Paradise Garden: The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment

My appeal had reached her, for I think she realized how seldom such a person as I could be moved to emotion.

"But I—how can I help?" she asked.

"Will you listen and not think me visionary? Jerry cares for you. To him you have made a different appeal from that of any other woman in the world. You were the first. You stirred him. You may not be aware. In his mind you stand for everything that is clean and noble. In his heart, I know—I have not studied Jerry all these years for nothing—he has a shrine there—for you, Miss Habberton. You will always be Una, the first. I hope you will forgive me and believe me. It is necessary that you should."

She smiled at me gently.

"You are very much in earnest, Mr. Canby. I can forgive much to one of your sincerity. But doesn't it seem to you a curious conversation?"

"I had hoped you cared enough—"

"And if I did, do you think anything would give you the right to come to me without Mr. Benham's permission and speak of—"

"You must let me finish," I demanded. "You are kind, charitable. Trying to save people from themselves is your life work. I merely bring you a soul to save, a friend in danger. Can you refuse, refuse him? Jerry is drinking. It has not been for long, but he is in trouble. He has gotten beyond his depth—a woman—Oh, don't misunderstand me! It is mental, a strange attraction, weird, Jerry doesn't understand at all. He's bewitched, but she is slowly brutalizing him, his mind I mean. Don't you understand?"

"Yes, I think so," she muttered. "It is not a new situation. But I—no friend, man or girl, could avail in a case like that." She paused a moment clasping and unclasping her hands. I waited.

"Who is this—this woman?" she blurted out at last.

I hesitated.

"A lady. You—you put me at a disadvantage."

"What is her name?" she insisted.

"Marcia Van Wyck," I muttered.

"Marcia! Surely—" She stopped. A look of bewilderment came over her face, ending with a frown of perplexity.

"No," she murmured. "He wouldn't understand Marcia. I—" And then with a gasp, "And you want me to interfere? Mr. Canby, I—"

"Just a moment, please. I ask nothing that you cannot do. I have thought of a plan. We are alone at the Manor. I ask you to meet Jerry as you met him there last summer along by the Sweetwater. I am going to arrange to have him fish up the stream on Saturday afternoon. Will you come, Miss Habberton, come to the wall and meet him there inside the broken grille? I know his mind. It is curiously affected by facts of association. It is the only thing. I have—"

The words died on my lips as she rose, her slim figure straight in its sudden dignity, and I knew that I had failed.

"Your proposal is preposterous, Mr. Canby," she said coolly, moving toward the door.

"You refuse?"

"Of course. I am sorry if Mr. Benham has failed, is failing his friends, but the thing that you suggest is impossible." She put out her hand in token of dismissal.

"And you won't reconsider? Let me come to see you tomorrow, the next day. Is it so much that I ask?"

"Good night, Mr. Canby."

"You do not care enough?"

"Good night."

I bowed over her fingers silently.

Then I took up my hat. There was nothing left to do.

CHAPTER XIX

THE PATH IN THE WOOD

Had I not been obsessed with the desire at all costs to divert the unhappy tide of Jerry's infatuation, I must have known that no girl such as Una Habberton could lend herself as accessory to a plan like mine. I had had evidence enough that she cared for Jerry in a tender, almost a motherly way, and while I had been unsuccessful in my mission, I now saw no reason to change my opinion. Indeed, in my hotel room that night, the more I thought of the interview the more convinced I was that whatever modesty deterred her, it was the very fact of her caring so much that made the thing impossible to her. Her air of indifference, carefully assumed, had not hidden the rapid rise and fall of her breast at the confession of my fears. The inquietude of her manner, the curiosity which had permitted me to finish my story, were proof convincing that her interests in Jerry were more than ordinarily involved, and the more I thought of her attitude the more I wondered at my own temerity.

A brazen minx I had once thought her, but tonight in her plain white frock and sober conventional surroundings she seemed to show something of the quiet poise of a nurse or a nun. She seemed to exemplify the thought that the ideal woman is both wood-nymph and madonna. By contrast to the Nietzschian intriguer I had left that morning at Briar Hills, she was a paragon of all virtues. Nietzsche! The philosopher of the sty! Freud, his runt!

When, the following morning, I found Jack Ballard in his apartment at eleven (as usual fastening his cravat) I told him of the unfortunate end to my ventures, but he only laughed at me.

"My dear Pope," he said, "you are suffering from a severe attack of paternomania. If you don't mind my saying so, you're making a prodigious ass of yourself and of Jerry. If I were the boy, I'd pack you out bag and baggage. Imagine it! Put yourself in his place. Would you like any meddling in your little affairs of gallantry?" And he laughed aloud at his joke. I scowled at him, but passed the absurd remark in dignified silence.

"If it were an affair of gallantry!" I said at last, "I could forgive him that, and her. But this—it's mere milk and water and he thinks it's the nectar of the gods. The pity of it!"

"A pity, yes. But who is responsible? Not Jerry, surely. He's what you've made him," Jack paused expressively. "Does he—?" he began and paused. I read his meaning.

"No," I said.

"Um! Knowledge will come like a thunderclap to Jerry. Then—look out!"

I agreed with him.

"But Jerry's amatory ventures are none of your business, Pope," he went on. "Let the boy go the limit. He has got to do it. It won't hurt him. I told you that Marcia would help him cut his eye-teeth. She's doing it in approved modern fashion, without instruments or gas. He'll recover. Let 'em alone. I'll tell you what to do. Just put your precious dialectics in cold storage awhile—they'll keep; nobody'll thaw 'em out unless you do—and take a trip to 'Frisco."

"Frisco or not, I meddle no more."

"Frankenstein!" he laughed again. "The monster is getting away from you."

"If you're going to be facetious—"

"There are times when nothing else is possible. This is one of 'em. Brace up, old boy. All's lost but hope and that's going soon. You go home and take a pill. You're yellow. Perhaps I'll come up for the week-end for Marcia's party, you know,—if you'll promise to have the beds well-aired. I'm sure they're reminiscent of Jerry's pugs. Going? Oh, very well. Love to Jerry. And remember, old top, that a man is as heaven made him and sometimes a great deal worse."

This was the comforting reflection I took with me to the train that afternoon. But I was now resigned. I had done what I could and failed. The only thing left, it seemed, was to reconcile myself to the situation, seek a friendship with Marcia and await the débâcle.

I made, of course, no mention of the object of my visit to New York and Jerry gave me no confidences. He went to town Tuesday and Wednesday, returned tired and sullen. And the next night after a long period alone in the study in which I had managed at last to get my mind on my work, I found Jerry in the dining-room quite drunk with the brandy bottle beside him. He was ugly and disposed to be quarrelsome, but I got him to bed at last, suffering myself no graver damage than a bruised biceps where his great fingers had grasped me. Jack Ballard's remark about Frankenstein was no joke. That night a monster Jerry was; from the bottom of my heart I pitied him.

I argued with Jerry in the morning, pleaded with him and threatened to leave the Manor, but he was so contrite, so earnest in his promises of reformation that I couldn't find it in my heart to go. I proposed a trip to Europe, but he refused.

"Not now, Roger," he demurred. "I've got to stay here now. Just stick around with me for awhile, won't you, old chap?"

"Will you stop drinking?" I asked.

"Brandy?"

"Everything."