Kenny

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."

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.'"