They were hard days for Kenny, who hated gloom save when it was picturesque and transient. And they were harder for the pity and misgiving in his heart. He himself perhaps had hastened the old man's death with a careless story. Why had it bothered him? Why had it goaded his wasted legs to horrible effort?
Ordinarily Kenny knew he would have resented the intrusion of alien sorrow into his life. He hated sorrow. Now for Joan's sake he made himself a part of it. If Joan must endure it, so could he. But he sickened at the need.
He was doomed to a tragic, unforgettable hour in the churchyard when the voice of the old minister, conventional in its sadness, droned wearily into his very soul:
"Ashes to ashes … dust to dust." … The clock turned back and he stood in a church by an Irish hill. White and terrified, Kenny remembered what in its vivid agony of detail he would fain have forgotten. Why, now, when Joan was slipping into his life, a lonely waif of a girl in a black gown he hated, why must he think years back to that soft-eyed Irish girl and Brian? Had he broken his pledge to her, driving her son away with a passion of self no less definite for its careless gayety? Eileen's son! Eileen's son! Sadness tore at Kenny's heart and twitched at his dry, white lips. Ah! why must he live again that agonizing day when Eileen had gone out of his life forever?
The voice went on, funereal, gentle. Kenny's eyes blurred. Sweat came coldly forth upon his forehead. At the first thud of earth he choked and turned away, the pain unbearable. Adam Craig had driven his nephew away … with a passion of self … and he had died with mercy at his bedside, not love. A passionate hunger for Brian stirred in Kenny's heart and made him lonely. Ah! how farcical his penance! Some nameless thing of self linked him to Adam Craig. The thought was horrible. Some nameless thing linked each mournful detail of to-day to the tragedy of long ago. … And then mercifully the thing became a blur of November wind, a monotonous voice of sorrow, the thud of earth and the end.
The coach toiled up the hill and Kenny, with Joan in his arms, forgot.
"Mavourneen," he said wistfully, "let's slip away, you and I, to the cabin in the pines. I want you to myself. And there in the house—" he looked away. The thought of the old house, bleak and desolate at its best and haunted now by the sense of a presence gone, oppressed him.
Joan nodded.
"And not that dress!" begged Kenny with a shudder.
She laid her cheek against his shoulder.