ENTER EVE
This memoir is not so much the history of a boy or of a man as of an
experiment. Therefore I will not longer delay in bringing Jerry to the
point where my philosophy and John Benham's was to be put to the test.
I have tried to indicate in as few phrases as possible Jerry Benham's
essential characteristics, the moral attributes that were his and the
shapeliness and strength of his body. I have never set great value on
mere physical beauty, which too often reacts unpleasantly upon the
character of its owner. But looks meant nothing to Jerry and he was as
unconscious of his striking beauty as the scarlet poppy that nods in
the meadow.
At the age of twenty, to which point this narrative has arrived, Jerry
Benham was six feet two inches in height and weighed, stripped, one
hundred and eighty-two pounds. His hair was brown, his eyes gray and
his features those of the Hermes of Praxiteles. His skin, naturally
fair, was tanned by exposure to a ruddy brown, and his body, except
for the few white scars upon his shoulder, relics of his encounter
with the lynx, was without blemish. He was always in training, and his
muscles were long and closely knit. I can hardly believe that there
was a man on the Olympian fields of ancient Greece who could have
been prettier to see than Jerry when he sparred with Flynn. He was as
agile as a cat, never off his balance or his guard, and slipped in and
out, circling and striking with a speed that was surprising in one of
his height and weight. "Foot-work," Flynn called it, and there were
times, I think, when the hard-breathing Irishman was glad enough at
the call of "time."
Flynn's own reply when I reproved him for the nonsense he had put into
Jerry's head about the prize ring will show how Jerry stood in the
eyes of one of the best athletes of his day. "He's a wonder, Misther
Canby. Sure, ye can't blame me f'r wantin' to thry him against good
'uns. He ain't awake yet, sor, an' he's too good-nachured. Holy
pow'rs! If the b'ye ever cud be injuced to get mad-like, he'd lick his
weight in woild-cats--so he w'ud."
There were times, as you may imagine, when I felt much like
Frankenstein in awe of the creature I had created. But Jerry
fortunately couldn't be "injuced to get mad-like." If things didn't
happen to please him, he frowned and set his jaws until his mood had
passed and he could speak his mind in calmness. His temper, like his
will, was under perfect control. And yet I knew that the orderly habit
of his mind was the result of growth in a sheltered environment and
that even I, carefully as I had trained him, had not gauged his depths
or known the secret of the lees which had never been disturbed.
At the age of twenty, then, Jerry had the body of a man, the brain of
a scholar and the heart of a child. Less than a year remained before
the time appointed when he must go forth into the world. Both of us
approached that day with regret. For my part I should have been
willing to stay on with Jerry at Horsham Manor indefinitely, and
Jerry, whatever curiosity he may have felt as to his future, gave no
sign of impatience. I knew that he felt that perhaps the years to come
might make a difference in our relations by the way he referred to the
good years we had passed together and the small tokens of his
affection which meant much from one not greatly demonstrative by
habit. As Jerry had grown toward manhood he did much serious reading
in books of my selection (the Benham library having been long since
expurgated), and I had been working steadily on my Dialectics. We did
our out-of-door work as usual, but there were times when I was busy,
and then Jerry would whistle to the dogs and go off for his afternoon
breather alone. There had never been a pledge exacted of him to keep
within the wall, but he knew his father's wish, and the thought of
venturing out alone had never entered his mind. Perhaps you will say
that it was the one thing Jerry would want to do, being the thing that
was forbidden him, but you would not understand as I did the way
Jerry's mind worked. If as a boy Jerry had been impeccable in the way
of matters of duty, he was no less so now. He had been trained to do
what was right and now did it instinctively, not because it was his
duty, but because it was the only thing that occurred to him.
And so, upon a certain day in June while I was reading in my study,
Jerry went out with a rod and fly-book bound for the silent pools of
Sweetwater, where the big trout lurked. My book, I remember, was the
"Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous upon the Reality and Perfection of
Human Understanding," and before Jerry had been long gone from the
house I was completely absorbed in what Fraser in his preface calls
"the gem of British metaphysical literature." But had I known what was
to happen to Jerry on that sunny afternoon, or conceived of the
dialogue in which he was to take a part, I should have regretted the
intellectual attraction of Berkeley's fine volume which had been the
cause of my refusal to accompany the boy.
I find that I must reconstruct the incident as well as I can from my
recollection of the facts as related by Jerry in the course of several
conversations, each of which I am forced to admit amplified somewhat
the one which had preceded it.
It seems that instead of making for the stream at its nearest point to
the eastward, Jerry had cast into the woods above the gorge and worked
upstream into the mountains. His luck had been fair, and by the time
he neared the point where the Sweetwater disappeared beneath the wall
his creel was half full. He clambered over a large rock to a higher
level and found himself looking at a stranger, sitting on a fallen
tree, fastening a butterfly net. He did not discover that the stranger
was a girl until she stood up and he saw that she wore skirts, short
skirts, showing neat leather gaiters. She eyed him coolly and neither
of them spoke for a long moment, the girl probably because she was
waiting for him to speak first, Jerry because (as he described it) of
sheer surprise at the trespass and of curiosity as to its
accomplishment. Then the girl smiled at Jerry.
"Hello!" she said at last.
Jerry advanced a few steps, frowning.
"I suppose you know," he said quickly, "that you're trespassing."
She glanced up at him, rather brazenly I fancy, and grinned.
"Oh, really!" Her eyes appraised him and Jerry, I am sure, felt rather
taken aback.
"Yes," he went on severely, "you're trespassing. We don't allow any
females in here."
Her reply was a laugh which irritated Jerry exceedingly.
"Well, I'm here," she said; "what are you going to do about it?"
"Do about it?" Jerry advanced two or three paces and stood looking
down at her. In our first conversation he told me that she seemed
absurdly small, quite too insignificant to be so impudent. In our
second conversation I elicited the fact that he thought her skin
smooth; in our third that her lips were much redder than mine.
When he got near her he paused, for she hadn't moved away as he had
expected her to and only looked up at him and laughed.
"Yes, _do_ about it," she repeated.
"You--you know I could--could throw you over the wall with one hand,"
he stammered.
"Perhaps, but you wouldn't."
"Why not?'
"Because you're a gentleman."
"Oh, am I?"
"Yes. Or if you aren't you ought to be."
He frowned at that, a little puzzled.
"Where do you come from?" he asked.
"I can't see how that can possibly be any business of yours."
"H-m. How did you get in here?"
"I followed my nose. How did you?"
"I--I--I belong here."
"It's an asylum, isn't it?" she asked quite coolly.
"N--no." Jerry missed the irony. "Not at all. I live here. It's my
place. You--you're the first woman that ever got in here, and I can't
imagine how you did it. I--I don't want to be impolite, but I'm afraid
you'll have to go at once."
The sound of her laughter was most disconcerting. Jerry had no lack of
a sense of humor and yet there was nothing that he could see to laugh
at.
"That's very amusing," she said. "A moment ago you were going to throw
me over the wall and now you're afraid you're impolite."
Jerry found himself smiling in spite of himself.
"I--I don't suppose I really meant that," he muttered.
"What? Throwing me over the wall or being polite?"
He looked rather bewildered, I think, at the inanity of her
conversation. Jerry wasn't much given to small talk.
"I'm sorry you don't think I'm polite. I--I'm not used to talking to
women. They're too fussy about trifles. What does it matter--"
"I don't call throwing a female visitor over a wall a trifle," she
broke in. "And it isn't quite hospitable. Now is it?"
Jerry rubbed his head and regarded her seriously.
"Now that you mention it, I don't suppose it is. But nobody asked you.
You just came. Didn't you see the trespass signs?"
"Oh, yes, they're all about," she said carelessly, as she picked up
her tin specimen-box and turned away. "I didn't mean to stay. I
followed a butterfly. He came in the iron railings, where the stream
goes through the wall. I crawled under where the iron is bent. If
you're afraid of women you'd better have it fixed."
"Afraid!" It was one word that Jerry detested. "Afraid! That's funny.
Do you think I'm afraid of _you_?"
"Yes," she replied, eyeing him critically. "I rather think you are."
"Well, I--I'm not. It would take more than a woman to make _me_
afraid."
Something in the turn of the phrase and tone of voice made her turn
and examine him with a new interest.
"You're a queer boy," she said.
"How--queer?" he muttered.
"You look and act as though you'd never seen a girl before."
If he had known women better he wouldn't have believed that she meant
what she said. As it was, her wizardry astounded him.
"How can you tell that?"
She was now regarding him wide-eyed in amazement.
"It's true, then?" she gasped.
"Yes, it's true. You're the first girl that I remember having seen.
But what difference does that make? Why should I be afraid of you?
You couldn't hurt a flea. You can talk pretty well, but talk never
killed anybody."
She seemed stricken suddenly dumb and regarded him with an air which
to anyone but Jerry would have shown her as discomfited as he.
"Do you mean that you've lived all your life a prisoner inside this
wall and never seen a woman?" she asked incredulously.
"That depends upon what you mean by prisoner," said Jerry. "If having
everything you want, doing everything you want is being a prisoner, I
suppose that's what I am."
"Extraordinary! And you've had no curiosity to go out--to see the
world?"
"No. I'm going soon, but I don't care about it. There isn't anything
out there half as good as what I've got."
"How do you know if you haven't been there?"
"Oh, I know. I've heard. I read a great deal."
Jerry told me (in our second conversation) that he wondered why he
still stood there talking to her. He supposed it was because he
thought he had been impolite enough. But she made no move to go.
"What have you heard?" she asked again. "I suppose you thought that a
girl had horns and a tail."
Unconsciously his gaze wandered down over her slim figure. Then he
burst into a sudden fit of laughter.
"You're funny," he said.
"Not half as funny as I would be if I had them."
"You might have a tail twisted under your dress for all I know. What
do girls wear skirts for?"
"To keep them warm. Why do you wear trousers?"
"Trousers aren't silly. Skirts are."
"That depends on who's in them."
He was forced to admit the logic of that. Skirts might be silly, but
she wasn't. She interested him, this strange creature that talked
back, not in the least like Miss Redwood. The jade! Jerry did not know
their tricks as I did. She was reading him, I haven't a doubt, like an
open book. It was a pity. I hadn't yet prepared Jerry for this
encounter. The girl had moved two or three paces away when she paused
again.
"What's your name?" she asked suddenly.
"Jerry."
"That's a nice name. I think it's like you."
"How--like me?"
"Oh, I don't know--boyish and rather jolly, in spite of being
Jeremiah. It _is_ Jeremiah, isn't it?"
He nodded.
"I was sure of it. It was Jeremiah who wanted to throw me over the
wall, but it was Jerry who didn't. Which are you really? If you're
Jerry I'm not afraid of you in the least. But if you're Jeremiah, I
must go at once."
He smiled at her.
"Oh, that's all right. You needn't hurry. I wouldn't hurt you. You
seem to be a very sprightly sort of a creature. You laugh as though
you really meant it. What's your name? I've told you mine."
"Una."
"H-m. That means 'first'."
"But not the last. There are five others--all girls."
"Girls! What a pity!"
She must have glanced around at him quickly, with that bird-like
pertness I discovered later. He was declaring war, himself
defenseless, and was not even aware of it.
"You're not flattering. A pity! Why?"
"It's too bad if you had to be born why some of you couldn't have been
boys. You'd have been a fine sort of a boy, I think."
"Would I really?" she said. "A better sort of a boy than I am a girl?"
He shrugged his shoulders, oblivious of the bait for flattery.
"How should I know what sort of a girl you are? You seem sensible
enough and you're not easily frightened. You know, I--I rather like
you."
"Really!"
He missed the smile and note of antagonism and went on quickly:
"You're fond of the woods, aren't you? Do you know the birds? They
like this place. And butterflies--I'd like to show you my collection."
"Oh, you collect?"
"Of course--specimens of all kinds. Birds, eggs, nests,
lepidoptera--I've got a museum down at the Manor. Next year you'll
have to come and see it."
"Next year!"
"Yes. You see--" Jerry's pause must have been that of embarrassment. I
think he realized that he had been going it rather rapidly. I didn't
hear this part of the dialogue until our third conversation. "Well,
you see, I'm not supposed to see any--any females until I'm
twenty-one. Not that I've ever wanted to, you know, but it seems
rather foolish that I can't ask you down, if you'd like to come."
Can you visualize a very modern young woman during this ingenuous
revelation? Jerry said that close, cool inspection of her slate-blue
eyes (he had, you see, also identified their color) rather
disconcerted him.
"I'm sure I should be delighted to come," she said with a gravity
which to anyone but Jerry would have made her an object of suspicion.
Jerry shook his head.
"But I--I'm afraid it wouldn't do. I've never given my word, but it's
an understanding--"
"With whom?"
"With Roger. He's my tutor, you know."
"Oh, I see. And Roger objects to--er--females?"
"Oh, yes, and so do I. They're so useless--most of them. You don't
mind my saying so, do you?"
"Oh, not at all," she replied, though I'm sure her lips must have been
twitching.
"Of course, you're different. You're really very like a boy. And I
don't doubt you're very capable."
"How--capable?"
"You look as if you could do things--I mean useful things."
At this she sank on a rock and buried her face in her hands, quivering
from head to foot. Jerry thought that she was crying.
"What's the--?"
She threw out her arms, leaned back against a tree, her long
suppressed merriment bubbling forth unrestrained.
"Oh, you'll be the death of me," she laughed, the tears running down
her cheeks. "I can't stand being bottled up another minute. I can't."
Jerry was offended.
"I don't see what there is to laugh at," he said with some dignity.
"You don't--that's just it, you don't, and that's what's so funny."
And she laughed again.
"What's funny?" he asked.
"You--!"
"I'm not half as funny as _you_ are, but I don't laugh at you."
"Y--you w-would if you didn't p-pity me so much," she gasped between
giggles.
"I don't pity you at all. And I think you're extremely foolish to
laugh so much at nothing."
"Even when I'm laughing at y-you?"
She had taken out her handkerchief and now composed herself with
difficulty while Jerry's ruffled dignity in silence preened at its
feathers. She watched him furtively, I'm sure, between dabs with her
handkerchief and at last stopped laughing, got up and offered him her
hand.
"I've made you angry," she said. "I'm sorry."
He found that he had taken her hand and was looking at it. The words
he used in describing it were these: "It was small, soft and warm,
Roger, and seemed alive with vitality, but it was timid, too, like a
young thrush just fallen from its nest." So far as I could discover,
he didn't seem to know what to do with her hand, and before he decided
anything she had withdrawn it abruptly and was turning away.
"I'm going now," she said calmly. "But I've enjoyed being here,
awfully. It was very nice of you not to--to throw me over the wall."
"I wouldn't have, really," he protested.
"But you might have had me arrested, which would have been worse." She
opened her tin box. "It's your butterfly, of course. You can have it,
if you like."
"Oh, I wouldn't take it for anything. Besides, that's no good."
"No good?"
"No, common. I've got loads of 'em."
Her nose wrinkled and then she smiled.
"Oh, well, I'll keep it as a souvenir of our acquaintance. Good-by,
Jerry." She smiled.
"Good-by, Una. I'm sorry--" he paused.
"For what?"
"If I was cross--"
"But you weren't. I shouldn't have laughed."
"I think I like you better when you laugh than when--when you're
'bottled up'."
"But I mustn't laugh at _you_. I didn't mean to. I just--couldn't
help. You've forgiven me, haven't you?"
"Of course."
She had taken up her hat and now walked away upstream. Jerry followed.
"Will you really come next year?" he asked. "I--I should like to show
you my specimens."
"Next year! Next year is a long way off. You know, I don't belong
here. I'm only visiting."
"Oh!"
She clambered down into the bed of the stream toward the iron railing.
Two of the bars, as he could now see, were bent inward at the bottom.
When she reached the railing she turned and flashed a smile up at him.
"You'd better tell Roger about the broken fence."
"Why?"
She thrust her net and tin box through the bars and then slipped
quickly through the opening.
"Why?" he repeated.
She stood upright and laughed.
"I might come in again."
Jerry, I think, must have stood looking down at her wistfully. I
cannot believe that the psychology of sex made any matter here. Youth
merely responded wordlessly to youth. Had she been a boy it would have
been the same. But the girl was clever.
"I think I will," she said gayly. "It looks very pretty from out
here."
"I--I can't invite you," said Jerry. "I should like to, but I--I
can't."
"I could come without being invited," she laughed.
"But you wouldn't, would you?"
"I might. I didn't hurt you, did I?"
"No," he laughed.
"Then I don't see what harm it would do. I'm coming."
No reply.
"I'm coming tomorrow."
No reply. This was really stoical of Jerry.
"And Jerry--" she called.
"Yes, Una--"
"I think you're--you're _sweet_."
There was a rustle among the leaves and she was gone.
Thus did the serpent enter our garden.