Part 55 (1/2)

Brian pressed his cheek against her hair.

”No,” he said. ”No. I would not have you say it again, Joan, dear as it is to hear it.”

An eternity of minutes seemed to tick away in the silence.

”Brian, you must believe I meant to be true to Kenny--”

”Don't!” he choked, paling at the sound of Kenny's name. ”Oh, Kenny, Kenny!”

Joan buried her face in his arm. Both were thinking with hot remorseful hearts of that stormy penitent with the laughing, tender Irish eyes. Both loved him well. And both were pledging themselves to keep his happiness intact.

Joan's tormented memory was busy with pictures: Kenny disastrously sculling the punt to help her, Kenny in the death-chamber shuddering and patient and pa.s.sionately resolved to stay by her to the end, Kenny with the lantern held high above her head, Kenny digging dots and helping Don to study and Kenny tearing bricks from the ancient fireplace.

She slipped out of his arms in a panic, her face, Brian thought, as white as the old-fas.h.i.+oned lilies in the garden.

”Brian, go--” she choked.

With the truth of the ragged money burning itself into her mind--with Brian so near and yet so far--the touch of his arms was torment.

Hungry for the peace of the pines and the lonely cabin, Joan fled out-of-doors.

CHAPTER XL

THE KING OF YOUTH

Ten minutes later Kenny, coming into the dark, old-fas.h.i.+oned library where Adam's books were once more arrayed upon the shelves, found Don wandering turbulently around the room.

Was this boy ever anything but turbulent, he wondered with impatience.

Must he always brood about the boulder and atonement?

Don stopped dead in his tracks, his fingers clenched in his hair, his white face staring queerly; and Kenny, irresistibly reminded of himself in minutes of turmoil, stared back, knowing in a flash of inspiration why the tale of the boulder had made him think of the crash of bouillon cups. The desire of the moment that marked men for disaster! The tongue-tied youngster there with his feet rooted to the ground and his face pale with agitation, was indeed something like himself. Kenny had a moment of pity.

”Mr. O'Neill,” said Don with a hard, dry sob, ”you know I've wanted to make up to Brian somehow about that boulder. If I hadn't been crazy to drive up the ledge once and if I hadn't lied to Grogan and bullied Tony, Brian wouldn't have spent the rest of the winter in a plaster cast. I--I want to do something for him, something big, and I--I've got to do it in a queer way.” He shuddered and wiped his face. Kenny saw that his hands were shaking wildly, and pitied him again. ”Mr.

O'Neill,” he blurted, ”Brian loves my sister and she loves him.”

It seemed to Kenny that lightning struck with a sinister flare of fire at his feet and hot blinding pieces of the floor were flying all about him.

”How do you know?” he said fiercely. ”How _do_ you know? How can you know such a thing as that? You can't! You can't possibly.”

”I do,” said Don. ”I heard them say it.”

”Heard them!”

”I was on the porch,” said Don, ”and I came through the window there to get a book. They were in the hall.”

”You listened!”

Don flushed.

”I--I wanted to,” he said sullenly. ”And I did.”