Этель Лилиан Войнич - Jack Raymond

"So this is what you call a good road here-abouts, is it?" said Dr. Jenkins.

He had stopped half-way up the hill, to look about him, and to let Timothy, the fisherman who had met him at the station, put down the heavy bag and rest a bit before climbing any further. Behind them the steep road wound in and out between rough granite blocks and tussocks of dwarf gorse. Before them it rose up sharply, a stony track bordered by wet and withered heather tufts; and turned, passing out of sight round the shoulder of a lichened rock. For the rest, a waste of barren moor­land; an angry sun going down, red in a fiery glow; a fierce north wind that rushed by, shrieking curses; and below the cliffs a sullen, moaning, desperate sea; that was all. On summer days the moor might wear a brighter face among the gold and purple glories of its flowering time; even this ashen sea had doubtless green or blue delights to show on sunny mornings after rain; but this was the doctor's first glimpse of Cornwall, and in the December evening every thing seemed to him chill and bleak and desolate.

The sun dipped, leaving a long red trail across the water, a bloody finger-mark that the waves made haste to wash out. Timothy picked up the bag again.

"It's not so far now, sir; we shall be in before dark. Eh, why surely that be Maaster Richards from Gurnard's Head, and the old woman with him. Good evening, maaster!"

A pony-cart laden with apples jogged round the projecting shoulder of the granite rock. Farmer and pony walked side by side; but for the difference in the number of legs they might have been twin brothers, so much alike they were in expression, in roundness of com­fortable figure, in solid evenness of tread. In the cart, among the apples, sat an old woman, half asleep.

"This is the new doctor for Porthcarrick," said Timothy. " We shall have two doctors now, for old Dr. Williams is stopping on, though he's past much work. Are you rested now, sir?"

They climbed a little further, while Farmer Richards and his pony jogged slowly down the hill.

"Hullo!" said the doctor, looking round. "Something's wrong with the old fellow's cart. Look, he's making signs to us. What is it?"

The farmer was gesticulating frantically with his whip, and trying to shout louder than the angry wind.

"Police!" he yelled in a despairing voice. "Murder! Help! Police!"

"'In all time of our tribulation'!" gasped the old woman, folding her hands. "It's the gang."

A big, muscular, black-haired boy, with a skin tanned almost to coffee-colour, and a face which struck the doctor as repulsively ugly, came tearing over the brow of the hill. A score of minor demons followed at his heels, brandishing sticks and yelling ferociously. The gang descended with such suddenness, that before the farmer could defend himself the pony was unhooked from the shafts and the old woman stood wailing by the roadside, wringing her hands at the sight of the over­turned cart and the apples rolling in the mud. As Timothy and the doctor came running back, the farmer recovered heart of grace and laid about him with his whip. After a sharp skirmish the gang broke and fled in all direc­tions down the hill, yelling and screeching, with bulging pockets crammed with apples. Pursuit seemed to be hopeless; but in the act of escaping, one of the boys, a freckled, lanky hobbledehoy, caught his foot against a stone and fell sprawling. The farmer pounced upon him instantly. "Jack!" shrieked the captive. "Jack!"

The leader bounded to the spot, tripped up the top-heavy farmer with a dexterous twist of one foot, dragged the fallen boy up by the collar, and despatched him at a headlong pace downhill by a thump between the shoulders. Then he glanced round to see if any one else were in need of help. It was evidently an established convention that he should be the first to charge and the last to flee. As he turned to follow the gang a hand dropped on his shoulder.

"I've caught one, at any rate," said Dr. Jenkins. "No, don't hit him," he added, intercepting the farmer's fist. "And all that bad language won't get your cart up, my man; Timothy, help him with the cart, and leave the boy to me."

The farmer, still swearing, went to join Timothy, who was trying to lift the cart; the old woman meanwhile collecting the scattered apples.

"Well, you're a promising young devil," said Dr. Jenkins to his prisoner, who was wriggling in his grasp like a conger eel. "What's your name?"

"What's yours?"

"Lord bless you, sir," said Timothy, "that's Jack Raymond. He be nephew to our vicar."

"And own son to Beelzebub," the farmer muttered from between the wheels.

The swarthy imp grinned at the compli­ment, showing his white teeth.

"Nephew... to the Vicar!" Dr. Jen­kins repeated incredulously. "Here, stand up, boy; don't wriggle about so. I won't hurt you."

Jack's eyes opened wide in scornful amaze­ment, and the doctor saw how dusky and yet how luminous they were.

"I should just about think you wouldn't!"

He left off kicking, however, and stood up straight. His ugliness was of an unfamiliar, barbaric type; but there was nothing degener­ate about it, notwithstanding the heavy jaw; his head, indeed, was finely shaped, and the deep-set eyes would have been really magnif­icent, but for their sullen, morose expression. The singular breadth between them, and the black line of the brows meeting above, gave to the face a look of strength and concentra­tion more appropriate to a bison than to a child.

"So you're the captain of the Bad Boys' Gang, are you?" said the doctor. "And what's your special line, if one may ask? Stealing poor men's goods and frightening old women out of their senses, eh?"

"Yes," said Jack, looking straight at him: "and stinging when we get a chance, like that hornet on your beard."

Dr. Jenkins, forgetting the season, instinc­tively put his hand up to his face. Immedi­ately he received a violent blow, delivered with admirable precision; and by the time he realised that a trick had been played on him, Jack was racing downhill at breakneck speed.

The doctor leaned against a rock and laughed till the tears ran out of his eyes. It was impossible to feel angry, the thing had been so neatly done.

"What a little devil!" he gasped, as soon as he could speak. "Oh, what an outlandish little devil!"

"And that boy," said Timothy, as they walked on again after the cart had been righted, "has been brought up in a godly house and has had the advantages of Chris­tian precept and example ever since he was six years old. But 'tis no use; what's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh."

"It strikes me," the doctor remarked, "that a good thrashing would have more effect on that urchin than Christian precept and example. He wants the nonsense taken out of him."

"Why, sir," said Timothy; "there's not a boy in Porthcarrick that gets the cane as often as Jack Raymond; anyway, since the captain died."

"Who?"

"Captain John, the Vicar's youngest brother. He was drowned three years ago last October, saving life in rough weather off Longships way by Land's End. The Vicar has no children of his own, so he took in the orphans, for they were left ill-provided, and he's done his duty by them, as a Christian man."

"There are more children, then?"

"There's one little girl, sir — eight years old; and a sweet little maid she is, no more like this imp of darkness than a plaice is like a pilchard. She takes after the Raymonds."

"And the Vicar is strict with the boy?"

Timothy screwed up his lips.

"Well, sir, there be some gentlemen on the school board do say he's a bit too strict; 'the flogging parson', they call him, because he's all for more caning in the schools. But to my mind he's right, sir; the human heart is corrupt and desperately wicked, and how else be 'ee goin' to instil the fear of God into a boy?"