Leona Dalrymple

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He knew what lay to the south beyond the orchard: woodlands and wildness, nothing else. The fields Hughie cultivated stretched to the north from the kitchen windows. There in the forest to the south where the river curved off at a tangent and flowed directly east, Brian had had his camp. On farther Joan had never cared to go. Where did she go now in the starlit darkness, climbing down the wistaria ladder with a cloak around her shoulders? To what did she venture through the solitude of whispering trees and the gloom of the pine forest?
A lover's tryst? Kenny sickened and choked. ”

“ There was no sound from the high old-fashioned bed where Adam Craig lay, gray and still. The silence, the gloom of dark wood, the grotesque shadows from a lamp burning dimly on the bureau and the loud licking of the clock drove Kenny with a shudder to the window. Death to him who so passionately loved life's gayety and its music was more a thing of horror than of grief. He found no solace in the wind and rain of the autumn night. They plunged him instead into a mood of morbid imagery. The weird music of the wind became Ireland's cry of lament for her dead. ”

“ I warned you, Brian—"
"Sunsets," said Brian, "and everything else you put on canvas with paint and brush. I can't paint. You know it. Garry knows it. I know it. I've painted, Kenny, merely to please you. I've nothing more than a commonplace skill whipped into shape by an art school. Aerial battlefields—my sunsets—in more ways than one. I paint 'em because they happen to be the thing in Nature that thrills me most. And when I fire to a thing, most always I can manage somehow. You yourself have engineered for me every profitable commission I've ever had. ”

“ Service lay across the water where men raved in the red fever of destruction, service and inclination. Could not one be mercifully the religion of the other? Must service spring from the bitter dregs of self-denial? Brian stared wretchedly into the dank white mist curling in the moonlight like a fallen cloud. And again with his conscience up in arms he remembered the face of Donald's sister. In a sense he could thank the boy for the peace of his summer. And he had written his promise. He was like Kenny, that boy, inflammable of purpose, erratic in his vigor, and likable. ”

“ Kenny shivered. He pictured her vividly in furs, warm and rosy, and hated the lynx-like eyes of the miser in the wheel-chair who doled out grudging pennies for nothing but his brandy. There was much that he could say if he told the truth; much the old man must be told if later Joan with her secret tears was to be saved the brunt of his hellish torment. He would force Adam Craig to stop the ferry. He would force him to buy furs. He would force him to endorse Mr. Abbott and his kindness, force him to grant Joan her books and the right to study, if she chose. ”

“ But he rather wished she hadn't said it.
"What will you do?"
"I shall find an inn," said Kenny firmly, "and stay here until you do hear."
"There is no inn."
"Then," said Kenny irresponsibly, "I shall camp here under the willow, buying beans. I have a can opener."
He caught in Joan's eyes a glint of gold and laughter and glanced wistfully across the river at the house upon the cliff. It was undeniably roomy.
"If only your house had been an inn!" he said. "An old, old ramshackle inn, quaint and archaic like the punt yonder and your gown! It's such a wonderful spot." ”

“ And the brutal practice hour in Adam's room when he had told the truth! Kenny went sick and cold and shivered. How unwittingly he had flung the old man's poverty in his teeth! How at times it must have hurt! The memory made him shrink. And it hadn't been truth. He had battled for Joan with misinterpretation and cruelty; he had practiced the truth with the telling of untruth. And the proud old man who veiled his poverty with pretense, had listened, listened inscrutably and laughed, ready to thrust from the grave itself. ”

“ As for work, Kenny loved work, Brian and Garry to the contrary. If in Brian's absence everything conspired against his passionate love of industry, it was no fault of his. Along with the torment of doubts that assailed him, thanks to that infernal notebook, the studio kept catapulting itself into a jungle of nerve-racking disorder in which it was impossible to work. And when Mrs. Haggerty fell upon it with the horrible energy of the Philistine and found places for everything, the studio became a place in which no self-respecting painter could be expected to keep his inspiration or his temper. ”

“ In the lonely hours before he came with his problems there had been solitude less soothing than Brian had expected. There has been an inclination to smoke and brood and nurse certain sentimental misgivings about Kenny when the fire was low and the owls hooting in the forest. After, mercifully—for they might have driven him back to sunsets—there had been no time. The life of another had made its demand and sympathy with Brian was never passive. Impossible somehow not to romp with the young savage yonder rejoicing in his freedom, with even work a lark! ”

“ Kenny, with the legend dimly adrift in his brain, dreamed that he too must wait until a ferryman grew up. He grew up on the further shore to a youth in patches and then all at once the dream became a beautiful delight. The youth by a twist of woodland magic turned to a maid in a glory of old brocade. Such a maid might have stepped from an ancient tapestry to come in search of a knight of old.
"Mr. O'Neill!"
Kenny did not stir. He must keep the dream to the end. ”

“ Brian called his days of convalescence, for the vine upon the porch hung full.
"Is it so hot in the pines?" he wondered one sultry afternoon.
"No," said Joan. "There it's always dark and cool and quiet. When you can walk, Brian, you must see the cabin."
Heat quivered visibly in the valley. A faint breeze frolicked now and then upon the ridge, fluttering the honeysuckle and the pages of an open book upon the table.
"I'm glad it isn't," said Brian in relief. "Somehow I can't imagine Kenny off there in a hot cabin striding up and down and grilling Don. He's so—so combustible. ”

“ Shadows had no part in the wonder of Kenny's winter, but an inclination to forget his quarrel with Brian and his flare of penance, violent and incomplete—for he had never reached the longed-for grail of his son's forgiveness—troubled him vaguely. In spasmodic moments of remorse he read his notebook, tremendously buoyed up by an augmenting consciousness of evolution. Faint inner voices warned him at times not to misinterpret his exultant happiness in terms of infallibility and when they called to him he had his moments of humility and panic. ”

“ Joan colored and laughed, her eyes faintly mischievous, wholly apologetic.
"Finn's youth," Kenny gallantly assured her, "was restored to him by magic and surely there is magic in a woman's smile."
They motored on in a silence that Kenny found depressing. When would Arcady come again, he wondered rebelliously, wistful for the sparkle of that other summer when fairies, silver-shod, had danced upon the moonlit lake. The strain of worry had tired them both.
The wind swept coolly toward them sweet with pine. Wind and pine up here were always mingling. A night—a moon for lovers! ”

“ It was Kenny in a painter's smock intent upon a palette, vividly, whimsically, delightfully Kenny. There was tenderness and sympathy in Sid's portrayal.
Joan clung to his hand in delight.
And was it all Bohemia, she asked.
Ah! admitted Kenny twinkling, there you had him. Bohemia, he fancied, was always wherever you yourself were not. The men and women who did big things were too busy for picturesque posing. Bohemia, as legend read it, had to do with rags and dreams and ambition without effort, a shabby, down-at-heel pretension that glittered without gratifying. ”

“ Garry could have told him it was the way he saw his pictures, romantic in his utter abandon, but Garry was not there and Kenny with his head in the clouds rushed on to his doom. The punt was a fairy boat sailing him over a silver river to Hy Brazil, the Isle of Delight. Ah! Hy Brazil! You saw it on clear days and it receded when you followed. It was a melancholy thought and true. The madness never lasted.
There are those for whom the present is merely anticipation of the future or reminiscence of the past. ”

“ Life was love and love was life and perhaps until now he'd known neither.
Still the old man stared at him in dazed and sullen envy. His wild vitality seemed a barrier impossible to surmount.
"And it isn't just Samhain," said Kenny, setting down his glass. "Ugh, Adam, your brandy's abominable! It's the Eve of All Souls. To-night the dead revisit their homes. Once I remember when I was tramping through Ireland, an old woman left a chair by the fireside that the spirit of her son might come back to her. She even left some embers in the fire." ”

“ 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 damned megaphone, I'll burn it." ”

“ Somewhat nettled, Kenny obeyed. Conscious, the minute he began, of a muffled whistle, he glanced sharply at his host and found his glance returned with a guileless air of inquiry.
"Adam," he said, "are you whistling?"
"My dear Kenny!" protested Adam. "It's the wind. I hear it myself."
Somewhat suspicious, for he fancied now he read in the invalid's alertness a feline readiness to pounce, Kenny returned to the tale of the harper who proved the right of Ireland to lead the world. This time the insolent whistle, louder and a shade defiant, convinced him that his listener's mood had changed. ”

“ At sunset Kenny blew the horn beneath the willow.
Twilight here among the vivid leaves was softly orange. Where was the invisible lamp, Kenny wondered with his blood singing, that filled the world with golden dusk? It lay reflected in the water and in the dim and yellowed forest paths behind him. And there behind the gables of the farm, an autumn sunset focussed its softness into a brilliant blaze of color.
Later when life was kind and peace was in his heart, Kenny was to paint that picture with exquisite truth and restraint and call it "Afterglow." ”

“ The dream if anything became a shade more clear. Well, if a man must dream, let him dream thus, vividly, turning the clock back to maids unbelievably quaint and winsome in old brocade. Sweet as an Irish smile, the face of this one, and as haunting. And beyond, an old flat-bottomed punt and a river, a real river—
Scarlet with confusion, Kenny sprang to his feet. Queen of Heaven! the girl was real. She had stepped from the page of an old romance into life and laughter, wearing for the mystification of chance beholders, an old-time gown of gold brocade! ”