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Page 56
"It's not because he's busy," said Garry grimly. "Nothing I've found
is further from his mind than the thought of work."
"And it's plain Brian isn't coming back," put in Jan. "He might as
well face that fact and have done with it. Personally I've lost
patience with him. He acts like a sulky kid."
Later Jan improvised a "scarlet fever" placard which Kenny in the
course of time found nailed upon his door. He read with amazed and
offended eyes that he was temporarily in temper quarantine.
It soon became apparent that life without Brian was maintaining even
more than its usual average of petty complication. The problem of
small change Kenny found a torment. There Brian had been a jewel. It
simply narrowed down to this, he told Garry: No matter how he started,
he never had any. Even a bag of change he had procured from the bank
in a moment of desperation was never to be found. It got under things.
His eventual solution of the difficulty plunged the club into scandal
and uproar. He found the bag of change and sprinkled coins into
everything in the studio that would hold them.
"Now," he informed Garry with moody satisfaction, "I'll always be able
to put my hand on some when I want it. I wonder I didn't think of it
before. I'm better with big sums. Dimes and nickels and even quarters
make me nervous. You know how it is, Garry. I always have to come in
to you or do one of a number of desperate things. And then if I can't
find a small coin and tip with a big one, Jan gets wind of it somehow
and talks by the hour about demoralizing the club-boys. He's a pest."
The device at first bade fair to be successful. Later there was
frenzied recourse to Garry to help him remember where on earth the
dimes were likely to be. Later still the pages helped. The sequel
came quickly. The studio attained suspicious popularity with one or
two new untried boys who mined the studio in Kenny's absence and tipped
themselves. Kenny, as scandalized as only Kenny could be, turned
sleuth and reported the thing in wrath. Everybody missed something and
the club buzzed with scandal until the boys departed, likely, Kenny
thought bitterly, to retire for life on the dimes and nickels they had
dug out of his studio.
Why must he always be the central pivot of a whirlpool of excitement?
God knows he loved peace even if Fate never permitted him to sample it.
He laid the whole thing unconditionally at Brian's door. Let Brian,
instead of shirking his usual numismatic responsibilities in some
indefinite green world of peace and calm, come home as he should.
As for work, Kenny loved work, Brian and Garry to the contrary. If in
Brian's absence everything conspired against his passionate love of
industry, it was no fault of his. Along with the torment of doubts
that assailed him, thanks to that infernal notebook, the studio kept
catapulting itself into a jungle of nerve-racking disorder in which it
was impossible to work. And when Mrs. Haggerty fell upon it with the
horrible energy of the Philistine and found places for everything, the
studio became a place in which no self-respecting painter could be
expected to keep his inspiration or his temper. Here again, Kenny felt
aggrievedly, was a condition which Brian's presence could have altered.
The lad had a way of mitigating order and disorder with a curious
result of comfort.
Garry lost his patience.
"You remind me," he said, "of the English squire who only drank ale on
two occasions; when he had goose for dinner and when he didn't."
Kenny remarked that the squire by reason of his nativity was a fool.
And the thing couldn't be helped. The studio in order was impossible.
He added with an air of inspiration that it made him think of
mathematics. Mathematics he considered a final argument against
anything. Besides, he was unusually fallible. Garry must always keep
that in mind. Let the infallibles work. If there was only something
he liked well enough, he'd drink himself to death.
"I suppose you are aware," thundered Garry, thoroughly exasperated,
"that even a painter must work to live? The whole club's buzzing over
your tantrums. There's been some talk of chaining you to an easel with
a brush in your hand for your own good."
Kenny as usual consigned the club to Gehenna. Nevertheless, as Garry
saw, he winced. Very well, he would work, furiously, as only he knew
how to work and when he had scored another brilliant success--
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