Jack Raymond

The holidays over, he went back to Germany. Helen had persisted in keeping the truth from him. "But, mother," Jack said at last; "he must know some time. Don't let it come with a shock at the end. And... Germany is such a long way off."

"There's still time; let him have his first concerts in peace. We can send for him when I get worse. And when he does come, dear, you must keep the bad sights from him. I... have seen a person dying of cancer, and I don't want Theo..."

"Mother!" Jack broke in, "that is not fair. He is a human creature, and you have no right to rob him of a human inheritance. You stand with a shield in front of him, and he will never learn to live."

"He will learn soon enough — afterwards."

"Afterwards... and you will go lonely this last winter..." "Not lonely, dear, when I have you." "Oh, yes, you have me, of course; but I'm not Theo. Mother, you have been sacrificed all your life; and now at the very end... It's wicked to carry unselfishness to that; it's not just."

"It would not be just for me to hamper his development. An artist is a high priest before the Lord; he belongs to all men and to no man. I have no right to take him from his music because I happen to be dying; that is for mothers whose sons have no genius."

Jack stood looking on the floor, his teeth set.

"Then thank God I have no genius!" he said at last. She drew him down to her and kissed his forehead.

"Even I may thank God for that."

When Theo had gone, Jack brought her up to London, and took lodgings near Kew Gardens, for himself and her. The daily jour­ney to and from town was a heavy addition to the fatigue of his life, but it gave Helen fresh air to breathe and trees to look at, and enabled him to be with her for the few months left to them.

That winter he failed in his examination; it was the only occasion in his student life when this happened.

Before the questioning began he knew that he was going to fail; he had passed a terrible night at Helen's bedside, and his head ached and throbbed so that the floor seemed heaving beneath him. Taking his place, he looked round at his fellow-students. Some were nervously excited, some depressed; a few quite composed and business-like. He watched them, for a moment, with a kind of vague curiosity; they seemed to him so far away, so anxious over matters of no moment. Nothing was of any consequence, really, except the hopeless things. Cancer, for instance; perhaps they would be asked about that; the examiners putting questions and the students answering them would think they knew something about it, as if a man could know anything about cancer till the person he loves best is dying of it. Then he knows, the only thing there is to know: that there is nothing, nothing, nothing he can do.

He shut his eyes; the horror of last night came over him, stifling, intolerable. "Oh, this is no use!" he thought; "I'm good for nothing to-day; I'd better go." Then he pulled himself together and plunged stolidly into the task set him.

At the end of the day one of the examiners came up to him with friendly concern. "You're not looking yourself to-day, Ray­mond; I'm afraid you don't feel quite up to the mark."

"No, not quite," Jack answered. "I was a fool to come. I have failed, of course?"

"I... fear so. You look as if you ought to be in bed. What's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing much, thank you."

Two or three days afterwards the same examiner saw him in the street and crossed over to speak to him.

"Raymond, Professor Brooks dined with me yesterday, and talked about you. Why didn't you tell us you'd been up all night with a cancer patient? You were not fit to go in for the examination. I'm very sorry about it; he tells me you've been having a terribly hard time."

Jack's eyes flashed.

"Yes; and so has the woman that washes the dissecting-room floor. She lost her baby last week, and I found her crying on the stairs over her bread and cheese. But she didn't shirk her scrubbing; people's private troubles have got nothing to do with their work."

The examiner looked at him, puzzled. "I'm very sorry," he said again gently. "Your mother, isn't it? Have you plenty of friends in London?"

"Thank you; Professor Brooks has been very kind; so has the doctor who attends her. As for friends, there's nothing any one can do."

"Well, if there should be, will you let me know? And as for the examination, don't worry about that; you'll pass it next year. You have the makings of a good doctor."

Theo, meanwhile, had taken Berlin, Paris, and Vie

Very soon the favours of the public began to disgust him. "The people stare at me," he wrote, "as if I were a gorilla in a cage; and clap when I come on, till I feel inclined to say: 'Here we are!' like a circus clown, and turn a back somersault off the platform. It's utterly hopeless to try to play decently; how can you get anywhere near to your music with an audience that is only thinking about which leg you stand on and how you part your hair? And I hate the women! They click their fans all through the concert out of time; and afterwards they come up to you in low-necked frocks and tight stays; and talk about their souls, with just yards of satin and velvet kicking about the floor under your feet that you'd give your best G string to be able to pick up and hide their shoulders with. I know they ill-treat their servants."

The next letter contained a cheque, and a figure dancing on one leg for joy. "Darling mummy," the hurried pencil scrawl began: "here are grapes and carriage drives to go on with. Hauptma

"Mother," Jack said, as he laid the letter down, " it is cruel to keep him in the dark any longer."

Slow tears gathered under her closed eye­lids; even the exertion of reading a letter was too much for her now, and her voice was tremulous with utter weariness.

"You may tell him if you like, dear; it can't injure his success now." She broke off, then added nervously: "And... Jack..."

"Yes, mother?"

"You'll be sure and tell him it's... not such a bad case. You know the word 'cancer' always gives people such a shock; and of course it might easily be worse. And then the morphia is a great help..."

"Yes, I'll tell him."

He wrote, asking Theo to come home as soon as his concert engagements permitted, and telling him, not the whole truth, but enough to prepare him for hearing the rest. A telegram came in answer; Theo was on his way home, leaving the impresario to apologise to an excited Parisian audience.

When the truth was told him at last he bore it with more dignity and patience than Jack had expected to see. The shock seemed to have awakened in him some dormant strain of his mother's character. In her presence he never lost his self-control; but Jack, coming into his room late at night, found him sitting by the window in a crouching posture, white and panic-stricken. He sprang up at the coming of the grave, protecting presence, and clung to Jack's hand like a scared child.