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Page 33
The random shot of inference went home. It was the first of many.
Kenny fought back his temper. Affronted, he crossed the room and laid
a roll of bills upon the table. Craig counted them with an irritating
show of care.
"That, Mr. O'Neill," he said, "will guarantee my hospitality for the
space of a month!"
He put the roll of money in the pocket of his bathrobe and Kenny
fancied his fingers loathe to leave it.
The drip of the rain and the gusty noise of wind that by daylight had
been no more than a melancholy adjunct to the poetry of wet blossoms,
became suddenly sinister and tragic and irresistibly atmospheric.
Kenny stared with new vision at the dreadful old man in the bathrobe.
One by one Kenny was fated to solve his mysteries when he wanted to
keep them. He knew now in a flare of intuition why the old rooms had
been abandoned, why Joan ferried folk from the village in the valley to
the village across the river, why her gown of the morning and the rags
of the runaway had been pitifully patched and mended. And he
remembered the mystery of her color, when, questing an inn, he had
glanced at the house on the cliff and hinted that her uncle might
consent to be his host.
"I know he would!" Joan's low voice rang in his ears again with new
meaning.
Adam Craig was a miser.
He shrank at the thought. Annoyed to find the old man's eyes boring
into him again, he cleared his throat and looked away.
"So," said Adam Craig, "you are a famous painter!"
"I am a painter," said Kenny stiffly.
"With medals," purred Adam.
"With medals."
A fit of coughing seemed for an interval to threaten the old man's very
life.
"Yonder in the closet," he said huskily, "is a bottle and some glasses.
Bring them here."
Kenny obeyed.
"Sit down."
With the old man's eyes upon him, hungry and expectant, as if he
clutched at the thought of companionship, Kenny reluctantly found a
chair for himself and sat down. Pity made him gentle. Year in and
year out, he remembered with a shiver, Adam Craig sat huddled here in
his wheel-chair listening to wind and rain, sleet and snow, the rustle
of summer trees and the wind of autumn. It was a melancholy thought
and true.
Smoothly hospitable, the invalid poured brandy for himself and his
guest and chatted with an air of courtesy. Kenny found himself in
quieter mood. Reminiscence crackled in the wood-fire. Nights in the
studio by the embers of a log many a Gaelic tale had glowed and
sparkled in his soft, delightful brogue for the ears of men who loved
his tales of folk lore and loved the teller.
Ah, Ireland, dark rosaleen of myths and mirth and melancholy. The
thought of it all made him tender and sad.
Well, he would give this lonely man by the fire an hour of unalloyed
delight. He would tell him tales of Ireland when brehons made the laws
and bards and harpers roved the green hills. Kenny made his
opportunity and began. He told a tale of Choulain, the mountain smith
who forged armor for the Ultonians. He told a lighter tale of three
sisters whom he called Fair, Brown and Trembling. With the brogue
strong upon him he told how Finn McCoul had stolen the clothes of a
bathing queen and he told in stirring phrase the exploits of Ireland's
mighty hero, Cuchullin.
He had never had a better listener. Adam Craig fixed his piercing eyes
inscrutably upon the teller's face, drank glass after glass of brandy,
and remained polite, intent and silent. Kenny, with his heart in the
telling, went on to the tale of Conoclach and the first harp.
Conoclach, he said, hating Cull, her husband, had run away from him
toward the sea. There upon the sand lay the skeleton of a whale and
the wind playing upon the taut sinews made sounds low and soothing
enough to lull her to sleep. And Cull, coming up, marveled at her
slumber, heard the murmuring of the wind through the sinews and made
the first harp. Kenny liked the tale and he liked the way he told it.
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