None Other Gods, Robert Hugh Benson [book recommendations for young adults .TXT] 📗

can
do what you've done, not only for a week or two, as I thought
at first, as a sort of game, but for nearly three months, and
during that time could leave me with only three or four
postcards and no news; above all, a man who could get into
such disgrace and trouble, and actually go to prison, and yet
not seem to mind much--well, it isn't what I had thought of
you.

"You see, there are a whole lot of things together. It isn't
just this or that, but the whole thing.

"First you became a Catholic, without telling me anything until
just before. I didn't like that, naturally, but I didn't say
anything. It isn't nice for a husband and wife to be of
different religions. Then you ran away from Cambridge; then you
got mixed up with this man you speak of in your letter to Jack;
and you must have been rather fond of him, you know, to go to
prison for him, as I suppose you did. And yet, after all that,
I expect you've gone to meet him again in York. And then
there's the undeniable fact of prison.

"You see, it's all these things together--one after another. I
have defended you to your father again and again; I haven't
allowed anybody to abuse you without standing up for you; but
it really has gone too far. You know I did half warn you in
that other letter. I know you couldn't have got it till just
now, but that wasn't my fault; and the letter shows what I was
thinking, even three months ago.

"Don't be too angry with me, Frank. I'm very fond of you still,
and I shall always stand up for you when I can. And please
don't answer this in any way. Jack Kirkby isn't answering just
yet. I asked him not, though he doesn't know why.

"Your father is going to send the news that the engagement is
broken off to the newspapers.

"Yours sincerely,
"JENNY LAUNTON."

PART II

CHAPTER I

(I)

Barham, as all Yorkshire knows, lies at the foot of a long valley, where it emerges into the flatter district round Harrogate. It has a railway all to itself, which goes no further, for Barham is shut in on the north by tall hills and moors, and lies on the way to nowhere. It is almost wholly an agricultural town, and has a curious humped bridge, right in the middle of the town, where men stand about on market days and discuss the price of bullocks. It has two churches--one, disused, on a precipitous spur above the town, surrounded by an amazingly irregular sort of churchyard, full, literally, to bursting (the Kirkbys lie there, generation after generation of them, beneath pompous tombs), and the other church a hideous rectangular building, with flat walls and shallow, sham Gothic windows. It was thought extremely beautiful when it was built forty years ago. The town itself is an irregular and rather picturesque place, with a twisting steep High Street, looking as if a number of houses had been shot at random into this nook among the hills and left to find their own levels.

The big house where the Kirkbys have lived since the middle of the seventeenth century is close to the town, as the squire's house ought to be, and its park gates open right upon the northern end of the old bridge. There's nothing of great interest in the house (I believe there is an old doorway in the cellar, mentioned in guide-books), since it was rebuilt about the same time as the new church first rose. It is just a big, comfortable, warm, cool, shady sort of house, with a large hall and a fine oak staircase, surrounded by lawns and shrubberies, that adjoin on the west the lower slopes, first of the park and then of the moors that stretch away over the horizon.

There is a pleasant feudal air about the whole place--feudal, in a small and neighborly kind of way. Jack's father died just a year before his only son came of age; and Jack himself, surrounded by sisters and an excellent and beneficently-minded mother, has succeeded to all the immemorial rights and powers, written and unwritten, of the Squire of Barham. He entertained me delightfully for three or four days a few months ago, when I was traveling about after Frank's footsteps, and I noticed with pleasure as we drove through the town that there was hardly a living creature in the town whom he did not salute; and who did not salute him.

He took me first to the bridge and pulled up in the middle of it, to point out a small recess in it, over the central pier, intended, no doubt, to give shelter to foot-passengers before the bridge was widened, in case a large vehicle came through.

"There," he said. "That's the place I first saw Frank when he came."

We drove on up through the town, and at the foot of the almost precipitous hill leading up to the ruined church we got out, leaving the dog-cart in charge of the groom. We climbed the hill slowly, for it was a hot day, Jack uttering reminiscences at intervals (many of which are recorded in these pages) and turned in at the churchyard gate.

"And this was the place," said Jack, "where I said good-by to him."


(II)

It was on the twenty-fifth of September, a Monday, that Jack sat in the smoking-room, in Norfolk jacket and gaiters, drinking tea as fast as he possibly could. He had been out on the moors all day, and was as thirsty as the moors could make him, and he had been sensual enough to smoke a cigarette deliberately before beginning tea, in order to bring his thirst to an acute point.

Then, the instant he had finished he snatched for his case again, for this was to be the best cigarette of the whole day, and discovered that his sensuality had overreached itself for once, and that there were none left. He clutched at the silver box with a sinking heart, half-remembering that he had filled his case with the last of them this morning. It was a fact, and he knew that there were no others in the house.

This would never do, and he reflected that if he sent a man for some more, he would not get them for at least twenty minutes. (Jack never could understand why an able-bodied footman always occupied twenty minutes in a journey that ought to take eight.) So he put on his cap again, stepped out of the low window and set off down the drive.

* * * * *


It was getting a little dark as he passed out of the lodge-gates. The sun, of course, had set at least an hour before behind the great hill to the west, but the twilight proper was only just beginning. He was nearly at the place now, and as he breasted the steep ascent of the bridge, peered over it, at least with his mind's eye, at the tobacconist's shop--first on the left--where a store of "Mr. Jack's cigarettes" was always on hand.

He noticed in the little recess I have just spoken of a man leaning with his elbows on the parapet, and staring out up the long reach of the stream to the purple evening moors against the sky and the luminous glory itself; and as he came opposite him, wondered vaguely who it was and whether he knew him. Then, as he got just opposite him, he stopped, uneasy at heart.

* * * * *


Naturally Frank was never very far away from Jack's thoughts just now--ever since, indeed, he had heard the news in a very discreet letter from the Reverend James Launton a week or two ago. (I need not say he had answered this letter, not to the father, but to the daughter, but had received no reply.)

He had written a frantic letter to Frank himself then, but it had been returned, marked: "Unknown at this address." And ever since he had eyed all tramps on the road with an earnestness that elicited occasionally a salute, and occasionally an impolite remark.

The figure whose back he saw now certainly was not much like Frank; but then--again--it was rather like him. It was dressed in a jacket and trousers so stained with dust and wet as to have no color of their own at all, and a cloth cap of the same appearance. A bundle tied up in a red handkerchief, and a heavy stick, rested propped against an angle of the recess.

Jack cleared his throat rather loud and stood still, prepared to be admiring the view, in case of necessity; the figure turned an eye over its shoulder, then faced completely round; and it was Frank Guiseley.

Jack for the first instant said nothing at all, but stood transfixed, with his mouth a little open and his eyes staring. Frank's face was sunburned almost beyond recognition, his hair seemed cut shorter than usual, and the light was behind him.

Then Jack recovered.

"My dear man," he said, "why the--"

He seized him by the hands and held him, staring at him.

"Yes; it's me all right," said Frank. "I was just wondering--"

"Come along, instantly.... Damn! I've got to go to a tobacconist's; it's only just here. There isn't a cigarette in the house. Come with me?"

"I'll wait here," said Frank.

"Will you? I shan't be a second."

It was, as a matter of fact, scarcely one minute before Jack was back; he had darted in, snatched a box from the shelf and vanished, crying out to "put it down to him." He found Frank had faced round again and was staring at the water and sky and high moors. He snatched up his friend's bundle and stick.

"Come along," he said, "we shall have an hour or two before dinner."

Frank, in silence, took the bundle and stick from him again, firmly and irresistibly, and they did not speak again till they were out of ear-shot of the lodge. Then Jack began, taking Frank's arm--a custom for which he had often been rebuked.

"My dear old man!" he said. "I ... I can't say what I feel. I know the whole thing, of course, and I've expressed my mind plainly to Miss Jenny."

"Yes?"

"And to your father. Neither have answered, and naturally I haven't been over again.... Dick's been there, by the way."

Frank made no comment.

"You look simply awful, old chap," pursued Jack cheerily. "Where on earth have you been for the last month? I wrote to York and got the letter returned."

"Oh! I've been up and down," said Frank impassively.

"With the people you were