After a moment he rose to leave the room; but paused and looked back with his hand on the door.
"Jack," he said, "when your father died I took you and your sister in for his sake; but I did it with a heavy heart, for you have in you the blood of a harlot. I have fed and clothed you and dealt with you as if you had been my own; and now I have my reward. You have brought the abomination of desolation into my house and the pit of hell before my door; you have made me ashamed among my neighbours, and blackened my face in the eyes of my congregation. I thank God that your father is dead."
He turned and went out.
Jack slowly lifted his head and looked round him. A few images had begun to shape themselves, more or less distinctly, out of the chaos of his mind. One thing, at least, was quite plain: he was being made the scape-goat for some one; perhaps for the whole gang, but certainly for Billy Greggs, and for Thompson and Greaves and Pol-wheal. "Of course," he told himself wearily, "they knew uncle would believe anything against me." It was simple enough; he had been leader in mischief to all these boys; again and again he had taken things upon himself to shield them, accepting, for his part, as a faithful captain should, the smallest share of booty and the largest of punishment; and all the while they had been dabbling in black secrets, and laughing at him for a fool behind his back. Now they had turned and sold him to his enemy to save their own skins.
He took up the photographs again and looked at them, wearily struggling to understand what use or pleasure things so meaningless and ugly could be to any one. Then, suddenly, the story that he had been reading upstairs came back upon his memory, and he understood why Lucrece had killed herself. He laid down the photographs and sat still
He understood it all now, the mysterious terror of the last few days; the whole thing was so easy, so hideously easy and simple. You jog along in your ordinary way and live your ordinary life, until your uncle, or Tarquin, or somebody else — what matter for the person or the manner of the thing? — some one whose muscles are stronger than yours are, pounces down upon you, and does some horrible shame to your body, and goes his way; and you, that were clean, are never clean any more. Then, if you can bear it, you go on living; and if not, you end like Lucrece.
As Mrs. Raymond came in with tears running down her face, and clasped him in her arms, he looked up, wondering, in a dull, careless way, for whom she was so sorry.
"My dear, my dear," she sobbed, "why will you not confess?"
Jack drew himself away from her and rose.
He looked at the photographs on the table; then at the weeping woman.
"Aunt Sarah, do you believe I did that sort of thing?"
"Oh, Jack!" she burst out; "if you had ever been a good boy I would believe you, no matter how much appearances might be against you: but you know yourself..."
She broke off to dry her eyes with her handkerchief.
"Yes, I know," he answered slowly; "I've always been wicked, haven't I? I suppose I was born so. Aunt Sarah, if I were to die now, do you think I should go straight to hell?"
She came up to him and took his hand gently.
"Listen, my dear; I'm hot wise and clever, like your uncle, but I mean well by you. I do indeed; and I think... perhaps... It's partly our fault that you have fallen into the snares of the evil one. I mean... we may have been a little harsh... sometimes... and you were afraid to confess the first sin, and went on from bad to worse — and you see — you must see, this is the path that leads to hell. Oh, my dear, I know it's hard to confess now... and your uncle is so terribly angry — of course, he's right, for it's a deadly sin. But he'll forgive you in time — I know he will. And Jack, I'll do my best to stand between you and him, — I will indeed, — if you'll only confess."
He listened gravely till the piteous, confused appeal was finished; then he drew his hand away, standing very straight and still. He was tall for his age, and his eyes were nearly on a level with hers.
"Aunt Sarah, I think you had better let me alone. It's a deadly sin, of course. Is it true that my mother was a harlot?"
She drew back with a little cry of horror.
"Jack!"
"Uncle says so. It's a word in the Bible. And if she was, I can't help it, can I? And anyhow, what's the use of crying? It won't help me — oh, you'd better go away!"
"Go away," a hard voice echoed behind them. "A Christian woman has nothing to do with these abominations."
The Vicar took up the photographs and put them into his desk.
"Go away," he repeated sternly. "This is no place for you; Jack knows how to tell you of things that are not for my wife to hear."
"Josiah!" she cried out, and caught him by the arm, "Josiah, — for God's sake — remember, he's a child."
The Vicar turned on her with another burst of rage.
"A child! A child who can teach me, with my grey hair, things that I ------ Go out, go out! it is for men to deal with such children."
She went out, weeping bitterly. Then Jack looked up, and understood. He came forwards gravely, quite self-possessed now.
"Uncle, I want to tell you. This is all a mistake; I know nothing about these things; I never saw them in my life before; I never heard a word about them."
The Vicar took up the knife. "And this?"
"Yes, I took the knife, that's true; and
sold it; but not for those things, and not to the man that you said ------"
"What did you sell it for?"
" I sold it to a boy — for ------"
" To what boy? And for what? "
Jack stopped short. His heart seemed to give one great bound, and then stand still. He saw once more the cage door opened wide, and the happy bird, with outstretched wings, darting away into a golden sunset, like the dove that returned not again.
"What did you sell it for? "
For an instant Jack paused, considering what explanation he could invent; then he resigned himself. Somehow, he could not find a lie to tell, nor indeed would lies avail him anything; and the truth was worse than useless. Even if he could force himself to drag into speech a thing so secret and so holy, there was no one in all the world who would believe him.
"Oh," he cried; "it's hopeless! I can't tell you; I can't tell you — and if I did you'd never understand."
"I understand enough," the Vicar answered. "May Christ defend me from understanding any more!"
He sat down at his desk, motioning the boy to sit opposite him, took out his watch and laid it between them on the table.
"I have given up what little hope I had of appealing to you by any other means than force. What I have to think of now is how to purify the school from defilement and how to protect the innocence of those who are not yet contaminated, and, above all, of your little sister."
His voice faltered for an instant; then he continued steadily: " I must know the whole truth, and I mean to have it from you at any cost. Do you understand? You have ten minutes to decide whether you will confess at once, or whether I must force you."
He leaned back in his chair. Except for the ticking of the watch, there was absolute silence in the room.
As Jack had said, the position was hopeless; the very quality of his innocence rendered it, to his uncle's mind, not merely incredible, but unthinkable. Virtuous conduct the Vicar could understand and appreciate; his own was eminently virtuous, for his deep religious convictions had sustained him through a long and patient struggle with the unwholesome impulses which had beset him in his cold and morbid youth. Like certain mediaeval saints, he had learned, by much prayer and penitence, to resist temptations which would not have tempted any healthy man; had he failed to resist them it might have been better for defenceless creatures at his mercy. The diseased imagination, driven inwards, fed upon itself; and the lust of cruelty had grown up, as a fungus grows, upon the buried rottenness of other lusts. It was now many years since there had been a page in his private life which he would have been ashamed for his neighbours' eyes to read; and he held that every man can, if he will, conquer the impure desires of the flesh; but of an imagination naturally chaste and clean it was not in him to conceive.