Kenny Part 49

"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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d, 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 anch.o.r.ed that d.a.m.ned 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 impa.s.sioned 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.