Kenny | Page 7

an I.O.U. and impaled it upon a strange
looking spike that seemed to pinion a heterogeneous admission of petty
debt.
Together they made the rarebit. Whitaker waited with foreboding for
the storm to break. But for some reason, though he was constrained and
impatient and feverishly active, Kenny avoided the subject of Brian. He
lost poise and patience all at once, pushed aside his plate and
challenged Whitaker with a look.
"Why did you want to eat in the studio?"
"I came to talk."
"Whitaker," blustered Kenny, "where's Brian?"

"Working."
"On your paper?"
"No. Brian's left New York. He's driving somebody's car. And I found
the job for him through my paper. When he has money enough he plans
to tramp off into God's green world of spring to get himself in trim.
Says he's stale and tired and thinking wrong. In the fall he's going
abroad for me and that, Kenny, is about all I can tell you."
"You mean," flared Kenny, rising with a ragged napkin in his hand,
"you mean, John, it's all you will tell me!"
"Sit down," said Whitaker, toasting a cracker over the alcohol flame. "I
prefer a sensible talk without fireworks."
Surprised and nettled, Kenny obeyed in spite of himself.
"Now," went on Whitaker quietly, "I came here to-night because I'm
Brian's friend and yours." He ignored the incredulous arch of Kenny's
eyebrows. "Where Brian is, where he will be, I don't propose to tell you,
now or at any other time. His wheres and his whens are the boy's own
business. His whys I think you know. He won't be back."
"He will!" thundered Kenny and thumped upon the table with his fist.
Whitaker patiently reassembled his supper.
"I think not," he said.
"You're not here to think," blazed Kenny. "You're here to tell me what
you know."
"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