Paradise Garden Part 2

"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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d'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, st.u.r.dy 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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.

CHAPTER III

JERRY GROWS

It is not my intention to dwell too long upon the first stages of my tutorship, which presented few difficulties not easily surmounted, but it is necessary in order to understand Jerry's character that I set down a few facts which show certain phases of his development. Of his physical courage, at thirteen, I need only relate an incident of one of our winter expeditions. We were hunting c.o.o.ns one night with the dogs, a collie and the bull pup, which now rejoiced in the name of Skook.u.ms, already mentioned. The dogs treed their game three miles from the Manor house, and when we came up were running around the tree, whimpering and barking in a high state of excitement. The night was dark and the branches of the tree were thick, so we could see nothing, but Jerry clambered up, armed with a stout stick, and disappeared into the gloom overhead.

"Do you see him?" I called.

"I see something, but it looks too big for a c.o.o.n," he returned.

"What does it look like?"

"It looks more like a cat, with queer-looking ears."

"You'd better come down then, Jerry," I said quickly.

"It looks like a lynx," he called again, quite unperturbed.

It was quite possible that he was right, for in this part of the Catskill country lynxes were still plentiful.

"Then come down at once," I shouted. "He may go for you."

"Oh, I'm not worried about that. I have my hunting knife," he said coolly.

"Come down, do you hear?" I commanded.