APRIL
April with its tender flame of green brought lagging days of worry. Brian, said Kenny wistfully, was just—not Brian. He was an irritable convalescent in a plaster cast, too nervous to be patient. His pain had been intense, the shock disastrous to his self-control. The haggard mark of it upon his face Don read with scalding heart and brooded. When after a refractory week of undisciplined nerves and temper that strained the doctor's endurance to the breaking point, Brian went out of his head for forty-eight hours and babbled like a madman about a face in the mist, Kenny in terror wired for Frank Barrington. Brian, he thought, must be frantic with pain.
Frank came, mystified and apprehensive. He found a white and apathetic patient who, with his delirium gone, denied abnormal pain.
"It isn't pain," Frank reported. "Of that I'm convinced. His head's in excellent condition and his danger of lameness is at an end. Though he resented the suggestion, I think there's something on his mind. And whatever it is, he's much too shattered nervously to give it a normal valuation."
"Keep that kid out of his room," advised Kenny hotly. "I can't. He moons around up there like a ghost. Brian admits that he's so sorry for him at times that it makes him feel sick."
"Hum!" said Frank and went in search of Don.
"I suppose you think I'm too much of a kid to have an opinion," Don told him, his face white and fierce, "but I—I did it. And I watch him more than anybody else—" He choked and blinked back boyish tears of indignation.
"Keep Mr. O'Neill out of Brian's room," he snorted. "He'd excite anybody!"
"I intend to keep you all out," was Frank's verdict in the end. "All but the nurse and Joan. Joan's not temperamental and she has nothing on her conscience. She has moreover a sedative convincing type of cheer that's a mighty good influence. The rest of you are simply on a sentimental spree of penance. You, Kenny, are so anxious to square yourself that you make him nervous and he fumes and blames himself. And Don can't look at him without remorse in his eyes. You're both too flighty and penitential for Brian's good."
Frank departed and Joan compassionately set herself to sentinel the sickroom. There were trying hours when her voice alone had power to soothe the querulous young savage whose tired eyes begged them all to forgive him.
Nurses came and nurses hopelessly departed. Brian hated and hounded them all with savage and impartial persistence. He was jarring even the little doctor out of his normal weary calm.
"I've seen him flat on the back of him before," Kenny confided to Joan in some distress, "a lamb for sense! But now he's tiring you out."
"You mustn't blame him," urged Joan. "He never asks me to come. I go always of my own accord and oftener now since Frank scolded. He's lonely without you and Donald and he hates the nurse—"
"He hates 'em all," said Kenny.
"No matter how nervous he is, I can read him to sleep."
"Ah, colleen!" There was a flash of reverence in Kenny's eyes. It mutely thanked her.
"I can't forget what he did for Don. Nor can I forget that Don's impulse—"
"Don remembers too."
Joan sighed.
"He worries me, Kenny—Don, I mean. Sometimes I think he sees in my help the one atonement he can make: he fumes and reproaches so when Brian is nervous or lonely. He even dreams of the boulder."
"And the year of study, mavourneen?"
Joan's face clouded.
"Don needs me," she said. "He would be frantic here alone. I cannot desert him."
"Nor I," said Kenny. "But the year of waiting ends at Samhain."
"Yes," said Joan, coloring. "I have given Don the money," she added. "If now he would only study!"
"He shall!" said Kenny and set himself to the finishing of Brian's winter task. That sacrifice, at least, he decided, nagging Don into hours of study that were a godsend to them both, should not become an anticlimax. He had paid once—in ragged money. For Joan's sake he would pay willingly again in time. Brian and Joan and Don—and he himself, with indolence for once in his life unwelcome, would be happier for the effort. But there were moments of clash and irritation when Don's energy flagged and he flung his books aside in black disgust.
"No use," he said moodily. "I can't work. I've got too much on my mind."
Kenny merely looked at him.
Don flushed.
"Mr. O'Neill," he barked.
"Shut up!" thundered Kenny, "I don't propose to quarrel now or at any other time."
They glared at each other in nervous indignation.
"Brian," Kenny added with a sniff, "was sure you could swing it. I never was. You need balance and a sense of responsibility."
Don gritted his teeth and worked in an inexhaustible spurt of endurance.
"Stop wandering around the room and kicking things," Kenny commanded more than once with his own hand clenched in his hair. "If you don't remember, you don't remember, and that's an end of it. Here's the book. Look it over while I'm smoking."
Once when the clash had a suspicious ring of familiarity, he grinned.
"What's the matter?" demanded Don huffily. "What are you laughing at? Me?"
"No," said Kenny. "I was just thinking of a man I know. Name's Whitaker."
Thus May came with a warm wind of spice and fresh misgivings furrowed the doctor's brow.
"Now that the windows are opened so much," he fretted, "the rumble of that quarry is inferno. The blasts bother him?"
"He jumps," said Joan.
"I thought so. He must have peace and quiet. If Mr. O'Neill is willing, we'll move him to the farm."
By the time the orchard flung out its white prayer of blossoms to the sun, the doctor had his patient at the farm.
And summer dreamed again upon the hills.