Paradise Garden: The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment

"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 to me of the girl. The night after the dinner at the Manor he had upbraided me for telling Marcia the story of his bout with Sagorski. He had not cared to tell her of that event, he said, because he thought it too brutal for the ears of a girl of her delicate and sensitive nature. The next night he spoke of it again, but this time without reserve. It seemed that Marcia was very much interested in his feats of physical strength and hoped that Jerry would permit her to watch him when he sparred. Of course, he didn't see why she shouldn't watch him when he sparred if she was really interested in that sort of thing, but it was curious how he had misjudged her tastes; she seemed so ethereal, so devoted to the gentler things of life, that he had not thought it possible she could care for the rugged art he loved, which at times, as I knew, verged upon the brutal. I mentioned with a smile that there remained in all of us, women as well as men, some relics of the age of stone.

"Of course," he assented cheerfully, "I knew she wasn't namby-pamby. It's rather nice of her, I think, to take so much interest."

A few days after that Jerry left me and I knew that Briar Hills was closed again.

The events which were to follow came upon me with startling unexpectedness. Scarcely two weeks had passed since Jerry's departure and I had hardly settled back into my routine at the Manor, where I was trying again to take up the lost threads of my work, when a message came over the wire from Jack Ballard asking me to come down to New York to visit him for a few days. I inferred from what he said that he wanted to see me about Jerry, and, of course, I lost no time in getting to the city and to his apartment, where I found him before his mirror, tying his cravat.

"Pope, my boy, I knew you'd come. Just itching for an excuse anyway, weren't you? But you needn't look so alarmed. Jerry's all right. He hasn't even run off; with a chorus lady or founded a home for non-swearing truckmen."

"Well what has he done?" I asked.

"Not much—merely engaged to become one of the principals in a prize fight in Madison Square Garden."

"Jerry! I can't believe you."

"It's quite true. Sit down, my boy. Have you break-fasted yet?"

"Hours ago at the Manor."

"Just reproach! But the early worm gets caught by the bird, you know. I never get up—"

"Tell me," I broke in impatiently, "where you heard this extravagant tomfoolery?"

"From the extravagant tomfool himself. Jerry told me yesterday. I'm afraid there's no doubt about the matter. The articles of agreement are signed, the money, five thousand a side, is in the hands of the stakeholder—one Mike Finnegan, a friend of Flynn's, who keeps a saloon upon the Bowery."

"Preposterous! It hasn't come out, the newspapers—"