant." + +A drill-runner was shouting to a man with a red flag as Brian climbed +into the pit. The flagman waved him back. A second later a dull blast +shook the quarry, earth and stone crumbled out of a fissure in the +cliff ahead, and the suspended labor of men awaiting the Titan aid of +inanimate force, turned to noise and bustle. + +"Hum!" said Brian, glinting, "mostly dago labor. Well, that doesn't +need to worry us, does it? You stay here, Don, while I find the boss." + +Don obeyed. Derricks hung above the cars upon the spur track. Farther +back a screen revolved and sorted stone. Men were feeding the crusher +and men were busy at the drills but the boy's eyes, with an instinct +for adventure, followed a man who drove a mule-cart along an +overhanging ledge above the pit. The task held for him a fearful +fascination. + +"Needs men to load cars," announced Brian coming back, "and feed the +crusher. In quarry caste I imagine that's about at the bottom. The +shacks are furnished and four of them are empty. We can take our pick. +What do you say?" + +"Whatever you say," said Don. + +"Well," said Brian, "to tell you the truth, I have the keys." + +The quarry, he fancied as he climbed the path to the cluster of shacks, +would solve his problem for him and when the time was ripe he would +have his say. + +The time ripened with frost in the morning and a harvest moon at night; +and Brian had failed to have his say. A letter came from John Whitaker +definite in detail and a shade impatient. Why was he loitering when +God's green world of spring had turned to autumn? Was he still stale +and thinking wrong? + +Brian set his lips to his task and spoke. + +"Don," he said one night when the dishes were washed, the shack swept +and the lamp lighted, "I've been thinking a lot about you and what +you're going to do this winter." + +The boy, who had been sparring with a kitten that had strayed into the +shack the day before, rose abruptly. + +"You say you won't write to your sister until you've made good?" + +"It isn't just that," stammered Donald, changing color. "I--I don't +dare. She'd beg me to come back--" + +Brian nodded. + +"Yes," he said. "I know the feeling." + +"And I won't go back!" flung out Donald passionately. "I won't go +back. I simply can't." + +"It's better," said Brian sensibly, "if you don't. For a number of +reasons. But you must do something. I mean something with the future +in view." + +"Yes." + +"As far as I can make out," went on Brian, puffing at his pipe, "you're +wildly unhappy and discontented at the farm and that worries your +sister. Of course your absence worries her too but the two letters we +wrote that night you tumbled into my camp fire must have made her feel +a lot better, particularly since we both expressed our intention of +making the best of ourselves. You say she won't leave your uncle +because he's an invalid. That leaves you without any string to your +bow but your own inclination. In a sense you've followed that too +long. I mean, Don, shirking the course of study the old minister +mapped out for you when your sister kept on plugging. You need it." + +"Nothing mattered," said the boy bitterly. "I knew I wouldn't stay. I +didn't dare. Once," he added in a low voice, "when Uncle cursed my +sister and threw a bottle of brandy at her, I made up my mind to kill +him." + +"Good Lord!" said Brian, shocked. + +"That's one of the reasons I don't dare go back. I'm afraid. You +can't guess what it is," he choked. "He taunts and jeers and curses in +a breath and he gets drunk every night. I wish to God he would die!" + +The wish was horrible in its sincerity. Brian ignored it. + +"If you were older," said Brian, "and your chief need wasn't school, +I'd take you abroad with me, free lancing. But in the circumstances, +with your welfare somewhere else, that's impossible." + +Donald hung his head. + +"I--I wish it wasn't," he blurted. "I want to go wherever you go." + +"That first night when I asked you to tramp along with me," said Brian +gently, "I said, in my letter to your sister, that I'd see you through. +That I'm going to do. But you've got to help me. I want you, after +I'm gone, to stay up here at the quarry, study nights, and next year +work your way through college." + +The boy stared, blank terror in his eyes. + +"A year's work will put you on your feet--your kind of work when the +mood is on you--and you can enter in the fall. I know a chap who's +working his way through Yale. He'd show you the ropes." + +"Here!" said Donald. "Alone!" + +"Here," said Brian quietly, "alone. I know you can do it." + +Don brushed his hair back heavily from his forehead. It was but little +browner than his face. The gesture reminded Brian irresistibly of +Kenny, Kenny in rebellion. + +"It isn't the college part," Don said hopelessly. "There I think I'd +get through. And I'd like to be an engineer. It's the year here. An +entrance examination would be stiff, wouldn't it, Brian?" + +"Yes." + +"I know chunks of a lot of things I don't need, almost nothing of +things I ought to know a lot about. When I liked a thing, I studied. +And when I didn't I let it slide. It worried my sister. And I work by +fits and starts when there's nobody around to keep me at it. Up here +alone, working all day and studying half the night, I'd never swing it. +It would mean the hardest kind of work." + +"Once," said Brian, "I saw you chop wood for thirteen hours." + +"You were there." + +"And down there in the quarry Grogan says you can load more stone to +the hour than two wops." + +"You're there feeding the crusher. And you work as hard as I do." + +Brian rose. His pipe was out. He knew as he knocked the ashes into a +saucer and filled again from a bowl of tobacco upon the mantel, that +Donald's eyes were upon him, abject with misery and remorse. But +neither spoke. + +Irritable and upset, Brian went out upon the porch. + +The straggling cluster of shacks around the rude store were dark. +Grogan's weary men found bed early. The moonlight was calm and cold +and weirdly bright. A wind mournful with the rustle of dead leaves +came sharply from the trees behind the shack where by day the autumn +sun touched russet into gold and scarlet. A bleak spot up here! The +solitude of stone and struggle. Could he expect Don to linger here and +fight his battle? Brian, with the weight of his years heavy on his +shoulders, said honestly no. And the problem still was with him. + +He went down the steps and walked aimlessly along the ridge above the +quarry. The bright emptiness below was grotesque with shadow, shadows +of ghost-like derricks, screens and drills. On the spur track lay a +car half full of stone. Standing there with the trainload of Donald's +labor at his feet, it came sharply to Brian that the boy stood again at +the parting of the ways. And the year would tell. + +To the right from the dank water of a quarry pool abandoned long since +to catfish and willows, a milk-white mist was rising eerily into the +moonlight. Brian saw it but he saw it indistinctly. He was thinking +of the boy's sister, her sweet face tragic with imploring. It lay in +the mist and yet not in the mist, and it was binding him to obligation. +He had written a promise. That promise he must keep. The face his +memory etched upon the mist made its appeal to every finer instinct of +his courage. + +Brian did not face his problem with excitement. He faced it with +ruthless concentration. All summer he had been groping through fog and +disillusion to the meaning of service, service to his fellowmen, and he +had groped through to something vague and lofty. Service lay across +the water where men raved in the red fever of destruction, service and +inclination. Could not one be mercifully the religion of the other? +Must service spring from the bitter dregs of self-denial? Brian stared +wretchedly into the dank white mist curling in the moonlight like a +fallen cloud. And again with his conscience up in arms he remembered +the face of Donald's sister. In a sense he could thank the boy for the +peace of his summer. And he had written his promise. He was like +Kenny, that boy, inflammable of purpose, erratic in his vigor, and +likable. And he needed a friend, inflexible and kindly. + +"Always," said Brian, "I am slated to be somebody's keeper." + +Could he shirk? Had he shirked when he left the studio in anger? Had +he a right to live his life his own way? Had anybody? His common +sense endorsed his earlier rebellion. This was different. + +"Whenever you tell me I can do a thing and hang around to see me do it, +I can seem to make myself do it somehow!" + +The words echoed harshly in his ears; and at first Brian refused to +hear them. Then inexorably he faced his fact. He and he alone was the +spur to the boy's amazing energy. A year? Well, after all what was a +year? + +He went back through the autumn moonlight with a sigh. + +"Don," he said, "you're right. You couldn't swing it up here alone. +I'll stick and see you through it." + +Don looked up, his face scarlet with emotion. Brian's hand was on his +shoulder. And Brian's eyes were half humorous, half quizzical and +wholly tender. + +"No, no, Brian, no!" he choked. "I--I didn't mean that--" + +"Of course you didn't," said Brian. "I thought that much of it out for +myself." + +Don's head went down upon his hands with a sob. + +That night Brian wrote to Whitaker. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +SAMHAIN + +To Kenny in poetic mood the seasons were druidic. There was May Eve +with its Bel fires when summer peeped over the hilltops at the cattle +driven through the sacred flames to protect them from disease. There +was Midsummer's Eve with more fires, and if St. Patrick in unpagan zeal +had chosen to kindle his fires in honor of St. John, he could. To +Kenny the festival was still druidic. There was Samhain or summer +ending, when the November wind speeded the waning season with a flurry +of dead leaves; and to Kenny, Samhain came and drove him forth in the +chill dusk to face another problem. + +He had come to the farm in blossom time and he had stared ahead to +sanity--in September at the latest. Now with branches dark and bare +against the glorious sunsets that burned at night in the west long +after the valley was in shadow, even with talk in Hannah's kitchen of +early snow, his madness was if anything a trifle more acute. Even the +dreaded hours with Adam ceased to trouble him in the joy of his days. +There was peace here and, thanks to Mr. Adams, who had simplified his +relations with the bank, freedom from work and worry. + +The November twilight, scintillant with stars, lay darkly ahead. He +forged through it in excitement. He who could forecast with the wisdom +of experience the duration of his own enslavement had gone over his +time. And, powers of wild-fire, he still kept going! Something +emotionally was wrong. + +It pleased him in a moody moment to busy himself with mathematics, much +as he hated them, and deduce a singular fact. He had spent delicious +hours of many a day with many a maid. But days and days and days with +one? Not ever! + +For one hour he had spent with some forgotten object of his adoration +in the past, he had spent five with Joan. The thought alarmed him. It +came to this. If by rational reduction you translated each flare into +hours, the vertigo of his summer with Joan became at once in contrast +equivalent to years. And by every law his infatuation should have +stopped the sooner. How much longer would it linger? What if +Christmas still found him turbulent and upset--and hating the thought +of the studio? This furlough of his from work and worry must come to +an end in time! + +Paralyzed by an infinite variety of prospects he stopped dead and +stared at the fading red behind the hills. When had it altered--this +madness of his? Why was it stronger? Any man addicted to falling in +love knew well enough it shouldn't be. + +It was his fate to remember as he stood there the talk of love around +the wood-fire. He had barely listened. Yet now his memory cast up +Kreiling's words and took his breath away. + +"There is love and love and to be in love is torture and a thing of +self but when the big splendid tenderness comes after the storm of self +and craving, the tenderness that knows more of giving than of +demanding, it comes to stay. But it's not the love of barbarity like +Finn's. It's an evolution." + +To stay! . . . The thought was volcanic. . . . _To stay_! + +And yet . . . how different that first dizzy sweep of delight at the +sight of Joan's loveliness, from this big, nameless something that +filled his heart with humility and longing! . . . How far away that +day beneath the willow when he had blown the horn! . . . An eternity +lay between. + +This love of his--no, it was no longer merely a storm of unrest. It +was no longer merely a delirium of the senses in which he knew +suffering no less than ecstasy. It was a big, kind, selfless +tenderness that grew from day to day. A thing perhaps for eternity! + +Kreiling was right. + +Kenny's irreverent philosophy of the heart crumbled into ashes at his +feet. Love he had once believed was poetic like summer lightning. It +flashed, blinded in a glory of light and disappeared. If it lingered +it would lose its mystery, It was a quest in which the emotion was +paramount; the object that inspired it merely essential and +subordinate. Love was the only thing in the world worth while but +though a poet's love might fill his life with a perpetuity of delight +the object was bound to be a variant. Kenny had often mourned for +departed madness. He had never mourned the girl whom Chance had +appointed to inspire it. Why mourn a flower that has bloomed and faded +when the bush is full? + +And marriage? That uncomfortable essential, legalists said, to +civilization and the transmission of property? To Kenny marriage had +always seemed a little like the Land of the Ever-Young. Mortals +imprisoned there soon tired of exile and longed for freedom and +distraction. His own marriage was but a memory he refused to face, dim +and distant, an inexplicable flurry of sentimentality that had ended +tragically with Brian in his arms. The brief year of it had been +poignant and at the end he had gone forth upon the hills, praying for +death. That girl of long ago with the black-lashed eyes of Irish blue +like Brian's, he had loved with all the passionate tumult of boyhood; +and in the end he had lived for Brian, coming to believe as life +carelessly unfolded for him its book of heart-things that in time he +must have tired. Lived for Brian! Had he? Or had he lived for +himself? + +The memory he had crushed out of his heart in a panic long ago, now +left him with a terrified sense of obligation. Why in this dreadful +moment of crisis when he had to think must even his memories accuse +him? Brian! Brian! Always Brian! + +The pang was spasmodic. The immensity of his love for Joan swept +everything before it and filled him with terror and amazement. To +stay! Any other thought was a profanation. And he must face another +problem. If Joan's madness was the kind that waned, if for her there +was no madness, if the summer had left her tranquil and +indifferent. . . . The uncertainty maddened him. + +He struck a match and glanced at his watch. It was supper time. In an +hour now Joan likely would be coming to the cabin. So, alas! would Mr. +Abbott. Kenny struck off hurriedly toward the south. + +The cabin was dark and silent. He waited near it, endlessly it seemed, +smoking and wondering if his heart would ever stop its nervous +thumping. If only she would come! His head had begun to ache. His +hand was shaking. Where the blood pounded in his wrists there was a +flurried sense of pain. And somehow the heavy odor of the pines and +the chill silence was depressing. + +It was his fate to see Mr. Abbott come first. Unaware of the Irishman +who drew back at his approach, his hot heart sick with disappointment, +he opened the door of the cabin and went in, the inevitable book under +his arm. A second later the cabin window with its shade drawn, sprang +out of the shadow, a yellow checkerpane of light. Kenny stalked off, +chafing intolerantly at the anticlimacteric tenor of his summer. + +He saw her coming a long way off, her lantern bobbing along like a +firefly, and walked faster. Impatience brought a cold sweat out upon +his forehead and then he needs must call her name before she could hear. + +"Joan!" he called a little later. The tenderness in his heart hurt. + +The light faltered and became a fixed point in the darkness ahead. + +"It is I, Kenny!" he called again. + +Once more the firefly glimmer glided toward him. + +"Kenny," called Joan in the darkness, "is it really you? You +frightened me a little. And why in the world didn't you come home to +supper? Hannah's wondering where you are." + +But his voice failed him and with shaking hand he took the lantern and +held it high above her head. If he could but read her eyes! + +Joan glanced up at him in wonder and the hood of her cloak tumbling +back upon her shoulders, bared her hair. It shone, in the lantern +light, with an odd dark gold. She had never seemed so lovely--or so +much a part of the lonely wood. + +"Why do you stare so, Kenny?" she asked. "And why are you so--quiet?" + +"Mavourneen!" said Kenny. And his eyes implored. + +It was not at all what he had meant to say. The word, tell-tale in its +tenderness, had seemed to speak itself. + +Joan's face flamed. But her eyes were beautiful and kind. + +Kenny dropped the lantern with a crash and caught her in his arms. She +cried and clung to him in the darkness. + +"Joan! Joan!" he said and kissed her. + +He did not remember how long he stood there under the bright November +stars with Joan in his arms and his face upon her hair. He knew his +eyes were wet. He knew there was peace in his heart and a vast +content. But something made him dumb and tongue-tied. + +"Kenny!" exclaimed Joan. "The lantern!" + +"I know, colleen," said Kenny, "but one lantern more or less in an +epoch doesn't matter." + +"Mr. Abbott will be waiting. Suppose he came to look for me." + +"God forbid! I can't--I won't let you go." + +"You must!" + +"Joan, you are sure, _sure_ you love me?" + +"I know," said Joan steadily, "that I love you. I've known it since +that night upon the lake when you first spoke of--going. I knew it +when you went. And then when you came again. When I think of the farm +without you it turns my heart to stone. Every minute that I--I am away +from you, I am eager to be back." + +"Bless your heart!" + +She slipped out of his arms with a sigh. His hands clung to her. + +"Truly, truly, Kenny, I must go!" + +"I'll come back with another lantern after supper." + +"No," said Joan. "Please don't. Mr. Abbott might scold. Besides, +every star is a lantern to-night. And Uncle sent Hughie for you long +ago." + +Kenny groaned. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE CHAIR BY THE FIRE + +He went with her as far as he dared, and turned back with shining eyes +and stumbling feet. He did not afterward remember his supper or what +he had eaten, though Hannah at his command had set the table in the +kitchen and Hughie had talked sensibly of pumpkins. He did not +remember climbing the stairs to Adam's room. The one thing that jarred +through his dreamy feeling of detachment was the old man's face. + +"You're late!" he said. + +"Yes," said Kenny happily, "I am." Even now with Adam's piercing eyes +upon him, he had a feeling of invincibility; as if, aloof in the aerial +sphere in which he seemed to float, he could shut the old man out. + +Adam stared at him with eagle-like intentness and a puzzled frown. His +face said plainly that Kenny's mood was without precedent and therefore +strategical. It behooved him to get to the bottom of it at once and be +on his guard. + +"'Tis Samhain, Adam," said Kenny, "the summer ending of the druids. +And to-night the hills are open and the fairies are all out a-temptin' +mortals. I myself have heard the fairy pipes showerin' sweetness +everywhere. Wonderful music, Adam! Silver-soft and allurin' and the +kind you can't forget! It throws you into a trance and fills you with +beautiful longing. I forgot to come home. There! I must tell Hannah +to put a light under the churn to-night. Then the fairies, hating +fire, can't bewitch it." + +[Illustration: "'Tis Samhain, Adam," said Kenny, "the summer ending of +the druids."] + +Adam stared at him blankly. He was in mad mood, this Irishman. His +eyes, ardently blue and tender and intense, danced with incautious +gleams of laughter. His color was high. He was gay and utterly +friendly. + +An odd jealous hunger sprang up in the invalid's eyes. + +"Are you mad?" he demanded. + +"Quite!" said Kenny. + +"More like," said the old man tartly, "you're drunk." + +"Drunk," nodded Kenny, "with heather ale. Only the fairies know how to +make it now. And who wouldn't be drunk in the head of him to-night +with the Good People dancing on the hills and the dead dancing with +them." + +Adam frowned and shivered. + +"You Irish," he said harshly, "are as morbid as you are poetic." + +"'Tis all a part of the night," cried Kenny gayly and poured himself +some brandy. "The druids," he remembered, "poured libations on the +ground to propitiate the evil spirits and the spirits of the dead; but, +Adam, I'm drinking to-night to Destiny! To Destiny," he added under +his breath, "and the foreverness of her gift!" + +"What gift," demanded Adam Craig, "are you trying to clinch with a gift +to yourself of my brandy?" + +"The gift," said Kenny cryptically, "of--Life!" + +Well, he had spoken truth there. Life was love and love was life and +perhaps until now he'd known neither. + +Still the old man stared at him in dazed and sullen envy. His wild +vitality seemed a barrier impossible to surmount. + +"And it isn't just Samhain," said Kenny, setting down his glass. "Ugh, +Adam, your brandy's abominable! It's the Eve of All Souls. To-night +the dead revisit their homes. Once I remember when I was tramping +through Ireland, an old woman left a chair by the fireside that the +spirit of her son might come back to her. She even left some embers in +the fire." + +"That," said Adam Craig with a shudder, "will be enough of your damned +ghosts and fairies." + +Afterward to Kenny the evening was always a blur but he knew they had +gotten on badly. And Adam, quiet and sullen, had drunk more than usual. + +Kenny sparkled through the evening in a baffling, dreamlike oblivion to +everything but his thoughts, and floated away to his room, feeling +curiously light and iridescent. + +He meant not to sleep. He meant to roll the shades to the top and with +the cold wind upon his face and the stars winking in silver beneficence +overhead, to lie awake and think until the dawn came. He slept +soundly, dreaming of thistledown and a little old woman in a green +cloak who came out of a hill and played a tune upon a sort of +lantern-flute. The notes had winged off in bars of music written in +fire against the darkness. He had not finished the dream when he was +awakened by someone knocking at his door. + +It was Hughie, his face pale and disturbed. + +"Mr. O'Neill," he said, "I'm wondering if you'd drive down to the +village and telephone the doctor to come here first. Mr. Craig's had a +bad fall. He's unconscious." + +"Unconscious!" exclaimed Kenny, changing color. "How on earth, Hughie, +did he fall?" + +"I don't know," said Hughie sadly. "He must have climbed out of bed in +the night." + +"But, Hughie, he couldn't!" + +"He could stagger a step or two," explained Hughie. "Not far. The +trouble's in his spine. But he never dragged himself so far before." + +"How far?" + +"From his bed to his sitting room. I found him in a heap by the fire." + +"Poor devil!" said Kenny, shocked. + +He dressed quickly. Hannah helped him hitch the old mare to the buggy +and found him nervous and unfamiliar with his task. Kenny drove off +down the lane, oppressed by the bleak wind and the bare black tangle of +branches ahead of him. The tragic effort of Adam's wasted legs had +left him startled and uneasy. For the life of him he could not put out +of his mind the tale of the old Irish woman and the chair she had left +by the fire on the Eve of All Souls for the visit of her dead son. It +had bothered Adam Craig and made him shudder. It bothered Kenny now. +He wished he hadn't remembered it last night or to-day. But the sound +of Nellie's hoofs plodding along the soft dirt road was no more +recurrent than his own foreboding. It filled him with sadness and +guilt. Adam perhaps had dragged himself to the sitting room fire in a +drunken fit of superstition. Seeking what? Someone he had _wronged_? +The sinister spark inflamed his fancy. His brain whirled. +Inexplicably the tale of the fairy mill and the rascal who stole the +widow's bag of meal linked itself with the mishap of the night before. +Then too Adam had fallen forward in his chair unconscious. + +Nellie stumbled and jolted Kenny into sanity. He put his thoughts +aside in horror. But dreadful strings of mystery converged +persistently to one point: Adam Craig, the pitiful old miser who for +some reason huddled every book in the farmhouse on his shelves. Fate +cruelly had brought melancholy into this, the first morning of his +love. Kenny shivered with resentment. + +He telephoned the doctor's farm and found him ready to start his weary +ambulant day; hamlet to hamlet, farm to farm, until dusk and often +after. The bare thought of it filled Kenny with sympathetic gloom. +Then his brain began again to burn in speculation. Frowning, he turned +back homewards up the hill and through the wood, where the road lay, +rough and lonely. + +With his mind upon it he evolved Nellie from her harness and led her +into the stall. When he had done with her halter he found that Joan +had slipped into the barn and stood a little way off, her soft eyes +intent upon him. + +"Joan!" he exclaimed radiantly. The sight of her was like a lilac wind +in fog. The fog fled and you found the world clear and fragrant. + +She came to him instantly, her face like a colorless flower, a faint +shadow in her eyes. + +"Colleen!" said Kenny. He kissed her gently. Again he was conscious +with a flurried feeling of impatience that the force of his tenderness +would not rise to his lips. He whose words of love had been so fluent +and poetic! + +"Hannah sent me," said Joan. "She was afraid you wouldn't know how to +get Nellie out of the shafts. Oh, Kenny!" There was quick compassion +in her eyes. + +"Let's not think of sorrowful things, dear!" said Kenny swiftly. "I +dreamed of a lantern." + +"And I," said Joan, the rich rose tints he loved flaming in her face, +"I dreamed of you." + +Kenny choked back the tender untruth he would have liked to utter. For +an instant he hated the little old fairy in the green cloak who had +come forth from the hill in his dream. How easy for the dream-god to +have made her--Joan! + +"Joan," he said wistfully, "you're sure you love me!" + +"Yes," said Joan. "There is no one in my life I love so well." + +"And it will last?" + +Disturbed she glanced at him, her eyes dark with rebuke. + +"Until the judgment day!" persisted Kenny. + +"Kenny," she said, "why do you speak so strangely. Love is love, isn't +it? And if you who have known all things love me, how much more must I +who have lived so much alone, love and cling to you?" + +He kissed her hair and pressed his cheek against it where the shadows +were soft and golden. + +"I want you, heart of mine," he said steadily, "to love me in this +wonderful way that I love you. There are ways and ways of loving." + +That, in her girlhood dream of love, she could not see. And Kenny was +passionately glad that his words were a riddle. + +Then the horn came, clear and mellow, through the cold November air and +Joan drew the hood of her cloak about her head. + +Kenny sighed. He clung to her hand as she started away. + +"Girleen," he said soberly, "the wind's cold. Must you ferry the river +in winter, too?" + +"Save when there's ice," said Joan. "The bridge is three long miles +away." + +From the barn doorway he watched the flutter of her cloak as she +hurried down the path to the river. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE SHADOW OF DEATH + +Kenny went back to the kitchen, hungry and depressed. To his fancy, as +eager at times in its morbidity as in its lighter sparkle, the shadow +of death seemed brooding over the farmhouse. This an hour later the +weary little doctor confirmed. He had tired shadows around his eyes, +that doctor; he seemed always bored to death at the proneness of +mankind to ills and aches and babies; and his kind tired voice never +lost its drawl no matter what the crisis. + +"It isn't just the spine trouble, Mr. O'Neill," he said. "With that +alone he'd likely linger on for years. And it isn't the trouble here +in his chest. That's chronic and unimportant. It's the brandy. He +drinks a quart a night and he won't give it up." + +"I know." + +The doctor shook his head and pursed his lips. + +"I think he'll just slip away without regaining consciousness. Pulse +is barely a flutter. Joan can tend him. She's done it before. Every +now and then for a good many years he's had a bedfast spell. Poor +child!" The doctor cleared his throat. "Well, Mr. O'Neill, such is +life! I'll stop back to-night on my way home." + +Distraught and rebellious, Kenny fought the girl's refusal to let +Hannah take her place. She hid the mended gown he hated under an apron +of Hannah's, slipped into his arms and out again with tears upon her +cheeks, and fled from his protestations with her hands upon her ears. +Kenny followed her to the door of Adam's sitting room, frantic with +distress. Verily, he thought, as the door closed gently in his face, +the quality of Joan's mercy was not strained. It came like Portia's +gentle rain from Heaven. It forgot and forgave and condoned. But the +thought of her, flowerlike in the shadow of death, was unendurable. + +Anxious to help, Kenny sculled the old punt back and forth, whenever +the horn blew, until dusk. He had humbly pledged himself to curb a +tendency to speed and excitement and therefore ferried the river well +until a wind rose at twilight, clouds thickened overhead and a spatter +of rain blew into his face. Then his patience waned and he tacked an +enormous sign upon the willow under one of Hughie's lanterns. Owing to +illness, it said, the ferry had been discontinued. Afterward he went +to tell Joan what he had done, and met the doctor on the stairway. + +"By morning," he nodded slowly, answering Kenny's look. "Yes, I'm +afraid he'll be gone. I'd like to stay, Mr. O'Neill, for Joan's sake. +But there's a baby coming over at the Jensen farm. There always is. +And my duty as I see it is more with life than with death." + +"I'll stay with him," said Kenny. "Joan must rest." + +But she would not. + +"Donald should be here too," she said. "We are all he has." + +"Then," said Kenny, his lips white, "I shall stay here with you." + +The night closed in with gusty showers of rain. There was no sound +from the high old-fashioned bed where Adam Craig lay, gray and still. +The silence, the gloom of dark wood, the grotesque shadows from a lamp +burning dimly on the bureau and the loud licking of the clock drove +Kenny with a shudder to the window. Death to him who so passionately +loved life's gayety and its music was more a thing of horror than of +grief. He found no solace in the wind and rain of the autumn night. +They plunged him instead into a mood of morbid imagery. The weird +music of the wind became Ireland's cry of lament for her dead. The +tossing boughs beyond the window, rain-spattered and somber, took on +eerily the outline of dark-cloaked women keeners rocking and chanting +the music of death. The rain was tears. + +Ochone! Ochone! The wind of sorrow rose and fell, rose and fell, with +unearthly cadence. Kenny thought of the horrible Dullahaun who roves +about the country with his head under his arm and a death-warning basin +of blood in his hand ready to dash in the face of the unlucky wight who +answers his knock. + +He shuddered and choked. Then Joan slipped into the shelter of his +arm, terrified at the thought of death, cried and watched the rain with +him. + +Adam Craig died at dawn with the rain he hated beating at the window. +And peace came wanly to his wrinkled face. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +IN THE CABIN + +They were hard days for Kenny, who hated gloom save when it was +picturesque and transient. And they were harder for the pity and +misgiving in his heart. He himself perhaps had hastened the old man's +death with a careless story. Why had it bothered him? Why had it +goaded his wasted legs to horrible effort? + +Ordinarily Kenny knew he would have resented the intrusion of alien +sorrow into his life. He hated sorrow. Now for Joan's sake he made +himself a part of it. If Joan must endure it, so could he. But he +sickened at the need. + +He was doomed to a tragic, unforgettable hour in the churchyard when +the voice of the old minister, conventional in its sadness, droned +wearily into his very soul: + +"Ashes to ashes . . . dust to dust." . . . The clock turned back and +he stood in a church by an Irish hill. White and terrified, Kenny +remembered what in its vivid agony of detail he would fain have +forgotten. Why, now, when Joan was slipping into his life, a lonely +waif of a girl in a black gown he hated, why must he think years back +to that soft-eyed Irish girl and Brian? Had he broken his pledge to +her, driving her son away with a passion of self no less definite for +its careless gayety? Eileen's son! Eileen's son! Sadness tore at +Kenny's heart and twitched at his dry, white lips. Ah! why must he +live again that agonizing day when Eileen had gone out of his life +forever? + +The voice went on, funereal, gentle. Kenny's eyes blurred. Sweat came +coldly forth upon his forehead. At the first thud of earth he choked +and turned away, the pain unbearable. Adam Craig had driven his nephew +away . . . with a passion of self . . . and he had died with mercy at +his bedside, not love. A passionate hunger for Brian stirred in +Kenny's heart and made him lonely. Ah! how farcical his penance! Some +nameless thing of self linked him to Adam Craig. The thought was +horrible. Some nameless thing linked each mournful detail of to-day to +the tragedy of long ago. . . . And then mercifully the thing became a +blur of November wind, a monotonous voice of sorrow, the thud of earth +and the end. + +The coach toiled up the hill and Kenny, with Joan in his arms, forgot. + +"Mavourneen," he said wistfully, "let's slip away, you and I, to the +cabin in the pines. I want you to myself. And there in the house--" +he looked away. The thought of the old house, bleak and desolate at +its best and haunted now by the sense of a presence gone, oppressed him. + +Joan nodded. + +"And not that dress!" begged Kenny with a shudder. + +She laid her cheek against his shoulder. + +"It was just for to-day, Kenny. Hannah thought it best." Her soft +eyes, curiously child-like with the shadow of sadness in them, appealed +to him for understanding. He kissed her, marveling afresh at the +tender miracle of peace and tenderness her presence brought him. + +"Had I loved Uncle a great deal more--it isn't wrong for me to say that +now, Kenny?" + +"It would be wrong, dear, if you made pretense of something you +couldn't feel." + +"I--I meant that even then I could have mourned him better with my +heart than this--this dreadful dress. It would carry gloom wherever I +went. And that would be selfish." + +He blessed her shy intelligence and kissed her again. Then the +carriage stopped at the farmhouse door and Kenny hurried up to his room +to find clothes less formal and depressing. Afterward he went ahead to +the cabin and built a fire. + +The crackle of the wood was lively to his ears and cheerful. The room +grew, warm and homelike. When Joan came a little later, he was +whistling softly and making tea. He liked her dress. It was dark and +soft. He liked the lace fichu at her throat. And he liked the huge +old-fashioned cameo that fastened it. + +"Hughie is hunting the key to the table-drawer," she said. "I told him +about the cabin. It doesn't matter now. Poor Uncle!" She blinked and +wiped her eyes. "He didn't mean to be cruel, Kenny. It was the brandy +and the pain. If Hughie finds the key, he wondered if you'd go over +Uncle's papers to-night. The will is there." + +"The will!" said Kenny. He put wood on the fire in some excitement. A +miser's will! + +Joan's eyes were tender. + +"Kenny, how good you've been!" + +"Nonsense!" he said brusquely. + +"Hughie said so, too. And Hannah and Hetty. Someone had to think and +plan and you did it all so well. And, Kenny, I told Hannah, that I'm +going to marry you and she cried and kissed me and--and poured a +wash-bowl full of tea for Hughie to wash his hands in!" + +"The heart of her!" said Kenny. "Come, girleen. The tea's ready. I +want to see you pour it." + +He watched with his heart in his eyes while she poured his tea. There +was a sense of home in the cabin here and the crackle of the fire was +the music of comfort. Kenny drank a little of his tea and roved off to +the window to light a cigarette. + +Beyond the November monotone of trees blazed the red of a sunset. A +winter sunset! The fall was over. + +"Joan!" he called softly. "Come, jewel machree, the Gray Man is +stealing through the pines." + +She came at once and slipped into the circle of his arm. Kenny held +her tight and found his courage. He was restless, it seemed, and after +months of irresponsibility, the thought of work was bothering him +badly. Kenny must leave the farm. He must go soon; in a week. And +his wife must go with him. + +Joan's breathless amazement made him laugh. + +"But, Kenny, I--I can't!" she said. + +"And I," said Kenny stubbornly, "can't and won't go away and leave you +here. The thought of winter and the hills and that barn of a house +when the wind is blowing would haunt me. No, no, girleen!" + +Joan looked up and smiled and her soft eyes were wistful. + +"Kenny, I must study for another year!" + +"Another year!" said Kenny blankly. "Colleen, you've the wisdom of the +ages in your head right now." + +Joan shook her head. + +"I must learn to be your wife," she said. "Now it--it dazzles and +frightens me--" + +"Joan!" + +"Have you forgotten, Kenny, that I have lived my life up here in hills +and trees. And you--" + +"Joan, please!" he begged in distress. + +"But I can't forget," said the girl steadily. "Whenever I read the +article Garry sent about 'Kennicott O'Neill, brilliant painter'--think +of it, Kenny! 'Brilliant painter!'--I go back and read again just to +be sure I'm not dreaming. I've been so much alone that the thought of +going out into your world with you--terrifies me. I could not bear to +have you--sorry!" + +"Mavourneen!" he said, shocked. + +There were tears upon her cheeks. + +"I would only ask that you be your own dear self," said Kenny gently. +"And every man of my world and every woman will stare and envy!" + +"I must know music and French," said Joan, checking the need upon her +fingers. "I must know how to dance. Now when I talk I must have +something to say. Otherwise I feel shy and quiet. I must learn how to +talk a great deal without saying anything as you do sometimes." + +He laughed in delight at the final need. + +"All of it," declared Kenny happily, "I can teach you." + +"No," said Joan with a definite shake of her head. "You would kiss me. +And I would always be right even when you knew I was wrong." + +His eyes laughed at her mischievously. But he caught her hands and +pressed them to his lips. + +"Listen, dear," he pleaded. "My world isn't a world of social climbers +or snobs or dollar-worshippers. It's a world of gifted men and women +who haven't time to look up your ancestors or your bank balance before +they decide to be friendly and kind. I know a poet whose mother was a +gypsy, a painter who's a baron and he says he can't help it, a French +girl who paints millionaire babies and her father was a tight-rope +walker in a circus. My world, Joan, is the happy-go-lucky Bohemia of +success and the democracy of real talent. We're actors and painters +and sculptors and writers and artists in general and all in all I think +we work a little more and play a little more, enjoy a little more and +suffer a little more than the rest of the world. Once in a while to be +sure a head grows a bit too big and then we all take a bop at it! But +the big thing is we're human; just folks, as a man in the grillroom +said one night. We're human and we're kind. It's not a smart set, +dear. And it's not an ultra-fashionable four-hundredy thing. God +forbid! It's the kind of Bohemia I love. And I'm sure you'll love it +too." + +Her eyes were shining. In the dusk her color came to him like the +glimmer of a flower. + +"Kenny!" she exclaimed. "How wonderful it all is, you and all of it! +And yet if--if I feel as I do, you must let me go for a year. +Otherwise if I lack confidence in myself--Oh, can't you see, Kenny, I +shall be shy and frightened and always ill at ease!" + +"Go!" he echoed blankly. + +"Somewhere," said Joan, "to study music and French and how to talk your +kind of nonsense. Hannah says there must be money enough in Uncle's +estate for that." + +"Where," said Kenny, his heart cold, "would you go?" + +"I thought," said Joan demurely, "that perhaps I could study in New +York where I wouldn't be so--lonesome." + +He caught her in his arms. + +"Heart of mine!" he whispered. "You thought of that." + +"Then," said Joan, "I can learn something of your world before I become +a part of it. Don't you see, Kenny? I can look on and learn to +understand it. I should like that. Come, painter-man! The tea's +cold. And it's growing dark. We'd better light the lamp." + +With the tea-pot singing again on the fire and the lamp lighted, Kenny, +but momentarily tractable, had another interval of rebellion. Joan, in +New York, might better be his wife. Joan, studying, might better have +him near to talk his sort of nonsense, listen to her music and make +love volubly in French to which she needed the practice of reply. His +plea was reckless and tender but Joan shook her head; and Kenny +realized with a sigh that her preposterous notion of unfitness was +strong in her mind and would not be denied. + +"A year, Kenny!" pleaded Joan. "After all, what is a year? And at the +end I shall be so much happier and sure." She came shyly to his chair +and slipped her arms around his neck. "I want so much to do whatever +you want me to do. And yet--and yet, Kenny, feeling as I do, I shall +be--Oh, so much happier if you will wait until I can come and say that +I am ready to be your wife." + +"It will make you happier!" he said abruptly. + +"Yes." + +"Then, mavourneen," said Kenny, "it shall be as you say. I care more +for your happiness than for my own." + +They went back through the darkness hand in hand. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +A MISER'S WILL + +Kenny lingered moodily over his supper. His evening was casting its +shadow ahead. He dreaded the thought of climbing the stairs to Adam's +empty room. If he could have kept his hostile memories in the face of +death, he told himself impatiently, it would have been easier. But +Garry was right. He was wild and sentimental. Only pitiful memories +lingered to haunt him: rain and loneliness and the old man's hunger for +excitement. + +He went at last with a sigh, oppressed by the creak of the banister +where Adam had sat, sinister and silent in his wheel-chair, listening +to the music. Memories were crowding thick upon him. Again and again +he wished that he had never opened the door of the sitting room that +other night and caught the old man off his guard. It had left a +specter in his mind, horrible in its pathos and intense. Strung +fiercely to the thought of emptiness, it came upon him nevertheless, as +he opened the door, with a curious chill sense of palpability; as if +silence and emptiness could strike one in the face and make him falter. + +The room was fireless and silent and unspeakably dreary. Hughie had +left a lamp burning upon the table. The key he had found in the pocket +of the old man's bathrobe lay beside it. + +For an interval Kenny stood stock still, his color gone. He faced +strange ghosts. Here in this faded room, with its mystery of books, he +had known agonizing pity and torment, gusts of temper, selfish and +unselfish, real and feigned, moments of triumphal composure that now in +the emptiness it was his fate to remember with a sickening shudder of +remorse. Here he had battled in vain for Joan, practicing brutally the +telling of much truth; and here with his probing finger, Adam Craig had +roused his slumbering conscience into new doubt and new despair. And +here he must not forget he had told the tale of the fairy mill . . . +and suspicion had come darkly to his mind. Suspicion of what? That, +as ever, he refused to face. + +A chair stood by the fireplace. Kenny with a shudder moved it to a +distant corner. He could not bear the memory of that last night when +he had barred the old man out from his joyous mood of sparkle, telling +Samhain tales of the fairies and the dead. + +After all, had he meant always to be cruel, that keen-eyed old man with +his keener wits? What conflict of spirit and body had lain behind his +fretful fits of temper? + +Kenny turned, blinking, from the wheelchair, and his glance, blurred a +little, found the old man's glasses on the mantel. The shabby case, +left behind while Adam faced the great adventure, was oddly pitiful. +Kenny cleared his throat. He had his moment of rebellion then at the +inevitability of death and doom. It behooved all of us, he remembered +with set lips, to be kind and mend quarrels while the sap of life ran +in our veins, strong and full. + +The sight of the key upon the table sent his thoughts flying off at a +tangent. A miser's will! . . . Mother of Men! It was a thing of +morbid mystery and romance! + +Kenny sat down in wild excitement and opened the drawer. + +He saw at once an orderly packet of papers. The will, which barely a +month ago, Hughie said, he and Hannah had signed without reading, lay +uppermost. Adam had written his will himself, disdaining lawyers. + +Kenny opened the will and began to read. He read as he always read in +moments of excitement, blurring through with a glance. But though the +old man's writing was distinct and almost insolent in its boldness, the +portent of the written words did not filter through at once to his +understanding. He frowned and read again. Once more he read, pacing +the floor with unquiet eyes. A number of things were becoming clearer. +There was in the first place no mention of the fugitive nephew. Joan +was the sole heir. There was one executor. That executor was Joan's +guardian and Joan's guardian was one--Kennicott O'Neill! Kenny read +the name aloud as if it belonged to someone else. Joan's guardian! +Again he read the clause aloud with an exclamation of doubt and +unbelief. It lay there definite and clear. He was the sole executor +of Adam's will and he was Joan's guardian. Startled he read the rest. + +"To Kennicott O'Neill, my friend, my signet ring . . . to my niece, +Joan West, from whom, no matter what the circumstances, I have never +had an unkind word, I bequeath the Craig farm and all the land and all +the rest, residue and remainder of my wealth wheresoever situate, +provided the executor can find it." + +Kenny went back with a feeling of numbness in his brain and read it all +again. + +"The rest of my wealth wheresoever situate . . . provided the executor +can find it!" + +Those words he scanned blankly with a feeling of much fire in his head +and a tantalizing cloud before his eyes. They meant what? Strange +hints and subtle smiles recurred to him. . . . And Adam had been a +miser who read of buccaneers and hidden treasure. . . . Buccaneers and +hidden treasure! . . . He would have hidden pirates' gold, he had +said, under the biggest apple-tree in the orchard, under the lilac bush +or . . . Where else had he said? . . . And . . what . . had . . +he . . meant? + +Kenny struck his head fiercely with his hand, raked his hair in the old +familiar gesture and roamed turbulently around the room with the will +in his hand. He was conscious of that dangerous alertness in his brain +that with him always presaged some unusual clarity of vision, a +startling speed with the adding of two and two. Four came now with +bewildering conviction. Fragments of the puzzle of mystery that had +bothered him for days dropped dizzily into place, even the fairy mill +and the Eve of All Souls. What wonder that in a drunken fit of +superstition Adam had staggered out to seek his dead! + +With his hair in disarray from the frantic combing of his fingers, +Kenny went down to find Joan. He read the will aloud to her, +controlling his voice with an effort. + +"Don shall have the farm," said Joan. "I shouldn't know what to do +with it." + +Kenny read the baffling clause at the end of the will again. + +"'All the rest, residue and remainder of my wealth, wheresoever +situate, provided the executor can find it.'" + +It seemed to him in his excitement that he could not tell her what he +thought--that he could not say it all with care and calm when his head +was whirling. + +"Joan," he said gently, "you must tell me everything you remember about +your mother and your father and your uncle. And whether there was ever +money. Much money," he insisted, his vivid face imploring. + +Joan shook her head sadly. + +"There is so little I remember, Kenny," she said. "So very little. +There was never money. I do not remember my mother or my father. +Neither does Donald. We lived until I was eight with an old cousin, +Nellie Craig. She said that uncle was a miser who loved nothing but +his brandy. Then she died and we came here. We had to come. There +was no other place for us. I remember that Don's clothes and mine were +always ragged until I grew old enough to mend them. Then I found +mother's trunks in the garret. Later Don and I thought of the ferry +and had for the first time some money of our own." + +Kenny looked crestfallen. + +"And there is nothing more?" he said. "Think, Joan, think!" + +"Nothing," said Joan. "Donald and I were afraid of Uncle. We never +dared to ask him questions. And he never spoke of my mother save to +sneer and curse the stage. What is it, Kenny? What are you thinking?" + +"I think," said Kenny, making a colossal effort to speak with the calm +he could not feel, "that somewhere buried on the farm is a great deal +of money. I think it belonged to your mother and that it was left in +trust to your uncle for Donald and you--" + +"Kenny!" + +"I think," went on Kenny steadily, "that this singular clause in your +uncle's will was a miser's struggle between justice and his instinct +for hoarding and hiding. Money he had kept so long he hated to +relinquish. Yet he dared not keep it. And so he buried the money. +God knows how or where, and shunted the responsibility of its finding +upon me. If it was never found, as perhaps he hoped, he had still +fulfilled his trust and the dictates of his conscience in willing the +money back to you." + +"But, Kenny, how could he bury it?" + +"How often," reminded Kenny, "has Hughie in summer wheeled him out to +the orchard and left him there? How often has he wheeled himself +around the walk by the lilac bush? And he was clever and cunning. +Could he not, from time to time, hide the money in his bathrobe and +find some means of digging?" + +Joan looked unconvinced. + +"And where," she said, "would my mother, who earned her living on the +stage, get money? A great deal, I mean?" + +"I--I don't know," said Kenny, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "I +wish I did. Sometime or other, Joan, there has been Craig money and a +lot of it. This old house is the house of an aristocrat with money +enough to gratify expensive whims. Either the money was willed to her +or with the beauty she must have had, she married it. They are the +things you and I must find out somehow. Of one thing I am absolutely +convinced. There is money. It did not belong to your uncle. It is +hidden somewhere on the farm." + +He told her of the fairy mill, of the old man's gloating pride in the +word miser, of All Souls' Eve and Adam Craig's hints about the apple +tree and the lilac bush. + +"And many another place," added Kenny bitterly, "that slipped by me for +I didn't listen!" + +"It is unlikely," Joan said, "that he would find the opportunity for +hiding money in so many places. Why then did he name them all?" + +"His conscience forced him to give some inkling of the spot where he +had hidden money not his own. But he purposely multiplied our chances +of failure. Joan, I've got to get a spade and dig up the apple-tree!" + +His excitement was contagious. Neither of them heard Hughie in the +doorway until he spoke. + +"Mr. O'Neill," he said eagerly, "have you read the will?" + +Kenny struck himself upon the forehead and stared at Hughie in genuine +resentment. Hughie was another problem. But Hughie's quiet eyes +pleaded; and Hughie's ruddy face was honest. Kenny told him all. + +"I'm not surprised," said Hughie. "From the minute I set foot here +three years back, I said, and Hannah said, that Mr. Craig was a miser. +And it's common talk in the village." + +But Kenny was off through the doorway with the will in his hand. Joan +and Hughie followed him to the kitchen. + +Here when the will had been read again commotion seized them all. +Hughie went out to the barn to hunt a spade, Hannah trotted about +talking of wraps, Hetty found a lantern for Kenny and Kenny burned his +fingers lighting it, and stepped on the cat. Joan soothed the outraged +feline with a nervous laugh. There was madness in the air. In an +interval of blank disgust in which he criticized the length of the +cat's tail and the clarion quality of his yell, Kenny fumed off +barnwards in search of Hughie. His excitement was compelling. Hannah +headed a cloaked exodus from the kitchen, chirping an astonishment +which she claimed was unprecedented in her quiet life. + +They straggled up the orchard hill in a flutter. + +It was snowing a little. The coldness of the air was soft and heavy. +Hannah and Hughie held the lanterns high and with a startling attack +that made the dirt fly, Kenny began to dig. + +The lantern light rayed off grotesquely through the leafless orchard +but the silent group, intent upon the energetic digger, watched only +the spot where the fan-like rays converged upon the spade. The wind, +sharp, intermittent and bringing with it now and then a flurry of snow, +flapped their clothes about them. Kenny, pausing to wipe his forehead, +thought the night warm. Joan's eyes, dark, solemn, frightened, spurred +him on to greater effort. He dug furiously, flinging earth in all +directions. Hughie marvelled at his madcap speed and the strength of +his sinewy arms. His jaw was set. His face, dark and vivid in the +lantern light, shone with a boy's excitement. But when the wind came +he looked defiant. They could not know that to him, then, the spirit +of Adam Craig seemed to come with a sigh and a rustle and hover near +them. + +Hughie took his turn at the spade but to Kenny his methodical +competence proved an irritant. He was glad when Hughie's back gave out +and forced him to surrender. + +"Mr. O'Neill," said Hannah flatly after what seemed an interminable +interval of digging, "you've dug a hole big enough to bury yourself. +Mr. Craig's money couldn't be no further down than that. Myself I +think you'd better let it go until morning. It's snowin' harder every +minute and we'll all get our death of cold." + +Kenny shuddered at the homely phrase. But he wiped the dirt and +perspiration from his forehead and went off toward the kitchen in +gloomy silence, his energy and optimism gone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +DIGGING DOTS + +So madness settled down upon the Craig farm. + +Futile, flurried days of digging followed for which Kenny, delving +desperately in his memory, supplied forgotten clues. Fearful lest the +villagers might take it into their heads to climb the hill to Craig +Farm and help them dig, he pledged every one to secrecy and went on +digging, with Hughie at his heels. The suspense became fearful and +depressing. + +On the third day Hannah rebelled. The gloom and mystery were getting +on her nerves. + +"Hetty," she said irritably, "if you're standin' at the window there, +figurin' out where Mr. Craig's money is likely to be buried, you can +stop it this minute and clean the lamps. Your father's out pulling up +the floor-boards in the barn and Mr. O'Neill's digging up the lilac +bush for the third time. And that's enough. It beats me how Mr. +O'Neill can go on rememberin' so much now he's got his memory started. +He just seems to unravel things out of it overnight. It keeps me all +worked up. I feel as if I ought to whisper when I speak and every +night the minute I get to sleep I find myself diggin' in first one +outlandish place and then another. And if I'm not diggin' in my sleep, +your father is, with jerks and starts and grunts enough to wake the +dead. I'm all unstrung. So far as I can see the only thing we're +findin' is nerves. One thing I will say: It was dull and lonesome +before Mr. O'Neill came and I missed him when he went but dear knows, +it was peaceful. It's been one thing right after the other. Who upset +Mr. Abbott in the river, I'd like to know, and almost hit him in the +head with an oar? Who kept Mr. Craig so upset that he threw his brandy +bottle at your father most every morning? Who sang the roan cow into +kickin' at the milk? Who--" + +"Sh!" said Hetty. + +It seemed that Mr. O'Neill at that minute was not digging up the lilac +bush. There was a sound of hurried footsteps in the room beyond and he +came in with a piece of letter paper in his hand. + +"Look, Hannah," he cried. "Look! I found it among Mr. Craig's papers. +It's a rude chart of the farm, picked out here and there in dots." + +Hannah wiped her arms and put on her glasses. The paper filled her +with excitement. + +"Sakes alive, Mr. O'Neill," she exclaimed, "what will you do now?" + +"Do?" said Kenny wildly. "Do? There's only one thing to do, of +course. Hughie and I will dig up the dots. I wish to Heaven I could +find a Leprechaun somewhere under a thorn-bush." + +"What's a Leper John?" demanded Hannah. + +"A fairy shoemaker," explained Kenny absently, "in a red coat and he +wears buckled shoes and knee-breeches and a hat with a peak and always +he's mendin' a shoe that he doesn't finish, find him and never once let +him trick you into lookin' away and he'll tell you where treasure is +hidden, always." + +Hannah blinked. + +"What ye need most to my mind, Mr. O'Neill," she said earnestly, "is a +regiment of grave-diggers and stone-cutters to help you and Hughie get +the thing done." + +Night came upon them with Hughie digging up a dot beside the well and +Kenny again in the orchard. Everything led back somehow to the +orchard, his memory, the chart, even his own conviction. + +That night in a dream Kenny distinctly saw the weary little doctor with +a bag of mystery in his hand and a spade over his shoulder walking down +the orchard hill. + +He awoke at dawn with a shiver of excitement. The doctor! What could +be more reasonable? Adam had known him for a lifetime. Whom else +would he trust? The thought nerved him to heroics. + +Kenny climbed out of bed and dressed, shiveringly conscious that the +morning was cold enough to turn his breath to steam. It was that +period of indistinctness moreover when farmers and roosters, he knew, +were getting up all over the dawn, but Kenny, with little time and no +inclination at all for melancholy rebellion, tip-toed down the stairway +with his shoes in his hand. He put them on by the kitchen fire. There +was water by the window in a milk-pail. He poured some in a basin, +washed his face and hands and found the water cold enough to hurt his +face. Still his excitement kept him keyed to a pitch of singular and +optimistic hilarity. Through the kitchen window came the pale glimmer +of snow. He hoped Hughie wouldn't hear him harnessing Nellie, and +shoot at the barn. The possibility sent him to the kitchen stairway. +It wound upward in an old-fashioned twist to the room above. + +"Hughie!" he called in a low voice. "Hughie!" + +There was a noise of many creaks overhead. + +"I'm going to hitch up Nellie and drive over to Dr. Cole's farm. I--I +feel sure he buried the money!" + +"God Almighty!" exclaimed Hughie. + +But Kenny was already on his way to the kitchen door. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +CHECKMATE! + +Daylight came bleak and cold as Kenny drove rapidly up the doctor's +lane. The aggrieved mare had traveled. Through the farm window, green +with potted begonias, Kenny could see the doctor already at his +breakfast. A young colored girl was pouring out his coffee. The +doctor himself opened the door. + +"Well, Mr. O'Neill," he exclaimed, "who's sick? Not Joan, I hope?" + +"No," said Kenny, following the doctor back to the table. "No, nobody +sick." + +"Sit down," invited the doctor, "I always figure you can talk as well +sitting as standing and you can rest. Won't you have some breakfast?" + +"I couldn't eat," said Kenny. "Doctor," he added hoarsely, "would +it--be possible--for me--to speak to you--alone?" + +The doctor nodded. In a life made up of emergencies as his was, +nothing astonished him. + +"Annie," he said kindly, "just tell Mrs. Cole not to hurry down to +breakfast. And close the door." + +Kenny took the will from his pocket and spread it on the table. + +The doctor wearily fumbled for his glasses and put them on. + +"Hum!" he said. "The old man's will, eh? I've been wondering about +it. Well, he didn't leave much but the farm, did he? And it might +have been better for Don and Joan if he'd taken it with him. Nobody +around here would buy it. A barn of a place! And the land's full of +stone." + +"Ah!" said Kenny significantly. "But Adam Craig was a miser!" + +"Pooh!" said the doctor with a sniff. "Who told you that?" + +Kenny stared. + +"I found it out for myself," he said stiffly. "Since then I have +learned that it is common rumor in the village. And the old man, even +when I--I spoke of it directly to him, never troubled to deny it." + +"Shucks!" said the little doctor crossly. "He liked it. It saved his +pride." + +"Saved--his--pride!" + +The doctor nodded. + +"Mr. O'Neill," he said, "country folks stare less unkindly at a miser +than at some other things. It hurt Adam, knowing his guilt, to see the +old Craig home going to rack and ruin. Had a lot of money when his +father died. A lot. And he wanted folks to think he still had it. +But he didn't. Went through it, Mr. O'Neill, hitting the high spots. +Came home a penniless wreck of a man, body and soul and pocketbook +warped beyond recall. I was there when they settled up his estate. As +a matter of fact my brother was his lawyer. And what he hadn't lost in +gambling and dissipation he lost speculating in Wall Street. Oh, he +never tried the miser stunt with me. He knew that I knew that he +hadn't a cent." + +"Not a cent!" echoed Kenny feebly. "Not a cent!" He cleared his +throat. "Not--a cent." + +"Not a cent," said the doctor cheerfully. "And barely a living from +that farm." + +"Dr. Cole," said Kenny steadily, "he may have lost his own money. Of +that I know nothing. But what about his sister's?" + +"Why," said the doctor at once, "she hadn't any. Old Craig senior left +it all to Adam. She ran away, you know, and went on the stage. He +never forgot it. 'Tisn't much of a story. She was a darned pretty +girl, high-spirited and clever, and the old man was a devil like Adam. +A scandal of that kind fussed us up pretty much in those days. I +remember I went to see Cordelia once in some old-time play. She was +wearing those old gowns that Joan, poor child, wears now. Always had a +feeling after that that I was a part of the scandal. Mother," he added +dryly, "felt so too." + +The doctor shook his head lugubriously. + +"She was a widow when she died," reminded Kenny. + +"Yes." + +"The money I mean must have come from her husband and she entrusted it +to Adam for Joan and Donald." + +"But my dear fellow," said the doctor kindly, "he hadn't any. He was +an actor chap. Cordelia came home to the farm to die while Adam was in +Europe. She hadn't a cent." + +"Not a cent!" said Kenny again. "Not a cent!" + +"Not a cent," repeated the mystified doctor. + +"Oh, my God!" said Kenny. "And I've dug up the farm!" + +It was the doctor's turn to stare. + +"You dug up the farm!" he said blankly. + +Sick with discouragement Kenny pointed to the will. + +"Read it," he said bitterly. "Particularly the 'remainder, residue and +situate' part." + +The doctor read and he read slowly. Before he reached the clause in +question Kenny was on his feet, mopping his forehead. He told of the +fairy mill and the chair by the fire. + +The doctor poured himself another cup of coffee and looked at Kenny +with a shade of asperity. Fairies, it would seem, were a little out of +his line. + +"Adam had a good many spells like that," he said, "'specially when he +was drinking hard. Off like a shot, hanging out of his chair. Mere +coincidence. As for the night he staggered out to the sitting room, it +is possible as you suggest that he did it in a fit of drunken +superstition. But there wasn't any money on his conscience. Couldn't +be for there wasn't any. If he feared at all to have his sister +revisit her home--queer notion, that, Mr. O'Neill! You Irish run to +notions!--it was simply because he hadn't given her kids a square deal +and he knew it." + +Again the doctor adjusted his glasses and went back to the will. + +"Doctor," flung out Kenny desperately, "I myself have seen indisputable +proof in that house that Adam Craig was a miser--even the way he +handled money." + +The doctor sighed and looked up. And he smiled his weary, +understanding smile. + +"What you saw, Mr. O'Neill," he said soberly, "was something very close +to poverty. He was selfish and he had to have his brandy. His economy +in every other way was horrible. Horrible! As for the way he handled +money, as I said before, he wanted you to think he was a miser. It +seems," added the doctor dryly as he went back to his reading, "that he +was a grain too successful." + +"He hated his sister," blurted Kenny. "Why would he hate her and +revile her memory unless he knew he had wronged her? Why did he have +black wakeful hours in bed and have to drink himself to sleep?" + +"Adam," said the doctor with weary sarcasm, "fancied his sister had +brought disgrace upon the grand old family name of Craig. She was a +good girl and clever. But Adam believed in sacrifice and conventional +virtue--for women. Most men do. And he knew the way folks feel up +here about the stage. The world's queer, Mr. O'Neill. And Adam was +just a little queerer than the rest of it. In a sense he had wronged +her. God knows he was cruel enough to those two poor youngsters. As +for his passion for drinking himself to sleep--well, when a man's had +straight legs and plenty of health, such a fate as Adam's hits hard. + +"He hated Joan and Donald," said Kenny. "Why?" + +"He resented their drain upon his pocket-book. He hadn't enough left +for them and brandy too. Though the Lord knows they never cost him +much. Nellie Craig had them for a while after Cordelia died. Good old +soul, Nellie. But her tongue hung in the middle and worked both ways +like a bell-clapper. I always blamed her for the start of the miser +yarn. Adam managed to get it over on her and that was enough." + +He made a final effort to read the will and while Kenny sat in stony +silence, choking back a creepy feeling of despair, reached the clause +pertaining to the residue of Adam's wealth. + +"Ah!" he said. + +"Well?" choked Kenny. "Is there some damned commonplace explanation +for that, too?" + +The doctor tapped the paper with his stubby finger. + +"And you," he marveled, "who knew so well his devilish cunning! That +clause I think was his last cruel jest." + +Kenny turned white. + +"A trap!" he said. + +"A trap," said the doctor. "And you've swallowed bait and trap and +all." + +"How he must have hated me?" + +"On the contrary," said the little doctor warmly, "I think in his way +he was fond of you. He counted the hours until nightfall, that I know." + +"And I--" said Kenny with a sharp intake of his breath, "I killed him +with that story of the chair." + +"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" said the doctor kindly. "Chair or no chair +he would have died just the same. I saw it coming. And your presence +there this summer freed him entirely from money worries. He even paid +me." + +"Yes," said Kenny, "my money helped him drink himself to death." + +The doctor sighed. + +"Oh, well," he said, "that too would have happened just the same." + +Kenny brushed his hair back dazedly from his forehead and rose. He +felt as if he had fallen from a great height and hit his head. It was +numbly aquiver. As he picked up the will and put it in his pocket, +Adam Craig, sinister and unassailable, seemed to mock him from the +grave. His last trap! Almost Kenny could hear him chuckle: +"Checkmate, Kenny, checkmate! And the game is won." How well he had +known his opponent's excitable fancy! + +"Doctor," asked Kenny drearily, "why were all the books in the +farmhouse in Adam's room?" + +"There," said the doctor, "I think he meant to be kind. Cordelia had +had all sorts of schooling and so had he. I think by denying the +youngsters books and too much knowledge, he thought to clip their wings +at the start and keep them contented. In tune with the farm, I mean, +and willing to stay. He'd seen enough of ruinous discontent when his +sister and himself went out in the world and tried their wings. Just a +fancy. I may be wrong. Well, Mr. O'Neill, I'm sorry. There's no +mystery and no money--" + +"No," said Kenny dully, "no mystery and no money." He moved toward the +door with a curious trance-like feeling that this was still a part of +his dream. + +"Just a commonplace story of self," said the doctor, following him to +the door, "with two ragged little kids the victims. Myself I think +it's just as well, Mr. O'Neill, to say as little as possible about +things of this sort. Tales up here grow. And fire that isn't fed goes +out. It's bound to. I never had the heart myself to deny the old +man's miser yarn. When I do talk, I try to say as little as possible +and keep my two feet solidly on the ground." + +He watched Kenny down the steps and into the buggy. + +"Humph!" said the little doctor. "Thought he had his fingers on a +regular swap-dollinger of a mystery, didn't he? To my thinking, the +only mystery in the farmhouse is himself!" + +And Kenny, climbing into the buggy in hot rebellion, felt that he had +come decked out gorgeously in rainbow balloons. And the doctor, +practical and unromantic, had pushed a weary finger through them, one +by one, watching them collapse with his bored and kindly smile of +understanding. Life after all, reflected Kenny irritably, was a matter +of adjectives and any man was at the mercy of his biographer. He +himself could have told that story of Adam and Cordelia Craig until no +man could have called it commonplace and unromantic. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +AN INSPIRATION + +Afterward Kenny thought that Nellie must have ambled into the doctor's +barnyard and turned herself, for he had no memory of guiding her. A +paralyzed conviction of another anti-climax had gripped him. He +remembered turning into the road with a haunting sense of eyes upon +him--Adam's eyes, piercing and bright with malevolent amusement. The +chart! The hints! The will! The cunning of him! What would he tell +Hughie and Hannah and Hetty? What would he tell Joan? What was there +to tell save that he had put two and two together and made five, a +romantic five lurid with melodrama? + +And the brutal practice hour in Adam's room when he had told the truth! +Kenny went sick and cold and shivered. How unwittingly he had flung +the old man's poverty in his teeth! How at times it must have hurt! +The memory made him shrink. And it hadn't been truth. He had battled +for Joan with misinterpretation and cruelty; he had practiced the truth +with the telling of untruth. And the proud old man who veiled his +poverty with pretense, had listened, listened inscrutably and laughed, +ready to thrust from the grave itself. + +Ah! Fate was forever flinging down her gauntlet. + +"To Kennicott O'Neill, my friend, my signet ring." His friend! In +spite of the practice hour--his friend. Kenny's eyes smarted. + +"Oh, Adam, Adam!" he said, sick at heart, "I beg your pardon." + +The snow crunched steadily under Nellie's feet. Kenny stared sadly at +the road ahead. Could he tell Joan what now he knew: that when the few +bills were paid and the estate balanced, there would be no money left +for the year of study? + +Perhaps Joan would marry him now--at once--to-morrow! And they could +leave the farm together. After all there was silver to his cloud. +Kenny brightened. + +A preposterous notion of hers, that unfitness. The memory of the +sunset hour in the cabin came again to darken the silver lining of his +cloud. Joan's arms, Joan's voice, Joan's eyes had pleaded; it would +make her happier to wait and study and watch his world before she came +to it, his wife. + +Kenny sighed. + +It would make her--happier. And the problem still was with him. + +Kenny cursed the evil in the world that had forced men to convention. +If only he could help her! If only-- + +A car was coming up behind him with a familiar noise of rattle. It was +the doctor. Kenny sat up, alert, inspired, excited. + +"Doctor," he called cheerfully, "is there a long distance telephone +near?" + +"A mile on. Road to the right," called the doctor, inwardly amazed at +his visitor's mercurial disposition. "They call it Rink's Hotel. Not +much of a place. Really a road house. But you'll find a telephone." + +Kenny found the telephone at Rink's Hotel in a pantry near the barroom +and closed the door to insure his privacy. It seemed an interminable +interval of waiting, an interval of blankness filled with voices +calling numbers on to further voices, before the Club Central answered. +Again he waited, tapping with impatience on the table. When the voice +came he wanted, it was far away and drowsy. Kenny looked at his watch. +It was not yet eight o'clock. + +"Garry," he said, "is that you?" + +"Yes. Who's calling?" + +"It's I--Kenny." + +"Kenny!" Garry's astonished voice came clearly over the wire. "Kenny, +where on earth did you go?" he demanded. "And what's the matter? Is +anything wrong? What are you doing up in the middle of the night?" + +Kenny snorted. + +"Garry," he said, "I'm mailing to you now in a very few minutes my +check for four thousand dollars--" + +"Say it again." + +"I said--I'm mailing to you--my check--for--four thousand--dollars." + +"Wait a minute, Kenny. This wire must be out of order." + +Kenny swore beneath his teeth. + +"I said," he repeated with withering distinctness, "that +I--am--mailing--to--you--my--check--for--four--thousand--dollars. And +I want you to cash it in old bills. Get, that, Garry, please. Old +bills." + +"Old bills!" repeated Garry in a strangled voice. "For the love of +Mike! . . . _Old bills_!" + +"Garry! For God's sake, listen! This is absolute, unadulterated +common sense. I want you to get that money in old bills, the older the +better. Ragged if you can. And I want you to send it to me, Craig +Farm, by registered package, special delivery." + +"Are you in some mess or other? Because if you are I'll bring it." + +"No, I can wait. I particularly don't want you to bring it. I can't +explain now. I'll write you all the details. Then I want you to get a +statement from the bank. Even with the four thousand gone, my balance +ought to be at least a thousand dollars. See what they make it." + +"Yes." + +"Next I want you to call up Ann Marvin and ask her if she's still +looking for another girl to share her studio with her . . . Ann Marvin." + +"Peggy's with her." + +"I know that. She said she wanted a third girl. If she does, tell her +I'm bringing my ward--" + +"Your--what!" + +"My--ward--" + +"Kenny," came in cold and scandalized tones from the other end, "have +you been to bed at all?" + +"If you make any pretense at all of being my friend," roared Kenny in a +flash of temper, "will you do me the favor of assuming that I'm +serious? I'm not drunk. I'm not insane. I've slept the night +through. And I'm tired and terribly in earnest." + +"You did say your ward." + +"I did. Mr. Craig--the uncle, you remember, an invalid--died. And +he's made me the guardian of his niece--" + +"The poor boob." Garry's voice was sad and sincere. + +"Garry! Are you or are you not my friend?" + +"I am." + +"Then listen. Next I want you to ask Max Kreiling for the name and +address of the French woman he knows who teaches music--" + +"Just a minute, Kenny, old man. Let me say this all after you. I am +to cash your check for four thousand dollars in old bills. Ragged if +possible. I am to send it registered and special delivery to Craig +Farm. I am to call up Ann and tell her about your--your ward. And I'm +to ask Max for the name of the French woman who teaches music." + +"Right. Garry, has Brian been back?" + +"No. John Whitaker may have heard from him. I don't know. I haven't +seen him. Oh, by the way, Kenny, Joe Curtis was in here blazing up and +down my studio. Said you promised to paint his wife's portrait. +What'll I tell him?" + +"Tell him," said Kenny, "to go to--No, never mind. I'll be needing to +work. Tell him I'll be back in New York positively by the end of next +week." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +MISER'S GOLD + +He was passionately glad in the week that followed that Fate, prodigal +in her gifts to him, had made him too an actor with a genius for +convincing. For he had to go on digging dots, feigning wild excitement +when his heart was cold within him. He hated spades. He hated dirt. +He almost hated Hughie, who went from dot to dot upon the chart with +unflagging zeal and system. Kenny himself dug anywhere at any time and +moodily escaped when he could to write letters. He was getting his +plans in line for departure. + +He had settled the problem of the doctor, after an interval of bitter +struggle, with a combination of fact and fancy. He said truthfully +that the doctor had rejected all notions of buried money with his usual +air of weariness. He added untruthfully--and with set teeth he +challenged the Angel Gabriel to settle the tormenting problem in any +other way--that the doctor had conceded the probability of Adam's +burying money though he had had but a few thousand dollars at best to +bury. + +"That," said Hughie, "is enough to dig for!" And he went on with his +digging. + +The need was desperate and Kenny did his best. Of the doctor's story +of Adam and Cordelia Craig he told enough. And he kept on talking +miser's gold when he hated the name of it. His air of excitement, said +Hughie who talked endlessly of dots, dug and dreamed them, kept them +all upon their toes. + +At nightfall of the third day when Kenny's hatred of dots was +approaching a frenzy and a ballet of spades danced with horrible rhythm +through his dreams, the package came from Garry. Kenny took it with a +careless whistle and went slowly up the stairs. + +The closing of his bedroom door transformed him. He found matches and +a lamp and marveled at the erratic pounding of his heart. It was a +muffled beat of triumph. Mad laughter, tender and joyous, lurked +perilously in his throat. His feet would have pirouetted in gay +abandon had he not, with much responsible feeling of control, forced +himself to walk with dignity and calm. But his nervous flying fingers +fumbled clumsily with string and paper and taxed his patience to the +utmost. + +The bills were incredibly old and ragged. Kenny stared at them with a +low whistle of delight, blessing Garry. Moreover, Fate and Garry had +chosen to solve a problem for him by packing the bills in a strong tin +box. To unpack the money and dent the tin was the work of a moment. +When he had darkened the shining surface with lamp-smoke and rubbed it +clean with a handkerchief which he burned, the box, discolored and +dented, had an inescapable look of age, like the ragged bills. + +Kenny went through the dark hallway to Adam's room with cat-like tread, +the searchlight that had been a part of his road equipment in his +pocket, a bag of wood-ash, purloined the day before from Hannah's +kitchen, and the battered box tucked unobtrusively beneath his coat. +He locked himself in and drew a long, gasping breath of intense relief. + +Though wind creaks startled him again and again as he made a pedestal +of faded books for his searchlight and directed its glaring circle upon +the blackened wall of the fireplace, no dreaded hand upon the knob +disturbed him. + +He worked noiselessly and with care, removing the lower bricks with his +penknife. + +Brick after brick he loosened, burrowing deep in the solid wall; then +with infinite care and patience he walled the money in, filled the +crevices with wood-ash and hid the remaining bricks in the chimney. + +He went down to supper with an unusual air of calm, but his head was +aching badly. Hughie, Joan said, was nearing the last dot. He was +discouraged and Hannah was cross. Kenny toyed absently with the food +upon his plate. + +"Mavourneen," he said, "I'm wondering." + +"Wondering what, Kenny?" + +"If perhaps the chart isn't purposely misleading--" + +"Like Uncle's hints to you?" + +"Yes." + +"I hadn't thought of it." + +"Every clue we have found has sent us out of doors." + +"Would he, I wonder, Kenny, hide the money in the house?" + +"I'm wondering too." + +"The sitting room!" + +"There," admitted Kenny, "he was often alone." + +"Kenny, shall we look to-night?" + +Kenny had his moment of doubt. + +"We'll ask Hughie," he said. + +And so with Hannah scoffing but noticeably on ahead with the lamp, they +climbed the stairs and tore the room to pieces--to no avail. In a +final burst of inspiration Hughie dragged the faded carpet from its +tacks and filled the room with dust. Sneezing and coughing, they faced +each other in the melee with looks of blank discouragement. Even +Kenny's inexhaustible energy and excitement seemed on the point of +waning. He stared drearily at the fireplace. + +"It's cold in here," he said, shivering. + +"Yes," said Joan, "we should have built a fire." + +"The fireplace!" cried Hughie hoarsely. + +"It's too late now," said Kenny irritably. "I'm chilled through." + +"No, no, Mr. O'Neill, I'm not meaning the fire. It's the one place we +haven't looked." + +"It won't hurt none to look, Mr. O'Neill," urged Hannah, who knew that +Kenny's energy was subject to undependable ebb and now. "If Hughie +goes out of here with that fireplace on his mind, he'll dream all night +about it." + +Kenny strode to the fireplace with Hughie at his heels and jerked +impatiently at the mantel. It was sturdy and unyielding. + +"I feared so," he said with a shrug. + +Hughie seized the lamp. + +"Hold the lamp, Mr. O'Neill," he begged, crouching. "I've got to look +at them bricks. Careful, sir! You're tipping it." + +Huddled in the glare of the lamp they stared in fascination at the +smoky bricks. + +"The bricks are loose!" exclaimed Hughie. "Look here!" He rattled one +with his finger. + +Kenny emitted a long low whistle of intense amazement. + +"Hughie, where's your knife?" he flung out wildly. "I think we're on +the trail!" + +"The lamp's shaking!" warned Hannah. "Let me hold it." + +"Oh, my God!" gasped Hughie with the dot fever flaring in his honest +eyes. "That ain't mortar. It's only ashes. Look!" + +Kenny frantically pulled out a brick and dropped it with a clatter. +Another and another. + +"Hold the lamp closer, Hannah!" directed Hughie, reaching within. +"There's something here!" + +Shaking violently he pulled forth a battered box and flung back the +lid. It was stuffed to the brim with ragged money. + +"Glory be to God!" cried Kenny and proceeded to pull the mantel down. + +But he found no more. + +"And to think of him burrowin' there in the bricks," marveled Hannah, +"and him that weak a child could push him over." + +"Ah!" said Kenny, "but his will was strong." + +He counted the money with trembling fingers and a smile, curiously +pleased and tender, and declared his belief that the doctor was right. +The ragged hoarding--he shivered slightly with revulsion as he touched +a tattered bill--represented the rest, residue and remainder of Adam's +wealth wheresoever situate. And thanks to Hughie's inspiration the +executor had found it. + +"Four thousand dollars!" he announced at last in a voice of +disappointment. + +"And a lucky thing," said Hughie with an air of pride, "that I thought +of the fireplace. For it might have laid there buried for the rest of +time." + +"Four thousand dollars!" gasped Hannah in a reverential voice. "Four +thousand dollars! Well, Mr. O'Neill, it may not be much, as you seem +to think after all the dots you and Hughie have been a-diggin', but I +say it's a lot. It ought to buy the child all the frocks and teachers +in New York." + +"It will see her through the year," said Kenny. + +Joan's eyes widened. + +"It would see me through a decade!" she exclaimed. + +Kenny smiled. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +KENNY'S WARD + +Peace came mercifully to Craig farm with the finding of Adam's money. + +"Toby," Joan whispered to the cat, her soft cheek pressed against his +fur, "I'm going away. And I can't believe it! I can't! I can't! I +can't!" + +"Toby will miss you," said Hannah. "And so will I. And so will Hughie +and Hetty." She cleared her throat. "As for Mr. O'Neill, Toby won't +be likely to miss him at all. He's stepped too many inches off his +tail. Hughie thinks it must be paralyzed. I never saw Mr. O'Neill +headin' for a new dot but what I knew Toby would be sure to stick his +tail in the way and start a row." + +Joan's face clouded. + +"Oh, Hannah, if only I knew where Donald is!" + +Hannah sighed. + +"I wish you did, dear." + +"It seems so dreadful with Uncle gone and everything changed. And +Donald doesn't even know. Think, Hannah, I may pass him in the train." + +"You may," said Hannah. "And then again you mayn't." + +"What if he comes home? What if he writes? It seems that I just +should be here." + +"If he writes, I'll send the letter. And if he comes, Hughie can ride +down and telegraph you word." + +"It's snowing," exclaimed Joan at the kitchen window. "Harder and +harder. Oh, Hannah, if it keeps up we shan't be able to go to Briston +to-morrow for my suit." + +"We'll go in the sleigh. Hughie spoke of it at breakfast." + +"A brown suit," mused Joan with shining eyes. "A brown hat and furs! +Think, Hannah! _Furs_! I do hope I shall look well in them." + +"Mr. O'Neill said you would and he ought to know." + +Joan laughed and blushed. + +At twilight the next night she came home dressed warmly in furs and a +suit the color of her eyes. + +"She would wear it home, Mr. O'Neill," whispered Hannah on ahead. "And +all, I think, to surprise you." + +Often afterward Kenny remembered her there in the half twilight of the +kitchen, joyously crying out his name. There had been a glimmer of +shining tin, a halo of light from the tilted stove-lids, purple at the +window panes and beyond snow and the distant tinkle of sleighbells in +the barn. Hetty, he remembered, had lighted the kitchen lamp and +gasped. A lovely child, proud and mischievous! Her youth startled him. + +In a week she was ready and eager to go but the day of farewell found +her clinging to Hannah in a panic. + +When at last the old Craig carriage creaked slowly away down the lane +with Hannah and Hetty waving from the farm-porch, the spirit of +adventure flickered forlornly out and left her sobbing. + +"Good-bye, Hannah dear!" she called, her eyes wet and wistful. +"Good-bye, Hetty! And--and don't forget to write me _all_ the news! +And don't let Toby catch the birds!" + +Hughie, blinking and upset, stared straight ahead at Nellie's ears. + +Kenny sobered. How great his trust! Hannah, waving her apron back +there and wiping her eyes, trusted him. And so did Hughie and Joan and +even perhaps old Adam Craig; and Mr. Abbott whose gentle grilling he +had endured with merely surface patience. + +"Don't cry, Joan, please!" he begged, understanding how dear familiar +things are apt to loom in the pain of separation. And then with her +hand to his lips, he pledged himself to make her happiness the religion +of his love. It was a pledge he was destined to keep inviolate. + +Ordinarily to Kenny, impatient in intervals of discomfort and delay, +the trip with its rural junctions and branch roads would have been +interminable torture. But to-day, with Joan's eyes, wide, dark, +intent, he chose to marvel with her. + +They lunched at noon between trains in a little country inn. At seven, +having come after much fragmentary travel into a comforting world of +express trains and Pullmans, they dined in the train itself. Joan +watched the flying landscape, dotted with snow and vanishing lights, +smiled with the shining wonder of it all in her eyes, and could not +eat. Kenny tried scolding and found her sorry, but she could not eat. + +By eleven, when the train thundered into the terminal at Thirty-third +Street, New York was wrapped in a scudding whirl of white dotted +dizzily with lights. Already to Kenny, buoyant, excited and inclined +to stride around in purposeless circles, the lonely farm was very far +away. He was back again in his own world with the roar of the city in +his ears--and Joan beside him. Ah! there he knew was the reason for +his gladness. Joan was beside him. + +The taxi he commandeered threaded its way south through a maze of +lights, hurrying crowds and noisy, weaving traffic to a tenement in +Greenwich Village. Joan, searching for the unknown sparkle of that +Bohemian world she had been unable to envisage, stared at the +unromantic basement doors ahead and clung to Kenny's hand. + +"It's quite all right, mavourneen," he assured her mischievously. +"Bohemia and poverty rub shoulders down here. It's picturesque. And +my club is only five blocks east. Beyond this door there's a +mysterious magic tunnel that runs straight through the house to +Somebody's back-yard. And in the back-yard is a castle and in the +castle studios and skylights, electricity and steam heat and wide, +old-fashioned fireplaces. Once it was a tenement--just like this with +fifty dirty people in it--but Ann with her magic wand has changed it +all." + +The basement door at which he had been ringing a prolonged Morse dot +and dash announcement of identity clicked back and revealed a dimly +lighted tunnel. At the end a flight of steps led up into a courtyard. + +Kenny closed the outer door and blocked out the roar of the city. New +York receded, its hum very far away. Their heels clanked loudly in the +quiet. + +As they climbed the steps and came out in the courtyard, Ann's windows, +trimly curtained, twinkled pleasantly through the snow ahead. + +A girl stood waiting in the doorway. + +"Hello, Ann!" called Kenny joyously. "Is it you?" + +"Hello, Kenny!" cried a pleasant contralto voice. "Hurry up. It's +snowing like fury." + +Kenny seized Joan's hand and raced her across the courtyard and up the +steps. When she came to a halt, shy and breathless, she was standing +by a crackling wood-fire in a room that seemed all coziness and color +and soft light. + +A tall girl with black hair, a clear skin and intelligent eyes was +smiling at them both. + +"Kenny," exclaimed Ann Marvin, "you Irish will-of-the-wisp! Where have +you been? Everybody's talking about you. Joan, dear, shake the snow +off your coat. You're beginning to melt." + +Joan's eyes opened wide at the sound of her name. Ann laughed and +pinched her flushed cheek. + +"My dear," she said drolly, "I know more than your name. Kenny sent me +a letter of measures, spiritual, mental and physical that would turn +Bertillon green with envy. If ever you default with all the foolish +hearts in New York I'll turn you over to the police. And you'll never +escape." + +Joan clung to her with a smile and a sigh of relief that made them both +laugh. + +"Ann," said Kenny in heartfelt gratitude, "you're a brick. I don't +wonder Frank Barrington's head over heels in love with you. You'll not +be mindin', Ann, dear, if I use your telephone?" + +"Sure, no!" mimicked Ann broadly. "It's yonder in the den." + +Kenny at the telephone called the Players' Club and with his lips set +for battle, asked for John Whitaker, whose methodical habits of +diversion for once in his life he blessed. When Whitaker's voice came, +brief and somewhat bored, he forgot to say: "Hello." + +"Whitaker," he demanded, "where's Brian? You must know by now." + +"Kenny! Is that you?" + +"Yes." + +"Where on earth have you been?" + +"Away. Where's Brian?" + +"Where's Brian?" Whitaker snorted. "He ought to be in a lunatic asylum +if you want my honest opinion. As to where he is, I told you before +and I'm telling you again, I'm pledged to secrecy. I've even destroyed +his address so I wouldn't be tempted--and my memory couldn't be worse. +I'd like to say right now, however, that he's more of an O'Neill than I +thought and I'm through with him." + +"Phew!" whistled Kenny, much too astonished for battle. "What--what's +up, John?" + +"What's up?" barked Whitaker, his voice tinged with acid. "Just this: +I handed the young fool a job that ten of the best newspaper men in New +York were pursuing and he turned me down cold to stay all winter in +some God-forsaken quarry where he's hacking up stone--" + +"Hacking up stone!" + +"Feels philanthropic. Grinds stone all day and at night helps a kid +he's known six months cram for a college exam. Damon and Pythias stuff +and I'm the goat. Pythias is seventeen by the way and wants to work +his way through college." + +"Mother of men!" said Kenny softly and thought of Joan's relief. + +"Sounds very beautiful and lofty in a letter," went on Whitaker, +angling for sympathy, "but of all the damned, high-falutin' lunacy I've +ever seen in men, that's the limit." + +He waited, confident in his expectation that Kenny would agree. The +voice that came back fairly bristled with virtue and approval. + +"You filled his head with notions about service, didn't you, Whitaker?" +demanded Kenny indignantly. "What's your idea of service anyway that +now when Brian's got a chance to be of absolute service to a kid who +needs him, you kick up your hind-heels and howl your head off. Sort of +a boomerang, isn't it? You came up to my studio, old man, and unloaded +some facts. Let me unload one right now. I'm with Brian. I think +he's a brick and a jewel for sense. And you can go to thunder!" + +And Kenny, with a gasping gurgle in his receiver ear, smiled sweetly +into the telephone and hung up with Whitaker roaring his name. He was +amazed, delighted and triumphant, uppermost in his mind the thought of +Joan's peace of mind. No further need to worry over Donald. + +He kissed his finger-tips to Ann who appeared in the doorway. + +"Your ward," she said, "is toasting her toes by the sitting-room fire. +Kenny, she's a dear!" + +"As sweet," said Kenny proudly, "as an Irish smile!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +THE STUDIO AGAIN + +The night-watchman at the Holbein Club greeted the prodigal with a +broad smile of welcome. + +"Wonder, I says, to the new bell-hop, I do wonder where Mr. O'Neill's +got to. Everybody's been wonderin'. Mr. Rittenhouse most of all," he +added, stopping the elevator at Kenny's floor. "I heard him grumblin' +just last night in the elevator to Mr. Fahr. Mr. Fahr seemed to feel +that you were off with the heathen somewhere paintin' 'em all up into +pictures." + +Kenny found the studio in a soulless state of order and blamed it +instantly upon Garry. Fifteen minutes later, gorgeous in his frayed +oriental bathrobe and his Persian slippers, he banged on the wall and +evoked a muffled shout of greeting. As usual Garry might or might not +be in bed. Kenny's time values had not altered. + +Garry came at once in bathrobe and slippers. + +"Lord, Kenny," he exclaimed warmly, "I'm glad you're back and sane. +But I'm mad as a wet hen!" + +"At me? My dear Garry!" + +"You didn't write, you know, after you said you would. You never +do--" + +"I telegraphed instead." + +"Your telegram," reminded Garry, "said 'O.K. Kenny.' And I'm chuck +full of curiosity and questions. Sit down. Every chair in the +studio's on a furlough." + +"So I see." + +"You left the studio in something of a mess. Sid tried to straighten +it out and nearly had brain fever. Got to babbling and wringing his +hands and we sent for Haggerty. She went on an order bust for two +days." + +"The old shrew! I suppose everything in the place is under something." + +He found cigarettes and a chair and settled back with an air of lazy +comfort. + +Garry made no attempt to disguise his impatience. + +"Kenny," he said, "you're the limit. If I'd ever telephoned into your +slumber and asked you to find four thousand ragged dollars and mail +them to me, and if I'd said I'd accidentally acquired a ward and was +bringing her back with me, you wouldn't sit there in patience and wait +for facts. Mind, old dear, I want the truth. It's likely to be a lot +queerer than anything you can make up." + +Kenny sighed--and told the truth. Garry listened in amazement. + +"Kenny," he said slowly, "you've roamed off before and gotten yourself +into some extraordinary messes and I honestly thought that summer in +China had taught you a lesson. But this tale of Adam Craig and the +miser money is the king-pin of them all. You've absolutely got to +house-clean that instinct for melodrama out of existence. It's a +peril; and furthermore expensive." + +"Don't rub it in," said Kenny. "Whatever you can think to say, I've +already told myself. Though," he added pensively, "it's queer, Garry. +Wherever I go, things begin to thicken up before I've had a chance to +be at fault in any way. And I'm so darned sick of anticlimaxes." + +"You keep yourself keyed up to such a pitch that anything normal's got +to be an anticlimax! Think of you digging dots when you knew there +wasn't any money! Think of you with a ward! Oh, my Lord!" finished +Garry with a gasp. "It's incredible. It--it really is." + +Kenny flushed and gnawed nervously at his lips. Could he tell Garry of +Samhain? + +"And think of you," said Garry, his voice changing, "salting the old +man's fireplace with your own money so that his niece could come down +here and study French and music! You wonderful, soft-hearted Irish +lunatic! I love you for it!" + +Kenny rose at once and began to bluster around the studio, damning +Haggerty. There was something disturbingly warm and honest in Garry's +eyes. Then with a sudden gesture of impatience he came back and his +troubled glance begged for understanding. + +"Garry," he blurted, "there's one thing that probably we shan't be +telling people for a year at least. And that is--that I love this girl +better than my life and I'm going to marry her." + +He waited with a fierce hurt challenge in his eyes for irreverence and +incredulity and even perhaps good-natured jeers, but Garry, sensing +something big and unfamiliar, held out his hand. Kenny wrung it in +passionate relief. + +"What's my balance?" he demanded. + +"I'm sorry I forgot that, Kenny. It's eight hundred and forty odd +dollars." + +"As usual," bristled Kenny, "they're lying." + +Garry refused to discuss the point. + +"And Brian, another Irish lunatic!" he marveled, shaking his head. +"Did Max write you the name of the French woman?" + +"Yes. 'Twas a Madame Morny. I've written her. Garry, darlin', where +on earth did you find that inspired collection of green rags?" + +"The bank managed somehow." + +"Weren't they curious?" + +"They were until I said the commission came from you. After that +nobody asked anything." + +Kenny went with him to the door, dreading the emptiness of the studio. +He was a little homesick for the farm. + +The order was irresistibly reminiscent of Brian, of the notebook and +the struggle that had driven him forth, a penitent, upon the road. The +fern was dead, like the first fever of his penance. The thought upset +him. Then something drew him to the door of Brian's room and he peered +in and closed it with a bang. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +PLAYTIME + +December found Joan with dark, happy eyes intent upon the rose-colored +phantasmagoria of existence, her worriment past. Donald was safe with +Brian. It hurt her a little that he did not write. + +"I think, girleen," said Kenny, intuitional as always, "that he fears +to write, thinking of course you are still at the farm and would try to +tempt him back. And I haven't a doubt he's set his teeth and vowed not +to come to you until he's made good." As indeed he had. + +After that, save for a wistful moment now and then, she seemed content, +trusting Brian. + +Unhappiness lay behind her like a forgotten shadow. After the +loneliness and the dreams and the hills, her playtime too had come as +Donald's had come to him in Brian's world of spring; and life was +whirling around her, brilliant, breathless, kaleidoscopic and +altogether beautiful, a fantastic fairyland that kept her dazzled and +delighted. + +It had no shadows for her wondering eyes; the shadows lay behind her. +New York with its shops where with Ann she had gasped and laughed and +colored and stared into mirrors, its lights, its crowds, its theaters, +its opera where Max Kreiling sang and left her with a sob in her heart, +its amazing Bohemia of success of which Kenny was a part, seemed to her +but a never-ending sparkle of romance and kindness. She spent +unwearied hours in Ann's studio, masquerading in a sculptor's smock and +staring at clay and marble with eyes of unbelief. And she tarried for +amazed intervals in the studio upstairs where Margot Gilberte plied +Cellini's art, embedding pennyweights of metal in hot pitch that, +cooling, held it like a dark and shapeless hand while Margot sculptured +elfin leaves and scrolls upon it. Curious things came to the jeweler's +desk where Margot worked; jewels cut and uncut, soft-colored +sea-pebbles, natural lumps of greenish copper, silver and gold and +brass (to Margot's eye there were no baser metals) malachite and coral +and New Zealand jade. Joan handled them all with gasps of reverence. + +"And this, Margot? How green it is!" + +"A peridot for a dewdrop in a leaf of gold. And there, Question-mark, +are the pink tourmalines I propose to use for rosebuds in this necklace +of silver leaves." + +"And blue sapphires!" + +"They are for pools of sea-water in some golden seaweed and the pearls +are for buds in some cherry leaves." + +"What an odd frail little tool, Margot!" + +"I made it myself," said Margot. "And now, cherie, if you don't run +along to Madame Morny, Kenny will scold me." + +She delighted Madame Morny with her willingness to work. She delighted +Kenny with her willingness to play. Nothing tired her. Together they +roamed to the quaint little restaurants of Bohemia; the Italian table +d'hotes where Kenny was inclined to twinkle at the youthful art +students who affected pretentious ties, the quiet old German restaurant +that once had been a church, Chinatown where you ate unskillfully with +chopsticks upon a table of onyx, and the Turkish restaurant where +everything, Sid said, was lamb. + +"Garry found it," he insisted. "I didn't. I'm glad I didn't, though a +lot of the Salmagundi men go over there and like it. The art students +too. Forty cents. Proprietor's the real thing--he wears a fizz." + +"Fuzz, darlin'," corrected Kenny gently. + +"Fez!" sputtered Sid in disgust. "Fez, of course. Everything's got +lamb in it, even the pastry and the coffee. I swear it has! I--I hate +lamb. Didn't know the Turks went in for it so much, did you, Kenny? +Jan computed a table of lamb percentages on the menu and I felt like +bleating. 'Pon my word I did. Menu's got a glossary and needs it. +Pilaf--that's rice. Lamb's something else. No, pilaf's lamb, and rice +is something else. Oh, hanged if I know. Lamb's lamb no matter how +you spell it." + +"Come along with us," suggested Kenny. His kindliness of late had +startled more than one, accustomed to his irresponsible caprices. + +"Please do!" said Joan; and Sid, delighted, and amazed as always, +repudiated at once his hatred of lamb. It was nourishing, he recalled +at once with a brazen air of sincerity, and the Turks disguise it in +amazingly enticing ways. + +Joan laughed. + +"Sid," she said, "you're a dear, blessed fibber and we want you with +us." + +Her poise and adaptability were startling. Her simplicity won them +all. To the girls who lived in Ann's studio building she seemed all +laughter and happiness and breathless eagerness to please. + +"She's just herself," said Peggy Jarvis, who lived with Ann and smiled +over the footlights each night in comedy that was comedy and to crowds +that were crowds, "She doesn't know that half the world is posing." + +Joan spent an afternoon in Peggy's dressing room during a matinee and +came home with moist, excited eyes. + +"Think, Peggy, think!" she exclaimed. "Once long ago that was my +mother's life." + +Peggy kissed her and rummaged for cigarettes. Joan's eyes rested upon +her pretty face with troubled indulgence. + +"Oh, Peggy," she pouted. "Why do you smoke?" + +"Because," said Peggy honestly, "I like it. Does it shock you, dear?" + +"It did at first," admitted Joan. "And even now I shouldn't care to +smoke myself. But then when that old painter Kenny likes so came here +with his wife, and her hair was so white and her face so kind, and she +smoked like a chimney--" + +"Joan!" + +"She did," insisted Joan. "Well, then, Peggy, I just stayed awake +that night and thought it all out. Peggy, do all painters' wives +smoke? I mean--" she flushed and stammered. + +Peggy's eyes were demure and roguish. + +"You ridiculous child!" she said. "Who's the painter?" + +Joan turned scarlet and bit her lip. + +"And what, sweetheart," begged Peggy with ready tact, "did you think +out?" + +"If you smoke," said Joan, "because you really want to, Peggy, it's all +right. But if a girl smokes just to--to appear startling and make men +look at her, then it's all wrong!" + +Peggy kissed her. + +"Joan, dear," she said, "you've the most amazing intelligence in that +small head that I ever met. Hum. If I'm not mistaken that's Kenny at +the door. He never stops ringing until he's sure you know he's there." + +Joan raced away to change her dress. + +With excitement in her cheeks and eyes she was extraordinarily lovely. +Kenny with difficulty kept his feet firmly upon the floor a yard away +from her. Peggy laughed up at him, her piquant face impudent and +understanding. + +"Kenny," she said under her breath, "I suppose you know you're in love +with your ward?" + +Kenny had had his flare with Peggy; and he had come out of it with +wounded vanity, somewhat baffled at Peggy's professed belief in the +transiency of feminine love. After all, Peggy said pensively, she knew +too many charming men to promise an indeterminate interval of +concentration upon one. Kenny deemed such a viewpoint heretical and +masculine; women were meant to be faithful. + +Now he stared at the girl's saucy face with a startled flush. + +"Peggy!" he said, "you little wretch!" + +It was growing harder day by day to keep his love a secret. + +Joan's first dance at the Holbein Club brought a train of complications. + +Ann, interpretative, dressed her in snow-white tulle with here and +there a glint of silver. The soft full skirt floated out above her +silver slippers like a cloud, but little whiter than her throat and +arms. Peggy and Ann never told the tale of her rebellion or her +frantic wail: + +"Oh, Peggy, Peggy! I can't go. They forgot the sleeves." + +She came down the stairway like a flower, but her eyes were wistful and +troubled. + +"Kenny, should I?" + +"Should you what, dear?" + +"Dance when--when Uncle--" + +"If your heart is glad and your feet want to dance, mavourneen," said +Kenny gently, "then no conventional pretense of mourning shall stop +them. You were kind and merciful while he lived. Even he, dear, would +not ask more." + +"If my Victrola arm has been winding in vain while you two practiced +half the floor off the studio," put in Ann, "I shall be offended. I +dreamed last night that I was an organ-grinder teaching Sid to dance." + +Joan laughed and kissed her. + +The Holbein Club accepted her with a hum of delight. + +"She _is_ beautiful!" said Jan. + +"Beautiful, of course," said Somebody. "Any girl in Kenny's life would +be beautiful or she wouldn't be there." + +As for Kenny, his path was pleasant, as it always was. If a waving arm +was not bidding for his attention, it was a laughing hail or a hearty +hand upon his shoulder. His bright dark face sparkled with the zest of +popularity. + +Joan thought him as care-free as a boy. + +"We dance in the club gallery," he told her, smiling at the look of +wonder in her eyes. + +"And the paintings and sculpture?" + +"A members' exhibition. The sculptured lion staring from his pedestal +at us is Jan's. Look at the superb muscle play of his flank! The +midsummer woods--see, how well the lad has painted _air_!--is Garry's. +And my pine picture's over there." + +"And Sid?" + +Kenny danced her the length of the gallery. A white line of sculpture +gleamed on either side behind a rail of brass. + +"Down here," he said. "I saved it for the last. The beggar's +painted--me!" + +It was Kenny in a painter's smock intent upon a palette, vividly, +whimsically, delightfully Kenny. There was tenderness and sympathy in +Sid's portrayal. + +Joan clung to his hand in delight. + +And was it all Bohemia, she asked. + +Ah! admitted Kenny twinkling, there you had him. Bohemia, he fancied, +was always wherever you yourself were not. The men and women who did +big things were too busy for picturesque posing. Bohemia, as legend +read it, had to do with rags and dreams and ambition without effort, a +shabby, down-at-heel pretension that glittered without gratifying. The +Bohemians of to-day were the failures of to-morrow. And the crowd who +lived at the Holbein Club lived, loved, worked and died much in the +fashion of less gifted folk. If there was a Bohemia of success, +however, it danced here to-night. + +But, girleen, the music was urging! And who could resist the sweet +wild delirium of a violin's call? Certainly not an Irishman intent +upon a moonbeam imprisoned in a girl's bright hair. But one sound +sweeter! + +"And that?" asked Joan as they glided away again among the dancers. + +Kenny threw back his head and his eyes laughed. + +"A robin singing in a blackthorn!" + +Joan smiled at the boyish sparkle of his face. He was so charmingly, +so irresponsibly young and gay. + +His Bohemia of success she found a startling triumph. + +"Joan's horribly disturbed," Ann telephoned in the morning. "As her +guardian you'll have to settle a number of infatuated young men. The +telephone's been ringing all morning. I think it's a case of 'The line +forms on the right, gentlemen, on the right!'" + +Kenny faced the problem with his fingers in his hair. + +"Who's bothering her?" he demanded bluntly. + +"The Art Students' League," said Ann demurely, "the Federation of Arts, +National Society of Portrait Painters, Architectural League, Watercolor +Society, Authors' League and the Prince who thinks he's a playwright." + +"He's a piece of cheese!" said Kenny in intense disgust. "What did +Joan think of him?" + +"She said she didn't like him nearly so well as the art student who +plays a banjo in the orchestra because he needs the money. Peggy knows +him." + +"That was wholesome," admitted Kenny. "But I don't think much of him +either. He has absolutely no right when he's playing a banjo +commercially to recognize the girls on the floor. I'll be over to +lunch." + +It was a nerve-racking hour for Ann. Kenny, pensive, ate but little. +He seemed very sorry for himself and eyed Joan with melancholy +tenderness. When at last the dreadful subject was broached, Ann +stoutly defended everybody. + +Frantic, Kenny pushed back his plate and began to stride around. + +"Sit down," said Ann. "You're making everybody nervous. Of course you +don't blame Joan. And of course you can't blame--" + +"I'm not blaming anybody," sputtered Kenny. "That club is a hot-bed of +shallow-minded, impressionable, fickle-minded boobs. I can see plainly +that we'll have to be married to-day. To-morrow at the latest." + +"Kenny, please!" said Joan and the conflict began. + +Finding the year still strongly in her mind, he surrendered with a +sigh, hurt and unhappy, remembering his vow that Joan's happiness +should be the religion of his love. + +"Oh, you dear foolish people!" cried Ann in despair. "Why don't you +announce your engagement in the Times and discourage the line once and +for all?" + +"Of course!" said Kenny and looked at Joan. + +"I shouldn't mind at all," said Joan, coloring. + +Whereat Kenny called up the Times office, and the Holbein Club went mad +with delight. Jan, without meaning to, got very drunk and shocked +himself, and Margot made the ring. She did not know why Kenny wanted +the golden circlet barred crosswise like a frail ladder. Nor why he +insisted upon a cluster of wistaria set in amethysts. + +Even then misgivings sent him to Ann in a panic of conscience. + +"Am I ungenerous?" he demanded. "Perhaps Joan should have had a year +of utter freedom. You know what I mean, Ann. To come and go as she +pleases and with whom she pleases. She's so young." He flushed. + +"Joan wouldn't have it different," said Ann, touched by the boyish +wistfulness of his eyes. "She clings to you. And she's as shy and +unspoiled as the day you brought her here. This flurry of admiration +to her means nothing at all. She's unhappy with strangers." + +Kenny knew it was true and marveled. + +"I would like to be generous," he admitted with an effort. "But I +can't. It's the simple truth, Ann, I can't. Even the thought of her +liking other men--bothers me." + +December was fated to hold for him another startling anticlimax. It +came one snowy morning when he had slept even later than usual, +dreaming of an iridescent balloon that climbed higher and higher with +Joan peeping radiantly over the edge until at the peal of the telephone +bell it disappeared entirely. + +Joan's voice instantly dispelled his irritation. + +"Mavourneen!" he exclaimed. "Up already! And you danced half the +night." + +"It's eleven o'clock," said Joan. "Besides, I couldn't sleep. I've +been thinking. Remember, Kenny, when you read the will and I said that +Donald should have the farm?" + +"Yes," said Kenny, somewhat mystified. "I remember." + +"If he's going to study and work his way through college, I don't think +he'd want it, do you?" + +"No, dear, I doubt if he would. What's in your mind, girleen?" + +"Oh, I'm so glad you think so too! Kenny--" + +"Yes?" + +"Do you know Jan's cousin, the pretty girl who's a model? I know that +doesn't sound at all as if it had anything to do with the farm but it +has. Jan's cousin said--I hardly know how to tell you, Kenny. I don't +think I like telephones. If I could see your face--" + +"I'm wearing my guardian's face!" + +"Oh!" + +"And evidently it isn't popular." + +"I like you--different. Jan's cousin said that she could get me a +great deal of work if I wanted it--posing for head and shoulders--" + +"Joan!" + +"Oh, dear!" wailed Joan. "That was a guardian's voice. Please wait, +Kenny." + +"I'm waiting." + +"I'm going to keep the farm and give Don the rest of the four thousand +dollars. . . . Did you say anything, Kenny?" + +"No. . . . No, I was just clearing my throat." + +"I've only spent a little of it yet. From now on I want to earn my +living like Peggy and Ann and Margot and all the others. I'll still +have plenty of time to study and practice. I wonder I didn't think of +it before. It was selfish when I had the farm and Don not even +mentioned in the will. I suppose I didn't think of it because here +things seem to happen so--so fast. I'm always in a whirl." + +"Yes," said Kenny sincerely. "Things do happen fast." + +She waited his approval and was the first to speak, a wondering hint of +reproach in her voice. + +"Kenny, please say something!" + +"To be truthful, dear," said Kenny in a queer voice, "you've taken my +breath away. I'm thinking--just thinking." + +"It's fair--" + +"Yes, dear, it's fair enough." + +"You don't disapprove? Oh, I hope you won't. It will make me so happy +to help Don through college." + +"It will make you happy!" said Kenny and sighed. + +"Ann had so many, many things to say against it. She said she was +trying to see it all with your eyes--as a guardian. But I told her +you're hardly ever--a guardian. And your Bohemia is democratic, isn't +it? And painters are respectable and worthy men and nothing like so +flighty as you read. You've said so yourself. And I like to work. +And there are so many charming girls who are models and Jan's cousin is +a Vassar girl--" In her eagerness to convince him she lost her +breath. + +"I'll come for you at Madame Morny's at four," Kenny told her, sick at +heart. "And then, dear, I'll tell you exactly what I think." + +And when he had rung off, he sat down weakly and laughed, his laugh +unmusical and sad. The dreadful, dreadful irony of it! How could he +deny her? How _could_ he? He who had surrounded her with women +friends, talented and independent, who believed in the gospel of work! +He liked her generosity. He liked her willingness to work. He blessed +the dear, selfless instincts of her heart, his eyes moist and tender. +And yet . . . and yet! Kenny laughed again. He had hidden his own +money in the fireplace to send through college a runaway youth he had +never seen! + +On the way home from Madame Morny's in a taxi, for the snow had become +a blizzard, he made one final desperate effort to break her resolution. +It was futile. Again she was passionately eager to please him. Again +he found it a problem that involved her happiness and peace of mind. +Again, with his heart sore, be kissed her and surrendered to her wishes +with a sigh. + +But he found the work for her himself with the older painters. + +"Kenny, I'm so glad you asked me to bring mother's trunks with me," +Joan told him. "Aranyi has asked me to pose in the gold brocade." + +Something sharp stabbed at Kenny's heart. + +"I meant them," he said with a sigh, "for costume dances, but Aranyi +paints the texture of things with marvelous skill." + +By the end of the month Joan's work day was full and he was seeing her +less than he had, save at night. Garry begged her to pose for him, +carried his case to Kenny and met with blank refusal. + +"I'm sorry, old man," Kenny finished inexorably, "but nothing under +forty need apply. You, my son, are particularly flighty and fickle. +Just now you happen to be raving about Peggy, but every pretty face, +I've noticed, makes you forget the one before." + +And Garry, who had been trying to marry Peggy for a year and was by no +means as uncertain and mercurial in his affections as Kenny would have +him believe, stared with eyes intelligent and reminiscent. + +"Well," he said softly, "I'll be jiggered. That's the limit!" + +"Be jiggered!" Kenny told him shortly. "And have done with it." + +Garry raised his eyebrows and departed. And Kenny, reverting to one of +his old frantic minutes, walked the floor. He had accepted portrait +commissions that would keep him busy for months; for the ragged money +he had hidden in the fireplace had made his need of work imperative. +Otherwise he himself could have painted Joan in the gold brocade and in +all the others. + +What had the money in the fireplace done for him? It had doomed him to +work apart while other men painted the golden shadows in her hair. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +FATE STABS + +March came to Kenny and found his studio with its haunting odor of +coffee and cigarettes, his brushes, his head and his heart, furiously +at work. He was giving himself up to love and labor with a Celtic +intensity that Garry found appalling. He planned endlessly to one +purpose: Joan's happiness, Joan's pleasure, Joan's future with him. +The memory of the ragged money laid aside for Don he dismissed with a +wry smile, gritting his teeth. What mattered in the face of the +splendid fact that he was so joyously, so recklessly, so absurdly happy? + +His life, with its deadly singleness of purpose, should have been +simple. It attained a complexity at times at which he marveled. An +inclination to blurt out the truth with panicky abruptness when he +wanted to lie, plunged him into more than one predicament. + +"I'm always explaining to somebody," he complained bitterly to Garry, +"why I tell the truth--" + +"You told Kenneth his dancing urchin was rotten--" + +"It was," insisted Kenny. "Garry, why is truth always unpleasant? Why +can't it be as romantic and agreeable as the things you want to say?" + +"Why," countered Garry, "isn't peace as romantic as war? Ask somebody +who knows. I don't." + +He stared curiously at Kenny and shook his head. A heavy hand with the +truth, that Irishman; and about as understandable in these splendid, +tender days of his idiocy and bliss, as March wind, comets or +star-dust. His passion for truth was literally a passion, relentless +and exact. He worked harder. His steadiness, as Jan said, was grim +and conscious and a thing of terror to anything in his path. He +wrestled with his check book and managed somehow to keep his studio in +order. And he was kinder. Fahr, in particular, remarked it; and Fahr, +worshipping Kenny, had sputtered and endured the brunt of many tempests. + +"But, Garry," he confided, round-eyed and apprehensive, "honest Injun, +I don't think he ought to bottle up his temper that way. Sometimes I +can almost see him swelling up and then when he speaks and I'm waiting +for an Irish roar, his voice is so quiet and pleasant that I feel +queer. I--I swear I do. Damn it all, I'm liking him more every day." + +"So am I," said Garry honestly. "But--" + +"But what?" + +"I wish he'd be less turbulently happy." + +"Let him," said Sid sagely, "Darn few can." + +"A pendulum," reminded Garry, "swings both ways. And he's an +extremist. If he'd just plant his two feet solidly on the ground and +get his head out of the clouds. He's got to do it sometime." + +"Oh, hell," said Sid. "Give him time. If that girl was going to marry +me I'd climb up a few air-steps myself and stick my head into any old +cloud." + +"Good old Sid!" said Garry affectionately. "You'd be sure to hit your +head on a star and then you'd be amazed and--" + +"Oh, you go to thunder!" blustered Sid. + +By now Kenny's Bohemia was rushing through its yearly cycle of costume +dances. Motley groups emerged at times from Ann's castle and departed +in taxis. + +"And Gawd knows where," said Mrs. Ryan from the third floor front of +the tenement that faced the street. "They're a wild bunch and my +Cassie'll never travel wid 'em. Last week the architeks rigged up +somethin' fierce and danced in 'the streets of Paris,' wid bullyvard +cafes, they called 'em, built into the dance hall, an actress singin' +the Marseillaise in a flag, and a Roosian hussy dancin' in boots. And +Mr. O'Neill, God save him for a pleasant gentleman though a bit wild in +the eye, took my Dinny up to be a gamin. Gay-min. I thought myself he +said a 'gay mon' and Dinny's a bit young; but I found he meant him to +peddle cigarettes about among the tables." + +In the quaint old gowns that were delighting the older painters, Joan +glided through the shifting blare and color unaware of the eyes that +watched and liked her. Not so Kenny. + +He knew who stared and smiled and he knew who stared too long. He was +inordinately proud of her. + +"Kenny, please!" begged Garry. "Let me paint her. I'm going to +California in April and I won't have another chance. I won't be back +until fall." + +"My son--" began Kenny wearily. Then he smiled. "Oh, go ahead, +Garry, darlin'. I'll not be mindin' a bit." + +And Garry curiously enough caught the tantalizing charm of her +sweetness that had baffled many an older and wiser man. + +Shadows had no part in the wonder of Kenny's winter, but an inclination +to forget his quarrel with Brian and his flare of penance, violent and +incomplete--for he had never reached the longed-for grail of his son's +forgiveness--troubled him vaguely. In spasmodic moments of remorse he +read his notebook, tremendously buoyed up by an augmenting +consciousness of evolution. Faint inner voices warned him at times not +to misinterpret his exultant happiness in terms of infallibility and +when they called to him he had his moments of humility and panic. + +In one of them he tried to coax the fern back to life; once with an +alarming air of energy and importance, he departed in a taxi and bought +a great many things for Brian's room; once when miraculously the bank +and he agreed for a brief period upon his balance, he succumbed to a +mathematical fit of uplift and conscience, dashed off a bewildering +number of checks and left the overladen slate of his credit unmarked by +even an I.O.U. His brilliant air of calm and satisfaction thereafter +was distinctly noticeable. + +On the whole he was much too happy to be lonely or introspective. +Brian's absence and his splendid, sacrificial freak of service, had +been the price of Joan's content and the welfare of her brother. + +Whitaker, journalism and God's green world of spring he had chosen +jealously to resent. The thought of Donald West and a dim conviction +of quarry hardships filled him with a new sense of solidarity in Brian +and a passionate respect. The current of his affection for his son was +subtly altering. It was no longer careless and frenzied and +sentimental. Nor was it selfish. Something big and abiding had sprung +up out of the ashes of his penance. + +By the end of March, with a record-breaking period of work behind him +and a furore of notoriety over his striking portrait of a famous beauty +compelling him to a radiant admission of success, Kenny found himself +lulled into the self-respecting quietude he craved. + +Days back self-confidence had come to him in Hannah's kitchen and Adam +Craig, in the course of time, had crushed it out with a keen and +understanding leer. Later it had returned with Adam's death, and the +weary voice of Doctor Cole had shattered it. + +So now on a March night of wind and hail--and this time by telephone +after much tedious trouble with the wire, Doctor Cole's voice, tired, +sorrowful and kind, came stabbing intrusively into his full-blown +equanimity with a message of terror. + +"Mr. O'Neill--" + +"Yes." + +"This is Doctor Cole of Briston, Pennsylvania." + +Kenny stiffened. He had never quite forgiven the doctor for that +bleak, anticlimacteric morning when he had driven dazedly away with +Nellie. Adjectives, like a man's laughter, were to him an irrefutable +test. With one you could definitely prefigure a man's degree of +refinement; with the other the aesthetic color of his soul. And gray +was no color for any mortal's soul. + +"Yes?" + +"Mr. O'Neill," came the kind, tired voice, "I'm sorry, sorrier than I +can tell. I've bad news for you. There has been an accident, a quarry +explosion, and your son is badly injured." + +A hot quiver swept through Kenny's body, ended at his face in a +stinging rush of blood and left him icy cold. + +"Brian!" + +"Yes. . . . Are you there, Mr. O'Neill?" + +"Yes. . . . Yes, I am here. Doctor. . . . How--badly?" + +"He is--well, conscious. I can hardly say more," owned the doctor. +"Thank God he's young and strong. There are no developed symptoms of +fracture yet but his skull--" + +"Fracture! Skull!" + +"There's a chance. Contusion now merely and a swollen condition. The +soft parts are unbroken and that makes an accurate diagnosis difficult, +but I must warn you that there is an immediate risk to his life from +shock and perhaps compression--" + +"Oh, my God!" said Kenny, his eyes wet. + +"You see, Mr. O'Neill," said the doctor sadly, "there may be depressed +fragments of bone or effused blood. We are watching closely. But I +think you had better come to him at once. There is a possibility--" + +But there were some things that even the little doctor could not say. + +"Still there, Mr. O'Neill?" he asked a little later. + +"Yes. Where is Brian now?" + +"In a quarry shack on what we call up here the Finlake mountain." + +"Finlake mountain!" + +"Yes, barely eighteen miles across the valley from the farm. They +couldn't find a doctor. Carson is nearer but he was out. Has a widely +scattered farm practice like my own and Don, frantic with terror, +telephoned to me. We've done everything possible for him, Mr. O'Neill, +but his pulse is pretty feeble and it's difficult to rouse him. +Sensibility of course is blunted. Bound to be--" + +"I will be there," said Kenny, "as soon--as soon as it is possible. +There are but three north-bound trains at Briston?" + +"Morning--eight-ten. Noon, one-twenty-nine and night, seven-fifteen. +But don't get off at Briston, Mr. O'Neill. Finlake, fifteen miles on, +is nearer--" + +"I can not possibly make the morning train. The changes make the trip +long. Twelve hours. . . . God!" + +"I myself will meet you at Finlake. It's three miles farther to the +quarry. If you are not on the noon train I will meet the night--" + +"I--I cannot thank you, Doctor Cole." Kenny hung up, unaware that the +doctor was adding further detail. + +Almost at once he unhooked the receiver and summoned the club central. +Afterward Pietro, who took his turn at the switchboard when the day +operator departed, spoke of the quiet curtness of his voice. + +"Pietro? Mr. O'Neill speaking. I want you, at once, to look up the +earliest connecting train with Finlake, Pennsylvania, any road." + +"Yes, sir," began Pietro. "What--" but the receiver had clicked into +place. + +Kenny stared with a shudder at the withered fern, his face as white as +chalk. + +A tearing hand seemed clinging to his brain. + +In the face of this grief-stricken terror that quaked and burned in his +soul, etching unforgettable scars, the recollection of his unsteady +spurts of penance rose to mock him with their artificiality. His +remorse had been but a pale, theatric spree! And now in this forgetful +winter of his love, Fate had decoyed him into optimistic quietude only +to thrust savagely and deep. Remorse in the raw! Was it +punishment--punishment for the farcical penitent on the highway who had +smiled into a woman's soft eyes, forgetting-- + +He answered Pietro's ring with a throbbing sense of confusion in his +forehead. + +The best connecting train and the earliest left the Pennsylvania +Terminal at eleven. It was now but five. How could he wait? + +"Pietro," he said, "give me now Doctor Barrington's office. And tell +the operator to put me through to his private wire. It's urgent. I do +not want the nurse in the anteroom. When you ring for me I want Dr. +Barrington ready at the other end and I want you yourself, Pietro, to +be sure he's there." + +Pietro, obeyed, amazed and loyal. + +"Frank?" Hot relief surged in Kenny's heart at the chance ease of +connection. "Kenny speaking." + +"Hello, Kenny. Nothing doing for me tonight, old man. I've got to +sleep." + +"I need you, Frank. Brian has been injured--badly--in a quarry +explosion." + +"Kenny!" + +"A chance of skull fracture," said Kenny steadily. "That means?" + +"A possible operation." + +"Can you leave with me at eleven o'clock to-night, Pennsylvania +Terminal? It will mean at least two days. He's at Finlake, +Pennsylvania, barely conscious--in the hands of a country doctor." + +The brilliant industrious young surgeon on the other end gasped and +whistled. He worked and played at heavy pressure. + +"Kenny, old man," he said, "nothing is impossible. Almost this is. +But it's you and Brian and that's enough, I'll meet you at quarter of +eleven. I'll go--thoroughly prepared. Do you feel like telling me +more?" + +"No." + +Two receivers clicked and Kenny, remembering that he could not +definitely locate Joan until six, felt the tautness of his control slip +dangerously. + +Eleven o'clock. . . . How could he wait? He paced the floor, his mind +in its chaotic desperation, numb and inelastic. With his glance upon +the psaltery stick, a dim notion of accounting filtered curiously into +his mind and became obsessional. He went shaking to Brian's room and +put the key of the chiffonier in his pocket. Thank God the studio was +in order, save a chair or two. Brian . . . would . . . be . . . +pleased. Kenny stared at the withered fern and blinked. An augury? +God forbid! Then he flung the bill-file with its heterogeneous +collection of receipted I.O.U.'s into his bulging suit case and called +up Simon Meyer. + +"Simon," he said, "whatever I happen to have there--there's a shotgun, +I know, and a tennis racket and some fishing rods. . . . The rest for +the moment I can't recall. . . . I want you to put all of it in a +bundle and send it here at once by special messenger. I have the +tickets here. . . . I'll have them ready. . . . Yes, I'll give him a +check. . . . No, Simon, it won't be certified and he'll take it as it +is." + +He rang off and searched impatiently for pawn tickets. Simon's +messenger arrived and, strained and hostile, Kenny looked over the +contents of the bundle and wrote a check. + +Alone in the studio again, he flung up a window, his mind pushing ahead +to eleven o'clock. It seemed to him then that he could not possibly +wait and go on fighting for his self-control. A gust of sleet and hail +swept in with a pattering sound upon the floor. Its cold, stinging +contact with his face refreshed him. Kenny's brain cleared. He gulped +and gasped. Garry's car! He would not wait. + +"Frank," he telephoned after an unavailing interval of search for +Garry, "if you're willing we'll motor to Finlake in Garry's car. He'll +not be mindin'. I borrow it often. It's a bad night of course--but we +could start now. And we can make time on the road. It's barely two +hundred and fifty miles but the branch roads and changes make +unendurable delay. Shall I come for you in half an hour?" + +Again Barrington gasped. Again he whistled. "Make it three quarters," +he said, "and I think I can swing it." + +"You're a jewel for sense," Kenny told him, a passionate note of +gratitude in his voice. "I love you for it." + +He called Ann's studio at six. Joan had not returned. Ann took the +message, startled and sympathetic. + +"I'll wire her in the morning," he said and, hanging up, found that +Sidney Fahr had come in. He stood with his back against the door, his +round face blank with terror. + +"Kenny," he stammered, "I--I couldn't help hearing." The hot sympathy +he could not bring himself to utter, flamed desperately in his +face--almost to the ruin of Kenny's iron control. "I--I--I can do +something, can't I, Kenny?" + +"Yes, Sid, darlin', you can," said Kenny gently. "I'm taking Garry's +car. You can square me with him." + +"I--I'd even thrash him," mumbled Sid. + +"Then if you will I'd like you to get in touch with Westcott's wife and +tell her. I'm painting her portrait. She comes to-morrow at ten. +Sid, could you--could you clean off those two chairs?" + +Sid fell upon the nearest chair with fearful energy. At the table +Kenny hurriedly wrote a check. + +"And to-morrow I want you to deposit this to Brian's account. I'm +paying back--what I owe him." His mouth worked. + +"Oh, Sid!" he said, his face scarlet. + +"Now, now, now, Kenny," choked the little painter, winking and making +horrible faces at the littered chair, "don't you go to taking on. +Don't you do it. I'll call up Westcott. The old gladiator!" Somehow +he turned his sniffle to a snort. "What in thunder does she want to be +painted for anyway? She's got a nose like a triangle and the +composition of her face is all wrong." + +He blinked away the wetness on his lashes and wondered why, with every +other chair in the studio clear, Kenny should make a point of the +littered two. But he did not ask. Instead he entered upon a period of +fruitless and agitated trotting that lasted until Kenny came hack from +the garage with Garry's car. Then Sid packed him in, made one last +terrible face and bolted across the sidewalk for the door. + +Beyond the threshold he bolted for a telephone. + +"Jan," he said in shocked tones, "I want you to come down to the bar +and watch me. I--I've made up my mind to get drunk. I've got to." He +gulped. "I'll tell you why when you come down." + +"Oh, fiddlesticks!" said Jan in a bored voice. "Go down to the grill +and eat something. And order me an English mutton chop and some +macaroni. I'll be down to dinner in five minutes." + +Sid aggrievedly obeyed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +ON FINLAKE MOUNTAIN + +Frank Barrington was to tell wryly in the grillroom of that night-ride +in the sleety wind through a polar world of ghostly, ice-hung trees. +Every flying rod of the sleazy road he knew was a peril. Even the +chains failed at times to grip. For eight hours the whir of the motor +and the tearing sound of the wind blared in his ears. For eight hours +he marveled at the silence and efficiency of the muffled driver beside +him who had apparently said all he intended to say upon the ferry. He +drove even faster than Frank had anticipated; and he drove with more +care, as if, defiantly, he feared the traps of an evil destiny to keep +him from his goal. At times he turned the swiveled searchlight upon a +road-sign and evoked a glistening play of silver on the trees. Once, +cursing, he changed a tire; once the car skidded dangerously in a +circle but to Frank his air of confidence was hypnotically convincing. +The final stretch of the journey became a dim and frosty blur of sleety +trees. + +At Finlake they began to climb. It was after three when the headlights +blazed upon the quarry. + +"I wired the doctor to wait," said Kenny. "He knows you're with me." + +"We leave the car here?" + +"We'll have to." He turned his searchlight on the cliff ahead. +"There's a path yonder." + +"And which shack, I wonder?" + +"There's a light in only one." + +Frank worked his stiffened face to relieve the feeling of cold +contorted rubber and followed Kenny up the path. Light glimmered dimly +through the jungle of frost upon the shack window. Fronded whitely by +the sleet, the panes loomed out of the dark like an incandescent series +of camera plates, bizarre and oriental. Frank shivered in the wind. + +Doctor Cole opened the door. Beyond in the rude room of the shack a +lamp flared smokily. + +"Brian?" said Kenny, his color gone. + +"Why," said Doctor Cole, "his pulse is a lot stronger, Mr. O'Neill, and +he complains now of pain--" + +"That means?" + +"It means, Kenny," said Frank Barrington, "that he has passed on +normally to the stage of reaction." But his keen, intelligent eyes +sought Doctor Cole with a furtive lifting of his brows and asked a +question. + +"Not a sign," said the little doctor gladly. "If anything he's a shade +too wide awake. And irritable. I've been setting his leg--" + +Kenny wheeled fiercely. + +"His leg!" he said. "His leg!" + +"I'm sorry," stammered the doctor. "I--I quite forgot you didn't +know. . . . Broken between the knee and the hip," he added, turning to +Barrington. "I thought it merely paresis of the muscles until--" + +"Where is he?" put in Kenny sharply. "What room?" + +"There are only two rooms here," said Doctor Cole. "The stairway's +yonder." + +"Just a minute, Kenny." Frank checked him with a gesture. "I'm going +up first with Doctor Cole." + +Kenny groaned. + +"Sit down," said Frank kindly. "Where's some brandy? Thank you, +Doctor. Now, Kenny, listen, please. The first risk to Brian's life is +past. I mean death from shock. He's not drowsy and he's feeling pain. +His leg, in the face of other possibilities, is merely painful. But I +must look at his head--" + +"Frank, darlin'," said Kenny patiently, "I brought you up here to order +us all around. Go to it." + +He flung himself into a chair by the stove and drowsing after a while +in a reactive sweep of exhaustion, awakened with a terrified jerk. A +boy was banking the red-hot stove, his white face like and yet +unlike--Joan's. + +"Mr. O'Neill," he blurted with a boyish sob, "I--I did it. I was +driving the mule-cart up the path. Grogan told me not to but I--I +coaxed Tony. And when some earth crumbled ahead I jerked back--too +quickly--and scared the mule. I've got to tell somebody. I've got +to. . . . And nobody listens--" + +"Tell me the rest," said Kenny wanly. "I've been wonderin'." + +"You see, Mr. O'Neill," he gulped, his eyes dark with grief and horror, +"the mule went back upon his haunches and drove the cart against a +boulder. It came out and crashed over the ledge and through the roof +of the dynamite shack--" + +"God!" In that vivid moment of his picturing, Kenny wondered why he +should think of bouillon cups crashing loudly on a roof. + +"And the other men were only scratched. A while ago--when Brian sent +for me--he thought of it through all his pain--" + +"He would," said Kenny. + +"I--I wanted to kill myself." + +"Oh, nonsense," said Kenny kindly. + +Don flung his arm across his eyes and sobbed aloud. + +"Oh," he choked, "if someone would only swear at me!" + +"I--I'd like to," said Kenny wryly, "for your sake and for my own, but +I'm all--in." + +He stared dully at the fire until the stair creaked and Frank came in +with Doctor Cole. + +"There isn't yet," Frank told him, "a single pressure symptom that I +consider alarming and Doctor Cole has done wonders with his leg. But +any emotional excitement is a danger. Three minutes, old man." He +followed Kenny up the stairway, watch in hand. + +The raftered room was dim and quiet. Kenny sickened at the faint odor +of antiseptics and softly closed the door. + +Brian opened his eyes. + +"Kenny, old dear," he said softly, "all these doctors are boobs. Frank +in particular is an awful ass. I told him so. He's loaded with fool +questions. One look at the Irish face of you is worth them all." + +Kenny, staring at the pallid face upon the pillow, blinked and smiled. + +"Frank told me you drove up here through the sleet," marveled Brian, +clinging to his hand. "A god-forsaken spot! I'm sorry--" + +"Three minutes!" warned Frank Barrington at the door. He knew Kenny +much too well to trust him further. + +And Kenny made a wry face and departed--with torture in his throat. +His voice had failed him utterly. + +A sleety dawn was graying at the windows. + +"Bed!" commanded Barrington briefly. + +"Doctor Cole has found another shack. He's waiting for you." + +"And you?" + +"I'll sleep to-morrow." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +IN THE SPAN OF A DAY + +Kenny slept heavily until three that afternoon. Don wakened him. + +"My sister is here," he said. + +"Joan!" + +Don stared a little at his quick, astonished warmth. + +"She wired Doctor Cole," he said, "and went to the farm. He brought +her back with him at noon." + +"The heart of her! I might have known. And Brian?" + +Brian, it seemed, was wakeful and nervous, his pain intense. The +pressure symptoms had not advanced. + +"Head's better," Don finished. "They've watched him like a hawk. But +they're letting up a bit now--" + +"And Dr. Barrington?" + +"Asleep downstairs." + +"Here?" + +"Yes. We found another cot. The car's in Grogan's shed." + +From the quarry below came the rumble of a blast. + +"Would you think--" he demanded, but the futility of his protest made +him dumb. + +"The world keeps on going," said Kenny. He dressed hurriedly. + +"Women," commented Don gloomily, following him down the stairs, "are +queer. My sister wept all over me. As if I hadn't had enough +shocks--" + +He caught his breath and stumbled. In the room below Barrington +stirred. + +"Quiet, Don!" warned Kenny, sensing the tears of heartbreak that +quivered on his lashes. He read the boy's hot heart with a renewed +shock of understanding; they were namelessly akin. + +Cold sunlight lay upon the cluster of shacks. The wind that bore the +rumble of the quarry upward was sharp and gusty and laden with stinging +particles of grit. A group of Italian women, chattering and +gesticulating in, apparently, unheeded unison, lingered near the shack +where Brian lay, agonizingly conscious of nerve and body, irritably +weary of the inevitable doctor at his bedside. Kenny charged them with +a look of indignation and shooed them to retreat in maledictory Italian. + +Inside Joan was busy at the stove. + +Kenny caught her hands, protesting, praising, thanking in a breath, and +Don, regarding them with a look of frank and bitter comprehension, +moved off toward the window with all a boy's disgust. In the span of a +day he had learned and suffered over-much. Grogan's world of drills +and noise down there was heartless and insistent. . . . It went on and +on, puffing, drilling, sorting rattling stone. Up here in the shack +was the lunacy of heart-things apart from him. The thought filled him +with jealous anger. And upstairs-- He wheeled and glared, fighting +down the agony in his throat. Kenny was moving toward the stairway. + +"Mr. O'Neill," barked Don, "Dr. Barrington particularly said you--you +were not to go up there. He said that Brian's got to have the--the +quiet kind around--" + +Joan's quick stare of reproach brought the color to his face. + +"I--I beg your pardon, Mr. O'Neill," he blurted. "He said--he said he +must have quiet." + +"It's all right," said Kenny ruefully. "Quite all right. You've been +up?" he added quietly. + +Don dug his toe into the floor and a hot flush suffused his forehead. + +"To tell you the truth," he said with some annoyance, "Doctor +Barrington wouldn't let me in. He seems to be able to manage a good +many things at once." + +"Ah!" said Kenny. + +"We must find still another cot," said Joan, pouring coffee at the +stove. + +So in the dark hours of nervous unrestraint that marked for Don and +Kenny that lagging period of terror and suspense, Joan stepped to the +helm and steered. And there was need of steering. + +Chaos would have reigned without it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +A FACE + +Vagueness lay for Brian in that shack room where the noise of forest +trees mourned always at the window. Only pain was sharp . . . +colossal, rearing misshapen out of the blur induced by an awful +weakness. Sleep wrenched him for horrible dreaming minutes from his +world of pain. Pain wrenched him back. At times a mammoth terror lay +in his soul, undefined yet grotesquely positive, as if, pushing back, +his consciousness foresaw that horrific catastrophe of noise and +belching terror, and waited, unable to sense any of its details save +the single one of personal tragedy and pain. There were cramped +minutes when the rafters of the peaked roof seemed pressing down upon +him . . . and minutes of a diffused reaching out when the world, torn +by internal explosion, seemed flying away from him in fragments, even +walls receding from his cot which stayed, by a miracle, alone upon a +wind-swept moor. + +Intervals were an eternity. Familiarity with the detail of the room +engendered frantic loathing. His brain conned over the faded colors in +the rag rug and encountered the unchangeable, bayonet-like crack in the +mirror with nervous fury. No peace came with the darkness. Each +familiar thing persisted, looming clearer to his tired mind by the very +effort his straining eyes made to reach it. There was the table +clogged with doctors' litter . . . and there the other cot where Frank +pretended to sleep and kept his vigil . . . there the chair . . . and +there the dab of yellow in the rug that the sun struck into faded +gayety in the morning . . . and there the crack across the mirror, the +wriggling, distorted, foolish crack that seemed alive for all its +sameness. And there was always the noise of wind which became a +corollary of his pain, pulsing with it, never quiet, an overtone that +tragically would not yield. + +Into the blur of wind and weakness and pain came two miracles--a red +geranium peering out of the dusk of the room like a glowing coal, +unfamiliar and therefore a delight--a bit of velvet laughter in the +drab that caught his whole attention . . . the other a face. The face +came first in a cloud of flower-spotted purple that he knew clearly was +in some way related to the hypodermic needle Frank had plunged into his +arm while the sunset still lay painted on the window. . . . It took +form in the purple like a pansy--that face--grew sweet and vivid and +very real. Mercifully its loveliness was changeable, losing its pansy +purples and gaining glints of gold . . . becoming less a pansy . . . +more a face flower-like with compassion. + +"And now?" wondered Brian when the face came again. + +"It is morning," said Joan. + +At the sound of her voice there came within him an extraordinary +fusing, at once a pain and a delight . . . fragments of memory . . . a +moonbeam . . . tears . . . the crackle of a fire . . . a quarry +mist . . . the glory of stars . . . a meaning . . . a motive that +startled and defied him. + +"There should be moonlight on your hair," said Brian, drifting slowly +back to a knowledge of reality and pain. + +"Moonlight?" + +"You are Joan." + +"Yes. At least until Doctor Cole finds someone else, I am at times +your nurse. The pain, Brian?" She bent over him, straightening a +pillow, touching his forehead with cool, questioning fingers. + +"Not worse," said Brian. + +"I am glad." + +"There was a purple cloud," he said, frowning. + +"The drug. Doctor Barrington wanted you to sleep." + +"And the geranium?" His eyes sought it with relief. + +"Kenny found it. Grogan's wife had it in her window. I think he must +have bullied her a little--" + +"Bless him! . . . Where's the mirror?" + +"Downstairs. I'm sleeping there." + +"Thank God!" He closed his eyes, his color ebbing. "This plaster +cast," he apologized, "is like a suit of armor. It bothers me." + +"Poor fellow! . . . Can you eat?" + +"Not--yet. . . . Who's cooking?" + +"Sometimes Don; sometimes I--unless the doctor sends me here. +Once--Kenny." + +Brian smiled. + +"You are very good," he said simply. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +THE PENITENT + +Brian's skull was young and elastic. It saved him much, but Barrington +lingered until the period of suspense was at an end. Kenny drove him +to the Finlake station. + +"This car has been a godsend," he said. + +"And Garry's wired me to keep it. He's going to the coast." + +"When?" + +"Thursday." + +Kenny's eyes were moist and grateful. + +"Ah, Frank, darlin', you're a jewel!" + +"Piffle!" countered Frank. "Kenny, old dear, I think you hit a +chicken. If at any time," he added at the station, "you feel the need +of me, I want you to wire. He's bound to be nervous. And if his +convalescence seems slow and irksome, remember that the reaction of a +shock like that isn't merely physical." + +Kenny wrung his hand in silence. He motored home, oppressed by the +bare line of hills and the noise of the quarry. + +As usual the sight of Joan dispelled his gloom. Brian's pain was less. +He had fallen asleep of his own accord. + +"He asked for you," she added. + +"You told him Frank wouldn't let me in?" + +"Yes." + +"Hum. . . . Where's Don?" + +"I sent him to the store." + +Kenny darted away with an air of expectancy to the other shack, whence, +after an excited period of foraging, he emerged, carrying a bundle. +Frank, knowing him well enough to read his shining enthusiasm aright, +would have turned him back at Brian's door without a qualm. But Frank +was not at hand. + +"You look like a kid sneaking home with a stray cat!" Brian told him +with a grin. + +"What's in the bundle?" + +"I've tried so many times to get in," admitted Kenny, "with Frank +nippin' me just as my hand was on the knob, that I'm feelin' a bit +surreptitious." He held up a tennis racket and a shotgun. + +"And everything else," he boasted with an air of triumph, "that I took +to Simon." + +"And the bill-file!" exclaimed Brian, staring at the litter on the +floor. "Jemima!" + +"You remember it, Brian? You hated the sight of it. 'Tis the stiletto +I stuck in a chunk of wax--" + +"Lord, yes! And you wrote the I.O.U.'s on anything from a playing card +to the end of a shirt." + +"And never paid 'em until I had to," said Kenny with an unyielding air +of self-contempt. "Many the time you checked 'em off, Brian, and +rebuked me as you should. But that, by the Blessed Bell of Clare, is +all behind me." + +He proudly exhibited the bizarre collection of scraps, initialed in +token of debt and reinitialed in token of payment. + +"Brian--I--I--" + +"Go ahead, old boy," said Brian, his eyes tender. "I can see you've +got a lot on your mind." + +"I paid 'em--every one!" + +"So I see." + +"And never again will you have to bookkeep lies. I'm that truthful now +Sid worries a bit!" + +Brian's amazed eyes twinkled. + +"You delicious lunatic!" he said. + +"I practiced," went on Kenny with his lips compressed. "I practiced +hard--up at the farm with Adam." + +"Joan's told me you were there. I can't quite hitch things together +yet, but I will in time." + +"A landslide of things seemed to happen the minute you went--" + +"I always had a feeling," admitted Brian, "that if I didn't stick +around and keep an eye on you, a lot of things would happen." + +"They did. They've been happenin' ever since." + +Brian flushed and put out his hand. + +"Kenny, surely you guessed. I was sorry--" + +"Jewel machree, I was fair sick about the shotgun. And after you went +I was willing to be sorry about anything--to get you back." + +"And Ann's statuette. Lord, I burn when I think of it." + +"You couldn't be blamed for a bit of temper. You're Irish, lad, and an +O'Neill. 'Tis a splendid inheritance but volcanic too." He changed +color and began to roam around the room, his mind casting up a painful +memory. + +"You'll never guess," he went on moodily, "what fell upon the head of +me after you went. John Whitaker came up and took a shot at me. And +Garry. And then after a while when I was quieter, old Adam, stirring +me up afresh. My ears are as used to the truth as my tongue." + +"It's a darned shame!" said Brian warmly. Kenny sighed. + +"Ah, Brian," he said wistfully, "I was needin' it all. You can't +conceive until you put your mind to it or--or write it down, what a +failure I've been--" + +"Failure!" + +"As a parent. Even my penance on the road was--was like the rest." + +"Your _penance_!" + +"I bought a corncrib and a mule," flung out Kenny, roaming turbulently +around the room, "and thrashed a farmer. And I hated the rain and the +smell of cheese and burned up the corn-crib--" + +"Kenny, what are you talking about?" + +Inexorably intent upon the easing of his conscience Kenny told the tale +of his penance with terrifying honesty and truth. + +Brian listened and dared not smile. + +"At first I--I hoped to find a clue," finished Kenny, wiping the sweat +from his forehead. "And then after I--I saw Joan I hoped I wouldn't. +You're not blamin' me, Brian?" + +"Not a bit. I'd have lingered myself." + +"The heart of you!" said Kenny, biting his lips. "I don't deserve it. +Lad, dear, the sunsets are past. I'm understandin'. And if you want +Whitaker's job, I--I'm willing. If you'd rather come back to the +studio and free-lance, I--I want you to know--" he gulped--"that +things are different. There's order there and the--the chairs are +cleared. Never a chair but what you can sit down on without staring +behind you. You wished that, Brian--" + +Brian turned his head. + +"Yes," he said. There were tears and laughter in his voice. + +"The money and clothes I borrowed," went on Kenny fervidly, "are paid +back. The clothes are safe in a new chiffonier and here's the key. I +sealed it in an envelope and well I did. I was badly needin' some +things you had and Pietro went out and bought them for me. As for my +temper, it's a lot better. A lot! Sid marvels at it. I--I do myself. +It all comes from the hell up there on the ridge with Adam." He drew a +long breath. "I've a record of work that will fill you with pride. +And though I seem to have a lot of money, I haven't bought a foolish +thing since the corncrib. There's plebeian regularity enough in my +money affairs now, Brian, to please even you! Though I'm havin' a bit +of a struggle with my check book. You can see for yourself, can't you, +Brian, 'twould not be the disorderly Bohemia you seem to hate? 'Twould +not be hand-to-mouth. Mind, I'm not seekin' to persuade you. So help +me God, I--I want you to do just what you want to do yourself--" + +"Kenny," said Brian dangerously, "if you go on one second more, you'll +have me sniffling--" + +Horrified and guilty, Kenny bolted for the door, his hand clenched in +his hair. + +"One thing more, Brian," he said, wheeling, "I--I've got to say it. +I've anchored that damned stick to the psaltery with a shoestring. +We--we couldn't lose it!" + +And closing the door, Kenny again wiped his forehead, remembering sadly +that he had planned to wind his son around his finger and induce him to +return. It had been the trend of all his preparation and resolve. And +now--what? He had choked back his inclination and begged Brian, with +impassioned sincerity, to do precisely what would please him most. + +He wondered why the anticlimax brought him--peace. + +When Doctor Cole arrived an hour later he found the shack in turmoil. +The truant hour of laughter and excitement, Kenny told him in a panic +of remorse, had sharpened Brian's pain. His pulse was galloping. With +a sigh the little doctor drugged his tossing patient into troubled +sleep. + + +Again through a cloud of flower-spotted purple shot now with gleams of +light as from a camp fire, Brian drifted unquietly, conscious of odd +and unrelated things, stars that turned to eyes, a moonbeam that broke +upon a pine-bough and fell in a shower of moon-silvered tears; in the +tears a face that turned perversely to a pansy. Then something snapped +and crackled sharply and he sat beside a camp fire, conscious of an +indefinable fusing within him. Beyond in a curling milk-white mist lay +the pansy, half a flower--half a face. It floated toward him, +sometimes part of the smoke from his fire, sometimes but a +flower-shadow in the cloud of purple. Brian strained to see it clearly +and could not until the inner fusing came again and Joan stood by the +fire, the sheen of moonlight on her hair. + +"You did so much for him," she said, "and now--the boulder!" + +Brian furrowed his forehead in painful concentration. + +"I thought I did it all for Don," he said. "For months I've thought so +but since something fused here in my heart, something linked to tears +and stars and moonlight and the crackle of a fire, I know I did it all +for you." + +"For me, Brian!" + +"For you!" + +In the cloud of purple Joan's eyes grew round and unbelieving. + +"Your face, all tears and sorrow and sweetness," said Brian stubbornly, +"etched itself on my memory the night Don ran away." + +"I--I did not know you saw me." + +"I know now that all I did that night I did for you. Don swore at +you--remember?" + +The flower-like face in the purple cloud saddened. Brian distinctly +heard the crackle of the camp fire. + +"I thrashed him for it!" + +"You said in your letter--" + +"I said I would help him, yes, but I wrote and I made Don write because +I could not bear to have you hurt and worried. And even at the quarry, +when I was keen to be off to Whitaker, I saw your face in the mist, +urging me to stay--to stay and help Don. And I did--for you. I know +that all these things I did for you. I _know_!" + +But again he was staring at a pansy and the cloud of purple floated +hazily away. Tired, ill and aeons old, Brian opened his eyes. + +"I'm glad you're awake," said Joan gently. "You were dreaming. Drugs +frighten me." + +"Nothing was clear," said Brian, touching his forehead, "but the pansy +and you. And purple--like that." He pointed to her ring. "What an +odd ring it is, Joan! Wistaria?" + +Joan nodded, her color bright. + +"Wistaria on a ladder. It's the ring Kenny gave me." + +Brian's startled eyes met and held her own. "Why?" he asked. + +"I'm going to marry him. Didn't you know?" + +"No," said Brian. "I--I didn't know." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +APRIL + +April with its tender flame of green brought lagging days of worry. +Brian, said Kenny wistfully, was just--not Brian. He was an irritable +convalescent in a plaster cast, too nervous to be patient. His pain +had been intense, the shock disastrous to his self-control. The +haggard mark of it upon his face Don read with scalding heart and +brooded. When after a refractory week of undisciplined nerves and +temper that strained the doctor's endurance to the breaking point, +Brian went out of his head for forty-eight hours and babbled like a +madman about a face in the mist, Kenny in terror wired for Frank +Barrington. Brian, he thought, must be frantic with pain. + +Frank came, mystified and apprehensive. He found a white and apathetic +patient who, with his delirium gone, denied abnormal pain. + +"It isn't pain," Frank reported. "Of that I'm convinced. His head's +in excellent condition and his danger of lameness is at an end. Though +he resented the suggestion, I think there's something on his mind. And +whatever it is, he's much too shattered nervously to give it a normal +valuation." + +"Keep that kid out of his room," advised Kenny hotly. "I can't. He +moons around up there like a ghost. Brian admits that he's so sorry +for him at times that it makes him feel sick." + +"Hum!" said Frank and went in search of Don. + +"I suppose you think I'm too much of a kid to have an opinion," Don +told him, his face white and fierce, "but I--I did it. And I watch him +more than anybody else--" He choked and blinked back boyish tears of +indignation. + +"Keep Mr. O'Neill out of Brian's room," he snorted. "He'd excite +anybody!" + +"I intend to keep you all out," was Frank's verdict in the end. "All +but the nurse and Joan. Joan's not temperamental and she has nothing +on her conscience. She has moreover a sedative convincing type of +cheer that's a mighty good influence. The rest of you are simply on a +sentimental spree of penance. You, Kenny, are so anxious to square +yourself that you make him nervous and he fumes and blames himself. +And Don can't look at him without remorse in his eyes. You're both too +flighty and penitential for Brian's good." + +Frank departed and Joan compassionately set herself to sentinel the +sickroom. There were trying hours when her voice alone had power to +soothe the querulous young savage whose tired eyes begged them all to +forgive him. + +Nurses came and nurses hopelessly departed. Brian hated and hounded +them all with savage and impartial persistence. He was jarring even +the little doctor out of his normal weary calm. + +"I've seen him flat on the back of him before," Kenny confided to Joan +in some distress, "a lamb for sense! But now he's tiring you out." + +"You mustn't blame him," urged Joan. "He never asks me to come. I go +always of my own accord and oftener now since Frank scolded. He's +lonely without you and Donald and he hates the nurse--" + +"He hates 'em all," said Kenny. + +"No matter how nervous he is, I can read him to sleep." + +"Ah, colleen!" There was a flash of reverence in Kenny's eyes. It +mutely thanked her. + +"I can't forget what he did for Don. Nor can I forget that Don's +impulse--" + +"Don remembers too." + +Joan sighed. + +"He worries me, Kenny--Don, I mean. Sometimes I think he sees in my +help the one atonement he can make: he fumes and reproaches so when +Brian is nervous or lonely. He even dreams of the boulder." + +"And the year of study, mavourneen?" + +Joan's face clouded. + +"Don needs me," she said. "He would be frantic here alone. I cannot +desert him." + +"Nor I," said Kenny. "But the year of waiting ends at Samhain." + +"Yes," said Joan, coloring. "I have given Don the money," she added. +"If now he would only study!" + +"He shall!" said Kenny and set himself to the finishing of Brian's +winter task. That sacrifice, at least, he decided, nagging Don into +hours of study that were a godsend to them both, should not become an +anticlimax. He had paid once--in ragged money. For Joan's sake he +would pay willingly again in time. Brian and Joan and Don--and he +himself, with indolence for once in his life unwelcome, would be +happier for the effort. But there were moments of clash and irritation +when Don's energy flagged and he flung his books aside in black disgust. + +"No use," he said moodily. "I can't work. I've got too much on my +mind." + +Kenny merely looked at him. + +Don flushed. + +"Mr. O'Neill," he barked. + +"Shut up!" thundered Kenny, "I don't propose to quarrel now or at any +other time." + +They glared at each other in nervous indignation. + +"Brian," Kenny added with a sniff, "was sure you could swing it. I +never was. You need balance and a sense of responsibility." + +Don gritted his teeth and worked in an inexhaustible spurt of endurance. + +"Stop wandering around the room and kicking things," Kenny commanded +more than once with his own hand clenched in his hair. "If you don't +remember, you don't remember, and that's an end of it. Here's the +book. Look it over while I'm smoking." + +Once when the clash had a suspicious ring of familiarity, he grinned. + +"What's the matter?" demanded Don huffily. "What are you laughing at? +Me?" + +"No," said Kenny. "I was just thinking of a man I know. Name's +Whitaker." + +Thus May came with a warm wind of spice and fresh misgivings furrowed +the doctor's brow. + +"Now that the windows are opened so much," he fretted, "the rumble of +that quarry is inferno. The blasts bother him?" + +"He jumps," said Joan. + +"I thought so. He must have peace and quiet. If Mr. O'Neill is +willing, we'll move him to the farm." + +By the time the orchard flung out its white prayer of blossoms to the +sun, the doctor had his patient at the farm. + +And summer dreamed again upon the hills. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +HONEYSUCKLE DAYS + +Pine-sweet wind still blew around the cabin, the sylvan river laughed +in the sun, wistaria hung grape-like on the ladder of vine; but over it +all, to Kenny, brooded the pathos of change. + +He longed wistfully for the gay vitality of that other summer when +every day had been an exquisite intaglio of laughter. There were times +when unreasonably he even missed Adam. How the nights in contrast had +sharpened the joy of his days! And he hated the village boy who +ferried the punt back and forth upon the river, hated the horn with its +transforming miracles of reminiscence, for it pointed the nameless lack +of sparkle now that struck melancholy into his soul. He had lived in +Arcady and jealously he would have hoarded each detail of its charm. + +The days were long and quiet. Life for all of them centered around the +wheel-chair on the porch. There Joan read aloud while the nurse kept +wisely in the background, and Hannah at meal-times set the table on the +porch. + +In the long afternoons of study that Kenny spent with Don, Brian +asserted his independence and banished books. He seemed content to +talk. Joan listened eagerly to his tales of the road, never tiring of +Don's vagabond adventures. After the worried months of monotony and +pain, the afternoons of reminiscence were tonic for them both. Lazy +humor crept back to Brian's eyes. At times he whistled. Wind and sun +were tanning his skin to the hue of health. + +He had his dark hours. Every effort then to cheer him left him tired +and quiet. Talk of the chain of circumstances that had, oddly, brought +them all together, he avoided with a frown. Any reference to her life +in New York, Joan found, plunged him into gloom. Was it, she wondered, +because he knew his accident had brought her year of play and study to +an end? She longed passionately to tell him how easy it had been for +her--how trifling, as a sacrifice, in the face of his kindness to Don; +but shyness held her back. + +"Honeysuckle days!" Brian called his days of convalescence, for the +vine upon the porch hung full. + +"Is it so hot in the pines?" he wondered one sultry afternoon. + +"No," said Joan. "There it's always dark and cool and quiet. When you +can walk, Brian, you must see the cabin." + +Heat quivered visibly in the valley. A faint breeze frolicked now and +then upon the ridge, fluttering the honeysuckle and the pages of an +open book upon the table. + +"I'm glad it isn't," said Brian in relief. "Somehow I can't imagine +Kenny off there in a hot cabin striding up and down and grilling Don. +He's so--so combustible. As a matter of fact," he added, "I can't +imagine him in any sort of cabin grilling Don. Soft-hearted lunatic!" + +"Don gets awfully on his nerves," said Joan, shaking her head. "If it +wasn't that he's doing it for you--" + +"For me, Joan!" + +Joan nodded. + +"What you began, he'll finish for you. He said so. It bothered him +that all those dreary months you spent at the quarry just to help Don +might be in vain. Don went so dreadfully to pieces." + +"Sentimental old hothead," grumbled Brian, touched and pleased. "I +love him for it." + +"I wonder if you realize how much he cares!" + +"For--you?" asked Brian quietly. "Yes." + +"No, no," said Joan, coloring. "For you. For you he has worked +through splendidly to--to less of self. And so has Don. It's a +wonderful tribute, Brian. To inspire something fine and beautiful is +fine and beautiful itself." + +Brian stared uncomfortably at a red barn in the valley. + +"To have something dormant inside that catches fire and burns up +splendidly into unselfishness is better," he said. "This porch is like +a throne. One sits up here among the honeysuckles and finds a world of +summer at his feet." + +"Last summer," remembered Joan, "Kenny used to tell me over and over +again that you were all things in one. All, Brian. Think of it! +Almost," she finished demurely, "I came to believe it." + +Brian glanced at her in droll suspicion. Her eyes laughed at him with +the wholesome mischief of a child. + +"Almost!" he countered. "I insist upon my full meed of perfection. +When did I lose it?" + +"When you hounded the nurse--" + +"Plural noun," amended Brian wryly. + +"Plural," agreed Joan. "I knew then that the idol had clay feet." + +Brian groaned. + +"Haven't you?" + +"Yes," he said. "And a clay head. But I was never an idol." + +"Oh, yes you were!" said Joan. "When you gave up your trip abroad to +help Don, you became to me a wonderful sort of--of selfless young +god--" + +"Joan!" He stared at her in panic. + +"Truly. And I'd rather have you human. I always thought of you with +thankful worship--" + +"I approve the attitude," said Brian mischievously. "Please state +when and why discontinued." + +"The minute I met you." + +"Phew! That I consider unnecessarily heartless candor. Did you ever +hear of tempering the wind to the shorn lamb?" + +"If I had met you in the end, alive and well," said Joan thoughtfully, +"I would have kept you up there on your pedestal out of mortal reach +but you came into my life, hurt and pitiful, and you needed help, my +sort of help, and something humanized you. You were no longer a god. +You were something human--" + +"Thank God for that!" said Brian. + +"Besides," added Joan, twinkling, "you had clay feet. Garry wrote me +that you had an Irish temper--" + +"And I told you to write him!" + +"I asked him _all_ about you," said Joan. "He wrote me such a splendid +letter. It made me like you--more. And you can't know what it meant +when you wrote and pledged yourself to help Don." + +"Garry is my press agent," said Brian with a sniff, "I pay him. And +I'll dock him for the part about my temper." + +"Brian, so often I--I've wanted to thank you!" + +"Don't," he begged. "Please don't. What I did--you see," he +stammered, "it just--happened." + +"Like the letter you wrote to me, praising someone else to guarantee +your own respectability. Is it always someone else, Brian? Don't you +ever think of yourself?" + +"Lying here," said Brian moodily, "I've thought of little else. +There's Hannah with the tablecloth. It can't be six o'clock." + +"It is," said Joan. "And Mr. Abbott's coming to supper." + +She fled in a panic. + +"Will the child never have done with chains?" Hannah demanded as the +weeks slipped by. + +"When it wasn't Don, it was old Adam. And now it's someone else. And +Mr. O'Neill's got more patience, Hughie, than I ever thought was in +him." + +"I like him better t'other way," said Hughie. "Things is livelier. +I'd sooner be diggin' dots than dronin' along so poky." + +"It's my opinion," put in Hannah tartly, "that last summer just about +spoiled your taste for anything but the life of a pirate. If you must +have somebody throwin' a bottle at your head or dumpin' ministers into +the river or diggin' treasure, things have come to a pretty pass." + +Hughie whistled. + +"I ain't the only one that's restless," he defended. "Don's as +contraptious as a mule. And I've caught a look in young O'Neill's eye +once or twice like old Sim's black mare, mettlesome and anxious to +bolt." + +"Until Joan slips into a chair with a book or some work," snapped +Hannah. "Then he's a lamb. If I was Mr. O'Neill I'd thrash Don into +common sense and I'd remind t'other young man, son or no son, that the +nurse ain't earnin' her keep. Joan's earnin' it for her." + +Alone, Kenny owned, one can not be gay and lunch in glens where the wee +folk hide and whisper. And Joan and he himself had chains. He +accepted the summer with a wry grimace, reading in its irksome demands +a chance for real requital. He found no bitterness in the cup he had +set himself to drink. It was the price of Brian's welfare and Brian's +peace of mind. But he hungered for Joan and the long, gay days of +another summer. When had she grown up so, he wondered impatiently. He +missed the romping child with the sun shadows in her hair; he missed +her eager tears and laughter. To his skillful touch they had been but +strings of a beautiful harp, subtly, unfailingly responsive. Ah! she +had been a beautiful promise--that starved child of a summer ago--but +the promise fulfilled in the woman, he owned with a rush of feeling, he +loved more. Her essential tenderness, strumming kindred chords in his +sensitive Celtic soul, aroused an unfamiliar sense of the holiness of +love. + +And he was splendidly afire with dreams. + +In July the little doctor found his patient strong enough for crutches +and dismissed the nurse. And unexpectedly John Whitaker arrived, +growling his opinion of the rural trains. + +"Can you walk without your crutches?" he barked, his glasses oddly +moist. + +"A little," said Brian. + +Whitaker sat down and blinked. + +"You don't deserve a job," he grumbled, "turning me down for a dynamite +spree, but I'm going to send you to Ireland in the fall. There's a +story there--a big one. If," he added grimly, "you can manage to get +in." + +Late August found the tension of worry at an end. Brian at last was +walking. And Don had fought a battle with his books and won. + +Kenny's spirits soared. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +ARCADY ELUDES A SEEKER + +"Come," Kenny begged one night when the dusk lay thick in the valley. +"Let's pace the Gray Man, Joan, in Garry's car. Nobody needs you now +as much as I." + +His bright dark face pleaded. + +The girl smiled. + +"Kenny, Kenny, Kenny," she said, "will you ever grow up?" + +"Did Peter Pan? Better get your cloak, dear. You may need it." + +He went off whistling to the barn. Kenny had blessed the car and Garry +many times. He blessed them again as the engine throbbed in the dusk. +Hot silence lay upon the ridge, broken only by the noise of insects. + +"A long road and a straight road and Samhain at the end!" he sang as +Joan climbed in. "And bless the Irish heart of me, dear, there's a +moon scrambling up behind the hill and peeping over. Lordy, Lordy!" he +added under his breath, "what a moon!" + + "'On such a night + Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew + And with an unthrift love did run to Venice + As far as--' + +"Hum! I've forgotten. Wonder why Shakespeare looked ahead and +harpooned me with that word unthrift. Where to, Jessica? Where shall +the unthrift lover drive on such a night?" + +Joan stared absently at the road ahead. + +"To Ireland," she said. + +The answer pleased him. + +"I mind me," he said instantly, "of an Irish tale of Finn McCoul." + +Joan did not answer. + +"Tell me," she said at last. "Finn and you are always delightful." + +Kenny stared at her in marked reproach. + +"Joan!" he exclaimed. + +"What--what is it, Kenny?" + +"That's just the sort of polite nothing you learned in New York!" + +"I'm sorry, Kenny. I'm--tired. And just for a minute I wasn't +listening. You know how it is. You hear an echo in your mind a long +while after and answer in a panic." She brushed her cheek against his +sleeve with a remorseful gesture of appeal. His arm went round her. + +"There!" he said with a sigh of relief. "That's better. I'm lonesome +when we're not in tune." + +"And the story?" + +Kenny told of a fairy face that Finn had seen in a lake among the +heather. + +"Leaf-brown eyes had the nymph, I take it, and satin-cream skin with a +rose showin' through and allurin' lashes maybe dipped in the ink-pots +of the fairies." + +"What," said Joan from the shelter of his arm, "is a blarney stone?" + +"A substitute for lips!" said Kenny instantly and kissed her. + +"And Finn?" + +"Plunged into the waters of the lake, he did, as any son of Erin +would--and found the maid." + +But Joan's eyes were absently fixed upon the road again and Kenny +abandoned his legend with a sigh until he bethought himself to use its +climax in reproach. + +"And when Finn reappeared, he was an old, old man, as old as a man may +feel when his lady's attention wanders." + +Joan colored and laughed, her eyes faintly mischievous, wholly +apologetic. + +"Finn's youth," Kenny gallantly assured her, "was restored to him by +magic and surely there is magic in a woman's smile." + +They motored on in a silence that Kenny found depressing. When would +Arcady come again, he wondered rebelliously, wistful for the sparkle of +that other summer when fairies, silver-shod, had danced upon the +moonlit lake. The strain of worry had tired them both. + +The wind swept coolly toward them sweet with pine. Wind and pine up +here were always mingling. A night--a moon for lovers! The clasp of +his arm tightened. + +The peace of the night was insistent. After all with worry at an end +Arcady might not lie so very far away--it was creeping into his heart, +sweet with the music of many trees. Joan too perhaps--he stole a +glance at the girl's face, colorless in the moonlight like some soft, +exquisite flower--and drew up the emergency brake with a jerk. Her +lashes were wet. + +"Joan," he exclaimed, "you're not crying!" + +She tried to smile and buried her face on his shoulder. + +"I think," she said forlornly, "it--it's just because everything has +turned out so--so nicely." + +He motored homeward, ill at ease, aware after a time that the girl +cradled in his arm had fallen asleep. Her tears worried him. + +"But I'm quite all right now, Kenny," she protested as they drove up +the lane. "It's partly the heat. Why didn't you wake me?" + +He swung her lightly to the ground. + +"I liked to think I was helping you rest," he said gently. "You need +it. Don't wait, dear. It's late." + +He climbed back in the car and glided off barnwards, waving his arm. +Joan went slowly up the stairway to her room. + +Latticed moonlight lay upon a chair by the window. She dropped into +it, weary and inert, grateful for the rushing sound of the river; it +soothed her with familiar music. A clock downstairs chimed the hour, +then the half--and then another hour. Below in the moonlight a man was +climbing up from the river. + +"Brian," she called breathlessly, "is it you?" + +"Yes." + +"Dr. Cole will scold. It's twelve o'clock." + +Brian tossed his cigarette away with a sigh. + +"He'll never know. I've been sitting down there in the punt. The +river's silver. Come down for a while," he implored. "All evening +I've been as lonely as a leper. Ever since you motored off with Kenny, +Don's been a grouch. Can't you climb down the vine?" + +"I--I can't, Brian." + +"Please, Joan. I'll tell Kenny myself in the morning." + +"No," said Joan. "I--can't. I--I wish I could." + +"So do I," said Brian. He walked away. + +Shaking and sobbing, Joan flung herself upon the bed. + +"Sid writes me you're home," Kenny wrote to Garry in September. "What +about the car? Come up for a while and drive it home. We can do some +sketching. Brian's full of Irish melancholy and waiting for word from +Whitaker. He may go any time. Joan's tired and busy with clothes. +Don's cranky and I'm rather at a loose end, hunting things to do." + +Puzzled, Garry went. + +"I can't make out what's wrong," he wrote to Sid, "Kenny's rational +enough, but Brian's strung to the breaking point. I suspect it's just +as it always has been--they're miserable apart and hopeless together. +But the year has been a sobering one, and what used to flash, they +bottle up. In my opinion the sooner Brian gets away the better. He's +not himself." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +THE TENSION SNAPS + +Months back Fate had flung out a skein of broken threads to the wind of +Chance. In mid September she chose to bring the flying ends together. + +It began when Hannah dropped a dipper. Hughie on his way to the +wood-box with an armful of kindlings jumped and dropped them with a +clatter. And he stepped on Toby's tail and swore. Hannah and Hughie +and Toby, startled, shared a sharp moment of resentment. + +"Hughie," Hannah's impatience keyed her voice a trifle high, "'pon my +honor I don't know what gets into you. Ever since you took to diggin' +dots you've been as nervous as a cat. You're full of jumps. It's my +opinion if the doctor hadn't told you that Mr. O'Neill himself buried +the money in the fireplace, you'd be diggin' dots in a lunatic asylum!" + +Hughie's horrified face of warning turned her cold with foreboding. +Hannah turned and gasped. + +Joan stood behind her. + +"Hannah," she asked, "what did you say?" + +"I--I don't know," said Hannah, scarlet with confusion. "I'm all +unstrung and my head's queer--" + +Hughie went out and slammed the door. + +"You said that Mr. O'Neill--buried--the money--in Uncle's fireplace!" +repeated Joan distinctly. She caught Hannah's arm, her dark frightened +eyes imploring. "Hannah, did he?" + +Shaking, Hannah put her apron to her eyes. "Hannah, you must tell me. +It is important that I know. No, don't cry. Did Mr. O'Neill bury the +money--in Uncle's fireplace?" + +"Yes," choked Hannah in a low voice. "Oh, Hughie will never forgive +me!" + +"How do you know?" + +"The doctor. Hughie went on diggin', thinking there must be more, +until he was sick with nerves. The doctor had to tell him." + +"And how did the doctor know?" + +The girl's strained quiet helped Hannah to regain her self-control. + +"Mr. O'Neill went to Rink's hotel to telephone," she faltered, wiping +her eyes, "and Sam Acker put his ear to the door. He--he telephoned +for a lot of ragged money--" + +Joan caught her breath. + +"And then a week later," gulped Hannah, "when the doctor came to tend +his wife, Sam told it, for Mr. O'Neill had said the doctor sent him +there to telephone. And the doctor never would have told but for +Hughie's nerves. He said so when he pledged us both to keep it secret. +He spoke wonderful about Mr. O'Neill. That I must say. And he called +him somebody Donkeyhote--" + +"Where is Mr. O'Neill?" + +"He drove down to the village with Mr. Rittenhouse for the mail." + +Joan glided away like a shadow. + +Don Quixote! And so he had done that strange, fantastic thing for +her--and she had given the money away to Don! Joan stopped at the foot +of the stairway, her face colorless and unbelieving, her mind casting +up a vivid picture of the night of search in the sitting room. +It--could--not--be! + +Ah, but it could! For Kenny, reckless and on his mettle, was a +finished actor. And the morning at the telephone! His silence and +constraint had bothered her then not a little. Later, whirling through +the blizzard in a taxi, he had begged her not to do it. And he had +surrendered in the end with a sigh and smiled and kissed her. His +eyes, warmly blue, irresistibly Irish in their tenderness, seemed now +to stare at her with sad reproach. Ah, the kindness of him! Hot +stinging tears rolled slowly down the girl's white cheeks. + +"Joan!" It was Brian's voice behind her. + +Joan turned, trembling, blinked and smiled. + +Something in her face drove his memory back to the moonlit wood. Niobe +on the verge of a passion of tears! + +"You look like a sad little brown thrush," he said gently. + +His voice, his eyes chilled her with foreboding. They stood in utter +silence. + +Joan touched the throbbing veins in her throat and moistened her lips. + +"You have heard from Mr. Whitaker--" + +"Yes, Garry brought the letter up." + +"When--" + +"I'm sailing in a week. I go from here--to-morrow." + +"Brian!" + +The terror in her eyes startled him and the tension snapped. An +instant later she was crying wildly in his arms. Brian crushed his +lips against her cheek, conscious only of an agonizing stab of joy, +then Joan pulled away, her eyes dark with grief and shame. + +"Oh, Brian, Brian," she whispered passionately, "I--want--to die." + +"I've wanted to die for weeks," said Brian. "Almost I think I did." + +Joan caught her breath with a shuddering gasp. + +"Don't!" said Brian. "I--can't bear to hear you cry. I've always +known that I was a pretty poor sort but this--" + +His honest eyes begged for understanding, + +Joan's face, wet with tears, condoned. + +"I--I am worse," she said unsteadily. + +He caught her hands rebelliously. + +"But you love me," he said wistfully. "That, at least--" + +Joan slipped into his arms again with a sob. + +"I love you better than my life," she said, "and I may--never--say it +again." + +[Illustration: "I love you better than my life," Joan said, "and I +may--never--say it again."] + +Brian pressed his cheek against her hair. + +"No," he said. "No. I would not have you say it again, Joan, dear as +it is to hear it." + +An eternity of minutes seemed to tick away in the silence. + +"Brian, you must believe I meant to be true to Kenny--" + +"Don't!" he choked, paling at the sound of Kenny's name. "Oh, Kenny, +Kenny!" + +Joan buried her face in his arm. Both were thinking with hot +remorseful hearts of that stormy penitent with the laughing, tender +Irish eyes. Both loved him well. And both were pledging themselves to +keep his happiness intact. + +Joan's tormented memory was busy with pictures: Kenny disastrously +sculling the punt to help her, Kenny in the death-chamber shuddering +and patient and passionately resolved to stay by her to the end, Kenny +with the lantern held high above her head, Kenny digging dots and +helping Don to study and Kenny tearing bricks from the ancient +fireplace. + +She slipped out of his arms in a panic, her face, Brian thought, as +white as the old-fashioned lilies in the garden. + +"Brian, go--" she choked. + +With the truth of the ragged money burning itself into her mind--with +Brian so near and yet so far--the touch of his arms was torment. + +Hungry for the peace of the pines and the lonely cabin, Joan fled +out-of-doors. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + +THE KING OF YOUTH + +Ten minutes later Kenny, coming into the dark, old-fashioned library +where Adam's books were once more arrayed upon the shelves, found Don +wandering turbulently around the room. + +Was this boy ever anything but turbulent, he wondered with impatience. +Must he always brood about the boulder and atonement? + +Don stopped dead in his tracks, his fingers clenched in his hair, his +white face staring queerly; and Kenny, irresistibly reminded of himself +in minutes of turmoil, stared back, knowing in a flash of inspiration +why the tale of the boulder had made him think of the crash of bouillon +cups. The desire of the moment that marked men for disaster! The +tongue-tied youngster there with his feet rooted to the ground and his +face pale with agitation, was indeed something like himself. Kenny had +a moment of pity. + +"Mr. O'Neill," said Don with a hard, dry sob, "you know I've wanted to +make up to Brian somehow about that boulder. If I hadn't been crazy to +drive up the ledge once and if I hadn't lied to Grogan and bullied +Tony, Brian wouldn't have spent the rest of the winter in a plaster +cast. I--I want to do something for him, something big, and I--I've +got to do it in a queer way." He shuddered and wiped his face. Kenny +saw that his hands were shaking wildly, and pitied him again. "Mr. +O'Neill," he blurted, "Brian loves my sister and she loves him." + +It seemed to Kenny that lightning struck with a sinister flare of fire +at his feet and hot blinding pieces of the floor were flying all about +him. + +"How do you know?" he said fiercely. "How _do_ you know? How can you +know such a thing as that? You can't! You can't possibly." + +"I do," said Don. "I heard them say it." + +"Heard them!" + +"I was on the porch," said Don, "and I came through the window there to +get a book. They were in the hall." + +"You listened!" + +Don flushed. + +"I--I wanted to," he said sullenly. "And I did." + +"Ah, yes," said Kenny, wiping his hair back and wondering vaguely why +it felt so wet, "you wanted to and you did." + +"I wanted to," said Don fiercely, "because I knew Brian loved her. And +I knew my sister wasn't happy. She's looked sad and tired and +frightened a lot of times, Joan has, and she's cried a lot--" + +"Yes," said Kenny, "she has." + +Don's challenging eyes swept with stormy suspicion over Kenny's face. + +"Mr. O'Neill," he flung out, "don't you blame her. Don't you do it. +She was a kid, an awful kid when you came here first, and lonesome. +She wanted to be flattered and loved. All girls do. She wasn't happy. +She wanted to play and you gave her a chance. You're famous and you've +been everywhere and you're a good looker," he gulped courageously, "and +maybe you turned her head. I--don't know. I think she loves you an +awful lot anyway. But not--not that way. You could have been her +father--" + +"Yes," said Kenny wincing. "She's younger than Brian." Where had he +read that youth was cruel? "Yes, I could have been her father." + +"I don't mean you're old," stammered Don, flushing. "I mean--Oh, Mr. +O'Neill--" and now Don slipped back into childhood for a second and +sobbed aloud--"I--I don't know what I mean. You just--just mustn't +blame her. She's my sister. She even patched my clothes." + +"I'm not blaming her, Don. God knows I'm not. I'm just wonderin'." + +"Joan's going to marry you just the same. She said so. Mr. O'Neill, +you've got to do something. You--you've got to!" He clenched his +hands and bolted for the door. + +"Yes," said Kenny, frowning, "I--I've got to do something. I +can't--think--what. Where's Joan?" + +"I think she's gone to the cabin. She often went there when Uncle made +her cry. Mr. O'Neill," Don clenched one hand and struck it fiercely +against the palm of the other, "you've been good to me. I--I'm awful +sorry--" + +He fled with a sob and Kenny put his hand to his throat to still a +painful throbbing. + +There was a clanking in his ears. Or was it in his memory? Ah, yes, +Adam had said that life was a link in a chain that clanks, and he +couldn't escape. Well, he hadn't. + +Kenny sat down, conscious of a tired irresolution in his head and a +numbness. Nothing seemed clearly defined, save somewhere within him a +monumental sharpness as of pain. Joan's happiness he remembered must +be the religion of his love. + +After that things blurred--curiously. Superstition, ordinarily +within him but an artificial twist of fancy, reared a mocking head and +reminded him of omens. Sailing over the river long ago he had thought +of Hy Brazil, the Isle of Delight that receded always when you +followed. Receded! It was very true. Later the wind among the +blossoms had been chill and fitful and Joan had been unaware of the +romance in the white, sweet drift. Omens! And rain had come, the +blossom storm. And Death had spread its sable wing over the first day +of his love. He shuddered and closed his eyes. + +Separate thoughts rose quiveringly from the blur. He thought of a +lantern and Samhain. Samhain, the summer-ending of the druids! +Perhaps this was the summer ending of his youth and hope. And he had +drank in Adam's room that Samhain night to Destiny--Destiny who had +brought him--this! + +Still the blur and the separate thoughts stinging into his +consciousness like poisoned arrows. Whitaker's voice, persistent and +analytical, rang in his ears. The King of Youth! Kenny laughed aloud +and tears stung at his eyes. He blinked and laughed again. Why, he +was growing up all at once! John would be pleased. Thoughts of +Whitaker, Brian, his farcical penance and Joan, became a brilliant +phantasmagoria from which for an interval nothing emerged separate or +distinct. Then sharp and clear came the dread of Brian's death and the +ride over the sleet with Frank. The steering wheel strained in his +aching hands and the wheels slid dangerously . . . He did not want to +be a failure . . . He wanted passionately after all the turmoil to be +Brian's successful parent. If in this instance there was a curious +need to wreck his own life in order that he might parent Brian with +success, he must not make a mess of it. Once, accidentally, John said, +he had almost shipwrecked Brian's life and Brian had stepped out--just +in the nick of time. He must not do that again. Brian had suffered +enough from self rampant in others. + +The King of Youth! . . . The King of Youth! . . . And Brian was +twenty-four years _old_. He must not make him--older. This sharp +aging all in a moment was fraught with pain. + +His weary ears resented the mocking persistence of Whitaker's +voice. Kenny's happy-go-lucky self-indulgence, it said, had often +spelled for Brian discomfort of a definite sort. . . . Well, +it--should--not--spell--pain. . . . And if in the past his generosity +had always been congenial, now it should hurt. Was he about to learn +something of the psychology of sacrifice that Adam had said he ought to +know? + +He swung rebelliously to his feet. Why must the fullness of life come +through sacrifice? Why must all things good and permanent and true +come only out of suffering? Why must men pay for their dreams with +pain? + +He moved mechanically toward the door. . . . Yes, he cared more for +Joan's happiness than for his own. And she was suffering. Why, the +tired truth of it was, he loved them both enough to want to see them +happy . . . And he would be a part of Don's erratic atonement. + +He smiled wryly and realized with a start that he was already +out-of-doors, walking dazedly toward the cabin in the pines. The +fresh, sweet wind blew through his hair and into his face, but the blur +persisted, filled with voices and memories and promptings from God +alone knew where. + +The odor of pine was sharply reminiscent. . . . And then with a shock +that stung him out of inhibition he was staring in at the cabin window. +Joan sat by the table, her head upon her arm, her shoulders heaving. + +"Poor child!" he said heavily. "Poor child!" And savagely cursed the +summer pictures that flamed in his mind at the sight of her. The +cabin, the wistaria ladder, the punt, the girl by the willow in the +gold brocade-- + +Well, he must go hurriedly toward that door or not at all. His courage +was failing. + +The sound of the door startled her. Joan leaped to her feet and stood, +shaking violently, by the table, one hand clutching at the edge of it +in terror. + +In that tongue-tied minute, if he had but known, with his fingers +clenched in his hair and his face scarlet, he was like that turbulent +boy who such a little while ago had crashed into his life with a sob. + +Joan's agonized eyes, wet with tears, brought home to him the need of a +steady head . . . and responsibility. Yes, he must keep his two feet +solidly on the ground and face a gigantic responsibility. + +"Don't cry, dear, please!" he said gently. "It's just one of the +things that can't be helped. Don told me. He overheard." + +Her low cry hurt--viciously. And she came flying wildly across the +room to his arms, sobbing out her grief and remorse. + +"Oh, Kenny, Kenny." she sobbed. "I--want--you--both." + +His shaking arms sheltered her. A heart-broken child! He must +remember that. And, as Don said, he could have been her father. + +"Happiness with the least unhappiness to others, girleen," he reminded +with his cheek against her hair. "Remember?" + +"Yes," she choked. + +"You must go to Brian. Any foolish notion of sacrifice now will only +tangle the lives of all of us." + +"But--I cannot forget! Kenny, if only you would hate me!" + +"I didn't mean to love you, mavourneen. It was like the tale of +Killarney. I left a cover off in my heart and a spring gushed out and +flooded my life." + +"I am blaming myself!" + +"You must not do that. You were in love with love. You must now know +how different it--" But he could not say it, courageous as he felt. + +"And the money!" choked Joan. "Oh, Kenny, Kenny, the ragged money! +And I gave it away. And you were so good--so good!" + +He frowned, unable to understand at once the relevance of the ragged +money and realized that Joan was sobbing into his shoulder the tale of +an eavesdropping bartender and a doctor. He accepted it, dazedly, +thunderstruck at the alertness of his Nemesis who missed no single +chance to shoot an arrow. + +"And Don must give that money back. I will tell him--" + +"No," said Kenny. "No, he must not." + +She stared at him in wonder. + +"Mavourneen," he pleaded wistfully, "may I--not do that at least for +someone who is yours? Don needs it." + +He could not know that his kindness was to her more poignant torment +than his bitterest reproach. He thought as the color fled from her +lips and left her gray and trembling, that she was fainting. He held +her closely in his arms. + +She slipped away from him and sat down weakly in a chair. Dusk lay +beyond the windows. Joan covered her face with her hands. + +"The Gray Man," she whispered. "He's peeping in." + +Pain flared intolerably in Kenny's throat and stabbed into his heart. +He drew the shades with a shudder and lighted the lamp. + +In the supreme moment of his agony, came inspiration. He must save +them all with a lie! Queer that, queer and contradictory! Yes, after +practicing the truth, he must save them all from shipwreck with a lie. + +"Girleen," he said, "there is something now that I must tell you. I +thought never to say it. You came into my dream that day beneath the +willow in gold brocade, with afterglow behind you and an ancient boat. +I am an Irishman--and a painter. 'Twas a spot of rare enchantment and +I said to myself, I am falling in love--again." + +"Again!" echoed Joan a little blankly. + +"Again!" said Kenny inexorably. "You see, Joan, dear, I was used to +falling in love. There are men like that. You and Brian would never +understand." + +"No," said the girl, shocked. "No." + +"You made a mistake, the sort of mistake that drives half the lifeboats +on the rocks. I mean, dear, falling in love with love. But you're +over that. It was--a different sort of love with me. I knew as we +crossed the river that first day in the punt that the madness could not +last. You see--it never had." + +"Kenny!" + +If Joan in that moment had remembered the Irishman tearing bricks from +the fireplace in a spasm of histrionic zeal, she might have distrusted +the steadiness of his level, kindly glance. She might have guessed +that again he was reckless and on his mettle. But she did not remember. + +"Romance and mystery," said Kenny, lighting a cigarette and smiling at +her through a cloud of smoke, "were always the death of me. My fancy's +wayward and romantic. Afterward your will-of-the-wisp charm held me +oddly. You kept yourself apart and precious. And I was always +pursuing. It was provocative--and unfamiliar. And then came Samhain, +the--the summer-ending." There was an odd note in his voice. "I faced +a new experience. I had gone over the usual duration of my madness and +I thought," he smiled, "I thought I was loving you for good. But--" + +Her dark eyes stared at him, wistful and yet in the moment of her hope +a shade reproachful. + +"And--your love--did not last, Kenny?" It was a forlorn little voice, +for all its unmistakable note of rejoicing. How very young she +was--and childlike! + +"It--did--not--last!" said Kenny deliberately. "It never does with me. +I should have known it. I love you sincerely, girleen. I always +shall. But I love you as I would have loved--my daughter." + +"Your daughter! Kenny, why then did you speak so of the flood of +Killarney?" + +"I was testing you. You can see for yourself. I could not honorably +tell you this, dear, if you still cared." + +"But I do care," cried Joan, flinging out her hands with a gesture of +appeal. "I love you so much, Kenny, that it hurts." + +"But not in the way you love Brian." + +"No." + +"And that, mavourneen, is as it should be." + +He told her of the stage mother. Let the lie go with the castle he had +built upon it. And he would begin afresh. + +"Ah," said Joan, dismissing it with shining eyes, "there, Kenny, you +meant only to be kind." + +He wondered wearily why the lie with all its torment had not shocked +her. Truth was queer. + +Joan glided toward the door. He caught in her face the look of a white +flame and dropped his eyes. A Botticelli look. Ah, well, it was +beautiful to be young and joyous! + +"I must tell Brian," she said. + +"Yes," said Kenny. "Of course." + +And she was gone. Kenny lay back in his chair and closed his eyes; the +sound of her flying feet death in his ears. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + +WHEN THE ISLE OF DELIGHT RECEDED + +Often Kenny had appreciatively dramatized for himself possible minutes of +tragedy. They were always opportunities for Shakespearian soliloquy and +gesture. + +Now he lay back in his chair much too tired for tragedy and gesture. And +the need of soliloquy would have found him dumb. Upper-most in his mind +was a dream in which Joan had peeped down at him from a balloon that went +ever and ever higher--like the Isle of Delight that was always--receding. +He had sensed in her to-night that aerial aloofness he had felt when he +blocked old Adam out from his dream of love. Liebestraum! The stabbing +pain in his heart grew hotter. + +It was lonely here in the pines. He wondered why he had never caught +before that chill pervading sense of solitude--sad solitude. The pines +whispered. It was not merely poetry. They whispered plaintively. . . . +And he was very tired. + +Rebellion came flaming into his apathy and Kenny caught his breath and +held it, fiercely striking his hands together again and again. Sacrifice +and suffering! Must it be like this? What had he written in his +notebook anyway? He seemed almost to have forgotten. + +The book opened at a touch to the page he wanted. + +"Sunsets and vanity," he read drearily and penciled the rebuke away with +a faint smile. Like his hairbrained, unquenchable youth, bright with +folly, the sunsets and vanity lay in the past. Vanity! Ah, dear God! he +could not feel humbler. + +Nor was he irresponsible--or a failure as a parent. He had made good +to-night. Surely, surely, he had made good to-night. The one thing that +he might not mark out was his failure as a painter. + +"Need to suffer and learn something of the psychology of sacrifice." +Well, he was--learning. . . . Nay, he had learned. Kenny fiercely drew +his pencil through the sentence and read the rest. + +The truth, though he did not fully understand it, he would always try to +tell. He had no debts. The chairs in the studio were cleared of litter. +A plebeian regularity had made him uncomfortably provident. + +So much for that part of his self-arraignment. One by one he marked the +items out and stared with a twisted smile at the next. + +"I borrow Brian's girls, his money and his clothes!" Hum! Once Garry +had barked at him for sending orchids to a girl or two whom Brian liked. + +The money, the clothes, the paraphernalia he had pawned, were returned. +As for the girls--well, Brian had retaliated in kind and perhaps the debt +in its concentration of payment, was abundantly squared. + +"Indolence." That the record of his winter could disprove. + +And finally, he read what, after Adam's telling of the truth, he had +scribbled at the end. + +"Life is a battle. I do not fight. And life is not an individual +adventure." + +It wasn't. It was a chain that clanked. + +"I do not fight," he read again and crossed it out. + +"Adam, old man," he said wryly, "I think to-night I've done some +fighting. And the fight has just begun." + +He tore the page out, struck a match and burned it. Again he dropped +back in his chair and closed his eyes. + +Into the blur came Garry. + +"Kenny!" he called. "Kenny!" + +Kenny opened his eyes with a start. Garry stood by the cabin door, his +hand upon the knob. + +"Don asked me to come. Kenny, I was on the porch. Great God! the kid +must have gone crazy." + +"You heard?" + +"Yes." + +"He wanted to--atone." + +"And now that he's cooled down enough to remember your kindness, Kenny, +he's breaking his heart over you. A queer kid! I almost thrashed him. +He's tramping off his brain-storm." + +"And Joan?" + +"With Brian." Garry looked away. "They have forgotten the world," he +added bitterly. + +"Kenny, how did you manage? That look in her face--" + +"I lied." + +"Gallant liar!" said Garry huskily. "I knew you would. It was the only +kind way." + +"Almost," said Kenny, "I did not remember to lie in time. Truth is a +thing I cannot understand." + +The sympathy in Garry's eyes unnerved him. + +"Garry," he flamed, "why did I practice the telling of truth to end now +with a lie? Why did Joan plead for a year to learn to be my wife and +learn in it--not to be?" + +"God knows!" said Garry gently. "Why did agony come to Brian at the +hands of a boy he'd befriended? And then--to you?" + +"It is the Samhain of my life," said Kenny rising. "And I am no longer +John Whitaker's King of Youth. I think my youth died back there when Don +thrust it aside, not meaning, I take it, to be cruel. But I grew up all +at once." He frowned. "Drowning men, they say, have a kaleidoscopic +vision of the past. I think sitting here that came to me. Perhaps, +Garry, if Eileen had lived I would have been different--steadier. I +think I loved her. I think it would have lasted. A child is a beautiful +link. Perhaps that fever of vanity that grew to a burning in my veins +would never have started. Started, it was like a conflagration. It +drove Brian to sunsets. God knows what it didn't do. I thought only of +myself--always. That desire for adulation in a woman's eyes, that +curious persistent fever was, I'm sure, a sort of sex vanity. It has +nearly ruined many another man's life. It nearly ruined mine. Always +when I was drifting into new madness, I couldn't work. I dreamed. The +Isle of Delight, always receding! I sang and whistled. The King of +Youth! Only when I was drifting out again, could I bend myself to +concentration and sanity. And then another look in a girl's soft +eyes--and more vanity and self and delirium. But I'm tired. I want to +look ahead to--to quiet and steadiness and work." + +Garry, with the husk still in his throat, wandered off to the window. + +"Garry!" + +Garry wheeled and found a wistful, boyish Kenny with his fingers in his +hair. + +"I'm no longer a failure as a parent?" + +"No!" said Garry with decision. + +"And God knows I haven't been a failure as a lover. I'm prayin' I shan't +always be a failure as a painter. It's the one thing left. Somewhere in +Ireland, Garry, nine silent fairies blow beneath a caldron. They know +the secrets of the future. I'd like to be peepin'." + +He was to know in time that the caldron held for him peace and big +achievement. + +"I wish I could help!" said Garry. + +"Garry, could you--would you drive me home to-night?" + +"Anything!" + +"You'll not be mindin'?" + +"No. It's better." + +"Come," said Kenny, his color high. "We'll be facin' it now." + +They went in silence through the pines. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII + +THE END OF KENNY'S SONG + +A light flickered on the porch where Hannah hovered around the supper +table, puzzled and annoyed. + +"I'm glad somebody's come at last," she exclaimed a trifle tartly. +"Every bug on the ridge has been staring at the supper table through +the screens. And I promised Mis' Owen to drive over there to-night +with Hughie." + +"Where's Brian?" + +"He went down to the village with Joan." + +"And Don?" + +"Don said he'd eat his supper when he came. It might be late." + +Kenny, whistling a madcap hornpipe, glinted at the table with approval. + +"Off with ye, now, Hannah, darlin'," he said. "I'll stare the bugs +down until they come." + +"They ought to be here now." Hannah's eyes strained, frowning, toward +the lane. + +"Ho, Brian!" Kenny called. + +"Ho!" came a distant shout. And then: "Coming, Kenny." + +Had Kenny's call been one of reassurance? To Garry, miserably intent +upon the ordeal ahead, the big Irishman, whistling softly in his chair, +had sent a message through the dark to ease the tension. Already the +daredevil light danced wantonly in his eyes. + +Hannah trotted off in better humor. + +Dreading the supper hour, dreading the sound of steps upon the walk, +Garry smoked and gnawed his lips. The meeting must be painful. . . . +Now they were coming along the gravel . . . and now . . . He had +undervalued Kenny's tact. + +The latch of the screen door clicked. Kenny rummaged for cigarettes +and struck a match. Joan had slipped to her place at the table before +he threw the match away. Then he smiled. His eyes were a curious +droll confessional that Brian seemed at once to understand. They +deplored the fickle strain in his blood that doomed all madness of the +heart to end in time. Brian had seen that look too many times to doubt +it now. + +"Come, Garry." Joan brought him into the circle at the table with a +smile. Garry joined it with a sinking heart. He would have had that +shining look of wonder in her eyes less unrestrained. But the shadows +for Joan, thanks to Kenny's lie, lay already dimly in the past. + +The merriment of the supper hour Garry thought of later with a pang. +He ate but little, fascinated by the reckless spontaneity of Kenny's +mood. It put them all at ease. The big kind Spartan will behind it +brought a catch to Garry's throat. Daredevil glints laughed in Kenny's +eyes. Again and again Garry found himself staring at the actor's vivid +face in a panic of unbelief. + +"Garry's had a letter," said Kenny presently. "He's driving back +to-night." + +"Garry!" + +"I'm sorry." Garry rose. "I'm afraid," he added, glancing at his +watch, "that I'll have to slip upstairs and sling some odds and ends in +my suit case. Mind, Kenny?" + +"Run along," said Kenny. "I'll be up in a minute." He drummed an +irresponsible tune upon the table and looked apologetic. + +"If you'll not be mindin', Brian," he began, "I'll go along. He +doesn't know the roads--" + +Brian eyed him with a familiar glint of authority. + +"I thought so," he said slowly. "I saw it coming. You're just in the +mood for what Jan calls 'rocketing' and Garry's letter, of course, was +the spark. Luckily, old boy, I'm on the job again. You've been +tearing around unguarded a shade too long." + +"I've got to go," barked Kenny, pushing back his chair. "I've had his +car for months. Do you suppose I want him losing his way all night--" + +He fumed off rebelliously, talking as he went. + +Brian's eyes followed him through the doorway. + +"Hum!" he said grimly. "'Richard is himself again!' You mustn't blame +him, Joan," he added. "He was always like that. He can't help it. I +mean, dear, tumbling in and out of love. I always knew the symptoms. +Falling in, he'd whistle softly and his eyes would shine. He'd be up +in the clouds and altogether gay and charming, his work would begin to +pall and he'd put it aside until he began to run down. I always knew +when he came to disillusion. His conscience would begin to bother him +about work. He'd be moody and discontented and a desperate flurry of +painting would follow until the next girl smiled." + +He reached across the table and caught her hands. + +"It is hard to believe it all," he said simply. "And Ireland for a +honeymoon!" + +The look of shining content in Joan's eyes deepened. + +"Oh, Brian," she said. "I shall love it, I know!" + +Kenny climbed the stairway in a daze and packed his suit case. +Everywhere he felt the eyes of Adam Craig upon him--less and less +unkind. They stared at him from the windows by the orchard. They +stared over the creaking banister as he stumbled down the stairway with +his courage ebbing. They stared from the library where the porch light +glimmered through the windows. . . . Fall was in the wind to-night. +The old house creaked. Adam's spirit swept in always with a sighing +wind. Kenny shivered. A bleak place--the ridge--and haunted. + +With a shock he found himself upon the porch. At the foot of the steps +Garry waited in the car, his gauntleted hands drumming nervously upon +the wheel. If for a minute stark, incredulous terror swept through +Kenny's veins, his laughing lips belied it. Then he kissed Joan +lightly on the cheek and went, whistling, down the steps with Brian. + +"And you, Brian?" he said, halting on the lower step to light a +cigarette. "What shall I tell John?" + +"Tell him all," said Brian. He talked hurriedly of his plans. + +Kenny held out his hand. + +"God speed, boy!" he said. + +Garry--unsentimental Garry--blinked as the car shot down the lane. He +clashed his gears and shuddered. + +Brian stared. + +"Phew!" he whistled as Joan came down the steps. "Garry's driving like +a blacksmith." + +They clung to each other in the dark and watched the headlights play +upon the trees. + +From the end of the lane came Kenny's final gift of reassurance. His +rollicking voice swept into the quiet, soft with brogue, as care-free +in song as it had been earlier in laughter: + + "'I'll love thee evermore + Eileen a roon! + I'll bless thee o'er and o'er + Eileen a roon!'" + +Brian laughed softly. + +"Joan! Joan!" he exclaimed in a rush of feeling. Their lips met. + + "'Oh! for thy sake I'll tread + Where plains of Mayo spread.'" + +Brian's heart went out to the irresponsible penitent rocketing in song. + +"Dear lunatic!" he said. + +Fainter in the night wind came the end of Kenny's song: + + "'By hope still fondly led, + Eileen a roon.'" + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KENNY*** + + +******* This file should be named 16040.txt or 16040.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/4/16040 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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