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Page 9
"I'm here," corrected John Whitaker, "to get a few facts out of my
system for your own good and Brian's. Kenny, how much of the truth can
you stand?"
Kenny threw up his hands with a reminiscent gesture of despair.
"Truth!" he repeated. "Truth!"
"I know," put in Whitaker, "that you regard the truth as something
sacred, to be handled with delicacy and discretion. But--"
Kenny told him sullenly to tell it if he could.
"I don't propose to urge Brian back here for a good many reasons. In
the first place, he's not a painter--"
"John," interrupted Kenny hotly, "you are no judge of that. I,
Kennicott O'Neill, am his father."
"And more's the pity," said Whitaker bluntly, "for you've made a mess
of it. That's another reason."
Kenny turned a dark red.
"You mean?"
"I mean, Kenny," said Whitaker, his glance calm and level, "that as a
parent for Brian, you are an abject failure."
The word stung. It was the first time in his life that Kenny had faced
it. That he, Kennicott O'Neill, Academician, with Heaven knows how
many medals of distinction, could fail at anything, was a new thought,
bewildering and bitter. This time he escaped from the table and flung
up a window. Whitaker, he grumbled, never toasted crackers without
burning them. Whitaker brought him back with a look.
"Sit down," he said again. "I don't propose to talk while you roam
around the studio and kick things."
Kenny obeyed. He looked a little white.
"I've tried to think this thing out fairly," said Whitaker. "Why as a
parent for Brian you're a failure--"
"Well?"
"And the first and fundamental cause of your failure is, I think, your
hairbrained, unquenchable youth."
Kenny stared at him in astounded silence.
"I remember once around the fire here you told a Celtic tale of some
golden islands--Tirnanoge, wasn't it?--the Land of the Young--"
Might have been, Kenny said perversely. He didn't remember.
"Ossian lived there with the daughter of the King of Youth for three
hundred years that seemed but three," reminded Whitaker. "Well, no
matter. The point is this: The Land of the Young and the King of Youth
always make me think of you."
"It is true," said Kenny with biting sarcasm, "that I still have hair
and teeth. It is also true that I am the respectable if unsuccessful
parent of a son twenty-three years old and I myself am forty-four."
"Forty-four years young," admitted Whitaker. "And Brian on the other
hand is twenty-three years old. There you have it. You know precisely
what I mean, Kenny. Youth isn't always a matter of years. It's a
state of being. Sometimes it's an affliction and sometimes a gift.
Sometimes it's chronic and sometimes it's contagious enough to start an
epidemic. You're as young and irresponsible as the wind. You've never
grown up. God knows whether or not you ever will. But Brian has.
There's the clash."
"Go on," said Kenny with a dangerous flash of interest in his eyes.
"You've an undeniable facility, John, with what you call the truth."
"It's an unfortunate characteristic of highly temperamentalized
individuals--"
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