None Other Gods | Page 5

the window-seat.
"Come in," he said. "And kindly ask me to lunch. The last porter's just
gone."

Jack looked at him.
He seemed amazingly genial and natural, though just a little flushed,
and such an air of drama as there was about him was obviously
deliberate.
"Very well; come to lunch," said Jack. "Where are you going to dine
and sleep?"
"I'm dining in hall, and I'm sleeping in a hammock. Go and look at my
bedroom."
Jack went across the bare floor and looked in. A hammock was slung
across from a couple of pegs, and there lay a small carpet-bag beneath
it. A basin on an upturned box and a bath completed the furniture.
"You mad ass!" said Jack. "And is that all you have left?"
"Certainly. I'm going to leave the clothes I've got on to you, and you
can fetch the hammock when I've gone."
"When do you start?"
"Mr. Guiseley will have his last interview and obtain his exeat from the
Dean at half-past six this evening. He proposes to leave Cambridge in
the early hours of to-morrow morning."
"You don't mean that!"
"Certainly I do."
"What are you going to wear?"
Frank extended two flanneled legs, ending in solid boots.
"These--a flannel shirt, no tie, a cap, a gray jacket."
Jack stood again in silence, looking at him.

"How much money did your sale make?"
"That's immaterial. Besides, I forget. The important fact is that when
I've paid all my bills I shall have thirteen pounds eleven shillings and
eightpence."
"What?"
"Thirteen pounds eleven shillings and eightpence."
Jack burst into a mirthless laugh.
"Well, come along to lunch," he said.
* * * * *
It seemed to Jack that he moved in a dreary kind of dream that
afternoon as he went about with Frank from shop to shop, paying bills.
Frank's trouser-pockets bulged and jingled a good deal as they
started--he had drawn all his remaining money in gold from the
bank--and they bulged and jingled considerably less as the two returned
to tea in Jesus Lane. There, on the table, he spread out the coins. He
had bought some tobacco, and two or three other things that afternoon,
and the total amounted now but to twelve pounds nineteen shillings and
fourpence.
"Call it thirteen pounds," said Frank. "There's many a poor man--"
"Don't be a damned fool!" said Jack.
"I'm being simply prudent," said Frank. "A contented heart--"
Jack thrust a cup of tea and the buttered buns before him.
* * * * *
These two were as nearly brothers as possible, in everything but blood.
Their homes lay within ten miles of one another. They had gone to a
private school together, to Eton, and to Trinity. They had ridden

together in the holidays, shot, dawdled, bathed, skated, and all the rest.
They were considerably more brothers to one another than were Frank
and Archie, his actual elder brother, known to the world as Viscount
Merefield. Jack did not particularly approve of Archie; he thought him
a pompous ass, and occasionally said so.
For Frank he had quite an extraordinary affection, though he would not
have expressed it so, to himself, for all the world, and a very real
admiration of a quite indefinable kind. It was impossible to say why he
admired him. Frank did nothing very well, but everything rather well;
he played Rugby football just not well enough to represent his college;
he had been in the Lower Boats at Eton, and the Lent Boat of his first
year at Cambridge; then he had given up rowing and played
lawn-tennis in the summer and fives in the Lent Term just well enough
to make a brisk and interesting game. He was not at all learned; he had
reached the First Hundred at Eton, and had read Law at
Cambridge--that convenient branch of study which for the most part
fills the vacuum for intelligent persons who have no particular bent and
are heartily sick of classics; and he had taken a Third Class and his
degree a day or two before. He was remarkably averaged, therefore;
and yet, somehow or another, there was that in him which compelled
Jack's admiration. I suppose it was that which is conveniently labeled
"character." Certainly, nearly everybody who came into contact with
him felt the same in some degree.
His becoming a Catholic had been an amazing shock to Jack, who had
always supposed that Frank, like himself, took the ordinary sensible
English view of religion. To be a professed unbeliever was bad form--it
was like being a Little Englander or a Radical; to be pious was equally
bad form--it resembled a violent devotion to the Union Jack. No;
religion to Jack (and he had always hitherto supposed, to Frank) was a
department of