JERRY
With Ballard the elder, to whom and to those plutocratic associates,
as had been predicted, my antecedents and acquirements had proven
satisfactory, I journeyed on the twelfth of December to Greene County
in the Ballard limousine. A rigorous watch was kept upon the walls of
Horsham Manor, and in response to the ring of the chauffeur at the
solid wooden gates at the lodge, a small window opened and a red
visage appeared demanding credentials. Ballard put the inquisitor to
some pains, testing his efficiency, but finally produced his card and
revealed his identity, after which the gates flew open and we entered
the forbidden ground.
It was an idyllic spot, as I soon discovered, of fine rolling country,
well wooded and watered, the road of macadam, rising slowly from the
entrance gates, turning here and there through a succession of natural
parks, along the borders of a lake of considerable size, toward the
higher hills at the further end of the estate, among which, my
companion told me, were built the Manor house and stables. Except for
the excellent road itself, no attempt had been made to use the art of
the landscape gardener in the lower portion of the tract, which had
been left as nature had made it, venerable woodland, with a
well-tangled undergrowth, where rabbits, squirrels and deer abounded,
but as we neared the hills, which rose with considerable dignity
against the pale, wintry sky, the signs of man's handiwork became
apparent. A hedge here, a path there, bordered with privet or
rhododendron; a comfortable looking farmhouse, commodious barns and
well-fenced pastures, where we passed a few men who touched their caps
and stared after us.
"It's lucky you care nothing for women, Canby," said Mr. Ballard
crisply; "this monastic idea may not bother you."
"It doesn't in the least, Mr. Ballard," I said dryly. "I shall survive
the ordeal with composure."
He glanced at me, smiled and then went on.
"Except for the presence of Miss Redwood, who goes today, the new
regulation has been in force here for a month. The farmers and
gamekeepers are all bachelors. We have an excellent steward, also a
bachelor. You and he will understand each other. In all things that
pertain to the boy he is under your orders. Questions of authority
where you differ are to be referred to me."
"I understand. I am not difficult to get on with."
My employer had described to me thoroughly but quite impersonally all
the conditions of his trust and mine, but had made no comments which
by the widest stretch of imagination could be construed into opinions.
He gave me the impression then as he did later that he was carrying
out strictly the letter of his instructions from the dead. He had a
face graven into austere lines, which habit had schooled into perfect
obedience to his will. He might have believed the experiment to which
he was committed a colossal joke, and no sign of his opinion would be
reflected in his facial expression, which was, save on unimportant
matters, absolutely unchanging. Nor did he seem to care what my own
thoughts might be in regard to the matter, though I had not refrained
from expressing my interest in the project. My character, my
reputation for conscientiousness, my qualifications for the position
were all that seemed to concern him. I was merely a piece of
machinery, the wheels of which he was to set in motion, which would
perform its allotted task to his satisfaction.
The road soon reached an eminence from which Horsham Manor was
visible, a fine Georgian house set handsomely enough in a cleft of the
hills, before which were broad lawns that sloped to the south and
terminated at the borders of a stream which meandered through a rocky
bed to the lake below. Wealth such as this had never awed me. John
Benham with all his stores of dollars had been obliged to come at last
to a penurious philosopher to solve for his son the problem of life
that had baffled the father. So intent was I upon the house which was
to be my home that I caught but a glimpse of the fine valley of meadow
and wood which ended in the faint purplish hills, beyond which
somewhere was the Hudson River.
It was evident that our arrival had been telephoned from the lodge at
the gate, for as the machine drew up at the main doorway of the house
a servant in livery appeared and opened the door.
"Ah, Christopher," said my companion. "Is Mr. Radford about?"
"Yes, sir. He'll be up in a minute, sir."
"This is Mr. Canby, Christopher, Master Jeremiah's new tutor."
"Yes, sir, you'll find Miss Redwood and Master Jerry in the library."
We went up the steps while the aged butler (who had lived with John
Benham) followed with the valises, and were ushered into the library,
where my pupil and his governess awaited us.
I am a little reluctant to admit at this time that my earliest
impression of the subject of these memoirs was disappointing. Perhaps
the dead man's encomiums had raised my hopes. Perhaps the barriers
which hedged in this most exclusive of youngsters had increased his
importance in my thoughts. What I saw was a boy of ten, well grown for
his years, who ambled forward rather sheepishly and gave me a moist
and rather flabby hand to shake.
He was painfully embarrassed. If I had been an ogre and Jerry the
youth allotted for his repast, he could not have shown more distress.
He was distinctly nursery-bred and, of course, unused to visitors, but
he managed a smile, and I saw that he was making the best of a bad
job. After the preliminaries of introduction, amid which Mr. Radford,
the steward of the estate, appeared, I managed to get the boy aside.
"I feel a good deal like the Minotaur, Jerry. Did you ever hear of the
Minotaur?"
He hadn't, and so I told him the story. "But I'm not going to eat
_you_," I laughed.
I had broken the ice, for a smile, a genuine joyous smile, broke
slowly and then flowed in generous ripples across his face.
"You're different, aren't you?" he said presently, his brown eyes now
gravely appraising me.
"How different, Jerry?" I asked.
He hesitated a moment and then:
"I--I thought you'd come all in black with a lot of grammar books
under your arms."
"I don't use 'em," I said. "I'm a boy, just like you, only I've got
long trousers on. We're not going to bother about books for awhile."
He still inspected me as though he wasn't quite sure it wasn't all a
mistake. And then again:
"Can you talk Latin?"
"Bless you, I'm afraid not."
"Oh!" he sighed, though whether in relief or disappointment I couldn't
say.
"But you can do sums in your head and spell hippopotamus?"
"I might," I laughed. "But I wouldn't if I didn't have to."
"But _I'll_ have to, won't I?"
"Oh, some day."
"I'm afraid _I_ never can," he sighed again.
I began to understand now. His mind was feminine and at least three
years backward. There wasn't a mark of the boy of ten about him. But I
liked his eyes. They were wide and inquiring. It wouldn't be difficult
to gain his confidence.
"Are you sorry Miss Redwood is going?" I asked him.
"Yes. She plays games."
"I know some games, too--good ones."
He brightened, but said nothing for a moment, though I saw him
stealing a glance at me. Whatever the object of his inspection, I
seemed to have passed it creditably, for he said rather timidly:
"Would you like to see my bull pup?"
It was the first remark that sounded as though it came from the heart
of a real boy. I had won the first line of entrenchments around
Jerry's reserve. When a boy asks you to see his bull pup he confers
upon you at once the highest mark of his approval.
I only repeat this ingenuous and unimportant conversation to show my
first impression of what seemed to me then to be a rather commonplace
and colorless boy. I did not realize then how strong could be the
effect of such an environment. Miss Redwood, as I soon discovered, was
a timid, wilting individual, who had brought him successfully through
the baby diseases and had taught him the elementary things, because
that was what she was paid for, corrected his table manners and tried
to make him the kind of boy that she would have preferred to be
herself had nature fortunately not decided the matter otherwise, and
chameleon-like, Jerry reflected her tepor, her supineness and
femininity. She recounted his virtues with pride, while I questioned
her, hoping against hope to hear of some prank, the breaking of
window-panes, the burning of a haystack or the explosion of a giant
cracker under the cook. But all to no purpose.
So far as I could discover, he had never so much as pulled the tail
of a cat. As old John Benham had said, of original sin he had none.
But my conviction that the boy had good stuff in him was deepened on
the morrow, when, banishing books, I took him for a breather over hill
and dale, through wood and underbrush, three miles out and three miles
in. I told him stories as we walked and showed him how the Indians
trailed their game among the very hills over which we plodded. I told
him that a fine strong body was the greatest thing in the world, a
possession to work for and be proud of. His muscles were flabby, I
knew, but I put him a brisk pace and brought him in just before lunch,
red of cheek, bright of eye, and splashed with mud from head to foot.
I had learned one of the things I had set out to discover. He would do
his best at whatever task I set him.
I have not said that he was a handsome boy, for youth is amorphous and
the promise of today is not always fulfilled by the morrow. Jerry's
features were unformed at ten and, as has already been suggested, made
no distinct impression upon my mind. Whatever his early photographs
may show, at least they gave no sign of the remarkable beauty of
feature and lineament which developed in his adolescence. Perhaps it
was that I was more interested in his mind and body and what I could
make them than in his face, which, after all, was none of my concern.
That I was committed to my undertaking from the very beginning will
soon be evident. Before three weeks had passed Jerry began to awake
and to develop an ego and a personality. If I had thought him
unmagnetic at first, he quickly showed me my mistake. His imagination
responded to the slightest mental touch, too quickly even for the work
I had in mind for him. He would have pleased me better if he had been
a little slower to catch the impulse of a new impression. But I
understood. He had been starved of the things which were a boy's
natural right and heritage, and he ate and drank eagerly of the
masculine fare I provided. He had shed a few tears at Miss Redwood's
departure and I liked him for them, for they showed his loyalty, but
he had no more games of the nursery nor the mawkish sentimentality
that I found upon the nursery shelves. I had other plans for Jerry.
John Benham should have his wish. I would make Jerry as nearly the
Perfect Man as mortal man could make God's handiwork. Spiritually he
should grow "from within," directed by me, but guided by his own inner
light. Physically he should grow as every well-made boy should grow,
sturdy in muscle and bone, straight of limb, deep of chest, sound of
mind and strong of heart. I would make Jerry a Greek.
Perhaps these plans may seem strange coming from one who had almost
grown old before he had been young. But I had made sure that Jerry
should profit by my mistakes, growing slowly, built like the Benham
Wall, of material that should endure the sophistries of the world and
remain unbroken.
I worked Jerry hard that first winter and spring, and his physical
condition showed that I had no need to fear for his health. And when
the autumn came I decided to bring him face to face with nature when
she is most difficult. I was a good woodsman, having been born and
bred in the northern part of the state, and until I went to the
University had spent a part of each year in the wilderness. We left
Horsham Manor one October day, traveling light, and made for the
woods. We were warmly clad, but packed no more than would be essential
for existence. A rifle, a shotgun, an ax, and hunting knives were all
that we carried besides tea, flour, a side of bacon, the ammunition
and implements for cooking. By night we had built a rough shack and
laid our plans for a permanent cabin of spruce logs, which we proposed
to erect before the snow flew. Game was abundant, and before our bacon
was gone our larder was replenished. I had told Radford of our plans
and the gamekeepers were instructed to give us a wide berth. Jerry
learned to shoot that year, not for fun, but for existence, for one
evening when we came in with an empty game bag we both went to our
blankets hungry. The cabin rose slowly, and the boy learned to do his
share of work with the ax. He was naturally clever with his hands, and
there was no end to his eagerness. He was living in a new world, where
each new day brought some new problem to solve, some difficulty to be
surmounted. He had already put aside childish things and had entered
early upon a man's heritage. There are persons who will say that I
took great risks in thus exposing Jerry while only in his eleventh
year, but I can answer by the results achieved. We lived in the woods
from the fifteenth of October until a few days before Christmas.
During that time we had built a cabin, ten feet by twelve, with a
stone fireplace and a roof of clay; had laid a line of deadfalls, and
rabbit snares; had made a pair of snowshoes and a number of vessels
of birch bark, and except for the tea and flour had been
self-supporting, items compensated for by the value of our labors.
In that time we had two snows, one a severe one, but our cabin roof
was secure and we defied it. Jerry wanted to stay at the cabin all
winter, a wish that I might easily have shared, for the life in the
open and the companionship of the boy had put new marrow into my dry
bones. I had smuggled into camp three books, "Walden," "Rolf in the
Woods" and "Treasure Island," one for Jerry's philosophy, one for his
practical existence and one for his imagination. In the evenings
sometimes I read while Jerry whittled, and sometimes Jerry read while
I worked at the snowshoes or the vessels of birch bark.
[Illustration: "In the evenings sometimes I read while Jerry whittled."]
In those two months was formed the basis of Jerry's idea of life as
seen through the philosophy of Roger Canby. We had many talks, and
Jerry asked many questions, but I answered them all, rejoicing in his
acuteness in following a line of thought to its conclusion, a
procedure which, as I afterward discovered, was to cause me anxious
moments. "Walden" made him thoughtful, but he caught its purpose and
understood its meaning. "Rolf in the Woods" made his eyes bright with
the purpose of achievement in woodcraft and a desire (which I
suppressed) to stalk and kill a deer. But "Treasure Island" touched
some deeper chord in his nature than either of the other books had
done. He followed Jim and the Squire and John Silver in the
_Hispaniola_ with glowing eyes.
"But are there bad men like that now out in the world, Mr. Canby?" he
broke in excitedly.
"There are bad men in the world, Jerry," I replied coolly.
"Like John Silver?"
"Not precisely. Silver's only a character. This didn't really happen,
you know, Jerry. It's fiction."
"Fiction!"
"A story, like Grimm's tales."
"Oh!" His jaw dropped and he stared at me. "What a pity!"
I had wanted to stir in him a knowledge of evil and chose the
picturesque as being the least unpleasant. But he couldn't believe
that old John Silver and the Squire and Benn Gunn hadn't been real
people. The tale dwelt in his mind for days, but the final defeat of
the mutineers seemed to satisfy him as to the intention of the
narrative.
"If there are evil men in the world like those mutineers, Mr. Canby,
it must be a pretty bad place to live in," was the final comment, and
I made no effort to undeceive him.