AT THE BLAST OF A HORN
The village was old and depressing. Kenny, a conspicuous guest at the
one hotel, awoke at noon to less imaginative interest in the wood, the
farmhouse and the river than he'd known for days. He had walked into
his picture. Now with perspective gone, he felt uncertain and vaguely
alarmed. Well, any quest that led to an inn like this, he felt, must
in itself be preposterous.
The innkeeper proved to be a mine of general information. He knew
nothing at all specific but evinced a candid willingness to overcome
this by acquiring facts from Kenny. Nobody he knew had run away from
an uncle. Why was Kenny seeking uncles? . . . Hum . . . Joel
Ashley's boy had run away but the uncle there had been a stepmother.
Was the runaway boy anybody's long lost heir? A pity! One read such
things in the papers. Years back there had been a scandal about a girl
who ran away to be an actress.
Kenny interrupted him long enough to order anything vehicular in the
village that would go. The innkeeper shouted to a boy outside with a
bucket and asked Kenny how far the "rig" would have to travel.
"I'm going," Kenny told him shortly, "to find a river. I'll keep going
until I find it."
The innkeeper after an interval of blank astonishment identified the
river at once. Kenny felt encouraged. Pressed to further detail,
however, he admitted a confusing plentitude of woods, hills and
farmhouses. Dangerously near the state of mind Garry called "running
in circles," Kenny fumed out to wait for the hotel phaeton and climbed
into it with a shudder of disgust. It had a mustard colored fringe.
But the phaeton creaked away into a wind and world of lilacs. Kenny
forgot the inn. He forgot the village. Another gust of warm, sweet
wind, another shower of lilac stars beside a well, another lane and he
would have to paint or go mad.
He neither painted nor lost his reason. He came instead to the river
and began again to fret. The road that but a moment before had made a
feint of stopping for good and all at a dark and hilly wall of cedars,
swept around a rocky curve and revealed the glint of the river. After
that by all the dictates of convenience it should have curved again and
continued its course to Kenny's destination, pleasantly parallel with
the bends of the river. Instead it crossed the river bridge and went
off at a foolish tangent, disappearing over the crest of a hill. Wild
and wooded country swept steeply down to the river edge. Kenny, who
had made a vow of penitential speed, must continue his search on foot.
The prospect filled him with dismay.
He dismissed the phaeton at the bridge and stared up and down the river
in gloomy indecision. Upstream or downstream? Heaven alone knew!
Whichever way he elected to go would be the wrong way. Fate, who had
saddled him with Silas and the mule, would see to that.
Then, having resentfully put his mind to it, he evolved some logic.
Brian, leaving the wood by the river, would not go back the way he had
come. He would travel upstream and mail his letter when he found the
village. Kenny conversely had found the village first. Therefore he
must travel downstream to find the wood; downstream through a
disheartening tangle of bush and tree and brier and maybe snakes and
marshes.
With a groan he plunged into the wood, keeping well up the slope to
avoid the lower marshes. He must spur himself to the start or he'd
never finish. But his mind was in ferment. What if the boy had
written to his sister? Must he vagabond forth again with the morning
into a world of bucolic dawns, alarm-clock farmers, roosters, corncribs
and mules? By the powers of wildfire, no! He would buy a motorcycle.
On tires or toes he could wind Brian around his finger and he would!
In a flurry of bitter abstraction, he floundered into a marsh and
emerged mud-spattered and indignant. Briers tore at him. Below the
sun-mottled river glided endlessly on in sylvan peace. The other shore
looked better. There the wind-bent shag of trees was greener save
when, with a hint of rain, the breeze turned up an under-leaf ripple of
silver. He met no one; no one but a madman, he reflected, would
explore the tangled banks of a hermit river.
At sunset, after seven slow weariful miles downstream in the brooding
quiet of a hot afternoon murmurous with birds and the sound of the
river, he came to the end of his journey--a wood, stretching steeply up
a cliff to a farmhouse lost in trees and ivy. It was on the other side
of the river and there was no bridge.
Kenny, who believed all things of Fate when the pet or victim was
himself, refused absolutely to credit her crowning whimsy. In a fury
of exasperation he clambered down to the water's edge and washed his
face; moodily mopping it with his handkerchief he stared across the
water.
The sun in a last blaze was going down behind the higher line of trees.
Roof peaks and chimney lay against a mat of gold. Crows winging toward
the forest to the south speckled the sky behind the chimney. To
Kenny's ardent fancy, the old house, built of gray and ancient stone,
became a rugged cameo set in gold and trees. Whatever arable land
belonged to the hill-farm lay away from the river. North and south
loomed only a primitive maze of trees.
A path wound steeply down to the river's edge and to a boat. Kenny
stared at it in some resentment.
Well, if he must hunt a bridge he would rest there first beneath the
willow. The sun had made him drowsy. He might even camp on the river
bank and if ever a foot came down the path and toward the boat, he
would fire his revolver into the air and demand attention. The
prospect pleased him. He went toward the willow.
Fate having toyed with Kenny tossed him a rose and smiled.
There was a battered horn upon the willow and below a wooden sign:
_Craig Farm Ferry
Please blow the horn_
A battered horn of adventure! What might it not evoke? Woodland
spirits perhaps, romance, a ferryman! Thank God the tree was old, the
horn battered and the willow naiadic in its grace. A trio of blessing!
Kenny whistled softly in amazed delight and blew the horn. Its blast
startled him and the wooded hills seemed to fling the echo back upon
him. In better humor he flung himself down beneath a tree to wait for
the ferryman--and went peacefully to sleep.
St. Kevin had once fallen asleep at a window with his arms outstretched
in prayer; a swallow had made a nest in his hand and the saint had
waited for the swallow's young to hatch. 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. If he moved
now the maid would vanish.
"Mr. O'Neill!" A hand touched his shoulder.
A haze of old brocade golden in the sunlight retreated and then loomed
persistently ahead. 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! The mystery of her gown, the river
setting, the laughing sweetness of her face, rooted him to the spot in
wonder and delight. He knew every subtlety of her coloring in one
glance. Her soft exquisite eyes were brown. Tragic, they might very
well seem pools of ink. Her hair? In the sun there was bronze, deep
and vivid, in the shadows brown. And the sun had deepened her skin to
cream and tan and rose. Thank God he was a Celt, an artist and an
aesthete!
He did not mean to keep on staring nor could he stop. He was horribly
disturbed. For he knew the signs as the traveler knows the landmarks
of an old, familiar road. Heaven help him, one of his periodic fits of
madness was upon him! It could not be helped. He was falling in love
again. And he was tragically sorry. Brian would get so far ahead.
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.
Passionately 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 identity 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 pass 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 circumstances, 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 shirk a duty, let John Whitaker say what he
chose. He was an unsuccessful parent, please God, 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."
"Wonderful!" repeated Kenny with a vague air of enthusiasm. 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."
Joan met his eyes and made no pretense of misunderstanding. She could
not.
"Your uncle!" exclaimed Kenny with an air of inspiration and then
looked apologetic.
The girl's face flamed. Oddly enough she looked at her gown. Kenny
wondered why. He found her distress and the hot color of her face
mystifying and lovely.
"I--I know he would!" said Joan in a low voice and looked away. "The
house is large. Rooms and rooms of it. And only Uncle and I, save
Hughie and his family. Hughie works the farm and lives yonder in the
kitchen wing."
Kenny reached for his knapsack and started toward the boat.
"Thank Heaven, that's settled!" he said pleasantly. "You saw for
yourself what Garry said about work. Honestly, Miss West, I ought to
work. I ought to put in a summer sketching. I can sketch here and
wait."
The punt, flat-bottomed and old, he proclaimed a delight. When the
girl did not answer he turned and found her staring. She seemed a
little dazed.
"I'm thinking," said Joan, her eyes round and grave with astonishment,
"how you seem always to have been here."
He laughed, his color high. His face, Joan thought, was much too young
and vivid for anybody's father. Their eyes met in new and difficult
readjustment and Kenny, his heart turbulent, turned back to the punt.
It was in his mind gallantly to scull the thing across. The
announcement brought Joan to the edge of the water in a panic.
"You'd scull us both into a rock!" she exclaimed. "The river is full
of them. I know the best way over."
"Professional jealousy!" retorted Kenny, his eyes droll and tender. "I
suppose you belong to the ferryman's union." He dropped his knapsack
into the boat and busied himself with the painter. "If the boat had
two oars," he told her laughing, "or I one arm, I know I could manage.
As it is, one oar and two arms--"
"It's much better," said Joan sensibly, "than two oars and one arm.
Please get in."
She went to the stern and stood there, waiting, one hand upon the oar.
Fascinated, Kenny climbed in.
What a ferryman! he mused as Joan sculled the punt from shore. What a
gown and what a background! The old brocade, flapping in the wind, was
gold like the afterglow behind the gables and the soft, haunting
shadows in the girl's eyes and hair. What an ecstasy of unreality!
Boat and ferryman seemed some exquisite animate medallion of another
age.
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. Kenny had the supreme gift of
living intensely and joyously in the present and the present for him
shone in the soft brown eyes of the ferryman in the stern. Past and
future he shrugged to the winds. For he was sailing across to romance,
he hoped, and surely to mystery. Yes, surely to mystery! Mystery
enough for any Celt in the battered horn, the ferry and the ferryman
yonder in the old-time gown.
[Illustration: He was sailing across to romance, he hoped, and surely
to mystery.]
"It was down there," said Joan, nodding, "where the river bends, that
Brian had his camp."
Brian's name was a shock. Kenny came to earth for an instant. Only
for an instant. The monochrome of gold behind the gables was drifting
into color. Here between the wooded heights where the river ran,
already there was shadow. Twilight and afterglow! Kenny in poetic
vein told of the Gray Man of the Path. The Path was in Ireland, a
fissure in the cliff at Fairhead. If you climbed well you could use
the Gray Man's Path and scale the cliff. Kenny himself had climbed it.
Joan, busy with the single oar, lost nevertheless no single word of it.
She was eager and intent.
"I suppose," said Kenny, "that the Gray Man is the spirit of the mists
of Benmore. But to me he's always Twilight. Twilight anywhere."
The girl nodded, quick to catch his mood.
"And to-night," she said, "his path is the river. He's coming now."
Kenny's Gray Man of the Twilight was stealing closer when they landed.
With the feeling of dreams still upon him he followed the girl up the
path. It wound steeply upward among the trees, with here and there a
rude step fashioned of a boulder, and came out in an orchard on a hill.
Kenny stood stock-still. Fate, he told himself, needed nothing further
for his utter undoing. And if she did, it lay here in the orchard. He
had come in blossom time.
Well, thanks to the crowded fullness of his emotional life, he knew
precisely what it meant. He had adventured in blossoms before to the
torment of his heart and head. In Spain. He had forgotten the girl's
name but it began with an "I." Now in the dusk he faced gnarled and
glimmering boughs of fleece. The wind, fitful and chill since the
sunset, speckled the grayness beneath the trees with dim white fragrant
rain and stirred the drift of petals on the ground. Stillness and
blossoms and the disillusion of intrusive fact!
Joan, lovelier to Kenny's eye than any blossom, seemed unaware of the
romance in the orchard. She was intent upon a man coming down the
orchard hill. Kenny sighed as he turned his eyes from her.
"It's Hughie," she said. "He's watched for you too since the letter
came. We all have. Hughie! Hughie!"
Hughie came toward them, sturdy, middle-aged and unpoetic for all his
head was under blossoms.
"Hughie!" called Joan. "It's Mr. O'Neill. He must have some supper.
Tell Hannah. And I'll go speak to Uncle Adam."
Romance flitted off through the twilight with her. Hungry, Kenny
embarked upon a reactive interval of common sense and followed Hughie,
who seemed inclined to talk of rain, to the kitchen door. It was past
the supper hour. Beyond in a huge, old-fashioned kitchen, yellow with
lamp light, Hughie's daughter, a ruddy-cheeked girl plump and wholesome
as an apple, was washing dishes. Kenny liked her. He liked the
shining kitchen. The wood was dark and old. He liked too the tiny
bird-like wife who trotted to the door at Hughie's call. Her hair was
white and scant, her skin ruddy, her eyes as small and black as berries.
Kenny made her his slave. He begged to eat in the kitchen.
Joan found him there a little later with everything in the pantry
spread before him. His voice, gay and charming, sounded as if he had
liked Hannah for a very long time. And Hannah's best lamp was on the
table. There was a pleasant undercurrent of excitement in the kitchen.
Joan found her guest's engaging air of adaptability bewildering. He
seemed all ease and sparkle.
At the rustle of her gown in the doorway, he sprang to his feet.
"Please sit down," she said, coloring at the unaccustomed deference.
"I've a message from Uncle Adam. He understands about your son. He
said you may wait here as long as you choose. In any room."
Trotting flurried paths to the pantry and the stove, Hannah at this
point must needs halt midway between the two with the teapot in her
hand to tell the tale of Kenny's considerate plea for supper in the
kitchen. Though it had been largely a matter of old wood and
lamp-yellow shadows, Kenny wished that a number of people who had never
troubled to be just and call him considerate could hear what she said.
Thank Heaven his self-respect was returning. These simple people were
splendidly intuitional. They understood. An agreeable wave of
confidence in his own judgment filled him with benevolence. He was to
lose that confidence strangely in a little while. It came to him
sitting there that he felt much as he had felt in the old care-free
past before Brian had deserted, plunging him into abysmal despair.
"Perhaps to-night," Joan said, "you'd better sleep wherever Hannah
says. And then tomorrow you can pick a room for yourself."
She slipped away with the grace of an elf. Spurred to pictures by the
old brocade, Kenny wished he had some velvet knickerbockers and a satin
coat. The thought of his knapsack wardrobe filled him with discontent.
Hum! To-morrow he must prevail upon someone to conduct him to the
nearest village in wire communication with the outside world.
To Garry two days later came a telegram from Craig Farm. It covered
three typewritten pages and read like a theatrical manager's costume
instructions to a star.
Garry stared.
"Oh, my Lord!" he groaned. "The sister's pretty!"
After a dazed interval, however, he found comfort in the thought that
the postmark had been harmless. It had served no other purpose than to
lead the penitential lunatic to Craig Farm. He would likely get no
further.
"The ties in Brian's bureau," read Garry, thunderstruck at the wealth
of detail. "My white flannels. Have cleaned. No place here. Had to
ride seven miles with a milk-man to send this--"
Garry ran his eye over the rest and groaned again at the hopeless task
ahead. Very well, he decided, reaching for the telephone, if he must
invade the O'Neill studio, excavate and pack, Sid could help and Mac
and Jan. Waiting, he read the telegram again. With Kenny's usual
sense of values there was one brief sentence relative to some materials
for work. He left the responsibility of selection there to Garry.
"Work, hell!" exclaimed Garry, provoked. "He wants work so he can fill
his time thinking up ways to evade it."