Paradise Garden Part 11

I'd like you to know Roger, I really would."

She gazed straight before her for a moment deliberating and then:

"I hope you don't mind if I say so, but I think your Roger must be a good deal of a fossil."

"A fossil. Now see here, Una--I can't have you talking about Roger like that."

"He is. I'm sure of it. All theorists are."

"He's not. He's the broadest fellow you ever knew."

"n.o.body's broad who ignores the existence of woman," she returned hotly. "It's sinful--that sort of philosophy. It's against nature.

We're here--millions of us, working as hard as men do, earning our own way in the world, active, live intelligences, writing books, nursing in hospitals, cleaning the plague-spots out of the cities, influencing in a thousand ways the uplift of that coa.r.s.er brute man and besides all this practicing a thousand acts of self-abnegation in the home.

Keeping man's house, cooking his food, bearing his ch--"

She stopped abruptly and bit her lip.

"Bearing his--what?" asked Jerry.

"Burdens," she blurted out. "Burdens--all sorts of burdens," she finished weakly.

"I suppose there _are_ things that women can do," said Jerry after a moment. "Of course, I don't know much about it. But--"

"Well, it's time you did," she broke in again. "It may be beautiful here--inside these walls--an unbroken idyl of peace and contentment, but it isn't life. It's just existence, that's all. If I were a man, I'd want to do a man's work in the world. I wouldn't want to miss an hour of it, childhood, boyhood or manhood. I'd want to meet my temptations and conquer them. It's selfish, the way you live, unreal, cowardly."

"See here, Una--"

"I mean it. You've got me started and I can't help it. If I say anything that hurts, you'll have to put me out. But I'm going to tell you what I think."

"You're rather bewildering. But I'm not a coward. I don't want you to say that. If you were a man, I'd give you a thras.h.i.+ng," he said quietly.

Their glances must have flashed fire. Jerry's face was red, I'm sure, and his fingers were twitching to get hold of something, but the girl didn't flinch. Jerry told me afterward that he found his anger softening strangely as he looked at her and in a moment they were both smiling. The girl spoke first.

"I've gone too far, Jerry. Forgive me."

"Of course," he said awkwardly. "I suppose you've got a right to your opinions. But it isn't very pleasant to be told that one's life is a failure."

"I didn't say that," she put in quickly. "You haven't failed, of course. You've missed something, but you've gained something too." Her words trailed slowly again and her gaze sought the deep woods. "Yes,"

she repeated softly and thoughtfully, "I'm very sure you've gained something."

"What have I gained?"

There was a long pause before she replied.

"Simplicity," she said carefully. "Life, after all, nowadays, is so very complex," she sighed.

But when he questioned as to what she meant, she waved him off. "No, I've said enough. I didn't intend to. Don't let's talk any more about what I think. Let's talk about what _you_ think, what you read, what you do. People say you live in the woods most of the time--do you?

Where? How?"

"In a cabin. We built it. Would you like to see it? It's not far. I'll make you a cup of tea."

As the reader will perceive, in these two conversations, lasting perhaps two hours, this slip of a girl, in mere idle curiosity, had touched with her silly chatter the vital, the vulnerable points of Jerry's philosophy of life. Fate had not been fair to me or with him.

Less than a year; remained of Jerry's period of probation. In December the boy was to go out into the world. And through an unfortunate accident due to a broken iron, a chaos of half-baked ideas had come pouring through the breach. If I said that my labors of ten years had been useless or that the fruition of John Benham's ideals for his son were still in doubt I should be putting the matter too strongly, but I have no hesitancy in confessing that the appearance of the girl had at least put them in jeopardy. She had turned his mind into a direction which I had carefully avoided. He must think now and ask questions that I could not be ready to answer. By this time it must be well understood that I have no love for women, but I will do this girl the credit of saying that in a general way she saw fit to respect Jerry's artlessness. I think that the s.e.x instinct, so ready with its antagonisms, its insinuations, its alternate attacks and defenses, was atrophied as in the presence of a phenomenon. She was modern enough, G.o.d knows, but she had some delicacy at least and was impotent before the splendor of Jerry's innocence.

What they said on the way to the cabin must have been unimportant. I suppose Jerry told her about his routine at the Manor and something of what I had taught him of woodcraft, but I think that she was very reticent in speaking of herself. No doubt her unceremonious visit to our domain and the unusual intimacy of their conversation had made it seem necessary to her to preserve her incognito, or perhaps it was coquetry, which no woman, however placed, is quite without. As far as I have been able to learn, they were as two children, the girl's mind as well as her actions, in spite of her sophistication, reflecting the artlessness of her companion. The damage that she had done, as I was afterwards to discover, was mainly by the force of suggestion. She a.s.sumed the absurd premises of modernity, drew her own preposterous conclusions and Jerry drank them in, absorbed them as he did all information, like a sponge.

CHAPTER VI

THE CABIN

Having decided upon a course of action, I lost no time in setting forth, following the Sweet.w.a.ter to the wall and then, not finding Jerry, making as though by instinct for the cabin. Perhaps I may be pardoned for approaching the place with cautious footsteps. I was justified, I think, by the anxiety of the moment and the fear of a damage that might be irreparable. I am sure that the somber shade of old John Benham guided me upon my way and made light my footsteps as I crept through the bushes and peered through the window of the cabin.

There upon the floor, before the hearth, in which some f.a.gots were burning, sat Jerry and the minx, as thick as thieves, oblivious of the fall of night, wrapped in their own conversation and in themselves. I am willing to admit that the girl was pretty, though from the glimpses I had of it, her profile gave no suggestion of the cla.s.sical ideals of beauty, for her nose made a short line far from regular and her hair, though carelessly dressed, was worn, in some absurd modern fas.h.i.+on with which I was unfamiliar. And yet in a general way I may say that there seemed to be no doubt as to her comeliness. She was quite small and crouched as she was upon the floor before the fire she even seemed childish--quite too unimportant a creature to have made such a hullabaloo in this small world of ours.

Nevertheless I felt justified in keeping silence and even in listening to their conversation.

"You didn't mean it," I heard Jerry ask, "about all those girls'

mothers, did you?"

She laughed.

"Of course I did. You're a catch, you know."

"You mean, they want to catch _me_? Nonsense. I don't believe you."

"It's true. You're too rich to escape."

"If that's the way marriage is made I don't think much of it."

"It isn't always like that." She smiled. "People aren't all as rich as you are."

"It's queer," he said after a pause. "I've never thought of myself as being different from other people. If money makes one man more desirable than another then money sets false standards of judgment.

The people here I like for what they are, not for what they have.

That's all wrong somehow, Una. It makes me think crooked."

"I suppose I'm talking too much. You don't have to believe what I say," she said slowly.

"But I want to know and I want you to talk. You've stirred something deep in me. You somehow make me think I've been looking at everything sideways without being able to walk around it. Roger knows what he's about, of course, and I suppose he has reasons of his own, but I'm a not a child any longer. And if he does not care to tell me the whole truth, I've got to find out things for myself from somebody else."

And then, turning upon her suddenly: "You aren't lying to me, are you?"

"Do you think I would?" she asked.

"No, I don't. But I thought you might say queer things, just as a joke."

She shook her head. "No," she said calmly. "I laughed a little at first, because I didn't understand, but I'm quite serious now."