Kenny | Page 6

seemed to
embody, stacked there upon the sill, Kenny passionately desired to
sweep them out of the window once and for all. The desire of the
moment, ever his doom, proved overpowering. The cups crashed upon
a roof below with prompt results. Kenny was appalled at the number of
heads that appeared at studio windows, the head of Sidney Fahr among
them, round-eyed and incredulous. Well, that part at least was normal.
Sid's face advertised a chronic distrust of his senses.
Moreover, when Pietro appeared after a round of alarmed inquiry,
Kenny perversely chose to be truthful about it, insisted that it was not
accidental and refused to be sorry. Afterward he admitted to Garry, it
was difficult to believe that one spontaneous ebullition of a nature not
untemperamental could provoke so much discussion, frivolous and
otherwise. The thing might grow so, he threatened sulkily, that he'd
leave the club.
As for the immediate present, Fate had saddled him again with an
afternoon of moody indolence. Certainly no Irishman with nerves
strung to an extraordinary pitch could work with Mike crawling snakily
around the lower roof intent upon china remnants whose freaks of
shape seemed to paralyze him into moments of agreeable interest.
Kenny at four refused an invitation to tea and waited in growing gloom
for Reynolds, a dealer who, prodded always into inconvenient
promptness by Kenny's needs, had promised to combine inspection of
the members' exhibition in the gallery downstairs with the delivery of a
check. There were critical possibilities if he did not appear.
Mike disappeared with the final fragment and Reynolds became the
grievance of the hour. Kenny, fuming aimlessly around the studio,
resorted desperately at last to an unfailing means of stimulus. He made
a careful toilet, donned a coat with a foreign looking waist-line, rather
high, and experimented with a new and picturesque stock that fastened
beneath his tie with a jeweled link. As six o'clock arrived and Reynolds'

defection became a thing assured, his attitude toward John Whitaker
underwent an imperative change. It would be impossible now to greet
him with hostile dignity. He had become a definite need.
When at ten minutes past six the studio bell tinkled, Kenny, opening
the door, stared at Whitaker in tragic dismay and struck himself upon
the forehead.
"Mother of Men!" he groaned. "I thought of course it would be
Reynolds. He's bringing me a check."
John Whitaker looked unimpressed. He merely blinked his recognition
of a subterfuge.
There was a parallel in his experience, a weekend arrival at Woodstock
when Kenny, farming in a flurry of enthusiasm, had come riding down
to meet his guest on a singular quadruped whose area of hide had
thickened strangely. Brian called the uncurried quadruped a plush horse.
Kenny, remembered Whitaker, had searched with tragic eyes for an
invited editor who had recklessly agreed to pay in advance for an
excursion of Kenny's into illustrating, ostensibly to pay for a cow. And
Kenny's words had been: "My God, Whitaker! Where's Graham?"
Moreover he had struck himself fiercely on the forehead and Whitaker
had grub-staked his host to provisions until Graham arrived.
"Can't we eat in the grill?" asked Whitaker. "It's raining." Kenny
regarded him with a look of pained intelligence.
"I'm posted," he said.
"Then," said Whitaker, "I'll go out and buy something. I'd rather eat in
the studio. What'll I get?"
Kenny capriciously banned oysters.
"If you want a rarebit," he added, "we have some cheese."
He was still searching excitedly for the cheese when Whitaker returned.

"Reynolds," he flung out vindictively, "is positively the most unreliable
dealer I know. He's erratic and irresponsible. A man may work himself
to death and wait in the grave for his money. Do you wonder poor
Blakelock met his doom through the cupidity of laggard dealers? Here
am I on the verge of God knows what from overwork--"
Whitaker spared him disillusion. Painting with Kenny was an
occupation, never work. When it slipped tiresomely into the class of
work and palled, he threw it aside for something more diverting.
"The cheese in all probability," suggested Whitaker mildly, "wouldn't
be under the piano. Or would it? And don't bother anyway. I took the
liberty of buying an emergency wedge while I was out."
Kenny wiped his forehead in amazed relief and piously thanked God he
hadn't wasted his appetite on middle-aged cakes.
"If you hadn't come when you did," he said, "I'd likely had to eat 'em,
thanks to Reynolds. Now I'll send 'em up to H. B." He peered
disgustedly into the bag and removed an irrelevant ace of spades. Its
hibernation there seemed for an instant to annoy him as well it might.
There had been a furore in whist about it barely a week before. Then he
used it irresponsibly for