Jack Raymond

by Этель Лилиан Войнич

  "I have given up what little hope I had of appealing to you by any other means than force. What I have to think of now is how to purify the school from defilement and how to protect the innocence of those who are not yet contaminated, and, above all, of your little sister."

  His voice faltered for an instant; then he continued steadily: " I must know the whole truth, and I mean to have it from you at any cost. Do you understand? You have ten minutes to decide whether you will confess at once, or whether I must force you."

  He leaned back in his chair. Except for the ticking of the watch, there was absolute silence in the room.

  As Jack had said, the position was hope­less; the very quality of his innocence ren­dered it, to his uncle's mind, not merely incredible, but unthinkable. Virtuous conduct the Vicar could understand and appre­ciate; his own was eminently virtuous, for his deep religious convictions had sustained him through a long and patient struggle with the unwholesome impulses which had beset him in his cold and morbid youth. Like cer­tain mediaeval saints, he had learned, by much prayer and penitence, to resist temptations which would not have tempted any healthy man; had he failed to resist them it might have been better for defenceless creatures at his mercy. The diseased imagination, driven inwards, fed upon itself; and the lust of cruelty had grown up, as a fungus grows, upon the buried rottenness of other lusts. It was now many years since there had been a page in his private life which he would have been ashamed for his neighbours' eyes to read; and he held that every man can, if he will, conquer the impure desires of the flesh; but of an imagination naturally chaste and clean it was not in him to conceive.

  His thoughts went back to his own boy­hood, to the time when, at sixteen, he himself had stood upon the verge of the pit. Assuredly, in his most unregenerate days, he had never been guilty of anything so mon­strous as the revelations of this morning; nevertheless, he had come near to being expelled from school for corrupting the morality of the younger boys. No irrevo­cable harm had been done; yet, after more than thirty years, the blood went up to his forehead at the recollection. He thought of his sullen obstinacy when found out; his insistence, in the face of absolute proof to the contrary, that he knew nothing of the matter; his panic of terror on hearing that his father had been sent for. He remembered how the iron-faced old Puritan had arrived, silent and grim, and had wrung confession out of him by sheer physical violence. "It cured me," he thought, "once for all; and it will cure even Jack, with all his vices."

  As for Jack, he did not think, in any con­scious way, at all; the lamed imagination stumbled helplessly among familiar trifles, falling upon now one, and now another. A red rose-bud was tapping on the shutter; and he thought: "The wind is in the south."

  Then he remembered a stormy afternoon last January, and the slanting rain which had lashed against the fuchsia hedge, and Molly in the tool house, mourning for Tiddles.

  The hand of the watch had crept past nine of the ten minute marks. He remembered I climbing one day on Deadman's Cliff, and seeing a rabbit which some one had shot, but not killed, and which had fallen to an inac­cessible place, and lay there, bleeding to death. He could see the quivering of its feet again quite distinctly, and the white tuft of the tail, and the blood trickling in a thin, slow stream down the grey rock face. Now again, something was bleeding to death, as the watch ticked. When the hand should reach the minute mark the thing would die; and after that nothing in the world would ever matter any more.

  The ten minutes were over. Mr. Ray­mond rose and took the boy by the arm. "Come upstairs," he said.

  They went up in silence into Jack's room; and the key turned in the lock.

  CHAPTER V

  On Friday evening after family prayers Mr. Raymond went up, as usual, to the locked gable room. It was after sunset, but there was still light enough to see.

  Jack was crouching on the floor, half-dressed, in the furthest corner of the room, He would stay so without moving, sometimes, for hours together. On the table stood a plate of bread and a water-jug. There was also a Bible, for examination by the question must alternate with prayer and solemn exhor­tation, or it would seem too like mere butchery. The bread, to-day at least, had been a little neglected, but there was no water left in the jug. Jack, for the most part, had been quite passive. He had not tried to escape by the window, yet the descent, though less easy than from the other rooms, was possible, had the idea but occurred to him. On Tuesday evening he had sprung suddenly at his uncle and tried to strangle him. For one moment the furious pressure of fingers on his throat had made the Vicar wild with fear; then the boy had been overpowered and flung down on the floor. And then had followed horrors which would haunt the dreams of both for years to come.

  After that his hands had been tied; but the precaution was needless; he had no thought of resistance. There had been some helpless, mechanical struggling, but nothing more. When unfastened he would cower down again in his corner, silent, understanding nothing. Now, as his uncle approached and spoke to him, he dropped face downwards on the floor in hysterical convulsions.

  If, at the beginning, it had occurred to the Vicar as a conceivable possibility that any boy could hold out so long, he would cer­tainly never have entered upon the contest; but having once made the initial mistake, to give in now would be the end of all his au­thority. And yet, he must give in; his posi­tion was no longer bearable. The villagers had already begun to whisper and glance at each other when he passed in the street; and now this...

  He fetched water from the next room, and tried to make the boy drink it. But Jack's teeth were set like a vice. When at last the dumb writhing stopped, he began to sob uncontrollably.

  "Thank God!" the Vicar murmured. This, without doubt, was the final break-down of the stubborn will that he had set himself to conquer; the hardest victory he had ever won. He rose with a long sigh of relief.

  He had accomplished, without flinching, a very painful duty. He had disregarded not merely his own natural repugnance, but the tears and entreaties of the household, and even a grave danger of misrepresentation and scandal; and, probably, he had saved the boy's soul alive. He thought of the dead sailor among the sunken reefs by Longships Light. "It wouldn't go on if Captain John were alive," he had heard one fisherman's wife say to another that morning. She was right. Poor John would never have had firmness enough to drive out the dumb devil which had possessed the boy; but he would be grateful on the Day of Judgment if he found his son among the saved.

  The sobbing had stopped at last; Jack was lying on his bed, quite still, his face buried in the pillow. The Vicar sat down beside him and touched him gently on the arm.

  "There, Jack, don't cry any more; sit up and listen to me."

  Jack sat up obediently, but he shrank away as far as he could. Apparently he had not been crying, from the look of his eyes. There was a curious glitter in them.

  "My dear boy," the Vicar began with gentle solemnity; "all this has been as dread­ful to me as to you; I have seldom had so hard a duty to perform. But as a Christian man and a minister of God's word, I will not and I dare not tolerate impurity. That my house should have been made a centre of defilement and contamination, to spread the poison of vice among my flock; that my dead brother's child should have been a cause of offence to these innocent members of Christ, has been to me perhaps the bitterest dis­appointment of my life."

  He paused a moment. Jack had not moved. A sense of fear came over the Vicar as he saw how wide and strained the great eyes were. His voice began to shake a little. "I know," he went on, "that you now think me harsh and cruel; but you will thank me for it some day. My child, you have been in danger of hell fire."

  The boy was still motionless; he seemed scarcely to breathe. The Vicar took him by the hand.

  "But I see that your evil pride is broken, and that you are sorry for your sin. Come and lay your hand on God's holy Book, and promise me that you will abandon your wickedness. Then we will kneel down to­gether and pray that it may please Him to fo
rgive you this deadly sin and to lead you into righteousness."

  He rose, holding the boy's hand. It was silently, furtively pulled away.

  "Jack!" he cried out. "Have you still not repented?"

  Jack stood up and looked round him two or three times, like a creature caught in a trap. His breathing had a sharp staccato sound.

  "Are you... going on?" he said. It was the first time that he had spoken since Tuesday night.

  "Jack!" the Vicar cried again. A slow dark flush went up to his forehead; the line of his mouth grew thin and straight Some­thing atavistic, something sensual and violent came over the whole face. The nostrils began to quiver.

  "Jack," he repeated for the third time, and stopped a moment. "Do you mean to... defy me?"

  They looked at each other in silence. Then the Vicar's eyes crept slowly down­wards to the naked shoulder and to the straight red bar across it. The old cannibal craving that he knew so well was taking possession of him again; the maddening physical lust to see something struggle. He put out a greedy hand and felt the wound.

  The touch sent fire through his pulses. Yet, in the instant before he gave himself up to the pleasures of his damnation, he had time to see his victim shrink away as if from lep­rosy, and to think: "The child has under­stood."

  Jack went slowly to the bed-post and put up his hands to be tied.

  ***

  That night, when the household was asleep, he dragged himself up off the floor. He had lain there, shivering, his head down on his arms, ever since his uncle went out.

  He looked round the room. No light was allowed him, but the night was clear and the moon shone in at the window. In the ivy outside a bird began to twitter sleepily.

  He reached the table at last, and drank some water. After that he was less inclined to tumble down when he tried to walk, and managed to open the cupboard door and take out the candle end and matches which he had hidden there some fortnight ago. He had done it for a purpose, but what purpose he had forgotten; and indeed, the objects and desires of the Jack who had lived a fortnight ago concerned him not at all.

  Having got a light he opened the Bible, and tried to find the passage which was run­ning in his head. As familiar as he was with the Scriptures, it took him a long time; his hands were so stiff and swollen, and shook so as he turned the leaves. Besides, he was sick and giddy, and had to keep shutting his eyes to wait till the letters grew steady on the page. But he found it at last; the twenty-seventh chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy; the chapter of the mount of cursing. Then he stooped laboriously and picked up the whip. It had been thrown down on the floor, when at last the Vicar's thirst was satisfied. He laid it across the open book, and pressed the red lash down upon the nineteenth verse: "Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen."

  Then he climbed out on to the window sill and let himself down by the ivy. He had done it often enough before, without any thought of danger; but to-night, as he reached the projecting ledge, the dizziness overcame him again, the wall seemed to sway and lurch forwards and the garden bed below to rise up, rushing upon him. He threw up his hands and fell.

  The rest of the night was a medley of con­fused impressions and strange things happen­ing without any ordered sequence; impres­sions of its being very hot, and then again very cold; of huge crowds of people surging about noisily and fading suddenly away; of something burning, pressed up against his right arm; of tumult and of lights and rushing water; and, here and there, black intervals of silence.

  After dawn he woke up somehow, and crawled into the wood-shed close at hand. There was little conscious purpose in the action; hardly more than the blind instinct of a wounded animal, to hide and die in some dark place. He realised that his right arm was broken; but beyond that he was not very clear about anything, except that he was cold and giddy, and wished, if he was going to die, he could die a bit quicker and get it over. Dying unrepentant after always having been such a wicked boy, he would of course go to hell; but that troubled him little; it is a long time yet till the Judgment Day, and hell is as good as any other place when you feel so sick.

  About eight o'clock the Vicar came down into the garden. His eyes were hard and steely with anger; he had been in the empty gable room and had seen the marked Bible and the broken ivy hanging from the wall. What if the boy had run away and gone to the villagers, or to the Dissenting minister? More probably he was trying to make his way to Falmouth, with some wild notion of going to sea. But there was yet another pos­sibility...

  The Vicar clenched his hands. "If I had only not touched him..." he thought; and flushed angrily at the memory of the bare shoulder and the red wound which had driven him mad with desire. What had happened to him yesterday he dared not call by its name, even in thought; yet he knew well enough what it was. All night he had been haunted by dreams that he had believed would never trouble him again; he, whose life was so strict, whose imagination, for years past, had been so steadily controlled. When a young man, just ordained, he had caught a rat one evening in his London bedroom after many fruitless efforts; the long search had angered him, and the creature, when caught at last, had died no easy death. Then he had gone out; and, slinking home at daybreak, sickened and remorseful, had said to himself: "It's the fault of the rat." Now his anger was bitter against Jack, who had been a cause of stumbling and offence to him in his sober maturity, and had brought back memories and longings of which he was ashamed.

  The open door of the wood-shed caught his eyes, and he looked in. The figure huddled up among the faggots crept further into its dim corner. He approached and stooped down.

  "Jack, what are you doing there?"

  The boy shrank a little further away.

  "What is the matter? Have you fallen and hurt yourself?"

  "No."

  "You got out of the window? You were thinking of running away? Stand up!"

  He paused a moment, waiting to be obeyed; but there was no movement. He felt that his self-control was going again; this cower­ing impotence, this voiceless terror tempted him beyond endurance.

  "Stand up!" he repeated.

  Jack raised himself a little and looked up. The red flash of the retina showed behind his eyes, as the flame leaps out in a smouldering tinder heap that flares up, suddenly on fire.

  "Well?" he said, "will you kill me, or must I kill you?"

  A mist blurred the man's sight; he struck out blindly, with a clenched hand.

  As Jack dropped, like a thing struck dead, silently in a heap at his feet, he realised what he had done. In the first shock of fear he thought that it was he who had broken the arm. At his call for help Mrs. Raymond came running out from the house.

  "Josiah! Oh, what is it?"

  "Help me carry him indoors, and send for the doctor as quick as you can. Make haste!"

  She bent down to enter the shed; but stopped short, seeing the boy lying on the ground. She stood still for a moment, look­ing; then turned on her husband.

  "What have you done?" she said.

  His eyes fell before hers.

  "I don't know."

  She stooped without another word and helped him to lift the boy; and he knew, like Philip of Spain, that his subjects had condemned him.

  For some time Jack only passed from one fainting fit into another. Dr. Jenkins, hastily summoned, looked round with a grave face after he had felt the pulse.

  "Some more brandy; and get hot appli­cations, quick! And send for Dr. Williams; I want a second opinion."

  The Vicar was almost as white as Jack.

  "Is there any... danger?" he faltered.

  "The pulse is very low. Why was I not called in sooner?"

  The Vicar moistened his lips.

  "I don't know," he said again. Dr. Jenkins looked round keenly, his hand on the pulse.

  "You don't know when it happened? Nor how?"

  "No."

  The doctor turned back to his patient.

 
By the time Dr. Williams arrived the danger of collapse was over, and the old man was a little surprised that his colleague should have thought it necessary to send for him. The operation of setting the bone brought on another fainting fit; but this time the boy soon rallied, and lay with half-closed eyes, glancing now and then indifferently at the figures moving round the sofa. He wished they would leave off pulling him about, but it was too much trouble to protest, and if he did they would probably take no notice; so there was nothing for it but to submit. When his uncle approached him he shuddered and turned his head away; other­wise he was quite passive and docile, but would answer no questions.

  "Did he remember falling? Was it from window-ledge? When was it? How did it happen?"

  He only shook his head in silence.

  Then they brought him something to drink; and he took it obediently, wondering why they could not let him alone, and why the glass should jingle so against his teeth. But he felt much stronger and more alive after it, which indeed was small gain. The position in which he lay was hurting him very much; and he made several patient efforts to change it, stopping perforce when too many sparks danced before his eyes, and stubbornly trying again as soon as he could breathe. But he gave up the struggle at last, and lay still, biting his lip and wishing he were dead. It had not occurred to him to ask any one's help.

  "Do you want the pillow shifted?" asked the Vicar.

  Jack looked up at him silently; and Dr. Jenkins, standing near, saw the deadly vin­dictiveness in the black eyes and bent down over the sofa.

  "Is the arm hurting you much now?" "It's not so bad when you let it alone." "Does anything else hurt you except the arm?"

  Jack looked round at him slowly, with grave contempt.

  "What makes you think that? I haven't made a fuss, have I?"

  "Indeed you haven't, you little Spartan," said Dr. Williams, turning his head with a smile. He had overheard only the last words. "I wish all grown-up patients made so little — don't you, Jenkins?"