"Are you Jack?" she said. "I have heard so much of you from Theo; he can talk of nothing else."
"He's a little idiot," said Jack, flushing angrily. He would have given a year's pocket money to get out of the room. He resented her presence, though he could not have told himself why; the low voice with its foreign accent seemed to force itself on him against his will, and make him think of Molly, and the foam on the grey rocks by Deadman's Cliff, and the circling flight of sea gulls. She had no right to come in here and make him wretched again, just when he was beginning to forget. It was nothing to her; she'd got her Theo.
"He is rather a baby still," she said; "and knows nothing of the kind of danger you rescued him from. I could not go home without thanking you."
Jack set his teeth. How much more of this was he to bear? She was looking at him now with a serious, scrutinising gaze.
"I thought at first of taking him away; but I have been talking it over with Dr. Cross, and he suggests that, as you have already been so kind, I should ask you to help me. Will you let me put the child under your care? Dr. Cross will see that the monitors understand, so you will have no difficulty; and I am quite sure it will be the best possible thing for Theo. An older schoolfellow, especially one he cares so much for, can protect him better than any master could do; and I know he will obey you. If you will take care of him, and not let him see or hear anything unfit for a little boy to know of, you will lift a heavy weight off my mind."
As she paused for his answer, Jack looked up. He was almost ready to burst out laughing at the brutal joke which the fates were playing at his expense. He thought of the Bishop's knife, and the photographs, and the threat of a reformatory. Then suddenly a lump came in his throat as his eyes met hers, and he looked down again at the floor.
"All right," he said huskily; "I'll see to it. He shan't come to any harm while I'm here."
She gave him her hand. "Thank you," she said, and rose; then paused a moment, looking at him.
"Theo tells me that the boy you fought had called him a 'jail-bird.' Is that so?"
"Yes."
"Do you know why? "
Jack hesitated. He had overheard vague hints about Theo's father.
"No," he said; "I... don't talk much to the others; and, anyhow, it's not my business."
"Have you ever read any Polish history?"
"I... no, I don't think so."
"Theo must have said something, and been misunderstood. He doesn't remember much about it; he was only a little thing. My husband was a political exile — do you know what that is? — in Siberia. When he died there, I brought the child to France. I have always tried to keep the shadow of these things away from Theo; there will be time enough for them when he is a man."
Jack went into the gymnasium, silent and very subdued. Helen Mirska and the things that she had told him belonged to a world of which he knew nothing. He understood only that she had talked to him, and gone away, and left him miserable. She, meanwhile, waiting at the station for her train, asked herself again and again: What is that child brooding over to be so unhappy? She had seen him for ten minutes, and had talked of her own affairs merely; and she read him as those with whom he had lived all his life had never been able to read.
In the gymnasium he went through his dumbbell exercises as conscientiously as ever; but for once he was not interested in them. Theo, standing in a corner, looked on, with wide-eyed admiration at the feats his idol could perform. As Jack swung his arms backwards, clashing the dumbbells together behind his back, the collar button of his gymnasium shirt snapped off under the strain; and when he stepped back for a moment's rest, letting his arms fall by his sides, the shirt slipped down a little from the left shoulder.
"What a queer mark you've got on your shoulder, Raymond," said the boy behind him. "Is it a burn?"
He put out a hand to draw the shirt lower, but sprang back with a cry. Jack had turned on him, white to the lips with rage, the heavy dumbbell lifted above his head.
"I'll kill you if you touch me!"
All the boys stopped in their exercises and stared, speechless with amazement Then the master's grave voice broke in: "Why, Raymond! Raymond!"
Some one took the dumbbells out of Jack's hands. He surrendered them passively, stumbled to the nearest form, and sat down. That horrible dizziness again, and the flashing lights and roaring noises...
"Oh, I can't help it!" he said.
When the lesson was over the gymnasium master went to Dr. Cross, and told him what had happened. Jack, summoned to the headmaster's study, went in, scowling, sullen, prepared for the worst.
"Raymond, my lad, Mirski's mother tells me you have undertaken to look after him and keep him out of mischief," said Dr. Cross. "I told her I was sure the little chap couldn't be in better hands. You've done him a lot of good already; I've just been talking about it with the monitors. You're a good fellow, if you could control your temper. By the way, if you should happen to have any little differences with the others, nobody will mind your settling them with your fists in the old-fashioned manner, provided you don't go too far; but you'd better not threaten your schoolfellows with iron weights another time; it isn't an English way of going to work."
"Very well, sir," said Jack submissively.
In the corridor a little hand stole into his.
"Jack," Theo whispered, looking up with soft eyes like his mother's, "is anything wrong with you? You're all shaking."
Jack stood still, feeling the small consoling fingers curl round his. Presently he pulled his hand roughly away.
"What should be wrong with me? There'd be nothing wrong, if people would only let me alone."
He shoved past the child and went about for the rest of the day with a hard face, surly and defiant. But late into the night, when masters and boys were asleep, he lay and brooded silently, hopelessly, for hours. He had thought he was growing accustomed and beginning to forget; and it was no use: after all these months he was as wretched as ever. Perhaps he should go on all his life, and never get accustomed. Why not? The scars would never go away; why should the memory?
It was some little time before the pallor of sleepless nights began to show through Jack's swarthy skin. He was so superbly healthy, so strong and sturdy, that even if he had fallen bodily ill he would have shown it less than most boys. But he was not ill; there was nothing the matter with him but sheer misery. Only as the weeks dragged by he grew more colourless and haggard, and the look that he had worn last August came slowly back into his eyes. At last the headmaster began to get anxious, and took him to a doctor, who looked at him in a keen, puzzled way, and presently asked: "Have you been upset about anything?"
"No, sir," said Jack, with his stolid face.
The doctor finally declared him to be "a little below par," and prescribed a tonic, which of course did no good. "I wonder what's the matter with that boy Raymond," said Dr. Cross to the mathematical master. "Do you think he's moping?"
"Hardly; he seems too stolid a creature to mope much. But one never can tell; perhaps he's a bit homesick."
Jack, meanwhile, trod nightly dumb and barefoot through hell-fire.
The days were not so bad; there were always lessons and games, and the presence of his schoolfellows. He took no interest in any of these distractions; but they filled up time and space and kept other things away. Yet sometimes, even in the middle of cricket or football, the thought of the coming night would strike at his heart. At evening, when the boys trooped up to the dormitory, he would tumble into bed with a wooden face and a sullen "good-night," and lie breathing evenly with the counterpane drawn up over his head, while the others undressed. It seemed to him that he must go mad if he should see the white, smooth, unscarred shoulders of all these happy creatures. They used to call him "The dormouse"; it had become a standing joke among them that he was always the first to sleep and the last to wake. Then, when the lights were out and the whispering between the beds had stopped, he would sit up alone, and fight with demons in the dark, helpless against a ghostly army, and crush the sheet over his mouth, and learn to sob quietly, that the others might not hear.