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Page 101
"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.
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