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Paradise Garden: The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment

by George Gibbs · English · Gutenberg #15570 · 530,959 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Paradise Garden: The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment

Author: George Gibbs


        
Release date: April 6, 2005 [eBook #15570]
                Most recently updated: December 14, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PARADISE GARDEN: THE SATIRICAL NARRATIVE OF A GREAT EXPERIMENT ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team.






  PARADISE GARDEN

  _THE SATIRICAL NARRATIVE
  OF A GREAT EXPERIMENT_


  BY
  GEORGE GIBBS

  AUTHOR OF THE YELLOW DOVE, ETC.


     _I have considered well his loss of time
     And how he cannot be a perfect man
     Not being tried and tutored in the world._

     --TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.


  ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM A. HOTTINGER


  GROSSET & DUNLAP
  PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

  Printed in the United States of America


[Illustration: "'Love!' he sneered ... 'I thought you'd say that.'"]




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

     I. THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

    II. JERRY

   III. JERRY GROWS

    IV. ENTER EVE

     V. THE MINX RETURNS

    VI. THE CABIN

   VII. JACK BALLARD TAKES CHARGE

  VIII. JERRY EMERGES

    IX. FOOT-WORK

     X. MARCIA

    XI. THE SIREN

   XII. INTRODUCING JIM ROBINSON

  XIII. UNA

   XIV. JERRY GOES INTO TRAINING

    XV. THE UNKNOWN UNMASKED

   XVI. THE FIGHT

  XVII. MARCIA RECANTS

 XVIII. TWO EMBASSIES

   XIX. THE PATH IN THE WOODS

    XX. REVOLT

   XXI. JERRY ASKS QUESTIONS

  XXII. THE CHIPMUNK

 XXIII. THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY

  XXIV. FEET OF CLAY

  XXV. THE MYSTERY DEEPENS

 XXVI. DRYAD AND SATYR

XXVII. REVELATIONS




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


"'Love!' he sneered ... 'I thought you'd say that.'"

"In the evenings sometimes I read while Jerry whittled"

"This then was Jerry's house-party--!"

"'Have pity, Jerry,' she whimpered"




PARADISE GARDEN




CHAPTER I

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT


It might be better if Jerry Benham wrote his own memoir, for no matter
how veracious, this history must be more or less colored by the point
of view of one irrevocably committed to an ideal, a point of view
which Jerry at least would insist was warped by scholarship and stodgy
by habit. But Jerry, of course, would not write it and couldn't if he
would, for no man, unless lacking in sensibility, can write a true
autobiography, and least of all could Jerry do it. To commit him to
such a task would be much like asking an artist to paint himself into
his own landscape. Jerry could have painted nothing but impressions of
externals, leaving out perforce the portrait of himself which is the
only thing that matters. So I, Roger Canby, bookworm, pedagogue and
student of philosophy, now recite the history of the Great Experiment
and what came of it.

It is said that Solomon and Job have best spoken of the misery of man,
the former the most fortunate, the latter the most unfortunate of
creatures. And yet it seems strange to me that John Benham, the
millionaire, Jerry's father, cynic and misogynist, and Roger Canby,
bookworm and pauper, should each have arrived, through different
mental processes, at the same ideal and philosophy of life. We both
disliked women, not only disliked but feared and distrusted them,
seeing in the changed social order a menace to the peace of the State
and the home. The difference between us was merely one of condition;
for while I kept my philosophy secret, being by nature reticent and
unassertive, John Benham had both the means and the courage to put his
idealism into practice.

Life seldom makes rapid adjustments to provide for its mistakes, and
surely only the happiest kind of accident could have thrown me into
the breach when old John Benham died, for I take little credit to
myself in saying that there are few persons who could have fitted so
admirably into a difficult situation.

Curiously enough this happy accident had come from the most unexpected
source. I had tried and failed at many things since leaving the
University. I had corrected proofs in a publishing office, I had
prepared backward youths for their exams, and after attempting life in
a broker's office downtown, for which I was as little fitted as I
should have been for the conquest of the Polar regions, I found myself
one fine morning down to my last few dollars, walking the streets with
an imminent prospect of speedy starvation. The fact of death, as an
alternative to the apparently actual, did not disconcert me. I
shouldn't have minded dying in the least, were it not for the fact
that I had hoped before that event to have expounded for modern
consumption certain theories of mine upon the dialectics of Hegel. As
my money dwindled I was reduced to quite necessary economies, and
while not what may be called a heavy eater, I am willing to admit
that there were times when I felt distinctly empty. Curiously enough,
my philosophy did little to relieve me of that physical condition, for
as someone has said, "Philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an
arrant jade on a journey."

But it seems that the journeying of my jade was near its ending. For
upon this morning, fortune threw me into the way of a fellow who had
been in my class at the University, who was to be my _deus ex
machina_. No two persons in the world could have been more dissimilar
than "Jack" Ballard and I, and yet, perhaps for that reason, there had
always been a kind of affinity between us. He was one of the
wealthiest men in my class and was now, as he gleefully informed me,
busily engaged clipping coupons in his father's office, "with office
hours from two to three some Thursdays." Of course, that was his idea
of a joke, for it seems quite obvious that a person who gave so little
time to his business had better have kept no hours at all. He greeted
me warmly and led me into his club, which happened to be near by,
where over the lunch table he finally succeeded in eliciting the fact
that I was down to my last dollar with prospects far from encouraging.

"Good old Pope!" he cried, clapping me on the back. "Pope" was my
pseudonym at the University, conferred in a jocular moment by Ballard
himself on account of a fancied resemblance to Urban the Eighth. "Just
the man! Wonder why I didn't think of you before!" And while I
wondered what he was coming at, "How would, you like to make a neat
five thousand a year?"

I laughed him off, not sure that this wasn't a sample of the Ballard
humor.

"Anything," I said, trying to smile, "short of murder--"

"Oh, I am not joking!" he went on with an encouraging flash of
seriousness. "Five thousand a year cool, and no expenses--livin' on
the fat of the land, with nothin' to do but--"

He broke off suddenly and grasped me by the arm.

"Did you ever hear of old John Benham, the multi-millionaire?" he
asked. I remarked that my acquaintance with millionaires, until that
moment, had not been large.

"Oh, of course," he laughed, "if I had mentioned Xenophon, you'd have
pricked up your ears like an old war horse. But John Benham, as a name
to conjure with, means nothing to you. You must know then that John
Benham was for years the man of mystery of Wall Street. Queer old
bird! Friend of the governor's, or at least as much of a friend of the
governor's as he ever was of anybody. Made a pot of money in
railroads. Millions! Of course, if you've never heard of Benham you've
never heard of the Wall."

I hadn't.

"Well, the Benham Wall in Greene County is one of the wonders of the
age. It's nine feet high, built of solid masonry and encloses five
thousand acres of land."

Figures meant nothing to me and I told him so.

"The strange thing about it is that there's no mystery at all. The old
man had no secrets except in business and no past that anybody could
care about. But he was a cold-blooded proposition. No man ever had
his confidence, no woman ever had his affection except his wife, and
when she died all that was human in him was centered on his son, the
sole heir to twenty millions. Lucky little beggar. What?"

"I'm not so sure," I put in slowly.

"Now this is where you come in," Ballard went on quickly. "It seems
that inside his crusty shell old Benham was an idealist of sorts with
queer ideas about the raising of children. His will is a wonder. He
directs his executors (the governor's one of six, you know) to bring
up his boy inside that stone wall at Horsham Manor, with no knowledge
of the world except what can be gotten from an expurgated edition of
the classics. He wants him brought to manhood as nearly as can be
made, a perfect specimen of the human male animal without one thought
of sex. It's a weird experiment, but I don't see why it shouldn't be
interesting."

"Interesting!" I muttered, trying to conceal my amazement and delight.

"The executors must proceed at once. The boy is still under the care
of a governess. On the twelfth of December he will be ten years of
age. The woman is to go and a man takes her place. I think I can put
you in. Will you take it?"

"I?" I said, a little bewildered. "What makes you think I'm qualified
for such an undertaking?"

"Because you were the best scholar in the class, and because you're a
blessed philosopher with leanings toward altruism. A poor helpless
little millionaire with no one to lean on must certainly excite your
pity. You're just the man for the job, I tell you. And if you said
you'd do it, you'd put it over."

"And if I couldn't put it over?" I laughed. "A growing youth isn't a
fifteen-pound shot or a football, Ballard."

"You could if you wanted to. Five thousand a year isn't to be sneezed
at."

"I assure you that I've never felt less like sneezing in my life,
but--"

"Think, man," he urged, "all expenses paid, a fine house, horses,
motors, the life of a country gentleman. In short, your own rooms,
time to read yourself stodgy if you like, and a fine young cub to
build in your own image."

"Mine?" I gasped.

He laughed.

"Good Lord, Pope! You always did hate 'em, you know."

"Hate? Who?"

"Women."

I felt myself frowning.

"Women! No, I do not love women and I have some reasons for believing
that women do not love me. I have never had any money and my
particular kind of pulchritude doesn't appeal to them. Hence their
indifference. Hence mine. Like begets like, Jack."

He laughed.

"I have reasons for believing the antipathy is deeper than that."

I shrugged the matter off. It is one which I find little pleasure in
discussing.

"You may draw whatever inference you please," I finished dryly.

He lighted a cigarette and inhaled it jubilantly.

"Don't you see," he said, "that it all goes to show that you're
precisely the man the governor's looking for? What do you say?"

I hesitated, though every dictate of inclination urged. Here was an
opportunity to put to the test a most important theory of the old
Socratic doctrine, that true knowledge is to be elicited from within
and is to be sought for in ideas and not in particulars of sense. What
a chance! A growing youth in seclusion. Such a magnificent seclusion!
Where I could try him in my own alembic! Still I hesitated. The
imminence of such good fortune made me doubt my own efficiency.

"Suppose I was the wrong man," I quibbled for want of something better
to say.

"The executors will have to take their chance on that," he said,
rising with the air of a man who has rounded out a discussion. "Come!
Let's settle the thing."

Ballard had always had a way with him, a way as foreign to my own as
the day from night. From my own point of view I had always held Jack
lightly, and yet I had never disliked him--nor did I now--for there
was little doubt of his friendliness and sincerity. So I rose and
followed him, my docility the philosophy of a full stomach plus the
chance of testing the theory of probabilities; for to a man who for
six years had reckoned life by four walls of a room and a shelf of
books this was indeed an adventure. I was already meshed in the loom
of destiny. He led me to a large automobile of an atrocious red color
which was standing at the curb, and in this we were presently hurled
through the crowded middle city to the lower part of the town, which,
it is unnecessary for me to say, I cordially detested, and brought up
before a building, the entire lower floor of which was given over to
the opulent offices of Ballard, Wrenn and Halloway.

Ballard the elder was tall like his son, but here the resemblance
ceased, for while Ballard the younger was round of visage and jovial,
the banker was thin of face and repressive. He had a long, accipitrine
nose which imbedded itself in his bristling white mustache, and he
spoke in crisp staccato notes as though each intonation and breath
were carefully measured by their monetary value. He paid out to me in
cash a half an hour, during which he questioned and I replied while
Jack grinned in the background. And at the end of that period of time
the banker rose and dismissed me with much the air of one who has
perused a document and filed it in the predestined pigeonhole. I felt
that I had been rubber-stamped, docketed and passed into oblivion.
What he actually said was:

"Thanks, I'll write. Good afternoon."

The vision of the Great Experiment which had been flitting in
rose-color before my eyes, was as dim as the outer corridor where I
was suddenly aware of Jack Ballard's voice at my ear and his friendly
clutch upon my elbow.

"You'll do," he laughed. "I was positive of it."

"I can't imagine how you reach that conclusion," I put in rather
tartly, still reminiscent of the rubber stamp.

"Oh," he said, his eye twinkling, "simplest thing in the world. The
governor's rather brief with those he doesn't like."

"Brief! I feel as though I'd just emerged from a glacial douche."

"Oh, he's nippy. But he never misses a trick, and he got your number
all O.K."

As we reached the street I took his hand.

"Thanks, Ballard," I said warmly. "It's been fine of you, but I'm
sorry that I can't share your hopes."

"Rot! The thing's as good as done. There's another executor or two to
be consulted, but they'll be glad enough to take the governor's
judgment. You'll hear from him tomorrow. In the meanwhile," and he
thrust a paper into my hands, "read this. It's interesting. It's John
Benham's brief for masculine purity with a few remarks (not taken from
Hegel) upon the education and training of the child."

We had reached the corner of the street when he stopped and took out
his watch.

"Unfortunately this is the Thursday that I work," he laughed, "and
it's past two o'clock, so good-by. I'll stop in for you tomorrow," and
with a flourish of the hand he left me.

Still dubious as to the whole matter, which had left me rather
bewildered, when I reached my shabby room I took out the envelope
which Ballard had handed me and read the curious paper that it
contained.

As I began reading this remarkable document (neatly typed and
evidently copied from the original in John Benham's own hand) I
recognized some of the marks of the Platonic philosophy and read with
immediate attention. Before I had gone very far it was quite clear to
me that the pedagogue who took upon himself the rearing of the infant
Benham, must himself be a creature of infinite wisdom and discretion.
As far as these necessary qualifications were concerned, I saw no
reason why I should refuse. The old man's obvious seriousness of
purpose interested me.

"It is my desire that my boy, Jeremiah, be taught simple religious
truths and then simple moral truths, learning thereby insensibly the
lessons of good manners and good taste. In his reading of Homer and
Hesiod the tricks and treacheries of the gods are to be banished, the
terrors of the world below to be dispelled, and the misbehavior of the
Homeric heroes are to be censured.

"If there is such a thing as original sin--and this I beg leave to
doubt, having looked into the eyes of my boy and failed to find it
there--then teaching can eradicate it, especially teaching under such
conditions as those which I now impose. The person who will be chosen
by my executors for the training of my boy will be first of all a man
of the strictest probity. He will assume this task with a grave sense
of his responsibility to me and to his Maker. If after a proper period
of time he does not discover in his own heart a sincere affection for
my child, he will be honest enough to confess the truth, and be
discharged of the obligation. For it is clear that without love, such
an experiment is foredoomed to failure. To a man such as my mind has
pictured, affection here will not be difficult, for nature has favored
Jerry with gifts of mind and body."

Everywhere in John Benham's instructions there were signs of a deep
and corroding cynicism which no amount of worldly success had been
able to dispel. Everywhere could be discovered a hatred of modern
social forms and a repugnance for the modern woman, against whom he
warns the prospective tutor in language which is as unmistakable as
the Benham Wall. It pleased me to find at least one wise man who
agreed with me in this particular. Until the age of twenty-one, woman
was to be taboo for Jerry Benham, not only her substance, but her
essence. Like the mention of hell to ears polite, she was forbidden at
Horsham Manor. No woman was to be permitted to come upon the estate in
any capacity. The gardeners, grooms, gamekeepers, cooks, house
servants--all were to be men at good wages chosen for their discretion
in this excellent conspiracy. The penalty for infraction of this rule
of silence was summary dismissal.

I read the pages through until the end, and then sat for a long while
thinking, the wonderful possibilities of the plan taking a firmer hold
upon me. The Perfect Man! And I, Roger Canby, should make him.




CHAPTER II

JERRY


With Ballard the elder, to whom and to those plutocratic associates,
as had been predicted, my antecedents and acquirements had proven
satisfactory, I journeyed on the twelfth of December to Greene County
in the Ballard limousine. A rigorous watch was kept upon the walls of
Horsham Manor, and in response to the ring of the chauffeur at the
solid wooden gates at the lodge, a small window opened and a red
visage appeared demanding credentials. Ballard put the inquisitor to
some pains, testing his efficiency, but finally produced his card and
revealed his identity, after which the gates flew open and we entered
the forbidden ground.

It was an idyllic spot, as I soon discovered, of fine rolling country,
well wooded and watered, the road of macadam, rising slowly from the
entrance gates, turning here and there through a succession of natural
parks, along the borders of a lake of considerable size, toward the
higher hills at the further end of the estate, among which, my
companion told me, were built the Manor house and stables. Except for
the excellent road itself, no attempt had been made to use the art of
the landscape gardener in the lower portion of the tract, which had
been left as nature had made it, venerable woodland, with a
well-tangled undergrowth, where rabbits, squirrels and deer abounded,
but as we neared the hills, which rose with considerable dignity
against the pale, wintry sky, the signs of man's handiwork became
apparent. A hedge here, a path there, bordered with privet or
rhododendron; a comfortable looking farmhouse, commodious barns and
well-fenced pastures, where we passed a few men who touched their caps
and stared after us.

"It's lucky you care nothing for women, Canby," said Mr. Ballard
crisply; "this monastic idea may not bother you."

"It doesn't in the least, Mr. Ballard," I said dryly. "I shall survive
the ordeal with composure."

He glanced at me, smiled and then went on.

"Except for the presence of Miss Redwood, who goes today, the new
regulation has been in force here for a month. The farmers and
gamekeepers are all bachelors. We have an excellent steward, also a
bachelor. You and he will understand each other. In all things that
pertain to the boy he is under your orders. Questions of authority
where you differ are to be referred to me."

"I understand. I am not difficult to get on with."

My employer had described to me thoroughly but quite impersonally all
the conditions of his trust and mine, but had made no comments which
by the widest stretch of imagination could be construed into opinions.
He gave me the impression then as he did later that he was carrying
out strictly the letter of his instructions from the dead. He had a
face graven into austere lines, which habit had schooled into perfect
obedience to his will. He might have believed the experiment to which
he was committed a colossal joke, and no sign of his opinion would be
reflected in his facial expression, which was, save on unimportant
matters, absolutely unchanging. Nor did he seem to care what my own
thoughts might be in regard to the matter, though I had not refrained
from expressing my interest in the project. My character, my
reputation for conscientiousness, my qualifications for the position
were all that seemed to concern him. I was merely a piece of
machinery, the wheels of which he was to set in motion, which would
perform its allotted task to his satisfaction.

The road soon reached an eminence from which Horsham Manor was
visible, a fine Georgian house set handsomely enough in a cleft of the
hills, before which were broad lawns that sloped to the south and
terminated at the borders of a stream which meandered through a rocky
bed to the lake below. Wealth such as this had never awed me. John
Benham with all his stores of dollars had been obliged to come at last
to a penurious philosopher to solve for his son the problem of life
that had baffled the father. So intent was I upon the house which was
to be my home that I caught but a glimpse of the fine valley of meadow
and wood which ended in the faint purplish hills, beyond which
somewhere was the Hudson River.

It was evident that our arrival had been telephoned from the lodge at
the gate, for as the machine drew up at the main doorway of the house
a servant in livery appeared and opened the door.

"Ah, Christopher," said my companion. "Is Mr. Radford about?"

"Yes, sir. He'll be up in a minute, sir."

"This is Mr. Canby, Christopher, Master Jeremiah's new tutor."

"Yes, sir, you'll find Miss Redwood and Master Jerry in the library."

We went up the steps while the aged butler (who had lived with John
Benham) followed with the valises, and were ushered into the library,
where my pupil and his governess awaited us.

I am a little reluctant to admit at this time that my earliest
impression of the subject of these memoirs was disappointing. Perhaps
the dead man's encomiums had raised my hopes. Perhaps the barriers
which hedged in this most exclusive of youngsters had increased his
importance in my thoughts. What I saw was a boy of ten, well grown for
his years, who ambled forward rather sheepishly and gave me a moist
and rather flabby hand to shake.

He was painfully embarrassed. If I had been an ogre and Jerry the
youth allotted for his repast, he could not have shown more distress.
He was distinctly nursery-bred and, of course, unused to visitors, but
he managed a smile, and I saw that he was making the best of a bad
job. After the preliminaries of introduction, amid which Mr. Radford,
the steward of the estate, appeared, I managed to get the boy aside.

"I feel a good deal like the Minotaur, Jerry. Did you ever hear of the
Minotaur?"

He hadn't, and so I told him the story. "But I'm not going to eat
_you_," I laughed.

I had broken the ice, for a smile, a genuine joyous smile, broke
slowly and then flowed in generous ripples across his face.

"You're different, aren't you?" he said presently, his brown eyes now
gravely appraising me.

"How different, Jerry?" I asked.

He hesitated a moment and then:

"I--I thought you'd come all in black with a lot of grammar books
under your arms."

"I don't use 'em," I said. "I'm a boy, just like you, only I've got
long trousers on. We're not going to bother about books for awhile."

He still inspected me as though he wasn't quite sure it wasn't all a
mistake. And then again:

"Can you talk Latin?"

"Bless you, I'm afraid not."

"Oh!" he sighed, though whether in relief or disappointment I couldn't
say.

"But you can do sums in your head and spell hippopotamus?"

"I might," I laughed. "But I wouldn't if I didn't have to."

"But _I'll_ have to, won't I?"

"Oh, some day."

"I'm afraid _I_ never can," he sighed again.

I began to understand now. His mind was feminine and at least three
years backward. There wasn't a mark of the boy of ten about him. But I
liked his eyes. They were wide and inquiring. It wouldn't be difficult
to gain his confidence.

"Are you sorry Miss Redwood is going?" I asked him.

"Yes. She plays games."

"I know some games, too--good ones."

He brightened, but said nothing for a moment, though I saw him
stealing a glance at me. Whatever the object of his inspection, I
seemed to have passed it creditably, for he said rather timidly:

"Would you like to see my bull pup?"

It was the first remark that sounded as though it came from the heart
of a real boy. I had won the first line of entrenchments around
Jerry's reserve. When a boy asks you to see his bull pup he confers
upon you at once the highest mark of his approval.

I only repeat this ingenuous and unimportant conversation to show my
first impression of what seemed to me then to be a rather commonplace
and colorless boy. I did not realize then how strong could be the
effect of such an environment. Miss Redwood, as I soon discovered, was
a timid, wilting individual, who had brought him successfully through
the baby diseases and had taught him the elementary things, because
that was what she was paid for, corrected his table manners and tried
to make him the kind of boy that she would have preferred to be
herself had nature fortunately not decided the matter otherwise, and
chameleon-like, Jerry reflected her tepor, her supineness and
femininity. She recounted his virtues with pride, while I questioned
her, hoping against hope to hear of some prank, the breaking of
window-panes, the burning of a haystack or the explosion of a giant
cracker under the cook. But all to no purpose.

So far as I could discover, he had never so much as pulled the tail
of a cat. As old John Benham had said, of original sin he had none.

But my conviction that the boy had good stuff in him was deepened on
the morrow, when, banishing books, I took him for a breather over hill
and dale, through wood and underbrush, three miles out and three miles
in. I told him stories as we walked and showed him how the Indians
trailed their game among the very hills over which we plodded. I told
him that a fine strong body was the greatest thing in the world, a
possession to work for and be proud of. His muscles were flabby, I
knew, but I put him a brisk pace and brought him in just before lunch,
red of cheek, bright of eye, and splashed with mud from head to foot.
I had learned one of the things I had set out to discover. He would do
his best at whatever task I set him.

I have not said that he was a handsome boy, for youth is amorphous and
the promise of today is not always fulfilled by the morrow. Jerry's
features were unformed at ten and, as has already been suggested, made
no distinct impression upon my mind. Whatever his early photographs
may show, at least they gave no sign of the remarkable beauty of
feature and lineament which developed in his adolescence. Perhaps it
was that I was more interested in his mind and body and what I could
make them than in his face, which, after all, was none of my concern.

That I was committed to my undertaking from the very beginning will
soon be evident. Before three weeks had passed Jerry began to awake
and to develop an ego and a personality. If I had thought him
unmagnetic at first, he quickly showed me my mistake. His imagination
responded to the slightest mental touch, too quickly even for the work
I had in mind for him. He would have pleased me better if he had been
a little slower to catch the impulse of a new impression. But I
understood. He had been starved of the things which were a boy's
natural right and heritage, and he ate and drank eagerly of the
masculine fare I provided. He had shed a few tears at Miss Redwood's
departure and I liked him for them, for they showed his loyalty, but
he had no more games of the nursery nor the mawkish sentimentality
that I found upon the nursery shelves. I had other plans for Jerry.
John Benham should have his wish. I would make Jerry as nearly the
Perfect Man as mortal man could make God's handiwork. Spiritually he
should grow "from within," directed by me, but guided by his own inner
light. Physically he should grow as every well-made boy should grow,
sturdy in muscle and bone, straight of limb, deep of chest, sound of
mind and strong of heart. I would make Jerry a Greek.

Perhaps these plans may seem strange coming from one who had almost
grown old before he had been young. But I had made sure that Jerry
should profit by my mistakes, growing slowly, built like the Benham
Wall, of material that should endure the sophistries of the world and
remain unbroken.

I worked Jerry hard that first winter and spring, and his physical
condition showed that I had no need to fear for his health. And when
the autumn came I decided to bring him face to face with nature when
she is most difficult. I was a good woodsman, having been born and
bred in the northern part of the state, and until I went to the
University had spent a part of each year in the wilderness. We left
Horsham Manor one October day, traveling light, and made for the
woods. We were warmly clad, but packed no more than would be essential
for existence. A rifle, a shotgun, an ax, and hunting knives were all
that we carried besides tea, flour, a side of bacon, the ammunition
and implements for cooking. By night we had built a rough shack and
laid our plans for a permanent cabin of spruce logs, which we proposed
to erect before the snow flew. Game was abundant, and before our bacon
was gone our larder was replenished. I had told Radford of our plans
and the gamekeepers were instructed to give us a wide berth. Jerry
learned to shoot that year, not for fun, but for existence, for one
evening when we came in with an empty game bag we both went to our
blankets hungry. The cabin rose slowly, and the boy learned to do his
share of work with the ax. He was naturally clever with his hands, and
there was no end to his eagerness. He was living in a new world, where
each new day brought some new problem to solve, some difficulty to be
surmounted. He had already put aside childish things and had entered
early upon a man's heritage. There are persons who will say that I
took great risks in thus exposing Jerry while only in his eleventh
year, but I can answer by the results achieved. We lived in the woods
from the fifteenth of October until a few days before Christmas.
During that time we had built a cabin, ten feet by twelve, with a
stone fireplace and a roof of clay; had laid a line of deadfalls, and
rabbit snares; had made a pair of snowshoes and a number of vessels
of birch bark, and except for the tea and flour had been
self-supporting, items compensated for by the value of our labors.

In that time we had two snows, one a severe one, but our cabin roof
was secure and we defied it. Jerry wanted to stay at the cabin all
winter, a wish that I might easily have shared, for the life in the
open and the companionship of the boy had put new marrow into my dry
bones. I had smuggled into camp three books, "Walden," "Rolf in the
Woods" and "Treasure Island," one for Jerry's philosophy, one for his
practical existence and one for his imagination. In the evenings
sometimes I read while Jerry whittled, and sometimes Jerry read while
I worked at the snowshoes or the vessels of birch bark.

[Illustration: "In the evenings sometimes I read while Jerry whittled."]

In those two months was formed the basis of Jerry's idea of life as
seen through the philosophy of Roger Canby. We had many talks, and
Jerry asked many questions, but I answered them all, rejoicing in his
acuteness in following a line of thought to its conclusion, a
procedure which, as I afterward discovered, was to cause me anxious
moments. "Walden" made him thoughtful, but he caught its purpose and
understood its meaning. "Rolf in the Woods" made his eyes bright with
the purpose of achievement in woodcraft and a desire (which I
suppressed) to stalk and kill a deer. But "Treasure Island" touched
some deeper chord in his nature than either of the other books had
done. He followed Jim and the Squire and John Silver in the
_Hispaniola_ with glowing eyes.

"But are there bad men like that now out in the world, Mr. Canby?" he
broke in excitedly.

"There are bad men in the world, Jerry," I replied coolly.

"Like John Silver?"

"Not precisely. Silver's only a character. This didn't really happen,
you know, Jerry. It's fiction."

"Fiction!"

"A story, like Grimm's tales."

"Oh!" His jaw dropped and he stared at me. "What a pity!"

I had wanted to stir in him a knowledge of evil and chose the
picturesque as being the least unpleasant. But he couldn't believe
that old John Silver and the Squire and Benn Gunn hadn't been real
people. The tale dwelt in his mind for days, but the final defeat of
the mutineers seemed to satisfy him as to the intention of the
narrative.

"If there are evil men in the world like those mutineers, Mr. Canby,
it must be a pretty bad place to live in," was the final comment, and
I made no effort to undeceive him.




CHAPTER III

JERRY GROWS


It is not my intention to dwell too long upon the first stages of my
tutorship, which presented few difficulties not easily surmounted, but
it is necessary in order to understand Jerry's character that I set
down a few facts which show certain phases of his development. Of his
physical courage, at thirteen, I need only relate an incident of one
of our winter expeditions. We were hunting coons one night with the
dogs, a collie and the bull pup, which now rejoiced in the name of
Skookums, already mentioned. The dogs treed their game three miles
from the Manor house, and when we came up were running around the
tree, whimpering and barking in a high state of excitement. The night
was dark and the branches of the tree were thick, so we could see
nothing, but Jerry clambered up, armed with a stout stick, and
disappeared into the gloom overhead.

"Do you see him?" I called.

"I see something, but it looks too big for a coon," he returned.

"What does it look like?"

"It looks more like a cat, with queer-looking ears."

"You'd better come down then, Jerry," I said quickly.

"It looks like a lynx," he called again, quite unperturbed.

It was quite possible that he was right, for in this part of the
Catskill country lynxes were still plentiful.

"Then come down at once," I shouted. "He may go for you."

"Oh, I'm not worried about that. I have my hunting knife," he said
coolly.

"Come down, do you hear?" I commanded.

"Not until he does," he replied with a laugh.

I called again. Jerry didn't reply, for just then there was a sudden
shaking of the dry leaves above me, the creaking of a bough and the
snarl of a wild animal, and the sound of a blow.

"Jerry!" I cried. No reply, but the sound of the struggle overhead
increased, dreadful sounds of snarling and of scratching, but no sound
of Jerry. Fearful of imminent tragedy, I climbed quickly, amid the
uproar of the dogs, and, knife in hand, had got my feet an the lower
branches, when a heavy weight shot by me and fell to the ground. Thank
God, not the boy!

"Jerry!" I cried again, clambering upward.

"A-all r-right, Mr. Canby," I heard. "You're safe, not hurt?"

"I'm all right, I think. Just--just scratched."

By this time I had reached him. He was braced in the crotch of a limb,
leaning against the tree trunk still holding his hunting knife. His
coat was wet and I guessed at rather than saw the pallor of his face
Below were the sounds of the dogs worrying at the animal.

"I--I guess they've finished him," said Jerry coolly sheathing his
knife.

"It's lucky he didn't finish _you_," I muttered. "You're sure you're
not hurt?"

"Oh, no."

"Can you get down alone?"

"Yes, of course."

But I helped him down, nevertheless, and he reached the ground in
safety, where I saw that his face at least had escaped damage. But the
sleeve of his coat was torn to ribbons, and the blood was dripping
from his finger ends.

"Come," I said, taking his arm, "we'll have to get you attended to."
And then severely: "You disobeyed me, Jerry. Why didn't you come
down?"

He hesitated a moment, smiling, and then: "I had no idea a lynx was so
large."

"It's a miracle," I said in wonder at his escape. "How did you hang
on?"

"I saw him spring and braced myself in time," he said simply, "and
putting my elbow over my head, struck with my knife when he was on
me--two, three, many times--until he let go. But I was glad, very glad
when he fell."

I drove the dogs away, lifted the dead beast over my shoulder and led
the way to the dog cart, which we had left in the road half a mile
off, reaching the Manor house very bloody but happy. But the happiest
of the lot of us, even including Skookums, the bull pup, was Jerry
himself at the sight under the lamplight of the formidable size of his
dead enemy. But I led Jerry at once upstairs, where I stripped him and
took account of his injuries.

His left arm was bitten twice and his neck and shoulder badly torn,
but he had not whimpered, nor did he now when I bathed and cauterized
his wounds. Whatever pain he felt, he made no sign, and I knew that by
inference my night-talks by the campfire had borne fruit. Old
Christopher, the butler, to whom the Great Experiment was a mystery,
hovered in the background with towels and lotions, timidly
reproachful, until Jerry laughed at him and sent him to bed, muttering
something about the queer goings on at Horsham Manor.

This incident is related to show that Jerry had more courage than most
boys of his years. Part of it was inherent, of course, but most of it
was born of the habit, learned early, to be sure of himself in any
emergency. There was little doubt in my mind that there was some of
the stuff in Jerry of which heroes are made. I thought so then, for I
was proud of my handiwork. I did not know, alas! to what tests my
philosophy and John Benham's were to be subjected. All of which goes
to show that in running counter to human nature the wisest plans, the
greatest sagacity, are as chaff before the winds of destiny. But to
continue:

The following summer Jerry gave further proofs of his presence of mind
in an accident of which I was the victim. For while trudging with
Jerry along a rocky hillside I stepped straight into the death trap of
a rattlesnake. He struck me below the knee, and we were a long way
from help. But the boy was equal to the emergency. Quite coolly he
killed the snake with a club. I fortunately kept my head and directed
him, though he knew just what to do. With his hunting knife he cut my
trouser leg away and double gashed my leg where the fangs had entered,
then sucked the wound and spat out the poison until the blood had
ceased to flow. Then he quickly made a tourniquet of his handkerchief
and fastened it just above the wound, and, making me comfortable, he
ran the whole distance to the house, bringing a motor car and help in
less than an hour. There isn't the slightest doubt that Jerry saved my
life on this occasion just as the following winter I saved him from
death at the horns of a mad buck deer.

You will not wonder therefore that the bond of affection and reliance
was strong between us. I gave Jerry of the best that was in me, and in
return I can truly say that not once did he disappoint me.

In addition to the woodlore that I taught him, I made him a good shot
with rifle and revolver. I had men from the city from time to time,
the best of their class, who taught him boxing and fencing. I had a
gymnasium built with Mr. Ballard's consent, and a swimming pool, which
kept him busy after the lesson hour. At the age of fifteen Jerry was
six feet tall and weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds, all bone
and muscle. In the five years since I had been at Horsham Manor there
had not been a day when he was ill, and except for an occasional
accident such as the adventure with the lynx, not one when I had
called in the services of a doctor. Physically at least I had so far
succeeded, for in this respect Jerry was perfection.

As to his mind, perhaps my own ideals had made me too exacting.
According to my carefully thought out plans, scholarship was to be
Jerry's buckler and defense against the old Adam. God forbid that I
should have planned, as Jack Ballard would have had it, to build Jerry
in my own image, for if scholarship had been my own refuge it had also
done something to destroy my touch with human kind. It was the quality
of sympathy in Jerry which I had lacked, the love for and confidence
in every human being with whom he came into contact which endeared him
to every person on the place. From Radford to Christopher, throughout
the house, stables and garage, down to the humblest hedge-trimmer, all
loved Jerry and Jerry loved them all. He had that kind of nature. He
couldn't help loving those about him any more than he could help
breathing, and yet it must not be supposed that the boy was lacking in
discernment. Our failings, weaknesses and foibles were a constant
source of amusement to him, but his humor was without malice and his
jibes were friendly, and he ran the gamut of my own exposed nerve
pulps with such joyous consideration that I came to like the
operation. He loved me and I knew it.

But nothing could make him love his Latin grammar. He worried through
arithmetic and algebra and blarneyed his French and German tutors into
making them believe he knew more than he did, but the purely
scientific aspects of learning did not interest him. It was only when
he knew enough to read the great epics in the original that my
patience had its reward. The Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid held him
in thrall, and by some magic eliminated at a bound the purely
mechanical difficulties which had fettered him. Hector, Achilles,
Agamemnon, Ulysses--Jerry was each of these in turn, lacking only the
opportunity to vanquish heroic foes or capture impregnable cities.

I had not censored the Homeric gods, as Jerry's father had commanded,
and my temerity led to difficulties. It began with Calypso and Ulysses
and did not even end when Dido was left alone upon the shores of
Carthage.

"I don't understand it at all," he said one day with a wrinkled brow,
"how a man of the caliber of Ulysses could stay so long the prisoner
of Calypso, a woman, when he wanted to go home. It's a pretty shabby
business for a hero and a demigod. A woman!" he sneered, "I'd like to
see any woman keep me sitting in a cave if I wanted to go anywhere!"

His braggadicio was the full-colored boyish reflection of the Canby
point of view. I had merely shrugged woman out of existence. Now Jerry
castigated her.

"What could she do?" he went on scornfully. "She couldn't shoot or run
or fight. All she did was to lie around or strut about with a veil
around her head and a golden girdle (sensible costume!) and serve the
hero with ambrosia and ruddy nectar. I've never eaten ambrosia, but
I'm pretty sure it was some sweet, sticky stuff, like _her_." There is
no measure for the contempt of his accents.

"She could swim," I ventured timidly.

"Swim! Even a fish can swim!"

I don't know why, but at this conversation, the first of Jerry's
maturer years in which the topic had been woman, I felt a slight
tremor go over me. Jerry was too good to look at. I fancied that there
were many women who would have liked to see the flash of his eye at
that moment and to meet his challenge with their wily arts. In the
pride of his masculine strength and capacity he scorned them as I had
taught him. I had done my work well. Had I done it too well?'

"What are women anyway?" he stormed at me again. "For what good are
they? To wash linen and have white arms like Nausicaa? Who cares
whether her arms were white or not? They're always weeping because
they're loved or raging because they're not. Love! Always love! I love
you and Christopher and Radford and Skookums, but I'm not always
whining about it. What's the use? Those things go without saying.
They're simply what are in a fellow's heart, but he doesn't talk about
them."

"Quite right. Jerry. Let's say no more about it."

"I'm glad there are no women around here, but now that I come to think
of it, I don't see why there shouldn't be."

"Your father liked men servants best. He believed them to be more
efficient."

"Oh, yes, of course," and then, suddenly: "When I go out beyond the
wall I'll have to see them and talk to them, won't I?"

"Not if you don't want to."

"Well, I don't want to."

He paused a second and then went on. "But I _am_ a little curious
about them. Of course, they're silly and useless and flabby, but it
seems queer that there are such a lot of 'em. If they're no good, why
don't they pass out of existence? That's the rule of life, you tell
me, the survival of the fittest. If they're not fit they ought to
have died out long ago."

"You can't keep them from being born, Jerry," I laughed.

"Well," he said scornfully, "it ought to be prevented."

I made a pretense of cutting the leaves of a book. He was going too
far. I temporized.

"Ah, they're all right, Jerry," I said with some magnificence, "if
they do their duty. Some are much better than others. Now, Miss
Redwood, for instance, your governess. She was kind, willing and
affectionate."

"Oh, yes," he said, "she was all right, but she wasn't like a man."

I had him safe again. Physical strength and courage at this time were
his fetish. But he was still thoughtful.

"Sometimes I think, Roger" (he called me Roger now, for after all I
was more like an elder brother than a father to him), "sometimes I
think that things are too easy for me; that I ought to be out doing my
share in the work of the world."

"Oh, that will come in time. If you think things are too easy, I might
manage to make them a little harder."

He laughed affectionately and clapped me on the shoulder.

"Oh, no, you don't, old Dry-as-dust. Not books. That isn't what I
meant. I mean life, struggles against odds. I've just been wondering
what chance I'd have to get, along by myself, without a lot of people
waiting on me."

"I've tried to show you, Jerry. You can go into the woods with a gun
and an ax and exist in comfort."

"Yes, but the world isn't all woods; and axes and guns aren't the
only weapons."

"But the principle is the same."

He flashed a bright glance at me.

"Flynn told me yesterday that I could make good in the prize ring if
I'd let him take me in hand."

(The deuce he had! Flynn would lose his engagement as a boxing teacher
if he didn't heed my warnings better.)

"The prize ring is not what you're being trained for, my young
friend," I said with some asperity.

"What then?" he asked.

"First of all I hope I'm training you to be a gentleman. And that
means--"

"Can't a boxer be a gentleman?" he broke in quickly.

"He might be, I suppose, but he usually isn't." He was forcing me into
an attitude of priggishness which I regretted.

"Then why," he persisted, "are you having me taught to box?"

"Chiefly to make your muscles hard, to inure you to pain, to teach you
self-reliance."

"But I oughtn't to learn to box then, if it's going to keep me from
being a gentleman. What is a gentleman, Roger?"

I tried to think of a succinct generalization and failed, falling back
instinctively upon safe ground.

"Christ was a gentleman, Jerry," I said quietly.

"Yes," he assented soberly, "Christ. I would like to be like Christ,
but I couldn't be meek, Roger, and I like to box and shoot--"

"He was a man, Jerry, the most courageous the world has ever known.
He was even not afraid to die for an ideal. He was meek, but He was
not afraid to drive the money changers from the temple."

"Yes, that was good. He was strong and gentle, too. He was wonderful."

I have merely suggested this part of the conversation to show the
feeling of reverence and awe with which the boy regarded the Savior.
The life of Christ had caught his imagination and its lessons had sunk
deeply into his spirit, touching chords of gentleness that I had never
otherwise been able to reach. His religion had begun with Miss Redwood
and he had clung to it instinctively as he had clung to the vague
memory of his mother. No word of mine and no teaching was to destroy
so precious a heritage. He was not goody-goody about it. No boy who
did and said and thought the things that Jerry did could be accused of
prudery or sentimentalism. But in his quieter moods I knew that he
thought deeply of sacred things.

But this conversation with Jerry had warned me that the time was
approaching when the boy would want to think for himself. Already in
our nature-talks some of his questions had embarrassed me. He had seen
birds hatched from their eggs and had marveled at it. The mammals and
their young had mystified him and he had not been able to understand
it. I had reverted to the process of development of the embryo of the
seed into a perfect plant. I had waxed scientific, he had grown
bewildered. We had reached our _impasse_. In the end we had
compromised. Unable to comprehend, Jerry had ascribed the propagation
of the species to a miracle of God. And since that was the precise
truth I had been content to let the matter rest there.

But there was another problem that our conversation had suggested: the
choice of a vocation. The proposition of the misguided Flynn had made
me aware of the fact that I was already letting my charge drift toward
the maws of the great unknown which began just beyond the Wall without
a plan of life save that he should be a "gentleman." It occurred to me
with alarming suddenness that the term "gentleman" was that frequently
applied to persons who had no occupation or visible means of support.
Nowhere in John Benham's instructions was there mention of any plan
for a vocation. Obviously if the old man had intended Jerry for a
business career he would have said so, and the omission of any exact
instructions convinced me that such an idea was furthest from John
Benham's thoughts. It remained for me to decide the matter in the best
way that I could, for determined I was that Jerry, merely because of
the possession of much worldly goods, should not be that bane of
humanity and of nations, an idler.

At about this period Mr. Ballard the elder came down to Horsham Manor
on one of his visits of inspection and inquiry. He brought up the
subject of his own accord.

"What do you think, Canby, what have you planned about Jerry's
future?"

I told him that my only ambition, so far, had been to make of Jerry a
gentleman and a scholar.

"Yes, of course," he nodded. "That's what you are here for. But beyond
that?"

"Nothing," I replied. "I am following my instructions from Mr.
Benham. They go no further than that."

He frowned into the fire.

"That's all very well as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.
Jerry is now eighteen. Do you realize that in three years he comes
into possession of five million dollars, an income of over two hundred
thousand a year; and that in seven years, at twenty-five, the
executors must relinquish the entire estate?"

I had not thought of the imminence of this disaster.

"I was not aware, Mr. Ballard," I said. "At the present moment Jerry
doesn't know a dollar from a nickel."

He opened his eyes wide and examined me as though he feared he had not
heard correctly or as though it were blasphemy, heresy that I was
uttering.

"You mean that he doesn't know the value and uses of money?"

"So far as I am aware," I replied coolly, "he has never seen a piece
of money in his life."

"All wrong, all wrong, Canby. This won't do at all. He had his
arithmetic, percentage and so forth?"

"Yes. But money doesn't interest him. Can you see any reason why it
should?"

Again the frown and level gaze.

"And what had you planned for him?" he asked. He did not intend to be
satirical perhaps. He was merely worldly.

"I thought when the time came he might be permitted to choose a
vocation for himself. In the meanwhile--"

"A vocation!" he snapped. "Isn't the controlling interest in a
transcontinental line of railroad vocation enough? To say nothing of
coal, copper and iron mines, a steel mill or two and a fleet of
steamers?"

He overpowered me for the moment. I had not thought of Jerry as being
all these things. To me he was merely Jerry. But I struggled upward
through the miasma of oppressive millions and met the issue squarely.

"There is nothing in John Benham's advice which directs any vocational
instruction," I said staunchly. "I was to bring the boy to the age of
manhood without realization of sin."

"A dream, Canby. Utopian, impossible!"

"It has not proved so," I replied, nettled. "I am merely following
instructions, Mr. Benham's instructions through you to me. The dream
is very real to Jerry."

Mr. Ballard gazed into the fire and smiled.

"The executors are permitted some license in this matter. We are
entirely satisfied with your work. We have no desire to modify in the
slightest degree the purely moral character of your instruction or
indeed to change his mode of life. Indeed, I think we all agree that
you are carrying out with rare judgment the spirit if not the actual
letter of John Benham's wishes. Jerry is a wonderful boy. But in our
opinion the time has come when his mind should be slowly shaped to
grasp the essentials of the great career that awaits him."

"I can be of no assistance to you, Mr. Ballard," I said dryly.

"We think the time has arrived," he went on, passing over my remark as
though it hadn't been uttered, "for Jerry to have some instruction
from one versed in the theory, if not the practice, of business. It
is our purpose to engage a professor from a school of finance of one
of the universities to work with Jerry for a part of each summer."

I did not dare to speak for fear of saying something I might regret.
Thus far he was within his rights, I knew, but had he proposed to take
Jerry into the cafes of Broadway that night, he couldn't have done my
plans for the boy a greater hurt. He was proposing nothing less than
an assault upon my barriers of idealism. He was going to take the
sentient thing that was Jerry and make of him an adding machine. Would
he? Could he? I found courage in a smile.

"Of course, if that is your desire," I managed at last, "I have
nothing to say except that if you had asked my opinion I should have
advised against it."

"I'm sorry, Canby," he finished, "but the matter has already been
taken out of your hands."

Youth fortunately is the age of the most lasting impressions. Dr.
Carmichael, of the Hobart School of Finance of Manhattan University,
came and went, but he made no appreciable ripple in the placid surface
of Jerry's philosophy. He cast stone after stone into the lovely pool
of Jerry's thoughts, which broke the colorful reflections into smaller
images, but did not change them. And when he was gone the pool was as
before he came. Jerry listened politely as he did to all his masters
and learned like a parrot what was required of him, but made no secret
of his missing interest and enthusiasm. I watched furtively,
encouraging Jerry, as my duty was, to do his tasks as they were set
before him. But I knew then what I had suspected before, that they
would never make a bond-broker of Jerry. I had but to say a word, to
give but a sign and bring about an overt rebellion. But I was too wise
to do that. I merely watched the widening circles in the pool and saw
them lost in the border of dreamland.

Jerry learned, of course, the difference between a mortgage and an
insurance policy; he knew the meaning of economics, the theory of
supply and demand, and gained a general knowledge which I couldn't
have given him of the general laws of barter and trade. But he
followed Carmichael listlessly. What did he care for bonds and
receiverships when the happy woods were at his elbow, the wild-flowers
beckoning, his bird neighbors calling? Where I had appealed to Jerry
through his imagination, Carmichael used only the formulæ of matter
and fact. There was but one way in which he could have succeeded, and
that was through the picture of the stupendous agencies of which Jerry
was to be the master: the fast-flying steamers, the monster engines on
their miles of rails, the glowing furnaces, the sweating figures in
the heat and grime of smoke and steam, the energy, the inarticulate
power, the majesty of labor which bridged oceans, felled mountains and
made animate the sullen rock. All this I saw, as one day Jerry should
see it. But I did not speak. The time was not yet. Jerry's
understanding of these things would come, but not until I had prepared
him for them.




CHAPTER IV

ENTER EVE


This memoir is not so much the history of a boy or of a man as of an
experiment. Therefore I will not longer delay in bringing Jerry to the
point where my philosophy and John Benham's was to be put to the test.
I have tried to indicate in as few phrases as possible Jerry Benham's
essential characteristics, the moral attributes that were his and the
shapeliness and strength of his body. I have never set great value on
mere physical beauty, which too often reacts unpleasantly upon the
character of its owner. But looks meant nothing to Jerry and he was as
unconscious of his striking beauty as the scarlet poppy that nods in
the meadow.

At the age of twenty, to which point this narrative has arrived, Jerry
Benham was six feet two inches in height and weighed, stripped, one
hundred and eighty-two pounds. His hair was brown, his eyes gray and
his features those of the Hermes of Praxiteles. His skin, naturally
fair, was tanned by exposure to a ruddy brown, and his body, except
for the few white scars upon his shoulder, relics of his encounter
with the lynx, was without blemish. He was always in training, and his
muscles were long and closely knit. I can hardly believe that there
was a man on the Olympian fields of ancient Greece who could have
been prettier to see than Jerry when he sparred with Flynn. He was as
agile as a cat, never off his balance or his guard, and slipped in and
out, circling and striking with a speed that was surprising in one of
his height and weight. "Foot-work," Flynn called it, and there were
times, I think, when the hard-breathing Irishman was glad enough at
the call of "time."

Flynn's own reply when I reproved him for the nonsense he had put into
Jerry's head about the prize ring will show how Jerry stood in the
eyes of one of the best athletes of his day. "He's a wonder, Misther
Canby. Sure, ye can't blame me f'r wantin' to thry him against good
'uns. He ain't awake yet, sor, an' he's too good-nachured. Holy
pow'rs! If the b'ye ever cud be injuced to get mad-like, he'd lick his
weight in woild-cats--so he w'ud."

There were times, as you may imagine, when I felt much like
Frankenstein in awe of the creature I had created. But Jerry
fortunately couldn't be "injuced to get mad-like." If things didn't
happen to please him, he frowned and set his jaws until his mood had
passed and he could speak his mind in calmness. His temper, like his
will, was under perfect control. And yet I knew that the orderly habit
of his mind was the result of growth in a sheltered environment and
that even I, carefully as I had trained him, had not gauged his depths
or known the secret of the lees which had never been disturbed.

At the age of twenty, then, Jerry had the body of a man, the brain of
a scholar and the heart of a child. Less than a year remained before
the time appointed when he must go forth into the world. Both of us
approached that day with regret. For my part I should have been
willing to stay on with Jerry at Horsham Manor indefinitely, and
Jerry, whatever curiosity he may have felt as to his future, gave no
sign of impatience. I knew that he felt that perhaps the years to come
might make a difference in our relations by the way he referred to the
good years we had passed together and the small tokens of his
affection which meant much from one not greatly demonstrative by
habit. As Jerry had grown toward manhood he did much serious reading
in books of my selection (the Benham library having been long since
expurgated), and I had been working steadily on my Dialectics. We did
our out-of-door work as usual, but there were times when I was busy,
and then Jerry would whistle to the dogs and go off for his afternoon
breather alone. There had never been a pledge exacted of him to keep
within the wall, but he knew his father's wish, and the thought of
venturing out alone had never entered his mind. Perhaps you will say
that it was the one thing Jerry would want to do, being the thing that
was forbidden him, but you would not understand as I did the way
Jerry's mind worked. If as a boy Jerry had been impeccable in the way
of matters of duty, he was no less so now. He had been trained to do
what was right and now did it instinctively, not because it was his
duty, but because it was the only thing that occurred to him.

And so, upon a certain day in June while I was reading in my study,
Jerry went out with a rod and fly-book bound for the silent pools of
Sweetwater, where the big trout lurked. My book, I remember, was the
"Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous upon the Reality and Perfection of
Human Understanding," and before Jerry had been long gone from the
house I was completely absorbed in what Fraser in his preface calls
"the gem of British metaphysical literature." But had I known what was
to happen to Jerry on that sunny afternoon, or conceived of the
dialogue in which he was to take a part, I should have regretted the
intellectual attraction of Berkeley's fine volume which had been the
cause of my refusal to accompany the boy.

I find that I must reconstruct the incident as well as I can from my
recollection of the facts as related by Jerry in the course of several
conversations, each of which I am forced to admit amplified somewhat
the one which had preceded it.

It seems that instead of making for the stream at its nearest point to
the eastward, Jerry had cast into the woods above the gorge and worked
upstream into the mountains. His luck had been fair, and by the time
he neared the point where the Sweetwater disappeared beneath the wall
his creel was half full. He clambered over a large rock to a higher
level and found himself looking at a stranger, sitting on a fallen
tree, fastening a butterfly net. He did not discover that the stranger
was a girl until she stood up and he saw that she wore skirts, short
skirts, showing neat leather gaiters. She eyed him coolly and neither
of them spoke for a long moment, the girl probably because she was
waiting for him to speak first, Jerry because (as he described it) of
sheer surprise at the trespass and of curiosity as to its
accomplishment. Then the girl smiled at Jerry.

"Hello!" she said at last.

Jerry advanced a few steps, frowning.

"I suppose you know," he said quickly, "that you're trespassing."

She glanced up at him, rather brazenly I fancy, and grinned.

"Oh, really!" Her eyes appraised him and Jerry, I am sure, felt rather
taken aback.

"Yes," he went on severely, "you're trespassing. We don't allow any
females in here."

Her reply was a laugh which irritated Jerry exceedingly.

"Well, I'm here," she said; "what are you going to do about it?"

"Do about it?" Jerry advanced two or three paces and stood looking
down at her. In our first conversation he told me that she seemed
absurdly small, quite too insignificant to be so impudent. In our
second conversation I elicited the fact that he thought her skin
smooth; in our third that her lips were much redder than mine.

When he got near her he paused, for she hadn't moved away as he had
expected her to and only looked up at him and laughed.

"Yes, _do_ about it," she repeated.

"You--you know I could--could throw you over the wall with one hand,"
he stammered.

"Perhaps, but you wouldn't."

"Why not?'

"Because you're a gentleman."

"Oh, am I?"

"Yes. Or if you aren't you ought to be."

He frowned at that, a little puzzled.

"Where do you come from?" he asked.

"I can't see how that can possibly be any business of yours."

"H-m. How did you get in here?"

"I followed my nose. How did you?"

"I--I--I belong here."

"It's an asylum, isn't it?" she asked quite coolly.

"N--no." Jerry missed the irony. "Not at all. I live here. It's my
place. You--you're the first woman that ever got in here, and I can't
imagine how you did it. I--I don't want to be impolite, but I'm afraid
you'll have to go at once."

The sound of her laughter was most disconcerting. Jerry had no lack of
a sense of humor and yet there was nothing that he could see to laugh
at.

"That's very amusing," she said. "A moment ago you were going to throw
me over the wall and now you're afraid you're impolite."

Jerry found himself smiling in spite of himself.

"I--I don't suppose I really meant that," he muttered.

"What? Throwing me over the wall or being polite?"

He looked rather bewildered, I think, at the inanity of her
conversation. Jerry wasn't much given to small talk.

"I'm sorry you don't think I'm polite. I--I'm not used to talking to
women. They're too fussy about trifles. What does it matter--"

"I don't call throwing a female visitor over a wall a trifle," she
broke in. "And it isn't quite hospitable. Now is it?"

Jerry rubbed his head and regarded her seriously.

"Now that you mention it, I don't suppose it is. But nobody asked you.
You just came. Didn't you see the trespass signs?"

"Oh, yes, they're all about," she said carelessly, as she picked up
her tin specimen-box and turned away. "I didn't mean to stay. I
followed a butterfly. He came in the iron railings, where the stream
goes through the wall. I crawled under where the iron is bent. If
you're afraid of women you'd better have it fixed."

"Afraid!" It was one word that Jerry detested. "Afraid! That's funny.
Do you think I'm afraid of _you_?"

"Yes," she replied, eyeing him critically. "I rather think you are."

"Well, I--I'm not. It would take more than a woman to make _me_
afraid."

Something in the turn of the phrase and tone of voice made her turn
and examine him with a new interest.

"You're a queer boy," she said.

"How--queer?" he muttered.

"You look and act as though you'd never seen a girl before."

If he had known women better he wouldn't have believed that she meant
what she said. As it was, her wizardry astounded him.

"How can you tell that?"

She was now regarding him wide-eyed in amazement.

"It's true, then?" she gasped.

"Yes, it's true. You're the first girl that I remember having seen.
But what difference does that make? Why should I be afraid of you?
You couldn't hurt a flea. You can talk pretty well, but talk never
killed anybody."

She seemed stricken suddenly dumb and regarded him with an air which
to anyone but Jerry would have shown her as discomfited as he.

"Do you mean that you've lived all your life a prisoner inside this
wall and never seen a woman?" she asked incredulously.

"That depends upon what you mean by prisoner," said Jerry. "If having
everything you want, doing everything you want is being a prisoner, I
suppose that's what I am."

"Extraordinary! And you've had no curiosity to go out--to see the
world?"

"No. I'm going soon, but I don't care about it. There isn't anything
out there half as good as what I've got."

"How do you know if you haven't been there?"

"Oh, I know. I've heard. I read a great deal."

Jerry told me (in our second conversation) that he wondered why he
still stood there talking to her. He supposed it was because he
thought he had been impolite enough. But she made no move to go.

"What have you heard?" she asked again. "I suppose you thought that a
girl had horns and a tail."

Unconsciously his gaze wandered down over her slim figure. Then he
burst into a sudden fit of laughter.

"You're funny," he said.

"Not half as funny as I would be if I had them."

"You might have a tail twisted under your dress for all I know. What
do girls wear skirts for?"

"To keep them warm. Why do you wear trousers?"

"Trousers aren't silly. Skirts are."

"That depends on who's in them."

He was forced to admit the logic of that. Skirts might be silly, but
she wasn't. She interested him, this strange creature that talked
back, not in the least like Miss Redwood. The jade! Jerry did not know
their tricks as I did. She was reading him, I haven't a doubt, like an
open book. It was a pity. I hadn't yet prepared Jerry for this
encounter. The girl had moved two or three paces away when she paused
again.

"What's your name?" she asked suddenly.

"Jerry."

"That's a nice name. I think it's like you."

"How--like me?"

"Oh, I don't know--boyish and rather jolly, in spite of being
Jeremiah. It _is_ Jeremiah, isn't it?"

He nodded.

"I was sure of it. It was Jeremiah who wanted to throw me over the
wall, but it was Jerry who didn't. Which are you really? If you're
Jerry I'm not afraid of you in the least. But if you're Jeremiah, I
must go at once."

He smiled at her.

"Oh, that's all right. You needn't hurry. I wouldn't hurt you. You
seem to be a very sprightly sort of a creature. You laugh as though
you really meant it. What's your name? I've told you mine."

"Una."

"H-m. That means 'first'."

"But not the last. There are five others--all girls."

"Girls! What a pity!"

She must have glanced around at him quickly, with that bird-like
pertness I discovered later. He was declaring war, himself
defenseless, and was not even aware of it.

"You're not flattering. A pity! Why?"

"It's too bad if you had to be born why some of you couldn't have been
boys. You'd have been a fine sort of a boy, I think."

"Would I really?" she said. "A better sort of a boy than I am a girl?"

He shrugged his shoulders, oblivious of the bait for flattery.

"How should I know what sort of a girl you are? You seem sensible
enough and you're not easily frightened. You know, I--I rather like
you."

"Really!"

He missed the smile and note of antagonism and went on quickly:

"You're fond of the woods, aren't you? Do you know the birds? They
like this place. And butterflies--I'd like to show you my collection."

"Oh, you collect?"

"Of course--specimens of all kinds. Birds, eggs, nests,
lepidoptera--I've got a museum down at the Manor. Next year you'll
have to come and see it."

"Next year!"

"Yes. You see--" Jerry's pause must have been that of embarrassment. I
think he realized that he had been going it rather rapidly. I didn't
hear this part of the dialogue until our third conversation. "Well,
you see, I'm not supposed to see any--any females until I'm
twenty-one. Not that I've ever wanted to, you know, but it seems
rather foolish that I can't ask you down, if you'd like to come."

Can you visualize a very modern young woman during this ingenuous
revelation? Jerry said that close, cool inspection of her slate-blue
eyes (he had, you see, also identified their color) rather
disconcerted him.

"I'm sure I should be delighted to come," she said with a gravity
which to anyone but Jerry would have made her an object of suspicion.

Jerry shook his head.

"But I--I'm afraid it wouldn't do. I've never given my word, but it's
an understanding--"

"With whom?"

"With Roger. He's my tutor, you know."

"Oh, I see. And Roger objects to--er--females?"

"Oh, yes, and so do I. They're so useless--most of them. You don't
mind my saying so, do you?"

"Oh, not at all," she replied, though I'm sure her lips must have been
twitching.

"Of course, you're different. You're really very like a boy. And I
don't doubt you're very capable."

"How--capable?"

"You look as if you could do things--I mean useful things."

At this she sank on a rock and buried her face in her hands, quivering
from head to foot. Jerry thought that she was crying.

"What's the--?"

She threw out her arms, leaned back against a tree, her long
suppressed merriment bubbling forth unrestrained.

"Oh, you'll be the death of me," she laughed, the tears running down
her cheeks. "I can't stand being bottled up another minute. I can't."

Jerry was offended.

"I don't see what there is to laugh at," he said with some dignity.

"You don't--that's just it, you don't, and that's what's so funny."

And she laughed again.

"What's funny?" he asked.

"You--!"

"I'm not half as funny as _you_ are, but I don't laugh at you."

"Y--you w-would if you didn't p-pity me so much," she gasped between
giggles.

"I don't pity you at all. And I think you're extremely foolish to
laugh so much at nothing."

"Even when I'm laughing at y-you?"

She had taken out her handkerchief and now composed herself with
difficulty while Jerry's ruffled dignity in silence preened at its
feathers. She watched him furtively, I'm sure, between dabs with her
handkerchief and at last stopped laughing, got up and offered him her
hand.

"I've made you angry," she said. "I'm sorry."

He found that he had taken her hand and was looking at it. The words
he used in describing it were these: "It was small, soft and warm,
Roger, and seemed alive with vitality, but it was timid, too, like a
young thrush just fallen from its nest." So far as I could discover,
he didn't seem to know what to do with her hand, and before he decided
anything she had withdrawn it abruptly and was turning away.

"I'm going now," she said calmly. "But I've enjoyed being here,
awfully. It was very nice of you not to--to throw me over the wall."

"I wouldn't have, really," he protested.

"But you might have had me arrested, which would have been worse." She
opened her tin box. "It's your butterfly, of course. You can have it,
if you like."

"Oh, I wouldn't take it for anything. Besides, that's no good."

"No good?"

"No, common. I've got loads of 'em."

Her nose wrinkled and then she smiled.

"Oh, well, I'll keep it as a souvenir of our acquaintance. Good-by,
Jerry." She smiled.

"Good-by, Una. I'm sorry--" he paused.

"For what?"

"If I was cross--"

"But you weren't. I shouldn't have laughed."

"I think I like you better when you laugh than when--when you're
'bottled up'."

"But I mustn't laugh at _you_. I didn't mean to. I just--couldn't
help. You've forgiven me, haven't you?"

"Of course."

She had taken up her hat and now walked away upstream. Jerry followed.

"Will you really come next year?" he asked. "I--I should like to show
you my specimens."

"Next year! Next year is a long way off. You know, I don't belong
here. I'm only visiting."

"Oh!"

She clambered down into the bed of the stream toward the iron railing.
Two of the bars, as he could now see, were bent inward at the bottom.

When she reached the railing she turned and flashed a smile up at him.

"You'd better tell Roger about the broken fence."

"Why?"

She thrust her net and tin box through the bars and then slipped
quickly through the opening.

"Why?" he repeated.

She stood upright and laughed.

"I might come in again."

Jerry, I think, must have stood looking down at her wistfully. I
cannot believe that the psychology of sex made any matter here. Youth
merely responded wordlessly to youth. Had she been a boy it would have
been the same. But the girl was clever.

"I think I will," she said gayly. "It looks very pretty from out
here."

"I--I can't invite you," said Jerry. "I should like to, but I--I
can't."

"I could come without being invited," she laughed.

"But you wouldn't, would you?"

"I might. I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"No," he laughed.

"Then I don't see what harm it would do. I'm coming."

No reply.

"I'm coming tomorrow."

No reply. This was really stoical of Jerry.

"And Jerry--" she called.

"Yes, Una--"

"I think you're--you're _sweet_."

There was a rustle among the leaves and she was gone.

Thus did the serpent enter our garden.




CHAPTER V

THE MINX RETURNS


That afternoon when Jerry returned to the Manor he gave me a
superficial account of the adventure--so superficial and told with
such carelessness that I was not really alarmed. The second
conversation in the evening after dinner aroused my curiosity but not
my suspicion. I was not in the habit of mistrusting Jerry. The
intrusion of the stranger was an accident, not likely to occur again.
It was only after our discussion had taken many turns and curiously
enough had always come back to the pert intruder that I realized that
Jerry's interest had really been aroused. Late at night over our
evening reading the boy made the comments upon the visitor's
appearance, her voice and the texture of her skin. He had been quite
free in his opinions, favorable and unfavorable alike, and it was this
very frankness which had disarmed me. The incident, as far as Jerry's
story went, ended when the visitor crawled under the railing. I am not
sure what motive was in his mind, but the events which followed lend
strong color to the presumption that Jerry believed the girl when she
said that she was coming back and that at the very time he was
speaking to me he intended to meet her when she came.

I had decided to treat the incident lightly, trusting to the
well-ordered habits of Jerry's life and the number of his daily
interests to put the visitor out of his mind. I did not even warn him,
as I should have done had I realized the imminence of danger or the
necessity of keeping to the letter as well as the spirit of John
Benham's definite instruction, for this I thought might lay undue
stress upon the matter. And in the course of the morning, nothing
further having been said, I was lulled into a sense of security.

In the afternoon Bishop Berkeley's book called me again and it was not
until late that I realized that the boy had been gone from the house
for four hours. His rod, creel and fly-book were missing from their
accustomed places but even then I suspected nothing. It was not until
the approach of the dinner hour when, Jerry not having returned, I
began to think of yesterday's visitor.

After waiting dinner for awhile, I dined alone, expecting every minute
to hear the sound of his step in the hall or his cheery greeting but
there was no sign of him and I guessed the truth. The minx had come in
again and Jerry was with her.

The events which followed were the first that cast the slightest
shadow over our friendship, a shadow which was not to pass, for, from
the day when Eve entered our garden, Jerry was changed. It wasn't that
he loved me any the less or I him. It was merely that his attitude
toward life and toward my point of view had shifted. He had begun to
doubt my infallibility.

It was this indefinable difference in our relations which delayed
Jerry's confession, and not until some days later did he tell me how
it all happened. He didn't think she would really come back, he said,
and I chose at the time not to doubt him, but the fact was that he
made his way directly upstream after leaving the house, and catching
no fish, sat down on a rock near the iron grille. That the girl
returned was not Jerry's fault, he said, because he didn't ask her to.
But the fact that he was there awaiting her when she arrived shows
that the wish was the father to the thought with Jerry. He had been
sitting there alone fifteen or twenty minutes "listening for bird
calls," as he explained it and had already identified twenty distinct
notes when he heard the twenty-first.

It was human. "Hello, Jerry," it said.

It came from the iron railing, behind which the female Una was
standing, grinning at him. He got up and walked toward her.

"Hello!" he returned.

"You didn't think I'd come, did you, Jerry?" she asked, though how she
could have arrived at that conclusion with the boy sitting there
waiting for her is more than I can imagine.

"No, I didn't," he replied, already learning to prevaricate with calm
assurance. "Are you coming in?"

"I will if you ask me to."

"I can't do that," he laughed. "You know the rules. But I don't see
what I could do to stop you."

"_Please_ invite me, Jerry."

"No, I won't invite you. But I won't put you out if you come."

"_Please!_"

"Why do you insist?"

"Because--I think you ought to, you know. Just to make me feel
comfortable."

"You seemed very comfortable yesterday."

"I think you're horrid."

"Horrid! Because I won't break my promise?"

"But you've made no promise."

"It's understood. See here. I'll turn my back and walk away. If you
come in it's not my fault."

"You needn't bother. I'm not coming." She turned and made as though to
go.

"Una," he called. "_Please._ Come in."

She reappeared miraculously, her vanity appeased by Jerry's downfall,
bobbed through the bent irons, and rose smiling decorously as Eve must
have smiled when she watched Adam first bite the apple.

"Thanks," she laughed, clambering up the rocks. "It's awfully nice of
you. I knew you would. I couldn't have come else."

"It doesn't really make much difference, I suppose," said Jerry
dubiously.

"What doesn't?"

"Whether I ask you or whether you just come."

"I wouldn't have come if you hadn't."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. I was just passing this way and I saw you sitting here. I
hadn't the slightest intention of coming in. Of course, when you
_invited_ me, that made things different."

He laughed and motioned to a rock upon which she sank.

"Tell me," he said, "how you happen to be up here in the mountains
alone. You don't belong around here. You didn't know about the wall,
or about me, did you?"

"Of course not; not yesterday. But I do now. I asked last night."

"Who did you ask?"

"The people I'm staying with."

"And what did they tell you?"

"They weren't very polite. It doesn't do to ignore one's neighbors.
They said you were a freak."

"What's a freak?"

"Something strange, unnatural."

"And do you think I'm strange or unnatural?" he asked soberly.

She looked at him and laughed.

"Unnatural! If nature is unnatural."

"What else do they say?" Jerry asked after a thoughtful pause.

"That your precious Roger is a dealer in magic and spells; that you've
already learned flying on a broomstick and practice it on nights when
the moon is full; that you're hideously ugly; that you're wonderfully
beautiful; that you live in a tree; that you sleep in a coffin; that
you're digging for gold; that you've found the recipe for diamonds;
that you've--"

"Now you're making fun of me," he laughed as she paused for lack of
breath.

"I'm not. If there's anything that you are or aren't that I haven't
heard, I can't imagine what it is. In other words, Jerry, you're the
mystery of the county. Aren't you glad?"

"Glad? Of course not. It's all such utter rot."

"Of course. But doesn't it make you _feel_ mysterious?"

"Not a bit."

"Doesn't it ever occur to you how important a person you are?"

"How--important?"

"To begin with, of course, you're fabulously wealthy. You knew that,
didn't you?"

"Oh, I suppose I've got some money, but I don't let it worry me."

"Do you know how much?"

"No, I haven't the slightest idea."

"Not that you've got millions--_millions_!"

"If my millions are as impalpable as my broomstick they won't hurt me
much," he laughed. And then soberly: "Say, Una, you seem to know a lot
more about me than I know about myself."

"I think I do," she returned. "For instance, of course, you couldn't
guess that half the match-making mammas of the county are already
setting their caps for you."

He looked bewildered at that, I'm sure.

"Do you know," he said, "that I haven't the slightest idea what you're
talking about."

"Of course," she laughed. "I forgot. They want to marry you to their
daughters."

"Marry! Me! You're joking."

I think he must have seemed really alarmed.

"I'm not. The fat, the small, the lean and the tall. They're all after
you. The moment you poke your nose outside the gate next year, they're
all going to pounce on you and try to carry you off."

"But I can't marry them all," he said aghast. "Besides I don't want
to marry anybody. And I'm not going to."

She couldn't restrain herself now and burst into wild peals of
merriment, while Jerry watched her, uncertain whether to be angry or
amused. At last he decided to smile.

"You seem to have a lot of fun with me, Una, don't you?"

"I don't mean to. But the picture of you trying to escape the
engulfing flood of mammas is too much. I've got to laugh, Jerry. I
can't help it."

"Laugh, then. I don't think it's so funny, though."

"But it is. Because I'm sure you'd be too polite to refuse them--any
of them."

"Polite! I won't be polite. Just because I'm nice to you isn't any
sign. I--I'll send 'em all packing. You'll see."

"Oh, you're brave enough now, but wait--wait!" She bent over, clasping
her knees, still shaking with merriment.

"Why, Jerry, you couldn't be impolite to a woman any more than you
could _fly_. You'd do just whatever she said."

"I wouldn't. They're idiots, the lot of 'em. What's the use? What do
girls want to get married for, anyway?"

She glanced up at him quickly. Then at the glimpse she had of Jerry's
sober profile her wide gaze dulled and then sought the earth before
her. It was true then what she believed of him. A child--this gorgeous
creature that shaved its face!

"I suppose it's because they--they haven't anything else to do," she
stammered.

"There's plenty for every woman to do without marrying, or there ought
to be. They can work like men, or clean their houses, or raise their
children."

At this point the girl was seized with a sudden fit of coughing and
her face was purple.

"What's the matter?"

"I--I just swallowed the wrong way," she gasped.

"Here, I'll pat you on the back. All right now?"

"Y-yes, better, thanks." But she held her fingers before her eyes and
still struggled for breath. In a moment when she raised her head,
there were traces of a smile, but she was quite composed.

"Then you--you don't believe in marriage as an institution?" she asked
with some hesitation.

"No. I can't see the use of it. We're all animals like the wild folk,
the beasts of the field, the birds. They get along all right."

"Birds mate, don't they?" she put in.

"Oh, yes, but they don't need a minister to mate 'em. They just hop
about together a bit and then start their nest. It's simple as rolling
off a log."

"That's what humans do, as you say; they just hop about a bit and then
get married."

"But marriage doesn't make 'em any happier, does it? I'm sure I
wouldn't want to be tied down to one woman as long as I lived. Suppose
I changed my mind or suppose she did."

"You wouldn't change your mind if you loved a woman."

"Love!" he sneered. "There you go. I thought you'd say that."

"You don't believe in love, then?" she asked.

"It seems to me that there's a lot of sentimental rubbish written
about it. What's the use of talking so much about a thing that's as
plain as the nose on your face? Love means loyalty, friendship, honor
and everything that's fine, but when the classic poets begin writing
reams of rot about it, it's time--it's time somebody was sensible."

"Poor Jerry," she laughed. "I'm so sorry for you."

"Why?"

"Because when you fall, you're going to fall so very hard."

"How--fall?"

"Fall in love. You will, some day. Everybody does. It's as sure as
death or taxes."

"Everybody! _You_ haven't, have you?"

"Oh, dear, no. Not yet. But I suppose I shall some day."

Jerry regarded her in silence for a moment.

"I didn't think you were a bit slushy."

"I'm _not_ slushy," indignantly. "I _hate_ slushy people. Where did
you get that word?"

"Roger. He hates 'em too."

"Your Roger doesn't like women, does he?"

"No. He's very wise, Roger is. But sometimes I think he's prejudiced.
I'd like you to know Roger, I really would."

She gazed straight before her for a moment deliberating and then:

"I hope you don't mind if I say so, but I think your Roger must be a
good deal of a fossil."

"A fossil. Now see here, Una--I can't have you talking about Roger
like that."

"He is. I'm sure of it. All theorists are."

"He's not. He's the broadest fellow you ever knew."

"Nobody's broad who ignores the existence of woman," she returned
hotly. "It's sinful--that sort of philosophy. It's against nature.
We're here--millions of us, working as hard as men do, earning our own
way in the world, active, live intelligences, writing books, nursing
in hospitals, cleaning the plague-spots out of the cities, influencing
in a thousand ways the uplift of that coarser brute man and besides
all this practicing a thousand acts of self-abnegation in the home.
Keeping man's house, cooking his food, bearing his ch--"

She stopped abruptly and bit her lip.

"Bearing his--what?" asked Jerry.

"Burdens," she blurted out. "Burdens--all sorts of burdens," she
finished weakly.

"I suppose there _are_ things that women can do," said Jerry after a
moment. "Of course, I don't know much about it. But--"

"Well, it's time you did," she broke in again. "It may be beautiful
here--inside these walls--an unbroken idyl of peace and contentment,
but it isn't life. It's just existence, that's all. If I were a man,
I'd want to do a man's work in the world. I wouldn't want to miss an
hour of it, childhood, boyhood or manhood. I'd want to meet my
temptations and conquer them. It's selfish, the way you live, unreal,
cowardly."

"See here, Una--"

"I mean it. You've got me started and I can't help it. If I say
anything that hurts, you'll have to put me out. But I'm going to tell
you what I think."

"You're rather bewildering. But I'm not a coward. I don't want you to
say that. If you were a man, I'd give you a thrashing," he said
quietly.

Their glances must have flashed fire. Jerry's face was red, I'm sure,
and his fingers were twitching to get hold of something, but the girl
didn't flinch. Jerry told me afterward that he found his anger
softening strangely as he looked at her and in a moment they were both
smiling. The girl spoke first.

"I've gone too far, Jerry. Forgive me."

"Of course," he said awkwardly. "I suppose you've got a right to your
opinions. But it isn't very pleasant to be told that one's life is a
failure."

"I didn't say that," she put in quickly. "You haven't failed, of
course. You've missed something, but you've gained something too." Her
words trailed slowly again and her gaze sought the deep woods. "Yes,"
she repeated softly and thoughtfully, "I'm very sure you've gained
something."

"What have I gained?"

There was a long pause before she replied.

"Simplicity," she said carefully. "Life, after all, nowadays, is so
very complex," she sighed.

But when he questioned as to what she meant, she waved him off. "No,
I've said enough. I didn't intend to. Don't let's talk any more about
what I think. Let's talk about what _you_ think, what you read, what
you do. People say you live in the woods most of the time--do you?
Where? How?"

"In a cabin. We built it. Would you like to see it? It's not far. I'll
make you a cup of tea."

As the reader will perceive, in these two conversations, lasting
perhaps two hours, this slip of a girl, in mere idle curiosity, had
touched with her silly chatter the vital, the vulnerable points of
Jerry's philosophy of life. Fate had not been fair to me or with him.
Less than a year; remained of Jerry's period of probation. In December
the boy was to go out into the world. And through an unfortunate
accident due to a broken iron, a chaos of half-baked ideas had come
pouring through the breach. If I said that my labors of ten years had
been useless or that the fruition of John Benham's ideals for his son
were still in doubt I should be putting the matter too strongly, but I
have no hesitancy in confessing that the appearance of the girl had at
least put them in jeopardy. She had turned his mind into a direction
which I had carefully avoided. He must think now and ask questions
that I could not be ready to answer. By this time it must be well
understood that I have no love for women, but I will do this girl the
credit of saying that in a general way she saw fit to respect Jerry's
artlessness. I think that the sex instinct, so ready with its
antagonisms, its insinuations, its alternate attacks and defenses, was
atrophied as in the presence of a phenomenon. She was modern enough,
God knows, but she had some delicacy at least and was impotent before
the splendor of Jerry's innocence.

What they said on the way to the cabin must have been unimportant. I
suppose Jerry told her about his routine at the Manor and something of
what I had taught him of woodcraft, but I think that she was very
reticent in speaking of herself. No doubt her unceremonious visit to
our domain and the unusual intimacy of their conversation had made it
seem necessary to her to preserve her incognito, or perhaps it was
coquetry, which no woman, however placed, is quite without. As far as
I have been able to learn, they were as two children, the girl's mind
as well as her actions, in spite of her sophistication, reflecting the
artlessness of her companion. The damage that she had done, as I was
afterwards to discover, was mainly by the force of suggestion. She
assumed the absurd premises of modernity, drew her own preposterous
conclusions and Jerry drank them in, absorbed them as he did all
information, like a sponge.




CHAPTER VI

THE CABIN


Having decided upon a course of action, I lost no time in setting
forth, following the Sweetwater to the wall and then, not finding
Jerry, making as though by instinct for the cabin. Perhaps I may be
pardoned for approaching the place with cautious footsteps. I was
justified, I think, by the anxiety of the moment and the fear of a
damage that might be irreparable. I am sure that the somber shade of
old John Benham guided me upon my way and made light my footsteps as I
crept through the bushes and peered through the window of the cabin.

There upon the floor, before the hearth, in which some fagots were
burning, sat Jerry and the minx, as thick as thieves, oblivious of the
fall of night, wrapped in their own conversation and in themselves. I
am willing to admit that the girl was pretty, though from the glimpses
I had of it, her profile gave no suggestion of the classical ideals of
beauty, for her nose made a short line far from regular and her hair,
though carelessly dressed, was worn, in some absurd modern fashion
with which I was unfamiliar. And yet in a general way I may say that
there seemed to be no doubt as to her comeliness. She was quite small
and crouched as she was upon the floor before the fire she even seemed
childish--quite too unimportant a creature to have made such a
hullabaloo in this small world of ours.

Nevertheless I felt justified in keeping silence and even in listening
to their conversation.

"You didn't mean it," I heard Jerry ask, "about all those girls'
mothers, did you?"

She laughed.

"Of course I did. You're a catch, you know."

"You mean, they want to catch _me_? Nonsense. I don't believe you."

"It's true. You're too rich to escape."

"If that's the way marriage is made I don't think much of it."

"It isn't always like that." She smiled. "People aren't all as rich as
you are."

"It's queer," he said after a pause. "I've never thought of myself as
being different from other people. If money makes one man more
desirable than another then money sets false standards of judgment.
The people here I like for what they are, not for what they have.
That's all wrong somehow, Una. It makes me think crooked."

"I suppose I'm talking too much. You don't have to believe what I
say," she said slowly.

"But I want to know and I want you to talk. You've stirred something
deep in me. You somehow make me think I've been looking at everything
sideways without being able to walk around it. Roger knows what he's
about, of course, and I suppose he has reasons of his own, but I'm a
not a child any longer. And if he does not care to tell me the whole
truth, I've got to find out things for myself from somebody else."
And then, turning upon her suddenly: "You aren't lying to me, are
you?"

"Do you think I would?" she asked.

"No, I don't. But I thought you might say queer things, just as a
joke."

She shook her head. "No," she said calmly. "I laughed a little at
first, because I didn't understand, but I'm quite serious now."

"You said Roger was a fossil. I know what a fossil is. That wasn't
kind."

"But it's true," she repeated warmly. "He might keep things from you,
but he has no right to misrepresent women."

"_Are_ women as fine as men?" he asked.

She looked around at him.

"Why shouldn't they be? I think they're finer. Your Roger wouldn't
agree with me. I've told you the kind of things they do--that men
can't and won't do. You may believe me or not as you choose. Some day
you'll find out."

"But I want to find out now. I want to find out everything."

She smiled into the fire.

"That's a great deal, isn't it?" she said.

He went on soberly:

"You see, I don't want you to think I'm an idiot and I don't want you
to think Roger is narrow-minded. If you only knew him--"

"I'm sure he has a long nose, sandy hair, grayish? watery eyes and
spectacles."

"There. I knew you hadn't a notion of him. He's nothing like that."

"Well, what _is_ he like?"

"Why, I've never thought. But he isn't like that. He has a beautiful
mind. I think that is what matters more than anything. What do looks
count for? I would rather think fine thoughts than be the handsomest
person in the world."

He might have been the handsomest person in the world but he wouldn't
have been aware of it. Through the window I saw the girl search his
bent head quickly and then peer into the fire smiling. But Jerry did
not know what she was thinking about and went on slowly:

"You've said some things that make me believe I ought to know more
about women and their work. I didn't know that they ever did the sort
of things you tell me of. It's strange I don't know, but I've always
been pretty busy in here and I've never really thought much about
them. What did you mean by 'the plague-spots of the cities'?" he
asked. "Surely there can be no such a disease as the plague in a
modern city when science has made such progress."

She smiled.

"Moral plague-spots, Jerry, civic sores." She paused.

"I don't understand."

"You will in time. The world isn't all as beautiful as you think it
is. There are men and women with diseased minds, diseased bodies that
no medicine can cure. There are hospitals and homes for them, but
there never seems to be enough money or skill or civic righteousness
to make such people well."

"How do you know all this?" he asked in wonder.

"I've always been interested in social problems. I can't abide being
idle."

"Social problems! And do you mean that you go among these diseased
people and try to make them well?"

She nodded.

"I begin to understand," he said slowly, "why you said you thought I
wasn't doing my work in the world. It's true. I've been sheltered from
evil. Things have been made easy for me. And you"--he burst forth
admiringly--"I think you're very wonderful. Perhaps some day I can
help. You'll let me help, won't you?"

"Oh, would you, Jerry?" she cried.

"I don't see any reason why I shouldn't. I shall be twenty-one in
December. I can do what I please. The executors want to make me a
business man--to go to board meetings and help run some companies my
money is in. But I don't want to. Finance makes my head tired. I've
been working at it some. Seems like awful rubbish to me. They want me
to make a lot more money. I suppose I've got enough to get along on. I
don't want any more than I've got. I'd much rather do something
useful."

She laughed.

"Useful! I'm afraid your executors have different ideals of utility."

Jerry sighed.

"Of course, I've got to go through with the thing for awhile. But
I--I'd rather give you my money to cure the plague spots."

"Not all of it, Jerry," she cried, "but would you, some of it? Just a
very little?"

"Of course--as much as you like. You can do a lot more with it than I
can."

In my hiding place, I didn't know whether to be alarmed or amused. She
had done well. Jerry was already giving her his twenty millions. She
was a capital missionary. It seemed about time I made my entrance, so
I coughed, then walked through the door and faced them.

"I beg pardon for intruding," I said dryly, "but the fact is that it's
almost if not quite bedtime."

They got to their feet in some haste, Jerry red as a turkey-cock, the
girl, I think, a little pale.

"Is it--_is_ it Roger?" stammered Jerry. "I hadn't the slightest
notion--" And from his appearance I could readily believe him. "Is it
dinner--bedtime? Why, of course, it _must_ be." He shuffled his feet
awkwardly and looked from me to the girl. "This is--Una, Roger. We've
been talking."

"So I should suppose," I remarked, aware of the cool and rather
contemptuous glances that the young lady was sending in my direction.
"It's too bad that I interrupted. I hope that Miss--er--"

"Smith," sniffed the girl.

"Quite so. I hope that Miss Smith will forgive me. We are a little
unused to visitors and of course--"

"I'm going at once," she said, moving a step or two, but seeing that I
stood in the door, hesitated.

"I don't want you to go yet, please," said Jerry, recovering his
coolness amazingly. "I want you and Roger to know each other. I've
been telling her all about us, Roger. She's awfully interested. She
just happened in, you know. It's all been very agreeable."

"I don't doubt it in the least," I remarked. "Of course, you have
settled all the affairs of the nations between you."

"Oh, not quite that," laughed Jerry uneasily. "But we did have a talk,
didn't we, Una?"

"I'm sure I--I hadn't the slightest idea how late it was," said the
girl stiffly, fingering at her hair.

"Time passes so quickly when one is amused or interested," I said.

"I was thinking, Roger, how nice it would be if Una would come to
dinner at the Manor."

"Oh, no, thanks--not now. I must be going."

"Couldn't you? I'll show you my specimens. Then we could send you on
in the machine afterwards."

"No--no, thanks."

"Doubtless the friends of Miss--er--Miss Smith will be worried about
her."

She shot a malevolent glance at me.

"Not at all. I'm accustomed to doing exactly as I please."

"But I couldn't think of letting you go through the forest alone. It's
fully half a mile beyond the wall to the highroad."

"Thanks, but I won't bother you at all. If you'll let me pass--"

But Jerry had caught her by the arm.

"Roger's right," he said quickly. "I didn't think. Of course you can't
go alone. I--"

"If you'll leave it to me, Jerry, I'll see that the lady reaches the
highroad in safety. I would suggest that you go at once to the house.
I will join you later."

"But--"

"Will you do as I ask?"

Our glances met in a level gaze. There was a moment of rebellion in
Jerry's, but it flickered out.

"I think I know best, Jerry," I said quietly.

"Yes, but I don't want her to think--"

"Please don't worry about me," said the girl. "I'm accustomed to
looking out for myself." She brushed by me quickly and before I could
restrain her, was merged into the shadows of the trees. But Jerry was
after her in a hurry while I followed.

"Please go with Roger," I heard Jerry say when I came up.

"I don't need a _keeper_!" she flared at him.

"Una!"

"Go, Jerry," I said again.

He paused but the girl went on, so I followed quickly, and wisely, it
seemed, for she wandered blindly and would have been lost in a moment.

"If you'll follow me," I ventured, "you will find the way out much
more quickly. Otherwise you will probably scratch your face."

I'm sure by the sound of her feet in the dry leaves and her hurried
breathing behind me that she would have liked to scratch _my_ face.
But she didn't. I think she realized for the first time that without
my guidance she would probably spend the rest of the night in the
woods.

"I'm sorry to have been obliged to be so unceremonious," I said at
last over my shoulder. No reply. But I wasn't in the least daunted. I
had made up my mind that she shouldn't venture in again.

"It's rather lucky you weren't seen by any of the gamekeepers. You
might have spent the night in the lockup."

Still no reply.

"You see, the trespass rules here are very strictly enforced. It's too
bad you didn't know about them. They've been in force for ten years.
This is the first time, I think, that a woman has been inside the
wall."

"I--I'm a stranger," she gasped. "I'm only visiting here."

"Of course, that explains it. I couldn't imagine your having ventured
in otherwise."

We had come to an opening where the trail was wider and I slowed my
pace so that in a moment she walked beside me. She forged ahead at
once, but I kept my place.

"Since you're interested in sociological questions, Miss--er--Smith,
perhaps--"

"You listened?" she asked scornfully.

"I did," grimly. "I listened for at least ten minutes."

"I'm sure you're quite welcome," she gasped.

"Since you're interested in sociological questions," I repeated,
"perhaps you may be interested in educational ones."

"I'm not."

"That's not consistent, for sociological problems can hardly be solved
without the aid of--"

"Oh!" Her pent-up temper exploded. "I didn't come in here to--to
listen to a dissertation on--" Rage choked her and she couldn't go on.

"I should be very much interested to learn what you _did_ come in
for."

"You're a beast!" she flashed at me.

"Come now, you don't mean that. As a matter of fact, I'm merely a
mild-mannered person of studious instincts hired to carry out a most
valuable experiment in comparative psychology."

"I have no interest in your experiments."

"Or the object of them?" I put in quickly. She found that difficult to
answer.

"You must admit that my inquiry is natural," I went on suavely. "Since
Jerry has just promised to give you his entire fortune, it seems to me
only fair that his executors--"

"Will you be silent?" she cried, stopping suddenly. "It seems that I'm
at your mercy. You will at least have the decency to let me go in
peace."

She broke away, running aimlessly. I followed rapidly, my conscience
hurting, but my purpose relentless.

"This way," I said coolly. "You've left the trail."

"I don't care," she gasped. "Leave me."

"I can't do that. You see, I promised Jerry. But I will lead the way
if you like. The stream is not far."

I set out again and I heard her trudging behind me. If she had stuck
me in the back with a hatpin, I shouldn't have been surprised. But she
was more tractable now.

"How are you getting on?" I asked as I neared the Sweetwater. But she
wouldn't reply. Her sentiments toward me, I am sure, were too deep for
words.

"Where did you come in?" I asked again.

"The iron railing--at the stream," she mumbled.

"Oh! It must be repaired at once."

"You needn't bother," she said scornfully, "so far as I am concerned."

"That's very kind of you. Ah, here we are."

We went carefully over the rocks and in a short while the dim bulk of
the wall rose before us. I descended, preceding her, found the opening
and went through it.

"You're not going any further with me," she commanded in a suppressed
tone. "I forbid it."

I rose on the other side of the grille and dusted my knees.

"I should be sorry to disobey your commands," I said firmly, "but the
dangers of the woods at night--"

"Oh! How I abominate you!"

"Really? I am sorry."

But she followed me through the aperture and I led the way down a
path, which seemed fairly well worn, alongside the wall.

"Of course, your real name isn't Smith," I began again in a moment.
And then after waiting in vain for a reply: "Are you staying with the
Laidlaws? The Carews? The Van Wycks then? You won't tell me? Oh, very
well, I'll inquire."

My threat brought her to her senses.

"You wouldn't do that!" she said in an agonized tone, catching me by
the arm.

"I'm quite capable of it," I replied, stopping beside her.

"I--I beg of you not to do that."

"_Am_ I a beast?" I smiled.

"No, no--not a beast. I'm sorry."

"Why do you wish to remain unknown?"

"I--I had no business coming. No one knows. It was mere--mere feminine
curiosity." She turned away, "Does _that_ satisfy you?" she cried.

"I think it does," I said more gently. "And you'll not return?"

"No--no, never."

"Good. I ask no questions. You stay out. It's a bargain."

She led the way now silently, and I hurried after her, a little sorry
for my own part in the matter, but still jealous for our violated
sanctuary. She had force, this girl, and not a little courage. Modern
she was, if you like, but very spirited and human. When we reached the
highroad I paused.

"If you wish, I will go on with you."

"Our paths separate here."

I offered her my hand.

"Forgive me," I said gently. "I am only doing my duty."

But she turned quickly and in a moment was running down the road where
the night soon swallowed her.

Women are queer animals. She might at least have given me her hand.




CHAPTER VII

JACK BALLARD TAKES CHARGE


On my way back to the Manor house I thought deeply of a way to make
the best of the situation. That Jerry was a philosopher seemed for the
moment to be a matter of little importance, for the portion of his
conversation in the cabin which I had overheard was an indictment both
of my teaching and my integrity. His eyes, thanks to the gabble of
this mischievous visitor, were now open. He would want to know
everything and I found myself placed in the position of being obliged
to choose between a frankness which would be hazardous and a deception
which would be intolerable. The time had suddenly come for generous
revelations. I had labored all these years to bring Jerry to manhood,
armed with righteousness and a sound philosophy, equipment enough
according to my reading of his character and the meaning of life, to
make him impervious to all sophistry and all sin. The conversation
that I had overheard did nothing to weaken my faith in the Great
Experiment which in my heart I felt already to be an unqualified
success, but it notified me of the fact which had almost escaped me,
that Jerry was no longer a boy but a man in years as well as body and
intelligence and that his desire for worldly knowledge was not to be
thwarted.

And yet the prospect seemed far from pleasing to me. It was the
beginning of the end of our Utopia. Upon the threshold of the world
Jerry was eager for that which I had scorned. Our paths would
separate. The old relation would be no more.

I went home slowly and I think some sign of my weariness and
perplexity must have been marked upon my features as I entered the
hall where Jerry with sober countenance awaited me. There was nothing
for it but to talk the thing out. I did not upbraid him nor he me. We
understood each other too well for that.

Then followed the flood of eager questions from a mind topsy-turvy. I
answered him slowly, deliberately, and gave him in some detail his
father's thesis on education, explaining how and why I happened to be
in sympathy with it and pointing out by the results attained the
wisdom of our plans.

"Results!" he cried. "What results? In what respect is my education
better than another man's? I know my Latin, and my Greek, my French,
my German. I'm a good history scholar, and what you've taught me of
philosophy,--the inside of books--all of it. But life, Roger,--you've
starved me--starved me! If I were a babe in arms I couldn't know
less--"

"You'll know life in time, Jerry, see it through a finer prism."

"I want to see it as it is, in the raw, not beautiful when it is not
beautiful. I want the truth--all the truth, Roger, the rough and the
ugly where it _is_ rough and ugly. You say you've made me a man,
taught me to think fine thoughts, given me a good mind and a strong
body, but all the while you were sheltering me, saving me--from what?
What good are my mind and body if they aren't strong enough to be put
to the test of life and survive it?"

He was much agitated.

"I have no fear to put you to any test--today, tomorrow," I said
quietly.

"Then put me to it--out there." With a wave of his arm he cried: "I
must see for myself, think for myself."

"You shall, Jerry, soon. Will you be patient a little while longer?"

He controlled himself with an effort and bent forward in his chair,
bringing his head down into his hands.

"It's hard. I feel like a coward, a coward--not taking my share--"

"Ah," I said suddenly, "_she_ called you that?"

"Yes. If she had been a man I should have thrashed her. But in a
moment I knew that she had spoken the truth."

"But Jerry, a coward is one who is afraid. How could you be afraid of
something you didn't know about?"

"But I know now. She told me very little, Roger, but I've guessed the
rest."

He went on in this vein for awhile and at last grew calmer. And the
result of it all was a promise on my part to answer more frankly all
his questions, to subscribe to two newspapers and some magazines, and
to begin on the morrow a course of reading which would prepare the way
for his contact with the world. He seemed satisfied and at last went
to bed with his old cheery "Good night, Dry-as-dust."

After all, I had gotten out of it well enough. Only a few months
remained for him within the wall and with the exception of the
newspapers, my plans for him were really little changed. I may as well
confess at once that my delay in broadening his point of view was
selfish. I had made such a beautiful thing that I was as proud of it
as any painter of his masterpiece. Until the present moment I had been
true to my own ideals. What was to follow must be a concession to
convention.

But I entered frankly enough into the new scheme of things and set
Jerry a course in modern fiction in books carefully chosen and before
the summer was gone and the autumn far advanced Jerry had read at
least a shelf-full of volumes. He went through them avidly and asked
few questions. Love between the sexes he now accepted as a matter of
course, but he hadn't the slightest conception of what it meant and
told me so. He had passed the morbid age between boyhood and manhood,
his head in the air, his gaze upon the stars, and what he read now did
not trouble him.

And as the months flew by without the expected revelation, I breathed
more freely. His heart was so clean that the suggestion of forbidden
things made no impression upon it. He already accepted suffering, sin,
disease, as part of the lot of a too complex society, but he made few
comments upon his reading and these were perfunctory. He was so free
from guile that I actually believe he could have been given access to
any library without fear of contamination.

In November Jack Ballard arrived for a visit of a few days and
announced that his father had bought a house in New York which was to
be ready for occupancy after Jerry's birthday. As Jack is to occupy a
prominent place in these pages, I may as well announce at once that at
this time he had reached the age of thirty-five, had kept most of his
hair, was slightly inclined to corpulency, and wore gay cravats which
matched his handkerchiefs, shirts and socks, the "sartorial symphony,"
as he described it. He still kept office hours from two to three on
Thursdays and refused all efforts on the part of his father to make
him take life other than as a colossal joke. He had not married,
though I do not doubt that there were many who would have nabbed him
quickly enough.

In his previous visits to Horsham Manor Jack had, at no little cost,
repressed his speech into accord with my teachings, and Jerry was very
fond of him. They fished, swam and sparred by day, and in the evenings
Jack told stories of hunting in foreign countries to which Jerry
listened wide-eyed.

But now, it seemed, his visit had a purport. There was just a
suggestion of swagger in Jack's manner at the dinner table where, to
Jerry's surprise, he wore a jacket and a fluted shirt.

At the boy's comment, Jack inhaled deeply of his cigarette (another
operation which Jerry always regarded with a certain awe) and stated
the object of his visit, which was nothing less than that of
sartorially equipping Jerry for the fray.

"To be well-dressed, my boy," he said gayly, "is to show the finishing
touch of a perfect culture. Without well-fitting garments no man is
complete. I am going to clothe you, Jerry, from the skin out. That's
my privilege. I shall be the framemaker for Roger's _magnum opus_.
And not over my dead body shall you wear after December twelfth a
tartan-cravat." (Jerry fingered at the gay bit of ribbon at his neck.)
"If you will remember, our friend Ruskin said that the man who wears a
tartan-cravat will most surely be damned."

As you will observe. Jack Ballard exactly defined sophistication, root
and branch. But his sophistries were always colorful and ornamental
and of course Jerry laughed.

"I'll take your word for it, Uncle Jack," he said. "But you know I
rather like color."

"Of course, in a rainbow, my boy. But in a cravat--no! The cravat is
the chevron of gentility. You shall see. Symphonies in browns and
gray-greens! I'll make you a heart-breaker."

"Why do you put such rubbish in his head, Ballard?" I said testily.

"Because he's got quite enough essential matter there already," he
laughed. "For ten years you've been packing him with facts. I have a
feeling that if one only shook Jerry a little, he would disgorge them
all--dates of battles, maxims, memorabilia of all sorts, a
heterogeneous mess. He's full to the brim, I tell you, and ready to
explode. Suppose he did! How would you like to be hit in the midriff
by an apothegm of Cicero, or be hamstrung by the subjunctive
pluperfect of an irregular French verb?"

Jerry was laughing immoderately, though I admit such blackface
pleasantry appealed little to my sense of humor. But I found myself
smiling. "Surely you don't expect to avert this catastrophe by
providing Jerry with a new cravat?" I urged.

"That is precisely what I _do_ expect," he said. "You've had your
fling at him, Pope. I'm going to have mine. Tomorrow a tailor will
arrive, also a haberdasher and a bootmaker. Jerry will be measured
from top to toe. The mountain is coming to Mahomet."

"Let's be sure no mouse is born," I said dryly.

"Six feet two of country mouse," he roared. "Oh, Pope, don't you
worry. We'll show you a thing or two, won't we, Jerry?"

The tailor, the haberdasher and the bootmaker came, saw and measured,
while Jack sat in the background, with a sheaf of plates of men's
clothing in his lap, and gave directions. Jerry must have felt a great
deal like a fool during the operation for I'm sure he looked one. But
Ballard had his way and not until night did he leave us to peace and
our own devices.

The time for the boy's emergence approached, alas, too quickly. A
change had come over the spirit of Jerry's dreams. I saw that he was
eager to go. It seemed that he already stood on tiptoe peering forth,
eager, straining at his leash. And since he was no longer content at
Horsham Manor, I reasoned, with regret, that the sooner he went the
better. I had done all I could for him. His destiny was now in the lap
of the gods.

Everything had been carefully arranged. The Ballards, elder and
younger, were to take him to the new house in town where Christopher
would look after him. At first Jerry would not listen to the
arrangement. I had for so long been his guide and philosopher I must
continue his friend. He wanted me with him in New York. But to this I
demurred. Much as I disliked the thought of separation, I had made up
my mind that he must go alone, cut adrift from all moral support. I
had wished to go away, for having saved practically all my salary for
ten years I was now independent, but at Jerry's insistent pleading we
compromised. For the present I would stay on at the Manor and finish
my book.

Jerry's birthday dinner was an impressive affair. With the two
Ballards came the five solemn co-executors of John Benham's will--Mr.
Stewardson, Mr. da Costa, Mr. Wrenn, Mr. Walsenberg and Mr. Duhring.
And these, with Jerry, Radford, Flynn, the boxer, and myself made up
the company. Jerry had insisted on having Flynn and no amount of
urging could dissuade him. Flynn was his friend, he said, more his
friend than Mr. Wrenn, Mr. Duhring or indeed any of the others whom he
barely knew by sight. And so Flynn came.

The elders were solemn and significant, Jerry, at the head of the
table, wearing for the first time his new finery (under the hypnotism,
as he confessed in a whisper, of the vast expanse of white
shirt-front), trying to look as though he were enjoying himself.
Radford and I were mere onlookers. Flynn was acutely miserable. Had it
not been for Jack Ballard I fear the conversation would have
degenerated into a discussion of the merits and possibilities of
Jerry's many "companies." But every time that that danger threatened
the irrepressible Jack demolished it with an anecdote. He wasn't going
to have Jerry's bud nipped so early, as his own had been, by the frost
of finance. By the time we had reached the roast, and the champagne,
the plutocrats seemed to realize that the occasion was a birthday
party and not a board meeting.

Over the port there were speeches, toasts by the plutocrats, one by
one, to the newly risen Railroad King, while Jerry grasped the arms of
his chair, a ballet dancer's smile on his lips, trying to look happy.
But when Jack got up he laughed genuinely.

"Gentlemen, I've known our host of this evening almost since he was
born. I have watched with solicitude the rearing of this infant. I am
his fairy godfather. I got Canby. Thanks to my wisdom, Jerry has now
safely emerged from the baby diseases, and confronts the world in a
boiled shirt. He has kindly consented, I think, against the advice of
his tutor, to permit me to put the finishing touches on his education.

"Jerry has already been proposed at three excellent clubs, to two of
which he has been elected today. I have warned him against the
insidious cocktail and the deadly cigarette" (here Jack puffed at one
vigorously) "and have advised him that ladies were designed by their
Maker for purely ornamental purposes. I am not sure that he has taken
my word for it and will probably propose to verify my statement
according to his reading of aesthetics. I wish him all success in the
purely scientific side of his investigations.

"As to his career, gentlemen, I warn you that he will choose it for
himself. If you don't believe me, I will ask you carefully to examine
the breadth and squareness of his chin. In proposing Jerry Benham's
health, a superfluous proceeding at the best, I don't think I can pay
him a higher tribute than in saying that in addition to being both a
scholar and a gentleman, he is also the best heavyweight boxer I have
ever seen, in the ring or out of it, and that anyone who expects to
make him do anything he does not want to do, will be a subject for
commiseration--or the coroner. Gentlemen, Jerry Benham!"

Having discharged this bombshell into the ranks of the plutocrats,
Jack sat down. Of course, everybody laughed, and while they were
laughing Flynn awkwardly got up, perspiring profusely, first shooting
his cuffs and then fingering at his neckband. "Misther Ballard's
right, gents. He's right. I don't know much about books, but if
Masther Jerry's as good at edjication as he is wid his fists, then all
I've got to say is that he's _some_ perfessor. I've been workin' wid
him on an' off these four year an' all I'd loike to say to you, gents,
is just this: Don't crowd him, _don't crowd him_, gents, because he's
got an uppercut like a ton o' coal."

Flynn sat down amid applause and Jerry rose, flushing happily. I think
what Flynn had said pleased him more than all that had preceded it.

"My friends," he said quietly, "I am glad to see you here and hope
that I may prove worthy of your good opinions. I'm grateful to you and
Mr. Ballard, Mr. Stewardson, Mr. da Costa, Mr. Walsenberg, Mr. Wrenn
and Mr. Duhring for all that you've done for me in here, but I want
you all to know that it's to Roger Canby that I owe my greatest debt,
to Roger Canby, my tutor, brother, mother, father,--friend."

They wanted me to speak. I could not. But Jerry understood.

In the library after dinner I overheard part of a conversation
between Ballard the elder and Mr. Duhring.

"What's all this rubbish of Jack's, Harry, about Jerry having a square
chin. Do you think he'll be difficult to manage?"

Henry Ballard smiled.

"Jack can't resist his little joke. I'm afraid I've spoiled that boy
outrageously."

"Yes, I rather think you have," said the other dryly.




CHAPTER VIII

JERRY EMERGES


In hearing from Jack Ballard's own lips the story of Jerry Benham's
first appearance in Broadway I was forcibly reminded of the opening
cantos of the Divine Comedy where Dante follows the shade of Virgil
into the abyss of hell. I had not let Jerry know of my presence in New
York, for I believed that he would have wanted me with him and did not
care to be placed in a position to refuse him. Indeed I can give no
reason for my visit except the very plausible one that, my work going
badly, I felt the need of a change. Jack was much amused at my sudden
appearance one morning at his apartments, but welcomed me warmly
enough, giving the pledge of secrecy I demanded.

"Oh, it's been perfectly ripping," he said, when we were seated,
fairly bubbling over with delectable reminiscences. "He's like a
newly-hatched chicken, all fluffy and clean, a little batty-eyed and
groggy but intensely curious about everything."

"Has he asked any questions?"

"Millions of 'em, like balls from a Roman candle. He shoots 'em at
every angle and some of 'em hit."

"You've taken him about?" I asked.

"Yes, but he doesn't exactly comprehend the meaning and purposes of
his clubs. I took him in one of them, the most select, on several
afternoons. The same fellows were always sitting around a window
looking out, others, older ones, were asleep in armchairs. I didn't
offer him anything to drink and we sat there, watching the chaps in
the window and listening to their talk. The conversation was not
brilliant."

"'Do these gentlemen do this all the time?' asked Jerry softly.

"'Yes, almost all the time.'

"'Don't they ever get tired of looking out of the window?'

"'They don't seem to. It's restful to watch other people working.'

"'But don't they _do_ anything else?'

"'Not much. They're rich.'

"'And the others, the old gentlemen asleep in the chairs, are they
rich too?'

"'Yes, rich too, but tired.'

"'Tired of being rich?'

"'Perhaps.'

"'I see.'

"He was quiet for a long while and then: 'What a horrible waste of
opportunity!'

"I thought this was the psychological moment to put in my brief for
the governor.

"'It certainly is. Luckily you've got a career waiting for you.'

"'But if riches only lead to this, Uncle Jack, I'm pretty sure I'd
much rather be poor.'

"'There isn't much chance of your getting _that_ wish,' I laughed.

"'Well, I could give my money away,' he said. I looked at him
quickly, for his tone was very earnest.

"'That won't do, my boy. Indiscriminate giving may be very injurious.'

"'I can't understand that.'

"A few nights later a beggar touched his arm as he passed. The man
said he was hungry and looked it. Jerry gave him his pocketbook. The
fellow glanced at the pocketbook and then at Jerry as though he
thought the boy was crazy and bolted without a word. Jerry watched him
out of sight. 'Might at least have said "Thank you,"' he murmured. He
didn't speak of giving away money for awhile.

"A night or two later he had an experience of another sort. It was
after the theater, the least noxious play I could discover on the
bills. Two women met us in a dark cross street. I saw Jerry stop and
stare at one of them. That was unusual. I urged him to go on but he
stopped and listened.

"'In an awful hurry, ain't you, dearie?' one of the girls asked.

"'Why, no, not at all,' says Jerry, politely taking off his hat. And
then as her appellation struck him: 'I think you must have mistaken me
for someone else.'

"The girl was a little puzzled.

"'Aw, yer stringin' me,' she said.

"'Stringing?' asked Jerry.

"'Cut it out. You know what I mean well enough'. Come along,' and she
moved a pace away.

"Jerry followed. 'I'd be glad to come if I can be of any assistance.'

"'Assistance,' laughed the girl.

"'Did you hear that, Geraldine?'

"And with that they both burst into roars of laughter.

"Jerry's ignorance of things made him keenly sensitive to ridicule.

"'I think you're very impolite,' he said with dignity.

"'Aw, go chase yourself,' said Geraldine and vanished into the shadows
with her companion.

"That interview took a lot of explaining. In fact, all the way to
Jerry's house the mystery of the girls' behavior hung like a cloud
over him. 'Do you know, Jack,' he said as we were parting, 'I think
that girl was mad--quite mad.'"

"Couldn't you have prevented that meeting?" I asked.

"I didn't try. Besides, Jerry is a persistent chap. When I asked him
why he stopped, he said it was because the girl looked like somebody
he was hunting for."

"Who? I can't imagine."

"He said her name was Una Smith."

"Oh, yes. The minx who slipped into Horsham Manor. I told you about
her. But her name isn't Smith."

"Jerry has been looking for her." He laughed. "He thought at first, he
said, he'd see her on the street, but was surprised to find the city
so large. He was a little disappointed. But I think he's forgotten.
There's safety in numbers."

"Then he doesn't know anything yet?"

"Bless your heart! I'd no more think of teaching Jerry filth than I
would my own sister. But by the Lord Harry, he's an inquisitive cuss.
He's learning that life isn't all beer and skittles, has felt the
skinny talons of poverty on his elbow and has heard a truck-driver
swear in the approved New York manner. That in itself was a liberal
education. The worst of it was that the chap happened to be swearing
at Jerry."

He chuckled at the memory.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Jerry jumped over the wheel, caught the man by the collar of his coat
and threw him into the street. He was a big 'un too."

Ballard lingered provokingly in the narrative, which was interesting
me greatly.

"And then?" I asked.

"The fellow rose, covered with slime, looking vicious.

"'What did you mean taking God's name in vain?' says Jerry sternly.

"'I'll show you, you--'

"He came in with a rush, grimy fists flying. Jerry feinted just once,
side-stepped and caught him prettily on the point of the jaw. The blow
was beautifully timed, and the fellow dropped like a log."

"And then?"

"A crowd was gathering and so we ducked--I slipped Jerry into a hotel
entrance near by and out we went by another way." Ballard paused in
the act of lighting a cigarette. "You see, he's already giving battle
to society. A walk abroad with Jerry is an adventure which may end in
metaphysics or the jail. But it won't do, Roger, tilting at wind-mills
like that. He can't make New York like Horsham Manor--at least not all
at once."

"He'd try that if he could," I laughed.

"It will be a slow business, I'm afraid. New York is quite contented
to be exactly what she is. And the women!" He emitted a tenuous
whistle. And then, "I don't suppose it ever occurred to you, Pope,
that all these years you've been sheltering the Apollo Belvedere."

"He _is_ good looking. Thank God he doesn't know it."

"He will in time. It's really a shame the way the women stare at him
on the street. He's never through blushing when he isn't asking
questions.

"'What do those women look at me for?' he asks. 'Nothing queer about
me, is there?'

"'Oh, no,' I reply. 'They look at everybody like that. It's a
characteristic of the sex, curiosity. You don't mind, do you?'

"'Oh, I suppose not. I rather like it when the pretty ones do. How red
their cheeks are and their lips! It must be much more healthful in the
city than I had supposed.'"

"Rouge?" I asked.

"Yes, of course. Even the flappers do it. It takes good eyesight to
tell 'em from the dowagers nowadays."

"And Jerry doesn't know the difference?"

"I think he's beginning to. A few days ago I met an old girl I know,
Mrs. Warrington, walking with Marcia Van Wyck; you know, the heiress,
who has the big place up near Horsham Manor--father, mother both dead.
Spoiled all her life. Lives with a companion, you know,--poor
relation. They stopped us--mere curiosity--not to talk to _me_, bless
your heart, but to see Jerry. It seems they'd heard we'd turned him
loose, and guessed who my companion was. We talked awhile and Marcia
asked us to call. When they went off. Jerry turned to me in a stage
whisper:

"'Jack, that lady has paint on her face.'

"'Woman, not lady,' said I. 'This is Fifth Avenue. The ladies of New
York are only to be found on Broadway and the Bowery,'

"He looked bewildered but his other discovery interested him the most.

"'But I say she had paint on her face,' he repeated.

"'How could you tell?' I asked innocently.

"'It was streaky. I saw it.'

"'Possibly. But it isn't polite to notice such things.'

"He was silent a moment. And then: 'I think the other, the girl, Miss
Van Wyck, is very beautiful. I think I should like to call on her,
Jack.'

"So you see, Pope, he's looking up. Marcia _is_ pretty. She has been
out three seasons but she takes good care of herself. I've never liked
her much myself--a little too studied, you know, and quite
ultra-modern."

"You think Jerry was impressed?" I asked. There may have been a deeper
note of interest in my query than I intended, for Jack burst into
laughter.

"There you go. Your one chick is a duckling now, Pope, old boy. You'll
have to let him swim if he wants to. The water's deep there, too--very
deep. Marcia knows her way about."

"It would be a pity if she made a fool of him," I ventured.

He only smiled.

"It would, of course. Perhaps she will. But Jerry's got to cut his eye
teeth. And he might as well cut 'em on Marcia as anybody else. But
there's no danger of her marrying him for his money. She's almost if
not quite as rich as he is. Half the young bloods in town are after
her. It's rather flattering to Jerry. She gave me the impression
yesterday of rather liking him."

"Oh, you called?"

"It was something of a command. When a girl rolls her eyes the way she
did at Jerry and says that he must come to see her, there's nothing
for him but to go. Besides, they're neighbors up in the country, you
know. I went with him. I had an idea what we were in for, but Jerry
didn't, naturally. She expected us and the butler led the way past the
drawing-room into the lady's particular sanctorum, a smallish room in
a wing of the house all hung in black damask, with black velvet rugs
and ebony chairs. Marcia's blonde, you know, and gets her effects
daringly. I must admit that she looked dazzling, like a bit of Meissen
or Sevres in an ormolu cabinet. She was lolling on a black divan
smoking a cigarette and put out her slim fingers languidly. That's her
pose--condescension mixed with sudden spasms of intense interest. She
extended her fingers to be kissed--she had learned that nonsense in
Europe somewhere--and so I kissed 'em. They were dry, cool, very
beautifully tinted, with the nails long and highly polished and had
the odor, very faintly, of jasmine. Jerry kissed 'em too, looking
extremely foolish."

"He would," I growled. "The hussy!"

Ballard shook with laughter.

"Oh, that's rather rough, Pope. She's merely the product of a highly
sensitized _milieu_. Because I don't like girls of that stamp doesn't
argue her unlikable. I've never heard a word against her except that
she has much attention from men. And with her money and looks that's
natural enough."

"What happened?" I put in shortly.

"Oh, she was very languid at first and a little formal, thawing
effectively as she drew Jerry out. You see she had a little the
advantage in knowing his history.

"'I'm very flattered that you should have come so soon,' she said,
comprehending us both in her level gaze. 'Will you smoke, Mr. Benham?
No? You haven't succumbed yet to all of the amiable weaknesses of
human nature. They're very mild. _Do_ change your mind. There! I knew
you would,'

"Jerry fingered the thing and lighted it as though it might have been
the match of a blunderbuss.

"'I've been wondering for a great many years, Mr. Benham, what you
could be like,' she went on in a tone which is more nearly described
as a purr than anything else. 'You know, our places up in Ulster
County are almost adjoining. At times I've been tempted to scale your
wall. It looked so very attractive from outside. But they told me you
kept a private banshee, trained to visit those you didn't like. You
don't, do you?'

"Jerry laughed. 'The nearest thing I've got to a banshee is my dog
Skookums. But he's blind in one eye and his teeth are gone, and he's
too lazy even to wag his tail. Besides I don't see why I should set
him on _you_!

"She laughed, showing a row of rather small but even teeth.

"'They say you don't like girls. Tell me it isn't so, Mr.
Ballard'--she appealed to me.

"I saw the way the wind was blowing but I chose to humor her.

"'I am sure he adores the very ground you walk on,' I said politely,
'especially when you look like a figure on an Etruscan amphora.'

"She smiled slowly. 'You _can_ say nice things, can't you, Mr.
Ballard? But that doesn't quite exculpate Mr. Benham.'

"'I'm sure,' said Jerry very gravely, 'that you're the most beautiful
creature I've ever seen!'

"Her fishing prospered. Her eyelashes lowered so that we both could
see how long they were and when she raised them again and looked at
Jerry her eyes were opened wide.

"'That is the greatest compliment I've ever received in my life,' she
said evenly. 'I hope you mean it, Mr. Benham.'

"'I shouldn't have said it if I didn't think so,' said Jerry quickly.

"Something in the positive way he spoke pleased her again for she
smiled bewitchingly, effacing me completely. I think we're going to be
very good friends,' she said, moving up on the divan a little nearer
to him. 'Of course, it takes more than the aesthetic appeal to bring
two sensible people together,' she murmured. 'It is not the eye which
must catch the reflection, but the mind. You've thought a good
deal--and studied? Men are so vapid nowadays.' She sighed. 'I hope
some day you will think I'm clever enough for you to talk to me about
things.'

"She was playing up to him, you see, I think that Jerry is the most
extraordinary male animal that has ambled into her vision this winter.

"'I'd be glad to. Of course you're different from anything I ever saw
before,' said Jerry. 'I've always thought of nature as the most
beautiful thing in the world. Now I seem to be just as sure that art
is.'

"That rather took her aback, but she didn't turn a hair.

"'You think all this--superfluous?'

"'Not superfluous, perhaps. Merely artificial.'

"'Am I artificial?'

"'Yes,' bluntly! 'I don't understand it at all. But it's singularly
effective. It's like night with only one star visible--'

"'The more visible,' I put in, 'for being Venus.'

"She looked at me slantways. 'I'm sorry you said that, Mr. Ballard.
Venus is not my goddess. Diana--'

"'The Huntress,' I broke in again.

"'Pallas Athene, the guardian and guide of heroes,' she countered
neatly.

"'I'm glad you don't like Venus, Miss Van Wyck,' put in Jerry quickly.
'She made a lot of trouble, just because she was pretty. Diana--she
_was_ the right sort, no sentimental rot for her.'

"'Of course. Sentiment _is_ rot and so sloppy.'

"Jerry laughed ingenuously. 'That's a good word,' he said. 'Imagine
Diana being sloppy.'

"'Women aren't nearly as sentimental as they used to be. As a woman's
weapon hysteria has gone to the dust heap. Women are learning
independence. You believe in women thinking for themselves, don't
you?'

"'Of course,' said Jerry. 'But they don't, do they?'

"'_I_ do. It's one of my gospels to be self-sufficient. Don't you
believe me?'

"'I'd like to, you're so lovely to look at. I'd like to think you were
perfect in everything.'

"He refreshed her. Her artificialities one by one were falling away
from her like discarded garments. And yet I was not sure that it
wasn't artifice that was discarding them. She was very clever. I might
have guessed it, had I noticed earlier the volumes by Freud and
Strindberg on the little ebony side table."

Ballard paused a moment to light a fresh cigarette.

"Bah!" I muttered contemptuously.

He looked over at me thoughtfully. "You may sneer, Pope, my boy," he
commented. "But this sort of thing has come to stay. The infants are
imbibing it with their bottles--self-expression, self-analysis and all
that."

"But this girl is dangerous," I remarked.

"I imagine she is," he said calmly. "At any rate, she's going to prove
or disprove your precious hypothesis."

"I'm not afraid for Jerry," I growled. "No chameleon will change _his_
color. What else did she say?"

"She was very much pleased at Jerry's compliment.

"'Someone has taught you to be very polite,' she said with a smile.

"'Polite?' asked Jerry. 'Merely because I was hoping you weren't
flabby?'

"'Well, I'm not flabby,' she smiled indulgently. 'I hate flabby
people.'

"'I don't see any reason why a woman should be different from a man,'
Jerry went on. 'Men don't cry, why should women? I've always thought
the Greeks were right. To me there's only one sin the world and that's
weakness.'

"You'll pardon me, Pope, if I say that he sounded very much like you,"
he laughed. "He had the preaching tone, the assertiveness. It was most
amusing. Imagine the paradox, this babe, an ascetic and this
worldling, a sybarite, meeting upon a common ground! For I really
believe she was sincere about her self-sufficiency. Whatever her
tastes, she's no weakling."

"But she's trivial, a smatterer, a decadent--"

"And handsome," laughed Ballard. "Don't forget that."

"Mere looks will never ensnare Jerry."

"I hope not, but she'll teach him a thing or two before she's through
with him."

I was silent for some moments, and then: "What else do you know of
this girl?" I asked.

"Nothing. I've painted you the picture as well as I could. The
conversation that followed was unimportant. Her remarks became guarded
and later descended to the mere commonplace."

"She _is_ dangerous," I said.

"I've warned Jerry. He laughed at me."

"When was this call?" I asked.

"The day before yesterday."

"And where is Jerry today?"

"I have a notion that he is spending the afternoon with Miss Marcia
Van Wyck," he said with a smile.




CHAPTER IX

FOOT-WORK


I should very much like to have been present while Jerry made some of
his visits to the house of the girl Marcia in order to have heard with
my own ears what she said to Jerry in those first few weeks of their
acquaintance. Some of it, a very little, I did learn from Jerry's
letters to me, but much more from Jack Ballard, who visited the lady
upon his own account and supplied the missing links in my information
as to the growing friendship. But the nature of Jerry's feelings
toward her I can only surmise by my knowledge of the character of the
boy himself through which I tried to peer as with my own eyes, at the
personality of this extraordinary female. That she was more than
ordinarily clever there was no reason to doubt; that she was
attractive to the better class of young men in her own set was beyond
dispute; that she was thoroughly unscrupulous as to the means by which
she attained her ends (whatever they were) seemed more than probable.
Perhaps she did not differ greatly from other young female persons in
her own walk of life, but I would have been better pleased if Jerry's
education in the ways of the world could have proceeded a little more
slowly. It seemed to me as I compared them, that the girl Una, who had
called herself Smith, brazen as she was, would have been a much saner
companion. I could not believe, of course, that either of them could
sway Jerry definitely from the path of right thinking, but I realized
that the eleven years during which Jerry had been all mine were but a
short period of time when compared to the years that lay before him.
From the description I had of her, the Van Wyck girl was not at all
the kind of female that I thought Jerry would like. She was an exotic,
and was redolent, I am sure, of faint sweet odors which would perplex
Jerry, who had known nothing but the smell of the forest balsams. She
was effete and oriental, Jerry clean and western.

But, of course, I had not met the girl and my opinion of her was based
upon the merest guesses as to her habits and character. She seemed to
be, according to Ballard, essentially feminine (whatever he meant by
that) and in spite of her protestations to Jerry as to her
self-sufficiency and soundness, to have a faculty for ingratiating
herself into the fullest confidence of the young men who came into her
net.

In looking over the above, it occurs to me that I may be accused of
prejudice against or unfairness to this girl of whom I really knew so
little, for if I do not tell the truth, this work has no value. But
upon consideration I have decided to let my opinions stand, leaving my
own personal point of view to weigh as little or as much as it may in
the mind of my reader. To say that I was jealous of Jerry's attentions
to any young woman would be as far from the truth as to say that I was
not jealous for his happiness. But as several weeks went by and Jerry
did not appear at the Manor, his notes meanwhile becoming more and
more fragmentary, I found a conviction slowly growing in my mind that
my importance in Jerry's scheme of things was diminishing with the
days. One afternoon just before the dinner hour I was reading Heminge
and Condell's remarkable preface to the "Instauratio Magna" of Bacon,
which advances the theory that the state of knowledge is not greatly
advancing and that a way must be opened for the human understanding
entirely different from any known. In the midst of my studies Jerry
rushed in, flushed with his long drive in the open air, and threw his
great arms around my neck, almost smothering me.

"Good old Dry-as-dust! Thought I'd surprise you. Glad to see me?
Anything to eat? By George! You're as yellow as a kite's foot. Been
reading yourself into a mummy, haven't you?"

It was good to see him. He seemed to bring the whole of outdoors in
with him.

I took him by the shoulders and held him off from me, laughing in pure
happiness.

"Well. What are you looking at? Expect to see my spots all changed?"

"I think you've actually grown."

"In four weeks? Rubbish! I think I've contracted. If there's anything
to make a fellow feel small it's rubbing elbows with four million
people. Good old Roger! Seems as if I'd been away for a lifetime. Then
again it seems as if I'd never been away at all, as if New York was
all a dream. Well, here I am, like Shadrach, past the fiery furnace
and not even scorched. It's a queer place--New York--full of queer
people, living on shelves, like the preserves in a pantry. Great
though! I'm getting to understand 'em a little, though they don't
understand me. I suppose I'm queer to them. Funny, isn't it? 'Old
fashioned,' a fellow called me the other day. I didn't know whether to
hit him or take him by the hand. I think he meant it as a compliment.
I had been polite, that's all. Most people don't understand you when
you say, 'Thank you' or 'Excuse me.' They just stare, and then dash
on. I used to wonder where they were all going and why they were
rushing. I don't now. I rush like the rest of 'em, even when I've got
nothing to do of a morning but to buy a new cravat. By Jove, I'm
rattling on. Is dinner ready?"

It was. We dined on Horsham Manor's simple fare, but Jerry ate it as
though he had never been away. And when dinner was over we adjourned
to the library and talked far into the night. I observed for one
thing, that he was now smoking cigarettes with perfect facility. I
made no comment, but could not help recalling the fact that it was in
this, too, that Eve had tempted and Adam fallen. He ran on at a great
rate, but said little of the girl Marcia, or indeed of any women. I
think he hadn't been able to forget my attitude toward them, and in
the light of his new contacts considered himself vastly superior to me
in experience of the world. But the mere fact that he now avoided
mention of the Van Wyck girl advised me that his thoughts of her were
of a sort which he thought I could not possibly comprehend.

He told of some of the things already mentioned, with humor and some
bewilderment. He had made it a habit to go and walk the streets for
awhile every day when he could mingle with the crowds and try and get
their point of view. He hadn't gotten very far yet, but he was
learning. He knew the different parts of the city and chose for his
walks the East side by preference. He had seen filth and squalor on
one avenue and on the next one elegance and wealth. The contrasts were
amazing.

"Something's wrong, Roger," he said again and again. "Something's
wrong. It doesn't seem fair somehow. I'm sure the people on one street
can't all be deserving and those on another all undeserving. The Fifth
Avenue lot, the ones I associate with in the clubs, are all very well
in their way, but they seem to waste a lot of time. They don't produce
anything, they're not helping to keep the world together. The real
workers are elsewhere. I've seen 'em, talked to some of 'em. They've
got vitality that the other chaps haven't. Flynn's friends are
_great_. I've been sparring with 'em--some pretty good ones, too."

"How did you manage?"

"All right. You know, Flynn always said I gave promise of being a
pretty good boxer, so I've been working a little in the afternoon at
his gymnasium. I had to, Roger, to keep in shape. There are all sorts
of chaps there, mostly professionals. You know he's training this new
middleweight, Carty, for a fight next March. I didn't like to put on
the gloves with any of 'em, but Flynn insisted."

Jerry paused and I saw a smile growing slowly at the corners of his
lips. I knew that smile. Jerry wore it the day Skookums disobeyed
orders and had the encounter with the skunk.

"You had a good go of it?" I asked.

He nodded.

"You see, there was a big Jew named Sagorski, 'Battling' Sagorski
they call him, hanging around the place. He's a 'White Hope.' He's
been sparring partner of one of the champions and he thinks a good
deal of himself. Flynn doesn't like him a great deal--some dispute
about a debt, I believe. I was sparring with Flynn, Sagorski watching.

"I heard someone make a remark and then Sagorski's voice sneering.
Flynn dropped his hands and turned.

"'Ye always c'ud talk, Sagorski,' said he. 'But talk's cheap. I'll
match the bye again ye six rounds, fer points, double or quits, the
same bein' the small amount that's been hangin' betune us the little
matter of a year.'

"Sagorski was up in a moment, smiling rather disdainfully. 'Yer on,'
he growled.

"They fixed us up, seconds, timekeepers and all, and we went at it. He
was a good one and strong but slow, Roger. You know, Flynn's lighter
than I am, but lightning fast. Sagorski gave me more time, but he had
a good left and an awful wallop with his right. Flynn had warned me to
look out for that right and I did. The first round was slow. Each of
us was feeling the other out. I landed a few and got one in the ribs.
The second round went faster. I avoided him by ducking and
side-stepping, but he kept boring in, still smiling disagreeably. I
didn't like that smile. He wanted to knock me out, I think, for he
made several vicious swings that might have settled me, but I got away
from them and kept him moving.

"'Wot's this, sonny?' he sneered at last, 'a foot race?'

"But he didn't make me mad--not then. I kept hitting him freely, not
hard, you know, but piling up points nicely for Flynn. He couldn't
really reach me at all and was getting madder and madder. It was
funny. I think I must have let up a little then, for I think it was in
the fourth round he got in past my guard and swung a hard right on my
nose. The blow staggered me and I nearly went down. Anyway, Roger, it
made me angry. It seemed a part of that ugly smile. I saw red for a
moment and then I went for him with everything I had, straight-arms,
swings, uppercuts--everything. I think I must have been in better
shape than he was, for by the time the round was ended he was groggy.

"When we came up for the next I heard Flynn whispering at my ear,
'Finish him, Masther Jerry. If you don't, he'll put ye out.'

"I didn't need that warning. I sparred carefully for a minute, feeling
out what he had left. He swung at me hard, just grazing my ear. Then I
went after him again, feinted into an opening and caught him flush on
the point of the chin."

He paused for breath. "I didn't want to, you know, Roger, but Flynn
was so insistent--and, of course, having started--"

"'You bored in, that th' opposed might beware of thee,'" I
paraphrased.

He laughed.

"Yes, I bored in. There was nothing else to do. Flynn didn't say much,
but he was pleased as punch. It took ten minutes to bring the fellow
around. I was bending over Sagorski, wetting his face, and as he
looked up at me I told him I was awfully sorry. What do you think he
said?

"'Aw, you go to hell!' Impolite beggar, wasn't he?"

"You have been at least catholic in the choice of companions," I
remarked, with a smile, recalling Flynn's prediction about Jerry's
weight in wild cats.

"Oh, yes. All sorts of people. I think on the whole I understand the
poorer classes best. They do swear, I find, horribly at times, but
they don't intend harm by it. I doubt if they really know what it
means. 'Hell' is merely an expletive like 'Oh' or 'By Jove' with us
chaps. Funny, isn't it?"

"That truck-driver didn't think so," I said.

"That was my first week. I know a lot more now. I've felt sorry about
him."

"You needn't," I laughed.

And after a pause:

"And down town, Jerry," I inquired. "How are things going there?"

His expression grew grave at once.

"Oh, I've been going to the office pretty regularly, but it's slow
work. I don't understand why, but I don't seem to get on at all."

"That's too bad," I said slowly. "You must get on, old man."

"Yes, I know, but it comes hard. It seems that I'm frightfully rich.
In fact, nobody seems to know how rich I am. I've got millions and
millions, twenty--thirty perhaps. So much that it staggers me. It's
like the idea of infinity or perpetuity. I can't grasp it at all. It's
piling up in new investments, just piling up and nothing can stop it."

"You don't want to stop it, do you?"

"But if it was only doing some good--When I see the misery all
about--"

"Wait a bit. You're putting the cart before the horse, my boy. There's
no sin in being rich, in piling it up, as you say, if you're not doing
anybody any harm. Have you ever thought of the thousands who work for
you, of the lands, the railroads, the steamships, the mills, all
carrying and producing--producing, Jerry, helping people to live, to
work? Isn't it something to have a share in building up your country?"

"But not the lion's share. It's so impersonal, Roger. My companies may
be helping, but I'm not. I want to help people myself."

"That's just what I'm getting at. The more money you make, the more
people you can help," I laughed. "It's simplicity itself."

"In theory, yes. But I see where it's leading me. If I go on making
money, where will I find the time to give it away? It seems to be a
passion with these men getting more--always more. I don't want to get
like Ballard or Stewardson. And I _won't!"_

He snapped his jaws together and strode with long steps the length of
the room.

"I _won't_, Roger," he repeated. "And I've told 'em so."

I remained silent for a moment, gazing at the portrait of John Benham
on the wall opposite me. He had a jaw like Jerry's, not so well turned
and the lips were thinner, a hard man, a merciless man in business, a
man of mystery and hidden impulses. The boy was keen enough, I knew,
when it came to a question of right and wrong. There was some ancient
history for Jerry to learn. Did Jerry already suspect the kind of man
his father had been?

"You're sure that you're right?" I asked quietly.

"Positive. It's all very well to talk about those my money helps, but
it harms, too. If anything gets in the way of Ballard's interests or
mine, he crushes 'em like egg-shells. My father--"

Jerry hesitated, repeated the word and then paced the floor silently
for a moment. I thought it wise to remain silent.

"Oh, I know what it all means to those men. Power! Always! More power!
And I don't want it if it's going to make me the kind of man that
Henry Ballard is, blind to beauty, deaf to the voice of compassion, a
piece of machinery, as coldly scientific in his charities as he is in
the--"

"But that's necessary, Jerry," I broke in. "A man of Henry Ballard's
wealth must plan to put his money where it will do the most good--"

"Or where it will magnify the name of Henry Ballard," he said quickly.
"Oh, I don't know much yet, but I'm pretty sure that kind of thing
isn't what Christ meant."

He threw out his arms in a wide gesture. "Roger, I've talked to some
of these poor people. There's something wrong with these charity
organizations. They're too cold. They patronize too much. They don't
get under the skin."

"You haven't wasted a great deal of time," I remarked when he paused.

He smiled. "Well, you know, I couldn't sit in a club window and watch
the buses go by."

"Have you declared these revolutionary sentiments to your executors?"
I asked after awhile.

He threw himself in an armchair and sighed.

"I suppose I ought to say that Mr. Ballard has been very patient with
me. He was. I told him that I didn't want any more money, that I had
enough. I think I rather startled him, for he looked at me for a long
while over the half-moons in his glasses before he spoke.

"'I don't think you realize the seriousness (he wanted to say enormity
but didn't) of your point of view. There's no standing still in this
world,' he said. 'If you don't go ahead, you're going to go back.
That's all very well for you personally if you choose to remain idle,
but it won't do where great financial interests are involved. I want
to try to make you understand that a going concern moves of its own
momentum. But it's so heavy that once you stop it, it won't go again.
The thought of abandoning your career is in itself hazardous. I hope
you will not repeat the sentiments you have expressed to me elsewhere.
If the street heard what you have just said there would be a fall in
your securities which might be disastrous.'

"'But other people would benefit, wouldn't they?' I asked.

"He glared at me, speechless, Roger, and got very red in the face.
'And this,' he stammered at last, 'is the fine result of your Utopia.
Ideals! Dreams! My God! If your father could hear you--he'd rise in
his grave!'

"I'm just what he made me,' I said coolly.

"He stared at me again as though he hadn't heard what I had said.

"'Do you mean that you're going to abandon this career we've made for
you, the most wonderful that could be given mortal man?' he asked,
though his tone was not pleasant.

"I did owe him a lot, you see. He's true to his own ideals, though
they're not mine. And I was very uncomfortable.

"'I hope you won't think me ungrateful, Mr. Ballard,' I said as calmly
as I could. 'In some ways you've been very like a father to me. I want
you to understand that I appreciate all that you and the other
co-executors have done for me. I've been very happy. But I want you to
know, if you don't know it already, that I'm very stupid about
business. It bewilders me. I'll try as hard as I can to please you and
will do my best at it, but you can understand that that won't be very
much when my heart isn't in it. I don't want to see the Benham
securities fall, because that would hurt you, too. I'll keep silent
for awhile and do just what you want me to do. But I don't want any
more money. The responsibility, the weight of it, oppresses me. I'm
too simple, if you like, but I don't think I'll change.'

"'And what,' he asked slowly when I stopped, 'what do you propose to
do with all this money we've kept together for you?'

"His voice was low, but his face was purple and he snapped his words
off short as if their utterance hurt him.

"'With your permission, sir,' I said quietly, 'I expect to give a
great deal of it away.'

"Roger, he couldn't speak for rage. He glared at me again and then,
jamming his hat on his head, stalked stiffly out. Oh, I've made a
mess of things, I suppose," he sighed, "but I can't help it. I'm sick
of the whole miserable business."

I made no comment. I had foreseen this interview, but it had come much
sooner than I had expected. I felt that I had known Jerry's mind and
what he would do eventually, but it was rather startling that he had
come to so momentous a decision and had expressed it so vigorously at
the very outset of his career. It was curious, too, as I remembered
things that had gone before, how nearly his resolution coincided with
the one boyishly confessed to the female, Una Smith, in the cabin in
the woods last summer. At the time, I recalled, the matter had made no
great impression upon me. I had not believed that Jerry could realize
what he was promising. But here he was reiterating the promise at the
very seats of the mighty.

The subject was too vast a one for me to grasp at once. I wanted to
think about it. Besides, he didn't ask my advice. I don't think he
really wanted it. I looked at Jerry's chin. It _was_ square. For all
his sophistries, Jack Ballard was no mean judge of human nature.




CHAPTER X

MARCIA


Jerry came down to the breakfast table attired in tweeds of a rather
violent pattern, knickerbockers and spats. He wore a plaid shirt with
turnover cuffs, a gay scarf and a handkerchief just showing a neat
triangle of the same color at his upper coat pocket. This
handkerchief, he informed me airily, was his "show-er." He kept the
"blow-er" in his trousers. At all events, he was much pleased when I
told him that the symphony was complete.

"The linen, _allegro_, the cravat, _adagio con amore_, the
suit--there's too much of the _scherzo_ in the suit, my boy."

"_Con amore?_" he asked, looking up from his oatmeal.

"Yes," I said calmly, for not until this moment had I guessed the
truth. "_Con amore_," I repeated. "I could hardly have hoped, if Miss
Marcia Van Wyck had not come to the neighborhood, that you would have
done me the honor of a visit."

It was a random shot, but it struck home, for he reddened ever so
slightly.

"How did you know? Who--who told you?" he stammered awkwardly.

"I think it must have been the cravat," I laughed.

"It _was_ a good guess," he said rather sheepishly (I suppose because
he hadn't said anything to me about her).

"She was tired of town. She's opening Briar Hills for a week or so.
Awfully nice girl, Roger. You've got to meet her right away."

"I shall be delighted," I remarked.

"She knows all about you. Oh, she's clever. You'll like her. Reads
pretty deep sort of stuff and can talk about anything."

"An intellectual attraction!" I commented. "Very interesting, and of
course rare."

"Very. We don't agree, you know, on a lot of things. She's way beyond
me in the modern philosophies. She's an artist, too--understands color
and its uses and all that sort of thing. She's very fine, Roger, and
good. Fond of nature. She wants to see my specimens. I'm going to have
her over soon. We could have a little dinner, couldn't we? She has a
companion, Miss Gore, sort of a poor relation. She's not very pretty,
and doesn't like men, but she's cheerful when she's expected to be.
You sha'n't care, shall you?"

"Yes, I shall care," I growled, "but I'll do it if you don't mind my
not dressing. I haven't a black suit to my name."

"Oh, that doesn't matter. Very informal, you know."

The motor was already buzzing in the driveway and he wasted little
time over his eggs.

"Fix it for tomorrow night, will you, Roger?" he flung at me from the
doorway as he slipped into his great coat. "Nothing elaborate, you
know; just a sound soup, entrée, roast, salad and dessert. And for
wines, the simplest, say sherry, champagne and perhaps some port."

"Shall you be back to luncheon?" I inquired.

"No; dinner, perhaps. G'by!" And he was down the steps and in the
machine, which went roaring down the drive, cut-out wide, making the
fair winter morning hideous with sound. I stood in the doorway
watching, until only a cloud of blue vapor where the road went through
into the trees remained to mark the exit of the Perfect Man.

I turned indoors with a sigh, habit directing me to the door of the
study, where I paused, reminded of Jerry's final admonitions.
Dinner--"nothing elaborate," with an entrée, salad, and wines to be
got for two women, Jerry's beautiful decadent who loved nature and
ornithology, and the "not very pretty" poor relation who didn't like
men but could be "cheerful when she was expected to be." Damn her
cheerfulness! It was inconsiderate of Jerry to set me to squiring
middle-aged dames while he spooned with his Freudian miracle in the
conservatory. Strindberg indeed! Schnitzler, too, in all probability!
While I invented mid-Victorian platitudes for the prosaic, "not very
pretty" Miss Gore--Bore! Bore--Gore! Bah!

I gave the necessary orders and went in to my work. I merely sat and
stared at the half-written sheet of foolscap on the desk, unable to
concentrate my thoughts. I am a most moderate man, a philosopher, I
hope, and yet today I felt possessed, it seemed, of an insensate
desire to burst forth into profanity--a fine attitude of mind for a
contemplative morning! My whole world was turned suddenly upside down.

But out of chaos cosmos returned. I had given up the thought of work,
but at last found satisfaction in a quiet analysis of Jerry's
narration of the night before. What did one female or two or a dozen
matter if Jerry was fundamentally sound? Sophistry might shake,
blandishment bend, sex-affinity blight, but Jerry would stand like an
oak, its young leaves among the stars, its roots deep in mother earth.
Marcia Van Wyck, her black damask boudoirs, her tinted finger tips,
her Freud, Strindberg and all the rest of her modern trash--there
would come a day when Jerry would laugh at them!

I think I must have dozed in my chair, for I seemed to hear voices,
and, opening my eyes, beheld Jerry in my Soorway, a laughing group in
the hall behind him.

"'Even the worthy Homer sometimes nods,'" he was quoting gayly. "Wake
up, Roger. Visitors!"

I started to my feet in much embarrassment. "Miss Van Wyck, Miss
Gore--Mr. Canby," said Jerry, and I found myself bowing to a very
handsome young person, dressed in an outdoor suit of a vivid, cherry
color. I had no time to study her carefully at the moment, but took
the hand she thrust forward and muttered something.

"I feel very guilty," she was saying. "It's all my fault, Mr. Canby.
I've been simply wild for years to see what was inside the wall."

"I hope it will not disappoint you," I said urbanely.

"It's very wonderful. I don't wonder Jerry never wanted to leave. I
shouldn't have gone--ever. A wall around one's own particular
Paradise! Could anything be more rapturous?"

("Jerry!" They were progressing.)

The tone was thin, gentle and studiously sweet, and her face, I am
forced to admit, was comely. Its contour was oval, slightly accented
at the cheek bones, and its skin was white and very smooth. Her lips
were sensitive and scarlet, like an open wound. Her eyes, relics, like
the cheek bones, of a distant Slav progenitor, were set very slightly
at an angle and were very dark, of what color I couldn't at the moment
decide, but I was sure that their expression was remarkable. They were
cool, appraising, omniscient and took me in with a casual politeness
which neglected nothing that might have been significant. I am not one
of those who find mystery and enigma in women's reticences, which are
too often merely the evasions of ignorance or duplicity. But I admit
that this girl Marcia puzzled me. Her characteristics clashed--cool
eyes with sensual lips, clear voice with languid gestures, a
pagan--that was how she impressed me then, a pagan chained by
convention.

As I had foreseen, when she and Jerry went off to the Museum, I was
left to the poor relation. She was tall, had a Roman nose, black hair,
folded straight over her ears, and wore glasses. When I approached she
was examining a volume on the library table, a small volume, a thin
study of modern women that I had picked up at a book store in town.
Miss Gore smiled as she put the volume down, essaying, I suppose, that
air of cheerfulness of which Jerry had boasted.

"'Modern Woman,'" she said in a slow and rather deep voice, and then
turning calmly, "I was led to, understand, Mr. Canby, that you weren't
interested in trifles."

"I'm not," I replied, "but I can't deny their existence."

"You can. Here at Horsham Manor."

"_Could_, Miss Gore," I corrected. "The Golden Age has passed."

I didn't feel like being polite. Nothing is so maddening to me as
cheerfulness in others when I have suddenly been awakened. Her smile
faded at once."

"I didn't come of my own volition," she said icily. "And I will not
bother you if you want to go to sleep again."

"Oh, thanks," I replied. "It doesn't matter."

She had turned her back on me and walked to the window.

"Would you like to see the English Garden?" I asked, suddenly aware of
my inhospitality.

"Yes, if you'll permit me to visit it alone."

That wasn't to be thought of. After all she was only obeying orders. I
followed her out of doors, hastening to join her.

"I owe you an apology. I'm not much used to the society of women. They
annoy me exceedingly."

She looked around at me quizzically, very much amused.

"You consider that an apology?" she asked.

"I intended it to be one," I replied. "I have been rude. I hope you'll
forgive me."

"You _are_ a philosopher, I see," she said with a smile. "I am sorry
to annoy you."

"Y--you don't, I think. You seem to be a sensible sort of a person."

She smiled again most cheerfully.

"Don't bother, Mr. Canby. We're well met. I'm not fond of meaningless
personalities--or the authors of them."

She really was a proper sort of a person. Her conversation had no
frills or fal-lals, and she wasn't afraid to say what she thought.
Presently we began speaking the same language. We talked of the
country, the wonderful weather and of Jerry, to whom it seemed she had
taken a fancy.

"You've created something, Mr. Canby--a rare thing in this age--" she
looked off into the distance, her eyes narrowing slightly. "But he
can't remain as he is."

"Why not?" I asked quickly. "Knowledge of evil isn't impurity."

"It will permeate him."

"No. He will repel it."

She smiled knowingly.

"Impossible. Society is rotten. It will tolerate him, then resent him,
and finally," she made a wide gesture, "engulf!"

"I'm not afraid," I said staunchly.

"You should be. He's in danger--" She stopped suddenly. "I mean--" She
paused again, and then said evenly, "It seems a pity to me, that's
all."

"What's a pity?"

"That all your teaching must end in failure."

"H-m! You haven't a very high opinion of your fellows."

"No, men are weak."

"Jerry isn't weak."

"He's human--too human."

"One can be human and still be a philosopher--"

"No."

"But he knows the good from the bad."

"Oh, does he? And if the bad is masquerading? It is always. You think
he would recognize it?"

She was speaking in riddles, and yet it seemed to me with a purpose.

"What do you mean, Miss Gore?"

"Merely that such innocence as his is dangerous."

It was an unusual sort of a conversation to be engaged in with a woman
I had known but twenty minutes. I think she felt it, too. There was
some restraint in her manner, but I realized that her interest in
Jerry was driving her, if against her better judgment, with a definite
design that would not balk at trifles.

"You seem to know a great deal about Jerry," I said at last. "Who has
told you?"

"My eyes are tolerably good, Mr. Canby, my ears excellent."

I would have questioned further, but Jerry and the Van Wyck girl at
this moment came out on the terrace. Jerry was laughing.

"Caught in the act," he cried, as they came down to join us. "There's
hope for you yet, Roger."

Marcia came and thrust her arm through Miss Gore's. "Isn't it
wonderful to be the first woman in the Garden of Paradise?"

Miss Gore nodded carelessly.

The girl was so radiant in her air of possession that I couldn't help
speaking.

"But you're not," I said.

Marcia's narrow eyes regarded me coolly and then looked at Jerry
inquiringly, and when she spoke her voice was almost too sweet.

"Please don't rob us of our poor little halos, Mr. Canby," she said.
"Do you mean that there have been other women, girls--in here before?"

I can't imagine why Jerry hadn't told her that. She seemed to know
about everything else. "Yes, one."

"Jerry!" reproachfully. "And you said I was the first girl you'd ever
really known!"

He smiled, though he was quite pink around the ears.

"You are really. Er--she didn't count."

"I shall die of chagrin. Her name, Mr. Canby," she appealed.

I hesitated. But Jerry, still red, blurted out:

"Una Smith. But Roger says that couldn't have been her name."

"But why shouldn't it be her name? She had nothing to be ashamed
about, had she?"

"Of course not. She just slipped in through a broken grille. She was a
stranger around here--I just happened to meet her and--er--we had a
talk."

The boy seemed to be quite ill at ease. What did he already owe this
girl Marcia that such an innocent confession made him uncomfortable?

"Una--Una--Smith," the girl was repeating. "This is really beginning
to be fearfully interesting. Una," she turned quickly, her eyes
widening. In the bright sunlight they seemed very light in color, a
dark gray shot with little flecks of yellow. "Of course," she
exclaimed. And then, "When was this--er--intrusion, Jerry? Last July?"

"I think so."

It was Jerry's turn to be surprised.

"She was brown-haired, smallish, with blue eyes? Quite pretty?"

Jerry nodded.

"Wore leather gaiters and carried a butterfly net?"

"You know her, Marcia?" he broke in.

"Of course. Jerry, I'm really surprised--also a trifle
disillusioned--"

They moved off down the path toward the lake, Jerry talking earnestly.
I watched them for a moment in silence, wondering what crisis I had
precipitated in Jerry's affairs.

Beside me I heard the deep voice of Miss Gore.

"You see? He's already madly infatuated with her."

"Yes, yes," I replied, still watching them. "And she?"

Miss Gore shrugged her thin shoulders.

"I don't know. She won't marry him. I doubt if she will ever marry."

"Thank God for that," I said feelingly. She looked up at me quickly.

"You don't like Marcia?" she asked.

"No." I realized that I had gone too far, but I stood firm to my guns.

I was surprised that she didn't resent my frankness. Instead of being
angry she merely smiled.

"Mr. Canby, it is difficult for many of us who live in the world to
realize the effect of luxury and over-refinement upon society! We live
too close to it. Mr. Benham is an anachronism. I would have given much
if he had not become interested in Marcia. She is not for him nor he
for her. But I think it is his mind that attracts her--"

"Rubbish!" I broke in. "Has he no face, no body?"

She smiled at my impetuousness. Strangely enough, we were both too
interested to resent mere forms of intercourse.

"It's true. She has a good mind, but badly trained. His innocence
fascinates, tantalizes her. I've watched them--heard them. She toys
with it, testing it in a hundred ways. It's like nothing she has ever
known before. But she isn't the kind you think she is. I doubt even if
Jerry has kissed her. To Marcia men are merely so much material for
experimentation. She has a reputation for heartlessness. I'm not sure
that she isn't heartless. It's a great pity. She's very young, but
she's already devoured with hypercriticism. She's cynical, a
philanderer. You can't tamper with a passion the way Marcia has done
without doing it an injury. You see, I'm speaking frankly. I don't
quite understand why, but I'm not sorry."

I bowed my head in appreciation of her confidence. This woman improved
upon acquaintance.

"You care for her," I said soberly. "I should have been more guarded."

"Yes, I care for her. She has many virtues. She gets along with women
and I can understand her attraction for men. But she has confessed to
me that men both attract and repel her. Sex-antagonism, I think the
moderns call it--a desire to tease, to attract, to excite, to destroy.
She uses every art to play her game. It is her life. If any man
conquered her she would be miserable. A strange creature, you will
say, but--"

"Strange, unnatural, horrible!"

She smiled at my sober tone.

"And yet she is acting within her rights. She asks nothing that is not
freely given."

"Women are curiously tolerant of moral imperfections in those they
care for. Your Marcia is dangerous. I shall warn Jerry."

But she shook her dark head sagely.

"It will do no good. You will fail."

We walked slowly toward the house and I tried to make her understand
that I was grateful for her interest. She was not pretty, but, as I
had discovered, had some beauties of the mind which made her physical
attractions a matter of small importance.

As we neared the terrace, a thought came to me and I paused.

"You know who the girl Una is?" I asked.

"Yes," she nodded, "but her name isn't Smith."

"I was aware of that. Would you mind telling me who and what she is?"

She remained thoughtful a moment, fingering the stem of a plant.

"I don't see why I shouldn't. Her name is Habberton, Una Habberton.
She was visiting the Laidlaws here last summer. Her family, a mother
and a lot of girls, live in the old house down in Washington Square.
They're fairly well off, but Una has gone in for social work--spends
almost all of her time at it--slumming. I don't know much about her,
but I think she must be pretty fine to give up all her social
opportunities for that."

I smiled.

"She may have another idea of social opportunity," I said.

"Yes--you're quite right. I used the wrong words. One is not
accustomed in Marcia's set to find that sort of thing an opportunity."

"Miss Van Wyck knows her?" I asked.

"Yes. Marcia is on a committee that provides money for this particular
charity. They know each other. She came over to Briar Hills one night
with Phil Laidlaw. Marcia saw her several times in our fields with her
butterfly net. You see, her name is unusual. Marcia guessed the rest."

"Thanks," I said. "I hope you've forgiven me for my churlishness. I
should like to know you better if you'll let me."

She turned her head toward me with a motherly smile.

"I don't care for the society of men," she said amusedly. "They annoy
me exceedingly."




CHAPTER XI

THE SIREN


Something went wrong with Jerry's afternoon, for not long after lunch
I heard his machine in the driveway. But I didn't go out to meet him.
I knew that if there was anything he wanted to say to me he would come
to the study door. But I heard him pass and go upstairs. I hadn't been
able to do any work at my book since yesterday morning, and the
prospect of going on with it seemed to be vanishing with the hours.

The astounding frankness of Miss Gore had set me thinking. As may be
inferred, I did not understand women in the least and hadn't cared to,
for their ways had not been my ways, nor mine theirs. But the woman's
revelations as to the character of her cousin had confirmed me in the
belief that Jerry had gotten beyond his depth. I think I understood
her motives in telling me. I was Jerry's guardian and friend. If Miss
Gore was Marcia's cousin she was also her paid companion, her
creature, bound less by the ties of kinship than those of convention.
I suppose it was Jerry's helplessness that must have appealed to the
mother in her, his youth, innocence and genuineness. Perhaps she was
weary treading the mazes of deception and intrigue with which the girl
Marcia surrounded herself. Jerry wasn't fair game. All that was good
in her had revolted at the maiming of a helpless animal.

For such, I am sure, Jerry already was. How much or how little the
unconscious growth in the boy of the sexual impulse had to do with his
sudden subjugation by the girl it was impossible for me to estimate.
For if the impulse was newly born, it was born in innocence. This I
knew from the nature of his comments on his experiences in the city.
Knowledge of all sorts he was acquiring, but, like Adam, of the fruit
of the tree he had not tasted. And yet, even I, stoic though I was,
had been sensible of the animal in the girl. Her voice, her gestures,
her gait, all proclaimed her. Miss Gore had spoken of a psychic
attraction. Bah! There is but one kind of affinity of a woman of this
sort for a beautiful animal like Jerry!

It was bewildering for me to discover how deeply I was becoming
involved in Jerry's personal affairs. With the appointed day I had
turned him adrift to work out in his future career, alone and unaided,
my theory of life and his own salvation. And yet here, at the first
sign of danger, I found myself flying to his defense as Jack Ballard
would have it, like a hen that had hatched out a duckling. I reasoned
with myself sternly that I feared nothing for Jerry. He would emerge
from such an experience greater, stronger, purer even, and yet, in
spite of my confidence, I found myself planning, devising something
that would open the boy's eyes before damage was done. I was
solicitous for Jerry, but there were other considerations. Jerry
wasn't like other men. He had been taught to reason carefully from
cause to effect. He would not understand intrigue, of course, or
double dealing. They would bewilder him and he would put them aside,
believing what he was told and acting upon it blindly. For instance,
if this girl told him she cared for him, he would believe it and
expect her to prove it, not in accordance with her notions of the
obligation created, but in accordance with his own. There lay the
difficulty, for he was all ideals, and she, as I suspected, had none.
There would be damage done, spiritual damage to Jerry, but what might
happen to Marcia? Jerry was innocent, but he was no fool, and with all
his gentleness he wasn't one to be imposed upon. Flynn had understood
him. He was polite and very gentle, but Sagorski, the White Hope, knew
what he was when aroused. I wondered if Marcia Van Wyck with all her
cleverness might miss this intuition.

Dinner time found the boy quiet and preoccupied. If he hadn't been
Jerry I should have said he was sullen. That he was not himself was
certain. It was not until he had lighted his cigarette after dinner
that he was sure enough of himself to speak.

"What made you talk of Una to Marcia, Roger?" he asked quietly.

"I didn't," I said coolly. "_You_ did, Jerry. And if I had, I can't
see what it matters."

"It does a little, I think. You see, Marcia knows who she is. Una gave
a false name. She wouldn't care to have people know she had come in
here alone."

This was a reason, but of course not the real one. It wasn't like
Jerry to mask his purposes in this fashion. I laughed at him.

"If you'll remember, Jerry, I mentioned no names."

"But why mention the incident at all?"

"Because to tell the truth," I said frankly, "I thought Miss Marcia
Van Wyck entirely too self-satisfied."

He opened his eyes wide and stared at me. "Oh!" he said.

And then after the pause:

"You don't like Marcia?"

"No," I replied flatly, "I don't."

He paced the length of the room, while I sat by a lamp and
ostentatiously opened the evening paper.

"I hope you realize," he said presently, with a dignity that would
have been ridiculous if it hadn't been pathetic, "that Miss Van Wyck
is a very good friend of mine."

"Is she?" I asked quietly.

"Yes--I'm very fond of her."

"Are you?" still quietly.

"Yes." He walked the floor jerkily, made a false start or so and then
brought up before me with an air of decision. "I--I'm sorry you don't
like her, Roger. I--I should be truly grieved if I--I thought you
meant it. For I intend some day to ask her to be my--my--wife."

It was as bad as that? I dropped pretense and the newspaper, folding
my arms and regarding him steadily.

"Isn't this decision--er--rather sudden?" I asked evenly.

"I've loved her from the first moment I saw her," he exclaimed. "She
is everything, everything that a woman should be. Amiable, charitable,
beautiful, talented, intellectual." He paused and threw out his arms
with an appealing gesture. "I can't understand why you don't see it,
Roger, why you can't see her as I see her."

I was beginning to realize that the situation was one to be handled
with discretion. He was in a frame of mind where active opposition
would only add fuel to his flame.

"I'm sorry that I've grown to be so critical, Jerry. You forget that
I've never much cared for the sex."

It seemed that this was just the reply to restore him to partial
sanity, for his face broke in a smile.

"I forgot, old Dry-as-dust. You don't like 'em--don't like any of 'em.
That's different. But you _will_ like Marcia. You _shall_. Why, Roger,
she's an angel. You couldn't help liking her."

I smiled feebly. My acquaintance with decadent angels had been
limited. I turned the subject adroitly.

"Have you discovered who Una is?" I asked.

"No. Marcia wouldn't tell me. She only laughed at me, but I really
wanted to know. She _was_ a nice girl, Roger, and I'd hate to have her
shown in a false light. Not that Marcia would do that, of course, but
girls are queer. I think she really resented our acquaintance. I can't
imagine why."

"Nor I," I said shortly. "She doesn't _own_ you, does she?"

He looked up at me with a blank expression.

"No, I suppose not," he said slowly.

I followed up my advantage swiftly.

"It's rather curious, Jerry, this attraction Miss Van Wyck has for
you. A moment ago you were chivalrous enough in your hope that Una's
identity would not be discovered. Was this chivalry genuine? Were you
sorry on Una's account or on your own? I really want to know. You
liked Una, Jerry. Didn't you?"

"Yes, but--"

"She seemed a very interesting, a fine, even a noble creature. The
thought of a girl doing the sort of things she was doing made you
reproach yourself for your idleness--your cowardice, I think you
called it. Now what I'd like to discover is whether you've quite
forgotten the impression she made--the ideal she left in your mind?"

"Of course not. My ideals are still the same. I've tried to tell you
that I'm going to put them into practice," he muttered.

"You've forgotten the impression made by Una herself; what reason have
you for believing that you won't forget the ideals also?"

"There's no danger of that. She merely opened my eyes. Anyone else
could have done the same thing."

"Ah! Has Miss Van Wyck done so?"

"Yes. She's very charitable. But she doesn't make a business of it
like Una. She has so many interests and then--" He paused. I waited.

"Roger," he went on in a moment, "I thought Una wonderful. I still do.
But Marcia's different. Una was a chance visitor. Marcia is a
friend--an old friend. She's like no other woman in the world. You
will understand her better some day."

"Perhaps," I said thoughtfully. After that Jerry would say no more.
Perhaps he thought he had already said too much, for presently he took
himself off to bed. At the foot of the stairs he paused.

"By the way, Roger, we'll be five instead of four for dinner
tomorrow."

"Who now?"

"A friend of Marcia's, Channing Lloyd, a chap from town. He came up
today."

That admission cost Jerry something, and it explained many things, for
I had heard of Channing Lloyd.

"Ah, very well," I said carelessly and shook out my paper.

"Good-night, Roger."

"Good-night, Jerry."

The boy was changed. It may not seem a serious thing to you, my
precocious reader, who number your flirtations among the trivial
affairs of life. Calf love, you will say, is not a matter worth
bothering one's brains about. You will class that ailment perhaps with
the whooping cough and the measles and sneer it out of existence. But
I would remind you that Jerry's mind and character were quite mature.
I had schooled them myself and I know. If Jerry had fallen in love
with Marcia Van Wyck who proposed to play at her game of
"pitch-farthing" with so fine a soul as Jerry's, the thing was
serious, serious for both of them. His attitude toward the girl in his
conversation tonight reminded me that affairs had already progressed a
long way. She had come to Briar Hills, flattering Jerry, of course,
that they could be alone, intriguing meanwhile with Channing Lloyd, a
wild fellow, according to Jack Ballard, who at thirty could have
unprofitably shared his omniscience with the devil. A fine foil for
Jerry!

At dinner, the following night, we made a curious party. Marcia Van
Wyck, radiant in pale green, with her admirers one at either hand;
Channing Lloyd, dark, massive, well-groomed, with a narrow smile and
an air of complete domination of the table; Jerry at the other side,
rolling bread-pills and forcing humor rather awkwardly; Miss Gore,
solemn in black satin--all of them elegant and correct in evening
clothes, while I in my rather shabby serge sat awkwardly trying to
hide the shininess of my elbows. From my position at one end of the
table I had an excellent opportunity to study the company. I saw in
Lloyd, I think, the attraction for Marcia. His looks, his topics, his
appetites were animal and gross. He drank continuously, smoked after
his salad, and monopolized the guest of the evening to the complete
exclusion of the others. Fragments of their talk reached me, of which
I understood a little--Greek to Jerry. Miss Gore sat calmly through it
all, leading Jerry into the conversation at propitious moments and out
of it when it threatened incomprehension.

There is a kind of charity of the dinner table and ballroom finer, I
think, than the mere kindness of giving, finer because it requires
discretion, nobler because it requires self-elimination. The more I
saw of Miss Gore the more deeply was I impressed by her many amiable
qualities. She had an ear for Jerry, but aware of my complete
elimination by the rowdy upon my left, found time to relieve the
awkwardness of my situation and contribute something to the pleasure
of what for me would otherwise have been a very unenjoyable repast.

But when dinner was over, to my great surprise, I found myself alone
with the girl Marcia. I have no very distinct notion of the means by
which she accomplished this feat, remembering only hazily that we all
ambled over to the conservatory, where a particular variety of orchid
seemed to interest the girl. And there we were, I explaining and she
listening, the others off somewhere near the entrance to the
gymnasium, where I heard Lloyd's voice in bored monotone. I was quite
sure in a moment that she hadn't managed to get me there to talk
orchids, and I felt a vague sense of discomfort at her nearness. I
have given the impression that her eyes were cold. As I looked into
them I saw that I had been mistaken. In the dim light they seemed
illumined at their greater depth by a hidden fire. She fixed her gaze
upon my face and moved ever so slightly toward me. You may think it
strange after what I have written when I say that at this moment I
felt a doubt rising in me as to whether or not I might have done this
girl an injustice, for her smile was frank, her air gracious, her tone
friendly.

"Oh, Mr. Canby," she said in her even voice, "I've wanted to tell you
what a wonderful thing it is that you have created--to thank you for
Jerry. He's a gift, Mr. Canby, refreshing like the rain to thirsty
flowers. You can't know what meeting a man like Jerry means to a woman
like me. I don't think you possibly can."

"What does it mean to you?" I asked.

"It means a new point of view on life, a thing scarce enough in this
day when all existence is either sordid or vicious. I had reached a
Slough of Despond, Mr. Canby, weary of the attainable, not strong
enough or clever enough or courageous enough to defy criticism and
obey the small voice that urged. I was sick with self-analysis,
filled to the brim with modern philosophies--"

"I understand," I broke in with a smile, which seemed to come in spite
of me. "There's no medicine for that."

"Yes, Jerry. I--I think he's cured me--or at least Pm well on the road
to recovery. Nobody could be mind-sick long with Jerry letting
daylight in."

"Daylight, yes. You found it startling?"

"A little, at first. I felt the way I look sometimes at dawn after
dancing all night, my tinsel tarnished, my color faded. All my effects
are planned for artificial light, you see."

Her frankness disarmed me.

"I'm thanking you for Jerry," she went on, "but I can't help knowing
that Jerry is what you've made him; that his ideals, his simplicity,
his purity are yours also."

If she had baited her hook with flattery there was no sign of
premeditation in the gentleness of her accents or in the friendly look
she gave me. Could it be possible that this was the person in whom I
had seen such a menace to Jerry's happiness?

"I have merely taught Jerry to be honest, Miss Van Wyck," I replied.
"I ask no credit of him or of you."

"But if it pleases me to give it to you," she said softly, "you surely
can't object."

"No, but I don't ask laurels I don't deserve. Jerry is--merely
himself."

"Plus, Mr. Roger Canby--purist and pedagogue," she laughed. "No, you
can't get out of it. Jerry reflects you; I think I actually recognize
inflections of the voice. You ought to be very glad to have laid so
strong an impress on so fine a thing."

Just then I heard the raucous laugh of Channing Lloyd from the
distant lawn, which reminded me with a startling suddenness that this
slender creature who spoke softly of ideals and purity could choose a
man like this fellow for an intimate. I noticed, too, the delicate
odor which rose from her corsage of which Jack Ballard had spoken,
something subtle and unfamiliar.

I straightened and looked out through the open window, steeling myself
against her.

"I am glad you think him fine," I said dryly. "No doubt he compares
very favorably with other young men of your acquaintance."

"You mean Mr. Lloyd, of course," she said quickly.

I was silent, avoiding her gaze and her perfume.

"I'm afraid you don't understand me, Mr. Canby," she said softly. "I'm
sorry. Any friend of Jerry's ought to be a friend of mine."

"I should like to be, of course, but--"

I paused. This woman, against my will, was making me lie to her.

"But what--? Am I so--so unpleasant to you? What have I done to earn
your displeasure?"

"Nothing," I stammered. "Nothing."

"Is it that you fear the contamination of the kind of culture I've
been bred and born in? Or the effect of my familiarity with doctrines
with which you're not in sympathy?"

Was she mocking? Her voice was still gentle, but I had a notion that
inside of her she was laughing. It was as though, having failed to win
me, she was beginning to unmask. I peered into her face. It was
guileless and wore the appealing expression of a reproachful child.

"You do not understand," I said. "I fear nothing for Jerry. He is
strong enough to stand alone. I hope you know just how strong he is,
that's all."

She was a little puzzled--and interested.

"I hope I do; but I wish you would explain."

I turned toward her quickly.

"I mean this. You and he are very different. He cares for you, of
course. It was to be expected, because you're everything that he is
not. Whatever you are, Jerry will be serious. And you can't bind the
characters of two strong people together without mutilating one or the
other, or perhaps both. Jerry will believe everything you tell him and
continue to believe it unless you deceive him. He's ingenuous, but I
hope you won't underestimate him."

She fingered the leaves of a rose, but her eyes under their lids were
looking elsewhere.

"How should I deceive him, Mr. Canby?" she asked, her voice still
unchanging.

"Perhaps I put it too baldly. But I'm not in the habit; of mincing
words. Jerry is no plaything. I'll give you an instance of how much in
earnest he is." And then briefly, but with some sense of the color of
the thing, I gave her a description of Jerry's bout with Sagorski. She
listened without looking at me, while her slender fingers caressed the
rose leaf, but beneath their lids I saw; her eyes flashing. When I had
finished I turned to her with a smile.

"That's the kind of man that Jerry is--harmless, docile and most
agreeable, but let him be aroused--"

I paused, letting the paralipsis finish my suggestion.

She was silent a moment, finally turning to me with a laugh that rang
a little discordantly against the softness of her speech.

"Jerry wouldn't beat _me_, would he, Mr. Canby?"

"I'm sure I haven't the least means of knowing," I replied.

"You are merely warning me, I see. Thanks. But I'm afraid you give me
credit for greater hardihood than I possess. On the whole I think I'm
flattered."

She snipped a bud and put it to her lips as though to conceal a smile,
and then passed me slowly.

"Come, Mr. Canby," she said. "I think it's time we joined the others."

It was. The night was cool, but I was perspiring profusely.




CHAPTER XII

INTRODUCING JIM ROBINSON


Of course, I had made an enemy of the girl and to no purpose. I had
felt her physical attraction, and I knew that only by putting myself
beyond its pale could I be true to my own convictions as to her
venality. She was the kind of woman to whom any man, even such a one
as I, is fish for her net. A girl may whet her appetite by coquetry
and deprave it by flirtation, setting at last such a value upon her
skill at seduction that she counts that day lost in which some male
creature is not brought into subjection to her wiles. As I thought
over the conversation later in the privacy of my bedroom I began to
realize that instead of good I had only done harm. For a warning, such
a futile one as I had given would only inflame a girl like Marcia, and
the suggestion of danger was just the fillip her jaded tastes
required.

It was not long before I had a confirmation of my mistake in judgment.
A week passed, a week of alternate joys and depressions for Jerry,
during which he spoke little 

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