Dr. Cross had known. He was too steady and diligent a worker to fail; but would pass ingloriously, by sheer perseverance, showing no trace of the special capacities which marked him as a born physician.
His heart's desire, never mentioned to any one except Helen, and to her but half-expressed, was to become a great specialist in the diseases of children. Even to himself he scarcely formulated this, his one ambition; but, hidden deep under the diffidence which afflicted him lay an abiding sense that he was called to this vocation; rather, that he held a claim for it upon the gods, as justification for faith. In his dumb way, half-consciously, he demanded this satisfaction of them, not repining nor in anger, but as a fair right, bought and paid for. Surely they would be honest for this once, and not repudiate so clear a title-deed. Seeing that he had accepted the curse of childhood as they had laid it on him, and had neither blasphemed against their ruling nor fallen by the way and died, it seemed but just that they should grant him, in return, a special understanding of the wrongs and griefs of children, a special right to help and heal. If Dr. Jenkins had but understood...
In other respects his childhood had marked him less than Helen had feared. The trace of it showed chiefly in a certain soberness of judgment, the serious moderation of a too early maturity. Yet he seemed to her freer than she had dared to hope from any morbid taint of bitterness, and, if not so young as his years warranted, still, far younger than he had been at fourteen.
Of Molly he seldom spoke, even to Helen; and she had often grieved over his reticence, dreading lest it might be the cloak for secret brooding. But, well as she had learned to read his character, she was mistaken here. He had trained himself not to waste his strength on barren yearning before the coming of the time for action. To rescue his sister was with him a purpose, not a craving; when he should have hewn a foothold for himself it would be time to turn and stretch a hand to her; till then he could do nothing for her but keep his face averted, lest the sight of her, defenceless in the enemy's hands, might distract him from his work. He had not seen her for seven years. She had been put to school in Truro, he knew; and, being now sixteen and tall for her age, was counted a young woman grown. "Next summer," Aunt Sarah had written in her Christmas letter, "she is to come home for good, and help in the parish work; for I am not so active as I used to be, and your uncle is troubled with rheumatism in the damp weather. She had a fancy to learn hospital nursing; but your uncle decided that she would be more useful and safer from temptation at home, so she has said no more about it. She has always been a good girl and very obedient, and he is pleased with her."
The Christmas letters, one from Aunt Sarah and one from Molly herself, had been, for all these seven years, the only link between Jack and his old life; except, indeed, the formal quarterly reports of his progress which he had sent, as stipulated, to the Vicar, and the long replies to them, each containing a meagre cheque and much sound advice and pious exhortation. The admonitions troubled him little; the remittances were the blackest shadow left upon his youth; a shadow of which Helen scarcely dared to speak, since she could do nothing to remove it. Once only, the Easter when he was sixteen, the look on his face, as he laid the cheque beside her, had made her break silence, putting up a thin hand to touch his cheek.
"My dear, you need never see him again, at least until you are a man."
"I have to eat his bread," he had answered in his slow, tense way. "The stray cats in the street are luckier; they're not told who throws the scraps."
After his return to school, Helen, with her failing health, had made again the weary journey to Porthcarrick, and repeated her ineffectual entreaty that she might be permitted to adopt the lad altogether.
"I could afford to keep him till he can keep himself," she urged; "and it would settle many difficulties. Once you have consented to let him live with me, why should you pay his schooling? It is only right and just that I, who have the privilege of his affection, should cover his expenses. It's small return for the benefit that his companionship has been to my own child. And the boy himself would be happier, too."
Beyond a little more compression of the lips there was no sign in the Vicar's face that she had pained him.
"It is not a question of happiness," he said, "but of right and wrong. My dead brother's son has a claim upon me for food and clothing, and for an adequate and Christian education, and I will not shirk my responsibilities. It is enough that I have consented to be set aside and to let a stranger take the place which belongs in God's sight to me and to my wife. That the boy has proved unworthy, and that he repays me with vindictiveness and hatred, are considerations off the point. It is my duty to provide for him."
Helen submitted; to press him further would have been to risk awakening his combative instincts: and if he should choose at any time to call the lad back home, she could not resist.
"I have tried again, my dear," she said to Jack on her next visit to the school; "and failed again. You will have to bear it as best you can."
As she looked up, and saw the line in which his mouth had set, it struck upon her suddenly how like the Vicar he was. There was a likeness in his speech too, when he answered.
"I'm sorry you bothered to go so far for nothing," was all he said. "If you had asked me, I could have told you it would be no use."
On his twenty-first birthday Jack received a letter from his uncle, inviting him to Porth-carrick for the settlement of business connected with the investment of the small property left by Captain Raymond, for which the Vicar had been trustee. "I have preserved it intact," the letter ran, "for you and your sister; and to that end have covered all the expenses of your minority out of my own purse. Being my next of kin, you will be co-heirs to what little I have to leave; so you had better know how it is invested. I presume also that, after so many years, you will wish to see your sister."
He replied stiffly and politely, declining the invitation. "From my share of what my father left," he added, "I would ask you to repay yourself what you have spent for me; and if anything is left over, to take it for my sister's keep. I will try to repay you when I can what she has cost you. Of the money you speak of leaving to me in your will I have no need."
There the letter ended, with a curt: "Faithfully yours."
For the summer vacation he went, as always, to Shanklin. Helen did not meet him on the platform, and he left the station with a sudden deepening of the grave lines round his mouth. He had been anxious for some time about her health; and he knew that nothing short of illness would have kept her in when he was coming. Approaching the cottage he stopped short, drawing in his breath; a great tangle of jasmine, torn down from the wall by last night's storm, hung trailing on the steps; in the garden border the red carnations had fallen over and lay prone, their blossoms in the dust; Helen's flowers, that were always cared for like young children.
She was in the sitting room, the maid told him, lying on the sofa. She had not been well lately, but had insisted on getting up today because he was coming. Going into the room softly, he found her asleep, and stood still, looking down at her. The lines deepened again about his mouth; she was more changed even than he had feared.
When she awoke, he kissed her without any sign of agitation, and began at once to talk of ordinary trifles. She looked at him a moment, covertly, and saw that he had understood. "He is doctor enough to see," she thought; "it will be different with Theo."
"When is Theo coming?" he asked, as if he had followed her thought.
"Next week; the Academy vacation does not begin till Saturday, and he will break the journey at Paris. Conrad wants Saint-Saens to hear him."
Theo was studying music under Joachim in Berlin. He was to make his first public appearance in the autumn; and great things were expected of him.
"I am glad to have you alone for a few
days before he comes," she went on. "There are several things I want to talk over with you."
''About Theo?"
; "Chiefly about him. He has not... grown up as you have, dear; perhaps it is the penalty of his type of genius that the possessor, or possessed, of it never can grow up. You will have to be a man for him, as well as for yourself, after..."
The sentence was hardly broken off; there was no need to finish it, seeing that he had understood. He sat quite still for a moment; then looked up smiling, defiantly cheerful.
"Yes; it's a bit rough on him, isn't it? Still, some one's got to have genius, if the rest of us are to hear any music. It was kind of the fates not to curse me with it, as things stand."
She laughed softly and put a hand in his.
"In addition to all other curses? You have brought blessings out of them for an old woman that loves you, my grave and reverend counsellor. Some day a young woman will love you instead of me, and you will grow young with her. I should be glad to see you young, once, for five minutes."
"There's no need, where Theo is. He is not just young; he is youth everlasting."
"Poor Theo!" she sighed under her breath; and Jack stooped down, for answer, and kissed her fingers.
"Mother," he said, with his eyes turned away, "you made me a promise last month."
"Yes, dear, and kept it."
He started and looked up.
"You went to London, and... never told me?"
"Of course not. It just happened that one of the specialists you mentioned came to Ventnor last week for a holiday; and I thought I would get the thing over at once, so I got an introduction, and..."
"Who was it?"
"Professor Brooks. I didn't care to write about it, when you were coming home so soon."
"And he..?"
"Yes; it is cancer."
She heard the quick sound in his throat as the breath stopped an instant; then there was silence, and he sat and looked before him, a stone figure, grey and motionless. After a little while she raised herself, and slipped her arm about him.
"Does it shake you so, dear? I knew it was that, and I thought... I thought you had guessed too."
He looked round slowly, pale as ashes.
"I had suspected; but to know is different. Does he think..?"
"He wants to see you. I told him you were coming, and he made an appointment for to-morrow. He refused to tell me any details; and even the fact itself he told me only because he saw I knew."
Again they were silent. When next she spoke, her voice was lower, and a little tremulous.
"There is one thing I have to say to you, and I want you to remember it all your life. You have been to me, without knowing it, the consolation for a bitter grief. It is the way of a mother, I suppose, to create out of her brain the dream son that her soul desires, and to find, when she is old and weary, that the son she has created out of her body is different; better, may be, but to her a stranger. It is not for me to reproach the fates because they have given my boy artistic genius and the limitations that sometimes go with it; and perhaps he is all the dearer to me because his nature is to mine so new and strange and wonderful. But you, who have no blood of mine, have been the other son, the child of my secret hope; and I shall go more lightly to meet death because I have seen the desire of my sight, a son that I can trust."
For all answer he slipped down and knelt beside her, his head against her breast.
"I can trust you." She lingered passionately on the words. "I can trust you; and Theo will be safe. If I had not found you, I should have had to die — think of it! — and leave him alone..."
Jack lifted up his head suddenly, and she saw how white he was.
"And aren't you leaving me alone? Theo — Theo will have me; and what shall I have? What else have I got in the world but you? What sort of life have you ever had? And now, — when I might have begun to give you a little peace and happiness ------ It's unjust! It's unjust. Oh, there, don't let us talk about it, for God's sake!"
He pulled his hand away from hers and went out hastily. She heard the house-door slammed and hurried footsteps on the garden path; then everything was still, and she leaned back on her pillows, panting for breath. Jack's sudden break-down had set her heart throbbing with affright; it was so unlike him.
He, for his part, lay face downwards on the grass under the laburnum tree. At last he gathered himself up, tramped to and fro in the garden for a while, and came in at the verandah door with his everyday face.
"Mother," he said, "I'm going to tie up the jasmine; and I asked Eliza to make some tea and help you get to bed. You mustn't overtire yourself."
The next day he called on Professor Brooks, and heard the details of the sentence with an unmoved face. She might live a year, or even more, the professor said, or perhaps only a few months; one could not tell much beforehand with internal cancer. He was not inclined to advise an operation; it might prolong her life a little, but only for a few months at the most; and the other way would be more merciful. "If she were my mother," he added gently, "I should not wish an operation."
There was no tremor in Jack's voice. "Then you think she will suffer very much?" he asked. The professor hesitated.
"It depends... Perhaps not so much as in many cases, if it goes quickly; but cancer is always cancer, and it may..."
He stopped, with a sense of wonder at the stolid face. "Is that callousness," he asked himself, "or self-control?" Then he saw the little sweat beads break out on Jack's forehead, and thought: "Poor lad!"
The next week brought Theo, like embodied sunshine; a creature ignorant of death and grief. Helen had written to him at Paris, telling him that she had been ill and was "not quite strong enough to get about"; so he was prepared to be met at the station by Jack only, and to find her on the sofa when they reached the house. He came in with his unshadowed face, his violin, his aureole of yellow curls; and knelt down to hug and kiss her rapturously and to litter the sofa with the presents he had brought.
"Why, mummy, what do you mean by falling ill the minute we go away? Is it to provide Jack with an opportunity to try his hand at doctoring? That's carrying maternal devotion a bit too far. And to grow so thin, too! You must hurry up and get well before the bright weather goes; we want to take you boating, you know. Wait, I've got something outside that 'll make you well to look at."
He ran out into the passage, then came back with a huge sheaf of white Annunciation lilies filling both arms, and heaped them all over the sofa.
"Did you ever see such glorious ones? I stopped at Havre on the way, and the peasants were bringing them in to market for the Madonna's images in church, so I got a bar-rowful for my special Madonna."
"And carried that load all the way from Havre? And the violin too?"
"Well, mummy, people carry lilies and musical instruments in heaven, don't they? And the water was like heaven to-day, with white sea-birds instead of seraphim, and shiny fishes wriggling and jumping for sheer delight, like the souls of the good people after they die. Why, Jack, how seedy you look! Too much dissecting, is it?"
Jack was standing still, looking out into the blossoming garden, and wondering how much more of this a man could bear. He turned with his wooden face.
"Oh, I'm all right, thanks. Don't you think the lilies should go in water?"
"Yes; they'll want a big bath-tub, won't they? Mummy, you look sweeter than ever; you ought always to be half buried in lilies."
As he stooped to lift them Helen caught his arm and drew him down beside her, resting her cheek against his.
"Kochanku moj!" Her eyes shone with a light which only Theo's presence waked in them; her voice had a deeper tone in her native speech. And Jack, the outsider, looked on without bitterness or jealousy, but with an aching heart. He had grown accustomed to this, years ago; yet the pain of it was always new. It was a thing inevitable, that must be accepted and endured in silence. To the end his uttermost devotion would be a lesser joy to her than the touch of this bright creature's wings; yet he was loved as much as any one could ever be who was not Theo and not of Polish blood. "She sees Poland i
n him," he thought once more; "and he cares as much for Poland as I for El Dorado."
Theo ran off laughing, his arms full of lilies, and the black kitten, dusted from ear to tail with golden pollen, purring on his shoulder. The door closed behind him, and the light faded out of Helen's eyes.
"Jack, how can we ever tell him? It is sacrilege to throw a cloud on him; he is Baldur the Beautiful."
Jack was stooping to smooth her pillow and gather up the fallen lily petals. He spoke with his face turned away.
"You had better let me tell him, mother; it may be less of a shock to him that way, and Professor Brooks wants you kept quiet."
There was a kind of struggle in her face... "No, dear!" she said at latst. "We will neither of us tell him. Let him have this one summer without a cloud. Remember, he comes out next autumn, and it might shake his nerves and spoil his playing; and the first concerts mean so much. There's no reason why he should know; I... I don't have the pain very often yet; and he goes back to Germany in September; he won't find out before then..."
Jack stooped down and kissed her gravely. "As you like, mother. It shall be our secret, yours and mine."
CHAPTER X
So the holiday-time passed, and Theo suspected nothing. His mother's weakness and inability to take the pleasure trips he had planned for her were a sore disappointment to him; his sweet and sunny nature could not care for enjoyment which might not be shared with others, and he had religiously saved up his few superfluous coins "to take mother about in the summer." Not being able to do this, he spent his money on hot-house grapes and peaches for her, and his time in ransacking the district for flowers and shells, making a sea-water aquarium to amuse her, or sitting at the piano in the dark, improvising soft fantasies while she lay listening with Jack's hand clasped in hers. "This is the water lapping against a boat, mummy," he would say; "next year you'll come out and hear the real thing instead of my imitations."
"I think I like your imitations best, dear," she would answer cheerfully, and hold Jack's hand a little tighter.
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