Paradise Garden: The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment

"You'll not," he cried.

"I will. What right have you to question me? You can amuse yourself with Una."

"Stop!" he thundered.

But she had found her spirit and her confidence in her ability to win him to gentleness by one means or another was returning to her. She was bold now but prepared to melt if the need required it.

"I will not stop," she cried. "You and Una. What right have you to criticize me for what you yourself—"

She stopped abruptly, for he caught her by the arm and held her. Jerry said that even yet he was timid of her delicacy—fearful of the things he had thought her to be. But he still held her, though she struggled to get away from him.

"Let me go, Jerry. You're hurting me. Please let me go."

She felt the first touch of his imperviousness when he refused to release her and chose to change her tone.

"Please let me go, Jerry," she pleaded softly. "Do you think you are treating me kindly, after all—all that is between us? I don't care for Chan—I don't, Jerry. Let me go."

In his eyes she read the new judgment.

"Then you're worse than I supposed," he muttered.

"Worse! Oh, Jerry. Don't look so—so coldly. It hurts me terribly. I must go. I can't stand your looking at me in that way."

She tried to move away, I think she had every intention of taking to her heels if Jerry had only given her the chance. But he wouldn't. He held her and kept her close beside him. He was hurting her wrist cruelly.

"Let me go," she cried, struggling anew.

Her resistance aroused him again. The animal fury of battle had not died out of his eyes. He did not know what he intended to do with her—had no plan, no purpose, he said. What plan or purpose could he have had unless murder? And even in his madness I'm sure that that never occurred to him. But his blood was hot and his anger and bitterness overwhelming. His fear of her delicacy diminished with her struggles, for her resistance inflamed him. He did not know, nor did she just then, that the animal instinct to conquer was what she had taught him, and that the turgid stream of his blood was finding new strength and unreason, a strange new impetus in every struggle. She saw her danger and was powerless to prevent it. She looked over her shoulder helplessly in the direction in which Chan Lloyd had vanished and saw no help from there. Jerry's great strength had never seemed so terrible as now. He caught her by the shoulders and held her, shook her, I think, a little, as one would shake a child, while she still struggled in his grasp. In a moment his grasp loosened a little, then tightened again, for the contact of his fingers with her warm skin was awaking the demon in him, the dormant devil she had put there.

"Oh, you're hurting me so, Jerry—so terribly."

But he did not even hear her voice. His eyes were speaking to hers, holding them with a deathly fascination. If fear was her passion she was drinking it now to the full—fear and the sense of the ruthless power and dominion in this madman of her own creation. Her hands clasped his shoulders.

"Jerry!" she screamed. "Don't look at me like that. Your eyes burn me."

"Into your soul—I will burn it—blot it out."

"Jerry, forgive me," she sobbed. "I love you."

"You lie."

"I love you. Forgive me!"

"No. You lie!"

Her arms went around his neck. And he crushed her to him, all the length of them in contact. She struggled faintly but her lips sought his in a despairing hope of pity. She found the lips, but no pity. The breath was almost gone from her body. She struggled, fighting hard, breathing his name in little panting sobs. She too was mad now, as much of an animal as Jerry, her blood coursing furiously. Her terror of herself must have been greater even than her terror of him, for she was quivering—shaken by the terrible gusts of his passion.

Suddenly she felt herself released, thrust from him. His fingers bruised the tender flesh of her shoulders but his eyes bruised her more.

"Jerry!"

His hands had caught the two sides of the flimsy shirt-waist at the breast and torn it aside, off her shoulders, off her arms.

"Have pity, Jerry," she whimpered.

"'Have pity, Jerry,' she whimpered."

"Pity, yes," he laughed wildly. "Kiss me. You want to be kissed. I'll kill you with kissing. Death like this—such a death—!"

She struggled more furiously, struck, kissed and struck again. But Jerry's madness triumphed—her own.

At this point Jerry hid his face in his hands, trembling violently.

"I was out of my head, Roger. Tell me that I was, for the love of God. I must have been. It was horrible. I did not know. I can scarcely remember now. Death would have been better—for her, for me—than that. My God! If only you had told me, something. I could have gone away, I think—before—But to have knowledge come like that, engulfing, flooding, drowning with its terrible bitterness. And Marcia—" He raised his head piteously, "I asked her to marry me, Roger—at once. But she only looked at me with strange eyes.

"'Marriage!' she said, 'My God!' It was almost as though I had uttered a sacrilege.

"I pleaded with her gently, but she shook me off. A fearful change had come over her. She drew away and looked at me with alien eyes.

"'Marriage!' she repeated. 'You!'

"'Marry me tomorrow, Marcia—'

"She thrust her naked arms in front of her, their tatters flying, the rags of her honor.

"'Oh, God! How I loathe you!'

"'Marcia!'

"'Go away from me. Go!'

"She put her arm before her eyes as though to shut out the sight of me.

"'For God's sake, go,' she repeated, with words that cut like knives. 'Leave me alone, alone.'

"'I must see you—tomorrow.'

"She turned on me furiously.

"'No, no, no,' she screamed, 'not tomorrow—or ever. It would kill me to see you. Kill me. Go away—never comeback. Do you hear? Never! Never!'

"She was in a harrowing condition now, mad where I was quite sane. There was nothing left for me to do. I turned as in a daze into the woods and wandered around as though only half-awake, stupidly trying to plan. At last I went back to the spring. Marcia had gone—gone out of my life—

"That's all, Roger. I wrote to her from New York, from Manitoba, from the ranch in Colorado, repeating my offer of marriage, but she has never answered me. You know the rest—" a slow and rather bitter smile crossed his features. "She goes about—with Lloyd—and others. She is gay. Her picture is in the papers and magazines—at hunt-meets—bazaars. She has forgotten—and I—No, I can never forget. She will dwell with me all the days I live. I can't forget or forgive—myself. Why, Roger, the Mission—the place that I'm giving money to support—to keep those women. You understand—I know now. She might be one of them and I—I would have brought her there."

I had been stricken dumb by the fearful revelation of Jerry's sin. I was silent, thinking of new words of comfort for him and for myself—for I was not innocent—but they would not come, and Jerry rose and walked the length of the room. "I've got to get away from it all again—somewhere. I can't stay here. Everything brings it all back. I'm going away."

"Going, Jerry? Where?"