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CHAPTER XXVI
DRYAD AND SATYR

Little by little the story came from him. Perhaps I urged him but I think the larger impelling motive to speak was his conscience which drove him on to confession. He needed another mind, another heart, to help him bear his burden. And the years had taught him that the secrets of his lips were mine. I could be as silent, when I chose, as a mummy. He had not named me old Dry-as-dust for nothing.

It seems that when Jerry left us at the Manor that afternoon and took to the woods he had no very clear notion of what he was going to do. All that he knew was that he could not bear the sight or touch or hearing of his fellow beings, least of all of those of us who were kind to him. In fact, he had no very clear notion of anything, for his brain was whirling with terrible grinding, reiterating blows like machinery that is out of order. What thoughts he had were chaotic, mere fragments of incidents, and conversations jumbled and mostly irrelevant. But the vision of the figures in the automobile dominated all. I am sure that he was mentally unsound and that his actions were instinctive. He walked furiously, because walk he must, because violent physical exercise had always been his panacea, and because the very act of locomotion was an achievement of some sort. After awhile he found himself running swiftly along the paths that led to the Sweetwater, and then following the stream through the gorge in the hills, leaping over the rocks until he reached the wall and the broken grille. There he paused for a moment and tried to reason with himself. But he found that he could not think and that his legs still urged him on. They were bent on carrying him to Briar Hills, he knew that much now, and that he had no power to stop them. The violence of his exercise, he said, had cleared the chaos from his brain and only the vision of the red automobile remained, Marcia's roadster. He knew it well. Had he not driven it? There was no mistake. It crossed his disordered brain that red for a machine was a frightful color, a painful color it seemed to him, and he wondered why he hadn't thought that before. Red, blood color, the color that seemed to be in his eyes at that very moment. All the trees were tinged with it, the rocks, even the pools in the brook, around the edges especially—and they had always seemed so cool, so very cool.

He leaped down the rocks and before he realized it had crawled under the broken railing and was in the forest beyond. He did not run now but walked quickly and with the utmost care over fallen tree-trunks and rocks, avoiding the paths and seeking the deep woods, still moving ever nearer to his goal. He made a wide detour around the Laidlaws' place and went half a mile out of his way to avoid the sight of some farmers working in an open field. As he neared Marcia's land he grew more crafty, even crawling upon his hands and knees across a clearing where there was little cover. He had no notion as yet of what he was going to do when he got there except that he hoped to find the girl and Lloyd together.

He saw the house at last and the garden, from a distance. The house had a red roof. Red again! It glared horribly in the afternoon sunlight. He turned his head so that he might not look at it and moved stealthily around a stone wall toward the woods beyond the garden—Marcia's woods, pine woods they were, their floor carpeted with brown needles where he and she had used to go and walk of an afternoon to the rocks by Sweetwater Spring, the source of the stream, they said, which Jerry had named the "blushful Hippocrene," the fountain of the Muses who met there to do Marcia, their goddess, honor.

Marcia, his goddess. And Chan Lloyd! Would they be there? He hoped so. The whole success of his venture seemed to depend upon seeing them together. It was her favorite spot. She had led Jerry to believe that the crevice among the rocks by the spring, a natural throne sculptured by nature, was his, his only, and that he was her king. That had always seemed a very beautiful thought to Jerry. She used to sit at his feet, her arms upon his knees, look up at him and tell him of his dominion over her and all the world; her "fighting-god" he had once been, and then again her Pan, and she a dryad or an oread.

Jerry crept nearer, stealthily. He had learned the craft of the woods years ago, and made no sound. He stalked that grove with the keenness of a deerslayer, moving around through the undergrowth until he was quite near the rocks. He could hear no voices as yet, but something told him that they must be there. It was a very secluded spot; it would have been a pity to have had to go on to the house where Miss Gore and the servants would hear and see. He crawled on his hands and knees, approaching slowly and with some pains. He still heard no sound, but at last reached a ridge of rock within a few feet of the spring and heard voices, lowered, guilty voices they seemed to him. He peered cautiously over. They were there, side by side on the rocky ledge.

Jerry told me that at this moment he seemed suddenly to grow strangely calm. The noises in his head had ceased and he felt a curious sense of quiet exaltation. He couldn't explain this. I think it was a purely mental reaction after many months of spiritual coma. He got to his feet and even before they heard the sounds of his footsteps he stood before them.

They must have been very much alarmed at Jerry's appearance for, after dashing hotfoot through the underbrush and crawling among the rocks, his clothing must have been disarranged and his hair dirty and disordered. The expression of his face, too, in spite of his boasted calm, could hardly have been pleasant to contemplate, for I had had a glimpse of it that morning in the motor and I am sure that for an hour or more he had been mad—quite mad. He said that they sprang apart suddenly and that Lloyd rose with a swaggering air and faced him. But it seemed that the current of Jerry's thought was diverted by Marcia, who had started up and then sank back upon the rock, addressing him in her softest tones.

"Why, Jerry!" she cried. "How you startled me!"

It was the first time, Jerry said, that the caressing tones of the girl's voice had made no impression upon him. In two strides he was alongside of her, within arm's reach of both of them. He looked dangerous, I think, for Lloyd edged off a little. Marcia kept her gaze fixed upon his face and what she read there was hardly reassuring.

"Jerry!" she cried again. "What does this mean? Your clothes are torn; your face scratched. Has—has something happened to you?"

The question was unfortunate, for it loosened Jerry's thick tongue.

"Yes. Something's happened," he muttered, moving a hand across his brows as though to clear his thoughts. And then:

"I've waked up, that's all," he growled.

"Waked! I don't understand," her voice still gentle, appealing, incredulous.

"Yes, awake. You're false as hell."

"Oh," she started back at that and the venturesome Lloyd took a pace forward.

"I say, Benham, I—" He got no further, for Jerry without even looking at him, swept his left arm around, the gesture of a giant bothered by a troublesome insect. But it caught the fellow full in the chest, and sent him reeling backward. Jerry's business just now was with Marcia Van Wyck.

"You understand what I mean," he went on quickly. "You've played false with me. You've always played false. I saw you there this morning kissing this man, the way you kissed me, the way you kiss others for all that I know."

"You're mad. You insult me." She rose, pale and trembling, but facing him hardily.

"No, I'm not mad. Nothing that I can say can insult you."

"Chan!" She appealed.

It was a fatal mistake, for at the word Lloyd came forward again, bent on making some show of resistance. Jerry turned on him with a snarl, for the fellow had foolishly put up his hands. A few blows passed and then—Jerry told what happened rather apologetically—"It was a pity, Roger. It wasn't altogether his fault, but he is a bounder. My fist struck his face, seemed to smear it, literally, all into a blot of red. It wasn't like hitting a man in the ring, it was like—like poking a bag full of dirty linen. The whole fabric seemed to give way. He toppled back, turned a complete somersault and collapsed."

I made no comment. I already knew that Lloyd hadn't been killed. The girl Marcia seemed stricken dumb for a moment and found her voice only when Jerry turned toward her again.

"Jerry," she cried. "It is horrible. You're a brute—beast—"

Jerry only pointed at the prostrate figure slowly struggling to its knees.

"Go and kiss him," he cried. "Go. Kiss him now. He's on his knees to you, waiting for you."

While they watched, Lloyd got to his feet, turned one look of terror in Jerry's direction and then fled blindly into the woods, like one possessed of a devil.

Jerry laughed. It couldn't have been very pretty laughter, for the girl covered her face with her hands and shrank away from him.

"How could you?" she stammered. "How could you?"

"You were mine. He wanted you."

"Jerry—I—. It's all a mistake. You thought you saw us. I haven't kissed—"

"You lie," he came a pace toward her. "I saw you. I'm not a fool—not any longer."

Her gaze met his and fell. There was something in his expression, something of the primitive that tore away all subterfuge.

But she was not without courage.

"And if I did kiss him—what then?" she asked defiantly. "I'll kiss as I please."

"Will you?" He caught at her wrist but she eluded him.

"Yes, I will. What right have you to tell me what I shall do or not do? I'll choose my friends as I please and kiss them as I please, Chan or anyone!"

She had not gauged his temper. Perhaps she hadn't read the meaning in his eyes. Perhaps she thought that she could elude him or that the fact that she was on her own land gave her a fancied sense of security.

"You'll not," he cried.

"I will. What right have you to question me? You can amuse yourself with Una."

"Stop!" he thundered.

But she had found her spirit and her confidence in her ability to win him to gentleness by one means or another was returning to her. She was bold now but prepared to melt if the need required it.

"I will not stop," she cried. "You and Una. What right have you to criticize me for what you yourself—"

She stopped abruptly, for he caught her by the arm and held her. Jerry said that even yet he was timid of her delicacy—fearful of the things he had thought her to be. But he still held her, though she struggled to get away from him.

"Let me go, Jerry. You're hurting me. Please let me go."

She felt the first touch of his imperviousness when he refused to release her and chose to change her tone.

"Please let me go, Jerry," she pleaded softly. "Do you think you are treating me kindly, after all—all that is between us? I don't care for Chan—I don't, Jerry. Let me go."

In his eyes she read the new judgment.

"Then you're worse than I supposed," he muttered.

"Worse! Oh, Jerry. Don't look so—so coldly. It hurts me terribly. I must go. I can't stand your looking at me in that way."

She tried to move away, I think she had every intention of taking to her heels if Jerry had only given her the chance. But he wouldn't. He held her and kept her close beside him. He was hurting her wrist cruelly.

"Let me go," she cried, struggling anew.

Her resistance aroused him again. The animal fury of battle had not died out of his eyes. He did not know what he intended to do with her—had no plan, no purpose, he said. What plan or purpose could he have had unless murder? And even in his madness I'm sure that that never occurred to him. But his blood was hot and his anger and bitterness overwhelming. His fear of her delicacy diminished with her struggles, for her resistance inflamed him. He did not know, nor did she just then, that the animal instinct to conquer was what she had taught him, and that the turgid stream of his blood was finding new strength and unreason, a strange new impetus in every struggle. She saw her danger and was powerless to prevent it. She looked over her shoulder helplessly in the direction in which Chan Lloyd had vanished and saw no help from there. Jerry's great strength had never seemed so terrible as now. He caught her by the shoulders and held her, shook her, I think, a little, as one would shake a child, while she still struggled in his grasp. In a moment his grasp loosened a little, then tightened again, for the contact of his fingers with her warm skin was awaking the demon in him, the dormant devil she had put there.

"Oh, you're hurting me so, Jerry—so terribly."

But he did not even hear her voice. His eyes were speaking to hers, holding them with a deathly fascination. If fear was her passion she was drinking it now to the full—fear and the sense of the ruthless power and dominion in this madman of her own creation. Her hands clasped his shoulders.

"Jerry!" she screamed. "Don't look at me like that. Your eyes burn me."

"Into your soul—I will burn it—blot it out."

"Jerry, forgive me," she sobbed. "I love you."

"You lie."

"I love you. Forgive me!"

"No. You lie!"

Her arms went around his neck. And he crushed her to him, all the length of them in contact. She struggled faintly but her lips sought his in a despairing hope of pity. She found the lips, but no pity. The breath was almost gone from her body. She struggled, fighting hard, breathing his name in little panting sobs. She too was mad now, as much of an animal as Jerry, her blood coursing furiously. Her terror of herself must have been greater even than her terror of him, for she was quivering—shaken by the terrible gusts of his passion.

Suddenly she felt herself released, thrust from him. His fingers bruised the tender flesh of her shoulders but his eyes bruised her more.

"Jerry!"

His hands had caught the two sides of the flimsy shirt-waist at the breast and torn it aside, off her shoulders, off her arms.

"Have pity, Jerry," she whimpered.

"'Have pity, Jerry,' she whimpered."

"Pity, yes," he laughed wildly. "Kiss me. You want to be kissed. I'll kill you with kissing. Death like this—such a death—!"

She struggled more furiously, struck, kissed and struck again. But Jerry's madness triumphed—her own.

At this point Jerry hid his face in his hands, trembling violently.

"I was out of my head, Roger. Tell me that I was, for the love of God. I must have been. It was horrible. I did not know. I can scarcely remember now. Death would have been better—for her, for me—than that. My God! If only you had told me, something. I could have gone away, I think—before—But to have knowledge come like that, engulfing, flooding, drowning with its terrible bitterness. And Marcia—" He raised his head piteously, "I asked her to marry me, Roger—at once. But she only looked at me with strange eyes.

"'Marriage!' she said, 'My God!' It was almost as though I had uttered a sacrilege.

"I pleaded with her gently, but she shook me off. A fearful change had come over her. She drew away and looked at me with alien eyes.

"'Marriage!' she repeated. 'You!'

"'Marry me tomorrow, Marcia—'

"She thrust her naked arms in front of her, their tatters flying, the rags of her honor.

"'Oh, God! How I loathe you!'

"'Marcia!'

"'Go away from me. Go!'

"She put her arm before her eyes as though to shut out the sight of me.

"'For God's sake, go,' she repeated, with words that cut like knives. 'Leave me alone, alone.'

"'I must see you—tomorrow.'

"She turned on me furiously.

"'No, no, no,' she screamed, 'not tomorrow—or ever. It would kill me to see you. Kill me. Go away—never comeback. Do you hear? Never! Never!'

"She was in a harrowing condition now, mad where I was quite sane. There was nothing left for me to do. I turned as in a daze into the woods and wandered around as though only half-awake, stupidly trying to plan. At last I went back to the spring. Marcia had gone—gone out of my life—

"That's all, Roger. I wrote to her from New York, from Manitoba, from the ranch in Colorado, repeating my offer of marriage, but she has never answered me. You know the rest—" a slow and rather bitter smile crossed his features. "She goes about—with Lloyd—and others. She is gay. Her picture is in the papers and magazines—at hunt-meets—bazaars. She has forgotten—and I—No, I can never forget. She will dwell with me all the days I live. I can't forget or forgive—myself. Why, Roger, the Mission—the place that I'm giving money to support—to keep those women. You understand—I know now. She might be one of them and I—I would have brought her there."

I had been stricken dumb by the fearful revelation of Jerry's sin. I was silent, thinking of new words of comfort for him and for myself—for I was not innocent—but they would not come, and Jerry rose and walked the length of the room. "I've got to get away from it all again—somewhere. I can't stay here. Everything brings it all back. I'm going away."

"Going, Jerry? Where?"

"I don't know. I've made a kind of plan. But I mustn't tell. I don't want you to know or anyone. But I've got to leave here." He smiled a little as he saw the anxious look in my eyes. "Oh, don't worry. I'm going to be all right, I don't drink, you know."

I think he was really a little proud of that admission.

"Are you sure, Jerry," I asked after awhile, "that you care nothing for Marcia?"

He took a turn up and down the room before he replied. And then, quite calmly:

"It's curious, Roger. She has gone out of my life. Gone like—like a burned candle. I do not love her, nor ever could again, and yet I would marry her tomorrow if she would have me. I wrote her again yesterday, and I'm going to try to see her in New York. But I'll fail. My face would always be a reproach to her. I know. She is like that—bitter. I don't know that I can blame her."

It was long past midnight. Jerry went to bed. But I sat oblivious of the passing hours, wide awake, somber, my gaze fixed upon the square of the window which turned from moonlight to dark and then at last shimmered with the dusk of the dawn.

CHAPTER XXVII
REVELATIONS

It was at Jerry's request that I stayed on at Horsham Manor, working as I could upon my book, and now I think with a new knowledge of the meaning of life as I had learned it through Jerry's failure. I discovered comfort in the words of St. Paul, and prayed that out of spiritual death the seed of a new life might germinate. Jerry had told me nothing on leaving the Manor of his plans or purposes, and I made no move to seek him out, aware of a new confidence growing in me that wherever Jerry was, whatever he was doing, no new harm would come to him. He had found himself at last.

Upon the occasion of my infrequent visits to the city I did myself the honor of calling at the house in Washington Square, where I made the acquaintance of a fair majority of the feminine Habberton family, enjoying long chats with Una in which the bonds of our friendship were still more firmly cemented. She told me much of her work and of course we spoke of Jerry, but if she had any news of him she gave no sign of it, and I always left the house no wiser as to his occupation or whereabouts than when I had entered it. But in the early days of the following autumn something in her manner, I cannot tell what, perhaps the very quality of her content, advised me that she was in some sort of communication with Jerry and that she was no longer borrowing trouble in his behalf. As I made my way back to the Manor in the train next day, I found the conviction growing in my mind that Jerry must be somewhere in New York. Una's orbit had not changed. Could it be that Jerry's was adapting itself to hers? Jack Ballard had told me that Jerry had not been seen at the office and that Ballard, Senior, had washed his hands of him in despair, but had agreed to have large amounts deposited at stated intervals in the bank. Of course this proved nothing, for Jerry might have been using his bank for a forwarding address, but the little I knew fitted surprisingly well with my own guesses as to Jerry's destiny. Perhaps the wish was father to the thought. At any rate, I returned to the Manor and resumed my work with a singularly tranquil mind, aware for the first time in months of a quiet exhilaration which made the mere fact of existence a delight. Perhaps after all I—my philosophy—Jerry—were still to be vindicated!

It was not until the following summer that I learned the truth. An item in the evening paper caught my eye. It told of the wonderful boys' club that was being erected in Blank Street, by an unknown philanthropist. The building was six stories in height, covering half a block, and was to contain a large gymnasium, a marble swimming pool, an auditorium, school-rooms, drill hall for the Boy Scout organization, clubrooms, billiard and pool tables, and sleeping quarters for a small army. The story was written in the form of an interview with the representative of the philanthropist, a Mr. John V. Gillespie, who was seeing personally to every detail of the planning and construction. The boys' club had already been in existence for a year, occupying hired quarters, also under the supervision and control of the aforesaid Gillespie, who, it seemed, had the destinies of the young males of the district in which the building was situated, already in the hollow of his hand. The unknown philanthropist was Jerry, of course. I read between the lines, the marble pool which Una had envied us, the gymnasium, with "ropes to pull." Jerry and Una had frequently discussed the further needs of the district and the prospective boys' club, I knew, was one of her hobbies and his.

As may be imagined not many hours elapsed before I made a pilgrimage to the city and visited the wonderful new structure, already under roof, which was to house the heirs of Jerry's munificence. It was of truly splendid proportions and already gave roughly the shape of its different rooms, which in point of dimensions left nothing to be desired. The operation would, I should think, make short work of a million dollars and, with its endowment, two million perhaps! Jerry was beginning well.

I inquired of the superintendent for Mr. Gillespie and was informed that that gentleman could probably be found at the temporary building in the adjoining street. Thither, therefore, I went, sure that after so great a lapse of time Jerry must pardon my interest and intrusion. I was not surprised to discover that Mr. John V. Gillespie was no less a person than Jerry himself, who was at the moment of my arrival busily engaged with a Scoutmaster, helping to teach the setting-up exercises. I slipped into the room unobtrusively, a place at the rear of the building—a dance hall it had once been, as I afterwards learned—and patched the youngsters going through their drill. Jerry walked around among them, with a word here, a touch on a shoulder there, while the boys struggled manfully for perfection. Jerry was so interested that he would not have seen me had I not risen as he passed my way and offered my hand.

"Roger! By George!"

He clapped his arms around me at once and gave me a bear hug.

"Good old Dry-as-dust!" he cried, "I was wondering how soon you'd find me out."

"You're not angry?"

"Bless your heart! I've been thinking of writing you about everything, but I wanted to wait until things were a little further along."

"But Jerry—"

"Mum's the word," he whispered. "That's not my name down here."

"Yes, I know," I smiled. "I've seen it in the papers."

"Oh! You saw that? And guessed?" he grinned. Then gave some word to the Scoutmaster and led me to his office—a small room beside the entrance at the front of the building—and closed the door. In this better light I had the opportunity to examine him at my leisure while he talked. He was a little thinner in face and body, but not spare or lean. There were no shadows in his eyes, which were finely lighted by his new enthusiasm. The new fire had burned out the old. He was splendid with happiness.

"Oh! You've no idea of the fun I'm getting out of the thing, Roger. It's simply great! These boys are fine to work with. They only need a chance. I've got several hundred of 'em lined up already, all nationalities ready for the melting-pot—Jews, Italians, Irish, all religions. I've got the families lined up, too, been to see 'em all personally. Rough lot, some of 'em—and dirty! Why, Roger, I never knew there was so much filth in all the world. I'm starting to clean up the boys, inside and out, getting them jobs and keeping the idle ones off the streets. Oh! It's going to take time, but we're going to get there in the end. You've seen the new building? Isn't it a corker? I haven't been idle, have I?"

"But how on earth," I asked, "have you managed to preserve your anonymity?"

"Oh, I keep pretty dark. I don't go uptown at all. I made a visit one night to Ballard Senior and made a clean breast of things and at last he gave in. You see he had given me up as an office possibility. In three years, you know, I'll come in—to all the money. In the meanwhile we've fixed things up to provide for our immediate needs down here."

"Ours?" I queried with a smile. He colored ever so slightly but went on unperturbed.

"Yes, you know Una's helping me. I couldn't have done a thing without Una. Her experience in dealing with these people has been simply invaluable. I thought—" he stopped to laugh—"I thought that all I had to do was just to spend the money and everything would work out all right. I made a lot of mistakes with these families at first, did a lot of harm in a way, offending the proud ones, spoiling the weak ones and all that, but I've learned a lot since I've been down here. We've devised a plan—a scientific one. It's really beautiful how it works. We're going to make these boys all self-supporting and give 'em an education at the same time: manual training, industrial art and science and all the rest of it. Here! you must go over the building with me. I've got just half an hour."

He snatched up his cap and we went around the corner, going over the building from cellar to roof, Jerry explaining breathlessly and I listening, wondering whether to be most astonished at the extraordinary change in his mode of thought or at the initiative which could have planned and executed so great a project. He spoke of Una constantly, "Una wanted this," or "Una suggested that," or "We had an awful row over the location of this thing, but Una was right." And then as an afterthought, "But then, she almost always is."

He wanted to give her all the credit, you see, and I think she must have deserved a great deal, but I saw in the newborn Jerry enough to convince me of his strength, intelligence and force. All his personality—and I had long known that he had one—had been poured into this fine practical work which at every turn bore the impress of a man's force, plus a woman's intelligence.

To the god from the machine (for as such, in spite of many ungodlike illusions, I still continued to regard myself) it seemed to me that all was going beautifully toward the consummation of my heart's fondest desire. And it was not until the following evening, when Jerry at last managed to find a chance to have a long talk with me, that I learned the truth.

It was a hot night in June. We had climbed to the roof of the new building for a breath of air, forsaking Jerry's small bedroom in the temporary quarters of the club where we had both been perspiring profusely. We sat upon the parapet smoking and talking of Jerry's plans and, since Una and the plans seemed to be a part of each other, of Una.

"I see her constantly, Roger," he said joyously. "We have regular meetings three times a week, sometimes at the Mission—and sometimes at the club, and when there isn't enough daytime—up in Washington Square. She has a wonderful mind for detail—carries everything in her head—figures, everything."

"And you're happy?" I asked.

"Need you ask?" he laughed. "I've never known what life was before. It's great just to live and see things, good, useful things grow under your very eyes, so personal when you've planned 'em yourself."

"And Una?"

"Oh, she's happy too. But then she's always happy, always was. It's her nature. I sometimes think she works a little too hard for her strength, but she never complains." He paused and looked down the side street to where the East River gleamed palely in the dusk night. "You know, Roger, I sometimes wish that she would complain. She just goes along, quietly planning—doing, without any fuss, accomplishing things where I fume and fret and get angry. She puts me to shame. She's a wonder—an angel, Roger." He smiled. "And yet she's human enough, always poking fun at a fellow, you know. I'm no match for her; I never was or will be." He grew quiet and neither of us spoke for a long while. We felt the life of the City stirring under us, but overhead were the stars, the same stars that hung above the peace of Horsham Manor, where in the old days we had dreamed our dreams.

"You care for her?" I ventured softly at last.

He did not speak at once. His gaze was afar.

"Care for her?" he murmured after awhile, "God help me! I love her with all the best of me, Roger. I always have loved her. It's so strange to me now that I never knew it before—so strange and pitiful—now when it is too late."

"Too late, boy?" I said with a smile. "Life for you, for you both, is just beginning."

"No, Roger; I would give everything in the world to be able to go to her and ask her to marry me. But I can't—" his voice sank and broke, "after that. I'm a beast—unclean."

He rose and took a pace away from me. "We mustn't speak of that—again. It makes me think of what I owe to—the other."

"You owe her nothing. She has refused you. She doesn't care. Her whole life avows it. She has forgotten. Why shouldn't you?"

"I can't forget. And I can't look in Una's eyes, Roger. They're so clear, so trusting; she believes in me—utterly. It's a mockery, to have her near me so much and not be able to tell her—"