Jack Raymond

"See what a brute I am! I come to you like a starving dog begging for shelter; and when you take me in I do nothing but make conditions."

"My treasure, you shall make all the con­ditions you like if you'll only stay with me."

"Then let me make one more; a fearful one."

She took both his hands; her own were burning.

"Promise that if I die next May, and the child lives, you'll adopt it, kill it, — any thing you will; but save it from uncle somehow."

He kissed her forehead solemnly. "There was no need to ask that promise."

"It's one that you probably won't be called on to keep. There's not..."

She broke off; then finished the sentence deliberately. "Not much hope of that. We're frightfully strong, we Raymonds."

"And frightfully lonely too, sometimes. Keep alive if you can, Molly."

Her eyes were fixed upon him, wide and wistful.

"Are you so utterly alone? I thought... you had some friends."

"I have Theo. But Theo is..."

He left the sentence unfinished, and stared absently into the fire. Presently he recovered himself with a start.

"Molly, darling, how you shiver! What was I thinking of not to send you to bed at once!"

CHAPTER XIII

"Jack," said Molly, coming into the meagre little front room, "I wish you'd put that microscope away for half an hour; you look fagged to death."

Jack raised his head from the specimens. He had been straining his eyes over them ever since he came in from the hospital. On Saturday afternoons the work was always heavy in the crowded out-patients' depart­ment; and to-day, in the thick November fog and the reek of gas and damp humanity and unwashed clothing, he had begun, strong as he was, to feel tired and sick.

"You have no business cutting sections till you've had some di

"Oh, I'm all right; only the out-patients are so unreasonable. They will all talk at once on these foggy days. The poor things seem to get flurried, like the carthorses, with slipping about in the mud. I came in splashed up to my hat."

Molly put her arm round his neck. They had been living together for nearly four years now, and had learned to read each other as only close friends can read. No one else would have seen from the line of his mouth that he was depressed as well as tired.

"Is it bad news?" she asked softly, with her cheek against his hair.

"No, nothing in particular. I'm an idiot to get down in the mouth now, just when I've got a good appointment at last, and this big stroke of luck with the Medical Congress."

"Perhaps that's why. I never used to worry over weekly accounts in the days when we could't get enough to eat, as I do now with three pounds a week for housekeeping."

"You needn't worry, old girl; the last shilling's worth of debt will be cleared off next month. You see our difficulties are all over now; even the private practice is be­gi

She kissed him, laughing.

"And that's why you get the blues? You and I are contemptible frauds, Jack; our courage is only good for hard times; it all fizzles out at our fingers' ends at the first bit of prosperity."

"You're right," he answered gravely; "I'm not worth my salt. Two years ago, with the child ill and not a sixpence coming in, I shouldn't have got fidgetted by a fog and a few little worries; I'm getting spoiled. It's your fault, Moll; if you coddle me this way I shall end by growing fat and sensitive and ill-tempered, like a rich old patient with nothing to do but imagine troubles."

"You'd better not, or I shall hand you over to Joh

"Yes, and I've plenty to do as it is, and here I am fooling about and wasting time. It's no use the Congress people inviting me to show sections if I haven't got any ready to show. They ought all to be in Edinburgh by the 15th."

Molly still kept her arm about his neck.

"Wait just a minute. You haven't told me what the 'few little worries' are? Hospital patients?"

"Oh, partly that; and then Theo..."

"You had a letter this morning?"

Her voice was quite under control, and as she leaned above him he could not see her eyes.

"Yes, I'm anxious about him. He's writing a set of Polish dances for stringed instruments, and he says the music takes on shapes and colours and dances round his bed all night, His handwriting is unsteady, too; you know what that sort of thing always means with him."

Molly was still looking out across her brother's head, with wide, grave eyes. He sighed, and added in his patient way:

"He doesn't say who the woman is this time, but I suppose there must be one; it seems to be the inevitable condition of his doing creative work. It's a bit difficult to understand how any one's affections can jump about that way."

There was a sudden little pause; then the girl said softly:

"Still, there is this; if a rainbow is not a permanent thing, it is at least a clean and beautiful one. An artist is a kind of glorious child; his instinct protects him from sordid entanglements."

"That makes it all the worse," Jack broke in gloomily. "If he got into vulgar intrigues with society flirts, as ninety-nine per cent, of the successful musicians do..."

"He would never have written the 'Crocus Field' Symphony."

"No, that's true; his music would have got vulgar too. But at least no one would suffer. As it is — Molly, my heart aches for the women that have loved him. That little Austrian princess — the year that Joh

"Just as Joh

Her brother turned round suddenly, and took her in his arms. They were both silent for a little while.

"How you have softened, Molly, since the child came! Sometimes you remind me of Mother."

"Theo's mother?"

"Yes; or Christ's mother. She seemed to me like the Catholic idea of the Mado

"So long as I am Joh

She sat down by the fire, drawing towards her a basket of clothes to mend. Jack began to whistle over his specimens, and she to darn earnestly at a stocking; neither was in the mood for further speech.

"Mummy!" a small voice wailed from the back room; "my house has tumbled down."

Molly rose and opened the folding doors. The bricks lay scattered on the carpet, and forlorn among the ruins sat Joh

"Never mind, so

Joh

"Uncle!" he said, stretching out a fat hand towards the microscope; "I want to see. Uncle!"

The word was a new one in his vocabulary, and he was proud of it. Susan, the maid, had just been explaining to him that little boys ought not to call their uncles: "Jack."

Jack put up his left hand suddenly, and bit it. The next instant he remembered that even the gods have some mercy, and that his childhood was over.