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Paradise Garden by George Gibbs

G >> George Gibbs >> Paradise Garden




"Exactly," said Ballard coolly over his coffee cup. "But how?"

"An appeal to the boy's reason. He must be insane to do such a thing.
It's Flynn who's put him up to this."

"I think not. If I understand Jerry correctly, he urged Flynn to make
the match. He's quite keen about it."

I paced the floor in some bewilderment, trying to think of a reason
for Jerry's strange behavior, but curiously enough the real one did
not come to me.

"I can't imagine how such an ambition could have got into his head," I
muttered.

Ballard struck a match for his cigarette and smiled.

"The nice balance of Jerry's cosmos between the purely physical and
the merely mental has been disturbed--that's all. Liberty has become
license and has gone into his muscles. What shall we do about it?
Flatly, I don't know. That's what I asked you down to discuss."

I took a turn or two up and down the room.

"Your father--the executors--know nothing of this?"

"Phew! I should say not!"

"They could stop it, I suppose."

"I'm not so sure," he said quietly. "If the boy has made up his mind."

I sank in a chair, trying to think.

"The executors mustn't know. Jack. We'll keep the thing quiet. We've
got to appeal to Jerry."

"That's precisely the conclusion I've reached myself. I've asked him
to come this morning. He may be in at any moment."

I looked out of the window thoughtfully toward the distant Jersey
shore.

"This isn't like Jerry. He's a fine athlete and a good sportsman--for
the fun he gets out of the thing. But he has too good a mind not to be
above the personal vulgarity of such an exhibition as this. His finer
instincts, his natural modesty, his lack of vanity--everything that we
know of the boy contradicts the notion of a personal incentive for
this wild plan. Does he know what he's doing--what it means--the
publicity--?"

"He thinks he's dodging that. Nobody knows him in New York except a
few fellows at the clubs, he says."

"But has he no consideration for _us_--for _me_?" I cried.

"Apparently his friends haven't entered into his calculations."

"I repeat, it isn't like him, Jack. Somebody has put this idea into
his head."

I stopped so abruptly that Ballard regarded me curiously.

"Somebody--who?"

I paced the floor with long strides, my fingers twitching to get that
pretty devil by the throat. I knew now--it had come in a flash of
light--Marcia. Jerry listened now to no one but Marcia; but I couldn't
tell Jack.

"Somebody--somebody at Flynn's," I muttered.

He regarded me curiously.

"But the boy is immune to flattery. There isn't a vain bone in his
body. I confess he puzzles me. But I think you'll find he's quite
stubborn about it."

"Stubborn, yes, but--"

My remark was cut short by a ring of the bell, immediately answered by
Ballard's man, and Jerry entered. He was, I think, attired in one of
Jack's "Symphonies," wore a blossom in his buttonhole, swung a stick
jauntily, and altogether radiated health and good humor, greeting us
both in high spirits.

"Well, fairy godfathers, what's my gift today?" he laughed. "A golden
goose, a magic ring, or a beautiful Cinderella hidden behind the
curtain?" and he poked at the portiere playfully. "But you have the
appearance of conspirators. Is it only a lecture?"

"I've just been telling Roger," Jack began gravely, "about your fight
with Clancy, Jerry."

I saw the boy's jaw muscles clamp, but he replied very quietly.

"Yes, Uncle Jack. He objects, I suppose."

"Not object," I said quickly. "It's the wrong word, Jerry. You're your
own master, of course. We were just wondering whether you hadn't
undervalued our friendship in not asking our advice before making your
plans."

Jerry followed a pattern in the rug with the point of his stick.

"I wish you hadn't put it just that way, Roger."

"I don't know how else to put it. That's the fact, isn't it, Jerry?"

"No. I don't undervalue your friendship. You know that, Roger, you
too. Uncle Jack. I suppose I should have said something about it. But
I--I just sort of drifted into it. I think walloping Sagorski spoiled
me--made me rather keen to have a try at somebody who had licked him.
Clancy's almost, if not quite, the best in his class. I'll get well
thrashed, I guess, but it's going to be a lot of fun trying--and if
nobody knows who I am, I can't see what harm it does."

I couldn't tell what there was in his tone and manner that made me
think he was playing a part not his own. I was not yet used to Jerry
out in the world, but as compared with the Jerry of Horsham Manor, he
didn't ring true.

"You can't keep people from knowing, Jerry," I said. "Your picture
will be on every sporting page in the United States."

"Oh, we've fixed that with a photographer. Flynn had a picture of a
cousin of his who is dead--young chap--looked something like me.
They're faking the thing."

The boy was getting a new code of morals as well as a new vocabulary.

"You can't hide a lie, Jerry."

"I'm not harming anybody," he muttered.

"Nobody but yourself," I said sternly.

"I don't see that," he growled, clasping his great fists over his
knees.

"It's the truth. You'll harm yourself irrevocably. The thing will come
out somehow. Jim Robinson isn't Jerry Benham. He's the New York and
South Western Railroad Company, the Seaboard Transportation Line, the
United Oil Company--"

"I'd get Clancy's goat in the first round if he thought I was all
that, wouldn't I?" Jerry grinned sheepishly, while Jack Ballard fought
back a smile.

"If you won't consider your own interests, what you must consider is
that you've no right to jeopardize the property interests of those who
have put their money and their faith behind these enterprises which
you control. You're already in a responsible position. You're making
yourself a mountebank, a laughing-stock. No one will ever trust you in
a position of responsibility again."

"I'm sorry, Roger, if you think things are as bad as that," said Jerry
coolly. "I don't. And besides, I'm too far in this thing to back out
now."

There was no shaking his resolution. We pleaded with him, argued,
cajoled, ridiculed, but all to no purpose. Jack painted a picture of
the crowd in the Garden, the cat-calls, the jeers, imitated the
introduction of past and present champions, and Jerry winced a little,
but was not moved. Finding all else unavailing, I fell back upon our
friendship, recalling all Jerry's old ideals and mine. He softened a
little, but merely repeated:

"I can't back out now, Roger. They'll think me a quitter. I'd like to
please you in everything, but I can't, Roger, I can't."

Jack Ballard was so incensed at this obstinacy that he swore at the
boy, flung out of the room and disappeared.

With a sober expression Jerry watched him go out and then rose and
walked slowly to the window. I looked at him in silence. I knew his
manner. Confession was on the tip of his tongue, and yet he would not
speak. But I waited patiently. Finally the silence became oppressive,
and he swung around at me petulantly.

"I can't see what's the use of making such a lot of fuss over the
thing," he muttered. "It seems as though because I have a lot of money
I've got to be fettered to it hand and foot. I'm not going to be a
slave to a desk. I've warned you of that. You wanted me to be a great
athlete, Roger, and now when I'm putting my skill to the test you
rebel."

"An athlete--but a gentleman. There are some things a gentleman
doesn't do."

"A gentleman," he sneered. "I hear of a lot of things a gentleman must
not do. Perhaps I don't know what the word means. In New York a
gentleman can get drunk at dances, swear, treat people impolitely, and
as long as he comes of a good family or has money back of him nobody
questions him. So long as I treat people decently and do no one any
harm I'm willing to take my chances with God Almighty. With Sailor
Clancy fighting is a business. With me it's a sport. He hasn't had
many good matches. I've given him a chance to make five thousand
dollars and gate receipts. Who am I hurting? Surely not Clancy. Not
Flynn. His gym is so full of people we've had to get special training
quarters. I've hired a lot of people to look after me, rubbers,
assistants--why, old Sagorski worships the very ground I walk on. Who
am I hurting?" he urged again.

"Yourself," I persisted sternly.

He laughed up at the ceiling.

"Good old Roger! You haven't much opinion of my moral fiber, after
all, have you? My poor old morals! They'd all be shot to shreds by
now if you had your way. I don't drink, steal, cheat, lie--"

I rose, shrugging my shoulders, and walked past him.

"I'll say no more except that I hope you know I think you're a fool."

"I do, Roger," he laughed. "You've indicated it clearly."

At the fireplace I turned, laying my trap for him skillfully.

"You've told Marcia?" I asked carelessly.

"Yes," he said. "You see, Marcia--" he bit his lip, reddened and came
to a full stop, searching my face with a quick glance, but he found me
elaborately removing a speck of lint from my coat sleeve.

"Yes, Jerry. Marcia--?" I encouraged innocently.

For a fraction of a minute he paused and then went on, blurting the
whole thing in his old boyish way.

"You see, Marcia's very broad-gauge, Roger. She's really very much
interested in the whole thing. It was a good deal of a surprise to me.
It began when she heard about my bout with Sagorski. She was awfully
keen about my gym work--you remember--at the Manor that night. She
thought every man ought to develop his body to its fullest capability.
I had Flynn out one night at Briar Hills. I didn't tell you about
that--thought you mightn't understand--and we sparred six fast rounds.
She kept the time and thought it was great. It was like going to a
vaudeville show, she said, only a thousand times more exciting. She
tried to make Lloyd do a turn, but he wouldn't, though I'd have liked
to have mussed him up a bit. Well, one thing led to another and we
had a lot of talks about education--you know, the Greek idea. It
seemed that my work with you was just in line with her whole
philosophy of life." (God bless his innocence--_her_ philosophy and
_mine_!) "The whole scheme of modern life was lopsided, she said, all
the upper classes going to brains and no body and all the lower
classes all to body and no brains. Conflict in the end was inevitable.
The unnatural way of living was weakening the fiber of the governing
powers the people of which intermarried and brought into the world
children of weak muscular tissue. She doesn't believe in marriage
unless both the man and the woman have passed rigid physical tests as
to their fitness."

"What tests?" I asked interestedly.

"Oh, I don't know. A woman who bears a child ought surely to have the
strength to do it. You and I have never talked much about these
things, Roger, and the miracle of birth, like the miracle of death,
must always be an enigma to us. But I think she's right, and I told
her that if she was ever going to have any children she ought to have
a gym built both at Briar Hills and in town for herself and begin
getting in shape for it right away."

"And what did she say to that?" I asked trying to keep countenance.

"Oh, she laughed and said that she wasn't thinking of having any
children just yet."

This, then, was the type of after-dinner conversation that took place
between them. I began more clearly to understand the fascination that
Jerry had for her--to understand, too, her growing delight in the
splendid, vital, innocent animal that she had chained to her chariot
wheel.

"Go on, Jerry," I said in a moment. "She wants you to typify the new
race--"

"Exactly. To spread the gospel of physical strength among my own
kind--to prove that mind, other things being more or less equal, is
greater than matter."

"I see," I said thoughtfully. "Then it _was_ Marcia's idea, wasn't
it?"

He hesitated a moment before replying.

"Oh, yes, I suppose so. But I've been pretty keen about it from the
beginning. You must admit that it's interesting in theory."

"The superbeast versus the superman," I commented. "Your mind is made
up then--irrevocably?"

"Yes."

I had not known Jerry all these years for nothing. I shrugged my
shoulders and sank into my chair again. "Then, of course, there's
nothing for it but to try to keep the thing out of the papers."

He took up his hat and stick gayly. "Oh, they'll never guess in the
world. When I go down to Flynn's I get into an old suit Christopher
got for me down on Seventh Avenue--a hand-me-down, and when Marcia
goes she wears--"

"Ah--Marcia goes--?"

"Oh, yes, sometimes in the afternoons. She wears the worst-looking
things--her maid got 'em somewhere. She watches me work. They call her
my 'steady.' It's great sport. She's having more fun than she ever had
before in her life, she says. I'd like you to run down this
afternoon. You know the place. It will liven up your dry bones. Come
along, will you?"

"Perhaps," I said helplessly, looking out of the window.




CHAPTER XIII

UNA


Jerry's destiny was indeed in the lap of the gods. Whatever may have
been my hope, during his visit to the Manor, of opening his eyes, I
now confessed myself utterly at a loss. He was dipping life up by the
ladle-full and yet curiously enough thus far had missed the vital, the
significant fact of existence. I supposed that it was because the
history of his early years was known to but few and that the men with
whom he came into contact, nice enough fellows at the clubs, friends
of Jack Ballard, had taken his worldliness for granted. He had missed
the filthy story perhaps, or if he had heard it, had ignored its point
and turned away to topics he understood. Business, too, had taken some
of his time and Marcia had taken more. The clubs, I had inferred, had
not greatly interested him. Flynn, his other crony, was no
scandal-monger and the habits of the years at Horsham Manor would
still be strong with him at the gymnasium. As I have said before,
Jerry hadn't the kind of a mind to absorb what did not interest him.

It must be obvious, however, that I was greatly concerned over Jerry's
venture into pugilism. I tried to view the Great Experiment as from a
great distance, as across a space of time looking forward to the hour
when Jerry would emerge scatheless from all his tests both material
and spiritual. But Jerry's personality, his thoughts, his
sensibilities bulked too large. There was no room for a perspective.
To all intents and purposes I myself was Jerry, thinking his thoughts,
tasting his enthusiasms and his regrets. But I think if he had married
a street wench or engaged in a conspiracy to blow up the Capitol at
Washington I could scarcely have been more perturbed for him than I
was at finding how strong was the influence that this girl Marcia
exercised upon his actions. His fondness for her was the only flaw I
had ever discovered in Jerry's nature. He could speak of her
spirituality as he pleased, but there was another attraction here. I
had felt the allure of her personality, a magnetism less mental than
physical. Physical, of course, and because incomprehensible to Jerry
the more marvelous. I had looked upon the boy as a perfect human
animal, forgetting that he was only an animal after all. Marcia, the
woman without a heart, whose game was the hearts of others! Bah! No
woman without a heart could hold Jerry. If passion danced to him in
the mask of a purer thing, Jerry's honesty would strip off the
disguise in time. The danger was not now, but then, and even then
perhaps more hers than his.

I waited long for Jack Ballard, but he did not return and so I went
out into the streets and walked rapidly for exercise down town in the
general direction of Flynn's Gymnasium over on the East Side, where I
proposed to meet Jerry later in the afternoon. I had kept no record of
the time and when my appetite advised me that it was the luncheon
hour, I looked at my watch. It was two o'clock. I sauntered into a
cross street, finding at last a quiet place where I could eat and
think in peace. "Dry-as-dust!" I was. Twelve years ago I had railed at
the modern woman and learned my lesson from her. But now--! The years
had swept madly past my sanctuary, license running riot. Sin stalked
openly. The eyes of the women one met upon the streets were hard with
knowledge. Nothing was sacred--nothing hidden from young or old. And
men and women of wealth and tradition--I will not call them society,
which is far too big a word for so small a thing--men and women born
to lead and mold public thought and conduct, showed the way to a
voluptuousness which rivaled tottering Rome.

And this was the world into which my sinless man had been liberated!

I smiled to myself a little bitterly. It was unfortunate that out of
all the women in New York, Jerry should have fallen in love with the
first hypocrite that had come his way, a follower of strange gods,
cold, calculating, too selfish even to be sinful! Eheu! She was
getting on my nerves. Analysis--always analysis! I could not let her
be. She obsessed me as she had obsessed Jerry--a slender wisp of a
thing that I could have broken in my fingers and would still, I think,
unless reason returned.

I paid my bill and would have risen, but just at that moment through
the door beside my table entered, to my bewilderment, Jerry himself
and a girl. I was so amazed at seeing him in this place that I made no
sound or motion and watched the pair pass without seeing me and take a
table beyond a small palm tree just beside me, and when they were
seated my amazement grew again, for I saw that his companion was the
girl Una--Una Habberton who had called herself Smith. Their
appearance at this moment together found me at a loss to know what to
do. To get up and join them would interfere with a tete-a-tete which,
whatever its planning, I deemed most fortunate; to get up and leave
the room without being observed would have been impossible, for Jerry
faced the door. So I sat debating the matter, watching the face of the
girl and listening to the conversation, aware for a second time that I
was playing the part of eavesdropper upon these two and now without
justification. And yet no qualm of conscience troubled me. Brazen she
may have seemed at Horsham Manor, but here in New York in her sober
suit and hat she seemed to have lost something of her raffish
demeanor, and there was a wholesomeness about her, a frankness in her
smile, which was distinctly refreshing.

It was not until several days later that I heard from Jerry how they
had happened to meet. It seems that after leaving Ballard's apartment
Jerry had gone home, attired himself in his old suit and made his way
to meet Flynn, with whom he had an appointment to go down to
Finnegan's saloon to attend to some final details of his match with
Clancy. This business finished, the party came out upon the street,
Jerry, Flynn, Finnegan (in his shirt sleeves) and Clancy's manager,
Terry Riley. In the midst of a brogue of farewells Jerry fairly bumped
into the girl. He took off his hat and apologized, finding himself
looking with surprise straight into Una's face. She started back and
would have gone on, but Jerry caught her by the arm.

"Una!" he said. "Don't you know me?"

"Yes, Jerry. Of course, but it seems so strange to see you--here--"
She paused. "To see you down here--in the Bowery."

"It is, isn't it?" he stammered. "But I--I'll explain in a minute--if
you'll let me walk with you."

She looked him over with a sober air, her gaze passing for a moment
over his soft hat pulled down over the eyes, his rough clothing, the
cigarette in his fingers (he hadn't really begun rigid training yet),
and then shrugged.

"Of course, I can have no objection," she said coolly.

Jerry threw the cigarette away.

"I suppose you think it's very curious to see me down here at
Finnegan's," Jerry repeated.

No reply.

"I've been there on--er--a matter of business--with--with Flynn. He's
my athletic instructor, you know. It's a sort of secret. I--I'm
supposed to belong up town."

"Oh, _are_ you?" Still, I think, the cool, indifferent tone.

"You know I--I'm awfully glad to see you. I've been hunting for you
ever since I came out of the--the asylum--you know."

It must have pleased her that Jerry should have remembered her phrase.

"Really!" her tone melting a little. "It's pleasant to
be--remembered."

She turned and again searched him slowly with her gaze, smiling a
little.

"How long have you been in New York?"

"Oh, ages--almost two months."

"And in that time," she said quizzically, "the Faun has learned the
habit of saloons and cigarettes. You've progressed, haven't you?"

"Oh, I say, Una. That's not quite fair. I don't make a habit of
saloons, and a cigarette once in a while doesn't hurt a fellow if his
wind and heart are good."

"And _are_ your wind and heart good?" she asked with her puzzling
smile.

"Now you're making fun of me. You always did though, didn't you? You
know it's awfully fine to hear you talk like that. Makes it seem as if
we'd just met by the big rock on the Sweetwater. You remember, don't
you?"

"Yes, I remember," she replied.

He eyed her sober little profile curiously. She seemed strangely
demure.

"I don't think you're very glad to see me," he said. "I thought
perhaps you would be. There were so many things that we began to talk
about and didn't finish. I've thought about them a good deal. I really
want to talk to you about them again. Couldn't we--er--go somewhere
and--Have you had lunch yet? Can't we find a place to get a cup of
tea?"

She turned toward him and their eyes met. When her gaze turned away
from him she was smiling.

"Yes. I'd like a cup of tea," she said after a moment of deliberation.

He didn't very well know this part of the city, but he remembered a
restaurant he had once gone to with Flynn, the very one, it seems,
where I had taken refuge. And there they were, looking at each other
across the table, the girl, as Jerry expressed it, a little demure, a
little quizzical, possibly a little upon the defensive, but friendly
enough. If she hadn't been friendly, he argued, most properly, she
wouldn't have come with him.

"I can't seem to think it's really you," Jerry began after he had
given his order. "You're different somehow--soberer and a little
pale."

"Am I?"

"Yes, I can't think just how I expected you to look in New York. Of
course, you wouldn't wear leather gaiters, or carry a butterfly net.
There aren't any butterflies in the Bowery, are there?"

"No--no butterflies." She paused a moment. "Only moths with singed
wings."

She examined him furtively, but he was frankly puzzled.

"Moths--! I don't think I understand."

"Yes--moths--I--I spend a good deal of my time at the Blank Street
Mission."

"And what is that?"

She gazed for a moment at him wide-eyed.

"A home--a refuge," she went on haltingly, "for--for women in trouble.
They're the moths--bewildered by the lights of the town--they--they
singe their wings and then we try to help them."

"It's great of you, Una."

"And what do you do with _your_ time?" she broke in quickly. "Whom
have you met? Is the riddle of existence easier for you in New York
than at Horsham Manor?"

"No," he blurted out. "I don't understand it at all. I'm always making
the most absurd mistakes. I'm fearfully stupid. Do you ever use rouge,
Una?"

The suddenness of the question took her aback, but in a second she
was smiling in spite of herself.

"No, I don't, Jerry. But lots of girls do. It's the fashion."

"I know, but do you approve of it?"

"It's very effective if not overdone," she evaded.

"But do you approve of it?" he insisted.

"There's no harm in it, is there? I'd wear it if I wanted to."

"But you don't want to."

"No. Why do you want to know?"

But he didn't seem to hear her question.

"Do you drink cocktails? Or smoke cigarettes?"

"No. I don't like cocktails. Besides they're not served at the
Mission. We think they might create false notions of the purposes of
the organization."

He didn't laugh.

"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."

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