Paradise Garden Part 51

He walked up and down again muttering.

"She has gone too far, Roger--too far." He paused before me.

"But you haven't answered my questions," he said flatly.

"You've hardly given me time," I said with a smile.

To be truthful, I did not propose to answer them. Aside from a curious shyness born of our long and innocent intimacy which made frankness now seem a violation of the precedent of years, I found that the desire was born in me, born anew with Jerry's awakening consciousness, to stand by my guns, and await the results of his lessons from the world. He must solve the riddle of the Great Experiment alone.

"You haven't answered my questions, Roger," he insisted.

I was unjointing Jerry's rod with scrupulous care.

"I'm not going to," I said quietly.

"You--?" He examined me with a curious expression. "Who else should I go to if not to you?"

I paused a long moment, during which he sc.r.a.ped at the moss with the toe of his boot.

"My dear Jerry," I said. "I am more than convinced since the period of your probation has pa.s.sed that my mission at Horsham Manor is ended. I was brought here to bring you to manhood with the things that were requisite as well for the body as the soul. I thought I had acquitted myself with tolerable success in obeying the desires of your dead father. But once freed from my influence you took the bit in your teeth and ran the race in your own way. I gave you advice but you wouldn't take it. If you had listened then, I could have helped you now. But you didn't listen. And if I were to warn you, to answer your questions, you wouldn't heed me now. Experience is the great teacher.

Seek it. I'm through."

He reddened and took a turn up and down.

"Do you mean that?"

"I do. I meddle with your personal affairs no longer. If I did I should begin at once--" I paused, for an attack on Marcia Van Wyck was trembling at the top of my tongue. "But there--you see we should only quarrel. I don't like your friends. We couldn't agree--"

"You like Una."

"Yes, unqualifiedly. She is one in a million."

"Well, we're agreed on that at least," he said smiling.

There was another silence in which Jerry puffed on his unlighted pipe.

"You know I've invited Una and her mother up here this week and what's better still, they're coming."

This was excellent news. To me it meant that Una thought the boy worth saving from himself and now proposed to carry the war into the enemy's country.

"I'm delighted," I said briefly.

"So am I," he returned thoughtfully. He sc.r.a.ped his pipe, filled it slowly and when it was lighted again, settled down comfortably.

"I think Una has wakened me, Roger. The force of her example is tremendous, her life, her way of thinking of things, her cheerfulness, hopefulness about everybody. I can't make out why Marcia should attack her so unjustly. It wasn't fair."

"It was _cattish_."

"I don't like your saying that," he put in quickly.

"I'm sorry. Can you imagine Una doing a similar thing?"

"No," he admitted, "but Una has been brought up differently."

Another silence. In spite of the recrudescence of Una we were on dangerous ground. But hope had given me temerity. In another moment he was back to the earlier questions.

"I see no reason why you shouldn't answer me, Roger. I've got to know what all this trouble means. If Una has been imprudent I want to know why, still more so, if she is to suffer as a consequence of it. If Marcia's insinuations are cruel I've got to understand what they mean."

"You may take my word for their cruelty," I said dryly and stopped with compressed lips. He clasped his hands over his knees and looked down into the pool before us.

"Do you think you're quite fair with me, Roger? I give you my confidences and you refuse--"

"Half-confidences, Jerry. My usefulness to you is ended. If you would speak, I could perhaps help you, solve some of your problems, answer your questions. But--"

I paused, throwing out my hands in a helpless gesture.

"What more do you want?" he asked.

I took the bull by the horns. I had wanted to for weeks.

"Freely, unreservedly, the nature of your relations with Marcia Van Wyck--"

He rose suddenly, his face flus.h.i.+ng darkly and took up his rod and creel.

"If you don't mind my saying so," he muttered, "that is none of your affair."

I rose, though his reproach stung me bitterly.

"Confidences and advice are inseparable," I said coldly.

"You hate Marcia," he mumbled.

"I do."

"Why?"

"Because she's unsound, unsafe, im--"

"Be careful!" he cried.

I shrugged but was silent, I think, from the fear of Jerry's fists which were clenching his rod and creel ominously.

"She's the woman I love," he declared with pathetic drama.

I braved the fists and laughed.

"Tus.h.!.+" I said.

He was furious. For a moment I thought he was going to strike me. Had he done so I should have been ended there and then, and this interesting history brought to an untimely conclusion on the very eve of its most interesting disclosures.