ARCADY ELUDES A SEEKER
"Come," Kenny begged one night when the dusk lay thick in the valley.
"Let's pace the Gray Man, Joan, in Garry's car. Nobody needs you now
as much as I."
His bright dark face pleaded.
The girl smiled.
"Kenny, Kenny, Kenny," she said, "will you ever grow up?"
"Did Peter Pan? Better get your cloak, dear. You may need it."
He went off whistling to the barn. Kenny had blessed the car and Garry
many times. He blessed them again as the engine throbbed in the dusk.
Hot silence lay upon the ridge, broken only by the noise of insects.
"A long road and a straight road and Samhain at the end!" he sang as
Joan climbed in. "And bless the Irish heart of me, dear, there's a
moon scrambling up behind the hill and peeping over. Lordy, Lordy!" he
added under his breath, "what a moon!"
"'On such a night
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew
And with an unthrift love did run to Venice
As far as--'
"Hum! I've forgotten. Wonder why Shakespeare looked ahead and
harpooned me with that word unthrift. Where to, Jessica? Where shall
the unthrift lover drive on such a night?"
Joan stared absently at the road ahead.
"To Ireland," she said.
The answer pleased him.
"I mind me," he said instantly, "of an Irish tale of Finn McCoul."
Joan did not answer.
"Tell me," she said at last. "Finn and you are always delightful."
Kenny stared at her in marked reproach.
"Joan!" he exclaimed.
"What--what is it, Kenny?"
"That's just the sort of polite nothing you learned in New York!"
"I'm sorry, Kenny. I'm--tired. And just for a minute I wasn't
listening. You know how it is. You hear an echo in your mind a long
while after and answer in a panic." She brushed her cheek against his
sleeve with a remorseful gesture of appeal. His arm went round her.
"There!" he said with a sigh of relief. "That's better. I'm lonesome
when we're not in tune."
"And the story?"
Kenny told of a fairy face that Finn had seen in a lake among the
heather.
"Leaf-brown eyes had the nymph, I take it, and satin-cream skin with a
rose showin' through and allurin' lashes maybe dipped in the ink-pots
of the fairies."
"What," said Joan from the shelter of his arm, "is a blarney stone?"
"A substitute for lips!" said Kenny instantly and kissed her.
"And Finn?"
"Plunged into the waters of the lake, he did, as any son of Erin
would--and found the maid."
But Joan's eyes were absently fixed upon the road again and Kenny
abandoned his legend with a sigh until he bethought himself to use its
climax in reproach.
"And when Finn reappeared, he was an old, old man, as old as a man may
feel when his lady's attention wanders."
Joan colored and laughed, her eyes faintly mischievous, wholly
apologetic.
"Finn's youth," Kenny gallantly assured her, "was restored to him by
magic and surely there is magic in a woman's smile."
They motored on in a silence that Kenny found depressing. When would
Arcady come again, he wondered rebelliously, wistful for the sparkle of
that other summer when fairies, silver-shod, had danced upon the
moonlit lake. The strain of worry had tired them both.
The wind swept coolly toward them sweet with pine. Wind and pine up
here were always mingling. A night--a moon for lovers! The clasp of
his arm tightened.
The peace of the night was insistent. After all with worry at an end
Arcady might not lie so very far away--it was creeping into his heart,
sweet with the music of many trees. Joan too perhaps--he stole a
glance at the girl's face, colorless in the moonlight like some soft,
exquisite flower--and drew up the emergency brake with a jerk. Her
lashes were wet.
"Joan," he exclaimed, "you're not crying!"
She tried to smile and buried her face on his shoulder.
"I think," she said forlornly, "it--it's just because everything has
turned out so--so nicely."
He motored homeward, ill at ease, aware after a time that the girl
cradled in his arm had fallen asleep. Her tears worried him.
"But I'm quite all right now, Kenny," she protested as they drove up
the lane. "It's partly the heat. Why didn't you wake me?"
He swung her lightly to the ground.
"I liked to think I was helping you rest," he said gently. "You need
it. Don't wait, dear. It's late."
He climbed back in the car and glided off barnwards, waving his arm.
Joan went slowly up the stairway to her room.
Latticed moonlight lay upon a chair by the window. She dropped into
it, weary and inert, grateful for the rushing sound of the river; it
soothed her with familiar music. A clock downstairs chimed the hour,
then the half--and then another hour. Below in the moonlight a man was
climbing up from the river.
"Brian," she called breathlessly, "is it you?"
"Yes."
"Dr. Cole will scold. It's twelve o'clock."
Brian tossed his cigarette away with a sigh.
"He'll never know. I've been sitting down there in the punt. The
river's silver. Come down for a while," he implored. "All evening
I've been as lonely as a leper. Ever since you motored off with Kenny,
Don's been a grouch. Can't you climb down the vine?"
"I--I can't, Brian."
"Please, Joan. I'll tell Kenny myself in the morning."
"No," said Joan. "I--can't. I--I wish I could."
"So do I," said Brian. He walked away.
Shaking and sobbing, Joan flung herself upon the bed.
"Sid writes me you're home," Kenny wrote to Garry in September. "What
about the car? Come up for a while and drive it home. We can do some
sketching. Brian's full of Irish melancholy and waiting for word from
Whitaker. He may go any time. Joan's tired and busy with clothes.
Don's cranky and I'm rather at a loose end, hunting things to do."
Puzzled, Garry went.
"I can't make out what's wrong," he wrote to Sid, "Kenny's rational
enough, but Brian's strung to the breaking point. I suspect it's just
as it always has been--they're miserable apart and hopeless together.
But the year has been a sobering one, and what used to flash, they
bottle up. In my opinion the sooner Brian gets away the better. He's
not himself."