Paradise Garden: The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment

"But surely you smoke cigarettes!"

"No, I don't smoke. I don't like cigarettes."

"But if you liked them, would you smoke?" he questioned eagerly.

"What a funny boy you are! What difference does it make what I do or don't do?"

"Would you smoke, if you liked to?" he still insisted.

She was very much amused.

"How can I tell what I'd do if I liked to when I don't like to?"

"Do you approve of them then—for women, I mean?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Just because I'd like to know what you think of such things—because you seem to me to be so calm, so sane in your point of view. You always impressed me that way—from the very first, even when you were making fun of me."

"Why do you think I'm sane?" she asked amusedly.

"Because there's no nonsense about you. There are a lot of things I'd like to talk to you about—things I don't quite understand—if you'd only let me see you."

"You're seeing me now, aren't you?"

"Yes. But I can't talk about them all—at once."

"You've made a pretty good start, I should say."

Jerry laughed. "I have, haven't I? That's the way I always do when I'm with you."

"Always?" she inquired, raising her brows with a show of dignity. "Do you realize that I have only met you once—twice before in my life—and then most informally?"

"I feel as if I'd known you always."

"But you haven't. And I'm beginning to think I don't know you at all."

"But you do, better than anybody almost. It was awfully good of you to come here with me today—after my meeting you the way I did. I ought to apologize. Girls don't like to go with fellows when they come out of saloons, but I wasn't drinking, you know."

"Oh, weren't you?"

"No," he said hastily. And then to cover a possible misconception of his meaning, "But of course I would drink, if I wanted to. I don't see any difference between having a drink at Finnegan's and having it in a club uptown."

She regarded him for a moment in silence and then,

"You do belong to some of the clubs, then?"

"Oh, yes. The Cosmos, the Butterfly and several others—" He broke off with a laugh. "You see, I'm supposed to be something of a swell"—

"You don't look much of a swell today," she said with a glance at his clothes. "And Finnegan's, though exclusive for the Bowery, is hardly what might be called smart. I am curious, Jerry. Curiosity is one of my besetting sins—otherwise I'd never have gotten inside your wall. I've been wondering what on earth you could have been doing in Finnegan's saloon."

Jerry sipped at his tea and was silent. The girl's eyes still questioned good-humoredly and then, still smiling, looked away. But Jerry would not speak. A coward she had once called him. Was it that he feared her sober judgment of this wild plan of his? Did he see something hazardous in the conservatism of her calm slate-blue eyes that would put his new mode of thought, his new habit of mind to tests which they might not survive?

"I—I said it was on business of Flynn's," he evaded at last. "He's a very good friend of mine. It wouldn't interest you in the least, you know," he finished lamely.

"Possibly not," she said calmly. "I hope you'll forgive my impertinence."

He felt the change in her tone and was up in arms at once. "Don't talk in that way, Una. I'd let you know if there was any possible use." He paused and then decidedly, "But there isn't, you see. Won't you take my word for it?"

She laughed at his serious demeanor.

"You know I am a curious creature, unduly so about this. But you do seem a little like the Caliph in the Arabian Nights, or Prince Florizel in London. You aren't a second-story man, are you? Or a member of a suicide club?"

He gazed at her in perplexity and then laughed. "You're just as real as ever, aren't you?"

"Real! I should hope so. But you aren't. The first time I see you, you're a woodland philosopher, living on berries and preaching in the wilderness; the second time, you're merely a caged enthusiast without a mission; the third time you're Haroun al Raschid, smoking cigarettes at Finnegan's. I wonder what you're going to be next."

He felt the light sting of irony, but her humor disarmed him.

"I'm not going to be anything else," he said slowly. "And I'm not an enthusiast without a mission. I may have been then, but I'm not now. You don't just understand. I'm pretty busy in a way, learning the ropes, business, social and all the rest of them, but I'm not idle. I'm learning something all the time, Una, and I'm going to try to help—I can, too."

"Do you really mean that?" she asked incredulously when he paused.

"Yes, I mean it. I want to try to help right away, if you'll let me. See here, Una—" He leaned across the table in a sudden burst of enthusiasm. "I don't want you to think that I've ever said anything I don't mean. I said up there at Horsham Manor that I wanted to help you in your work, and I'm going to prove it to you that whatever your doubts of me I haven't changed my purposes. You didn't believe me when I said I'd been hunting for you. You don't have to, if you don't want to, but you'll have to believe me now when I tell you that I want to set aside a fund for you to use—to administer yourself. Oh, you needn't be surprised. I've got more money than I know what to do with. It's rotting in a bank—piling up. I don't want it. I don't need it, and I want you to take some of it right away and put it where it will do the most good. You've got to take it—you've got to, if only to prove that you don't believe me insincere. I'm going to start giving money now and if you don't help me I'll have to ask somebody else. I'd rather have you do it, personally, than work through some big charity organization, that would spend seven or eight dollars, in overhead charges, before they could distribute one. That kind of charity is all very well and does fine work, I suppose, but I want to feel that I'm helping personally—directly. I'll want to pitch in down here some day and do what I can myself. You've got to do it, Una—let me give you some money to start with right away, won't you?"

He paused breathless awaiting her reply. Her face was turned toward me during the whole of Jerry's rather long speech and I watched the play of emotion upon her features. She had been prepared, I suppose, from the appearance of Jerry's companions at Finnegan's, to find her woodland idyl shattered, and she followed Jerry word by word through his boyish outburst, incredulously at first, then earnestly and then eagerly. She had an unusually expressive countenance and the transition I observed was the more illuminating in the light of my previous knowledge of their acquaintance. Jerry was enthroned again, panoplied in virtues.

"You almost take my breath way," she said at last. "It's very bewildering," she smiled. "But are you sure you're—" she paused. "I mean, isn't there someone else to be consulted?"

"No," he cried, I think a little triumphantly. "No one, I'm my own master. I can do as I please. How much do you want, Una? Would five thousand help? Five thousand right away? And then five thousand more the first of each month?"

She started back in her chair and gazed at him in an expression of mingled incredulity and dismay.

"Five thou—!"

"And five thousand a month," Jerry repeated firmly.

"You can't mean—"

"I do. See here. I'll show you."

He felt in his pockets, I suppose for his check-book,—but could not find it. Naturally! It evidently wasn't a habit of the pugilist Robinson to carry about in his hand-me-down suit a check-book carrying a bank balance of forty or fifty thousand dollars. He was rather put out at not finding it and felt that she must still consider his magnificent offer somewhat doubtfully.

"Well, I'll send it to you tomorrow. You'll see if I don't."

The boy was uppermost in him now and I saw the gay flash of her eye which recognized it—the enthusiast of Horsham Manor who wanted to help cure the "plague spots."

"I knew it," she laughed at him. "I knew you'd be somebody else if I only waited long enough. Now you're Prester John and Don Quixote rolled into one. You propose by the simple process of financing the operation to turn our slums into Happy Valleys, our missions into gardens of resurrection. It's a very beautiful purpose, Jerry, quite worthy of your colorful imagination, but the modern philanthropist doesn't wed his Danae with a shower of gold. He's discovered that it's very likely to turn her head."