Jack Raymond

The letter ended with a grave warning as to the dangers to which an intimacy with Jack was presumably exposing Theo. "In my capacity as the boy's medical attendant," the doctor added, "I made every effort to win his confidence; but entirely without suc­cess. His disposition appeared to me peculiarly sullen, stubborn, vindictive, and secret; indeed, before this unhappy business came to light, he had already, though barely fourteen, gained an exceedingly bad name in the whole country round. Far from regard­ing this fact, however, as in any way excusing Mr. Raymond's conduct, I believe the mis­chief to have been from the begi

Helen read the letter over and over again; she had sent the boys out for a long ramble in the fields, and was free to think undis­turbed. Late in the afternoon, when tea was finished and Theo was practising violin exer­cises in the breakfast room, she went to look for Jack, but he was not in the house. She returned to the tiny parlour, and stepped out on to the verandah. A sound of hammering came from the garden; and, looking down, she saw Jack mending the roof of the sum­mer house. She watched him for a little while, noticing his absorption in the work and the masterly handling of his tools. Cer­tainly he had a natural turn for carpentering.

"Jack!" she called at last.

He looked round.

"What?"

"Will you come in here a minute?"

"S'pose I must," he muttered crossly, jumping to the ground with a splendid spring. His ma

He ran up the verandah steps and into the room, an uncouth barbarian cub, slamming the glass door noisily, stamping marks of muddy boot-heels into the carpet.

"What's up?"

"Sit down a minute; I want to speak to you."

"Oh!" said Jack, sitting down ungra­ciously on the edge of a chair. " I thought you wanted something done."

Helen looked into the fire for a moment before she spoke; and Jack, hunched up sulkily, with an ugly scowl on his face, drummed with his boot-heels the eternal refrain of: "Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah..."

"You remember," she began with her eyes on the red coals, "telling me I might write to Dr. Jenkins?"

Jack stiffened all over and sat up straight. The drumming of his heels had stopped.

"Well, I wrote; and I had an answer this morning."

He drew in his breath so sharply that the sound was like a cry. She kept her head turned away.

"He has told me all he knows."

A little pause followed, punctuated by the sound of quick breathing.

"Where's the letter?"

"It's here; but I would rather you didn't read it."

He rose and came up to her.

"Give me the letter."

She looked round. His eyes were black and gleaming, as his uncle had seen them in the wood-shed.

"Give me the letter."

"My child, I will give it to you if you insist; but I would very much rather not. And besides, there is no need; you know everything in it already."

"Give me the letter."

She handed it to him silently. He took it away to the window, sat down and read it through. Helen watched his face; it was pinched and grey, and lines came about the mouth which made her think of the change­lings in the fairy tales, old haggard children who can never be made young again.

He brought the letter back at last and laid it on the table.

"Well," he said, "what's the next move?"

She made no answer. He came a step nearer, quivering.

"Have you got all you wanted? I don't go poking about asking people your private affairs. Jenkins is a dirty little sneak to tell you."

His eyes were like hot coals.

"I told you you wouldn't want me hanging round your precious little molly-coddle, spoil­ing his i

She rose and put her hand on his shoulder.

"Only one thing more, my child: Has any one ever treated you as a human creature, and believed your word — ever in all your life?"

He wrenched himself away from the hand, and faced her, white and panting.

"D'you mean... you'd believe it..?"

"I have not even asked you for your word."

Jack had still not understood. He put up a hand, and the fingers shook against his throat.

"S'pose I told you... it was all a lie... from begi

She caught him suddenly in her arms.

"My dear, there is no need to tell me that; of course I knew!"

Jack was sobbing now, in the slow, tearless, frightful way that was like the weeping of a grown man.

When they sat down together, she in a low chair by the fire, he on the hearth rug at her feet, staring into the red coals, she learned the story of the mavis, or as much of it as Jack could put into words, which, indeed, was not much. He told it quietly, without tears, but with pauses and intervals of silence here and there, much as she had heard other stories told long ago in Siberia.

But for that same Siberia, she too, like Dr. Jenkins, would probably have failed to understand. But she had lived outside the pale of men's mercy, and her unsheltered eyes had seen the naked sores of the world. Month after month of daily contact with criminals, idiots, and lunatics on the journey out, years spent among a monstrous population of de­generates in a land which has been for cen­turies a sink without a drain, had taught her many things. To her the Vicar's disease was no new horror; she had seen his like in every shape and stage, from ghastly children sniggering and leering while they burned a squirrel alive, to homicidal maniacs plunging into frenzied orgies, their hands wet from the gash in a victim's throat.

The story was finished, and both sat silent for a little while. It was growing dark in the room. Helen was softly stroking the head on her knee.

"Tell me one thing more, my son. What was it you were going to do when you got out of the window? To run away and go to sea?"

"Not to sea; only to the cliff. I'd had enough."

His voice was quite lifeless and dreary; utterly unchildlike.

"Old Jenkins is wrong, though," he added. "Uncle didn't know my arm was smashed; I took precious good care he shouldn't."

Her fingers tightened on his. "Be­cause..?"

"You see, I couldn't manage to kill him; I did try once, and it was no use. So I thought I'd see whether I could make him kill me; then he'd have been hanged."

Helen stooped and kissed him. The twilight faded slowly into darkness; a faint glow shone in the blackening coals.

"That's why it's such beastly rot," Jack began suddenly, and stopped. Helen's arm was still round his neck.

"What is, dear?"

"Why, you coddling me up and making all this fuss, just as if I was Theo. Oh, of course I'll look after the little beggar, and try to lick him into shape, and not let the other chaps bully him, — he's such a shrimp; but his want­ing to chum up with me, and all that, is just bubble and squeak."

"Theo is a little boy, and... has not gone down into hell, yet. His turn will come, when he is a man. But I think I understand."

Jack burst out laughing. His voice sounded old and thin out of the darkness.

"You?" he said. "Rats!"

He jerked away from her hand and stirred the dying embers with the poker.

"You think, because you've seen prisons and things... What do you know? you're clean. Your people may have been shot and hanged, and all that, but they've not been tied up and ------"