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 catch 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 ——"

"Bill Greggs, if I swop, I swop. You take the knife, and I take the grey-bird and the hiding. Is that plain? Then stow your tot and clear out of there and fetch the bird."

"Oh, well, if you don't care, I don't." He ran back to the blacksmith's cottage. Jack lay still; kicking his hefels lazily, and ineditating on his bargain. He was not really quite so indifferent to consequences as he chose to appear. Now that there was no one to see, his forehead contracted again; at the bottom of his heart he was afraid. But his reputation as a "devil's limb" had to be kept up; and moreover, thrashings, as he reflected, are among the inevitable accidents of life, like "the act of God" that the railway companies mention in their consignment bills. You can't expect to get through boyhood without them; not, at least, if you happen to be an orphan of evil disposition, with a double dose of original sin and a pernicious resemblance to a mother who is both dead and damned; so it makes little difference just when they come. And then, to have one's eyes burnt out and be set to sing for all one's life in a little wooden cage... And after all, it would be a joke to see uncle downright furious. The theft of the Bishop's knife would probably go down in the "conduct book" with a black cross against it; uncle's memory was evidently short. Jack, for his part, needed no such artificial aids; he had many grievances against his uncle, and he remembered them every one.

Whatever else the Vicar had accomplished, he had at least taught this turbulent, difficult nature some self-control. In the Captain's life-time Jack had been a creature of im­pulses; had bitten and scratched when he was angry and struggled furiously when he was hurt Now he was chronically angry and well accustomed to being hurt; and had learned to set his teeth and wait for his opportunity. It generally came, sooner or later; and he did not often fail to render the offending "grown-ups" as uncomfortable as they had made him.

 Billy ran back with the wretched mavis panting and fluttering in a cage of firewood hardly bigger than itself. So Jack walked home with the cage under his arm, and, slip­ping into the house unobserved, hid the bird in his bedroom..

After supper he said good-night, and car­ried his books upstairs, telling the Vicar that he had lessons to prepare for Monday's school. His room was small and low, but he liked it better than any other in the house, because it had windows facing east and west, so that he could see the sun both rise and set. When he had locked his door he took the cage from its hiding-place and set it on the western window-sill.

"All right, you little fool!" he grumbled to the terrified bird as it shrank up against the bars. "Keep your hair on! It's me hell pitch into, not you."

He put into the cage a bit of watercress which he had slipped inside his jacket at tea-time. But the mavis would only flutter desper­ately and beat its wings against the bars. Jack sat down on the sill beside it, turning his back to the Sunset, and considered what to do next.

His first idea had been to keep the bird, and tame it. Certainly a thrush would be a sec­ond-rate kind of pet; he would have much preferred, for instance, a starling, which could be taught to swear, and to blaspheme against bishops and against green-handled knives and missions to deep sea fishermen. But a thrush would be better than nothing; and if he was going to get into trouble for its sake, it was only fair that he should have some fun out of the transaction. On the other hand, wild creatures do not always take kindly to captivity; and for that matter, uncle would be angry enough to kill the bird for sheer spite if ever he should happen to find out. Had he hot drowned Molly's pet kitten last winter, to punish her for getting her frock dirty? Jack's eyes darkened at the memory; he hated the Vicar with the silent, poisonous hatred that remembers and bides its time; and in his long and heavy score agaihst his enemy this was a big item. Until lately his attitude towards Molly had been one of Olympian indifference; what had he to do with a mere girl, who was afraid of the dark and couldn't so much as throw a stone straight? But the day when he had come home from school and found her in the tool-house, blind and sick with crying because Tiddles was dead, — ("and oh, Tiddles did squeak so!") — had been the beginning of a new sense in him, that it was somehow his business to protect his sister.

No, there was nothing for it but to let the bird go. The fate of Tiddles was a warning; it does not do to get fond of creatures that you are not strong enough to defend. Once free inTrevanna glen, the mavis must fight its own battles.

"If you get caught again, you little duffer," he remarked, rising and opening the window; "I shan't help you out; once is enough."

 Trevanna glen lay soft and dim in a golden sunset haze. The sky was too clear for flam­ing colour; only a few high cloudlets trailed their faint rose bands across the west. From the beach came a low sound of ripples on the shingle; then the wailing cry of a sea-gull.

As Jack opened the cage door the mavis fluttered, panic-stricken, and shrank away. He drew back a little, and the bird passed by him like a lightning flash. He heard a sud­den cry, a whirring of swift wings; and leaned upon the sill, following with his eyes a moving black spot, small and smaller, that darted straight towards the glen.

He crossed the room and sat down on his bed, holding on to the foot-rail. He seemed to have gone all shaky inside, and there was a tightening in his throat. When he shut his eyes the tree-tops came back, and the yellow haze, and the spread wings of a living soul that had been caged and now was free.

He opened his eyes at last and looked around him, solemnly afraid. The room startled him with its familiar aspect; it was all as it had been, and he alone was changed. On the table lay his lesson books; the empty cage stood on the window-sill, the watercress dangling from its bars. He must smash up the cage, by the way, or uncle would ask...

Ah, what did uncle matter now?

He went back to the window and looked out, his shoulder on the lintel, his head against his arm. There he watched while the sunset faded. All the broad spaces between earth and sky were full of violet shadows; in the glen the tree-tops swayed a little, and grew still; the sea-birds called, and called again, and settled in the hollows, and all things fell asleep. Then stars came out; one, and another, and a thousand, shining above shadowy trees and ghostly moorland half asleep, with clear eyes, full of wonder; as if they too had only now begun to understand, and, looking down upon the world's familiar face, had seen that it was good.