IN SOMEBODY'S BOAT
The moon came silver in the valley and mingled with shadow among the trees. Owl's-light was nowhere, Kenny said, and the pines stood like shaggy druids in the silver dusk. The twilight of the moon he called it. Restless and poetic he begged Joan to help him find the lake down yonder in the valley. It was gleaming, to his fancy, with fairies' fire.
They found the lake and somebody's boat. Both were in a lonely glen. Kenny unwillingly conceded the existence of somebody with a claim upon the boat stronger than his own.
"But," he went on with an air of inspiration, "somebody is in the world or he wouldn't be somebody; and the world's my friend. Therefore by moon-mad deduction somebody's my friend and I may take his boat."
He released the painter, smiling up into Joan's face.
"Beside," he added, "he's either a young dub who doesn't know the moon is shining or an old cynic who doesn't care."
"Kenny!" said Joan, somewhat shocked by his inconsequent habits of acquirement. "I'm quite sure we shouldn't."
"Everything in the world you want to do," reminded Kenny, "you shouldn't. And everything in the world you shouldn't, you want to do!"
He flung his cigarette at a frog.
"The only thing to smoke on such a lake," he said, "is a fairy's pipe. Come, jewel machree, happiness is the aim of life. And my happiness for the moment, is to glide forth upon the bosom of that lake with you. Look, you can even see the gleam of silver shoes where the fairies dance upon the ripples."
He was indeed moon-mad in mood and irresistible. Joan smiled compassionately at the pleading of his eyes.
"But, Kenny," she said, holding back, "the aim of life isn't just happiness. That might be very dreadful. It's just happiness with the least unhappiness to others."
He stared at her a little startled. It was the sort of thing, he felt rebelliously, that he should write down in his notebook. Well, it was no night for notebooks. It was a night, a lake, a boat for lovers.
"Even granting that, girleen," he said, "it's not going to make somebody unhappy if we take his boat. For he won't know it. And therefore it will make us happy with the least possible unhappiness to anybody else. And, after all, it's more likely to be a fairy's boat, for it's made of quicksilver. Come, mavourneen, come!"
She climbed in unconvinced.
"Lordy! Lordy!" breathed Kenny in delight. "The lake is thatched with moonbeams!" And he thought of course of the legend of Killarney. "'Twas a valley like this, Joan," he said, "all rich with fields and pastures of green and there in the heart of it always was the fairy fountain covered with a stone to keep the water from rushin' out. And then came the knight."
His eyes pleaded. He was staging his legend and begging her to act.
"And then," said Joan smiling, "came the knight. I think his eyes were Irish."
"He saw a maid at the fountain," said Kenny, his eyes tender, "a maid with a pitcher and her skin was cream and her cheeks were rose and there were shadows of gold in her bronzy, nut-brown hair. I'm sure she wore a quaint old gown of blue and silver."
"Kenny!"
"And he liked her," said Kenny stubbornly. "You can't deny him that."
"No," said Joan gently. "And why should I deny it? For the blue and silver maid liked the knight."
Kenny's heart leaped to his eyes.
"They wandered on the hills and they wandered in the valley. And then the maid in blue and silver, who was all rose petals and sun shadows and the glory of autumn, ran back to the fountain. She had forgotten to cover it with the stone and the valley was flooded. There beautiful and calm stretched the lake of Killarney and I hope it was moonlight."
"And the knight and the maid?" Joan had forgotten their game of pretense. She was eager for the end of the story.
Kenny feathered his oars in silver spray and wondered impatiently why all love stories ended in an anticlimax. He had finished the story artistically and well. Luckily Joan had forgotten the stage and the actors.
"I suppose," he said gloomily, "that the knight married the maid and took her to dwell in a castle she must have hated. And they lived unhappily ever after."
Joan laughed. She saw in his words merely a perverse dislike for familiar endings and forgot it at once. The moonlit lake had aroused in her a yearning tenderness for the brother off somewhere in what, Kenny said, Brian called his Tavern of Stars.
"Oh, Kenny," she sighed, "I wish Donald would write!"
The wish jarred. Kenny frowned. How could he wish it too! And yet, not wishing was disloyal, disloyal to Brian. Upset, he turned, hurt and sulky. And presently as Joan, busy with thoughts of the truant brother, continued unaware of the melancholy in his mood that never failed to make its appeal to her tenderness, he began to hum.
Joan looked up.
"What a queer, wild tune!" she exclaimed. "What is it, Kenny? I've never heard you sing it before."
"I never felt the need," said Kenny. "It's called the 'Twisting of the Rope.' Long, long ago, girleen, a harper's gallantry to a pretty maid angered her mother and she asked him to help her twist a straw rope. And he did. And twisting he had to back away and over the threshold and the mother slammed the door in his face. Faith, 'twas all to get rid of him!"
It was impossible to miss the point. Joan's face went scarlet.
"Oh, Kenny!" she said. "You knew—surely you knew I couldn't mean that."
It was a new delight to hear her say it.
"When Donald writes," reminded Kenny, "then I must go." And watching the girl's troubled face, he wondered with a thrill of triumph if at last the madness of the summer was upon her. Well, thank Heaven, he was honest and honorable. He would stay until the madness waned. Always he was fated to climb down out of the clouds first.
Ah! But what if Joan slipped back into sense and sanity first? The possibility filled him with panic. What on earth would he do?