None Other Gods | Page 2

badly. And I want to
talk a great deal more about Frank.
P.P.S.--I hear that her ladyship has gone back to live with her father;
she tried the Dower House in Westmoreland, but seems to have found

it lonely. Is that true? It'll be rather difficult for Dick, won't it?

NONE OTHER GODS


CHAPTER I
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PART I
CHAPTER I
(I)
"I think you're behaving like an absolute idiot," said Jack Kirkby
indignantly.
Frank grinned pleasantly, and added his left foot to his right one in the
broad window-seat.
These two young men were sitting in one of the most pleasant places in
all the world in which to sit on a summer evening--in a ground-floor
room looking out upon the Great Court of Trinity College, Cambridge.
It was in that short space of time, between six and seven, during which
the Great Court is largely deserted. The athletes and the dawdlers have
not yet returned from field and river; and Fellows and other persons,
young enough to know better, who think that a summer evening was
created for the reading of books, have not yet emerged from their
retreats. A white-aproned cook or two moves across the cobbled spaces
with trays upon their heads; a tradesman's boy comes out of the corner
entrance from the hostel; a cat or two stretches himself on the grass; but,
for the rest, the court lies in broad sunshine; the shadows slope

eastwards, and the fitful splash and trickle of the fountain asserts itself
clearly above the gentle rumble of Trinity Street.
Within, the room in which these two sat was much like other rooms of
the same standing; only, in this one case the walls were paneled with
white-painted deal. Three doors led out of it--two into a tiny bedroom
and a tinier dining-room respectively; the third on to the passage
leading to the lecture-rooms. Frank found it very convenient, since he
thus was enabled, at every hour of the morning when the lectures broke
up, to have the best possible excuse for conversing with his friends
through the window.
The room was furnished really well. Above the mantelpiece, where
rested an array of smoking-materials and a large silver cigarette-box,
hung an ancestral-looking portrait, in a dull gilded frame, of an aged
man, with a ruff round his neck, purchased for one guinea; there was a
sofa and a set of chairs upholstered in a good damask: a black piano by
Broadwood; a large oval gate-leg table; a bureau; shelves filled with
very indiscriminate literature--law books, novels, Badminton,
magazines and ancient school editions of the classics; a mahogany
glass-fronted bookcase packed with volumes of esthetic
appearance--green-backed poetry books with white labels; old leather
tomes, and all the rest of the specimens usual to a man who has once
thought himself literary. Then there were engravings, well framed,
round the walls; a black iron-work lamp, fitted for electric light, hung
from the ceiling; there were a couple of oak chests, curiously carved.
On the stained floor lay three or four mellow rugs, and the
window-boxes outside blazed with geraniums. The débris of tea rested
on the window-seat nearest the outer door.
Frank Guiseley, too, lolling in the window-seat in a white silk shirt,
unbuttoned at the throat, and gray flannel trousers, and one white shoe,
was very pleasant to look upon. His hair was as black and curly as a
Neapolitan's; he had a smiling, humorous mouth, and black eyes--of an
extraordinary twinkling alertness. His clean-shaven face, brown in its
proper complexion as well as with healthy sunburning (he had played
very vigorous lawn-tennis for the last two months), looked like a boy's,

except for the very determined mouth and the short, straight nose. He
was a little below middle height--well-knit and active; and though,
properly speaking, he was not exactly handsome, he was quite
exceptionally delightful to look at.
Jack Kirkby, sitting in an arm-chair a yard away, and in the same sort
of costume--except that he wore both his shoes and a Third Trinity
blazer--was a complete contrast in appearance. The other had
something of a Southern Europe look; Jack was obviously
English--wholesome red cheeks, fair hair and a small mustache
resembling spun silk. He was, also, closely on six feet in height.
He was anxious just now, and, therefore, looked rather cross, fingering
the very minute hairs of his mustache whenever he could spare the time
from smoking, and looking determinedly away from Frank upon the
floor. For the last week he had talked over this affair, ever since the
amazing announcement; and had come to the conclusion that once
more, in this preposterous scheme, Frank really meant what he said.
Frank had a terrible way of meaning what he said--he reflected with
dismay. There was the affair of the