MARCIA RECANTS
Thanks to the formidable size of Jerry's training partners, we had
managed to avoid the reporters at the Garden, and when we reached
Jerry's house we gave instructions to the butler to admit no one and
answer no questions. Christopher, now Jerry's valet, we took upstairs
with us and got the boy ready for bed. As the telephone bell began
ringing with queries from the morning newspapers, I disconnected the
wire and we were left in peace. A warm bath and a drink of brandy did
wonders both for Jerry's appearance and his spirits, and at last we
got him to bed. But he could not sleep, and so we sat at his bedside
and talked to him until far into the night, Jerry propped up on his
pillows, his bad eye comically decorated with a part of his morning's
steak.
By dint of persuasion and a promise to stay all night at last we got
the boy to sleep and went to bed. I think Jack was rather glad to be
beyond the reach of the parental ire, and my own wish was to be near
Jerry now, to help him on the morrow to readjust his mind to his
disappointment, and do what other service I could to save him from the
results of his folly.
The morning papers brought the evidences of it in vivid scare heads
upon their first pages and detailed accounts of the whole affair,
written by their best men, who gave Jerry, I am glad to say, the
credit that was his due, calling him "the new star in pugilistic
circles," "the coming heavyweight champion," and the yellowest of
them, the one that had unmasked Jim Robinson the afternoon before,
came out with an offer to back Jerry Benham for five thousand dollars
against Jack Clancy or any other heavyweight except the Champion.
Jerry read the articles in silence, a queer smile upon his face and at
last shoved the papers aside.
"Nice of those chaps, very, considering the way I've treated 'em, but
it's no go. I've finished."
Jack had ventured out to brave the storm and I sat quietly, scarcely
daring to hope that I had heard correctly.
"I'm done, Roger," he repeated. "No more fights for me. I staked
everything on science and head-work. I failed. He got me--somewhere
that hurt like the devil--and I saw red. I don't remember much after
that except that I was as much of a brute as he was. I failed, Roger,
failed miserably. The fellow that can't hold his temper has no
business in the ring."
His voice was heavy, like his manner, weary, disappointed, and as he
threw off his dressing gown I saw that his left arm was hideously
discolored from wrist to shoulder.
"Does it hurt?" I asked.
"What? Oh, my arm. No. But I'm sore inside of me Roger, my mind I
mean. To do a thing like that, and fail--that's what hurts. Because I
hadn't will enough--"
"You're in earnest, then," I asked, "about not fighting again?"
"Yes. I'm through--for good." And then boyishly, "But I didn't quit,
Roger, did I?"
"I think any unprejudiced observer will admit that you didn't quit," I
said. "Clancy, I'm sure, knows better than anybody."
"Good old Clancy. He _was_ a sight--but he squared things. I saw that
knockout coming, but I couldn't move for the life of me. My arms
wouldn't come up. By George--that _was_ a wallop! Oh well," he sighed,
"the better man won. I'm satisfied."
I helped him into his clothes and we went down to breakfast. He
examined his letters quickly and put them aside with an air of
disappointment, and then asked if there had been any telephone calls,
seeming much put out when I told him my reasons for disconnecting the
instrument.
"Oh, it doesn't matter--Beastly nuisance, those reporters--" He looked
over at me and grinned sheepishly. "Nice morning reading for Ballard,
Senior! It _was_ a rotten trick to play on him, though. He didn't
deserve all this. I wouldn't wonder if he didn't speak to me now. I
deserve that, I think. He cost me ten thousand cold. I'm in disgrace.
I'll never be able to square myself--never."
When he got up from the breakfast table he caught a glimpse of his
face in a mirror. "I _am_ a sight. The lip is going down nicely, but
the eye! Looks like an overripe tomato against a wall. Pretty sort of
a phiz to go calling on a lady with."
"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, God 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, finishing
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 amusement 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 glass
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. Nobody 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 Rasselas 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 jackass," I said, storming down at where he sat from
my indignant five feet eight.
His brow lowered and his jaw shot forward unpleasantly. "A jackass," 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
jackass! Hardly Hegelian, but neat, Roger, and most beautifully
appropriate. A jackass, 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.
"You _are_ a good sort, Roger," he said at last, with an embarrassment
that contrasted strangely with the bombast of a moment ago. "I--I'm
glad you did that. I think you're about the only person in the world
I'd have taken it from. But I haven't drunk much. I couldn't get to be
much of a drunkard in three weeks, could I?" He smiled his boyish
smile and disarmed me.
"But why drink at all?" I asked quietly.
"Oh, I don't know. It's such an easy way to be jolly. Everybody does
it. You can't seem to go anywhere without somebody sticking a glass
under your nose. It's part of the social formula. There's no harm in
it, in reason."
"Jerry," I said sternly. "You've begun wrong. I don't know whether
it's my fault or not, but you seem to be hopelessly twisted in your
view of life. You're floundering. Of course it's none of my business.
I've done what I was paid to do, and you've got to work things out in
your own way. If you want to drink yourself maudlin, that's your
privilege. I can move out, but while I'm here in this house I'm not
going to sit idly by while you make a fool of yourself."
He puffed on his pipe a moment in silence, eyeing the table leg.
"I _am_ a fool," he said soberly at last. And then after a pause, "I
don't know what the trouble has been exactly, unless I've taken
people too literally; and that's your fault, Roger. White with you was
always white and black was black. You taught me to say what I thought
and to believe that other people said what they thought. That was a
mistake."
"You forget," I said, "that I wasn't brought here to teach you
worldliness. But you can't say that I didn't warn you against it."
He had gotten up and now paced the room with long strides.
"Futile, Roger! Absolutely futile. In my heart even then, I think, I
believed you narrow. You see, I'm frank. A few months in the world
hasn't changed my opinion. But I do want to think straight." And then
with a sigh as he paused alongside of me, "It's very perplexing
sometimes."
I knew what he was thinking about and whom, but he would not speak.
"You have thought me narrow, Jerry, because I laid my life and yours
along pleasant byways and ignored the beaten track. I've never told
you why the world had grown distasteful to me. I think you ought to
know. It may be worth something to you. The old story, always new--a
girl, pretty, insincere. I was just out of the University, with a good
education, some prospects, but no money. We became engaged. She was
going to wait for me until I got a good professorship. But she didn't.
In less than a year, without even the formality of breaking the
engagement, she suddenly married a man who had money, a manufacturer
of gas engines in Taunton, Massachusetts. I won't go into the details.
They're rather sickening from this distance. But I thought you might
like to know why I've never particularly cared to trust women."
"I supposed," he said, thoughtfully, "it might have been something
like that. Women _are_ queer. You think you know them, and then--" He
paused, confession hovering on his lips, but some delicacy restrained
him.
"Women, Jerry, are the flavoring of society; I regret that I have a
poor digestion for sauces. I hope yours will be better."
He laughed. "Poor Roger; was she _very_ pretty?"
"I can't remember. Probably. Calf love seldom considers anything
else--prettiness! Yes she was pretty."
"How old were you?"
"Older than you Jerry--and wiser."
He was silent. Once I thought he was about to speak, but he refrained,
and when he deftly turned the topic, I knew that any chance I might
have had to help him had passed. I understood, of course, and I could
not help respecting his delicacy. Jerry was in for some hard knocks, I
feared, harder ones than Clancy had given him.
He went to bed presently and I sat by the lamp alternately reading and
thinking of Jerry, comparing him with myself in that long-distant
romance of my own. They were not unlike, these two women, pretty
little self-worshipers, born to deceit and chicanery, with clever
talents for concealing their ignorance, hiding the emptiness of their
hearts with pretty tricks of coquetry. But Marcia was the more
dangerous, a clean body and an unclean mind. A half-virgin! I would
have given much to know what had recently passed between Marcia and
Jerry. If there was any way to bring about a disillusionment--
As though in answer to my enigma, at this moment Christopher came down
from Jerry's room on his way below stairs. I stopped him and taking
him into my study closed the door.
"You're very fond of Master Jerry, Christopher?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, sir, Mr. Canby."
"So am I, Christopher. I think you know that, don't you?"
"Why, yes, sir. You've been a father to 'im, sir. Nobody knows that
better than me, sir."
"We'd both go through fire and water for him, wouldn't we,
Christopher?"
"Oh, yes, sir; an' if you please, sir, what with these prize fighters
at the Manor an' all, I rather think we 'ave, sir."
I smiled.
"A bad business, but over for good, I think, Christopher. But there
are other things, worse in a way--"
I paused, scrutinizing the man's homely, impassive face.
"Did Master Jerry do much drinking before he went into training,
Christopher?"
"A little, what any gentleman would, out in the world, sir."
"You've noticed it since the fight?"
He hesitated. Loyalty was bred in his bone.
"Yes, sir."
"You know, Christopher, that I've spent my life trying to make Jerry a
fine man?"
"You 'ave, sir. It's a pity--the--the drink. But it can't 'ave much
of a 'old on 'im yet, sir."
"Then you _have_ noticed?"
"Yes, sir."
"When did he begin?"
He paused a moment.
"I think it was the day after the fight, that very night, to be
hexact, sir."
"I see. The night after the fight. He spent the evening out and when
he came home, was he intoxicated?"
"Not then, no, sir. But 'e'd been drinkin', just mildly lit--in a
manner o' speakin' sir, not drunk, but gay and kind o' sarcastic-like;
not like Master Jerry 'imself, sir."
"Had he been with some other gentlemen during the evening?"
"No, sir. 'E 'ad been callin' on a lady, but stopped at 'is club on
the way around--"
"What lady?"
"I--I--"
"You may speak freely, Christopher. Miss Van Wyck?"
"I--I think so, sir. They 'ad an appointment."
"I see. And did he drink again that night?"
"A few brandies--yes, sir. Ye see, sir, it got to him
quick-like--breakin' training so suddent."
"I understand. And you put him to bed."
"Yes, sir, in a manner o' speakin' I did, sir."
"When did you notice his drinking again?"
"Not for some days, sir."
"And what then?"
"The same thing happened again, sir."
"I see." I paced the floor silently, my inclination to question
further struggling against my sense of the fitness of things. Was not
Christopher, after all, a friend as well as a servant, a well-tried
friend of Jerry's clan? "Did you connect the fact of Master Jerry's
drinking with his visits to the lady I have mentioned, Christopher?" I
asked in a moment.
He paused a moment scratching his head in perplexity, and then blurted
forth without reserve.
"I'm glad you've spoken, Mr. Canby. I'm not given to talkin' over
Master Jerry's private affairs, sir, but it's all in the family, like,
though I wouldn't 'ave Master Jerry know--"
"Master Jerry will not know."
"Well, Mr. Canby, if you'd ask my hopinion, sir, I'd say that this
young lady--sayin' no names, sir--is doin' no good to Master Jerry.
She's always got 'im fussed, sir, an' irritable. 'E's not like
'imself--not like 'imself at all, sir. Why, Mr. Canby, I'm not the
kind as listens behind keyholes, sir, but one night last week when she
comes to the 'ouse in New York to visit 'im--"
"Ah, she came to the house?"
"Yes, sir, alone, sir, at night; a most unproper thing for a nice girl
to do, sir, if I must say it, Mr. Canby. I couldn't 'elp 'earin' in
the next room, or seein' for the matter of that. Master Jerry is out
of 'is 'ead about 'er, an' no mistake, sir. I could 'ear 'is voice
soft-like an she indifferent, leadin' 'im on, a-playin' with 'im, sir.
Seemed to me like she was sweet an' mad-like by turns. She's a strange
one, Mr. Canby, an' if the matter goes no further I'd like to say,
sir, that I've no fancy for such doin's in a lady."
"Nor I, Christopher. You heard what she said?"
"I couldn't 'elp, some of it. 'Twas about the fight, sir. 'But you
lost,' says she again and again when 'e speaks to 'er soft-like. 'You
lost. You let that ugly gorilla'--them's 'er words, sir, speakin' o'
Clancy--'you let that gorilla beat you, you, my fightin' god.' I
remember the words, sir, 'er hexact words, sir, she said them again
and again. Queer talk for a drawin' room, Mr. Canby, in a lady's
mouth, an' Master Jerry talkin' low all the time and tellin' her he
loved 'er--not darin' even to touch 'er 'and, sir, an' lookin' at her
pleadin' like; 'im with his soft eyes, 'im with 'is great strength an'
manhood, like a child before 'er, not even touchin' 'er, sir, with 'er
temptin' and tantalizing." He broke off with a shrug. "'Tis a queer
world, sir, where them that calls themselves ladies comes a visitin'
gentlemen alone at night, an' goes away clean with a laugh on their
lips. A gentleman Master 'Jerry is, sir, too good for the likes o'
her." The man paused and looked toward the door with a startled air.
"I 'ave no business sayin' what's in my mind, even to you, Mr. Canby.
You'll not tell 'im, sir?"
"No. I'm glad you've spoken. You've said nothing of this--to anyone?"
"I'd cut my tongue out first, sir," he muttered, wagging his head.
I led the way to the door and opened it.
"I like her no better than you, Christopher. Something must be
done--something--It's too bad--"
"Good night, sir," he said.
"Good night, Christopher."