Paradise Garden Part 38

"You _are_ a good sort, Roger," he said at last, with an embarra.s.sment that contrasted strangely with the bombast of a moment ago. "I--I'm glad you did that. I think you're about the only person in the world I'd have taken it from. But I haven't drunk much. I couldn't get to be much of a drunkard in three weeks, could I?" He smiled his boyish smile and disarmed me.

"But why drink at all?" I asked quietly.

"Oh, I don't know. It's such an easy way to be jolly. Everybody does it. You can't seem to go anywhere without somebody sticking a gla.s.s under your nose. It's part of the social formula. There's no harm in it, in reason."

"Jerry," I said sternly. "You've begun wrong. I don't know whether it's my fault or not, but you seem to be hopelessly twisted in your view of life. You're floundering. Of course it's none of my business.

I've done what I was paid to do, and you've got to work things out in your own way. If you want to drink yourself maudlin, that's your privilege. I can move out, but while I'm here in this house I'm not going to sit idly by while you make a fool of yourself."

He puffed on his pipe a moment in silence, eyeing the table leg.

"I _am_ a fool," he said soberly at last. And then after a pause, "I don't know what the trouble has been exactly, unless I've taken people too literally; and that's your fault, Roger. White with you was always white and black was black. You taught me to say what I thought and to believe that other people said what they thought. That was a mistake."

"You forget," I said, "that I wasn't brought here to teach you worldliness. But you can't say that I didn't warn you against it."

He had gotten up and now paced the room with long strides.

"Futile, Roger! Absolutely futile. In my heart even then, I think, I believed you narrow. You see, I'm frank. A few months in the world hasn't changed my opinion. But I do want to think straight." And then with a sigh as he paused alongside of me, "It's very perplexing sometimes."

I knew what he was thinking about and whom, but he would not speak.

"You have thought me narrow, Jerry, because I laid my life and yours along pleasant byways and ignored the beaten track. I've never told you why the world had grown distasteful to me. I think you ought to know. It may be worth something to you. The old story, always new--a girl, pretty, insincere. I was just out of the University, with a good education, some prospects, but no money. We became engaged. She was going to wait for me until I got a good professors.h.i.+p. But she didn't.

In less than a year, without even the formality of breaking the engagement, she suddenly married a man who had money, a manufacturer of gas engines in Taunton, Ma.s.sachusetts. I won't go into the details.

They're rather sickening from this distance. But I thought you might like to know why I've never particularly cared to trust women."

"I supposed," he said, thoughtfully, "it might have been something like that. Women _are_ queer. You think you know them, and then--" He paused, confession hovering on his lips, but some delicacy restrained him.

"Women, Jerry, are the flavoring of society; I regret that I have a poor digestion for sauces. I hope yours will be better."

He laughed. "Poor Roger; was she _very_ pretty?"

"I can't remember. Probably. Calf love seldom considers anything else--prettiness! Yes she was pretty."

"How old were you?"

"Older than you Jerry--and wiser."

He was silent. Once I thought he was about to speak, but he refrained, and when he deftly turned the topic, I knew that any chance I might have had to help him had pa.s.sed. I understood, of course, and I could not help respecting his delicacy. Jerry was in for some hard knocks, I feared, harder ones than Clancy had given him.

He went to bed presently and I sat by the lamp alternately reading and thinking of Jerry, comparing him with myself in that long-distant romance of my own. They were not unlike, these two women, pretty little self-wors.h.i.+pers, born to deceit and chicanery, with clever talents for concealing their ignorance, hiding the emptiness of their hearts with pretty tricks of coquetry. But Marcia was the more dangerous, a clean body and an unclean mind. A half-virgin! I would have given much to know what had recently pa.s.sed between Marcia and Jerry. If there was any way to bring about a disillusionment--

As though in answer to my enigma, at this moment Christopher came down from Jerry's room on his way below stairs. I stopped him and taking him into my study closed the door.

"You're very fond of Master Jerry, Christopher?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, sir, Mr. Canby."

"So am I, Christopher. I think you know that, don't you?"

"Why, yes, sir. You've been a father to 'im, sir. n.o.body knows that better than me, sir."

"We'd both go through fire and water for him, wouldn't we, Christopher?"

"Oh, yes, sir; an' if you please, sir, what with these prize fighters at the Manor an' all, I rather think we 'ave, sir."

I smiled.

"A bad business, but over for good, I think, Christopher. But there are other things, worse in a way--"

I paused, scrutinizing the man's homely, impa.s.sive face.

"Did Master Jerry do much drinking before he went into training, Christopher?"

"A little, what any gentleman would, out in the world, sir."

"You've noticed it since the fight?"

He hesitated. Loyalty was bred in his bone.

"Yes, sir."

"You know, Christopher, that I've spent my life trying to make Jerry a fine man?"

"You 'ave, sir. It's a pity--the--the drink. But it can't 'ave much of a 'old on 'im yet, sir."

"Then you _have_ noticed?"

"Yes, sir."

"When did he begin?"

He paused a moment.

"I think it was the day after the fight, that very night, to be hexact, sir."

"I see. The night after the fight. He spent the evening out and when he came home, was he intoxicated?"

"Not then, no, sir. But 'e'd been drinkin', just mildly lit--in a manner o' speakin' sir, not drunk, but gay and kind o' sarcastic-like; not like Master Jerry 'imself, sir."

"Had he been with some other gentlemen during the evening?"

"No, sir. 'E 'ad been callin' on a lady, but stopped at 'is club on the way around--"

"What lady?"

"I--I--"

"You may speak freely, Christopher. Miss Van Wyck?"