Kenny Part 10

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.

Pa.s.sionately 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 ident.i.ty 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 pa.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 s.h.i.+rk a duty, let John Whitaker say what he chose. He was an unsuccessful parent, please G.o.d, 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."