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Page 68
"Don," he said, "you're right. You couldn't swing it up here alone.
I'll stick and see you through it."
Don looked up, his face scarlet with emotion. Brian's hand was on his
shoulder. And Brian's eyes were half humorous, half quizzical and
wholly tender.
"No, no, Brian, no!" he choked. "I--I didn't mean that--"
"Of course you didn't," said Brian. "I thought that much of it out for
myself."
Don's head went down upon his hands with a sob.
That night Brian wrote to Whitaker.
CHAPTER XIX
SAMHAIN
To Kenny in poetic mood the seasons were druidic. There was May Eve
with its Bel fires when summer peeped over the hilltops at the cattle
driven through the sacred flames to protect them from disease. There
was Midsummer's Eve with more fires, and if St. Patrick in unpagan zeal
had chosen to kindle his fires in honor of St. John, he could. To
Kenny the festival was still druidic. There was Samhain or summer
ending, when the November wind speeded the waning season with a flurry
of dead leaves; and to Kenny, Samhain came and drove him forth in the
chill dusk to face another problem.
He had come to the farm in blossom time and he had stared ahead to
sanity--in September at the latest. Now with branches dark and bare
against the glorious sunsets that burned at night in the west long
after the valley was in shadow, even with talk in Hannah's kitchen of
early snow, his madness was if anything a trifle more acute. Even the
dreaded hours with Adam ceased to trouble him in the joy of his days.
There was peace here and, thanks to Mr. Adams, who had simplified his
relations with the bank, freedom from work and worry.
The November twilight, scintillant with stars, lay darkly ahead. He
forged through it in excitement. He who could forecast with the wisdom
of experience the duration of his own enslavement had gone over his
time. And, powers of wild-fire, he still kept going! Something
emotionally was wrong.
It pleased him in a moody moment to busy himself with mathematics, much
as he hated them, and deduce a singular fact. He had spent delicious
hours of many a day with many a maid. But days and days and days with
one? Not ever!
For one hour he had spent with some forgotten object of his adoration
in the past, he had spent five with Joan. The thought alarmed him. It
came to this. If by rational reduction you translated each flare into
hours, the vertigo of his summer with Joan became at once in contrast
equivalent to years. And by every law his infatuation should have
stopped the sooner. How much longer would it linger? What if
Christmas still found him turbulent and upset--and hating the thought
of the studio? This furlough of his from work and worry must come to
an end in time!
Paralyzed by an infinite variety of prospects he stopped dead and
stared at the fading red behind the hills. When had it altered--this
madness of his? Why was it stronger? Any man addicted to falling in
love knew well enough it shouldn't be.
It was his fate to remember as he stood there the talk of love around
the wood-fire. He had barely listened. Yet now his memory cast up
Kreiling's words and took his breath away.
"There is love and love and to be in love is torture and a thing of
self but when the big splendid tenderness comes after the storm of self
and craving, the tenderness that knows more of giving than of
demanding, it comes to stay. But it's not the love of barbarity like
Finn's. It's an evolution."
To stay! . . . The thought was volcanic. . . . _To stay_!
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