"Did he remember falling? Was it from window-ledge? When was it? How did it happen?"
He only shook his head in silence.
Then they brought him something to drink; and he took it obediently, wondering why they could not let him alone, and why the glass should jingle so against his teeth. But he felt much stronger and more alive after it, which indeed was small gain. The position in which he lay was hurting him very much; and he made several patient efforts to change it, stopping perforce when too many sparks danced before his eyes, and stubbornly trying again as soon as he could breathe. But he gave up the struggle at last, and lay still, biting his lip and wishing he were dead. It had not occurred to him to ask any one's help.
"Do you want the pillow shifted?" asked the Vicar.
Jack looked up at him silently; and Dr. Jenkins, standing near, saw the deadly vindictiveness in the black eyes and bent down over the sofa.
"Is the arm hurting you much now?" "It's not so bad when you let it alone." "Does anything else hurt you except the arm?"
Jack looked round at him slowly, with grave contempt.
"What makes you think that? I haven't made a fuss, have I?"
"Indeed you haven't, you little Spartan," said Dr. Williams, turning his head with a smile. He had overheard only the last words. "I wish all grown-up patients made so little — don't you, Jenkins?"
Dr. Jenkins said nothing. He had keener eyes than the older man, and to him the steady, practised stoicism of this mere child was a frightful thing to see. The rope marks on the wrists had aroused his suspicions at the first, and he had been watching quietly. When no one else was looking he had seen the boy put up his left hand furtively, and bite it. The action had explained to him the savage little dints marking the brown skin in so many places; apparently the mere clenching of teeth had often not proved help enough. "You didn't learn that trick in one night," he thought; "and you know more than you care to tell. We haven't got to the bottom of this story yet."
Jack said nothing either, but his mouth twitched. He had had enough of posing as a Spartan, and would have been glad to sob and shriek like other children. But it was too late in the day to begin that now, and besides, he was too tired; so he looked out of the window and held his tongue.
"Do you feel better now?" asked Dr. Williams, seeing that the boy had left off trembling. "Then we'll just unfasten your things and make sure there's no more mischief anywhere."
"I think I saw a cut on the right shoulder," Dr. Jenkins put in. There was something unusual in his tone, so that Jack looked up at htm again quickly and then dropped his eyes,
"Oh, we must expect to find a few little cuts and bruises after such a tumble," said the old doctor cheerfully. "You needn't shiver so, my boy; I'm not going to hurt you any more; that's all over. Hullo!"
He had uncovered the stained shirt.
"Why, what the dickens have you been doing to yourself? Tumbling out of window every night for a month? You never got into this state by... Jenkins, come here; look at this child's shoulders! Why, it's..."
Then there was dead silence, while the three men watched each other's faces. At last Jack looked up suddenly at his uncle, and their eyes met.
"Jack!" the clergyman whispered hoarsely, with lips as colourless as the boy's own. "For God's sake, why didn't you tell me the arm was broken?"
Jack only looked at him and laughed.
CHAPTER VI
Angry as Dr. Jenkins was, he held his tongue. His first impulse, however, on leaving the house, had been to make the whole matter public; and it was only after a hot discussion with his colleague that he had agreed to keep silence.
"Professional secrecy!" He had interrupted the old man's arguments, as they walked together down the lane. "And if I were called to a house and saw murder being done, would you expect me to keep up professional secrecy then? This is not so far off it. All this talk of the Vicar and his respectability — thank Heaven some of the world's not respectable at that rate! I didn't often come across things so bad as this when I was practising in the slums of Liverpool. One would think the child had been clawed by a wild beast."
"It's a ghastly business, I don't deny," Dr. Williams had answered mildly. "But what good will you do to any one by exposing it? You'll ruin his career, there will be a horrible scandal in the papers, and the boy's position will be worse than ever. And then, think of the poor wife!"
But the reticence of the two doctors was of little avail. Probably the story leaked out first through the servants; however that may have been, by Monday evening Porthcarrick and all the neighbouring villages were ringing with the scandal of the Vicarage. Even the intolerant, gouty, bad-tempered old Tory squire came down from his chough's nest at the top of the cliff to discuss the matter solemnly with the schoolmaster and curate. Seeing that there was no longer anything to conceal, and that silence only led to the circulation of exaggerated reports, the two doctors consented to tell what they knew. Mr. Hewitt then gave them a detailed account of the enormities of which Jack had been found guilty; and the curate earnestly pointed out that the Vicar's action, "much as all of us must regret it," was, after all, only the result of too great zeal in the cause of public morality.
"And what's all that to me, sir?" roared the squire. "You don't suppose I need to be told that Jack Raymond's a damned young scoundrel? Every cow in Porthcarrick knows that, and it's nothing to do with the matter. If the boy's too bad to live among decent folks, send him to a reformatory — what else do we keep them up out of the rates for? But while I'm lord of the manor there shall be no vivisecting and Spanish Inquisitions here, or I'll know the reason why."
In the end the matter was, of course, hushed up, though not without a stormy scene at the Vicarage. At any other time Mr. Raymond would have loftily resented the interference of outsiders in his domestic concerns; but the shock of finding out on Satur-day morning how narrowly he had escaped a tragedy, had startled him out of all his mental habits. Seated at his desk, his head resting on one hand, his foot nervously tapping the floor, he listened to everything that his accusers had to say; and looked up at last, with a sigh,
"I have no doubt you are right, gentlemen. I have been to blame in this matter; but I did all for the best. A little injury to one perishable body seemed to me of small account as against the utter destruction of so many immortal souls. Perhaps, Providence having so greatly afflicted me in the character of my nephew, I did wrong ever to let him enter a school where he had an opportunity of contaminating others. I have heard," he added, turning to Dr. Jenkins, "that some doctors believe these vicious tendencies can be eradicated by a special course of hygienic treatment; but the idea seems to me to be based on a profoundly immoral conception. How can hygiene cure sin?"
"I'm not a theologian," said the doctor bluntly; "and I have been busy saving the boy's life — and his reason, I hope; not thinking about his morals."
A greyer shade of pallor crept over the Vicar's face.
"Have you any fear for his mind?" he asked.