"Oh, yes," he said slowly, "I know. They're even reported engaged. Perhaps they are."
There was a long silence. We were sitting in the library late one night, a month at least after he had returned, reading and talking by turns.
"She wasn't worthy of you. Jerry," I remarked.
"No, that's not true," he said, a hand shading his eyes from the lamplight. "It would be a poor creature that wouldn't be worthy of such a beast as I. But she tried me, Roger, terribly."
"She tempted you purposely. It was a game. I saw it. But you, poor blind Jerry--"
"Yes, blind and worse than blind, deaf to the appeals of my friends--you and--and Una, who saw where I did not. Marcia had promised to marry me, Roger, to be my wife. Do you understand what such a promise meant to me then? All ideals and clean thoughts. I worshiped her, did not even dare to touch her--until--Oh, I kissed her, Roger. She taught me--many things, little things, innocent they seemed in themselves at the time, but dangerous to my body and to my soul. I knew nothing. I was like a new-born babe. My God! Roger--if only you had told me! If you had told me--"
"I couldn't then, Jerry," I said softly. "It would have been too late. You wouldn't have believed--"
"No," he muttered, "you're right. I wouldn't have believed anything against her at the time or found a real meaning in the truth. She could have done no wrong. Then I saw her kissing that fellow--you remember? I think the change came in me then, my vision. I seemed to see things differently without knowing why. Rage possessed me, animal rage. I saw red. I wanted to kill."
He rose and paced the length of the room with great strides.
"I mustn't, Roger. I can't say more. It's impossible."
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.