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Page 67
"Yes."
"I know chunks of a lot of things I don't need, almost nothing of
things I ought to know a lot about. When I liked a thing, I studied.
And when I didn't I let it slide. It worried my sister. And I work by
fits and starts when there's nobody around to keep me at it. Up here
alone, working all day and studying half the night, I'd never swing it.
It would mean the hardest kind of work."
"Once," said Brian, "I saw you chop wood for thirteen hours."
"You were there."
"And down there in the quarry Grogan says you can load more stone to
the hour than two wops."
"You're there feeding the crusher. And you work as hard as I do."
Brian rose. His pipe was out. He knew as he knocked the ashes into a
saucer and filled again from a bowl of tobacco upon the mantel, that
Donald's eyes were upon him, abject with misery and remorse. But
neither spoke.
Irritable and upset, Brian went out upon the porch.
The straggling cluster of shacks around the rude store were dark.
Grogan's weary men found bed early. The moonlight was calm and cold
and weirdly bright. A wind mournful with the rustle of dead leaves
came sharply from the trees behind the shack where by day the autumn
sun touched russet into gold and scarlet. A bleak spot up here! The
solitude of stone and struggle. Could he expect Don to linger here and
fight his battle? Brian, with the weight of his years heavy on his
shoulders, said honestly no. And the problem still was with him.
He went down the steps and walked aimlessly along the ridge above the
quarry. The bright emptiness below was grotesque with shadow, shadows
of ghost-like derricks, screens and drills. On the spur track lay a
car half full of stone. Standing there with the trainload of Donald's
labor at his feet, it came sharply to Brian that the boy stood again at
the parting of the ways. And the year would tell.
To the right from the dank water of a quarry pool abandoned long since
to catfish and willows, a milk-white mist was rising eerily into the
moonlight. Brian saw it but he saw it indistinctly. He was thinking
of the boy's sister, her sweet face tragic with imploring. It lay in
the mist and yet not in the mist, and it was binding him to obligation.
He had written a promise. That promise he must keep. The face his
memory etched upon the mist made its appeal to every finer instinct of
his courage.
Brian did not face his problem with excitement. He faced it with
ruthless concentration. All summer he had been groping through fog and
disillusion to the meaning of service, service to his fellowmen, and he
had groped through to something vague and lofty. Service lay across
the water where men raved in the red fever of destruction, service and
inclination. Could not one be mercifully the religion of the other?
Must service spring from the bitter dregs of self-denial? Brian stared
wretchedly into the dank white mist curling in the moonlight like a
fallen cloud. And again with his conscience up in arms he remembered
the face of Donald's sister. In a sense he could thank the boy for the
peace of his summer. And he had written his promise. He was like
Kenny, that boy, inflammable of purpose, erratic in his vigor, and
likable. And he needed a friend, inflexible and kindly.
"Always," said Brian, "I am slated to be somebody's keeper."
Could he shirk? Had he shirked when he left the studio in anger? Had
he a right to live his life his own way? Had anybody? His common
sense endorsed his earlier rebellion. This was different.
"Whenever you tell me I can do a thing and hang around to see me do it,
I can seem to make myself do it somehow!"
The words echoed harshly in his ears; and at first Brian refused to
hear them. Then inexorably he faced his fact. He and he alone was the
spur to the boy's amazing energy. A year? Well, after all what was a
year?
He went back through the autumn moonlight with a sigh.
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