"Most of the older painters," Garry said with reluctance, "seem to feel that--well, there's too colorful a dominance of self in your work.

Your personality always overshadows. You've an extraordinary fluency with color, a deft a.s.surance, a brilliancy that leaves one rather breathless and incredulous, but what you do is autocratically, unforgettably--almost unforgivably--you!"

"Art," explained Kenny loftily, "is reality plus personality. And personalities are variously vivid and anaemic. Unreal, over-idealized, too colorful a dominance of self and personality overshadows," he summarized after an interval of silence. "And in the face of that--success. I am successful?"

"Undeniably."

"Even Hazleton, with his sordid gangs of Eastsiders nudging each other on a dirty bench, can't deny it," bristled Kenny.

He had divided the honors of more than one exhibition with Hazleton and admired and resented him impartially.

"It has been said," said Garry, ruffled by his air of triumph, "that you paint down subtly to the popular fancy where you might paint up to your own ideals."

The barb went home. Kenny flushed.

"Your work," added Garry, "lacks the force and depth of sincerity.

Even in Brian's dreadful East River sunset over there, there's a quality you lack, an eagerness for reality and truth and life as it is.

Brian has painted poorly what he saw but he painted boats for ragged sailors. Real boats. You've painted brilliantly, in the pine picture for instance, what you wanted to see, a dark forest for mystic folk to dance in when the moonlight lies upon the snow."

"And what," inquired Kenny with a shade of sarcasm, "was the final verdict of the grill jury when all the evidence was in?"

"Remember old Dirk, Kenny? He said that the fullness of life came through--sacrifice. That all things, good and permanent and true, come only out of suffering; that men pay for their dreams with pain." He let the full import of that drive home. "The verdict was, that if you'd forget your public and look for truth, paint with restraint and less brilliant illusory abandon, you'd be a big painter."

"And that," said Kenny with icy politeness, "unalterably defines my status as a painter. In this club at least."

"You asked me--"

Kenny looked tired but he held out his hand. "Dear lad," he said, "'twas fine brave friendship to tell me--when I asked you."

Failure! He, Kennicott O'Neill who had been decorated by the French government! The men in the grill then talked openly of his flaws and the verdict, officious or otherwise, was failure. Flaws! He was not a big painter. He was merely a self-centered, impecunious, improvident Irishman, indifferently skillful, whose vanity and self-indulgence had driven his son off into a vague green world, G.o.d alone knew where. He _was_ a big painter! Posterity would fling that back in the teeth of men!

"Kenny!"

It was Garry's voice.

"I'm going."

"Oh," said Kenny vaguely. "Yes, of course."

He was grateful when the door closed, though he stood for full a minute afterward tapping on the table with his fingers. Then indignantly he looked up the word failure in Brian's dictionary and underscored it heavily.

Ah! this world of his was amazingly awry and he himself was hurt and unhappy. After all, was there any romance, any camaraderie in the Bohemia he once had loved. By Heaven, no! One had but to stare at the studio with Brian's vision to see the thing aright. Disorder and carping tongues and loneliness! G.o.d help him, how he longed to escape somewhere, anywhere where there was peace--and faith and friendliness in human eyes.

Afterward, a painter on the floor below, swore that Kenny had tramped the floor all night and there had been occasional thuds. At daylight he had gone out hurriedly and banged the door.

Sid, entering the studio by the door Kenny had forgotten to lock, found abundant evidence of frenzied packing and carried the news to the grill.

"I knew it," he said. "I knew it last night. By the Lord Harry, it was in his eye. Where on earth d'you suppose he's gone?"

"G.o.d knows," said Garry and heartily wished he'd kept the grillroom verdict to himself.

At sunset Kenny blew the horn beneath the willow.

Twilight here among the vivid leaves was softly orange. Where was the invisible lamp, Kenny wondered with his blood singing, that filled the world with golden dusk? It lay reflected in the water and in the dim and yellowed forest paths behind him. And there behind the gables of the farm, an autumn sunset focussed its softness into a brilliant blaze of color.

Later when life was kind and peace was in his heart, Kenny was to paint that picture with exquisite truth and restraint and call it "Afterglow."

At the flutter of a cloak on the cliff-path he slipped behind the willow.

For an eternity it seemed he traced the forward sweep of the punt until it grated on the sh.o.r.e. And the surprise perversely came to him.

"Kenny!" called Joan.

There was mischief and laughter in her voice--and welcome. And Kenny, oblivious of the detail of his going, knew only that he stood beside her in the golden dusk and that her eyes were curiously like shining, leaf-brown stars.

"Ah!" he reproached, catching both her hands. "You are a witch.

You're burning an invisible lamp of incense off somewhere in that yellow wood and out of it comes the twilight and the secrets of the world. How did you know?"

"The horn was so excited!"

"The horn!"

Joan nodded.

"I know them all," she said. "Mr. Abbott blows an apology for disturbing me. Mrs. Lawler is stout and when she's delivering b.u.t.ter and eggs, her wind doesn't last and she gets no further than a toot, and the blacksmith's wind is amazing--"

"Enough!" said Kenny sternly. "You've too much wisdom. But--"

"Of course," said Joan, "I didn't know you would ride to the village yonder but I thought you might. Uncle said you wouldn't come."

Kenny laughed. Joan never knew that he had not meant to come again.

He found home in the farm kitchen and joyously pumping homely hands, stepped at once on the tail of Hannah's cat. Toby, after a vocal minute of terror, fixed a hard eye upon his heel and withdrew at once to a sheltered spot behind the stove. He had learned before that Mr.

O'Neill with his head in the clouds was frequently unaware of feet things.

Kenny went of his own accord to Adam's sitting room.

Almost he surprised a glint of welcome in the old man's piercing eye.

"Well, Adam," he said happily, "I'm back!"

"Humph!" said Adam ungraciously. "I knew you would be."

By the end of the week Kenny forgot that he had been away.

CHAPTER XVIII