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Page 13
CHAPTER III
IN THE GAY AND GOLDEN WEATHER
Spring came early and with the first marsh hawk Brian was on the road,
his eager youth crying out to the spring's hope and laughter.
Everywhere he caught the thrill of it. Brooks released from an armor
of ice went singing by him. Hill and meadow deepened verdantly into
smiles. A little while now and the whole green earth in its tenderness
would dimple exquisitely, with every dimple a flower. Mother Earth,
moistening the bare brown fields for the plough with a capricious tear
or so for the banished winter, was beginning again. And so was he.
Hope swelled wistfully within him like song in the throat of the
bluebird and sap in the trees. With the sun warm upon his face and the
gladness of spring in his veins, he sang with Pippa that "God's in his
Heaven, all's right with the world!"
Well, New York, thank God, lay to the back of him, veiling her
realities and truth in glitter, defying nearness. Every human thing
that made for life lay there as surely as it lay here in God's quieter
world, but you never came close to it.
So he tramped away to green fields and hills and winding quiet roads,
spring riding into his heart, invincible and bold.
An arbutus filled him with the wonder of things, a sense of eternity, a
swift, inexplicable compassion, a longing for service to the needs of
men. His ears thrilled to the song of the earth and the whistle of the
ploughman turning up the fresh brown earth. He filled his lungs with
the wind of the open country, drank in the enchantment of the morning
and the dusk, his nostrils joyously alive to the smell of the furrowed
ground and a hint of burgeoning wild flowers.
But the first robin brought misgivings and remorse. Brian remembered
Kenny's legend of the thorn ("worst of them all it was," said Kenny
gently, "and prickin' deepest!") and the robin who plucked it from the
bleeding brow of Christ. So by the blood of the Son of Man had the
robin come by his red breast.
The legend filled Brian with yearning. He softened dangerously to the
memory of a sketching tramp with Kenny fuming at his heels, his
excitement chronic. Adventure had endlessly stalked Kenny for its own,
waylaid him at intervals when he passionately proclaimed his desire for
peace, and saddled Brian with the responsibilities of constant
guardianship.
Brian stubbornly put it all behind him. Kenny, frantic with tenderness
and resolution, could sweep him credulously back into bondage if he
kept to the siege. His promises were fluent always and alluring. Only
by the courage of utter separation could Brian make his longed for
emancipation a thing assured.
So he tramped the highway, lingering by fence and rail to talk with
men, living and learning. For the highway meant to him the passion of
life. Hope and sorrow traveled it day and night in homely hearts.
And often his thoughts harked wistfully back to the words of a modern
poet which Kenny with his usual skill had set to music:
"And often, often I'm longing still,
This gay and golden weather,
For my father's face by an Irish hill,
And he and I together."
In the gay and golden weather things were going badly with the
unsuccessful parent. For weeks now his life had been in ferment, his
moods as freakish as the wind. What little regularity his life had
known departed to that limbo that had claimed his peace of mind. That
he felt himself abnormally methodic lay entirely in the fact that he
watered the fern each day. It had for him a morbid fascination.
Incomprehensible forces were sapping his faith in himself and the
future; and viciously at war with them, he nursed his grievance against
Brian only to find that it was less robust than any grievance should
be. At any cost he wanted Brian back.
"He's taken care of me," remembered Kenny sadly, "since he was a bit of
a lad."
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