None Other Gods

h a start and o

ee nothing. So he turned over on the

a quite tolerable lodging; they had their programme, such as it was, for the next day or so; and-by the standard to which he had learned to adjust himself-t

a twenty-mile walk lay before him. He began to tell himself that sleep was merely a question of will-of will deliberately relaxing attention. He rearranged his

f thoughts began as o

g to consider the wisdom of the whole affair. This was a point that he had not consciously yet considered, from the day on which he had left Cambridge. The impetus of his first impulse and the extreme strength of his purpose had, up to the present-he

d so fall to pieces; there was, obviously, nothing in it at all. It was an impulse of silly pride, of obstinacy, of the sort of romance that effects nothing. There was Merefield waiting for him-for he knew perfectly well that terms could be arranged; there was all that leisureliness and comfort and distinction in which he had b

s round him, with every detail visible and insistent, seen as in the cold light of mo

ep!" said Frank to himself,

nk about Cambridge, and Merefield and Jack Kirkby, and the auction in his own rooms, and his last dinner-party and the design on the menu-cards, and what a fool he was; and when he became conscious of the rosary again he found that he held in his fingers the last bead but three in the fifth decade. He had repeated four

tion and confidence in it, there was its whole character, composed (like personality) of countless touches too small to be definable; there was the definite evidence adduced from history and philosophy and all the

ill and Predestination; Love and Pain; Foreknowledge and Sin; and their companions. And it appeared to him, in this cold, emotionless mood, when the persona

ntly learned-the repetition of certain words, the performance of certain actions-the rosary for instance; an

of experience and association, and they had lost the romance of n

ins a great deal more acute than his own found in the dilemmas no final obstacles to faith; he placed himself under the shelter of the Church and tried to say blindly that he believed what she believed. But, in a sense,

enny's loyalty. He had turned to the thought of her as a last resort for soothi

that there was nothing in him whatever which could possibly be loved by anyone; the whole thing had been a mistake, not so much on his part as on Jenny's. She had thought him to be something he was not. She was probably regretting already the engagement; she would certainly not f

of thought clicked back into its own beginning, clasp

and coldly visible. He perceived the broken-backed chair on which his clothes were heaped-with the exception of

cts. And it seemed to him that there were no facts beyond them. These were the bones of the Universe-a stuffy bedroom, a rasping flannel suit, a cold dawn, a snoring in the gloom, and three bodies, heavy with weariness.... There o

lay down; he knew the worst now;

I

as a kind of bruise below the surface. He was conscious that it had once been possible for him to doubt

haracter. One thing or the other must be the effect of such a mood in which-even though only for an hour or two-all things other than physical take on themselves an appearance of illusiveness: either the standard

road. He repressed a violent feeling of irritation, and turned round to pick them up. The Major and

ing-glass and a piece of lead piping-and packed them once more carefully together on the bank. He tested his string, knotted it, drew it t

broke from the Majo

; it had some disagreeable-looking moist substance adhering to it, which he wiped off on to his sleeve, and th

don't be so

inct was to kick every single object that lay before

y more strin

hings in your po

d once more tried, with it, to tie up his parcel. But the angle was too acute, and just as the twig tightened sati

rted in mirth

ut

ank icily. "The thing's got to

ve. During the process Gertie moved suddenly, and he looked up. When he looked d

ment. Then he sat down on the bank

slightly offensive comme

"or anywhere else you like. But I'm going

mind. It is quite indefensible, of course-and especially his regrettable language that closed the interview; but it gives a pleasant little glimpse, I think, of Frank's character just now

I

o sample several different kinds of moods, for he had

of doors. There was a copse a hundred yards away from the road, and in the copse a couple of small shelters built, probably, for wood-p

arth turns and sighs in her sleep, when every cow gets up and lies down again. He was conscious of a s

beyond, and the sky visible only in glimpses-feeling extremely awake and extremely content. Certainly he wa

shoes and slipped them on. Then he unwound the wra

erything was absolutely motionless about him as he went under the trees and came out above the wide park-land of which the copse was a sort of barrier. The dew lay soaking and thick on t

t a leaf that stirred-each hung as if cut of steel; there was not a bird which chirp

finished, and the players of the new eternal drama were not yet come. An hour hence they would be all about: the sounds would begin again; men would cross the field-pat

better than interruptions; as if this fixed poise of nature were something complete in itself; as if these trees hung out their leaves to listen to something that they could actually hear, as if these motionless creatures of the wo

whirl of actual living, he seemed to be looking at things-staring out, as he was, almost unseeingly at the grass slopes before him-from exactly the opposite side. Then, they had seemed to him the only realities, these tangible physical things, and all else illusion: now it was the physical things that were illusive, and something else that was real. Once again the two elements of life lay d

ng of that on which he looked; he was but aware that there was something to be understood. And the trees hung rigid above him, and the clear blue sky still a hard ston

zen cry; a rabbit sat up, then crouched an

ack under the trees, to s