Kenny Part 19

"Kenny," he said with a pitiful air of bravado, "do you know a tune, an Irish tune called 'Eileen Aroon'?"

"Yes," said Kenny, clearing his throat. "Yes."

"Whistle it."

Kenny obeyed. His eyes were sympathetic,

"Well," said Adam in m.u.f.fled tones, "it isn't Irish. It's Robin Adair and it came from Scotland."

But his voice was tired.

Kenny rummaged in the closet for his brandy.

"There are times," said Adam queerly, "when you've an open-hearted, understanding way about you. I believe you even know why I get drunk."

"Yes," said Kenny, "I think I do."

Adam dropped hack limply in his chair.

"It's because," he whispered, "I've--got--to--sleep!"

Startled at his manner, Kenny remembered the fairy mill and wondered.

CHAPTER XIII

KENNY'S TRUTH CRUSADE

Kenny began his truth crusade the next night.

"Adam," he said, halting on the threshold of the old man's sitting room with one hand carelessly behind him and his att.i.tude expectant and determined, "I've often wondered why every book in the farmhouse is up here on your shelves."

Adam cupped his ear with his hand.

"Wh-a-a-a-t?" he asked blankly.

Kenny brought the hand behind his back forward. It held a megaphone.

"I said," he bellowed through it, "that I've often wondered why all the books in the farmhouse are here upon your shelves."

Adam sat up.

"For G.o.d's sake, Kenny," he said. "Close the door. Where did you get that thing?" he demanded with a scowl.

"It's Hughie's and the very sight of it was an inspiration."

"Give it to me!"

"On the contrary I intend to cure your deafness."

Adam stared.

"I mean just this: You can hear as well as I can. You pretend to be deaf when you don't want to hear."

"What?" snapped the old man with a glance like lightning.

"You told me to practice the truth," reminded Kenny, dropping into a chair. "I'm merely beginning. I've a lot to say. And the health of your hearing, Adam, is an indispensable adjunct to my practice hour and my peace of mind. I'm merely insuring myself against your refusing with a feint of deafness to hear what I have to say."

"For once," said Adam insolently, "you've scored. But if ever I get my hands on that d.a.m.ned megaphone, I'll burn it."

"You won't get your hands on it," retorted Kenny. "And if you do I'll buy a bigger one."

It was hard to begin but Kenny with his mouth set thought of Joan. He told Adam Craig he was a miser.

In the dreadful silence the tick of the old clock on the mantel seemed to Kenny's distracted ears a perpetuity of measured taps upon a death-drum. He thought of Poe and the pit and the pendulum. He thought of Joan and told himself fiercely that he did it all for her; for her he was winding around himself a chain foredoomed to clank. And he wondered why on earth the old man did not speak.

The suspense became intolerable. Intensely excited, Kenny swung to his feet.

"Well?" he said.

"Well!" said Adam and smiled a curious, inscrutable, twisted sort of smile. He had never looked so evil-eyed and subtle. "One of your greatest drawbacks, Kenny, is an Irish temper and a habit of excitement."

"A miser!" repeated Kenny with defiance. He must keep his feet upon the path. It was the prelude to all that he must say for Joan's emanc.i.p.ation.

"A miser!" said Adam, nodding. "Well, what of it?"

Kenny struck himself fiercely on the forehead, wondering if the word had pleased and not provoked him. The possibility shocked him into fresh courage. He said everything that was on his mind with deadly quietness and an air of fixed purpose. Then he picked up his megaphone and started for the door.

"Adam," he said, "I've told you the truth, so help me G.o.d, in an hour of practice. Now, you can practice facing facts."

And he was gone.

He was courageous and persistent, with the thought of Joan always spurring him to further effort. Night after night he played his game of truth and fought with desperation for the happiness of the girl whose eyes had committed him irrevocably to a vow of honesty and fact.

He could not see that he was making any headway.

Adam listened with baffling intentness while his strange guest practiced strangely the telling of truth. He refuted nothing. He accepted everything that Kenny said with a corroborative, birdlike nod of politeness. With the megaphone upon the floor by Kenny's chair, he made no further pretense of deafness. He said nothing at all and Kenny found his new inscrutable trick of silence unendurable. One singular fact loomed out above all others. Adam shamelessly accepted the word miser with a gloating chuckle. He seemed to like it. For Kenny, generous to a fault and prodigal with money, the word embodied all things hideous.

There were times when Kenny abandoned the hopeless battle and came at Adam's plea, reserved and sullen. Then with a solicitous air of virtue the old man urged him to renew it.

"Kenny," he demanded more than once, "have you got your practicing done? You lack application. If you're ever to learn truth at your stage of ignorance you'll have to have it."

The goad went home. He did lack application. And Joan must not suffer from that lack.

But in the end the old man tired him out; and the practice of truth became a boomerang.