Paradise Garden Part 8

"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 s.e.x 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.

CHAPTER V

THE MINX RETURNS

That afternoon when Jerry returned to the Manor he gave me a superficial account of the adventure--so superficial and told with such carelessness that I was not really alarmed. The second conversation in the evening after dinner aroused my curiosity but not my suspicion. I was not in the habit of mistrusting Jerry. The intrusion of the stranger was an accident, not likely to occur again.

It was only after our discussion had taken many turns and curiously enough had always come back to the pert intruder that I realized that Jerry's interest had really been aroused. Late at night over our evening reading the boy made the comments upon the visitor's appearance, her voice and the texture of her skin. He had been quite free in his opinions, favorable and unfavorable alike, and it was this very frankness which had disarmed me. The incident, as far as Jerry's story went, ended when the visitor crawled under the railing. I am not sure what motive was in his mind, but the events which followed lend strong color to the presumption that Jerry believed the girl when she said that she was coming back and that at the very time he was speaking to me he intended to meet her when she came.

I had decided to treat the incident lightly, trusting to the well-ordered habits of Jerry's life and the number of his daily interests to put the visitor out of his mind. I did not even warn him, as I should have done had I realized the imminence of danger or the necessity of keeping to the letter as well as the spirit of John Benham's definite instruction, for this I thought might lay undue stress upon the matter. And in the course of the morning, nothing further having been said, I was lulled into a sense of security.

In the afternoon Bishop Berkeley's book called me again and it was not until late that I realized that the boy had been gone from the house for four hours. His rod, creel and fly-book were missing from their accustomed places but even then I suspected nothing. It was not until the approach of the dinner hour when, Jerry not having returned, I began to think of yesterday's visitor.

After waiting dinner for awhile, I dined alone, expecting every minute to hear the sound of his step in the hall or his cheery greeting but there was no sign of him and I guessed the truth. The minx had come in again and Jerry was with her.

The events which followed were the first that cast the slightest shadow over our friendship, a shadow which was not to pa.s.s, for, from the day when Eve entered our garden, Jerry was changed. It wasn't that he loved me any the less or I him. It was merely that his att.i.tude toward life and toward my point of view had shifted. He had begun to doubt my infallibility.

It was this indefinable difference in our relations which delayed Jerry's confession, and not until some days later did he tell me how it all happened. He didn't think she would really come back, he said, and I chose at the time not to doubt him, but the fact was that he made his way directly upstream after leaving the house, and catching no fish, sat down on a rock near the iron grille. That the girl returned was not Jerry's fault, he said, because he didn't ask her to.

But the fact that he was there awaiting her when she arrived shows that the wish was the father to the thought with Jerry. He had been sitting there alone fifteen or twenty minutes "listening for bird calls," as he explained it and had already identified twenty distinct notes when he heard the twenty-first.

It was human. "h.e.l.lo, Jerry," it said.

It came from the iron railing, behind which the female Una was standing, grinning at him. He got up and walked toward her.