Paradise Garden Part 53

"A friend, yes. Oh, I've been so unhappy about it all--so _miserably_ wretched."

Her voice broke and she seemed upon the point of tears.

"Why did you, Marcia? Why did you?" he repeated.

"I--I--" She appeared to break down and weep and Jerry's voice took on a tone of distress.

"Don't, Marcia, please!"

"I--I'm trying not to--but--" and she wept anew.

"Come," said Jerry's voice. "Sit here a moment. I'm sure it can all be explained. It makes me very unhappy to see you so miserable."

They moved nearer and she sat upon the very rock beneath which I lay among the mouldy leaves; so near that I could have reached out and touched the girl's silken ankle with my fingers. Jerry, I think, still stood.

"I don't want to--to make you unhappy," she said in a moment. "And it was all my fault, but I just couldn't--couldn't stand it, Jerry."

"Stand what?"

A pause and then in m.u.f.fled tones.

"Don't you know? Don't you really understand?"

"No. I--"

"I was mad," she whispered, "mad with jealousy of Una. She was your first love, your first--"

"Marcia! You mustn't. It's absurd."

"No, no," she protested. "I know. Ever since I first learned that she had--had been in here with you, I--I haven't been able to get her out of mind--I may have appeared to, but I'm not one who forgets things easily; and to meet her at the cabin, the very place where I thought I should--should have you all to myself--it was too much. Jerry. I couldn't stand it. Something--something in me rebelled. I grew cold all over and hard against all the world, even you."

"But this was foolish of you. Una, a friend. Surely there was no harm in my seeing her here?"

"It was foolish," there was a slight change in the intonation of her voice here, "but I know the world so much better than you, Jerry.

Girls are so designing, so--so untrustworthy."

"You don't know Una if you say that," said Jerry loyally.

"Perhaps I don't. I don't wish to think badly of anyone you call a friend but Una is so--er--so independent--so accustomed to moving with queer people--" She paused a moment again to give her insinuation weight. "I don't know," she sighed. "I thought all sorts of horrible things about you."

"Horrible! How? Why?"

"Oh, Jerry. Think for a moment. It was natural in me, wasn't it? If I hadn't been jealous of you I couldn't have loved you very much, could I?"

"But horrible thoughts! I don't understand. You might think that there was something between Una and me if you chose to be suspicious, but to think unpleasant things of her, I can't see--"

"You're making it very difficult for me--you're so strange," she murmured. "Isn't it something that I've lowered my pride to the earth in coming here to you? That I've given up Chan? That I'm pleading to you for forgiveness?"

"It is, of course. I do forgive you," he murmured

"Oh, Jerry, if you knew how I had longed to hear you say that--if you knew!"

All this while Jerry had been standing beside her in the path while the girl sat on the rock. I could tell this from the sounds of their voices. In spite of her accents of endearment, notes which she played with the deftest touch, I could understand that Master Jerry was still a little upon his dignity.

"I do forgive you," he repeated, "but I don't just know what your insinuations meant, Marcia."

"Insinuations! Oh, Jerry!"

"Well, what were they? You didn't accuse Una of anything, or me. But you meant something--something unpleasant. Una was very much disturbed--"

"Oh, she was?" No self-control could have concealed the tiny note of exultation.

"Yes, disturbed and angry. What did you mean, Marcia?"

There was an effective pause. What grimaces she was making for his benefit I'm sure I can't imagine, but I hope they were worthy of her talents.

"Poor, dear Jerry!" she sighed. "You're so innocent. I sometimes wonder whether you're really as innocent as you seem."

"I'm innocent of wronging Una," he said with some spirit.

She couldn't restrain a short laugh at the ingenuousness of the remark and its tone.

"There are ways and ways of wronging girls, Jerry," she said slowly. I couldn't see her face, of course, but I knew that her eyes must have been searching him sidelong under their lashes with peculiar avidity.

"Of course, I don't _say_ that there was anything wrong, but you'll admit that Una's hunting you out the way she did was _most_ imprudent."

"No, I don't admit it," said Jerry. "If Una was imprudent, so are you, _here_, today."

"Jerry!" The girl started up, one of her tall French heels within reach of my fingers. If her heel had been her vulnerable spot I must have struck it at once, like a viper.

Jerry apparently stood his ground, for the image of Una must have still been fresh in his memory.

"What is the difference, Marcia?" he asked calmly. "Will you tell me?

Do you think I could hurt _you_?"

She sank upon the rock again, her tone almost too plaintive.

"You're hurting me now, Jerry--terribly."

"I can't see--"

"That you can't see any difference, between my being here--and Una's."

His voice fell a little.

"Of course, there's a difference. Una is a friend and you--why Marcia--" and he came near her, "of course there's all the difference in the world in _that_ way. You're the girl I--I love."

"Jerry!" she whispered.

I was miserable. It was nauseating. Fate was surely unkind to me.