Jack Raymond

Jack said nothing either, but his mouth twitched. He had had enough of posing as a Spartan, and would have been glad to sob and shriek like other children. But it was too late in the day to begin that now, and besides, he was too tired; so he looked out of the window and held his tongue.

"Do you feel better now?" asked Dr. Williams, seeing that the boy had left off trembling. "Then we'll just unfasten your things and make sure there's no more mis­chief anywhere."

"I think I saw a cut on the right shoulder," Dr. Jenkins put in. There was something unusual in his tone, so that Jack looked up at htm again quickly and then dropped his eyes,

"Oh, we must expect to find a few little cuts and bruises after such a tumble," said the old doctor cheerfully. "You needn't shiver so, my boy; I'm not going to hurt you any more; that's all over. Hullo!"

He had uncovered the stained shirt.

"Why, what the dickens have you been doing to yourself? Tumbling out of win­dow every night for a month? You never got into this state by... Jenkins, come here; look at this child's shoulders! Why, it's..."

Then there was dead silence, while the three men watched each other's faces. At last Jack looked up suddenly at his uncle, and their eyes met.

"Jack!" the clergyman whispered hoarsely, with lips as colourless as the boy's own. "For God's sake, why didn't you tell me the arm was broken?"

Jack only looked at him and laughed.

CHAPTER VI

Angry as Dr. Jenkins was, he held his tongue. His first impulse, however, on leav­ing the house, had been to make the whole matter public; and it was only after a hot dis­cussion with his colleague that he had agreed to keep silence.

"Professional secrecy!" He had inter­rupted the old man's arguments, as they walked together down the lane. "And if I were called to a house and saw murder being done, would you expect me to keep up profes­sional secrecy then? This is not so far off it. All this talk of the Vicar and his respect­ability — thank Heaven some of the world's not respectable at that rate! I didn't often come across things so bad as this when I was prac­tising in the slums of Liverpool. One would think the child had been clawed by a wild beast."

"It's a ghastly business, I don't deny," Dr. Williams had answered mildly. "But what good will you do to any one by exposing it? You'll ruin his career, there will be a horrible scandal in the papers, and the boy's position will be worse than ever. And then, think of the poor wife!"

But the reticence of the two doctors was of little avail. Probably the story leaked out first through the servants; however that may have been, by Monday evening Porthcarrick and all the neighbouring villages were ringing with the scandal of the Vicarage. Even the intolerant, gouty, bad-tempered old Tory squire came down from his chough's nest at the top of the cliff to discuss the matter solemnly with the schoolmaster and curate. Seeing that there was no longer anything to conceal, and that silence only led to the circulation of exaggerated reports, the two doctors con­sented to tell what they knew. Mr. Hewitt then gave them a detailed account of the enor­mities of which Jack had been found guilty; and the curate earnestly pointed out that the Vicar's action, "much as all of us must regret it," was, after all, only the result of too great zeal in the cause of public morality.

"And what's all that to me, sir?" roared the squire. "You don't suppose I need to be told that Jack Raymond's a damned young scoundrel? Every cow in Porthcarrick knows that, and it's nothing to do with the matter. If the boy's too bad to live among decent folks, send him to a reformatory — what else do we keep them up out of the rates for? But while I'm lord of the manor there shall be no vivisecting and Spanish Inquisitions here, or I'll know the reason why."

In the end the matter was, of course, hushed up, though not without a stormy scene at the Vicarage. At any other time Mr. Raymond would have loftily resented the in­terference of outsiders in his domestic con­cerns; but the shock of finding out on Satur-day morning how narrowly he had escaped a tragedy, had startled him out of all his mental habits. Seated at his desk, his head resting on one hand, his foot nervously tapping the floor, he listened to everything that his ac­cusers had to say; and looked up at last, with a sigh,

"I have no doubt you are right, gentlemen. I have been to blame in this matter; but I did all for the best. A little injury to one perishable body seemed to me of small account as against the utter destruction of so many immortal souls. Perhaps, Providence having so greatly afflicted me in the character of my nephew, I did wrong ever to let him enter a school where he had an opportunity of contaminating others. I have heard," he added, turning to Dr. Jenkins, "that some doctors believe these vicious tendencies can be eradicated by a special course of hygienic treatment; but the idea seems to me to be based on a profoundly immoral conception. How can hygiene cure sin?"

"I'm not a theologian," said the doctor bluntly; "and I have been busy saving the boy's life — and his reason, I hope; not think­ing about his morals."

A greyer shade of pallor crept over the Vicar's face.

"Have you any fear for his mind?" he asked.

Dr. Jenkins pulled himself up sharply, feel­ing that he had been too brutal.

"No," he said; "it's not so bad as that; but I have some fear of hysteria. The boy is suffering from nervous shock."

Mrs. Raymond, coming into the study a little later, found the Vicar sitting alone with an ashen face. He rose hastily as she entered; the consciousness that he had lost the respect of his parishioners was enough to bear, without the sight of his wife's swollen eyelids.

"Josiah!" she said with an effort, as he was leaving the room. He turned back and faced her proudly.

"Yes, Sarah?"

"When you go upstairs... would you mind... not speaking in the passage? It... upsets Jack so..."

"My voice upsets him, do you mean?"

"I... you remember calling Mary A

Her voice trailed off into a miserable quaver. After all her years of wifely sub­mission, she was ashamed of her husband.

She would have died rather than tell him so; and there was no need, for he had read it in her eyes.

Perhaps the only person in Porthcarrick who heard nothing of the subject was Jack himself. It was, of course, never mentioned in his room; nor, indeed, was he in a state to listen, had it been spoken of. For a fort­night he was more or less delirious every evening and some part, at least, of nearly every night. In the daytime he usually lay quite passively, sometimes moaning under his breath, more often in a kind of heavy stupor. If spoken to, he would raise his eyelids slowly, with a look of weary indifference or cold dislike, and drop them again, still in silence. His uncle's presence in the sick­room threw him into such paroxysms of terror that Dr. Jenkins was obliged to pro­hibit it altogether; but nothing else seemed to affect him at all. Even the daily ordeal of dressing the wounds scarcely roused him. On the first occasion Mrs. Raymond, who was helping the doctor, had burst into passionate tears of horror and shame when the bandages were removed; and the boy had merely glanced at her with a faint, petulant whisper: "I wish you'd let me alone!"

His illness was a longer one than had been at first expected. No complications set in, but for some time he simply failed to get well. The arm was mending steadily; even the lacerations were nearly healed, and he still lay in the same state of utter prostration, of continually recurring slight fever. With time and careful nursing, however, he began to rally; and at last, one day in August, a listless, pallid ghost of Jack came downstairs to lie on the drawing-room sofa.