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Page 38
Kenny shivered and refused to dwell upon a phase of life that was like
autumn and sere and drifting leaves. It bothered him that the thought of
Hannah and Hughie had driven him to think it out. He liked best in heart
things to think back, not too far, and never forward.
"Kenny!" It was Joan's voice in the dusk.
Kenny forgot the sadness of his wisdom and foreboding. He forgot the
future. The thing to do always was to live in the present and now Joan's
voice, joyous and young, filled him with tenderness.
"Yes, Joan."
"The Gray Man of the Twilight's here. See, he's climbed up from the
valley and he's coming down the walk."
From the Gray Man's misty robes came the fragrance of syringa.
CHAPTER IX
ADAM CRAIG
Joan, Kenny called his torment of delight in days that were exquisite
intaglios. Adam Craig was a torment of another caliber. He claimed
the evenings of his guest.
Kenny knew too well for his own peace of mind the pitiful diversions of
the old man's day. It sapped his powers of resistance. In the morning
there was the doctor, a weary little man, untemperamental and
mercifully impervious to insult, who chugged up the lane in a car that
needed but one twist of the crank to release a great many clattering
things. All of them Kenny felt should be anchored more securely.
There was an occasional hour in the open. At nightfall he sent for
Kenny and by nine he was drunk.
Again and again, wrought to a high pitch of resentment by the traps the
invalid baited with an air of courtesy, Kenny cursed his own weak-kneed
spasms of pity and surrender and resolved to break away. Always when
Hughie rapped at his bedroom door he remembered the melancholy drip of
the blossom storm at Adam's windows, the invalid's hunger for news of
the outside world and the Spartan way he bore his pain. Whatever the
nature of the disease that had wasted his body and etched shadows of
pain upon his subtle face, he never spoke of it. Nor did he speak of
Donald or Joan, whom Kenny felt despairingly he hated and taunted into
secret tears. If he resented the runaway's rebellion, he kept it to
himself.
One evening when he seemed to be quiet and in pain, and was taking,
Kenny noticed, the medicine that marked vague periods of crisis, Adam
said pensively that he had not meant to impugn the Gaelic folk lore.
He liked it. It reflected the warm, poetic soul of a people. Brandy,
alas, always made him quarrelsome and undependable of mood. When the
rain came again and he had to have a fire, they would have more tales
of the Dark Rose Kenny loved. Ireland, the Dark Rose! The name was
like her history. Yes, folk lore went with the crackle of a log and
the mournful music of rain upon a roof. He could have his brandy later.
The rain came with its lonely patter and Kenny told him tales of
Ireland, delighted at the sympathetic quiet of his mood. Unbrandied,
the evenings, after all, might become endurable.
"You see," Adam said once a little sadly, "without the brandy--"
Kenny nodded his approval.
When the clock struck nine he was in splendid fettle, brogue and all.
"For Ireland's harpers," he was boasting with a reckless air of pride,
"were better than any harpers in the world."
"Liars?" asked Adam blankly.
Kenny found his occasional pretense of deafness trying in the extreme.
"Harpers!" he repeated in a loud voice. "And you heard me before."
Adam nodded.
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