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Page 6
It was the thing, as Garry knew, that taxed Brian's patience to the
utmost, plunged him into grotesque dilemmas and kept him keyed to an
abnormal alertness of memory. Always his sense of loyalty revolted at
the notion of denying any tale that Kenny told.
Now Kenny's hurt stare left Brian unrepentant. He lost his temper
utterly. Thereafter he blazed out a hot-headed summary of book-keeping
that made his father gasp.
Kenny's air of conscious rectitude vanished. In an instant he was
defensive and excited, resenting the unexpected need of the one and the
distraction of the other. The sum of his episodic rambling on Brian's
tongue was appalling. He was willing to concede that his imagination
was wayward and romantic. But why in the name of Heaven must a
man--and an Irishman--justify the indiscretions of his wit? Well, the
lad had always had an unnatural trend for fact. Kenny remembered with
resentment the Irish fairies that even in his childhood Brian had been
unable to accept, excellent fairies with feet so big that in time of
storm they stood on their heads and used them for umbrellas!
Staggered by Brian's inflexible air of resolution, Kenny, his fingers
clenched in his hair, began another circle. He reverted to his
grievance. The quarrel this time was sharp and brief. Brian hated
repetitions. Hotly impenitent he flung out of the studio and slammed
his bedroom door, leaving Kenny dazed and defensive and utterly unable
to comprehend the twist of fate by which the dignity of his grievance
had been turned to disadvantage.
Garry glanced at the gray haze in the court beyond the window and rose.
"It's nearly daybreak," he said. "And I've a model coming at ten.
She's busy and I can't stall."
He left Kenny amazed and aggrieved at his desertion. Certainly in the
grip of untoward events, a man is entitled to someone with whom he can
talk it over.
Wakeful and nervous, Kenny smoked, raked his hair with his fingers and
brooded. Brian had been disinherited much too often to resent it all
at once to-night. As for the shotgun, that dispute or its equivalent
was certainly as normal a one as regularity could make it. And he had
related many a tale unhampered by fact that Brian had simply ignored.
"What on earth has got into the lad?" he wondered impatiently.
Ah, well, he was a good lad, clean-cut and fine, with Irish eyes and an
Irish temper like his father. Kenny forgot and forgave. Both were a
spontaneity of temperament. Brian and he would begin again. That was
always pleasant.
He strode remorsefully to Brian's door and knocked. There was no
answer. He knocked again. Ordinarily he would have flung back the
door with a show of temper. Penitential, he opened it with an air of
gentle forbearance. The room, which gave evidence of anger and hurried
packing, was empty, the door that opened into the corridor, ajar.
Brian was gone.
White and startled, Kenny unearthed the chafing dish and made himself
some coffee.
Brian, of course, would return in the morning, whistling and sane. He
would call something back in his big, pleasant voice to the elevator
man who worshipped him, and bang the studio door. The lad was not
given to such definite revolt. Besides, Brian, he must remember, was
an O'Neill, an Irishman and a son of his, an indisputable trio of good
fortune; as such he could be depended upon not to make an ass of
himself.
CHAPTER II
THE UNSUCCESSFUL PARENT
Kenny slept as he lived, with a genius for dreams and adventure. He
remembered moodily as he rose at noon that he had dreamed a
kaleidoscopic chase, precisely like a moving picture with himself a
star, in which, bolting through one taxi door and out another with a
shotgun in his hand, he had valiantly pursued a youth who had,
miraculously, found the crooked stick of the psaltery and stolen it.
The youth proved to be Brian. That part was reasonable enough. Brian
was the only one who could find the thing long enough to steal it.
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