Kenny Part 55

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 pa.s.sionately 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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, flus.h.i.+ng. "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. G.o.d 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. Superst.i.tion, 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 a.n.a.lytical, 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 pa.s.sionately 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 s.h.i.+pwrecked 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?