Jack Raymond

by Этель Лилиан Войнич

  "Are you Jack?" she said. "I have heard so much of you from Theo; he can talk of nothing else."

  "He's a little idiot," said Jack, flushing angrily. He would have given a year's pocket money to get out of the room. He resented her presence, though he could not have told himself why; the low voice with its foreign accent seemed to force itself on him against his will, and make him think of Molly, and the foam on the grey rocks by Deadman's Cliff, and the circling flight of sea gulls. She had no right to come in here and make him wretched again, just when he was beginning to forget. It was nothing to her; she'd got her Theo.

  "He is rather a baby still," she said; "and knows nothing of the kind of danger you rescued him from. I could not go home without thanking you."

  Jack set his teeth. How much more of this was he to bear? She was looking at him now with a serious, scrutinising gaze.

  "I thought at first of taking him away; but I have been talking it over with Dr. Cross, and he suggests that, as you have al­ready been so kind, I should ask you to help me. Will you let me put the child under your care? Dr. Cross will see that the monitors understand, so you will have no difficulty; and I am quite sure it will be the best possible thing for Theo. An older schoolfellow, especially one he cares so much for, can protect him better than any master could do; and I know he will obey you. If you will take care of him, and not let him see or hear anything unfit for a little boy to know of, you will lift a heavy weight off my mind."

  As she paused for his answer, Jack looked up. He was almost ready to burst out laugh­ing at the brutal joke which the fates were playing at his expense. He thought of the Bishop's knife, and the photographs, and the threat of a reformatory. Then suddenly a lump came in his throat as his eyes met hers, and he looked down again at the floor.

  "All right," he said huskily; "I'll see to it. He shan't come to any harm while I'm here."

  She gave him her hand. "Thank you," she said, and rose; then paused a moment, looking at him.

  "Theo tells me that the boy you fought had called him a 'jail-bird.' Is that so?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know why? "

  Jack hesitated. He had overheard vague hints about Theo's father.

  "No," he said; "I... don't talk much to the others; and, anyhow, it's not my business."

  "Have you ever read any Polish history?"

  "I... no, I don't think so."

  "Theo must have said something, and been misunderstood. He doesn't remember much about it; he was only a little thing. My husband was a political exile — do you know what that is? — in Siberia. When he died there, I brought the child to France. I have always tried to keep the shadow of these things away from Theo; there will be time enough for them when he is a man."

  Jack went into the gymnasium, silent and very subdued. Helen Mirska and the things that she had told him belonged to a world of which he knew nothing. He understood only that she had talked to him, and gone away, and left him miserable. She, mean­while, waiting at the station for her train, asked herself again and again: What is that child brooding over to be so unhappy? She had seen him for ten minutes, and had talked of her own affairs merely; and she read him as those with whom he had lived all his life had never been able to read.

  In the gymnasium he went through his dumbbell exercises as conscientiously as ever; but for once he was not interested in them. Theo, standing in a corner, looked on, with wide-eyed admiration at the feats his idol could perform. As Jack swung his arms backwards, clashing the dumbbells together behind his back, the collar button of his gymnasium shirt snapped off under the strain; and when he stepped back for a moment's rest, letting his arms fall by his sides, the shirt slipped down a little from the left shoulder.

  "What a queer mark you've got on your shoulder, Raymond," said the boy behind him. "Is it a burn?"

  He put out a hand to draw the shirt lower, but sprang back with a cry. Jack had turned on him, white to the lips with rage, the heavy dumbbell lifted above his head.

  "I'll kill you if you touch me!"

  All the boys stopped in their exercises and stared, speechless with amazement Then the master's grave voice broke in: "Why, Raymond! Raymond!"

  Some one took the dumbbells out of Jack's hands. He surrendered them passively, stumbled to the nearest form, and sat down. That horrible dizziness again, and the flash­ing lights and roaring noises...

  "Oh, I can't help it!" he said.

  When the lesson was over the gymnasium master went to Dr. Cross, and told him what had happened. Jack, summoned to the head­master's study, went in, scowling, sullen, pre­pared for the worst.

  "Raymond, my lad, Mirski's mother tells me you have undertaken to look after him and keep him out of mischief," said Dr. Cross. "I told her I was sure the little chap couldn't be in better hands. You've done him a lot of good already; I've just been talk­ing about it with the monitors. You're a good fellow, if you could control your temper. By the way, if you should happen to have any little differences with the others, nobody will mind your settling them with your fists in the old-fashioned manner, provided you don't go too far; but you'd better not threaten your schoolfellows with iron weights another time; it isn't an English way of going to work."

  "Very well, sir," said Jack submissively.

  In the corridor a little hand stole into his.

  "Jack," Theo whispered, looking up with soft eyes like his mother's, "is anything wrong with you? You're all shaking."

  Jack stood still, feeling the small consoling fingers curl round his. Presently he pulled his hand roughly away.

  "What should be wrong with me? There'd be nothing wrong, if people would only let me alone."

  He shoved past the child and went about for the rest of the day with a hard face, surly and defiant. But late into the night, when masters and boys were asleep, he lay and brooded silently, hopelessly, for hours. He had thought he was growing accustomed and beginning to forget; and it was no use: after all these months he was as wretched as ever. Perhaps he should go on all his life, and never get accustomed. Why not? The scars would never go away; why should the memory?

  ***

  It was some little time before the pallor of sleepless nights began to show through Jack's swarthy skin. He was so superbly healthy, so strong and sturdy, that even if he had fallen bodily ill he would have shown it less than most boys. But he was not ill; there was nothing the matter with him but sheer misery. Only as the weeks dragged by he grew more colourless and haggard, and the look that he had worn last August came slowly back into his eyes. At last the head­master began to get anxious, and took him to a doctor, who looked at him in a keen, puzzled way, and presently asked: "Have you been upset about anything?"

  "No, sir," said Jack, with his stolid face.

  The doctor finally declared him to be "a little below par," and prescribed a tonic, which of course did no good. "I wonder what's the matter with that boy Raymond," said Dr. Cross to the mathematical master. "Do you think he's moping?"

  "Hardly; he seems too stolid a creature to mope much. But one never can tell; per­haps he's a bit homesick."

  Jack, meanwhile, trod nightly dumb and barefoot through hell-fire.

  The days were not so bad; there were always lessons and games, and the presence of his schoolfellows. He took no interest in any of these distractions; but they filled up time and space and kept other things away. Yet sometimes, even in the middle of cricket or football, the thought of the coming night would strike at his heart. At evening, when the boys trooped up to the dormitory, he would tumble into bed with a wooden face and a sullen "good-night," and lie breathing evenly with the counterpane drawn up over his head, while the others undressed. It seemed to him that he must go mad if he should see the white, smooth, unscarred shoulders of all these happy creatures. They used to call him "The dormouse"; it had become a standing joke among them that he was always the first to sleep and the last to wake. Then, when the lights were out and the whispering between the beds had stopped, he would
sit up alone, and fight with demons in the dark, helpless against a ghostly army, and crush the sheet over his mouth, and learn to sob quietly, that the others might not hear.

  It struck upon him at times with a sense of amazement that misery could wear so many faces, and that one could know them all, and yet not die. There were nights of fear, when the furies sat beside his bed. He would fall asleep quietly, like every one else, to wake, quivering, from nightmares of Porthcarrick, his teeth knocking together and damp skin drawn up beneath the roots of his hair. There were nights of rage, when he would clench his hands and grit his teeth with hatred of the God, Whoever He might be, Who had made the world so unjust and the people in it so wretched. There were nights of despair, when he could only sob and sob for very desolation, till his head ached and his eyes burned and the struggle to breathe seemed to tear his throat in pieces. There were nights of loathing and horror, when hideous imaginations pursued him and the photographs glared out of the darkness whichever way he turned. But the worst were the nights of shame.

  Of all torments the keenest was to see his schoolfellows asleep. By day he now envied, now despised them; by night he was ashamed before them. He would sit on the edge of his bed, watching the long still rows of placid figures, listening to the sound of their breath­ing. Sometimes one would turn over with a sigh, or another would fling a bare arm out upon the coverlet; and to the desolate on­looker the sight was as the stab of a knife. They seemed to him so beautiful, so intoler­ably white and clean; what place had he among them? They had no evil dreams, no secret horrors, no shameful scars to hide; they had not been dragged through the by­ways of hell or polluted with the knowledge of a man's damnation... Then he would lie down and hide his face against the pillow, and tell himself that he must get accustomed; that what is done is done; that his body had been utterly defiled; that he should never be clean again.

  The Easter holidays were close at hand, and a flutter of excitement had begun in the school. To Jack the prospect of solitude and silence was now a relief, now an added terror. Suddenly it flashed upon him that only four months remained till the long summer vacation; and that then he should have to go home. Somehow, he had never thought of that before.

  Now this new dread took possession of him so wholly that all lesser griefs were driven out. Fear walked behind him all day long, and caught him by the throat when night came on. "Four months," he would repeat to himself; "four months!" four months to decide in, to make up his mind, to think of a plan. He must run away, drown himself, escape some­how — anyhow. To go back to Porthcarrick would drive him mad.

  "Raymond," said Dr. Cross, on the last Monday of the term, "you remember it was arranged that you should spend Easter here? I find now that it can't be managed, because of the spring cleaning; so I wrote to ask your uncle if he could make it convenient to have you home, and he wires that he'll ex­pect you next Saturday. I'm glad, for I think a scamper on the moors will do you good."

  The spring cleaning difficulty was a kindly fiction, Dr. Cross having decided that the boy must be homesick.

  Jack went out into the playing fields with a face of stone. His four months' grace had vanished, and he must decide now what he would do. He walked straight before him, thinking, his eyes on the ground.

  He might run away. But there was the risk of being caught and taken home by force. Also, to run away, when one has no money and no friend to go to, would mean a lot of thinking, and planning, and arranging; and he was too tired. There was a way of escape that was quite safe and simple, and one could take it without any trouble.

  He walked down to the pond in the hollow of the furthest field. The deep water lay still and black, bordered by trails of leafless bramble and sodden wrecks of last year's rushes. He threw a stone into the middle of the pond, and watched till the slow ripples died away; then crept along an overhanging tree trunk, and looked down into the water. Yes, it would be quite easy.

  Then in one instant the fear of death took hold upon him. He shut his eyes, that he might not see the water, and clung with both hands to the tree trunk. "I can't!" he pleaded with the thing that seemed to be behind him, driving him into the pond. "Oh, I can't! I can't! I can't!"

  He reached solid ground again, and opened his eyes. If he had only been brave for one minute, it would have been all over by now; but he was a coward. All degraded creatures are cowards; he remembered reading that somewhere. He was not brave enough to drown himself, or to run away; so he must submit, as cowards always have to do. He must go back to Porthcarrick, and see the wood-shed, and his uncle's face, and the stair­case which they had gone up together. He would be put to sleep in that same room; to pass interminable nights alone there; and to see the day dawn and the sun arise and shame him, shining in upon the place where he had been tied up like a dog...

  "Why, Raymond, what's the matter with you, boy?"

  Jack put out both hands in the direction of the voice.

  "I... feel sick."

  Dr. Cross took him by the arm. "Come indoors," he said; "you'd better lie down."

  The dormitory was quiet and airy. Jack lay down on his bed, and the head-master brought him a glass of water.

  "Let me look at your tongue. No, that's all right; and you're not feverish..."

  "There's nothing the matter with me; I only got a bit giddy."

  Dr. Cross stood looking down at him for a little while.

  "I wonder whether you've been feeling rather lonely, perhaps, as you hadn't been away from home before? I remember when I was a youngster I didn't like it at first."

  Jack clenched his teeth. Oh, if they would leave him alone, all these people! What was it to them? He was not going to make a fuss; he never made a fuss about things. He would manage to bear it somehow, if they'd only let him alone.

  "You'll be all right next term," said Dr. Cross. "Perhaps you feel rather a stranger here still, but you'll soon get used to it."

  It was a little time before Jack unclenched his teeth.

  "Oh, yes," he said; " I shall get used to it."

  The class bell rang, and Jack lifted his head from the pillow. Dr. Cross gently pushed him down again.

  "No, you'd better lie still for a bit, and go to sleep."

  The door shut behind him at last. Jack put up his left hand, and bit it till tears started under his closed eyelids; then he pressed it down over his eyes, trying to make shapes and colours come, and shut out other images. The marks of his teeth showed in livid crescents on the brown skin.

  CHAPTER VIII

  "Raymond!" cried Theo, bursting into the form room. "Mother's come!"

  Jack's head went down over the algebra book.

  "Hold your noise, you little donkey! Can't you see I'm doing lessons?"

  "Well, you needn't be so beastly sulky, if you are!" Theo was making rapid progress in English, and his unfamiliar elegance of speech had vanished with his golden curls. "I only came to say that mother wants you."

  "Oh, damn!" said Jack, flinging down his book.

  He went into the other room with his made-up face, indifferent and morose. Helen's deep, compassionate eyes looked him over gravely as he entered.

  "Jack," she said, "Theo and I want you to spend your Easter holidays with us in the Isle of Wight. Will you?"

  He drew back a step, raised his eyes slowly and looked at her. Oh, it was no use to play a part; it might deceive every one else, but not her; she had read all his secrets from the first.

  "What do you want me for? "

  She smiled.

  "Well, chiefly because we like you."

  "Oh, do come!" Theo put in. "You can teach me to row, and -----"

  "What do you want me for?" Jack re­peated doggedly. He had come a little nearer, looking straight into her face. An insane desire to laugh was taking possession of him. Suppose she were ever to come across his uncle, or Mr. Hewitt, or Dr. Jenkins, and to hear what had happened last summer? Suppose he were to tell her him­self, and let her choose whether she would invite him then or not
? A kind of horrible internal mirth shook him at the thought of how she would snatch up her darling and flee. He had already learned that there are some things, to be accused of which is enough; nobody wants to hear about your innocence.

  She came up to him, and put her hand on his shoulder. Well, he was behaving like a sneaking cad, of course, and sailing under false colours; but it would save him from Porthcarrick. And if he was such a beastly coward that he couldn't save himself the other way...

  "Oh, yes, I'll come fast enough," he said; "if uncle will let me."

  Helen stayed at the village inn till break-ing-up day, and every time that Jack saw her the soft and pitying eyes seemed to shame him, "like a scat in the face," he said to him­self. But who was he that he should care for any blow across the cheek now, if it was not hard enough to hurt? He lived in hourly terror lest the Vicar should deem it necessary to forbid his accepting the invitation, and to explain to Dr. Cross the reason. But Mr. Raymond made no difficulties; he was thank­ful for any offer which would spare him his nephew's contaminating presence at Porth­carrick. He satisfied his conscience by writing a long letter to the boy, solemnly exhorting him not to abuse the kindness of his new friends. Jack read it through, tossed it into the fire and started for Southampton with Helen and Theo, saying to himself in cold disgust: "The filthy cad! He believes I'm all that, and he lets me go! And I'm no better."

  All the way to Shanklin he kept assur­ing himself that he was going to enjoy to the full whatever pleasures the gods might grant, and put off thinking of anything else till the end of the holidays. He was safe for four months now, and could afford three weeks' happiness, surely. Other people were happy for years and years. For the first few days he wearied the household with his riotous high spirits; then, returning from the shore one afternoon and entering the little garden, he came upon Theo lying on the grass under the big laburnum tree, reading aloud to his mother, his head resting on her knee. She had one arm round the child's neck, and her other hand played with his hair as she listened. That night Jack lay and sobbed till he was sick and dizzy. Oh, it was un­fair, unfair, unfair!