Paradise Garden Part 4

He laughed affectionately and clapped me on the shoulder.

"Oh, no, you don't, old Dry-as-dust. Not books. That isn't what I meant. I mean life, struggles against odds. I've just been wondering what chance I'd have to get, along by myself, without a lot of people waiting on me."

"I've tried to show you, Jerry. You can go into the woods with a gun and an ax and exist in comfort."

"Yes, but the world isn't all woods; and axes and guns aren't the only weapons."

"But the principle is the same."

He flashed a bright glance at me.

"Flynn told me yesterday that I could make good in the prize ring if I'd let him take me in hand."

(The deuce he had! Flynn would lose his engagement as a boxing teacher if he didn't heed my warnings better.)

"The prize ring is not what you're being trained for, my young friend," I said with some asperity.

"What then?" he asked.

"First of all I hope I'm training you to be a gentleman. And that means--"

"Can't a boxer be a gentleman?" he broke in quickly.

"He might be, I suppose, but he usually isn't." He was forcing me into an att.i.tude of priggishness which I regretted.

"Then why," he persisted, "are you having me taught to box?"

"Chiefly to make your muscles hard, to inure you to pain, to teach you self-reliance."

"But I oughtn't to learn to box then, if it's going to keep me from being a gentleman. What is a gentleman, Roger?"

I tried to think of a succinct generalization and failed, falling back instinctively upon safe ground.

"Christ was a gentleman, Jerry," I said quietly.

"Yes," he a.s.sented soberly, "Christ. I would like to be like Christ, but I couldn't be meek, Roger, and I like to box and shoot--"

"He was a man, Jerry, the most courageous the world has ever known.

He was even not afraid to die for an ideal. He was meek, but He was not afraid to drive the money changers from the temple."

"Yes, that was good. He was strong and gentle, too. He was wonderful."

I have merely suggested this part of the conversation to show the feeling of reverence and awe with which the boy regarded the Savior.

The life of Christ had caught his imagination and its lessons had sunk deeply into his spirit, touching chords of gentleness that I had never otherwise been able to reach. His religion had begun with Miss Redwood and he had clung to it instinctively as he had clung to the vague memory of his mother. No word of mine and no teaching was to destroy so precious a heritage. He was not goody-goody about it. No boy who did and said and thought the things that Jerry did could be accused of prudery or sentimentalism. But in his quieter moods I knew that he thought deeply of sacred things.

But this conversation with Jerry had warned me that the time was approaching when the boy would want to think for himself. Already in our nature-talks some of his questions had embarra.s.sed me. He had seen birds hatched from their eggs and had marveled at it. The mammals and their young had mystified him and he had not been able to understand it. I had reverted to the process of development of the embryo of the seed into a perfect plant. I had waxed scientific, he had grown bewildered. We had reached our _impa.s.se_. In the end we had compromised. Unable to comprehend, Jerry had ascribed the propagation of the species to a miracle of G.o.d. And since that was the precise truth I had been content to let the matter rest there.

But there was another problem that our conversation had suggested: the choice of a vocation. The proposition of the misguided Flynn had made me aware of the fact that I was already letting my charge drift toward the maws of the great unknown which began just beyond the Wall without a plan of life save that he should be a "gentleman." It occurred to me with alarming suddenness that the term "gentleman" was that frequently applied to persons who had no occupation or visible means of support.

Nowhere in John Benham's instructions was there mention of any plan for a vocation. Obviously if the old man had intended Jerry for a business career he would have said so, and the omission of any exact instructions convinced me that such an idea was furthest from John Benham's thoughts. It remained for me to decide the matter in the best way that I could, for determined I was that Jerry, merely because of the possession of much worldly goods, should not be that bane of humanity and of nations, an idler.

At about this period Mr. Ballard the elder came down to Horsham Manor on one of his visits of inspection and inquiry. He brought up the subject of his own accord.

"What do you think, Canby, what have you planned about Jerry's future?"

I told him that my only ambition, so far, had been to make of Jerry a gentleman and a scholar.

"Yes, of course," he nodded. "That's what you are here for. But beyond that?"

"Nothing," I replied. "I am following my instructions from Mr.

Benham. They go no further than that."

He frowned into the fire.

"That's all very well as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.

Jerry is now eighteen. Do you realize that in three years he comes into possession of five million dollars, an income of over two hundred thousand a year; and that in seven years, at twenty-five, the executors must relinquish the entire estate?"

I had not thought of the imminence of this disaster.

"I was not aware, Mr. Ballard," I said. "At the present moment Jerry doesn't know a dollar from a nickel."

He opened his eyes wide and examined me as though he feared he had not heard correctly or as though it were blasphemy, heresy that I was uttering.

"You mean that he doesn't know the value and uses of money?"

"So far as I am aware," I replied coolly, "he has never seen a piece of money in his life."

"All wrong, all wrong, Canby. This won't do at all. He had his arithmetic, percentage and so forth?"

"Yes. But money doesn't interest him. Can you see any reason why it should?"

Again the frown and level gaze.

"And what had you planned for him?" he asked. He did not intend to be satirical perhaps. He was merely worldly.

"I thought when the time came he might be permitted to choose a vocation for himself. In the meanwhile--"

"A vocation!" he snapped. "Isn't the controlling interest in a transcontinental line of railroad vocation enough? To say nothing of coal, copper and iron mines, a steel mill or two and a fleet of steamers?"

He overpowered me for the moment. I had not thought of Jerry as being all these things. To me he was merely Jerry. But I struggled upward through the miasma of oppressive millions and met the issue squarely.

"There is nothing in John Benham's advice which directs any vocational instruction," I said staunchly. "I was to bring the boy to the age of manhood without realization of sin."

"A dream, Canby. Utopian, impossible!"

"It has not proved so," I replied, nettled. "I am merely following instructions, Mr. Benham's instructions through you to me. The dream is very real to Jerry."

Mr. Ballard gazed into the fire and smiled.

"The executors are permitted some license in this matter. We are entirely satisfied with your work. We have no desire to modify in the slightest degree the purely moral character of your instruction or indeed to change his mode of life. Indeed, I think we all agree that you are carrying out with rare judgment the spirit if not the actual letter of John Benham's wishes. Jerry is a wonderful boy. But in our opinion the time has come when his mind should be slowly shaped to grasp the essentials of the great career that awaits him."