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Page 115
CHAPTER XXXVII
HONEYSUCKLE DAYS
Pine-sweet wind still blew around the cabin, the sylvan river laughed
in the sun, wistaria hung grape-like on the ladder of vine; but over it
all, to Kenny, brooded the pathos of change.
He longed wistfully for the gay vitality of that other summer when
every day had been an exquisite intaglio of laughter. There were times
when unreasonably he even missed Adam. How the nights in contrast had
sharpened the joy of his days! And he hated the village boy who
ferried the punt back and forth upon the river, hated the horn with its
transforming miracles of reminiscence, for it pointed the nameless lack
of sparkle now that struck melancholy into his soul. He had lived in
Arcady and jealously he would have hoarded each detail of its charm.
The days were long and quiet. Life for all of them centered around the
wheel-chair on the porch. There Joan read aloud while the nurse kept
wisely in the background, and Hannah at meal-times set the table on the
porch.
In the long afternoons of study that Kenny spent with Don, Brian
asserted his independence and banished books. He seemed content to
talk. Joan listened eagerly to his tales of the road, never tiring of
Don's vagabond adventures. After the worried months of monotony and
pain, the afternoons of reminiscence were tonic for them both. Lazy
humor crept back to Brian's eyes. At times he whistled. Wind and sun
were tanning his skin to the hue of health.
He had his dark hours. Every effort then to cheer him left him tired
and quiet. Talk of the chain of circumstances that had, oddly, brought
them all together, he avoided with a frown. Any reference to her life
in New York, Joan found, plunged him into gloom. Was it, she wondered,
because he knew his accident had brought her year of play and study to
an end? She longed passionately to tell him how easy it had been for
her--how trifling, as a sacrifice, in the face of his kindness to Don;
but shyness held her back.
"Honeysuckle days!" Brian called his days of convalescence, for the
vine upon the porch hung full.
"Is it so hot in the pines?" he wondered one sultry afternoon.
"No," said Joan. "There it's always dark and cool and quiet. When you
can walk, Brian, you must see the cabin."
Heat quivered visibly in the valley. A faint breeze frolicked now and
then upon the ridge, fluttering the honeysuckle and the pages of an
open book upon the table.
"I'm glad it isn't," said Brian in relief. "Somehow I can't imagine
Kenny off there in a hot cabin striding up and down and grilling Don.
He's so--so combustible. As a matter of fact," he added, "I can't
imagine him in any sort of cabin grilling Don. Soft-hearted lunatic!"
"Don gets awfully on his nerves," said Joan, shaking her head. "If it
wasn't that he's doing it for you--"
"For me, Joan!"
Joan nodded.
"What you began, he'll finish for you. He said so. It bothered him
that all those dreary months you spent at the quarry just to help Don
might be in vain. Don went so dreadfully to pieces."
"Sentimental old hothead," grumbled Brian, touched and pleased. "I
love him for it."
"I wonder if you realize how much he cares!"
"For--you?" asked Brian quietly. "Yes."
"No, no," said Joan, coloring. "For you. For you he has worked
through splendidly to--to less of self. And so has Don. It's a
wonderful tribute, Brian. To inspire something fine and beautiful is
fine and beautiful itself."
Brian stared uncomfortably at a red barn in the valley.
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