THE BLOSSOM STORM
At nightfall, with his telegram to Garry depressingly linked with a
memory of winding, sodden, lonely roads, dripping woods and the clink
of milk-cans, Kenny was summoned to the sitting room of Adam Craig.
A fire burned in the open fireplace. Lamp-light softened the
shabbiness of the old room and shone pleasantly on dark wood and a
great many faded books. Later Kenny knew that every book in the
farmhouse was here upon his shelves. Adam Craig sat huddled in a
wheelchair. Kenny thought of the runaway who hated him. He thought of
Joan. He thought of the bleak old rooms that seemed one in spirit with
the man before him. A wrinkled, evil old man, he told himself with a
shudder, with piercing eyes and a face Italian in its subtlety.
Adam Craig looked steadily at the Irishman in the doorway and found his
stare returned. The gaze of neither faltered. So began what Kenny,
when his singular relations with the old man had goaded him to startled
appraisal, was pleased to call a "friendship that was never a
friendship and a feud that was never a feud."
"I sent you a message," said Adam Craig.
"Your niece brought it."
The old man tapped with slender, wasted fingers upon the arm of his
chair.
"What was it?" he asked guilelessly.
"As I remember it," stammered Kenny in surprise, "you were good enough
to say that I might stay here as long as I chose."
"Like all women and some Irishmen," said Adam Craig, "she lied. I said
you could stay as long as you were willing to pay."
Kenny changed color. The invalid chose to misinterpret his interval of
constraint.
"So," he said softly, "you don't always pay!"
The random shot of inference went home. It was the first of many.
Kenny fought back his temper. Affronted, he crossed the room and laid
a roll of bills upon the table. Craig counted them with an irritating
show of care.
"That, Mr. O'Neill," he said, "will guarantee my hospitality for the
space of a month!"
He put the roll of money in the pocket of his bathrobe and Kenny
fancied his fingers loathe to leave it.
The drip of the rain and the gusty noise of wind that by daylight had
been no more than a melancholy adjunct to the poetry of wet blossoms,
became suddenly sinister and tragic and irresistibly atmospheric.
Kenny stared with new vision at the dreadful old man in the bathrobe.
One by one Kenny was fated to solve his mysteries when he wanted to
keep them. He knew now in a flare of intuition why the old rooms had
been abandoned, why Joan ferried folk from the village in the valley to
the village across the river, why her gown of the morning and the rags
of the runaway had been pitifully patched and mended. And he
remembered the mystery of her color, when, questing an inn, he had
glanced at the house on the cliff and hinted that her uncle might
consent to be his host.
"I know he would!" Joan's low voice rang in his ears again with new
meaning.
Adam Craig was a miser.
He shrank at the thought. Annoyed to find the old man's eyes boring
into him again, he cleared his throat and looked away.
"So," said Adam Craig, "you are a famous painter!"
"I am a painter," said Kenny stiffly.
"With medals," purred Adam.
"With medals."
A fit of coughing seemed for an interval to threaten the old man's very
life.
"Yonder in the closet," he said huskily, "is a bottle and some glasses.
Bring them here."
Kenny obeyed.
"Sit down."
With the old man's eyes upon him, hungry and expectant, as if he
clutched at the thought of companionship, Kenny reluctantly found a
chair for himself and sat down. Pity made him gentle. Year in and
year out, he remembered with a shiver, Adam Craig sat huddled here in
his wheel-chair listening to wind and rain, sleet and snow, the rustle
of summer trees and the wind of autumn. It was a melancholy thought
and true.
Smoothly hospitable, the invalid poured brandy for himself and his
guest and chatted with an air of courtesy. Kenny found himself in
quieter mood. Reminiscence crackled in the wood-fire. Nights in the
studio by the embers of a log many a Gaelic tale had glowed and
sparkled in his soft, delightful brogue for the ears of men who loved
his tales of folk lore and loved the teller.
Ah, Ireland, dark rosaleen of myths and mirth and melancholy. The
thought of it all made him tender and sad.
Well, he would give this lonely man by the fire an hour of unalloyed
delight. He would tell him tales of Ireland when brehons made the laws
and bards and harpers roved the green hills. Kenny made his
opportunity and began. He told a tale of Choulain, the mountain smith
who forged armor for the Ultonians. He told a lighter tale of three
sisters whom he called Fair, Brown and Trembling. With the brogue
strong upon him he told how Finn McCoul had stolen the clothes of a
bathing queen and he told in stirring phrase the exploits of Ireland's
mighty hero, Cuchullin.
He had never had a better listener. Adam Craig fixed his piercing eyes
inscrutably upon the teller's face, drank glass after glass of brandy,
and remained polite, intent and silent. Kenny, with his heart in the
telling, went on to the tale of Conoclach and the first harp.
Conoclach, he said, hating Cull, her husband, had run away from him
toward the sea. There upon the sand lay the skeleton of a whale and
the wind playing upon the taut sinews made sounds low and soothing
enough to lull her to sleep. And Cull, coming up, marveled at her
slumber, heard the murmuring of the wind through the sinews and made
the first harp. Kenny liked the tale and he liked the way he told it.
Adam Craig nodded.
"Lies!" he said, springing the trap it had pleased him to bait with an
air of courtesy, "All lies."
Kenny flushed with annoyance. The sacrilege of doubt when the tale was
Irish jarred.
"Lies!" said Adam Craig again, "adapted centuries ago by some Irish
word-thief."
"You are pleased to be humorous," said Kenny, glancing coldly at his
host.
"I am pleased," said the old man insolently, "to be truthful, not being
Irish. Fair, Brown and Trembling!" he added with a sneer. "Word for
word, it's the tale of Cinderella."
"The pattern for Cinderella!" corrected Kenny with a shrug.
Adam Craig glanced at him with narrowed eyes.
"And Finn McCoul and the bathing queen. I can find you the German tale
of a stolen veil from which it's--borrowed."
"You can find me likely the name of a German who chose to delve into
Gaelic for his plot."
"You've a ready tongue."
"There are times when it's needed."
"As for the first harp," snapped Adam Craig, nettled, "there's a
Grecian lyre tale yonder on the shelf like it."
"Liar tale," said Kenny purposely misunderstanding. Hum! The Greeks,
he remembered regretfully, were clever adapters.
His air of assurance incensed the old man.
"As for that fool of a Cuchullin," he rasped, coughing a little, "where
is he different from Achilles?"
"A little different," said Kenny. "Achilles, poor old scout, was much
the inferior of the two."
Again in fury Adam Craig coughed until it seemed that his life must
end. Again he drank. Kenny knew by the flurried brightness of his
eyes sunk deep in the yellowed gauntness of his face that he was drunk.
He shuddered and rose. Already the old man's head was drooping toward
his chest in a drunken stupor. With an effort he roused and leered.
"Cinderella, damn you!" he said. "Cinderella and Achilles!"
"Cinderella," repeated Kenny pityingly. "Cinderella and Achilles."
He stood uncertain what to do while Adam Craig slipped down in his
chair. Drunk, perverse and cruel! With the rain beating at the
windows Kenny thought of Joan, compassion in his heart, and rang for
Hughie.
"I--I'm afraid he's drunk," he whispered with a sense of guilt when
Hughie came. "Perhaps I shouldn't have given him the bottle."
Hughie glanced at his watch.
"It's nine o'clock," he said. "He's late."
"You mean?"
"Every night," said Hughie. "The doctor gave up fightin' long ago."
Kenny went to his room filled with pity and disgust.
Gusts of wind and rain battered at the orchard blossoms the next day
and the next. Kenny found a tuning outfit in a closet and spent his
days with Joan tuning the Craig piano. He was grateful in the gloom of
dark wood and dust for the fantastic thing of lavender she wore. It
was like a bit of iris in a bog, he told her, and was sorry when he saw
her glance with troubled eyes at the dust and cobwebs.
The river ran high and brown. The horn beneath the willow was silent.
Each night Adam Craig sent for his guest. The rain, he said, made him
lonesome. Each night in a hopeless conflict of pity and dislike Kenny
went, rain and wind and Adam Craig getting horribly upon his nerves.
He was glad when the sun came and filled the valley, panoramic from the
farmhouse ridge, with a glory of light. Milk-white clouds capped the
western hills. Nearer, dotted peacefully with farms, red barns and
dark, straggling clumps of evergreen, the rolling valley stretched
unevenly among intersecting lines of trees. At the foot of a hill rose
the spire of the village church. To the south a crystal blaze of sun
showed water.
A world of lilac and dogwood and a few late apple blossoms clinging
bravely through the storm to sunshine. And the world held Joan with
shadows of the sun in her hair and eyes and shadows of the past in her
gowns.
Ah, truly, it was good to be alive!