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Page 127
The money, the clothes, the paraphernalia he had pawned, were returned.
As for the girls--well, Brian had retaliated in kind and perhaps the debt
in its concentration of payment, was abundantly squared.
"Indolence." That the record of his winter could disprove.
And finally, he read what, after Adam's telling of the truth, he had
scribbled at the end.
"Life is a battle. I do not fight. And life is not an individual
adventure."
It wasn't. It was a chain that clanked.
"I do not fight," he read again and crossed it out.
"Adam, old man," he said wryly, "I think to-night I've done some
fighting. And the fight has just begun."
He tore the page out, struck a match and burned it. Again he dropped
back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Into the blur came Garry.
"Kenny!" he called. "Kenny!"
Kenny opened his eyes with a start. Garry stood by the cabin door, his
hand upon the knob.
"Don asked me to come. Kenny, I was on the porch. Great God! the kid
must have gone crazy."
"You heard?"
"Yes."
"He wanted to--atone."
"And now that he's cooled down enough to remember your kindness, Kenny,
he's breaking his heart over you. A queer kid! I almost thrashed him.
He's tramping off his brain-storm."
"And Joan?"
"With Brian." Garry looked away. "They have forgotten the world," he
added bitterly.
"Kenny, how did you manage? That look in her face--"
"I lied."
"Gallant liar!" said Garry huskily. "I knew you would. It was the only
kind way."
"Almost," said Kenny, "I did not remember to lie in time. Truth is a
thing I cannot understand."
The sympathy in Garry's eyes unnerved him.
"Garry," he flamed, "why did I practice the telling of truth to end now
with a lie? Why did Joan plead for a year to learn to be my wife and
learn in it--not to be?"
"God knows!" said Garry gently. "Why did agony come to Brian at the
hands of a boy he'd befriended? And then--to you?"
"It is the Samhain of my life," said Kenny rising. "And I am no longer
John Whitaker's King of Youth. I think my youth died back there when Don
thrust it aside, not meaning, I take it, to be cruel. But I grew up all
at once." He frowned. "Drowning men, they say, have a kaleidoscopic
vision of the past. I think sitting here that came to me. Perhaps,
Garry, if Eileen had lived I would have been different--steadier. I
think I loved her. I think it would have lasted. A child is a beautiful
link. Perhaps that fever of vanity that grew to a burning in my veins
would never have started. Started, it was like a conflagration. It
drove Brian to sunsets. God knows what it didn't do. I thought only of
myself--always. That desire for adulation in a woman's eyes, that
curious persistent fever was, I'm sure, a sort of sex vanity. It has
nearly ruined many another man's life. It nearly ruined mine. Always
when I was drifting into new madness, I couldn't work. I dreamed. The
Isle of Delight, always receding! I sang and whistled. The King of
Youth! Only when I was drifting out again, could I bend myself to
concentration and sanity. And then another look in a girl's soft
eyes--and more vanity and self and delirium. But I'm tired. I want to
look ahead to--to quiet and steadiness and work."
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