KENNY'S WARD
Peace came mercifully to Craig farm with the finding of Adam's money.
"Toby," Joan whispered to the cat, her soft cheek pressed against his
fur, "I'm going away. And I can't believe it! I can't! I can't! I
can't!"
"Toby will miss you," said Hannah. "And so will I. And so will Hughie
and Hetty." She cleared her throat. "As for Mr. O'Neill, Toby won't
be likely to miss him at all. He's stepped too many inches off his
tail. Hughie thinks it must be paralyzed. I never saw Mr. O'Neill
headin' for a new dot but what I knew Toby would be sure to stick his
tail in the way and start a row."
Joan's face clouded.
"Oh, Hannah, if only I knew where Donald is!"
Hannah sighed.
"I wish you did, dear."
"It seems so dreadful with Uncle gone and everything changed. And
Donald doesn't even know. Think, Hannah, I may pass him in the train."
"You may," said Hannah. "And then again you mayn't."
"What if he comes home? What if he writes? It seems that I just
should be here."
"If he writes, I'll send the letter. And if he comes, Hughie can ride
down and telegraph you word."
"It's snowing," exclaimed Joan at the kitchen window. "Harder and
harder. Oh, Hannah, if it keeps up we shan't be able to go to Briston
to-morrow for my suit."
"We'll go in the sleigh. Hughie spoke of it at breakfast."
"A brown suit," mused Joan with shining eyes. "A brown hat and furs!
Think, Hannah! _Furs_! I do hope I shall look well in them."
"Mr. O'Neill said you would and he ought to know."
Joan laughed and blushed.
At twilight the next night she came home dressed warmly in furs and a
suit the color of her eyes.
"She would wear it home, Mr. O'Neill," whispered Hannah on ahead. "And
all, I think, to surprise you."
Often afterward Kenny remembered her there in the half twilight of the
kitchen, joyously crying out his name. There had been a glimmer of
shining tin, a halo of light from the tilted stove-lids, purple at the
window panes and beyond snow and the distant tinkle of sleighbells in
the barn. Hetty, he remembered, had lighted the kitchen lamp and
gasped. A lovely child, proud and mischievous! Her youth startled him.
In a week she was ready and eager to go but the day of farewell found
her clinging to Hannah in a panic.
When at last the old Craig carriage creaked slowly away down the lane
with Hannah and Hetty waving from the farm-porch, the spirit of
adventure flickered forlornly out and left her sobbing.
"Good-bye, Hannah dear!" she called, her eyes wet and wistful.
"Good-bye, Hetty! And--and don't forget to write me _all_ the news!
And don't let Toby catch the birds!"
Hughie, blinking and upset, stared straight ahead at Nellie's ears.
Kenny sobered. How great his trust! Hannah, waving her apron back
there and wiping her eyes, trusted him. And so did Hughie and Joan and
even perhaps old Adam Craig; and Mr. Abbott whose gentle grilling he
had endured with merely surface patience.
"Don't cry, Joan, please!" he begged, understanding how dear familiar
things are apt to loom in the pain of separation. And then with her
hand to his lips, he pledged himself to make her happiness the religion
of his love. It was a pledge he was destined to keep inviolate.
Ordinarily to Kenny, impatient in intervals of discomfort and delay,
the trip with its rural junctions and branch roads would have been
interminable torture. But to-day, with Joan's eyes, wide, dark,
intent, he chose to marvel with her.
They lunched at noon between trains in a little country inn. At seven,
having come after much fragmentary travel into a comforting world of
express trains and Pullmans, they dined in the train itself. Joan
watched the flying landscape, dotted with snow and vanishing lights,
smiled with the shining wonder of it all in her eyes, and could not
eat. Kenny tried scolding and found her sorry, but she could not eat.
By eleven, when the train thundered into the terminal at Thirty-third
Street, New York was wrapped in a scudding whirl of white dotted
dizzily with lights. Already to Kenny, buoyant, excited and inclined
to stride around in purposeless circles, the lonely farm was very far
away. He was back again in his own world with the roar of the city in
his ears--and Joan beside him. Ah! there he knew was the reason for
his gladness. Joan was beside him.
The taxi he commandeered threaded its way south through a maze of
lights, hurrying crowds and noisy, weaving traffic to a tenement in
Greenwich Village. Joan, searching for the unknown sparkle of that
Bohemian world she had been unable to envisage, stared at the
unromantic basement doors ahead and clung to Kenny's hand.
"It's quite all right, mavourneen," he assured her mischievously.
"Bohemia and poverty rub shoulders down here. It's picturesque. And
my club is only five blocks east. Beyond this door there's a
mysterious magic tunnel that runs straight through the house to
Somebody's back-yard. And in the back-yard is a castle and in the
castle studios and skylights, electricity and steam heat and wide,
old-fashioned fireplaces. Once it was a tenement--just like this with
fifty dirty people in it--but Ann with her magic wand has changed it
all."
The basement door at which he had been ringing a prolonged Morse dot
and dash announcement of identity clicked back and revealed a dimly
lighted tunnel. At the end a flight of steps led up into a courtyard.
Kenny closed the outer door and blocked out the roar of the city. New
York receded, its hum very far away. Their heels clanked loudly in the
quiet.
As they climbed the steps and came out in the courtyard, Ann's windows,
trimly curtained, twinkled pleasantly through the snow ahead.
A girl stood waiting in the doorway.
"Hello, Ann!" called Kenny joyously. "Is it you?"
"Hello, Kenny!" cried a pleasant contralto voice. "Hurry up. It's
snowing like fury."
Kenny seized Joan's hand and raced her across the courtyard and up the
steps. When she came to a halt, shy and breathless, she was standing
by a crackling wood-fire in a room that seemed all coziness and color
and soft light.
A tall girl with black hair, a clear skin and intelligent eyes was
smiling at them both.
"Kenny," exclaimed Ann Marvin, "you Irish will-of-the-wisp! Where have
you been? Everybody's talking about you. Joan, dear, shake the snow
off your coat. You're beginning to melt."
Joan's eyes opened wide at the sound of her name. Ann laughed and
pinched her flushed cheek.
"My dear," she said drolly, "I know more than your name. Kenny sent me
a letter of measures, spiritual, mental and physical that would turn
Bertillon green with envy. If ever you default with all the foolish
hearts in New York I'll turn you over to the police. And you'll never
escape."
Joan clung to her with a smile and a sigh of relief that made them both
laugh.
"Ann," said Kenny in heartfelt gratitude, "you're a brick. I don't
wonder Frank Barrington's head over heels in love with you. You'll not
be mindin', Ann, dear, if I use your telephone?"
"Sure, no!" mimicked Ann broadly. "It's yonder in the den."
Kenny at the telephone called the Players' Club and with his lips set
for battle, asked for John Whitaker, whose methodical habits of
diversion for once in his life he blessed. When Whitaker's voice came,
brief and somewhat bored, he forgot to say: "Hello."
"Whitaker," he demanded, "where's Brian? You must know by now."
"Kenny! Is that you?"
"Yes."
"Where on earth have you been?"
"Away. Where's Brian?"
"Where's Brian?" Whitaker snorted. "He ought to be in a lunatic asylum
if you want my honest opinion. As to where he is, I told you before
and I'm telling you again, I'm pledged to secrecy. I've even destroyed
his address so I wouldn't be tempted--and my memory couldn't be worse.
I'd like to say right now, however, that he's more of an O'Neill than I
thought and I'm through with him."
"Phew!" whistled Kenny, much too astonished for battle. "What--what's
up, John?"
"What's up?" barked Whitaker, his voice tinged with acid. "Just this:
I handed the young fool a job that ten of the best newspaper men in New
York were pursuing and he turned me down cold to stay all winter in
some God-forsaken quarry where he's hacking up stone--"
"Hacking up stone!"
"Feels philanthropic. Grinds stone all day and at night helps a kid
he's known six months cram for a college exam. Damon and Pythias stuff
and I'm the goat. Pythias is seventeen by the way and wants to work
his way through college."
"Mother of men!" said Kenny softly and thought of Joan's relief.
"Sounds very beautiful and lofty in a letter," went on Whitaker,
angling for sympathy, "but of all the damned, high-falutin' lunacy I've
ever seen in men, that's the limit."
He waited, confident in his expectation that Kenny would agree. The
voice that came back fairly bristled with virtue and approval.
"You filled his head with notions about service, didn't you, Whitaker?"
demanded Kenny indignantly. "What's your idea of service anyway that
now when Brian's got a chance to be of absolute service to a kid who
needs him, you kick up your hind-heels and howl your head off. Sort of
a boomerang, isn't it? You came up to my studio, old man, and unloaded
some facts. Let me unload one right now. I'm with Brian. I think
he's a brick and a jewel for sense. And you can go to thunder!"
And Kenny, with a gasping gurgle in his receiver ear, smiled sweetly
into the telephone and hung up with Whitaker roaring his name. He was
amazed, delighted and triumphant, uppermost in his mind the thought of
Joan's peace of mind. No further need to worry over Donald.
He kissed his finger-tips to Ann who appeared in the doorway.
"Your ward," she said, "is toasting her toes by the sitting-room fire.
Kenny, she's a dear!"
"As sweet," said Kenny proudly, "as an Irish smile!"