Jack Raymond Read online

  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.

  CHAPTER II

  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.

  He, for his part, had nearly forgotten the incident of the puppy, and certainly bore no ill-will on account of it. Thrashings were matters of common occurrence; and, for the rest, he was still in the barbaric stage of cub­hood, and had fought as much for pure joy in fighting as for any sentimental reason. Nevertheless, he instinctively disliked both Greaves and Polwheal, just as he disliked Charlie Thompson, the fat, short-winded boy whose hands always disgusted him — he could not have told why. Jack, like many primitive creatures, had a curious physical shrinking from anything not quite healthy. Singularly enough, this subtle instinct of repulsion had never yet warned him against the Vicar; there his feeling was quite simple and ele­mentary; he hated his uncle, just as he liked animals, just as he despised Aunt Sarah.

  Mr. Hewitt, the schoolmaster, walked down the lane with his eyes on the ground; he did not share the general high spirits. The re­sponsibilities of his profession weighed heav­ily upon him, for he was a conscientious person, and nature had not intended him for a schoolmaster.

  "Together again," he muttered, looking after the two big boys as they walked off arm in arm.

  "They're always huggermuggering over something," said the curate, coming up be­hind him. Mr. Hewitt turned round quickly, with a look of relief; he and the curate were old friends.

  "I'm awfully worried about this business, Black," he said. "Do you think the Vicar suspects anything?"

  "I'm certain he doesn't; he'd have turned the place inside out. You know how severe he is about anything immoral. Why, the other day, with Roscoe's girl — I thought he would have frightened her into a fit. It's all very well, Hewitt, but he goes too far. The girl's very young and ignorant, and it was not fair to press her so."

  "I don't agree with you. As vicar of the parish he ought to know the seducer's name, for the protection of other girls. It was sheer obstinacy that made her refuse to tell."

  "Or sheer terror. Anyhow, about the boys ------"

  The schoolmaster drew back.

  "For Heaven's sake!" he crifed; "you don't suspect one of my boys about the Roscoe girl?"

  "No, no, of course not! It's some young fisherman. That is..." They both paused a moment.

  "I hadn't thought of that," the curate went on, with a troubled face; "but Greaves and Polwheal... Anyway, it's no use imagining horrors like that till we have cause. And Heaven knows the other thing's black enough."

  "It is indeed; and the worst is that I'm afraid the Vicar's own nephew is at the bottom of it all."

  "Hewitt, are you sure of that? Jack is without exception the most troublesome boy I ever came across, but he doesn't look to
me that sort, somehow. Now if you'd said Thompson ------"

  "Oh, as for Thompson, I have no doubt at all. But I'm afraid Jack must be a bad lot too; he's so utterly callous. And if so, his influence over all the other boys makes him fearfully dangerous. You know, in every thing, it's he that leads them away, I scarcely know how to go and tell Mn Raymond what I suspect, after all the trouble he's taken about the school. I'm convinced of one thing: if we have a scandal in this place, and boys expelled, and the newspapers reporters down, and his nephew's in it, — it'll break the Vicar's heart. Who's that — Greggs?"

  A slim, indefinite-looking boy, with timid eyes, too prominent and a little too near together, got up from behind a tussock of gorse, and pulled at his cap with a shame­faced grin. He was the village blacksmith's son, and a personal satellite of Jack Raymond, without whose nefarious influence he would probably never have had the courage to rob any man's orchard; A born huckster, he made a good deal of pocket-money by accompany­ing Mr. Hewitt's scholars on various mar­auding expeditions under Jack's leadership, and selling them birds, ferrets, and fishing­tackle by the way.

  "Could you go a message for me this afternoon?" asked the curate.

  "If Master Jack will let me, sir; he told me to wait for him here: he wants to go fishing."

  "You see," sighed Mr. Hewitt, as he walked on with his friend. "Jack told him to wait; and he'll wait the whole afternoon sooner than disobey. A boy like that is putty in Jack's hands."

  Indeed, Billy Greggs had waited for a long time when his commander appeared, moody and wrathful-eyed, and dismissed him with a curt: "Bill, it's no go."

  "Why, Jack, aren't you coming?" "Can't; the beastly sneak is keeping me in to do a lot of piggish Latin — just because the weather's fine."

  "What, old Hewitt? Why ------"

  "No, uncle, of course; it's just his spite." "Have you been putting his back up again?"

  "Oh, the everlasting story — want of re­spect to the Bishop. I wish that old boy would come back out of his grave for five minutes — wouldn't I just punch his head!"

  The Bishop, an eminent and learned great-uncle of the Raymonds, and the only member of the family who had ever attained to any special distinction, was at the vicarage a kind of household god on a small scale. Every object connected with his memory was treated with solemn reverence; and Jack's grudge against him was, perhaps a natural result of the many hundreds of "lines" that he had written out, on various half-holidays, as penance for transgressing against the family taboo.

  "You know that knife with the green handle that uncle makes such a fuss over be­cause the Duke of something or other gave it to the Bishop? I just took it to mend my tackle this afternoon, and, of course, he came in and caught me; and wasn't he wild! I slipped out at the back door to let you know. I'll get done as quick as I can. Good­bye."

  "Jack!" Billy called after the retreating figure; "meet me behind our cowshed when you're done; we'll have larks."

  Jack stopped and turned back. "Why, what's up?"

  "Whitefoot's calving, and something's gone wrong. Father's sent for the vet to put her right. He won't let me in; but there's a chink at the back by the ash-heap, and we can ------"

  Jack flared up suddenly.

  "Bill Greggs, if I catch you hanging about and peeping at things that aren't your busi­ness, the vet 'll have you to put right next, you dirty little cad."

  Billy subsided, meekly enough, but with a small internal chuckle, remembering what things could safely be said and done under this strict commander's very nose.

  "All right," he said mildly; "you needn't snap my head off. I say, do you want a grey-bird?"

  "What, a tame one?"

  "Well, you can tame it if you like. I caught one yesterday in the glen — a beauty. You can have it for ninepence."

  "And where am I going to get the nine-pence?"

  "Why, you had half-a-crown the other day."

  Jack shrugged his shoulders; money never would stop in his pockets for any length of time,

  "I've only got twopence halfpenny now."

  "All right! then I shall let Greaves have the bird; he asked me for it. I'll blind it to-night."

  Jack's level brows contracted into a frown.

  "Let the thing alone, can't you!" he said angrily. "What d'you want to blind it for? It 'll sing right enough without that."

  At this second display of mawkishness in his captain Billy permitted himself a little snigger.

  "Why, Jack, I didn't think you were so soft! Of course I'm going to blind it; it's the proper way. There's nothing to make all that fuss about; you just stick a needle into a cork and make it red-hot and ------"

  "Let me see the bird before you do it," Jack interrupted imperiously. "I'll get done by tea-time."

  He walked away, his forehead still con­tracted. Perhaps the dash of Hungarian blood inherited from his mother was respon­sible for the overweening personal pride which made any suspicion of ridicule so in­tolerably galling to him. He rated himself fiercely for caring who peeped and sniggered at "beastly" sights, or put out a wild bird's eyes. What was it all to him that he should mind so much? Nobody else ever minded those things.

  Nevertheless, the grey-bird and the hot needle kept getting in the way of the Latin verses the whole afternoon, and Jack's temper grew worse and worse. His educa­tion and surroundings, the steady hardening process through which he had been put, had come near to grinding out of him whatever natural softness he might originally have possessed; and, being inordinately proud of his reputation as the most callous reprobate of the district, he was afflicted with a kind of shame every time any thing touched upon one of those little sensitive spots, of whose exist­ence no one knew but himself. By the time the Latin was finished he was boiling over with impatience to commit some reckless enormity which should at once "pay uncle out"for the spoiled half-holiday and restore himself to his proper place in his own estima­tion and in that of Billy Greggs. He wiped his inky fingers on his aunt's clean table­cover, thrust them into his black thatch of hair, and racked his brains for a plan.

  In the next room the Vicar was at work upon his sermon for Sunday morning. He wrote more fluently than was usual with him, and the blunt corners of his mouth were compressed into their most characteristic line. The sermon was to be a thunderbolt in Porthcarrick, a stern denunciation of Farmer Roscoe's daughter and her unknown, seducer. The girl herself and her proud, helpless old father would probably be pres­ent, for the Roscoes were regular attendants at church; but Mr. Raymond was not sensi­tive. He had no sympathy with what he called "her crime"; in his youth he had known something of temptation, but not of such temptation as Maggie Roscoe would have understood.

  ***

  "Hi! Bill!"

  Billy Greggs was poking up a fat snail with a stick; he turned round at the shout and saw Jack Raymond racing down the heather slope towards him.

  "Done your Latin?"

  Jack threw himself full length on the heather.

  "Yes, at last."

  Billy returned to the snail. For some little time Jack lay royally at ease, kicking his heels in the air like the uncouth young Philistine he was: then he sat up, pulled a knife out of his pocket, opened it with a broken and dirty finger nail and began whit­tling a stick to a cheerful accompaniment of "Tommy, make room for your uncle..."

  "Hullo!" Billy said, after watching him a moment. "Where did that knife come from?"

  "What's that to you?"

  "Hold hard; let's have a look."

  Jack held out the knife in a great brown fist It was an expensive-looking tool, with a malachite handle and initials engraved on a gold plate.

  "Why, it's... the Bishop's! Jack!"

  Jack returned the knife to his pocket with a grin.

  "How did you get hold of it?"

  "P'raps uncle gave it me for being such a good boy."

  "Rats!"

  "P'raps I took it."

  Billy whistled softly.

  "My eye, won't you just ca
tch it!"

  "Rather!" said Jack laconically, kicking the heather roots. Then, after a pause: "I say, Bill!"

  "Well?"

  "Will you swop?"

  "Swop what?"

  "Why, that bird — for the knife."

  Billy sat bolt upright and stared, open-mouthed. The "grey-bird," a common mavis thrush, might be worth, at the most, a shilling; the knife would be worth, to the boy found guilty of stealing it...

  "Why, Jack, he'll lick you into the middle of next week!"

  Jack shrugged his shoulders.

  "I'm not a girl, to mind a bit of a hiding, am I?"

  "I say!" Billy turned over on his elbows and looked at him with interest. "You get thrashed a lot, don't you? They do say your uncle's a reg'lar old beast for caning."

  "'Twon't be caning any more, so he says. He told me, the last licking I had, he'd take the horsewhip next time, and see if that 'd do me any good."

  "What had you been doing?" Jack was more and more laconic "'For­get. Time before last it was for stealing pears out of the garret and shying them off the roof at the squire's old maid sister when she came to call. Just smashed her nice new bonnet."

  "The pears did?"

  "Only the bad ones; I ate the others, half before the licking and half after, to take the taste out of my mouth."

  "You're a cool hand!"

  "You don't suppose I care," said Jack, with lofty scorn.

  Billy reflected. A boy who could stand unlimited "licking" without turning a hair was a creature to be approached with due respect, however ludicrous might be his pre­posterous innocence and his occasional fits of "softness".

  "Do you really want to swop?"

  " 'Course I do. Where's the bird?"

  "At home. But — look here ------"

  "Well?"

  "Are you sure you won't..."

  "Won't what?"

  "Why, get me into hot water?"

  Jack's big fist took him by the scruff of the neck and jerked him back on the heather.

  "Now, then, none of your cheek!"

  "No, I mean... if your uncle ——"