Paradise Garden: The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment
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"Wait," I said, "listen."
Somewhere within I thought I made out the sound of footsteps. "At least someone is about. Where's the bell? We'll ring."
I found it and though the hour was late a maid answered. She came to the door timidly, uncertainly, as though a little frightened.
"This is Mr. Canby," I explained. "I would like to see Miss Gore, please."
"I don't know, sir," she paused and then: "Wait a moment. I'll see—" and went upstairs.
We had been prepared for a wait but Miss Gore appeared almost immediately. She came down calmly, and asked us into the drawing-room.
"I was expecting you," she said with great deliberateness, "and wondered if you'd come."
"Then something—something has happened," I broke in hurriedly.
"I don't know what, exactly," she said. "I can't understand. I've thought several things—"
"Is Channing Lloyd here?" I asked excitedly.
"No. He was here to luncheon and went out with Marcia, but he didn't come back—to the house, I mean."
"But you know that he has been seen—since?"
I asked the question in terror and trembling.
"Oh, yes," she said. "One of the gardeners saw him and—"
"And Marcia?" I questioned again.
She pointed upward, where we were conscious again of the steadily moving footsteps.
"She's upstairs in her room."
I think the gasps of relief that came from each of us at this welcome news must have given Miss Gore the true measure of our anxiety, for a thin smile broke on her lips.
"Thank God," I said feelingly. "Then they're safe. What has happened, Miss Gore? Can you tell me? Jerry has gone, fled from Horsham Manor. We feared—the worst."
"I don't know what has happened, Mr. Canby," she admitted. "But it's very strange. I will tell you what I know. Marcia and Mr. Lloyd went out together after luncheon, not in a motor but afoot. I was in the garden in the afternoon cutting roses for the dinner table when I saw a figure skulking near the hedge which leads to the main drive. I wasn't frightened at all, for Dominick, the man who attends to the rose garden, was nearby, but the man's actions were queer and I sent the gardener to inquire. He went and I followed, curiously. Dominick cut across behind the hedges and came out on the lawn quite near the man, who walked with his body slightly inclined and one arm upraised and bent across his face, his hand holding a red handkerchief. I could make out his figure now. I remembered the suit of shepherd's plaid that Channing Lloyd had been wearing. There is no doubt of his identity, for Dominick confirmed me. It was Mr. Lloyd."
"But what was he bending over for?" I asked.
"I can't imagine. When Dominick spoke to him, he merely cursed the man and went on."
"Curious," said Jack thoughtfully.
"Isn't it? I can't make it out at all."
"And Marcia?" I asked.
"She came back much later. I didn't see her for she rushed into her room and locked the door. She's there now. I've tried to get to her. But she won't let me in, won't even answer me. Listen," and she pointed upward. "She's been doing that for hours. I've taken her food. She won't eat or reply. Nothing except, 'Go,' or 'Go away.' I'm at my wit's ends. I seem to be sure, Mr. Canby, that Jerry—"
"Yes," I put in. "You're right, Jerry—was here. Something has happened."
"But what?" she asked.
"He saw them together in the red motor."
"Kissing," put in Jack rather brutally.
"Ah," she said composedly. And then, "Ah, yes, I see, but why Lloyd's curious behavior and Jerry's flight?"
"It's very mysterious."
"Yes, very." Here she rose as with a sudden sense of responsibility and brought the interview to an end. I think she read farther than I did. "At all events we know that they are all alive," she said with a smile. "Perhaps no great damage is done after all."
It seemed as though she were trying to deceive herself or us, but we made no comment, presently taking our departure.
It was not until many months later that I learned what had happened on that dreadful day. Jack Ballard and the Habbertons left Horsham Manor the following afternoon and it was many weeks before I saw Una in New York, for some instinct had restrained me; not until some time after I had Jerry's first letter, just a few lines written from somewhere in Manitoba, merely telling me that he was in good health and asking me not to worry. But brief as it was, this message cheered me inexpressibly.
I could not bring myself to go to Briar Hills again, but managed a meeting with Miss Gore, who told me that Marcia was in a more than usually fiendish temper most of the time—quite unbearable, in fact. She was going away to Bar Harbor, she thought, and the certainty of Miss Gore's tenure of office depended much upon Marcia's treatment of her. They had quarreled. To be a poor relation was one thing, to be a martyr another.
She couldn't understand Marcia's humor, moody and irascible by turns, and once when Miss Gore had mentioned Jerry's name she flew into a towering rage and threw a hair brush through a mirror—a handsome mirror she particularly liked.
Jerry's affair with Marcia was ended. There could be no possible doubt about that. Further than this Miss Gore knew nothing. It was enough. I was content, so content that in my commiseration I held her hand unduly long and she asked me what I was going to do with it, and not knowing I dropped it suddenly and made my exit I fear rather awkwardly. What could I have done with it? A fine woman that, but cryptic.
It was June when Jerry left, not until midwinter that he returned to Horsham Manor. He was very much changed, older-looking, less assertive, quieter, deeper-toned, more thoughtful. It was as though the physical Jerry that I knew had been subjected to some searching test which had eliminated all superfluities, refined the good metal in him, solidified, unified him. And the physical was symbolic of the spiritual change. I knew that since that night in July the world had tried him in its alembic with its severest tests and that he had emerged safely. He was not joyous but he seemed content. Life was no longer a game. It was a study. Bitter as experience had been, it had made him. Perfect he might not be but sound, sane, wholesome. Jerry had grown to be a man!
But Jerry and I were to have new moments of rapprochement. As the days of his stay at the Manor went on, our personal relations grew closer. He spoke of his letters to Una and of hers to him, but his remarks about her were almost impersonal. It seemed as though some delicacy restrained him, some newly discovered embarrassment which made the thought of seeing her impossible and so he did not go to pay his respects to her. Indeed, he was content just to stay at the Manor with me. It seemed that the bond between us, the old brotherly bond that had existed before Jerry had gone forth into the world, had been renewed. I would have given my life for him and I think he understood. He was still much worried and talked of doing penance. Poor lad! As though he were not doing penance every moment of his days! I know that he wanted to talk, to tell me what had happened, to ask my advice, to have my judgment of him and of her. But something restrained him, perhaps the memory of the girl he had thought Marcia to be, that sublimated being, in whose veins flowed only the ichor of the gods, the goddess with the feet of clay. I told him that she had been at Bar Harbor with Channing Lloyd and that Miss Gore had told me that the two were much together in town.
"Oh, yes," he said slowly, "I know. They're even reported engaged. Perhaps they are."
There was a long silence. We were sitting in the library late one night, a month at least after he had returned, reading and talking by turns.
"She wasn't worthy of you. Jerry," I remarked.
"No, that's not true," he said, a hand shading his eyes from the lamplight. "It would be a poor creature that wouldn't be worthy of such a beast as I. But she tried me, Roger, terribly."
"She tempted you purposely. It was a game. I saw it. But you, poor blind Jerry—"
"Yes, blind and worse than blind, deaf to the appeals of my friends—you and—and Una, who saw where I did not. Marcia had promised to marry me, Roger, to be my wife. Do you understand what such a promise meant to me then? All ideals and clean thoughts. I worshiped her, did not even dare to touch her—until—Oh, I kissed her, Roger. She taught me—many things, little things, innocent they seemed in themselves at the time, but dangerous to my body and to my soul. I knew nothing. I was like a new-born babe. My God! Roger—if only you had told me! If you had told me—"
"I couldn't then, Jerry," I said softly. "It would have been too late. You wouldn't have believed—"
"No," he muttered, "you're right. I wouldn't have believed anything against her at the time or found a real meaning in the truth. She could have done no wrong. Then I saw her kissing that fellow—you remember? I think the change came in me then, my vision. I seemed to see things differently without knowing why. Rage possessed me, animal rage. I saw red. I wanted to kill."
He rose and paced the length of the room with great strides.
"I mustn't, Roger. I can't say more. It's impossible."
I was silent. A reaction had come.
CHAPTER XXVI
DRYAD AND SATYR
Little by little the story came from him. Perhaps I urged him but I think the larger impelling motive to speak was his conscience which drove him on to confession. He needed another mind, another heart, to help him bear his burden. And the years had taught him that the secrets of his lips were mine. I could be as silent, when I chose, as a mummy. He had not named me old Dry-as-dust for nothing.
It seems that when Jerry left us at the Manor that afternoon and took to the woods he had no very clear notion of what he was going to do. All that he knew was that he could not bear the sight or touch or hearing of his fellow beings, least of all of those of us who were kind to him. In fact, he had no very clear notion of anything, for his brain was whirling with terrible grinding, reiterating blows like machinery that is out of order. What thoughts he had were chaotic, mere fragments of incidents, and conversations jumbled and mostly irrelevant. But the vision of the figures in the automobile dominated all. I am sure that he was mentally unsound and that his actions were instinctive. He walked furiously, because walk he must, because violent physical exercise had always been his panacea, and because the very act of locomotion was an achievement of some sort. After awhile he found himself running swiftly along the paths that led to the Sweetwater, and then following the stream through the gorge in the hills, leaping over the rocks until he reached the wall and the broken grille. There he paused for a moment and tried to reason with himself. But he found that he could not think and that his legs still urged him on. They were bent on carrying him to Briar Hills, he knew that much now, and that he had no power to stop them. The violence of his exercise, he said, had cleared the chaos from his brain and only the vision of the red automobile remained, Marcia's roadster. He knew it well. Had he not driven it? There was no mistake. It crossed his disordered brain that red for a machine was a frightful color, a painful color it seemed to him, and he wondered why he hadn't thought that before. Red, blood color, the color that seemed to be in his eyes at that very moment. All the trees were tinged with it, the rocks, even the pools in the brook, around the edges especially—and they had always seemed so cool, so very cool.
He leaped down the rocks and before he realized it had crawled under the broken railing and was in the forest beyond. He did not run now but walked quickly and with the utmost care over fallen tree-trunks and rocks, avoiding the paths and seeking the deep woods, still moving ever nearer to his goal. He made a wide detour around the Laidlaws' place and went half a mile out of his way to avoid the sight of some farmers working in an open field. As he neared Marcia's land he grew more crafty, even crawling upon his hands and knees across a clearing where there was little cover. He had no notion as yet of what he was going to do when he got there except that he hoped to find the girl and Lloyd together.
He saw the house at last and the garden, from a distance. The house had a red roof. Red again! It glared horribly in the afternoon sunlight. He turned his head so that he might not look at it and moved stealthily around a stone wall toward the woods beyond the garden—Marcia's woods, pine woods they were, their floor carpeted with brown needles where he and she had used to go and walk of an afternoon to the rocks by Sweetwater Spring, the source of the stream, they said, which Jerry had named the "blushful Hippocrene," the fountain of the Muses who met there to do Marcia, their goddess, honor.
Marcia, his goddess. And Chan Lloyd! Would they be there? He hoped so. The whole success of his venture seemed to depend upon seeing them together. It was her favorite spot. She had led Jerry to believe that the crevice among the rocks by the spring, a natural throne sculptured by nature, was his, his only, and that he was her king. That had always seemed a very beautiful thought to Jerry. She used to sit at his feet, her arms upon his knees, look up at him and tell him of his dominion over her and all the world; her "fighting-god" he had once been, and then again her Pan, and she a dryad or an oread.
Jerry crept nearer, stealthily. He had learned the craft of the woods years ago, and made no sound. He stalked that grove with the keenness of a deerslayer, moving around through the undergrowth until he was quite near the rocks. He could hear no voices as yet, but something told him that they must be there. It was a very secluded spot; it would have been a pity to have had to go on to the house where Miss Gore and the servants would hear and see. He crawled on his hands and knees, approaching slowly and with some pains. He still heard no sound, but at last reached a ridge of rock within a few feet of the spring and heard voices, lowered, guilty voices they seemed to him. He peered cautiously over. They were there, side by side on the rocky ledge.
Jerry told me that at this moment he seemed suddenly to grow strangely calm. The noises in his head had ceased and he felt a curious sense of quiet exaltation. He couldn't explain this. I think it was a purely mental reaction after many months of spiritual coma. He got to his feet and even before they heard the sounds of his footsteps he stood before them.
They must have been very much alarmed at Jerry's appearance for, after dashing hotfoot through the underbrush and crawling among the rocks, his clothing must have been disarranged and his hair dirty and disordered. The expression of his face, too, in spite of his boasted calm, could hardly have been pleasant to contemplate, for I had had a glimpse of it that morning in the motor and I am sure that for an hour or more he had been mad—quite mad. He said that they sprang apart suddenly and that Lloyd rose with a swaggering air and faced him. But it seemed that the current of Jerry's thought was diverted by Marcia, who had started up and then sank back upon the rock, addressing him in her softest tones.
"Why, Jerry!" she cried. "How you startled me!"
It was the first time, Jerry said, that the caressing tones of the girl's voice had made no impression upon him. In two strides he was alongside of her, within arm's reach of both of them. He looked dangerous, I think, for Lloyd edged off a little. Marcia kept her gaze fixed upon his face and what she read there was hardly reassuring.
"Jerry!" she cried again. "What does this mean? Your clothes are torn; your face scratched. Has—has something happened to you?"
The question was unfortunate, for it loosened Jerry's thick tongue.
"Yes. Something's happened," he muttered, moving a hand across his brows as though to clear his thoughts. And then:
"I've waked up, that's all," he growled.
"Waked! I don't understand," her voice still gentle, appealing, incredulous.
"Yes, awake. You're false as hell."
"Oh," she started back at that and the venturesome Lloyd took a pace forward.
"I say, Benham, I—" He got no further, for Jerry without even looking at him, swept his left arm around, the gesture of a giant bothered by a troublesome insect. But it caught the fellow full in the chest, and sent him reeling backward. Jerry's business just now was with Marcia Van Wyck.
"You understand what I mean," he went on quickly. "You've played false with me. You've always played false. I saw you there this morning kissing this man, the way you kissed me, the way you kiss others for all that I know."
"You're mad. You insult me." She rose, pale and trembling, but facing him hardily.
"No, I'm not mad. Nothing that I can say can insult you."
"Chan!" She appealed.
It was a fatal mistake, for at the word Lloyd came forward again, bent on making some show of resistance. Jerry turned on him with a snarl, for the fellow had foolishly put up his hands. A few blows passed and then—Jerry told what happened rather apologetically—"It was a pity, Roger. It wasn't altogether his fault, but he is a bounder. My fist struck his face, seemed to smear it, literally, all into a blot of red. It wasn't like hitting a man in the ring, it was like—like poking a bag full of dirty linen. The whole fabric seemed to give way. He toppled back, turned a complete somersault and collapsed."
I made no comment. I already knew that Lloyd hadn't been killed. The girl Marcia seemed stricken dumb for a moment and found her voice only when Jerry turned toward her again.
"Jerry," she cried. "It is horrible. You're a brute—beast—"
Jerry only pointed at the prostrate figure slowly struggling to its knees.
"Go and kiss him," he cried. "Go. Kiss him now. He's on his knees to you, waiting for you."
While they watched, Lloyd got to his feet, turned one look of terror in Jerry's direction and then fled blindly into the woods, like one possessed of a devil.
Jerry laughed. It couldn't have been very pretty laughter, for the girl covered her face with her hands and shrank away from him.
"How could you?" she stammered. "How could you?"
"You were mine. He wanted you."
"Jerry—I—. It's all a mistake. You thought you saw us. I haven't kissed—"
"You lie," he came a pace toward her. "I saw you. I'm not a fool—not any longer."
Her gaze met his and fell. There was something in his expression, something of the primitive that tore away all subterfuge.
But she was not without courage.
"And if I did kiss him—what then?" she asked defiantly. "I'll kiss as I please."
"Will you?" He caught at her wrist but she eluded him.
"Yes, I will. What right have you to tell me what I shall do or not do? I'll choose my friends as I please and kiss them as I please, Chan or anyone!"
She had not gauged his temper. Perhaps she hadn't read the meaning in his eyes. Perhaps she thought that she could elude him or that the fact that she was on her own land gave her a fancied sense of security.
"You'll not," he cried.
"I will. What right have you to question me? You can amuse yourself with Una."
"Stop!" he thundered.
But she had found her spirit and her confidence in her ability to win him to gentleness by one means or another was returning to her. She was bold now but prepared to melt if the need required it.
"I will not stop," she cried. "You and Una. What right have you to criticize me for what you yourself—"
She stopped abruptly, for he caught her by the arm and held her. Jerry said that even yet he was timid of her delicacy—fearful of the things he had thought her to be. But he still held her, though she struggled to get away from him.
"Let me go, Jerry. You're hurting me. Please let me go."
She felt the first touch of his imperviousness when he refused to release her and chose to change her tone.
"Please let me go, Jerry," she pleaded softly. "Do you think you are treating me kindly, after all—all that is between us? I don't care for Chan—I don't, Jerry. Let me go."
In his eyes she read the new judgment.
"Then you're worse than I supposed," he muttered.
"Worse! Oh, Jerry. Don't look so—so coldly. It hurts me terribly. I must go. I can't stand your looking at me in that way."
She tried to move away, I think she had every intention of taking to her heels if Jerry had only given her the chance. But he wouldn't. He held her and kept her close beside him. He was hurting her wrist cruelly.
"Let me go," she cried, struggling anew.
Her resistance aroused him again. The animal fury of battle had not died out of his eyes. He did not know what he intended to do with her—had no plan, no purpose, he said. What plan or purpose could he have had unless murder? And even in his madness I'm sure that that never occurred to him. But his blood was hot and his anger and bitterness overwhelming. His fear of her delicacy diminished with her struggles, for her resistance inflamed him. He did not know, nor did she just then, that the animal instinct to conquer was what she had taught him, and that the turgid stream of his blood was finding new strength and unreason, a strange new impetus in every struggle. She saw her danger and was powerless to prevent it. She looked over her shoulder helplessly in the direction in which Chan Lloyd had vanished and saw no help from there. Jerry's great strength had never seemed so terrible as now. He caught her by the shoulders and held her, shook her, I think, a little, as one would shake a child, while she still struggled in his grasp. In a moment his grasp loosened a little, then tightened again, for the contact of his fingers with her warm skin was awaking the demon in him, the dormant devil she had put there.
"Oh, you're hurting me so, Jerry—so terribly."
But he did not even hear her voice. His eyes were speaking to hers, holding them with a deathly fascination. If fear was her passion she was drinking it now to the full—fear and the sense of the ruthless power and dominion in this madman of her own creation. Her hands clasped his shoulders.
"Jerry!" she screamed. "Don't look at me like that. Your eyes burn me."
"Into your soul—I will burn it—blot it out."
"Jerry, forgive me," she sobbed. "I love you."
"You lie."
"I love you. Forgive me!"
"No. You lie!"
Her arms went around his neck. And he crushed her to him, all the length of them in contact. She struggled faintly but her lips sought his in a despairing hope of pity. She found the lips, but no pity. The breath was almost gone from her body. She struggled, fighting hard, breathing his name in little panting sobs. She too was mad now, as much of an animal as Jerry, her blood coursing furiously. Her terror of herself must have been greater even than her terror of him, for she was quivering—shaken by the terrible gusts of his passion.
Suddenly she felt herself released, thrust from him. His fingers bruised the tender flesh of her shoulders but his eyes bruised her more.
"Jerry!"
His hands had caught the two sides of the flimsy shirt-waist at the breast and torn it aside, off her shoulders, off her arms.
"Have pity, Jerry," she whimpered.
"'Have pity, Jerry,' she whimpered."
"Pity, yes," he laughed wildly. "Kiss me. You want to be kissed. I'll kill you with kissing. Death like this—such a death—!"
She struggled more furiously, struck, kissed and struck again. But Jerry's madness triumphed—her own.
At this point Jerry hid his face in his hands, trembling violently.
"I was out of my head, Roger. Tell me that I was, for the love of God. I must have been. It was horrible. I did not know. I can scarcely remember now. Death would have been better—for her, for me—than that. My God! If only you had told me, something. I could have gone away, I think—before—But to have knowledge come like that, engulfing, flooding, drowning with its terrible bitterness. And Marcia—" He raised his head piteously, "I asked her to marry me, Roger—at once. But she only looked at me with strange eyes.
"'Marriage!' she said, 'My God!' It was almost as though I had uttered a sacrilege.