Этель Лилиан Войнич: Jack Raymond

"It doesn't seem to have got instilled into this one."

"Ah, that's the bad blood in him. Many a tear he's cost poor Mrs. Raymond. You must know, she comes of a very respectable family, up St. Ives way; good church people, all of them, and not used to such goings on. She's a godly, pious woman, and good to the poor, as a clergyman's wife should be, and she's cared for those two children as if they'd been her own, though they're none of her kin. Little Molly's the apple of her eye. She's tried her hardest to coax the devil out of the boy, and the Vicar, he's tried to thrash it out, and you might as well plant potatoes on the Runnel Stone. He's his mother's own brat."

"Who was she?"

"A scarlet woman, sir; a play actress from London that Captain John brought home when he was young and wild, to carry shame into a decent house. Lord knows what she'd been before he married her. If you'll believe it, sir, she'd smoke tobacco like a man, and her foot was never inside a place of wor­ship. And then her flaunting skirts and her lewd ways — it was enough to make the old folks turn in their graves! She'd trapes about under the cliffs in dirty weather sing­ing to herself, with her hair streaming down her back, for all the world like a madwoman. Why, I've seen her myself sitting half-dressed with her bare feet in a rock-pool and a crazy artist fellow from London painting her por­trait — great maazed antic! She was as ugly as sin, too; you can tell by the boy; but Captain John was fair mad about her. How­ever, she went the way of damnation after the little maid was born; 'took an engage­ment,' she called it, and ran off to Paris to her play-acting; as 'tis written in the Scriptures: 'the dog returneth to his vomit, and the sow to her wallowing in the mire.'

And there she took the cholera, and died like an unrepentant heathen, so I've heard tell. 'Tis plain it was a judgment. And the captain, poor silly fool, instead of being duly grateful to Providence for a good riddance of bad rubbish, he took on as if his heart was broken in him, and never held up his head again ------"

"Is this Porthcarrick?" the doctor inter­rupted as a sharp turn of the road brought them to a break in the hills and a fishing village nestling between two great cliffs.

"Yes, sir, and that's the lighthouse beyond Deadman's cliff. The white house there is Mr. Hewitt's school; a lot of gentlefolk send their sons there — the Vicar's trustee for it; and that big one higher up is Heath Brow, where the Squire lives."

"And the old house by the church, all over ivy?"

"That's the Vicarage."

The next morning, when Dr. Jenkins re­turned from his first stroll through the village, he found on his table a card bearing the inscription: "Rev. Jos. Raymond, The Vicar­age, Porthcarrick, Cornwall."

"The Vicar said he'd call again," said the landlady. "He seemed in a great taking; I suppose it's that devil's limb Jack again; they do say he scared poor old Mrs. Richards fair to death on the cliff road yesterday; smashed the cart and lamed the pony and ------"

"Come, come," said the doctor, "it's not quite so bad as that. I was there myself. Has the farmer been complaining?"

"Yes, sir; they say the Vicar had a long bill to pay him this morning; he threatened to bring an action for assault and battery."

"Oh, that's absurd. I'll go round to the Vicar after dinner and tell him the truth of the story myself."

As he entered the Vicarage garden a sound of light feet running came from behind the fuchsia hedge. Before he had time to draw back, a small creature in a holland pinafore dashed round the corner and came in a head­long rush against his legs, then started away, tossing back a tawny mane.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! Did I hurt you, sir?"

The doctor looked down in surprise, won­dering if this pretty child could really be Jack Raymond's sister.

"Hurt me? What, by treading on my toes? I was afraid it was I that had hurt you. Are you Mr. Raymond's little niece?"

"I'm Molly. Did you want to see uncle?"

She led him into the house; he, meanwhile, unsuccessfully trying to draw her into conver­sation. He was fond of children; and Molly, clean and wholesome throughout, shy yet not awkward, freckled and tanned with sun and wind, appeared to him a creature altogether delightful. Charming as she was, however, she would certainly not grow up beautiful; for, though so unlike her brother in colouring and expression, she possessed, in a modified form, the same obstinate mouth and heavy jaw; but her eyes bore no resemblance to Jack's; they were deliciously limpid and blue.

The Rev. Mr. Raymond was an iron-grey man, serious and cold, with eyes as lifeless as his grizzled hair. He held himself erect like a soldier, though without a soldier's ease. There was about him an antiquated stiffness, yet withal a certain patient dignity, as of one mindful that he was made in the image of God. His sense of order would not tolerate useless growth of any kind; therefore he was clean-shaven, showing the nakedness of the worst thing in his face — a Chinese insensitiveness, at the corners of the mouth. A little more curve and pointing of the lines might have rendered the face a fine one, impressive if not sympathetic; but as it was, he seemed a diagram of virtue drawn in monochrome.

He sent Molly away, and then began a laborious apology for the wickedness of Jack, the "devil's limb." Seeing how much he took the matter to heart, the visitor cut him short good-humouredly, giving his own version of the story, as of a mere schoolboy prank, and turned the conversation to other subjects.

Presently tea was brought in, and together with it came Mrs. Raymond, a stout, submis­sive, motherly woman, older than her husband, with indefinite eyebrows plaintively raised in an arch of chronic faint surprise. Her black gown was the perfection of neatness, and not a hair of her head was out of place. Molly, in a clean white pinafore, the thick curls carefully brushed and tied back with a ribbon, made a gracious little picture, clinging shyly to her aunt. An air of peaceful domesticity seemed to enter with the woman and child. The bread, butter, and cake were too good not to be home made; and when, after tea, Mrs. Raymond sat down by the window to finish embroidering a frock for Molly, the visitor saw that she was no less excellent a needle­woman than a cook. She was also charitable, as appeared from the red woollen comforter which Molly was learning to knit; the little girl had evidently been taught that the mak­ing of warm garments for the poor is an important duty. It occurred to him that this woman of plastic virtues must sometimes find it a little fatiguing to stand a perpetual buffer between husband and nephew.

" Sarah," said the Vicar, when the tea had been cleared away, "I have been telling Dr. Jenkins how deeply we regret what happened on the cliff road yesterday. He is so kind as to take the matter very lightly, and not to de­mand any more formal apology."

Mrs. Raymond lifted her mild eyes to the visitor's face.

"We are very sorry that you should have had any annoyance. But we have done our best, indeed; and it is most kind of you not to want the boy punished..."

"He will be punished in any case," said the Vicar quietly. "The entry is already made in the conduct book."

"Not on my account, I hope," Dr. Jenkins put in. "I regarded the whole thing really as a joke, and should never have thought of complaining if you had not happened to hear of it."

"You are very kind," replied the Vicar; "but I never overlook an offence."

"Good Heavens, what a piled-up account there must be against that boy!" thought the doctor. He turned the conversation away, as soon as he could, from the sore subject of Jack's delinquencies. On other topics the Vicar proved a very agreeable talker; practi­cal, clear-headed, and fairly well informed. He took a great interest in local philanthropic and pious enterprises, particularly in missions,