FATE STABS
March came to Kenny and found his studio with its haunting odor of coffee and cigarettes, his brushes, his head and his heart, furiously at work. He was giving himself up to love and labor with a Celtic intensity that Garry found appalling. He planned endlessly to one purpose: Joan's happiness, Joan's pleasure, Joan's future with him. The memory of the ragged money laid aside for Don he dismissed with a wry smile, gritting his teeth. What mattered in the face of the splendid fact that he was so joyously, so recklessly, so absurdly happy?
His life, with its deadly singleness of purpose, should have been simple. It attained a complexity at times at which he marveled. An inclination to blurt out the truth with panicky abruptness when he wanted to lie, plunged him into more than one predicament.
"I'm always explaining to somebody," he complained bitterly to Garry, "why I tell the truth—"
"You told Kenneth his dancing urchin was rotten—"
"It was," insisted Kenny. "Garry, why is truth always unpleasant? Why can't it be as romantic and agreeable as the things you want to say?"
"Why," countered Garry, "isn't peace as romantic as war? Ask somebody who knows. I don't."
He stared curiously at Kenny and shook his head. A heavy hand with the truth, that Irishman; and about as understandable in these splendid, tender days of his idiocy and bliss, as March wind, comets or star-dust. His passion for truth was literally a passion, relentless and exact. He worked harder. His steadiness, as Jan said, was grim and conscious and a thing of terror to anything in his path. He wrestled with his check book and managed somehow to keep his studio in order. And he was kinder. Fahr, in particular, remarked it; and Fahr, worshipping Kenny, had sputtered and endured the brunt of many tempests.
"But, Garry," he confided, round-eyed and apprehensive, "honest Injun, I don't think he ought to bottle up his temper that way. Sometimes I can almost see him swelling up and then when he speaks and I'm waiting for an Irish roar, his voice is so quiet and pleasant that I feel queer. I—I swear I do. Damn it all, I'm liking him more every day."
"So am I," said Garry honestly. "But—"
"But what?"
"I wish he'd be less turbulently happy."
"Let him," said Sid sagely, "Darn few can."
"A pendulum," reminded Garry, "swings both ways. And he's an extremist. If he'd just plant his two feet solidly on the ground and get his head out of the clouds. He's got to do it sometime."
"Oh, hell," said Sid. "Give him time. If that girl was going to marry me I'd climb up a few air-steps myself and stick my head into any old cloud."
"Good old Sid!" said Garry affectionately. "You'd be sure to hit your head on a star and then you'd be amazed and—"
"Oh, you go to thunder!" blustered Sid.
By now Kenny's Bohemia was rushing through its yearly cycle of costume dances. Motley groups emerged at times from Ann's castle and departed in taxis.
"And Gawd knows where," said Mrs. Ryan from the third floor front of the tenement that faced the street. "They're a wild bunch and my Cassie'll never travel wid 'em. Last week the architeks rigged up somethin' fierce and danced in 'the streets of Paris,' wid bullyvard cafes, they called 'em, built into the dance hall, an actress singin' the Marseillaise in a flag, and a Roosian hussy dancin' in boots. And Mr. O'Neill, God save him for a pleasant gentleman though a bit wild in the eye, took my Dinny up to be a gamin. Gay-min. I thought myself he said a 'gay mon' and Dinny's a bit young; but I found he meant him to peddle cigarettes about among the tables."
In the quaint old gowns that were delighting the older painters, Joan glided through the shifting blare and color unaware of the eyes that watched and liked her. Not so Kenny.
He knew who stared and smiled and he knew who stared too long. He was inordinately proud of her.
"Kenny, please!" begged Garry. "Let me paint her. I'm going to California in April and I won't have another chance. I won't be back until fall."
"My son—" began Kenny wearily. Then he smiled. "Oh, go ahead, Garry, darlin'. I'll not be mindin' a bit."
And Garry curiously enough caught the tantalizing charm of her sweetness that had baffled many an older and wiser man.
Shadows had no part in the wonder of Kenny's winter, but an inclination to forget his quarrel with Brian and his flare of penance, violent and incomplete—for he had never reached the longed-for grail of his son's forgiveness—troubled him vaguely. In spasmodic moments of remorse he read his notebook, tremendously buoyed up by an augmenting consciousness of evolution. Faint inner voices warned him at times not to misinterpret his exultant happiness in terms of infallibility and when they called to him he had his moments of humility and panic.
In one of them he tried to coax the fern back to life; once with an alarming air of energy and importance, he departed in a taxi and bought a great many things for Brian's room; once when miraculously the bank and he agreed for a brief period upon his balance, he succumbed to a mathematical fit of uplift and conscience, dashed off a bewildering number of checks and left the overladen slate of his credit unmarked by even an I.O.U. His brilliant air of calm and satisfaction thereafter was distinctly noticeable.
On the whole he was much too happy to be lonely or introspective. Brian's absence and his splendid, sacrificial freak of service, had been the price of Joan's content and the welfare of her brother.
Whitaker, journalism and God's green world of spring he had chosen jealously to resent. The thought of Donald West and a dim conviction of quarry hardships filled him with a new sense of solidarity in Brian and a passionate respect. The current of his affection for his son was subtly altering. It was no longer careless and frenzied and sentimental. Nor was it selfish. Something big and abiding had sprung up out of the ashes of his penance.
By the end of March, with a record-breaking period of work behind him and a furore of notoriety over his striking portrait of a famous beauty compelling him to a radiant admission of success, Kenny found himself lulled into the self-respecting quietude he craved.
Days back self-confidence had come to him in Hannah's kitchen and Adam Craig, in the course of time, had crushed it out with a keen and understanding leer. Later it had returned with Adam's death, and the weary voice of Doctor Cole had shattered it.
So now on a March night of wind and hail—and this time by telephone after much tedious trouble with the wire, Doctor Cole's voice, tired, sorrowful and kind, came stabbing intrusively into his full-blown equanimity with a message of terror.
"Mr. O'Neill—"
"Yes."
"This is Doctor Cole of Briston, Pennsylvania."
Kenny stiffened. He had never quite forgiven the doctor for that bleak, anticlimacteric morning when he had driven dazedly away with Nellie. Adjectives, like a man's laughter, were to him an irrefutable test. With one you could definitely prefigure a man's degree of refinement; with the other the aesthetic color of his soul. And gray was no color for any mortal's soul.
"Yes?"
"Mr. O'Neill," came the kind, tired voice, "I'm sorry, sorrier than I can tell. I've bad news for you. There has been an accident, a quarry explosion, and your son is badly injured."
A hot quiver swept through Kenny's body, ended at his face in a stinging rush of blood and left him icy cold.
"Brian!"
"Yes. … Are you there, Mr. O'Neill?"
"Yes. … Yes, I am here. Doctor… How—badly?"
"He is—well, conscious. I can hardly say more," owned the doctor. "Thank God he's young and strong. There are no developed symptoms of fracture yet but his skull—"
"Fracture! Skull!"
"There's a chance. Contusion now merely and a swollen condition. The soft parts are unbroken and that makes an accurate diagnosis difficult, but I must warn you that there is an immediate risk to his life from shock and perhaps compression—"
"Oh, my God!" said Kenny, his eyes wet.
"You see, Mr. O'Neill," said the doctor sadly, "there may be depressed fragments of bone or effused blood. We are watching closely. But I think you had better come to him at once. There is a possibility—"
But there were some things that even the little doctor could not say.
"Still there, Mr. O'Neill?" he asked a little later.
"Yes. Where is Brian now?"
"In a quarry shack on what we call up here the Finlake mountain."
"Finlake mountain!"
"Yes, barely eighteen miles across the valley from the farm. They couldn't find a doctor. Carson is nearer but he was out. Has a widely scattered farm practice like my own and Don, frantic with terror, telephoned to me. We've done everything possible for him, Mr. O'Neill, but his pulse is pretty feeble and it's difficult to rouse him. Sensibility of course is blunted. Bound to be—"
"I will be there," said Kenny, "as soon—as soon as it is possible. There are but three north-bound trains at Briston?"
"Morning—eight-ten. Noon, one-twenty-nine and night, seven-fifteen. But don't get off at Briston, Mr. O'Neill. Finlake, fifteen miles on, is nearer—"
"I can not possibly make the morning train. The changes make the trip long. Twelve hours… God!"
"I myself will meet you at Finlake. It's three miles farther to the quarry. If you are not on the noon train I will meet the night—"
"I—I cannot thank you, Doctor Cole." Kenny hung up, unaware that the doctor was adding further detail.
Almost at once he unhooked the receiver and summoned the club central. Afterward Pietro, who took his turn at the switchboard when the day operator departed, spoke of the quiet curtness of his voice.
"Pietro? Mr. O'Neill speaking. I want you, at once, to look up the earliest connecting train with Finlake, Pennsylvania, any road."
"Yes, sir," began Pietro. "What—" but the receiver had clicked into place.
Kenny stared with a shudder at the withered fern, his face as white as chalk.
A tearing hand seemed clinging to his brain.
In the face of this grief-stricken terror that quaked and burned in his soul, etching unforgettable scars, the recollection of his unsteady spurts of penance rose to mock him with their artificiality. His remorse had been but a pale, theatric spree! And now in this forgetful winter of his love, Fate had decoyed him into optimistic quietude only to thrust savagely and deep. Remorse in the raw! Was it punishment—punishment for the farcical penitent on the highway who had smiled into a woman's soft eyes, forgetting—
He answered Pietro's ring with a throbbing sense of confusion in his forehead.
The best connecting train and the earliest left the Pennsylvania Terminal at eleven. It was now but five. How could he wait?
"Pietro," he said, "give me now Doctor Barrington's office. And tell the operator to put me through to his private wire. It's urgent. I do not want the nurse in the anteroom. When you ring for me I want Dr. Barrington ready at the other end and I want you yourself, Pietro, to be sure he's there."
Pietro, obeyed, amazed and loyal.
"Frank?" Hot relief surged in Kenny's heart at the chance ease of connection. "Kenny speaking."
"Hello, Kenny. Nothing doing for me tonight, old man. I've got to sleep."
"I need you, Frank. Brian has been injured—badly—in a quarry explosion."
"Kenny!"
"A chance of skull fracture," said Kenny steadily. "That means?"
"A possible operation."
"Can you leave with me at eleven o'clock to-night, Pennsylvania Terminal? It will mean at least two days. He's at Finlake, Pennsylvania, barely conscious—in the hands of a country doctor."
The brilliant industrious young surgeon on the other end gasped and whistled. He worked and played at heavy pressure.
"Kenny, old man," he said, "nothing is impossible. Almost this is. But it's you and Brian and that's enough, I'll meet you at quarter of eleven. I'll go—thoroughly prepared. Do you feel like telling me more?"
"No."
Two receivers clicked and Kenny, remembering that he could not definitely locate Joan until six, felt the tautness of his control slip dangerously.
Eleven o'clock… How could he wait? He paced the floor, his mind in its chaotic desperation, numb and inelastic. With his glance upon the psaltery stick, a dim notion of accounting filtered curiously into his mind and became obsessional. He went shaking to Brian's room and put the key of the chiffonier in his pocket. Thank God the studio was in order, save a chair or two. Brian … would … be … pleased. Kenny stared at the withered fern and blinked. An augury? God forbid! Then he flung the bill-file with its heterogeneous collection of receipted I.O.U.'s into his bulging suit case and called up Simon Meyer.
"Simon," he said, "whatever I happen to have there—there's a shotgun, I know, and a tennis racket and some fishing rods. … The rest for the moment I can't recall… I want you to put all of it in a bundle and send it here at once by special messenger. I have the tickets here… I'll have them ready… Yes, I'll give him a check… No, Simon, it won't be certified and he'll take it as it is."
He rang off and searched impatiently for pawn tickets. Simon's messenger arrived and, strained and hostile, Kenny looked over the contents of the bundle and wrote a check.
Alone in the studio again, he flung up a window, his mind pushing ahead to eleven o'clock. It seemed to him then that he could not possibly wait and go on fighting for his self-control. A gust of sleet and hail swept in with a pattering sound upon the floor. Its cold, stinging contact with his face refreshed him. Kenny's brain cleared. He gulped and gasped. Garry's car! He would not wait.
"Frank," he telephoned after an unavailing interval of search for Garry, "if you're willing we'll motor to Finlake in Garry's car. He'll not be mindin'. I borrow it often. It's a bad night of course—but we could start now. And we can make time on the road. It's barely two hundred and fifty miles but the branch roads and changes make unendurable delay. Shall I come for you in half an hour?"
Again Barrington gasped. Again he whistled. "Make it three quarters," he said, "and I think I can swing it."
"You're a jewel for sense," Kenny told him, a passionate note of gratitude in his voice. "I love you for it."
He called Ann's studio at six. Joan had not returned. Ann took the message, startled and sympathetic.
"I'll wire her in the morning," he said and, hanging up, found that Sidney Fahr had come in. He stood with his back against the door, his round face blank with terror.
"Kenny," he stammered, "I—I couldn't help hearing." The hot sympathy he could not bring himself to utter, flamed desperately in his face—almost to the ruin of Kenny's iron control. "I—I—I can do something, can't I, Kenny?"
"Yes, Sid, darlin', you can," said Kenny gently. "I'm taking Garry's car. You can square me with him."
"I—I'd even thrash him," mumbled Sid.
"Then if you will I'd like you to get in touch with Westcott's wife and tell her. I'm painting her portrait. She comes to-morrow at ten. Sid, could you—could you clean off those two chairs?"
Sid fell upon the nearest chair with fearful energy. At the table Kenny hurriedly wrote a check.
"And to-morrow I want you to deposit this to Brian's account. I'm paying back—what I owe him." His mouth worked.
"Oh, Sid!" he said, his face scarlet.
"Now, now, now, Kenny," choked the little painter, winking and making horrible faces at the littered chair, "don't you go to taking on. Don't you do it. I'll call up Westcott. The old gladiator!" Somehow he turned his sniffle to a snort. "What in thunder does she want to be painted for anyway? She's got a nose like a triangle and the composition of her face is all wrong."
He blinked away the wetness on his lashes and wondered why, with every other chair in the studio clear, Kenny should make a point of the littered two. But he did not ask. Instead he entered upon a period of fruitless and agitated trotting that lasted until Kenny came hack from the garage with Garry's car. Then Sid packed him in, made one last terrible face and bolted across the sidewalk for the door.
Beyond the threshold he bolted for a telephone.
"Jan," he said in shocked tones, "I want you to come down to the bar and watch me. I—I've made up my mind to get drunk. I've got to." He gulped. "I'll tell you why when you come down."
"Oh, fiddlesticks!" said Jan in a bored voice. "Go down to the grill and eat something. And order me an English mutton chop and some macaroni. I'll be down to dinner in five minutes."
Sid aggrievedly obeyed.