Paradise Garden Part 37

"You lost something, Flynn?" he asked.

"A trifle, sor."

"And the Kid and Tim?"

"_And_ Rozy and Dan--all of us a bit, sor. But it don't matther."

"Well," he said with a laugh. "I'll make it up to you, all of you, d'

you hear? And I'm very much obliged for your confidence."

It didn't need this munificence on Jerry's part to win the affection of these bruisers, but they were none the less cheerful on account of it. As Jim Robinson he had won their esteem, and all the evening they had stood a little in awe of Jerry Benham, but before they left him that night he gave them a good handshake all around and invited them to his house on the morrow. Between the crowd of us we got him into street clothes and a closed automobile in which Jack and I went with him to his house uptown.

CHAPTER XVII

MARCIA RECANTS

Thanks to the formidable size of Jerry's training partners, we had managed to avoid the reporters at the Garden, and when we reached Jerry's house we gave instructions to the butler to admit no one and answer no questions. Christopher, now Jerry's valet, we took upstairs with us and got the boy ready for bed. As the telephone bell began ringing with queries from the morning newspapers, I disconnected the wire and we were left in peace. A warm bath and a drink of brandy did wonders both for Jerry's appearance and his spirits, and at last we got him to bed. But he could not sleep, and so we sat at his bedside and talked to him until far into the night, Jerry propped up on his pillows, his bad eye comically decorated with a part of his morning's steak.

By dint of persuasion and a promise to stay all night at last we got the boy to sleep and went to bed. I think Jack was rather glad to be beyond the reach of the parental ire, and my own wish was to be near Jerry now, to help him on the morrow to readjust his mind to his disappointment, and do what other service I could to save him from the results of his folly.

The morning papers brought the evidences of it in vivid scare heads upon their first pages and detailed accounts of the whole affair, written by their best men, who gave Jerry, I am glad to say, the credit that was his due, calling him "the new star in pugilistic circles," "the coming heavyweight champion," and the yellowest of them, the one that had unmasked Jim Robinson the afternoon before, came out with an offer to back Jerry Benham for five thousand dollars against Jack Clancy or any other heavyweight except the Champion.

Jerry read the articles in silence, a queer smile upon his face and at last shoved the papers aside.

"Nice of those chaps, very, considering the way I've treated 'em, but it's no go. I've finished."

Jack had ventured out to brave the storm and I sat quietly, scarcely daring to hope that I had heard correctly.

"I'm done, Roger," he repeated. "No more fights for me. I staked everything on science and head-work. I failed. He got me--somewhere that hurt like the devil--and I saw red. I don't remember much after that except that I was as much of a brute as he was. I failed, Roger, failed miserably. The fellow that can't hold his temper has no business in the ring."

His voice was heavy, like his manner, weary, disappointed, and as he threw off his dressing gown I saw that his left arm was hideously discolored from wrist to shoulder.

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

"What? Oh, my arm. No. But I'm sore inside of me Roger, my mind I mean. To do a thing like that, and fail--that's what hurts. Because I hadn't will enough--"

"You're in earnest, then," I asked, "about not fighting again?"

"Yes. I'm through--for good." And then boyishly, "But I didn't quit, Roger, did I?"

"I think any unprejudiced observer will admit that you didn't quit," I said. "Clancy, I'm sure, knows better than anybody."

"Good old Clancy. He _was_ a sight--but he squared things. I saw that knockout coming, but I couldn't move for the life of me. My arms wouldn't come up. By George--that _was_ a wallop! Oh well," he sighed, "the better man won. I'm satisfied."

I helped him into his clothes and we went down to breakfast. He examined his letters quickly and put them aside with an air of disappointment, and then asked if there had been any telephone calls, seeming much put out when I told him my reasons for disconnecting the instrument.

"Oh, it doesn't matter--Beastly nuisance, those reporters--" He looked over at me and grinned sheepishly. "Nice morning reading for Ballard, Senior! It _was_ a rotten trick to play on him, though. He didn't deserve all this. I wouldn't wonder if he didn't speak to me now. I deserve that, I think. He cost me ten thousand cold. I'm in disgrace.

I'll never be able to square myself--never."

When he got up from the breakfast table he caught a glimpse of his face in a mirror. "I _am_ a sight. The lip is going down nicely, but the eye! Looks like an overripe tomato against a wall. Pretty sort of a phiz to go calling on a lady with."

"You're going visiting?"

"Yes, Marcia and I are going up to the country together. You'll have to go along."

"Thanks," I said, "but I've some matters to attend to here."

"I say, Roger," he went on quickly examining himself anew in the mirror; "I've got to get hold of Flynn. There's a chap in the Bowery who makes a business of painting eyes." And he went off to the telephone where I heard him making the arrangement.

With Jerry restored to partial sanity my duty at the town house was ended. Reporters still came to the door, but were turned away, and, seeing that I could be of no further use, I made my adieux and took my way downtown.

If no man is a hero to his valet, surely no boy can be a hero to his tutor, and I may as well admit that glorious as Jerry's defeat had been, I had ceased to reckon him among the perfect creations of this world. Nowhere, I think, have I hailed Jerry as a hero. I have not meant to place him upon a pedestal. At the Manor, before he came to New York, he did no wrong, because the things that were good were pleasant to him and because original sin--_Eheu!_ I was beginning to wonder! Original sin! John Benham had ignored its existence and I had thought him wise. What was original sin? And if its origin was not within, where did it originate and how? If the boy had already been inoculated with the germ of sin, was he conscious of it? And did he yield to it voluntarily or unconsciously or both? And if unconscious of sin, was he morally responsible for its commission? These and many other vexed theological questions flitted anxiously through my mind and brought me to a careful scrutiny of Jerry's acts as I knew them.

To engage in a prize fight, whatever the prize, whether money or merely the love of woman, if a venial, was not a mortal sin. To be sure, anger was a mortal sin and Jerry had yielded to it. Such fighting as Jerry had done, was not and could not by dint of argument become a part of any philosophy that I had taught him. He had sinned.

He would sin again. As Miss Gore had said, my dream castle was tottering--it _had_ tottered and was falling. Jerry, my Perfect Man, at the first contact with the world felt the contagion of its innate depravity and corruption. The more I thought of Jerry's character, his ingenuous belief in the good of all things, the more it seemed to me that it was only a question of the strength of Jerry's spiritual health to resist the ravages of spiritual disease. You see, already I had thrown my philosophy to the winds. For where I had once planned that Jerry should go through fire unscorched, it was now merely become a question of the amount of his scorching.

I bade Jack good-by, after hearing of the bad quarter-hour he had spent with Ballard, Senior, downtown, and made my way to my train for Horsham Manor in no very happy frame of mind. Had I known what new phase of Jerry's character was soon to be revealed to me, G.o.d knows I should have been still more unhappy. Jerry was not at the Manor when I arrived there. For some reasons best known to Marcia Van Wyck and himself it had been decided to stay for awhile longer in town, and it was not until over a month later that Jerry arrived bag and baggage in his machine with Christopher. He greeted me cheerfully enough, but I was not quite satisfied with his appearance. The marks of his fight with Clancy had almost, if not quite, disappeared, and while he had taken on much of his normal weight, he had little color and his eyes were dull. He smoked cigarettes constantly, lighting one from another, and on the afternoon and evening of the day of his arrival, sat moodily frowning at vacancy, or walked aimlessly about, his mind obviously upon some troublesome or perplexing matter. I could not believe that Clancy's victory had cast this shadow upon his spirit, but I asked no questions. He ordered wine for dinner, a thing he had never done before at the Manor, save on a few occasions when we had had guests, and drank freely of both sherry and champagne, finis.h.i.+ng after his coffee with some neat brandy, which he tossed off with an air of familiarity that gave me something of a shock. He invited me to join him and when I refused seemed to find amus.e.m.e.nt in twitting me about my abstemious habits.

"Come along now, just a nip of brandy, Roger. 'Twill make your blood flow a bit faster. No? Why not, old Dry-as-dust? Conscientious scruples? A dram is as good as three scruples. Come along, just a taste."

"Brandy was made for old dotards and young idiots. I'm neither."

"Oh, very well, here's luck!" and he drank again, setting the gla.s.s down and drawing a deep breath of satisfaction. And then with a laugh.

"An idiot! I suppose I am. Good thing to be an idiot, Roger. Nothing expected of you. n.o.body disappointed."

"You're talking nonsense," I said sternly.

"Nonsense! I differ from you there, old top," he laughed. "The true philosophy of life is the one that brings the greatest happiness.

Self-expression is my motto, wherever it leads you. I fight, I play, I smoke, I drink because those are the things my particular ego requires."

"Ah! You're happy?"

"'Happiness,' old Dry-as-dust, as our good friend Ra.s.selas puts it, 'is but a myth.' I have ceased listening with credulity to the whispers of fancy or pursuing with eagerness the phantoms of hope.

They're not for me. To live in the thick of life and take my knockouts or give them--Reality! I'm up against it at last,--real people, real thoughts, real trials, real problems--I want them all. I'm going to drink deep, deep."

He reached for the brandy bottle again, but I whisked it away and rose.

"You're a d----d jacka.s.s," I said, storming down at where he sat from my indignant five feet eight.

His brow lowered and his jaw shot forward unpleasantly. "A jacka.s.s," I repeated firmly, still holding the neck of the brandy bottle.

He glared at me a moment longer, then he slowly sank back into his chair, his features relaxing, and burst into a laugh.

"Roger, you improve upon acquaintance. All these years you've concealed from me a nice judgment in the use of profanity. A d----d jacka.s.s! Hardly Hegelian, but neat, Roger, and most beautifully appropriate. A jacka.s.s, I am. Also as you have remarked, an idiot. You see, there's no argument. I admit the soft impeachment. But I won't drink again just now; so set the brandy bottle down like a good fellow and we will talk as one gentleman to another."

I saw that I had brought him for the moment to his senses, and obeyed, sitting resolutely silent with folded arms, waiting for him to go on.

He took a pipe from his pocket rather sheepishly, then filled and lighted it.