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..."