Kenny Part 22

"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 b.u.mp, 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 compa.s.sionate hearts as yours."

"I don't want it!" said Adam instantly. "It's churchiology, not Christianity. They are as different, thank G.o.d, 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 b.u.mp myself into eternity down that hallway," flung out Adam Craig pa.s.sionately, 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 G.o.d!" said Kenny, wiping his forehead. "I'll stay!"

"Good!" said Adam, moistening his lips. "Good! You know, Kenny," he whispered, s.h.i.+vering, "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 d.a.m.ned rake of an Irish song and if you're not singing, you're at the piano battering out a sc.r.a.p-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 a.s.sailed 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 circ.u.mstances, 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?