Part 37 (2/2)

”You're going visiting?”

”Yes, Marcia and I are going up to the country together. You'll have to go along.”

”Thanks,” I said, ”but I've some matters to attend to here.”

”I say, Roger,” he went on quickly examining himself anew in the mirror; ”I've got to get hold of Flynn. There's a chap in the Bowery who makes a business of painting eyes.” And he went off to the telephone where I heard him making the arrangement.

With Jerry restored to partial sanity my duty at the town house was ended. Reporters still came to the door, but were turned away, and, seeing that I could be of no further use, I made my adieux and took my way downtown.

If no man is a hero to his valet, surely no boy can be a hero to his tutor, and I may as well admit that glorious as Jerry's defeat had been, I had ceased to reckon him among the perfect creations of this world. Nowhere, I think, have I hailed Jerry as a hero. I have not meant to place him upon a pedestal. At the Manor, before he came to New York, he did no wrong, because the things that were good were pleasant to him and because original sin--_Eheu!_ I was beginning to wonder! Original sin! John Benham had ignored its existence and I had thought him wise. What was original sin? And if its origin was not within, where did it originate and how? If the boy had already been inoculated with the germ of sin, was he conscious of it? And did he yield to it voluntarily or unconsciously or both? And if unconscious of sin, was he morally responsible for its commission? These and many other vexed theological questions flitted anxiously through my mind and brought me to a careful scrutiny of Jerry's acts as I knew them.

To engage in a prize fight, whatever the prize, whether money or merely the love of woman, if a venial, was not a mortal sin. To be sure, anger was a mortal sin and Jerry had yielded to it. Such fighting as Jerry had done, was not and could not by dint of argument become a part of any philosophy that I had taught him. He had sinned.

He would sin again. As Miss Gore had said, my dream castle was tottering--it _had_ tottered and was falling. Jerry, my Perfect Man, at the first contact with the world felt the contagion of its innate depravity and corruption. The more I thought of Jerry's character, his ingenuous belief in the good of all things, the more it seemed to me that it was only a question of the strength of Jerry's spiritual health to resist the ravages of spiritual disease. You see, already I had thrown my philosophy to the winds. For where I had once planned that Jerry should go through fire unscorched, it was now merely become a question of the amount of his scorching.

I bade Jack good-by, after hearing of the bad quarter-hour he had spent with Ballard, Senior, downtown, and made my way to my train for Horsham Manor in no very happy frame of mind. Had I known what new phase of Jerry's character was soon to be revealed to me, G.o.d knows I should have been still more unhappy. Jerry was not at the Manor when I arrived there. For some reasons best known to Marcia Van Wyck and himself it had been decided to stay for awhile longer in town, and it was not until over a month later that Jerry arrived bag and baggage in his machine with Christopher. He greeted me cheerfully enough, but I was not quite satisfied with his appearance. The marks of his fight with Clancy had almost, if not quite, disappeared, and while he had taken on much of his normal weight, he had little color and his eyes were dull. He smoked cigarettes constantly, lighting one from another, and on the afternoon and evening of the day of his arrival, sat moodily frowning at vacancy, or walked aimlessly about, his mind obviously upon some troublesome or perplexing matter. I could not believe that Clancy's victory had cast this shadow upon his spirit, but I asked no questions. He ordered wine for dinner, a thing he had never done before at the Manor, save on a few occasions when we had had guests, and drank freely of both sherry and champagne, finis.h.i.+ng after his coffee with some neat brandy, which he tossed off with an air of familiarity that gave me something of a shock. He invited me to join him and when I refused seemed to find amus.e.m.e.nt in twitting me about my abstemious habits.

”Come along now, just a nip of brandy, Roger. 'Twill make your blood flow a bit faster. No? Why not, old Dry-as-dust? Conscientious scruples? A dram is as good as three scruples. Come along, just a taste.”

”Brandy was made for old dotards and young idiots. I'm neither.”

”Oh, very well, here's luck!” and he drank again, setting the gla.s.s down and drawing a deep breath of satisfaction. And then with a laugh.

”An idiot! I suppose I am. Good thing to be an idiot, Roger. Nothing expected of you. n.o.body disappointed.”

”You're talking nonsense,” I said sternly.

”Nonsense! I differ from you there, old top,” he laughed. ”The true philosophy of life is the one that brings the greatest happiness.

Self-expression is my motto, wherever it leads you. I fight, I play, I smoke, I drink because those are the things my particular ego requires.”

”Ah! You're happy?”

”'Happiness,' old Dry-as-dust, as our good friend Ra.s.selas puts it, 'is but a myth.' I have ceased listening with credulity to the whispers of fancy or pursuing with eagerness the phantoms of hope.

They're not for me. To live in the thick of life and take my knockouts or give them--Reality! I'm up against it at last,--real people, real thoughts, real trials, real problems--I want them all. I'm going to drink deep, deep.”

He reached for the brandy bottle again, but I whisked it away and rose.

”You're a d----d jacka.s.s,” I said, storming down at where he sat from my indignant five feet eight.

His brow lowered and his jaw shot forward unpleasantly. ”A jacka.s.s,” I repeated firmly, still holding the neck of the brandy bottle.

He glared at me a moment longer, then he slowly sank back into his chair, his features relaxing, and burst into a laugh.

”Roger, you improve upon acquaintance. All these years you've concealed from me a nice judgment in the use of profanity. A d----d jacka.s.s! Hardly Hegelian, but neat, Roger, and most beautifully appropriate. A jacka.s.s, I am. Also as you have remarked, an idiot. You see, there's no argument. I admit the soft impeachment. But I won't drink again just now; so set the brandy bottle down like a good fellow and we will talk as one gentleman to another.”

I saw that I had brought him for the moment to his senses, and obeyed, sitting resolutely silent with folded arms, waiting for him to go on.

He took a pipe from his pocket rather sheepishly, then filled and lighted it.

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