Kenny | Page 3

into shape by an art school. Aerial battlefields--my sunsets--in more ways than one. I paint 'em because they happen to be the thing in Nature that thrills me most. And when I fire to a thing, most always I can manage somehow. You yourself have engineered for me every profitable commission I've ever had. What's more, Kenny, if ever once you'd put into real art the dreadful energy I've put into my mediocrity--"
"You mean I'm lazy?" interrupted Kenny, bristling.
"Certainly not," said Brian with acid politeness. "You're merely subject to periodic fits of indolence. You've said as much yourself."
It was irrefutable. Kenny, offended, brought his fist down upon the table with a bang.
"I know precisely what you're going to say," cut in Brian. "I'm ungrateful. I'm not. But it's misdirected generosity on your part, Kenny. And I'm through. I'm tired," he added simply. "I want to live my own life away from the things I can't do well. I'm tired of drifting."
"And to-night?"
Brian flung out his hands.
"The last straw!" he said bitterly.
"You're meaning the shotgun, Brian?" demanded Kenny.
"I'm meaning the shotgun."
"What will you do?" interposed the peacemaker in the nick of time.
"I've done some free-lance reporting for John Whitaker," said Brian. "I think he'll give me a big chance. He's interested." His voice--it had in it at times a hint of Kenny's soft and captivating brogue--was splendidly boyish and eager now. "Foreign perhaps or war. Maybe Mexico. Anything so I can write the truth, Garry, the big truth that's down so far you have to dig for it, the passion of humanness--the humanness of unrest. I can't say it to-night. I can only feel it."
Alarmed by this time, Kenny came turbulently into the conversation and abused John Whitaker for his son's defection. Brian, it was plain, had been decoyed by bromidic tales of cub reporters and "record-smashing beats." He contrasted art and journalism and found Brian indifferent to his scorn.
"It isn't just Whitaker and the sunsets and the desire to exchange the sham of my 'art' for the truth of something real," said Brian. "It's everything. It's the studio here and things like--like the shotgun. I hate the brilliant, disorderly hand-to-mouth sort of Bohemia, Kenny, in which you seem to thrive. Either we have a lot of money or a lot of debts--"
Garry nodded.
"I suppose," went on Brian wearily, "that my nature must demand an orderly security in essentials. Plebeian, of course, but comfortable. I mean, money in sufficient regularity, chairs you can sit down on without looking first--" he shrugged.
Further detail and he would be drifting into deep water. Life with Kenny, who borrowed as freely as he gave, entailed petty harassments that could not be named.
"Things," finished Brian. "that are mine without a lock and key."
He had meant not to say it. Kenny struck his hand fiercely against the table.
"You hear that, Garry?" he demanded with an indignant bid for support. "You hear that? By the Lord Harry, Brian, it's damnable and indecent to harp so upon the shotgun after smashing the statuette."
The circle was complete. They were back to Kenny's grievance. Brian sighed.
"I wasn't thinking of the shotgun," he said. "There have been times, Kenny, when I hadn't a collar left--"
"He's right," put in Garry with quick sympathy. "It's not just the shotgun--"
"Garry, you shut up!" snapped Kenny, sweeping the fragments of Ann's statuette into the table drawer and closing it with a bang.
"Please remember," reminded Garry, coldly, "that an established privilege of mine, since I undertook this Hague stuff, is absolute frankness."
"Br-r-r-r--"
"Who rapped for me?"
"Kenny did," said Brian.
"Any man," retorted Kenny bitterly, "may have a--a moment of lunacy. I thought you were impartial."
"You mean," said Garry keenly, "that when you rapped you'd been hypnotized by the justice of your own case and felt a little reckless."
Kenny drew himself up splendidly and glared at Garry through a cloud of smoke.
"Piffle!" said Garry. "No stately stuff for me, Kenny, please. It's late and I'm tired. I'll referee this thing in my own way. I repeat--it's not just the shotgun. It's everything he owns."
"What for instance?" inquired Kenny, dangerously polite.
"His money, his clothes and his girls!" enumerated Garry brutally. "You even pawned his fishing rods and golf clubs."
"I sent him a fern," said Kenny, affronted. "Did he even water it? No!"
"I think I paid for it," said Brian.
"Has he ever given me the proper degree of respect. No! He calls me--Kenny!"
Garry laughed aloud at the wrathful search for grievance. It was not always easy to remember that Kenny had eloped at twenty with the young wife who had died when his son was born; and that his son was twenty-three.
"Go on," said Kenny. "Laugh your fool head off. I'm merely stating facts."
"As for his tennis racquet," reminded Garry, and Kenny flushed.
It developed that of studio things the racquet and the