Paradise Garden: The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment. Gibbs George
of impatience. I knew that he felt that perhaps the years to come might make a difference in our relations by the way he referred to the good years we had passed together and the small tokens of his affection which meant much from one not greatly demonstrative by habit. As Jerry had grown toward manhood he did much serious reading in books of my selection (the Benham library having been long since expurgated), and I had been working steadily on my Dialectics. We did our out-of-door work as usual, but there were times when I was busy, and then Jerry would whistle to the dogs and go off for his afternoon breather alone. There had never been a pledge exacted of him to keep within the wall, but he knew his father's wish, and the thought of venturing out alone had never entered his mind. Perhaps you will say that it was the one thing Jerry would want to do, being the thing that was forbidden him, but you would not understand as I did the way Jerry's mind worked. If as a boy Jerry had been impeccable in the way of matters of duty, he was no less so now. He had been trained to do what was right and now did it instinctively, not because it was his duty, but because it was the only thing that occurred to him.
And so, upon a certain day in June while I was reading in my study, Jerry went out with a rod and fly-book bound for the silent pools of Sweetwater, where the big trout lurked. My book, I remember, was the "Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous upon the Reality and Perfection of Human Understanding," and before Jerry had been long gone from the house I was completely absorbed in what Fraser in his preface calls "the gem of British metaphysical literature." But had I known what was to happen to Jerry on that sunny afternoon, or conceived of the dialogue in which he was to take a part, I should have regretted the intellectual attraction of Berkeley's fine volume which had been the cause of my refusal to accompany the boy.
I find that I must reconstruct the incident as well as I can from my recollection of the facts as related by Jerry in the course of several conversations, each of which I am forced to admit amplified somewhat the one which had preceded it.
It seems that instead of making for the stream at its nearest point to the eastward, Jerry had cast into the woods above the gorge and worked upstream into the mountains. His luck had been fair, and by the time he neared the point where the Sweetwater disappeared beneath the wall his creel was half full. He clambered over a large rock to a higher level and found himself looking at a stranger, sitting on a fallen tree, fastening a butterfly net. He did not discover that the stranger was a girl until she stood up and he saw that she wore skirts, short skirts, showing neat leather gaiters. She eyed him coolly and neither of them spoke for a long moment, the girl probably because she was waiting for him to speak first, Jerry because (as he described it) of sheer surprise at the trespass and of curiosity as to its accomplishment. Then the girl smiled at Jerry.
"Hello!" she said at last.
Jerry advanced a few steps, frowning.
"I suppose you know," he said quickly, "that you're trespassing."
She glanced up at him, rather brazenly I fancy, and grinned.
"Oh, really!" Her eyes appraised him and Jerry, I am sure, felt rather taken aback.
"Yes," he went on severely, "you're trespassing. We don't allow any females in here."
Her reply was a laugh which irritated Jerry exceedingly.
"Well, I'm here," she said; "what are you going to do about it?"
"Do about it?" Jerry advanced two or three paces and stood looking down at her. In our first conversation he told me that she seemed absurdly small, quite too insignificant to be so impudent. In our second conversation I elicited the fact that he thought her skin smooth; in our third that her lips were much redder than mine.
When he got near her he paused, for she hadn't moved away as he had expected her to and only looked up at him and laughed.
"Yes, do about it," she repeated.
"You—you know I could—could throw you over the wall with one hand," he stammered.
"Perhaps, but you wouldn't."
"Why not?'
"Because you're a gentleman."
"Oh, am I?"
"Yes. Or if you aren't you ought to be."
He frowned at that, a little puzzled.
"Where do you come from?" he asked.
"I can't see how that can possibly be any business of yours."
"H-m. How did you get in here?"
"I followed my nose. How did you?"
"I—I—I belong here."
"It's an asylum, isn't it?" she asked quite coolly.
"N—no." Jerry missed the irony. "Not at all. I live here. It's my place. You—you're the first woman that ever got in here, and I can't imagine how you did it. I—I don't want to be impolite, but I'm afraid you'll have to go at once."
The sound of her laughter was most disconcerting. Jerry had no lack of a sense of humor and yet there was nothing that he could see to laugh at.
"That's very amusing," she said. "A moment ago you were going to throw me over the wall and now you're afraid you're impolite."
Jerry found himself smiling in spite of himself.
"I—I don't suppose I really meant that," he muttered.
"What? Throwing me over the wall or being polite?"
He looked rather bewildered, I think, at the inanity of her conversation. Jerry wasn't much given to small talk.
"I'm sorry you don't think I'm polite. I—I'm not used to talking to women. They're too fussy about trifles. What does it matter—"
"I don't call throwing a female visitor over a wall a trifle," she broke in. "And it isn't quite hospitable. Now is it?"
Jerry rubbed his head and regarded her seriously.
"Now that you mention it, I don't suppose it is. But nobody asked you. You just came. Didn't you see the trespass signs?"
"Oh, yes, they're all about," she said carelessly, as she picked up her tin specimen-box and turned away. "I didn't mean to stay. I followed a butterfly. He came in the iron railings, where the stream goes through the wall. I crawled under where the iron is bent. If you're afraid of women you'd better have it fixed."
"Afraid!" It was one word that Jerry detested. "Afraid! That's funny. Do you think I'm afraid of you?"
"Yes," she replied, eyeing him critically. "I rather think you are."
"Well, I—I'm not. It would take more than a woman to make me afraid."
Something in the turn of the phrase and tone of voice made her turn and examine him with a new interest.
"You're a queer boy," she said.
"How—queer?" he muttered.
"You look and act as though you'd never seen a girl before."
If he had known women better he wouldn't have believed that she meant what she said. As it was, her wizardry astounded him.
"How can you tell that?"
She was now regarding him wide-eyed in amazement.
"It's true, then?" she gasped.
"Yes, it's true. You're the first girl that I remember having seen. But what difference does that make? Why should I be afraid of you? You couldn't hurt a flea. You can talk pretty well, but talk never killed anybody."
She seemed stricken suddenly dumb and regarded him with an air which to anyone but Jerry would have shown her as discomfited as he.
"Do you mean that you've lived all your life a prisoner inside this wall and never seen a woman?" she asked incredulously.
"That depends upon what you mean by prisoner," said Jerry. "If having everything you want, doing everything you want is being a prisoner, I suppose that's what I am."
"Extraordinary! And you've had no curiosity to go out—to see the world?"
"No. I'm going soon, but I don't care about it. There isn't anything out there half as good