Paradise Garden: The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment

CHAPTER XII

INTRODUCING JIM ROBINSON

Of course, I had made an enemy of the girl and to no purpose. I had felt her physical attraction, and I knew that only by putting myself beyond its pale could I be true to my own convictions as to her venality. She was the kind of woman to whom any man, even such a one as I, is fish for her net. A girl may whet her appetite by coquetry and deprave it by flirtation, setting at last such a value upon her skill at seduction that she counts that day lost in which some male creature is not brought into subjection to her wiles. As I thought over the conversation later in the privacy of my bedroom I began to realize that instead of good I had only done harm. For a warning, such a futile one as I had given would only inflame a girl like Marcia, and the suggestion of danger was just the fillip her jaded tastes required.

It was not long before I had a confirmation of my mistake in judgment. A week passed, a week of alternate joys and depressions for Jerry, during which he spoke little to me of the girl. The night after the dinner at the Manor he had upbraided me for telling Marcia the story of his bout with Sagorski. He had not cared to tell her of that event, he said, because he thought it too brutal for the ears of a girl of her delicate and sensitive nature. The next night he spoke of it again, but this time without reserve. It seemed that Marcia was very much interested in his feats of physical strength and hoped that Jerry would permit her to watch him when he sparred. Of course, he didn't see why she shouldn't watch him when he sparred if she was really interested in that sort of thing, but it was curious how he had misjudged her tastes; she seemed so ethereal, so devoted to the gentler things of life, that he had not thought it possible she could care for the rugged art he loved, which at times, as I knew, verged upon the brutal. I mentioned with a smile that there remained in all of us, women as well as men, some relics of the age of stone.

"Of course," he assented cheerfully, "I knew she wasn't namby-pamby. It's rather nice of her, I think, to take so much interest."

A few days after that Jerry left me and I knew that Briar Hills was closed again.

The events which were to follow came upon me with startling unexpectedness. Scarcely two weeks had passed since Jerry's departure and I had hardly settled back into my routine at the Manor, where I was trying again to take up the lost threads of my work, when a message came over the wire from Jack Ballard asking me to come down to New York to visit him for a few days. I inferred from what he said that he wanted to see me about Jerry, and, of course, I lost no time in getting to the city and to his apartment, where I found him before his mirror, tying his cravat.

"Pope, my boy, I knew you'd come. Just itching for an excuse anyway, weren't you? But you needn't look so alarmed. Jerry's all right. He hasn't even run off; with a chorus lady or founded a home for non-swearing truckmen."

"Well what has he done?" I asked.

"Not much—merely engaged to become one of the principals in a prize fight in Madison Square Garden."

"Jerry! I can't believe you."

"It's quite true. Sit down, my boy. Have you break-fasted yet?"

"Hours ago at the Manor."

"Just reproach! But the early worm gets caught by the bird, you know. I never get up—"

"Tell me," I broke in impatiently, "where you heard this extravagant tomfoolery?"

"From the extravagant tomfool himself. Jerry told me yesterday. I'm afraid there's no doubt about the matter. The articles of agreement are signed, the money, five thousand a side, is in the hands of the stakeholder—one Mike Finnegan, a friend of Flynn's, who keeps a saloon upon the Bowery."

"Preposterous! It hasn't come out, the newspapers—"

"They're full enough of it as it is. Jerry's opponent is a very prominent pug—an aspirant for the heavyweight title, no less a one than Jack Clancy, otherwise known as 'The Terrible Sailor, Champion of the Navy.'"

"But your father—the public—! It will ruin Jerry—ruin him—"

"Wait a bit. Fortunately Jerry's anonymity has been carefully kept. At Flynn's gymnasium he's called Jim Robinson, and it's as Jim Robinson, Flynn's wonderful unknown, that he will make his public appearance."

"But a name is a slender thread to hang Jerry's whole reputation on. He'll be recognized, of course. This thing can't go on. It must be stopped at once," I cried.

"Exactly," said Ballard coolly over his coffee cup. "But how?"

"An appeal to the boy's reason. He must be insane to do such a thing. It's Flynn who's put him up to this."

"I think not. If I understand Jerry correctly, he urged Flynn to make the match. He's quite keen about it."

I paced the floor in some bewilderment, trying to think of a reason for Jerry's strange behavior, but curiously enough the real one did not come to me.

"I can't imagine how such an ambition could have got into his head," I muttered.

Ballard struck a match for his cigarette and smiled.

"The nice balance of Jerry's cosmos between the purely physical and the merely mental has been disturbed—that's all. Liberty has become license and has gone into his muscles. What shall we do about it? Flatly, I don't know. That's what I asked you down to discuss."

I took a turn or two up and down the room.

"Your father—the executors—know nothing of this?"

"Phew! I should say not!"

"They could stop it, I suppose."

"I'm not so sure," he said quietly. "If the boy has made up his mind."

I sank in a chair, trying to think.

"The executors mustn't know. Jack. We'll keep the thing quiet. We've got to appeal to Jerry."

"That's precisely the conclusion I've reached myself. I've asked him to come this morning. He may be in at any moment."

I looked out of the window thoughtfully toward the distant Jersey shore.

"This isn't like Jerry. He's a fine athlete and a good sportsman—for the fun he gets out of the thing. But he has too good a mind not to be above the personal vulgarity of such an exhibition as this. His finer instincts, his natural modesty, his lack of vanity—everything that we know of the boy contradicts the notion of a personal incentive for this wild plan. Does he know what he's doing—what it means—the publicity—?"

"He thinks he's dodging that. Nobody knows him in New York except a few fellows at the clubs, he says."

"But has he no consideration for us—for me?" I cried.

"Apparently his friends haven't entered into his calculations."

"I repeat, it isn't like him, Jack. Somebody has put this idea into his head."

I stopped so abruptly that Ballard regarded me curiously.

"Somebody—who?"

I paced the floor with long strides, my fingers twitching to get that pretty devil by the throat. I knew now—it had come in a flash of light—Marcia. Jerry listened now to no one but Marcia; but I couldn't tell Jack.

"Somebody—somebody at Flynn's," I muttered.

He regarded me curiously.

"But the boy is immune to flattery. There isn't a vain bone in his body. I confess he puzzles me. But I think you'll find he's quite stubborn about it."

"Stubborn, yes, but—"

My remark was cut short by a ring of the bell, immediately answered by Ballard's man, and Jerry entered. He was, I think, attired in one of Jack's "Symphonies," wore a blossom in his buttonhole, swung a stick jauntily, and altogether radiated health and good humor, greeting us both in high spirits.

"Well, fairy godfathers, what's my gift today?" he laughed. "A golden goose, a magic ring, or a beautiful Cinderella hidden behind the curtain?" and he poked at the portiere playfully. "But you have the appearance of conspirators. Is it only a lecture?"

"I've just been telling Roger," Jack began gravely, "about your fight with Clancy, Jerry."

I saw the boy's jaw muscles clamp, but he replied very quietly.

"Yes, Uncle Jack. He objects, I suppose."

"Not object," I said quickly. "It's the wrong word, Jerry. You're your own master, of course. We were just wondering whether you hadn't undervalued our friendship in not asking our advice before making your plans."

Jerry followed a pattern in the rug with the point of his stick.

"I wish you hadn't put it just that way, Roger."

"I don't know how else to put it. That's the fact, isn't it, Jerry?"

"No. I don't undervalue your friendship. You know that, Roger, you too. Uncle Jack. I suppose I should have said something about it. But I—I just sort of drifted into it. I think walloping Sagorski spoiled me—made me rather keen to have a try at somebody who had licked him. Clancy's almost, if not quite, the best in his class. I'll get well thrashed, I guess, but it's going to be a lot of fun trying—and if nobody knows who I am, I can't see what harm it does."

I couldn't tell what there was in his tone and manner that made me think he was playing a part not his own. I was not yet used to Jerry out in the world, but as compared with the Jerry of Horsham Manor, he didn't ring true.

"You can't keep people from knowing, Jerry," I said. "Your picture will be on every sporting page in the United States."

"Oh, we've fixed that with a photographer. Flynn had a picture of a cousin of his who is dead—young chap—looked something like me. They're faking the thing."

The boy was getting a new code of morals as well as a new vocabulary.

"You can't hide a lie, Jerry."

"I'm not harming anybody," he muttered.

"Nobody but yourself," I said sternly.

"I don't see that," he growled, clasping his great fists over his knees.

"It's the truth. You'll harm yourself irrevocably. The thing will come out somehow. Jim Robinson isn't Jerry Benham. He's the New York and South Western Railroad Company, the Seaboard Transportation Line, the United Oil Company—"

"I'd get Clancy's goat in the first round if he thought I was all that, wouldn't I?" Jerry grinned sheepishly, while Jack Ballard fought back a smile.

"If you won't consider your own interests, what you must consider is that you've no right to jeopardize the property interests of those who have put their money and their faith behind these enterprises which you control. You're already in a responsible position. You're making yourself a mountebank, a laughing-stock. No one will ever trust you in a position of responsibility again."

"I'm sorry, Roger, if you think things are as bad as that," said Jerry coolly. "I don't. And besides, I'm too far in this thing to back out now."

There was no shaking his resolution. We pleaded with him, argued, cajoled, ridiculed, but all to no purpose. Jack painted a picture of the crowd in the Garden, the cat-calls, the jeers, imitated the introduction of past and present champions, and Jerry winced a little, but was not moved. Finding all else unavailing, I fell back upon our friendship, recalling all Jerry's old ideals and mine. He softened a little, but merely repeated:

"I can't back out now, Roger. They'll think me a quitter. I'd like to please you in everything, but I can't, Roger, I can't."

Jack Ballard was so incensed at this obstinacy that he swore at the boy, flung out of the room and disappeared.

With a sober expression Jerry watched him go out and then rose and walked slowly to the window. I looked at him in silence. I knew his manner. Confession was on the tip of his tongue, and yet he would not speak. But I waited patiently. Finally the silence became oppressive, and he swung around at me petulantly.

"I can't see what's the use of making such a lot of fuss over the thing," he muttered. "It seems as though because I have a lot of money I've got to be fettered to it hand and foot. I'm not going to be a slave to a desk. I've warned you of that. You wanted me to be a great athlete, Roger, and now when I'm putting my skill to the test you rebel."

"An athlete—but a gentleman. There are some things a gentleman doesn't do."

"A gentleman," he sneered. "I hear of a lot of things a gentleman must not do. Perhaps I don't know what the word means. In New York a gentleman can get drunk at dances, swear, treat people impolitely, and as long as he comes of a good family or has money back of him nobody questions him. So long as I treat people decently and do no one any harm I'm willing to take my chances with God Almighty. With Sailor Clancy fighting is a business. With me it's a sport. He hasn't had many good matches. I've given him a chance to make five thousand dollars and gate receipts. Who am I hurting? Surely not Clancy. Not Flynn. His gym is so full of people we've had to get special training quarters. I've hired a lot of people to look after me, rubbers, assistants—why, old Sagorski worships the very ground I walk on. Who am I hurting?" he urged again.

"Yourself," I persisted sternly.

He laughed up at the ceiling.

"Good old Roger! You haven't much opinion of my moral fiber, after all, have you? My poor old morals! They'd all be shot to shreds by now if you had your way. I don't drink, steal, cheat, lie—"

I rose, shrugging my shoulders, and walked past him.

"I'll say no more except that I hope you know I think you're a fool."

"I do, Roger," he laughed. "You've indicated it clearly."

At the fireplace I turned, laying my trap for him skillfully.

"You've told Marcia?" I asked carelessly.

"Yes," he said. "You see, Marcia—" he bit his lip, reddened and came to a full stop, searching my face with a quick glance, but he found me elaborately removing a speck of lint from my coat sleeve.

"Yes, Jerry. Marcia—?" I encouraged innocently.

For a fraction of a minute he paused and then went on, blurting the whole thing in his old boyish way.

"You see, Marcia's very broad-gauge, Roger. She's really very much interested in the whole thing. It was a good deal of a surprise to me. It began when she heard about my bout with Sagorski. She was awfully keen about my gym work—you remember—at the Manor that night. She thought every man ought to develop his body to its fullest capability. I had Flynn out one night at Briar Hills. I didn't tell you about that—thought you mightn't understand—and we sparred six fast rounds. She kept the time and thought it was great. It was like going to a vaudeville show, she said, only a thousand times more exciting. She tried to make Lloyd do a turn, but he wouldn't, though I'd have liked to have mussed him up a bit. Well, one thing led to another and we had a lot of talks about education—you know, the Greek idea. It seemed that my work with you was just in line with her whole philosophy of life." (God bless his innocence—her philosophy and mine!) "The whole scheme of modern life was lopsided, she said, all the upper classes going to brains and no body and all the lower classes all to body and no brains. Conflict in the end was inevitable. The unnatural way of living was weakening the fiber of the governing powers the people of which intermarried and brought into the world children of weak muscular tissue. She doesn't believe in marriage unless both the man and the woman have passed rigid physical tests as to their fitness."

"What tests?" I asked interestedly.

"Oh, I don't know. A woman who bears a child ought surely to have the strength to do it. You and I have never talked much about these things, Roger, and the miracle of birth, like the miracle of death, must always be an enigma to us. But I think she's right, and I told her that if she was ever going to have any children she ought to have a gym built both at Briar Hills and in town for herself and begin getting in shape for it right away."

"And what did she say to that?" I asked trying to keep countenance.

"Oh, she laughed and said that she wasn't thinking of having any children just yet."

This, then, was the type of after-dinner conversation that took place between them. I began more clearly to understand the fascination that Jerry had for her—to understand, too, her growing delight in the splendid, vital, innocent animal that she had chained to her chariot wheel.

"Go on, Jerry," I said in a moment. "She wants you to typify the new race—"

"Exactly. To spread the gospel of physical strength among my own kind—to prove that mind, other things being more or less equal, is greater than matter."

"I see," I said thoughtfully. "Then it was Marcia's idea, wasn't it?"

He hesitated a moment before replying.

"Oh, yes, I suppose so. But I've been pretty keen about it from the beginning. You must admit that it's interesting in theory."

"The superbeast versus the superman," I commented. "Your mind is made up then—irrevocably?"

"Yes."

I had not known Jerry all these years for nothing. I shrugged my shoulders and sank into my chair again. "Then, of course, there's nothing for it but to try to keep the thing out of the papers."

He took up his hat and stick gayly. "Oh, they'll never guess in the world. When I go down to Flynn's I get into an old suit Christopher got for me down on Seventh Avenue—a hand-me-down, and when Marcia goes she wears—"

"Ah—Marcia goes—?"

"Oh, yes, sometimes in the afternoons. She wears the worst-looking things—her maid got 'em somewhere. She watches me work. They call her my 'steady.' It's great sport. She's having more fun than she ever had before in her life, she says. I'd like you to run down this afternoon. You know the place. It will liven up your dry bones. Come along, will you?"

"Perhaps," I said helplessly, looking out of the window.

CHAPTER XIII

UNA

Jerry's destiny was indeed in the lap of the gods. Whatever may have been my hope, during his visit to the Manor, of opening his eyes, I now confessed myself utterly at a loss. He was dipping life up by the ladle-full and yet curiously enough thus far had missed the vital, the significant fact of existence. I supposed that it was because the history of his early years was known to but few and that the men with whom he came into contact, nice enough fellows at the clubs, friends of Jack Ballard, had taken his worldliness for granted. He had missed the filthy story perhaps, or if he had heard it, had ignored its point and turned away to topics he understood. Business, too, had taken some of his time and Marcia had taken more. The clubs, I had inferred, had not greatly interested him. Flynn, his other crony, was no scandal-monger and the habits of the years at Horsham Manor would still be strong with him at the gymnasium. As I have said before, Jerry hadn't the kind of a mind to absorb what did not interest him.

It must be obvious, however, that I was greatly concerned over Jerry's venture into pugilism. I tried to view the Great Experiment as from a great distance, as across a space of time looking forward to the hour when Jerry would emerge scatheless from all his tests both material and spiritual. But Jerry's personality, his thoughts, his sensibilities bulked too large. There was no room for a perspective. To all intents and purposes I myself was Jerry, thinking his thoughts, tasting his enthusiasms and his regrets. But I think if he had married a street wench or engaged in a conspiracy to blow up the Capitol at Washington I could scarcely have been more perturbed for him than I was at finding how strong was the influence that this girl Marcia exercised upon his actions. His fondness for her was the only flaw I had ever discovered in Jerry's nature. He could speak of her spirituality as he pleased, but there was another attraction here. I had felt the allure of her personality, a magnetism less mental than physical. Physical, of course, and because incomprehensible to Jerry the more marvelous. I had looked upon the boy as a perfect human animal, forgetting that he was only an animal after all. Marcia, the woman without a heart, whose game was the hearts of others! Bah! No woman without a heart could hold Jerry. If passion danced to him in the mask of a purer thing, Jerry's honesty would strip off the disguise in time. The danger was not now, but then, and even then perhaps more hers than his.

I waited long for Jack Ballard, but he did not return and so I went out into the streets and walked rapidly for exercise down town in the general direction of Flynn's Gymnasium over on the East Side, where I proposed to meet Jerry later in the afternoon. I had kept no record of the time and when my appetite advised me that it was the luncheon hour, I looked at my watch. It was two o'clock. I sauntered into a cross street, finding at last a quiet place where I could eat and think in peace. "Dry-as-dust!" I was. Twelve years ago I had railed at the modern woman and learned my lesson from her. But now—! The years had swept madly past my sanctuary, license running riot. Sin stalked openly. The eyes of the women one met upon the streets were hard with knowledge. Nothing was sacred—nothing hidden from young or old. And men and women of wealth and tradition—I will not call them society, which is far too big a word for so small a thing—men and women born to lead and mold public thought and conduct, showed the way to a voluptuousness which rivaled tottering Rome.

And this was the world into which my sinless man had been liberated!

I smiled to myself a little bitterly. It was unfortunate that out of all the women in New York, Jerry should have fallen in love with the first hypocrite that had come his way, a follower of strange gods, cold, calculating, too selfish even to be sinful! Eheu! She was getting on my nerves. Analysis—always analysis! I could not let her be. She obsessed me as she had obsessed Jerry—a slender wisp of a thing that I could have broken in my fingers and would still, I think, unless reason returned.

I paid my bill and would have risen, but just at that moment through the door beside my table entered, to my bewilderment, Jerry himself and a girl. I was so amazed at seeing him in this place that I made no sound or motion and watched the pair pass without seeing me and take a table beyond a small palm tree just beside me, and when they were seated my amazement grew again, for I saw that his companion was the girl Una—Una Habberton who had called herself Smith. Their appearance at this moment together found me at a loss to know what to do. To get up and join them would interfere with a tête-à-tête which, whatever its planning, I deemed most fortunate; to get up and leave the room without being observed would have been impossible, for Jerry faced the door. So I sat debating the matter, watching the face of the girl and listening to the conversation, aware for a second time that I was playing the part of eavesdropper upon these two and now without justification. And yet no qualm of conscience troubled me. Brazen she may have seemed at Horsham Manor, but here in New York in her sober suit and hat she seemed to have lost something of her raffish demeanor, and there was a wholesomeness about her, a frankness in her smile, which was distinctly refreshing.

It was not until several days later that I heard from Jerry how they had happened to meet. It seems that after leaving Ballard's apartment Jerry had gone home, attired himself in his old suit and made his way to meet Flynn, with whom he had an appointment to go down to Finnegan's saloon to attend to some final details of his match with Clancy. This business finished, the party came out upon the street, Jerry, Flynn, Finnegan (in his shirt sleeves) and Clancy's manager, Terry Riley. In the midst of a brogue of farewells Jerry fairly bumped into the girl. He took off his hat and apologized, finding himself looking with surprise straight into Una's face. She started back and would have gone on, but Jerry caught her by the arm.