A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

Paradise Garden by George Gibbs

G >> George Gibbs >> Paradise Garden




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."

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Pierre Besnier - "A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages"

Mrs. Georgie Sheldon - "True Love's Reward"

Francis Galton - "The Art of Travel"

Mrs. Sutherland Orr - "A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.)"