THRALDOM
Hughie met him at the door.
"He's been askin' for you, Mr. O'Neill," he said. "And he hasn't drank
a drop all evening."
"I shan't go," said Kenny. "Depend upon it, Hughie, it's another
trick."
"I don't know," said Hughie hopelessly. "It may be. It's not for me
to deny, with all you take from him." Hughie looked ashamed of
himself. "I--I'm sorry for him."
Kenny groaned and set his teeth.
"I think," said Hughie, "he wants to apologize. He wrote you a note
this morning and tore it up. And when I put his brandy bottle on his
chair to-night he flung it at my head."
"I'll go this once," said Kenny. "But, so help me Heaven, I'll never
go again!"
He went dully up the stair, cursing the blossom storm. Its monotonous
patter on the roof had inspired Adam Craig to his first plea of
loneliness; it had left Kenny himself with a haunting memory of drab
solitude, pain and melancholy that seeped with a dripping sound into
his very marrow; and it had begun for him the singular thraldom,
inspired by pity, that he could not bring himself to understand.
Hughie had left the door of Adam's room ajar. The invalid sat by the
table in his wheelchair, a book upon his knees, likely one of the
pirate tales in which he reveled. His face was drawn and haggard, his
eyes closed. With the wine of his excitement gone, he seemed but a
huddled heap of skin and bone. A death's-head! Kenny shuddered.
Unspeakable pity made him kind. The old man yonder was off his guard;
he had pride and spirit that compelled respect.
Kenny softly closed the door and rapped.
"Come in!" said Adam Craig. Almost Kenny could see him chirking up
into insolence and the pertness of a bird. It was precisely as he had
expected. When the door swung back, Adam was erect in his wheel-chair,
electric with challenge. His eyes were once more bright and sharp.
"Kenny," he demanded with asperity, "where have you been?"
Kenny glanced at the faded books stacked upon the bookshelves; and with
the cabin uppermost in his mind he swung back dangerously to the
hostile mood of the night before. Adam Craig was a miser, cruel and
selfish. He had driven Joan and Donald to a refuge in the pines.
"I said," repeated Adam in a louder voice, "where have you been?"
"Picking wild flowers," said Kenny.
"You lie!" said Adam. "It's your way of telling me to mind my own
business."
Kenny did not trouble to deny it.
"You've been sulking."
"Very well, then," said Kenny evenly, making use of his one weapon of
composure, "let's concede that I've been sulking."
He was sorry instantly.
Infuriated, Adam brought his fist down upon the arm of his wheel-chair
and, coughing, propelled himself up and down the room.
Kenny walked away to the window, sick with remorse. For the old man
had coughed himself into gasping quiet. What could he do?
A wayward Irish tune, ludicrously fitting, danced into his head and
made him smile.
"What shall I do with this silly old man?" whistled Kenny softly at the
window.
"What's that?" demanded Adam suspiciously.
The insolence in his voice struck fire again. Kenny remembered his
notebook and the hour of accounting. Never again would the forces Adam
had revived sink into the quietude of his first days here at the farm.
"What's what?" he asked perversely.
"That asinine tune you're whistling?"
"It's a song," said Kenny innocently, "about a wild flower. And it was
very wild. It had thorns."
"I think you lie," said Adam, glaring. "But as I have no womanish
repertoire of songs to prove it, you can whistle it all you want and be
damned to you."
Kenny at the window availed himself of the privilege.
"What's the name of it?" snapped Adam after a while, ruffled by his
guest's persistence.
"'What shall I do with this silly old man?'" explained Kenny with a
grin.
"You impudent liar!" cried the old man in a high, angry voice. "Do you
ever tell the truth?"
"Almost never," said Kenny. "Do you?" And he went on with his
whistling.
Adam ignored his impudence.
"Well, then," he said, "it's time you began. You're young enough, God
knows. But it's not a youth of years. It's a superficial youth of
spirit. And you're old enough to tell the truth."
"How shall I learn?"
"Practice!"
Kenny wheeled. Adam's careless dart had struck deep and sharp and it
rankled.
"Very well, Adam," he said, "I'll practice on you."
Truth! Truth! he reflected passionately at the window. Was the world
mad about it? And what was the matter with himself? Why did the
romantic freaks of his fancy always fill him now with vague worry?
"What," gasped Adam, staring, "did you say?"
"I said," flung out Kenny, "that I'd practice telling the truth and I'd
practice on you. And by Heaven I will!"
He wiped his forehead with a shaky hand. The room was warm, the lamp
flickering hotly in the summer breeze. He thought of Joan and the
ferry. Did she scull the old, flat-bottomed punt back and forth, back
and forth, when the winter wind was howling up the river? What did she
wear when winter settled, sharp and bleak, upon the ridge? 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. Why in Heaven's name should she creep through rain and snow
and shadows to the refuge in the pines?
He was dangerously excited with the fever of the old crusader in his
veins. And then he thought of the trust in Joan's eyes when his tongue
rambled, and went cold with shame. He must learn to tell the truth.
He would practice for his own sake--and for the sake of Joan.
With a sense of shock he realized that he had been very far away. Adam
was choking and wheezing and gasping himself into weakness.
"For God's sake," exclaimed Kenny with a feeling of guilt, "what's the
matter? Are you laughing or choking?"
"I'm laughing," said Adam, shaking with mirth. "Kenny, I'm just
laughing."
"Well," said Kenny huffily, "laugh your head off if you want to. I
mean what I say."
The old man chuckled.
"I'd be disappointed," he said, "if you didn't."
Kenny stared at him in intense disgust. A perverse old lunatic! He
would like his new diversion less perhaps as time went on.
"I want you to forget," Adam said abruptly, "about last night. I
was--jealous. I hate your health. I--hate your straight legs--Oh, My
God!" he whispered, shuddering, and closed his eyes. When he opened
them his smile was ghastly.
"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 muffled 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.