Joan looked up.

"What a queer, wild tune!" she exclaimed. "What is it, Kenny? I've never heard you sing it before."

"I never felt the need," said Kenny. "It's called the 'Twisting of the Rope.' Long, long ago, girleen, a harper's gallantry to a pretty maid angered her mother and she asked him to help her twist a straw rope.

And he did. And twisting he had to back away and over the threshold and the mother slammed the door in his face. Faith, 'twas all to get rid of him!"

It was impossible to miss the point. Joan's face went scarlet.

"Oh, Kenny!" she said. "You knew--surely you knew I couldn't mean that."

It was a new delight to hear her say it.

"When Donald writes," reminded Kenny, "then I must go." And watching the girl's troubled face, he wondered with a thrill of triumph if at last the madness of the summer was upon her. Well, thank Heaven, he was honest and honorable. He would stay until the madness waned.

Always he was fated to climb down out of the clouds first.

Ah! But what if Joan slipped back into sense and sanity first? The possibility filled him with panic. What on earth would he do?

CHAPTER XV

IN WHICH CALIBAN SCORES

It was a prospect doomed to haunt him more and more as the summer which had bade fail to be so full of peace, took on an indescribable atmosphere of complication. Where could he go, he wondered despairingly, that life would not instantly pour around him a distracting whirlpool of commotion? Was he fated to rush through life with his fingers clenched in his hair and his teeth set? Was he doomed, as Garry had once said, to run forever in circles of excitement?

Stumbling and tired, Kenny tried to keep his feet unswervingly in the path of truth, colorless and uninviting as it seemed; but the strategy of his practice hour in Adam's room he was forced to abandon, heartsick for Joan and the future. His battle for her he knew had been in vain.

Useless further to bombard with truth that silent, inscrutable Caliban upstairs, whose fiendish power to drive him to his notebook when he chose in turn to tell the truth, seemed uncanny. And it was practice enough to tell the truth to Joan! G.o.d grant, in all sincerity, that he might come to justify the faith in the dear eyes of her.

He made one last heroic effort to break his chain of thraldom. After an interval of bitter insubordination which ended each night in surrender, he set his teeth and vowed by every sacred thing he knew that to-morrow night, summons or no summons, he would not go to the sitting room of Adam Craig. He would secretly leave the farmhouse at dusk with Joan and when Hughie knocked on his bedroom door, ready to say that the old man was lonely and in pain, he would be safe and serene in the cabin in the pines. Was it fated to be his refuge too?

Torrential rain woke him in the morning. Kenny stared out at the wet valley in tragic unbelief. It simply could not be; for he wanted a dusk flecked with stars. But the rain gave no promise of abating and late that afternoon he altered the detail of his rebellion.

Fortunately there were other ways. When the dusk closed in and the old man watched the clock and waited, he would go boldly downstairs to the old piano and register his rebellion in music that Adam Craig could hear. He would spend his evening openly with Joan; he would go through fire and water; he would ride the whirlwind and direct the storm but what this time he would a.s.sure his emanc.i.p.ation.

Instinct had warned him to abandon, in his hours with Adam Craig, certain picturesque forms of attire in which he delighted. To-night, whistling with a feeling of gayety and unrestraint, he rummaged his trunks, selecting his clothing with fastidious attention to minor detail and held the lamp high at the end to afford a better glimpse of the handsome Irishman smiling back at him from the mirror in the bureau. No doubt of it, give a fashionable tailor disposed to be experimental, his head and enough money on account and he could create a dash and piquancy worth while. Always remembering that such a creative artisan was fortunate to find a suitable contrast of shoulder and hip to wear his inspiration.

Kenny in the best of spirits went downstairs. The lamp in the parlor was already lighted; soft yellow shadows lay upon the faded walls; dust and cobwebs had long ago surrendered to the siege of Hannah's broom.

Kenny drew the curtains to close out the splash of rain upon the window panes and went to the piano. Even the noise of wind and rain left him calm and cold and invincible. He played brilliantly s.n.a.t.c.hes of everything he knew. When Joan came and curled up in a chair beside him with her chin upon her hand, he forgot Adam Craig entirely and went on playing. Not the music of rebellion; it was more the music of dreams, dusk-moths of melody that flitted through his memory, curiously iridescent.

He drifted dangerously after a while into the tenderness and pa.s.sion of the _Liebestraume_, the one thing perhaps that, loving, he knew to the end; swept through the downward cadenza with exquisite accuracy and feeling, and forgot the rest. With the girl's soft pensive eyes upon him he could have forgotten anything; he even forgot that love is transient.

"Joan!" he gasped.

A loud voice rasped through the silence.

"Kenny!"

Joan shivered. Kenny stared at her in terror. It was the voice of Adam Craig.

"Kenny!" The voice, sharp with indignation, brought them both to their feet.

"Yes?" stammered Kenny, his face scarlet.

"Do you know _all_ of anything?"

Lamp in hand Kenny went to the foot of the stairway.

"Adam," he demanded, staring up aghast at the wheel-chair and the wrinkled, saturnine face bending over the railing with a leer of triumph, "how in G.o.d's name did you get there?"

"Wheeled myself, you Irish fool!" snapped Adam.

Kenny went wearily up the stairway and set the lamp in a corner of the hallway.

"Well," bristled the old man. "Why don't you say something? What are you going to do about it?"

"It's the kind of night," said Kenny, "that you always have a fire.

I'm going to wheel you back where it's safe and warm."

Adam chuckled.

"That's what I thought you'd do," he jeered.

"And then?"

"Then," thundered Kenny in a blaze of temper, "I'm going back!"

As usual his show of temper filled the invalid with delight.

"Humph!" said he. "So am I."

Kenny stopped the chair with a jerk.

"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.

"I mean," said Adam Craig, "that I'll wheel my chair back where I can listen to music instead of rain. And if you wheel me back I'll do it again. The hallway's dark and it's full of turns but I'll manage somehow, if I break my neck."

There was danger at every turn. A cold sweat came out on Kenny's forehead.

"Adam," he said quietly, "how did you manage to get there in the first place? How did you open the door of your room?"

"Wheeled myself close to the k.n.o.b and unlatched it--"

"Yes?"

"Then I wheeled myself out of the way and poked at the door with a stick."

"Stick! What stick?"