"Bill Greggs, if I swop, I swop. You take the knife, and I take the grey-bird and the hiding. Is that plain? Then stow your tot and clear out of there and fetch the bird."
"Oh, well, if you don't care, I don't." He ran back to the blacksmith's cottage. Jack lay still; kicking his hefels lazily, and ineditating on his bargain. He was not really quite so indifferent to consequences as he chose to appear. Now that there was no one to see, his forehead contracted again; at the bottom of his heart he was afraid. But his reputation as a "devil's limb" had to be kept up; and moreover, thrashings, as he reflected, are among the inevitable accidents of life, like "the act of God" that the railway companies mention in their consignment bills. You can't expect to get through boyhood without them; not, at least, if you happen to be an orphan of evil disposition, with a double dose of original sin and a pernicious resemblance to a mother who is both dead and damned; so it makes little difference just when they come. And then, to have one's eyes burnt out and be set to sing for all one's life in a little wooden cage... And after all, it would be a joke to see uncle downright furious. The theft of the Bishop's knife would probably go down in the "conduct book" with a black cross against it; uncle's memory was evidently short. Jack, for his part, needed no such artificial aids; he had many grievances against his uncle, and he remembered them every one.
Whatever else the Vicar had accomplished, he had at least taught this turbulent, difficult nature some self-control. In the Captain's life-time Jack had been a creature of impulses; had bitten and scratched when he was angry and struggled furiously when he was hurt Now he was chronically angry and well accustomed to being hurt; and had learned to set his teeth and wait for his opportunity. It generally came, sooner or later; and he did not often fail to render the offending "grown-ups" as uncomfortable as they had made him.
Billy ran back with the wretched mavis panting and fluttering in a cage of firewood hardly bigger than itself. So Jack walked home with the cage under his arm, and, slipping into the house unobserved, hid the bird in his bedroom..
After supper he said good-night, and carried his books upstairs, telling the Vicar that he had lessons to prepare for Monday's school. His room was small and low, but he liked it better than any other in the house, because it had windows facing east and west, so that he could see the sun both rise and set. When he had locked his door he took the cage from its hiding-place and set it on the western window-sill.
"All right, you little fool!" he grumbled to the terrified bird as it shrank up against the bars. "Keep your hair on! It's me hell pitch into, not you."
He put into the cage a bit of watercress which he had slipped inside his jacket at tea-time. But the mavis would only flutter desperately and beat its wings against the bars. Jack sat down on the sill beside it, turning his back to the Sunset, and considered what to do next.
His first idea had been to keep the bird, and tame it. Certainly a thrush would be a second-rate kind of pet; he would have much preferred, for instance, a starling, which could be taught to swear, and to blaspheme against bishops and against green-handled knives and missions to deep sea fishermen. But a thrush would be better than nothing; and if he was going to get into trouble for its sake, it was only fair that he should have some fun out of the transaction. On the other hand, wild creatures do not always take kindly to captivity; and for that matter, uncle would be angry enough to kill the bird for sheer spite if ever he should happen to find out. Had he hot drowned Molly's pet kitten last winter, to punish her for getting her frock dirty? Jack's eyes darkened at the memory; he hated the Vicar with the silent, poisonous hatred that remembers and bides its time; and in his long and heavy score agaihst his enemy this was a big item. Until lately his attitude towards Molly had been one of Olympian indifference; what had he to do with a mere girl, who was afraid of the dark and couldn't so much as throw a stone straight? But the day when he had come home from school and found her in the tool-house, blind and sick with crying because Tiddles was dead, — ("and oh, Tiddles did squeak so!") — had been the beginning of a new sense in him, that it was somehow his business to protect his sister.
No, there was nothing for it but to let the bird go. The fate of Tiddles was a warning; it does not do to get fond of creatures that you are not strong enough to defend. Once free inTrevanna glen, the mavis must fight its own battles.
"If you get caught again, you little duffer," he remarked, rising and opening the window; "I shan't help you out; once is enough."
Trevanna glen lay soft and dim in a golden sunset haze. The sky was too clear for flaming colour; only a few high cloudlets trailed their faint rose bands across the west. From the beach came a low sound of ripples on the shingle; then the wailing cry of a sea-gull.
As Jack opened the cage door the mavis fluttered, panic-stricken, and shrank away. He drew back a little, and the bird passed by him like a lightning flash. He heard a sudden cry, a whirring of swift wings; and leaned upon the sill, following with his eyes a moving black spot, small and smaller, that darted straight towards the glen.
He crossed the room and sat down on his bed, holding on to the foot-rail. He seemed to have gone all shaky inside, and there was a tightening in his throat. When he shut his eyes the tree-tops came back, and the yellow haze, and the spread wings of a living soul that had been caged and now was free.
He opened his eyes at last and looked around him, solemnly afraid. The room startled him with its familiar aspect; it was all as it had been, and he alone was changed. On the table lay his lesson books; the empty cage stood on the window-sill, the watercress dangling from its bars. He must smash up the cage, by the way, or uncle would ask...
Ah, what did uncle matter now?
He went back to the window and looked out, his shoulder on the lintel, his head against his arm. There he watched while the sunset faded. All the broad spaces between earth and sky were full of violet shadows; in the glen the tree-tops swayed a little, and grew still; the sea-birds called, and called again, and settled in the hollows, and all things fell asleep. Then stars came out; one, and another, and a thousand, shining above shadowy trees and ghostly moorland half asleep, with clear eyes, full of wonder; as if they too had only now begun to understand, and, looking down upon the world's familiar face, had seen that it was good.
CHAPTER III
As far back as Jack's earliest memories went, he had always liked animals and plants and rough grey rocks and yellow foam.
They had, indeed, been all there was to like. Human beings, especially grown-up ones, had hitherto played in his conception of life a singularly small and contemptible part. They were inevitable, of course, and sometimes useful; but neither interesting nor pleasant, and generally much in the way. Within the last three years a new element had been creeping into his relation with the adults of his world; he had begun to see in them natural, as it were, hereditary enemies. Anything brutal or stupid, any petty meanness or fidgetty interference on their part, seemed to him a matter of course, coming from creatures by nature illogical, spiteful, and incompetent; and, his standpoint having once become fixed, many wise and necessary restrictions were lumped together with the others in careless contempt. He never troubled himself about the reasons of a prohibition; if a thing was forbidden, it was presumably just because there was no sensible ground of objection to it.
Of men and women in any other capacity than that of despised authority he had little knowledge. After the loss of the black-browed mother whom he could dimly remember, he and Molly had spent four years in St. Ives under the care of their grandmother and a crotchetty maiden aunt. These two ladies had regarded the children as visitations of Providence, whom, for their sins, they must at regular intervals feed and wash, especially wash; no boy was ever more heroically scrubbed than Jack. But cold water and rough towels, excellent as they were, had not satisfied all the soul's needs of the growing boy; and as quite a small child he had sat up in his bed in the dark to address, to the big anthropomorphic Thing whic
h he had been taught to worship, a bitter reproach; "It's not fair. What did You make me for, if You weren't going to let anybody want me?"
The sailor father had wanted him, at any rate; it had been good to know that there was one person in the world who did not think it a disgrace for a boy to be dark and ugly and to have black eyes like his mother's, even though that person was nearly always at sea. But then had come a night of rough weather aтd distress signals all along the coast; and the next morning Aunt Sarah had driven over with a white face and a telegram. Since then the orphans had lived at the Vicarage in Porthcarrick.
Uncle Josiah and Aunt Sarah had shown to the passionate boy much earnest care for his body's welfare and his soul's health, but very little personal friendliness or affection; and that little, when it came from the man, he resented as impertinence, when from the woman, despised as weakness. People should play fair, and not try to catch you with shams that you didn't expect. Grownups had two recognised engines of warfare, and should stick to them. One was moralising, or "jaw"; the other, sheer coercion. This latter, though disagreeable, seemed to him the more logical weapon. It would have saved trouble to begin with the thing, once they were going to end with it. Indeed, the Vicar would have been surprised could he have learned how much more keenly the boy resented his sermons than his punishments. Innumerable thrashings had instilled into Jack a certain respect for a person who can hit hard; and had his relations with his uncle begun and ended with the cane, there would have been on his part far less bitterness; but the moralising filled him with scorn, and the occasional attempts at friendliness with fierce disgust.
Aunt Sarah he simply despised. She, poor woman, had certainly never been guilty of any brutality towards him; it is doubtful whether she had uttered a harsh word to any one in all her ineffectual, well-meaning days. Her ambitions went no further than to see around her smiling faces of contented servants and children, looking up in happy submission to their and her king; and her one grief, besides that of childlessness, was that the faces, though mostly submissive enough, were not always happy. Jack, in a chronic state of disobedience and revolt, was to her an utterly unsolvable problem. She was always kind to him, — it was not in her to be otherwise to any living thing, — but she looked upon him with a sort of dread, and with a feeling which, in a more definite nature, would have been dislike; he was so inconvenient. Her little careful plans to make things "go smoothly" were always being disturbed and thrown out by this one impossible factor.
If it had crossed her mind that the boy was lonely and miserable she would have been sincerely horrified; merely to read in the parish magazine of an ill-used child was enough to make her cry; and, timid as she was, she had often risked the displeasure of her god on earth by trying to beg Jack off from various punishments. Had he ever tried to beg himself off, she would have liked him better; his hard indifference repelled her. She herself, though a most conscientious woman, had once even stepped a little aside from the exact truth to screen him from the Vicar's anger. She had been found out, of course; for Jack, when asked about the matter, had told the truth at once. The worst of it was that his habit of acknowledging his misdeeds appeared to be the result of sheer bravado, not of any love for veracity; for he had no scruples about telling any number of falsehoods when it suited his purpose to do so. But he never prevaricated; when he told a lie, he did it deliberately, with a straight look between the eyes; and that, again, Aunt Sarah could not understand. So beyond much gentle moralising, pathetically futile, her vicarious motherhood, in his case, could not go. She lavished all her affection on Molly, whose evil tendencies, if they were there at all, were still hidden in the mists of babyhood; and left Jack to struggle with a bitter heart as best he might.
He was not envious because his sister was preferred before him. In a certain stiff, shy way of his own he was fond of the child. But they had not much in common. She was not only little, and a girl, — he might have forgiven these defects, — she was also "good." She sat on people's laps, and shut the door after her, and was kissed and praised, and had sweets given her by visitors, who liked to stroke her pretty hair. Jack wondered sometimes how the caresses didn't make her sick, and why she didn't cut the hair off with Aunt Sarah's scissors and throw it in the people's faces. He would have dragged his out by the roots if any one had "pawed it about" that way.
The only human creatures whom he recognised as having any moral claim upon him were the larrikins to whom, for nearly two years now, he had been leader. His ethical code was barbaric and primitive; it never occurred to him to think that he was doing anything mean or unworthy in breaking people's windows, looting their apples, or wantonly damaging their kitchen gardens; nor did he think it necessary to consult at all the personal wishes of his subjects; he was the master, and his will was law; but to abandon his boys in a crisis, or allow one of them to take a caning which he could by any manoeuvring have transferred to his own shoulders, would have seemed to him a monstrous thing. His tiny kingdom was an absolute despotism; in his eyes the whole duty of a subject consisted in obedience, that of a ruler in loyalty; he was splendidly loyal to his boys, but he despised them in his heart.
From human society, great and small, he came back always with relief to furred or feathered creatures, to cliffs and moor and sea. The puppies and the rabbits, the village dogs and cats, all knew a side of him which the Vicar had never seen. Even the lesser humans to whom he extended his protection never saw quite the real Jack; with Billy Greggs he was scornfully tolerant, with Molly condescendingly good-natured; with animals, especially if they were small and helpless, he could be full of tender loving-kindness.
But the best that was in him was known only to Spotty. She was the old brown dog in the stable yard; a sorry specimen truly, and, except for Jack, without a friend in the world. In her best days she had not been much to look at; a hopeless mongrel, bob-tailed and bandy-legged, with a white patch over one ragged ear. Now in her old age she had gone blind, and was no longer of any use as a watch-dog. It would have been kinder to have her chloroformed; she was growing too feeble to take exercise and keep healthy, and was becoming a burden to herself and an object of disgust to others. But Mrs. Raymond disliked the idea of killing anything; and the Vicar was too just a man to turn out a faithful servant because she was past her work; so Spotty remained in the yard, well fed and housed, and tolerated as aged paupers are tolerated.
On this old, ugly, miserable creature, whom death had passed by and forgotten, was showered all the hidden gold of Jack's affection. He never forgot to wash and comb her, or to soak her biscuits carefully, and never forgave any one who laughed at her infirmities. Under his indifference and callousness lay a dumb, fierce, hot resentment against the injustice of men and things. No one was ever fair to Spotty, because she had grown old and blind; as if that in itself were not unfair enough. No one was ever fair to him, because he was born ugly and wicked; and he could no more help that than Spotty could help being blind. Their common wrong was a bond between them; and it was Spotty alone who knew his secret.
For Jack had one secret; only one, and that so simple and so plainly written in his face that anybody could have read it who had looked at him with unprejudiced eyes. But there were no such eyes at the Vicarage; and his secret remained unread. It was that he was unhappy. He had never acknowledged it to himself, and would have been amazed and indignant had any one suggested it; but it was true, nevertheless. Though in some ways, especially impish ways, he got a fair amount of enjoyment out of life, there was always behind his pleasures a dull aching, as of emptiness that nothing could fill. To be glad when night came because another day was over; to hide every little hurt and grief away for fear some one should find it out; to have his hand against every man and every man's hand — often so heavy — against him, seemed to him a matter of course; if he thought about it all, he thought only that the world was stupidly managed somehow, and that it was no use to worry, because one couldn't make things any bett
er.
It was this secret hunger of the soul that had driven him to seek his loves outside of human companionship. The bleak grey Cornish moorland was a tenderer mother to him than Aunt Sarah, with all her kindly heart, had ever been. On his worst days, when mischief failed to help and even fighting could not cure the aching restlessness within him, he would slip away and wander on the cliffs alone for hours. Then he would lie down in some still, shadowy gorge or cleft, and bury himself in the wet fern, and find comfort somehow.
So, blind as he was and groping in the dark, he had learned to know and love the healing touch of nature. Then, when the mavis flew away, his eyes were opened, and whereas he was blind, now he saw.
For a long time he sat by the window, looking out; at last he undressed himself in the dark and crept into bed, very grave and subdued. Fortunately there was no one in the world who cared enough about him to look in upon his sleep, as happens sometimes with boys who have mothers; so his pride was safe from any one discovering that he slept with wet eyelashes. He found it out himself, though, in the morning, and was ashamed for a moment. Then he looked out of the window, and forgot to be self-conscious, seeing a new heaven and a new earth.
Then followed glorious days; long days of wonder and rejoicing, radiant with light and song and colour, or veiled in solemn clouds and mystery. Of course there were the usual annoyances; church on Sunday, school on week-days, family prayers and Bible-readings, Aunt Sarah and Uncle Josiah. But these disturbances, after all, were temporary and unimportant; he had never realised before
how few of the twenty-four hours they filled, how wide and wonderful were those remaining. Sunday passed, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; and the first rapture of his awakening still encircled him about; since Saturday he had not fought or quarrelled, had played no tricks and given no trouble either at home or in school. Four consecutive days without so much as a reprimand were a new record in his life; according to his social traditions and standard of conduct a disgraceful one; but it did not occur to him to think about the matter at all; he was behaving like the "good boys" that he held in contempt, and had not even found it out, so absorbed he was in the joy of life, in splendours of sunlight and starlight, in shining sands and glittering foam.
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