THE PENITENT
Brian's skull was young and elastic. It saved him much, but Barrington
lingered until the period of suspense was at an end. Kenny drove him
to the Finlake station.
"This car has been a godsend," he said.
"And Garry's wired me to keep it. He's going to the coast."
"When?"
"Thursday."
Kenny's eyes were moist and grateful.
"Ah, Frank, darlin', you're a jewel!"
"Piffle!" countered Frank. "Kenny, old dear, I think you hit a
chicken. If at any time," he added at the station, "you feel the need
of me, I want you to wire. He's bound to be nervous. And if his
convalescence seems slow and irksome, remember that the reaction of a
shock like that isn't merely physical."
Kenny wrung his hand in silence. He motored home, oppressed by the
bare line of hills and the noise of the quarry.
As usual the sight of Joan dispelled his gloom. Brian's pain was less.
He had fallen asleep of his own accord.
"He asked for you," she added.
"You told him Frank wouldn't let me in?"
"Yes."
"Hum. . . . Where's Don?"
"I sent him to the store."
Kenny darted away with an air of expectancy to the other shack, whence,
after an excited period of foraging, he emerged, carrying a bundle.
Frank, knowing him well enough to read his shining enthusiasm aright,
would have turned him back at Brian's door without a qualm. But Frank
was not at hand.
"You look like a kid sneaking home with a stray cat!" Brian told him
with a grin.
"What's in the bundle?"
"I've tried so many times to get in," admitted Kenny, "with Frank
nippin' me just as my hand was on the knob, that I'm feelin' a bit
surreptitious." He held up a tennis racket and a shotgun.
"And everything else," he boasted with an air of triumph, "that I took
to Simon."
"And the bill-file!" exclaimed Brian, staring at the litter on the
floor. "Jemima!"
"You remember it, Brian? You hated the sight of it. 'Tis the stiletto
I stuck in a chunk of wax--"
"Lord, yes! And you wrote the I.O.U.'s on anything from a playing card
to the end of a shirt."
"And never paid 'em until I had to," said Kenny with an unyielding air
of self-contempt. "Many the time you checked 'em off, Brian, and
rebuked me as you should. But that, by the Blessed Bell of Clare, is
all behind me."
He proudly exhibited the bizarre collection of scraps, initialed in
token of debt and reinitialed in token of payment.
"Brian--I--I--"
"Go ahead, old boy," said Brian, his eyes tender. "I can see you've
got a lot on your mind."
"I paid 'em--every one!"
"So I see."
"And never again will you have to bookkeep lies. I'm that truthful now
Sid worries a bit!"
Brian's amazed eyes twinkled.
"You delicious lunatic!" he said.
"I practiced," went on Kenny with his lips compressed. "I practiced
hard--up at the farm with Adam."
"Joan's told me you were there. I can't quite hitch things together
yet, but I will in time."
"A landslide of things seemed to happen the minute you went--"
"I always had a feeling," admitted Brian, "that if I didn't stick
around and keep an eye on you, a lot of things would happen."
"They did. They've been happenin' ever since."
Brian flushed and put out his hand.
"Kenny, surely you guessed. I was sorry--"
"Jewel machree, I was fair sick about the shotgun. And after you went
I was willing to be sorry about anything--to get you back."
"And Ann's statuette. Lord, I burn when I think of it."
"You couldn't be blamed for a bit of temper. You're Irish, lad, and an
O'Neill. 'Tis a splendid inheritance but volcanic too." He changed
color and began to roam around the room, his mind casting up a painful
memory.
"You'll never guess," he went on moodily, "what fell upon the head of
me after you went. John Whitaker came up and took a shot at me. And
Garry. And then after a while when I was quieter, old Adam, stirring
me up afresh. My ears are as used to the truth as my tongue."
"It's a darned shame!" said Brian warmly. Kenny sighed.
"Ah, Brian," he said wistfully, "I was needin' it all. You can't
conceive until you put your mind to it or--or write it down, what a
failure I've been--"
"Failure!"
"As a parent. Even my penance on the road was--was like the rest."
"Your _penance_!"
"I bought a corncrib and a mule," flung out Kenny, roaming turbulently
around the room, "and thrashed a farmer. And I hated the rain and the
smell of cheese and burned up the corn-crib--"
"Kenny, what are you talking about?"
Inexorably intent upon the easing of his conscience Kenny told the tale
of his penance with terrifying honesty and truth.
Brian listened and dared not smile.
"At first I--I hoped to find a clue," finished Kenny, wiping the sweat
from his forehead. "And then after I--I saw Joan I hoped I wouldn't.
You're not blamin' me, Brian?"
"Not a bit. I'd have lingered myself."
"The heart of you!" said Kenny, biting his lips. "I don't deserve it.
Lad, dear, the sunsets are past. I'm understandin'. And if you want
Whitaker's job, I--I'm willing. If you'd rather come back to the
studio and free-lance, I--I want you to know--" he gulped--"that
things are different. There's order there and the--the chairs are
cleared. Never a chair but what you can sit down on without staring
behind you. You wished that, Brian--"
Brian turned his head.
"Yes," he said. There were tears and laughter in his voice.
"The money and clothes I borrowed," went on Kenny fervidly, "are paid
back. The clothes are safe in a new chiffonier and here's the key. I
sealed it in an envelope and well I did. I was badly needin' some
things you had and Pietro went out and bought them for me. As for my
temper, it's a lot better. A lot! Sid marvels at it. I--I do myself.
It all comes from the hell up there on the ridge with Adam." He drew a
long breath. "I've a record of work that will fill you with pride.
And though I seem to have a lot of money, I haven't bought a foolish
thing since the corncrib. There's plebeian regularity enough in my
money affairs now, Brian, to please even you! Though I'm havin' a bit
of a struggle with my check book. You can see for yourself, can't you,
Brian, 'twould not be the disorderly Bohemia you seem to hate? 'Twould
not be hand-to-mouth. Mind, I'm not seekin' to persuade you. So help
me God, I--I want you to do just what you want to do yourself--"
"Kenny," said Brian dangerously, "if you go on one second more, you'll
have me sniffling--"
Horrified and guilty, Kenny bolted for the door, his hand clenched in
his hair.
"One thing more, Brian," he said, wheeling, "I--I've got to say it.
I've anchored that damned stick to the psaltery with a shoestring.
We--we couldn't lose it!"
And closing the door, Kenny again wiped his forehead, remembering sadly
that he had planned to wind his son around his finger and induce him to
return. It had been the trend of all his preparation and resolve. And
now--what? He had choked back his inclination and begged Brian, with
impassioned sincerity, to do precisely what would please him most.
He wondered why the anticlimax brought him--peace.
When Doctor Cole arrived an hour later he found the shack in turmoil.
The truant hour of laughter and excitement, Kenny told him in a panic
of remorse, had sharpened Brian's pain. His pulse was galloping. With
a sigh the little doctor drugged his tossing patient into troubled
sleep.
Again through a cloud of flower-spotted purple shot now with gleams of
light as from a camp fire, Brian drifted unquietly, conscious of odd
and unrelated things, stars that turned to eyes, a moonbeam that broke
upon a pine-bough and fell in a shower of moon-silvered tears; in the
tears a face that turned perversely to a pansy. Then something snapped
and crackled sharply and he sat beside a camp fire, conscious of an
indefinable fusing within him. Beyond in a curling milk-white mist lay
the pansy, half a flower--half a face. It floated toward him,
sometimes part of the smoke from his fire, sometimes but a
flower-shadow in the cloud of purple. Brian strained to see it clearly
and could not until the inner fusing came again and Joan stood by the
fire, the sheen of moonlight on her hair.
"You did so much for him," she said, "and now--the boulder!"
Brian furrowed his forehead in painful concentration.
"I thought I did it all for Don," he said. "For months I've thought so
but since something fused here in my heart, something linked to tears
and stars and moonlight and the crackle of a fire, I know I did it all
for you."
"For me, Brian!"
"For you!"
In the cloud of purple Joan's eyes grew round and unbelieving.
"Your face, all tears and sorrow and sweetness," said Brian stubbornly,
"etched itself on my memory the night Don ran away."
"I--I did not know you saw me."
"I know now that all I did that night I did for you. Don swore at
you--remember?"
The flower-like face in the purple cloud saddened. Brian distinctly
heard the crackle of the camp fire.
"I thrashed him for it!"
"You said in your letter--"
"I said I would help him, yes, but I wrote and I made Don write because
I could not bear to have you hurt and worried. And even at the quarry,
when I was keen to be off to Whitaker, I saw your face in the mist,
urging me to stay--to stay and help Don. And I did--for you. I know
that all these things I did for you. I _know_!"
But again he was staring at a pansy and the cloud of purple floated
hazily away. Tired, ill and aeons old, Brian opened his eyes.
"I'm glad you're awake," said Joan gently. "You were dreaming. Drugs
frighten me."
"Nothing was clear," said Brian, touching his forehead, "but the pansy
and you. And purple--like that." He pointed to her ring. "What an
odd ring it is, Joan! Wistaria?"
Joan nodded, her color bright.
"Wistaria on a ladder. It's the ring Kenny gave me."
Brian's startled eyes met and held her own. "Why?" he asked.
"I'm going to marry him. Didn't you know?"
"No," said Brian. "I--I didn't know."