None Other Gods by Robert Hugh Benson (fb2 epub reader TXT) 📕

of it?"

Jenny paused.

"I think I knew he was going to ask me two days ago--the day you met us out riding, you know."

* * * * *


There was a long silence.

They had already discussed, when Frank's affair had been before them, all secondary details.

The Rector's sister was to have taken Jenny's place. There was nothing of that sort to talk about now. They were both just face to face with primary things, and they both knew it.

The Rector's mind worked like a mill--a mill whose machinery is running aimlessly. The wheels went round and round, but they effected nothing. He was completely ignorant as to what Jenny intended. He perceived--as in a series of little vignettes--a number of hypothetical events, on this side and that, but they drew to no conclusion in his mind. He was just waiting on his daughter's will.

* * * * *


Jenny broke the silence with a slow remark in another kind of voice.

"Father, dear, there's something else I must tell you. I didn't see any need to bother you with it before. It's this. Mr. Dick Guiseley proposed to me when he was here for the shooting."

She paused, but her father said nothing.

"I told him he must wait--that I didn't know for certain, but that I was almost certain. If he had pressed for an answer I should have said 'No.' Oddly enough, I was thinking only yesterday that it wasn't fair to keep him waiting any longer. Because ... because it's 'No' ... anyhow, now."

The Rector still could not speak. It was just one bewilderment. But apparently Jenny did not want any comments.

"That being so," she went on serenely, "my conscience is clear, anyhow. And I mustn't let what I think Mr. Dick might say or think affect me--any more than the other things. Must I?"

"... Jenny, what are you going to do? Tell me!"

"Father, dear," came the high astonished voice, "I don't know. I don't know at all. I must think. Did you think I'd made up my mind? Why! How could I? Of course I should say 'No' if I had to answer now."

"I--" began the Rector and stopped. He perceived that the situation could easily be complicated.

"I must just think about it quietly," went on the girl. "And I must write a note to say so.... Father ..."

He glanced in her direction.

"Father, about being fond of a man.... Need it be--well, as I was fond of Frank? I don't think Lord Talgarth could have expected that, could he? But if you--well--get on with a man very well, understand him--can stand up to him without annoying him ... and ... and care for him, really, I mean, in such a way that you like being with him very much, and look up to him very much in all kinds of ways--(I'm very sorry to have to talk like this, but whom am I to talk to, father dear?) Well, if I found I did care for Lord Talgarth like that--like a sort of daughter, or niece, and more than that too, would that--"

"I don't know," said the Rector, abruptly standing up. "I don't know; you mustn't ask me. You must settle all that yourself."

She looked up at him, startled, it seemed, by the change in his manner.

"Father, dear--" she began, with just the faintest touch of pathetic reproach in her voice. But he did not appear moved by it.

"You must settle," he said. "You have all the data. I haven't. I--"

He stepped towards the door.

"Tell me as soon as you have decided," he said, and went out.


(III)

The little brown dog called Lama, who in an earlier chapter once trotted across a lawn, and who had lately been promoted to sleeping upon Jenny's bed, awoke suddenly that night and growled a low breathy remonstrance. He had been abruptly kicked from beneath the bedclothes.

"Get off, you heavy little beast," said a voice in the darkness.

Lama settled himself again with a grunt, half of comfort, half of complaint.

"_Get off!_" came the voice again, and again his ribs were heaved at by a foot.

He considered it a moment or two, and even shifted nearer the wall, still blind with sleep; but the foot pursued him, and he awoke finally to the conviction that it would be more comfortable by the fire; there was a white sheepskin there, he reflected. As he finally reached the ground, a scratching was heard in the corner, and he was instantly alert, and the next moment had fitted his nose, like a kind of india-rubber pad, deep into a small mouse-hole in the wainscoting, and was breathing long noisy sighs down into the delicious and gamey-smelling darkness.

"Oh! be quiet!" came a voice from the bed.

Lama continued his investigations unmoved, and having decided, after one long final blow, that there was to be no sport, returned to the sheepskin with that brisk independent air that was so characteristic of him. He was completely awake now, and stood eyeing the bed a moment, with the possibility in his mind that his mistress was asleep again, and that by a very gentle leap--But a match was struck abruptly, and he lay down, looking, with that appearance of extreme wide-awakedness in his black eyes that animals always wear at night, at his restless mistress.

He could not quite understand what was the matter.

First she lit a candle, took a book from the small table by the bed and began to read resolutely. This continued till Lama's eyes began to blink at the candle flame, and then he was suddenly aware that the light was out and the book closed, and all fallen back again into the clear gray tones which men call darkness.

He put his head down on his paws, but his eyebrows rose now and again as he glanced at the bed.

Then the candle was lighted again after a certain space of time, but this time there was no book opened. Instead, his mistress took her arms out of bed, and clasped them behind her head, staring up at the ceiling....

This was tiresome, as the light was in his eyes, and his body was just inert enough with sleep to make movement something of an effort....

Little by little, however, his eyebrows came down, remained down, and his eyes closed....

He awoke again at a sound. The candle was still burning, but his mistress had rolled over on to her side and seemed to be talking gently to herself. Then she was over again on this side, and a minute later was out of bed, and walking to and fro noiselessly on the soft carpet.

He watched her with interest, his eyes only following her. He had never yet fully understood this mysterious change of aspect that took place every night--the white thin dress, the altered appearance of the head, and--most mysterious of all--the two white things that ought to be feet, but were no longer hard and black. He had licked one of them once tentatively, and had found that the effect was that it had curled up suddenly; there had been a sound as of pain overhead, and a swift slap had descended upon him.

He was observing these things now--to and fro, to and fro--and his eyes moved with them.

* * * * *


After a certain space of time the movement stopped. She was standing still near a carved desk--important because a mouse had once been described sitting beneath it; and she stood so long that his eyes began to blink once more. Then there was a rustle of paper being torn, and he was alert again in a moment. Perhaps paper would be thrown for him presently....

She came across to the hearth-rug, and he was up, watching her hands, while his own short tail flickered three or four times in invitation. But it was no good: the ball was crumpled up and thrown on to the red logs. There was a "whup" from the fire and a flame shot up. He looked at this carefully with his head on one side, and again lay down to watch it. His mistress was standing quite still, watching it with him.

Then, as the flame died down, she turned abruptly, went straight back to the bed, got into it, drew the clothes over her and blew the candle out.

* * * * *


After a few moments steady staring at the fire, he perceived that a part of the ball of paper had rolled out on to the stone hearth unburned. He looked at it for some while, wondering whether it was worth getting up for. Certainly the warmth was delicious and the sheepskin exquisitely soft.

There was no sound from the bed. A complete and absolute silence had succeeded to all the restlessness.

Finally he concluded that it was impossible to lie there any longer and watch such a crisp little roll of paper still untorn. He got up, stepped delicately on to the wide hearth, and pulled the paper towards him with a little scratching sound. There was a sigh from the bed, and he paused. Then he lifted it, stepped back to his warm place, lay down, and placing his paws firmly upon the paper, began to tear scraps out of it with his white teeth.

"Oh, _be quiet_!" came the weary voice from the bed.

He paused, considered; then he tore two more pieces. But it did not taste as it should; it was a little sticky, and too stiff. He stood up once more, turned round four times and lay down with a small grunt.

In the morning the maid who swept up the ashes swept up these fragments too. She noticed a wet scrap of a picture postcard, with the word "Selby" printed in the corner. Then she threw that piece, too, into the dustpan.


CHAPTER IV

(I)

Mrs. Partington and Gertie had many of those mysterious conversations that such women have, full of "he's" and "she's" and nods and becks and allusions and broken sentences, wholly unintelligible to the outsider, yet packed with interest to the talkers. The Major, Mr. Partington (still absent), and Frank were discussed continually and exhaustively; and, so far as the subjects themselves ranged, there was hardly an unimportant detail that did not come under notice, and hardly an important fact that did. Gertie officially passed, of course, as Mrs. Trustcott always.

A couple of mornings after Frank had begun his work at the jam factory, Mrs. Partington, who had stepped round the corner to talk with a friend for an hour or so, returned to find Gertie raging. She raged in