Jack Raymond

In the second week a new visitor arrived, a grey-headed man who called Helen by her Christian name, and whom Theo addressed as "Uncle Conrad." He proved to be not a relative, but an old and close friend of Helen's family, and a former fellow-prisoner of her husband. After spending several years in a Russian fortress on a general charge of seditious opinions, he had settled in Paris, where he was now a well-known and successful musical critic. He examined Theo severely in harmony, and found so many faults in his violin playing that the child, when finally released, dashed into the garden, where Jack found him in tears.

"It's all a sham!" he wailed. "Those English music masters are duffers — they don't know anything about it. They said I was getting on nicely, and Uncle Conrad has done nothing but grumble! I hold my bow too tight, and I slur the phrasing, and I can't play a bit!"

"Perhaps it's he that's a duffer," Jack sug­gested, racking his brains for consolation to give. Theo sat bolt upright, scandalised at such a heresy.

"Jack! Uncle Conrad is always right about music. And it's true, I know it is; I played hatefully to-day. I shall be just an amateur; I shall never play like Joachim — never, never!"

His distress was so passionate that Jack finally ran up the verandah steps to call Helen, as his own attempts at consolation had no effect. The glass door leading into the sitting-room was open, and as he came up to it he saw Helen and Conrad in the room, talking earnestly together in their native lan­guage. He could not understand the worls they said, but drew back instinctively, seeing the look on her face.

"Helen," the old man was saying, "it is a vocation, like the other. Who shall say it is less holy? I would not speak till I was quite sure; last year I only told you the child had talent. I tell you now that he has genius."

"If it is his vocation," she answered slowly, "he must follow it, and there is nothing more to say. I had hoped..." She raised her eyes suddenly to a picture hanging on the wall. Jack had often looked at it and wondered what it meant. It was a large photograph of a group of statuary, rep­resenting a colossal seated figure of a woman, with torn garments and chained hands, and with dead and dying men about her feet.

"God help me!" Helen said, and covered her face.

Jack slipped out silently. He had under­stood nothing beyond the bare fact that she was unhappy; but over this he pondered gravely, never having realised before that any one else in the world except himself could have a secret grief.

Before returning to Paris Conrad put Theo through a minute examination, testing his ear in various ways. On the last after­noon of his visit, when they were all sitting on the garden lawn, he called the child's attention to the peculiar intervals in the songs of certain birds.

"Remember, Theo, you don't stop learn­ing music when you put down your instru­ment and go for a walk; every bird has got something to teach you. The best teacher I ever had was my pet sky-lark."

"Why, Conrad," said Helen; "you didn't keep a sky-lark in a cage, surely!"

He laughed.

"We were both in the same cage. It was in the prison in Moscow; I picked the bird up in the court-yard with a broken wing, and they let me keep it in my cell. It got nearly tame by the time the wing was cured."

"And did it stay with you afterwards?" Theo asked.

"No, it flew away, — lucky little mortal!"

Jack, apparently, was not listening; he was cutting his name, after the ma

"I'm going to look at the rabbits."

He slouched away across the lawn with his hands in his pockets, whistling shrilly between his teeth: "Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah..." He had been distress­ingly addicted to comic songs of late, though he never could get the tunes right, having no ear.

"Jack!" Theo cried, trotting after him; "you're out of tune; it's F sharp!"

"Rather a loutish sort of lad for Theo to be so fond of, isn't he?" said Conrad, when the boys were out of hearing.

"I suppose so," Helen answered absently.

Theo came ru

"Mummy, Jack's as cross as two sticks."

"Is he?"

"Yes; I wanted to look at the rabbits with him, and he told me to go and be damned."

"Don't tell tales," said Conrad.

Helen had risen with an anxious face.

"Where has he gone?"

"Into the house. You'd better let him alone a bit, mummy; he gets sulky fits at school now and then. He'll be all right soon."

"Take Uncle Conrad to see the rabbits," was all Helen said.

She went into the house and up to the door of Jack's room. There she paused a moment, listening. From within came a stifled sound which she had sometimes heard at night. She opened the door softly and went in.

Jack was lying face downwards on his bed, with both hands clenched into the pillow, sobbing under his breath in a horrible, sup­pressed, unchildlike way. She came up to him and laid a hand on his.

"Jack, what is it?"

He neither started nor cried out; only shrank a little away and held his breath, trembling. Presently he lifted himself up, and she saw that his eyes were quite tearless and dry.

"Oh, it's nothing."

She sat down on the bed and put her arms round him.

"Won't you tell me? I know you often lie awake half the night; I can hear every sound from my room, you know."

Jack bit his lip.

"It's nothing partic'lar, thanks! I've been a bit upset; and Theo's such a blasted little donkey, he can't let a fellow alone."

"Is there nothing I can do? It's horrible to have a secret trouble at your age. If you can't trust me, is there no one you can trust?"

"There's nothing to tell. It's only something that happened... before I went to school."

"Last year? And don't your people know of it?"

Jack began to laugh.

"All Porthcarrick knows; that's why they let me go to school."

She drew him closer into her arms. "Won't you tell me?"

He looked away from her, breathing quickly. "Ask old Jenkins," he said at last, huskily; "he'll tell you all about it."

"Who is Jenkins?"

"The new doctor, down to Porthcarrick. He and Dr. Williams both came when I smashed my arm, and he tried to come the soft dodge over me, just like you. I told him he'd better get me away from there instead of talking all that tommy-rot about being sorry for me; he wasn't sorry enough to help me."

Helen thought for a moment, silently.

"Would you let me write to Dr. Jenkins and ask him to tell me about it? You see, I can't help caring, when you've been so good to my Theo."

Jack pulled himself away with a jerk and walked over to the window. He turned round after a minute, his eyebrows dragged down in the ugliest scowl she had ever seen him wear. He was rather white about the lips.

"All right," he said. "You can write to him: Dr. Jenkins, Cliff Cottage, Porthcarrick. Tell him I said he can tell you what he knows about me. P'raps you won't be in such a hurry to have me good to Theo then. I don't care."

He stuck his hands into his pockets again and stumped down the stairs, whistling, out of tune as usual: "Said the young Obadiah..."

Neither he nor Helen referred to the sub­ject any more. She wrote to Dr. Jenkins, explaining how matters stood, and begging him to tell her what he could. On the last day of the holidays a fat letter came from Porthcarrick in reply. She slipped it into her pocket, that Jack might not see the post­mark, and after breakfast carried it to her room. Dr. Jenkins wrote, in detail, all that he knew of Jack's history; as much, that is, as his own eyes had shown him, together with what he had heard from the Vicar, the school­master, and Mrs. Raymond.