Этель Лилиан Войнич: Jack Raymond

He was giving the visitor an account of his connection with the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, when the house-door was violently slammed and Mrs. Raymond looked up in nervous anticipation.

"Jack!" called the Vicar, rising and open­ing the door of the room. "Come in here. Molly, my dear," he added, turning to the little girl; "you had better run upstairs and play."

"Mind you change your pinafore," said Mrs. Raymond, as the child went out. "And ask Mary Anne ------ Oh, Jack, where have you been to get into that state!"

Jack had slouched into the room with his hands in his pockets. He took in the situa­tion at a glance, and stopped short beside the door, scowling at the visitor. Sullen, grimy, and unkempt, his obstinate chin stuck out, his jacket torn and dirty, and the wet mud from his boots soiling the clean carpet, he looked as ill-favoured and ill-conditioned a young brute as any family could be cursed with.

"Do you remember this gentleman?" asked the Vicar, with ominous composure.

"I'll bet he remembers me, anyway," said Jack. Heard in a room, his voice sounded curiously full and resonant for his age.

"I certainly do," said the visitor, still cheerfully trying to avert the gathering-storm. "Come here and shake hands, boy, to show there's no ill feeling."

Jack looked at him silently from under lowered brows.

"Go up and shake hands," said the Vicar, still gently, but with angry eyes. "Your aunt and I have apologised for you, as you have not done it for yourself."

Jack approached the visitor in his slouch­ing way, and held out a grimy left hand, keeping the right still in his pocket.

"Why not the other hand?" asked the doctor.

"Can't."

"What have you done to yourself now?" asked Mrs. Raymond, with a pathetic, uncon­scious emphasis on the last word. "Why, your sleeve's all over mud, and you've torn that new jacket!" "Take your hand out of your pocket," said the Vicar. His voice was growing sharp with suppressed irritation.

The hand, when unrolled from a dirty, blood-stained handkerchief, proved to be scratched and grazed.

"How did you do that?"

Jack threw a sullen glance at his uncle.

"Climbing on Deadman's Cliff."

"Where you have been strictly forbidden to go?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Jack," said the aunt helplessly; "how can you be so disobedient!"

The Vicar took out the black book and made another entry.

"Go to your room and wait till I come," was all he said.

Jack turned with a shrug of his shoulders, and left the room, whistling. Mrs. Ray­mond followed, glancing nervously at her husband.

"It's no use our trying to hide the skeleton in our family cupboard away from you," said the Vicar, turning to his visitor with a sigh. "It has been forced upon your notice, against our will. My nephew's bad disposition has been a heavy cross to Mrs. Raymond and myself; the heaviest with which it has pleased Providence to afflict us."

"He may grow out of this wilfulness in time," the doctor ventured, consolingly. "After all, many very good men have been naughty boys."

"Naughty, yes; but unhappily it is not mere childish naughtiness that we have to contend with in my nephew; it is an inhe­rently evil disposition."

He looked into the fire for a little while; then added with a gesture of resignation : "If Timothy has not already told you the wretched story you are sure to hear it soon from some of the village gossips. Jack inherits from his mother a character which seems incapable of reform, its vices are so deeply rooted. Neither persuasion nor firm­ness has any effect upon him; after years of care and earnest efforts to arouse some glimmering of better feelings, he grows steadily worse and worse. We have been greatly blessed in that Molly, as yet at least, shows no trace of vicious tendencies; but for the boy I have little hope."

As soon as he could, Dr. Jenkins made his escape from the house. He was wearied of the subject of Jack and his sins. "Hang it all!" he said to himself; "if that confounded cub is to be rammed down my throat wherever I go, I shall have to set up a placard on my door: 'It is requested not to talk about the crimes of the Vicar's nephew.'"

In the garden was a shed used for storing fire-wood. Passing beside it he heard a noise overhead, and looked up. Jack, serene in the consciousness of a position at once dangerous and impregnable, was sitting astride on the corner of the sloping roof, with a huge chunk of bread in one hand and a sour green cooking-apple, probably a rem­nant of yesterday's loot, in the other. He was devouring the two in alternate bites.

"Hullo!" said the doctor. "How did you get there? I thought you were sent up­stairs."

The imp glanced at him laconically and took another bite out of the apple. The deliberate crunching sound set the doctor's teeth on edge.

"You'll have a stomach ache if you eat unripe fruit at that pace."

"I haven't time to talk," Jack replied, with his mouth full. "I've got to go indoors and be thrashed in a minute, and I want to finish my tea first."

"It doesn't seem to affect your appetite."

Jack shrugged his shoulders and began upon another apple. Mrs. Raymond came running down the path, stout and panting, with clasped hands.

"Jack! Jack! Where are you? Go in at once, you wicked boy! Oh, my dear, do make haste and go in; your uncle will be so angry!"

She caught sight of the visitor standing in the path, and stopped short. Jack looked round, grinning.

"Isn't she soft? She always blubbers when I get a licking."

"You don't, I suppose?"

"I?" said Jack, with a contemptuous stare. "I'm not an old woman. Is uncle going upstairs now, Aunt Sarah? I'll bet you I'll be there before him."

He jumped down from the roof and took the sill of the bow window with as clean a run and spring as if he had been training for a professional acrobat. From there he swung himself up by the ivy to a projecting ledge running round the house between the two stories, and scrambled in at an upper window like a cat.

Mrs. Raymond turned to the visitor in despair.

"What am I to do with him?" she said.

The boys came trooping out from school. It was a half-holiday and a glorious midsum­mer afternoon, and every one, or almost every one, was in high spirits. Jim Greaves, the eldest boy, who was nearly seventeen, and a person of consequence, having always plenty of pocket-money, walked arm in arm with his special friend, Robert Polwheal, "the lamb," so called for his habit of bullying the little ones. The two boys were not popular in the school; but as Jim was richer and Rob stronger than most of the others, a good many things were forgiven them, or, if not forgiven, submitted to in silence. The dul-ness of life at Porthcarrick had induced them to join Jack Raymond's gang of larrikins, which enrolled boys of various characters, sizes, and social ranks; and, though both were much older than the captain, his dominant will kept them fairly submissive to orders. Yet neither of them had any natural gift for marauding, and there was small love between them and Jack; they still remembered, though they pretended to forget, how last year he had fought them, one after the other, for ill-treat­ing a puppy. Though physically somewhat overmatched, he had succeeded, by dint of sheer pugnacity, in giving both of them as much pommelling as they cared to have; and had then gone cheerfully home with a swollen nose and one eye bunged up, to be, as usual, thrashed by his uncle for fighting.

Since then they had treated him with the respect due to so warlike a captain; and had indulged their secret ill-will only by making, in his presence, remarks which they knew would have infuriated him had the double meanings but been intelligible to his ignor­ance. When his back was turned the gang would shriek with laughter at the incongruity of a leader in wickedness too "green" to understand Rob Polwheal's jokes. It was perhaps as much the general enjoyment of a comic situation as the fear of his big fists which saved him from enlightenment.