IN THE CABIN
They were hard days for Kenny, who hated gloom save when it was
picturesque and transient. And they were harder for the pity and
misgiving in his heart. He himself perhaps had hastened the old man's
death with a careless story. Why had it bothered him? Why had it
goaded his wasted legs to horrible effort?
Ordinarily Kenny knew he would have resented the intrusion of alien
sorrow into his life. He hated sorrow. Now for Joan's sake he made
himself a part of it. If Joan must endure it, so could he. But he
sickened at the need.
He was doomed to a tragic, unforgettable hour in the churchyard when
the voice of the old minister, conventional in its sadness, droned
wearily into his very soul:
"Ashes to ashes . . . dust to dust." . . . The clock turned back and
he stood in a church by an Irish hill. White and terrified, Kenny
remembered what in its vivid agony of detail he would fain have
forgotten. Why, now, when Joan was slipping into his life, a lonely
waif of a girl in a black gown he hated, why must he think years back
to that soft-eyed Irish girl and Brian? Had he broken his pledge to
her, driving her son away with a passion of self no less definite for
its careless gayety? Eileen's son! Eileen's son! Sadness tore at
Kenny's heart and twitched at his dry, white lips. Ah! why must he
live again that agonizing day when Eileen had gone out of his life
forever?
The voice went on, funereal, gentle. Kenny's eyes blurred. Sweat came
coldly forth upon his forehead. At the first thud of earth he choked
and turned away, the pain unbearable. Adam Craig had driven his nephew
away . . . with a passion of self . . . and he had died with mercy at
his bedside, not love. A passionate hunger for Brian stirred in
Kenny's heart and made him lonely. Ah! how farcical his penance! Some
nameless thing of self linked him to Adam Craig. The thought was
horrible. Some nameless thing linked each mournful detail of to-day to
the tragedy of long ago. . . . And then mercifully the thing became a
blur of November wind, a monotonous voice of sorrow, the thud of earth
and the end.
The coach toiled up the hill and Kenny, with Joan in his arms, forgot.
"Mavourneen," he said wistfully, "let's slip away, you and I, to the
cabin in the pines. I want you to myself. And there in the house--"
he looked away. The thought of the old house, bleak and desolate at
its best and haunted now by the sense of a presence gone, oppressed him.
Joan nodded.
"And not that dress!" begged Kenny with a shudder.
She laid her cheek against his shoulder.
"It was just for to-day, Kenny. Hannah thought it best." Her soft
eyes, curiously child-like with the shadow of sadness in them, appealed
to him for understanding. He kissed her, marveling afresh at the
tender miracle of peace and tenderness her presence brought him.
"Had I loved Uncle a great deal more--it isn't wrong for me to say that
now, Kenny?"
"It would be wrong, dear, if you made pretense of something you
couldn't feel."
"I--I meant that even then I could have mourned him better with my
heart than this--this dreadful dress. It would carry gloom wherever I
went. And that would be selfish."
He blessed her shy intelligence and kissed her again. Then the
carriage stopped at the farmhouse door and Kenny hurried up to his room
to find clothes less formal and depressing. Afterward he went ahead to
the cabin and built a fire.
The crackle of the wood was lively to his ears and cheerful. The room
grew, warm and homelike. When Joan came a little later, he was
whistling softly and making tea. He liked her dress. It was dark and
soft. He liked the lace fichu at her throat. And he liked the huge
old-fashioned cameo that fastened it.
"Hughie is hunting the key to the table-drawer," she said. "I told him
about the cabin. It doesn't matter now. Poor Uncle!" She blinked and
wiped her eyes. "He didn't mean to be cruel, Kenny. It was the brandy
and the pain. If Hughie finds the key, he wondered if you'd go over
Uncle's papers to-night. The will is there."
"The will!" said Kenny. He put wood on the fire in some excitement. A
miser's will!
Joan's eyes were tender.
"Kenny, how good you've been!"
"Nonsense!" he said brusquely.
"Hughie said so, too. And Hannah and Hetty. Someone had to think and
plan and you did it all so well. And, Kenny, I told Hannah, that I'm
going to marry you and she cried and kissed me and--and poured a
wash-bowl full of tea for Hughie to wash his hands in!"
"The heart of her!" said Kenny. "Come, girleen. The tea's ready. I
want to see you pour it."
He watched with his heart in his eyes while she poured his tea. There
was a sense of home in the cabin here and the crackle of the fire was
the music of comfort. Kenny drank a little of his tea and roved off to
the window to light a cigarette.
Beyond the November monotone of trees blazed the red of a sunset. A
winter sunset! The fall was over.
"Joan!" he called softly. "Come, jewel machree, the Gray Man is
stealing through the pines."
She came at once and slipped into the circle of his arm. Kenny held
her tight and found his courage. He was restless, it seemed, and after
months of irresponsibility, the thought of work was bothering him
badly. Kenny must leave the farm. He must go soon; in a week. And
his wife must go with him.
Joan's breathless amazement made him laugh.
"But, Kenny, I--I can't!" she said.
"And I," said Kenny stubbornly, "can't and won't go away and leave you
here. The thought of winter and the hills and that barn of a house
when the wind is blowing would haunt me. No, no, girleen!"
Joan looked up and smiled and her soft eyes were wistful.
"Kenny, I must study for another year!"
"Another year!" said Kenny blankly. "Colleen, you've the wisdom of the
ages in your head right now."
Joan shook her head.
"I must learn to be your wife," she said. "Now it--it dazzles and
frightens me--"
"Joan!"
"Have you forgotten, Kenny, that I have lived my life up here in hills
and trees. And you--"
"Joan, please!" he begged in distress.
"But I can't forget," said the girl steadily. "Whenever I read the
article Garry sent about 'Kennicott O'Neill, brilliant painter'--think
of it, Kenny! 'Brilliant painter!'--I go back and read again just to
be sure I'm not dreaming. I've been so much alone that the thought of
going out into your world with you--terrifies me. I could not bear to
have you--sorry!"
"Mavourneen!" he said, shocked.
There were tears upon her cheeks.
"I would only ask that you be your own dear self," said Kenny gently.
"And every man of my world and every woman will stare and envy!"
"I must know music and French," said Joan, checking the need upon her
fingers. "I must know how to dance. Now when I talk I must have
something to say. Otherwise I feel shy and quiet. I must learn how to
talk a great deal without saying anything as you do sometimes."
He laughed in delight at the final need.
"All of it," declared Kenny happily, "I can teach you."
"No," said Joan with a definite shake of her head. "You would kiss me.
And I would always be right even when you knew I was wrong."
His eyes laughed at her mischievously. But he caught her hands and
pressed them to his lips.
"Listen, dear," he pleaded. "My world isn't a world of social climbers
or snobs or dollar-worshippers. It's a world of gifted men and women
who haven't time to look up your ancestors or your bank balance before
they decide to be friendly and kind. I know a poet whose mother was a
gypsy, a painter who's a baron and he says he can't help it, a French
girl who paints millionaire babies and her father was a tight-rope
walker in a circus. My world, Joan, is the happy-go-lucky Bohemia of
success and the democracy of real talent. We're actors and painters
and sculptors and writers and artists in general and all in all I think
we work a little more and play a little more, enjoy a little more and
suffer a little more than the rest of the world. Once in a while to be
sure a head grows a bit too big and then we all take a bop at it! But
the big thing is we're human; just folks, as a man in the grillroom
said one night. We're human and we're kind. It's not a smart set,
dear. And it's not an ultra-fashionable four-hundredy thing. God
forbid! It's the kind of Bohemia I love. And I'm sure you'll love it
too."
Her eyes were shining. In the dusk her color came to him like the
glimmer of a flower.
"Kenny!" she exclaimed. "How wonderful it all is, you and all of it!
And yet if--if I feel as I do, you must let me go for a year.
Otherwise if I lack confidence in myself--Oh, can't you see, Kenny, I
shall be shy and frightened and always ill at ease!"
"Go!" he echoed blankly.
"Somewhere," said Joan, "to study music and French and how to talk your
kind of nonsense. Hannah says there must be money enough in Uncle's
estate for that."
"Where," said Kenny, his heart cold, "would you go?"
"I thought," said Joan demurely, "that perhaps I could study in New
York where I wouldn't be so--lonesome."
He caught her in his arms.
"Heart of mine!" he whispered. "You thought of that."
"Then," said Joan, "I can learn something of your world before I become
a part of it. Don't you see, Kenny? I can look on and learn to
understand it. I should like that. Come, painter-man! The tea's
cold. And it's growing dark. We'd better light the lamp."
With the tea-pot singing again on the fire and the lamp lighted, Kenny,
but momentarily tractable, had another interval of rebellion. Joan, in
New York, might better be his wife. Joan, studying, might better have
him near to talk his sort of nonsense, listen to her music and make
love volubly in French to which she needed the practice of reply. His
plea was reckless and tender but Joan shook her head; and Kenny
realized with a sigh that her preposterous notion of unfitness was
strong in her mind and would not be denied.
"A year, Kenny!" pleaded Joan. "After all, what is a year? And at the
end I shall be so much happier and sure." She came shyly to his chair
and slipped her arms around his neck. "I want so much to do whatever
you want me to do. And yet--and yet, Kenny, feeling as I do, I shall
be--Oh, so much happier if you will wait until I can come and say that
I am ready to be your wife."
"It will make you happier!" he said abruptly.
"Yes."
"Then, mavourneen," said Kenny, "it shall be as you say. I care more
for your happiness than for my own."
They went back through the darkness hand in hand.