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."