B9
 
 ?
 
 BRUTE 
 GODS
 
 NOVELS BY LOUIS WILKINSON 
 
 A CHASTE MAN 
 THE BUFFOON 
 BRUTE GODS
 
 LOUIS 
 WILKINSON 
 
 BRUTE 
 GODS 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 ALFRED A KNOPF 
 
 MCMXIX
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY 
 ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. 
 
 PRINTED IN TUB tTNITED 8TATS8 OT AMERICA
 
 To 
 GEORGE MOOR 
 
 Marking the Coming-of-Age 
 Qf an Unbroken Friendship. 
 
 September 1897 September 1918 
 
 2138961
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CONFUSIONS 9 
 DISCLOSURES 157 
 REFUGE 321
 
 CONFUSIONS
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE terrible calamity fallen upon the house 
 of Glaive had sent the master of that 
 house post-haste to his lawyers in I^ondon. 
 Mr. Sidney Starr Glaive, estate-agent to the Marquis 
 of Yetminster, had never been so baffled, never so 
 deeply angered, never so humiliated. He had pro- 
 tracted his absence and those fruitless but sympa- 
 thetic discussions with the lawyers for a considerably 
 longer time than was warrantable, except by his 
 strong disinclination to face the people of his neigh- 
 bourhood. His younger son had given him an excuse 
 for delay. The boy was finishing his last term at 
 school : he was yet to be informed of the tragic family 
 event, and his father could reasonably wait until the 
 term ended, meet Alec at Paddington Station and 
 break the news to him as they travelled down to 
 Suffolk together. 
 
 On the morning after this return Mr. Glaive was 
 reading Prayers. He addressed his two sons, his 
 widowed sister, and his servants, in tones of com- 
 bative assertion of dignity, teased and pulled at by 
 spleen. He was consoled, dimly, by his sense of the 
 drama of the occasion, by the jumping and stiffening 
 of his response to the scene so familiar, those kneel- 
 ing domestic figures, under his presidency, and now 
 that empty chair ah! 
 
 11
 
 12 BRUTE GODS 
 
 The thought, rushing, caught him : how carefully he 
 had chosen this second wife of his, this stepmother for 
 his children! He had chosen her for her tender- 
 ness, for her soft dependent ways, for her large de- 
 voted wistful eyes that promised him the straitest 
 fidelity, a fidelity almost fanatical. She had had 
 such a sensitive trustful mouth, the lips rather tremu- 
 lously apart. He had been old enough then, this little 
 man with his little fierce fires, to give discretion 
 the whip-hand of mere passion: it had been a sage 
 choice, a choice guided by brain, by experience. . . . 
 So now it was not alone his pride of property that was 
 injured, but his pride of judgment. . . . Mr. Glaive 
 choked. Instantaneously convinced that he was suf- 
 fering from the emotion of a strong smitten man, 
 he passed his Prayerbook silently to his elder son. 
 He constrained his lips. "A motherless home!" 
 he said to himself, taking comfort in the appeal of the 
 phrase. 
 
 Mervyn read aloud the holy words as rapidly as 
 lie could. He was extremely hungry. The morn- 
 ing's disorganization had delayed Prayers and break- 
 fast. Mr. Glaive watched his son with growing irrita- 
 tion. He took the book from him, just as the boy was 
 beginning a new prayer. Mr. Glaive turned the page : 
 "The blessing of our Lord Jesus Christ," he read in 
 a vexed dry voice, "the love of God, and" he 
 snapped viciously on "the fellowship of the Holy 
 Ghost . . . world without end, Amen. Johnson, why 
 are you here ? ' ' 
 
 The under-gardener had already opened the door.
 
 CONFUSIONS 13 
 
 "Beg pardon, sir " He hesitated awkwardly. 
 1 ' 'Thought as I might fare to come into Prayers 
 'smornin', sir." 
 
 "You never do. I mean you only come on Sun- 
 days. You know perfectly well that only the maids 
 attend Prayers on week-days. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, sir. Seemed sort o' like a Sunday today, 
 sir." 
 
 "You can go, Johnson." 
 
 ' ' 'Thought he 'd better make up the quorum, I 
 s'pose," Mervyn whispered to his younger brother. 
 There was silence as the rest of the servants walked 
 out with self-conscious solemnity. As the door shut, 
 Alec heard, faintly, the kitchenmaid 's giggle. It 
 reminded him of the girl's cousin, "Frippie" Clark, 
 she had been christened "Elfrida," a wench of 
 the village. The boys' aunt kept looking over her 
 brother's head, with nervous glances of a fretful 
 reprobation which she enjoyed. 
 
 "What beastly weather." Mervyn fastened the 
 two bottom buttons of his corduroy waistcoat. His 
 father gave him a carefully dramatic glance of aus- 
 terity tempered by grief. Alec, irritated by the 
 thinned-out discontent that his aunt cherished, walked 
 away to the end of the room, and sat down in the 
 alcove, by the small-sized billiard-table. Outside, a 
 sparse rain, weakly persistent, was wetting the discon- 
 solate Suffolk landscape. The youth turned back, 
 resting his eyes on the legs of the billiard-table. He 
 observed Nature no more closely than do most boys 
 brought up in the country. Mervyn, joining him.
 
 14 BRUTE GODS 
 
 whispered: "Christ! Nice weather for an elope- 
 ment. ' ' 
 
 "Shut up." Alec's lip trembled. 
 
 "For God's sake don't go and have a fit of the 
 giggles." 
 
 "I'm not. Do shut up. It's bad enough the way 
 you fool in Church. You're awful; always nearly 
 making me laugh in the middle of reading the Les- 
 sons. ' ' 
 
 "You did, that last time, practically. Your 
 bloomin' silly voice cracked. Why the devil don't 
 you have more self-control? If you get a laughing- 
 fit now, the old man '11 stick the bread-knife into 
 you." 
 
 "Well, you shut up, and I won't laugh." 
 
 " 'Didn't know I was a humourist." 
 
 "Oh, just now any thing 'd make one laugh, with 
 all this rumpus. You know how it is." 
 
 "That's rich. I suppose one's Mater runnin' away 
 with a chap is enough to make a cat laugh, any- 
 how" 
 
 "Oh, do shut up!" Alec smoothed his quivering 
 mouth with his hands, turned his head, and gulped. 
 
 "Come to breakfast, you boys!" Mr. Glaive called 
 them. "What's all that whispering about?" He 
 shot his little fired eyes from one to the other. 
 
 "After all," Mervyn lowered his voice still more, 
 "you can hardly blame the Mater, can you?" 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 "Oh, I'm hungry, that's all." 
 
 "Hungry? That's either impertinence, or else ut-
 
 CONFUSIONS 15 
 
 ter lack of feeling. For what we are about to re- 
 ceive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. The 
 fearful blow that has fallen upon us, and all you can 
 think about is whether you're hungry." The aunt 
 put her bowl of porridge from her. "I've noticed 
 that your self-indulgence has got worse and worse 
 ever since you left the Army." He poured cream 
 into his porridge. "You could rough it well enough 
 out there, couldn't you? Now you come back and 
 you want to turn everything into a er into a veri- 
 table sty of Epicurus." 
 
 "Sort of a garden he had, though, wasn't it?" 
 Mervyn queried vaguely. Alec was in agony. 
 
 "The general atmosphere the general atmosphere 
 is It's altogether unspeakable. Moral atmos- 
 phere. The amount of looseness, of vicious self-in- 
 dulgence. I never did believe that it was the right 
 thing for women to go earning their own living. 
 Why, there are married women now many of them 
 who do it. Disgraceful degrading to their hus- 
 bands. They'll find that out, soon enough. That's a 
 large part of our present trouble." 
 
 "Earning her own living?" Mrs. Mowry, the 
 aunt, looked up, deprecating. "But, my dear Sid- 
 ney, surely that wasn't " 
 
 Her brother glared at her, and she dropped her 
 spoon. "I can't eat," she remarked, concentrating 
 her gaze on the heavy spoonful of porridge and cream 
 that went its automatic way to Mr. Glaive's red- 
 moustached lips. 
 
 "We are not urging you to eat, Catherine. I sup-
 
 16 BRUTE GODS 
 
 pose it is impossible for some people to understand 
 a detached and general conversation. I was taking a 
 wide view of the state of our times. I hope I can 
 lift myself above my own personal griefs and injur- 
 ies. They have never yet affected my judgment. 
 "Women are incapable of that kind of detachment. 
 Entirely incapable. "What I have to say about this 
 personal matter I shall say to you all at the right time, 
 in proper place. You will kindly be in my Study at 
 eleven o'clock this morning. And " He lowered 
 his pale sparse eyebrows with their obstinate project- 
 ing hairs showing like hairs that pierce through a 
 thin sock: he looked hard at his sister. "Catherine: 
 I must ask you not to refer to the subject in any sort 
 of way. I am sorry that I should need to ask you. 
 I should have thought while we are at breakfast " 
 
 "Mixin' it all up with the porridge," Mervyn dole- 
 fully whispered. 
 
 Alec choked, and caught his napkin to his mouth. 
 He gave out a suppressed sound like a whinny. His 
 father regarded the boys in astonishment and rage. 
 
 "Unpardonable!" he exclaimed. "Ungentle- 
 manly. You take a mean advantage of my deafness. 
 I won't ask you what you said, Mervyn. You would 
 only tell me an untruth. Alec: you think it's behav- 
 ing like a gentleman to sit there and neigh like a 
 mare? I will not have such conduct at my table. 
 A scene of this kind this morning." In deep dis- 
 taste of the actual fact, he gave a moment's survey to 
 the contrasting and becoming picture which should 
 have been presented by the family on that occasion.
 
 CONFUSIONS 17 
 
 "You are both utterly without " Alec could bear 
 his torture of suppression no longer. "Yes, I'm glad 
 you retain decency enough to leave the table." 
 
 "I can eat nothing, Sidney," Mrs. Mowry faltered, 
 upturning her weak obstinate face. "You will ex- 
 cuse me, too?" Mr. Glaive nodded. 
 
 He was left alone with Mervyn. No longer 
 obliged to regard a general family effect, and anxious 
 to get his son on his side, he changed his manner. 
 
 "My boy, I want your er support. I'll be 
 perfectly frank. I need you. I can't stand alone 
 not at my age not under a blow like this. I'm 
 not a weakling, I hope, but there are times when a 
 man must lean or, well, to some extent depend 
 on his son. Alec's a baby. You're a man grown. 
 You had a year of the war: in a way, I suppose, 
 you've 'seen life' more than I have. Now we must 
 look this horrible business in the face. Of course 
 we shall be exposed to ridicule " 
 
 "Good Lord! Is there any chance of their get- 
 tin' wind of it up at Magdalen?" Mervyn 's blue 
 eyes clouded. 
 
 "At Magdalen? I was thinking, of course, of our 
 neighbourhood. Oxford's some way off." 
 
 "What exactly did old Keeling advise? Will you 
 get a divorce?" 
 
 "Oh why, yes, yes, of course, certainly. I must 
 er vindicate myself. Keeling well, of course, 
 Keeling" 
 
 Mervyn, forgetting for the moment his cultivated 
 civilian slouch, got up and helped himself to some
 
 18 BRUTE GODS 
 
 cold ham from the sideboard. His military figure, 
 so straightly yet so easily poised, was in agreeable 
 contrast with his lounging dress the soft grey cloth 
 coat, the loosely knotted bow tie, the flannel trousers 
 of a lighter shade of grey, the elegant light-coloured 
 socks and brown leather slippers. His wavy hair 
 was almost flaxen, worn rather long. 
 
 His father watched him, with a half-suppressed 
 fleck of envy in his narrowed shrewd glance. His 
 day was over, but he felt damnably capable of being 
 young; the more so for Mrs. Glaive's desertion of 
 him. 
 
 "I can't let that scoundrel get off so easily, can 
 It" 
 
 "Well, I shouldn't go makin' any you know, too 
 much beastly fuss about the thing." Mervyn cut 
 his ham deliberately. 
 
 Mr. Glaive stood up by the mantelpiece. He raised 
 himself on his toes. 
 
 "The worm! He ought to pay for it; he'll have 
 to. Keeling & Marshall would get me thumping 
 damages." He squinted down his nose. "Look 
 here : look at this letter I found in her room. Shows 
 just the kind of slimy underhanded " 
 
 "I say, don't let's go reading his beastly letters " 
 
 " 'My dear lady' that's how he started it. 'My 
 dear lady'!" 
 
 "Well, he writes novels or something, don't he?" 
 
 "Your stepmother could receive a letter like this. 
 No doubt she liked getting it. The gross ingratitude 
 and deception. I tell you, my boy, I never could
 
 CONFUSIONS 19 
 
 have believed And that kind of a man! To think 
 of her consenting to read such stuff as this!" Mr. 
 Glaive was happier now. " 'I have not seldom 
 thought of what you told me,' " he began reading. 
 
 "What's that? Why couldn't the fool have said 
 'often'?" 
 
 "My dear Mervyn, that's the literary touch." Mr. 
 Glaive was enjoying himself. Little sarcasms always 
 re-established his self-esteem. " 'And believe me, I 
 have thought in sympathy.' ' He read with twisted 
 lips, in a whining drawl. " 'If I may without pre- 
 sumption offer you my sympathy, then I beg of you 
 to accept it. Sometimes even one who is compara- 
 tively a stranger may make this offer, and the touch 
 of a hand, even though it be only for a brief instant 
 in passing, may do somewhat toward healing.' 
 Really, Mervyn, I must apologize for reading this to 
 you while you're eating your breakfast. 'In suffer- 
 ing of the spirit there is an appeal that is wide as 
 the spirit itself: you were right to say the word to 
 me more right, perhaps, than if we had been more 
 intimately acquainted.' ' 
 
 "When is this bilge dated?" 
 
 "There's no date and no address. The fellow never 
 puts them. Much too undistinguished and commer- 
 cial for a man of letters to think of dates. His 
 mind's too full of the beautiful things he's going 
 to write, especially when he's writing to a lovely 
 lady! Heh! Postmark's end of May about two 
 months ago. You see, she must have written to him 
 without my knowledge. 'I feel that I must answer
 
 20 BRUTE GODS 
 
 your letter ' 'Epistle' would have been a daintier 
 term, Mervyn, don't you think? 'must answer by 
 something more than the silent thought that you have 
 already as you will know had from me.' ' 
 
 Mervyn finished his last cup of coffee and squeaked 
 his chair. 
 
 "Nearly finished. He didn't use more than one 
 sheet, at that stage. Didn't want to overdo the ef- 
 fect." The man's reddish eyes glistened. "The last 
 sentence, that's a gem. 'My hope is that your ways 
 may win through light that grows, on to peace. ' ' 
 
 "My God!" 
 
 "A master of English, Mervyn. 'Thanking you for 
 your letter' he underlines 'thanking' 'Believe me, 
 my dear friend, most sincerely your well-wisher, 
 Hugh Halley Carlyon- Williams. ' " 
 
 "Well, I wouldn't trouble any more about a chap 
 like that. Why not let the thing go? What's the 
 point? He's not worth " 
 
 "Yes, but how about her? That's what hits me, 
 my boy." Mr. Glaive deepened his voice. "The 
 hideous ingratitude of it. I had given her every- 
 thing freely as you know. An old and honourable 
 name, a position in the county not wealth, but 
 ample sufficiency; she lacked for nothing. My con- 
 stant affection and consideration. Why I can say 
 it to you, Mervyn, you're a man I considered her 
 delicacy of health so far as to spare her from ah 
 maternity : even though Dr. Eesine er waived the 
 matter, I thought it better to avoid the risk for 
 her sake. Are there many husbands I ask you?
 
 CONFUSIONS 21 
 
 My constant indulgence for five years. And she can 
 write to that cur about 'spiritual suffering.' Make- 
 believe ! Women grow discontented if they 're well 
 treated, that's it. Just because I didn't palaver like 
 that bounder! Because I'm a plain man, and not a 
 monkey." He pulled down his mustard-coloured 
 waistcoat with a virile gesture. ' ' No gentleman could 
 have written such stuff. 'Hugh Halley'!" He 
 ejected the name in a thin whistle. "Women don't 
 recognize a gentleman don't know his value any 
 cad can catch them. Well, she'll degrade." 
 
 "I s'pose he'll still go on writin' about what the 
 war has done for our ideals and our art an' that sort 
 of thing." 
 
 "Let him. This thing will hit him, though. The 
 British Public won't stand hypocrisy. Let him try 
 to make them believe that adultery is one of the new 
 ideals let him see ! We'll stamp on him. There are 
 some men who want boot-prints on their faces with 
 the heel in their mouths. Swine! Thank God, 
 Christianity isn't dead yet Christian morality isn't 
 dead, I have that on my side." 
 
 "I don't know so much. Williams is the sort of 
 chap who can get out of anything. He '11 be as moral 
 as any of them about it all. And the laugh '11 be on 
 us. You know what you said, ridicule and that." 
 
 "I don't care. I'll bring action. It'll hurt him 
 more than me. We're in for the scandal, anyhow." 
 people in Suffolk were taking the "scandal"; but he 
 He hesitated, wanting to know from Mervyn how 
 could not bring himself to ask. He construed his
 
 22 BRUTE GODS 
 
 cowardice as dignity. "I must defend our honour," 
 he added. 
 
 "All right. I'd think it over, though. When 
 things get into the papers, it makes all the differ- 
 ence. Williams is pretty well known. He wouldn't 
 mind " 
 
 "Gad, yes: he'd make speeches in court, and all 
 the ladies would say what a beautiful voice ! ' ' 
 
 "Good advertisement. For him, not for us. He'd 
 get back ten times any damages, and he knows it. 
 Probably write a book about the case 'unwritten 
 law' you know the kind of thing." 
 
 "It's monstrous, Mervyn; a monstrous injustice. 
 The most outrageous thing is that she can keep her 
 own money all of it. Why, it makes me feel dead 
 ashamed of English law! But I shall sue." Mr. 
 Glaive was getting angry again. "I believe in doing 
 the right thing regardless of consequences. I'd get 
 thumping damages, whatever he might make out of 
 it afterwards. I'd score in that. He'd bleat at 
 having to pay ten or fifteen thousand, wouldn't he, 
 eh? What d 'you think?" 
 
 "I'd wait a bit." 
 
 "Wait? Well, anyhow, there's the present to be 
 thought of. I suppose I shall have to have a house- 
 keeper." Mr. Glaive's mouth loosened, and he looked 
 down his nose again. "Your aunt's useless. Now, 
 to take things from your point of view: this affair 
 has thrown a burden on you. A sort of moral burden. 
 We have to show people that we're not tarred with 
 the same dirty brush, you see that? Make Alec see
 
 CONFUSIONS 23 
 
 that! He'll have to be precious careful how he be- 
 haves in the neighbourhood. You're two goodlook- 
 ing boys no harm my telling you that and of course 
 I know what temptation is. I don't pretend to be a 
 stone. People '11 be on the look-out. Of course you're 
 engaged. I wasn't thinking of you, of course not. 
 But I hope you've been careful how you talk. Ig- 
 nore the affair, of course. Be distant if any one takes 
 up too sympathetic an attitude, especially if it's a 
 social inferior. That's the most dignified way the 
 best bred way. Never forget that you're a Glaive." 
 
 "Oh, Lord," thought Mervyn, "now we're in for 
 the great Glaive sermon." 
 
 "The Glaives are as good as the Freyles. They're 
 better. The baronetcy's really older than any of 
 their titles. Dates back before any of Lord Yet- 
 minster's ancestors were heard of. I should never 
 dream of mentioning it outside the family, of course. 
 But a man should realize his birth, especially in these 
 times. It makes all the difference in the world. We 
 can hold up our heads, whatever happens. Carlyon- 
 Williams ! I should like to know of any Carlyon-Wil- 
 liams who 's legally entitled to bear arms ! Contemp- 
 tible fellows. How she could Reminds me of 
 Hamlet. 'Could you on this fair mountain leave to 
 feed, And batten on this moor?' " 
 
 He gave his short stature a gesture of affirmation. 
 Mervyn 's lip twitched, as he glanced at the "fair 
 mountain. ' ' He wished Alec had been there. 
 
 "We have our family faults. We're quick-tem- 
 pered excitable too passionate, perhaps. Our
 
 24 BRUTE GODS 
 
 blood runs hot. But no Glaive has ever been guilty 
 of a mean or a base action." He spoke with unim- 
 pugnable sincerity. "We've always supported the 
 great Causes, the great traditions. Fought for Crom- 
 well, helped William of Orange to the throne, sup- 
 ported the Protestant Church and the Constitution 
 father to son. Freedom within the law : faith with- 
 out superstition. The foundations of a good life are 
 ours by inheritance. We've never known disgrace 
 or dishonour, never broken faith " 
 
 Mervyn yawned. All this was meaningless to him. 
 He began wondering what his father would do when 
 he found out how much he owed the Oxford trades- 
 men. 
 
 "Remember that we can't be disgraced. We take 
 disgrace and make a glory of it! That's the spirit! 
 Williams! What do you think, my boy, do you 
 think they'd give five thousand damages? More, per- 
 haps? He'd feel it more if he were older, though. 
 You know what they say. When a man's twenty, he 
 wants to look well, when he's thirty he wants to do 
 well when he's forty, to be well when he's fifty, 
 to 'cut up' well. Not true, that, though," he added 
 hurriedly. "I'm not thinking of 'cutting up' yet, 
 I've my time. Don't you go looking at me as though 
 I were an octogenarian. When a man's only about 
 fifty, he isn't dead yet, is he? Well " Mervyn 
 was obviously restless. "Be on your guard. Re- 
 member your name. Hold up Alec's head for him, 
 and don't let your aunt make more of a fool of her-
 
 CONFUSIONS 25 
 
 self than she has to poor creature! Of course 
 she" 
 
 The door opened. "His lordship is in the Study, 
 sir." 
 
 "Ah. Yes, yes, of course. I might have ex- 
 pected " Mr. Glaive looked gratified: he turned 
 to the mirror, fiddled with his horse-shoe pin, 
 smoothed his faded yellowish hair. "Of course he 
 would come. Motor over to Bloyce's, Mervyn, and 
 get that mortgage business settled. Your law ought 
 to be fresher than mine. Get back by eleven, if you 
 can. But we'll wait for you." 
 
 Mervyn rose as his father went to receive the con- 
 dolences of the Marquis. Mr. Glaive, in his neatly 
 cut morning coat and his taut check trousers, left the 
 room carrying his little head rather to one side, and 
 further stating himself with his spry and wary back. 
 The door stayed open, and the boy and the servant 
 heard something of the preliminary approaches: "I 
 wished to express to you personally following my 
 letter most sincere sympathies great shock to us 
 you know the great regard Lady Yetminster and I 
 always your friends " Then from the husband 
 and father, in a voice sharpened by excitement: "I 
 am very much touched do indeed appreciate, and 
 thank you act of real friendship in fact, Lord Yet- 
 minster, I'm quite incapable of expressing what I 
 feel " The Study door closed. 
 
 Mervyn threw open the French window and 
 walked out on to the drive. It had stopped raining.
 
 26 BRUTE GODS 
 
 He whistled, and soon his brother joined him, with 
 flushed face and indignant eyes. 
 
 "You perfect ass," said Alec. ''I've been waiting 
 about to get in and finish my breakfast, but you and 
 he would keep on jabbering. 'Don't want to go now, 
 though. Sick of waiting." 
 
 "I can't help it. You will do these things. You 
 ought to know by now that it isn't behaving like a 
 gentleman to neigh like a mare. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, shut up. You can't make me laugh now. 
 You might be as funny as you could stick together, 
 and it wouldn't make me laugh. Just because it 
 wouldn't matter if I did, I suppose. How damn silly ! 
 What did he say?" They walked down towards 
 the garage. 
 
 "Oh, the usual gag. Business about bein' a 
 blasted Glaive. And you're to keep up the honour 
 of the family, after this, by not takin' any notice 
 of girls and always talkin' proper. Dear old dad 
 isn't sure if he'll get enough cash out of Williams 
 to make it worth while, but if he can annoy the chap 
 badly, he may bring action anyhow. I'm against it. 
 It'd be a horrid nuisance, particularly while I'm up 
 at Oxford. Don't think the old bird '11 do it, but 
 he'd make himself damn uncomfortable, so's to hit 
 Williams." 
 
 "You seem cheerful enough. I don't half like it. 
 Why, it's the sort of thing that hardly ever happens. 
 We shall both look awful fools " 
 
 "Oh, what's the odds? You ought to have been a 
 few years older. After you Ve been mixed up in that
 
 CONFUSIONS 27 
 
 mess, all you want is to live an 7 have a good time, 
 an' never see a uniform. I shan't ever give or take 
 a salute again, that's enough for me. "War's over. 
 What 's the odds ? Wake up in a bed, have a bath and 
 be a civilian. You don't think anything of a little 
 thing like this. She isn't our mother, either. And 
 anyhow nothing's worth fussing over. 'Pity Wil- 
 liams is such an ass, though." 
 
 Alec, puzzled, scrutinized his brother. He did not 
 at all understand how deeply, yet how lightly and ami- 
 ably, Mervyn was disillusioned. "I see the Rat's 
 come," he said. 
 
 "Yes; with the old man in the Study now. I've 
 got to drive over to Bloyce's." 
 
 "Auntie's guzzling in her room. She got Mogg- 
 ridge to send her breakfast up." 
 
 "'Course she did. Any one could see she was 
 really as hungry as a whale. 'Wish she'd eloped in- 
 stead of the Mater. I hate Aunt Cathy worst of all 
 my aunts, but I s'pose that's only because she lives 
 with us. If I wasn't as lazy as a tortoise I'd clear 
 out and get something to do in London. 'Don't fancy 
 trottin' round seein' after the Eat's tenants all my 
 life just like the guv 'nor. But, Lord, what's the 
 odds? Comin' along?" 
 
 "No, don't think so." 
 
 "Well, don't go messin' about with Frippie. 
 She's a rotter, anyhow. Some fellow's gone and 
 bitten her chin already." 
 
 Mervyn sauntered off. Alec's face grew grave 
 and troubled. He walked away, over the lawn,
 
 28 BRUTE GODS 
 
 through the gate that led into the field a youth 
 somewhat over-tall, with an undisciplined figure. 
 Girls who liked him thought of his eyes, which were 
 of a very dark brown impressionable eyes, and large ; 
 contrasting startlingly with his russet hair that had 
 enough light of gold in it for him to have been called 
 "Carrots" at school. A less hackneyed nickname 
 was "Autumn Tints." His face was long, and high- 
 coloured: he blushed very easily, to a tormentingly 
 vivid scarlet. His round chin hinted weakness of 
 will, but this suggestion was modified, at least, by a 
 certain grimness and almost bitterness often showing 
 in the close lines of his mouth a small mouth, though 
 with full enough lips. He baffled prediction, so evi- 
 dently exposed as he was, so susceptible to change, 
 so ready for any one of a score of diverse moulds. 
 But "volatile" was not the word to touch him: his 
 surrender to influence would be too seriously made, 
 with too much energy; and he would colour each in- 
 fluence with himself, subdue it to himself, perhaps. 
 His long legs now took him rapidly over the field 
 towards Father Collett's Vicarage. "You can hardly 
 blame the Mater. ' ' Mervyn's careless words had gone 
 deep, Alec struck out from them, and was lost. His 
 mind swam in the first surge of the event, but could 
 not breast eddies nor touch bottom. His step- 
 mother He tried, wonderingly, to see her. . . . 
 
 Mrs. Glaive's adulterous desertion had postponed 
 Aunt Catherine's breakfast a trifling piece of dis- 
 comfort for the heartfelt satisfaction she had had in 
 a surprise so stirring: it had set the brain of the
 
 CONFUSIONS 29 
 
 master of the house working keen on nice balances 
 of loss and profit, in the intervals of self-dedication to 
 Christian morality: the settled Mervyn's amiable 
 securities it had sensibly though not too rudely ruffled. 
 In Alec, the sense of the "calamity" began to vex 
 for organic growth.
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 ALEC crossed the road from the field and 
 struck out skirting the Golf Course. The 
 flat treeless drained marshland was rough- 
 ened and brightened by bushes of lively yellow gorse. 
 Their lavish buxom odour assailed him, in blend with 
 the smart-tasting sea air. All this could not help: 
 it could stand anything any beastly thing that might 
 happen. That impudent excessive shouting gorse! 
 If only he could insult this "Nature," which had be- 
 come really noticeable to him now for the first time. 
 Alec swished his stick through one of the clumps, 
 scattering the offensive bright stuff. He remembered 
 the Suffolk boy who had been found beating a toad 
 and calling out, between the strokes: "I'll larn 
 yer to be a toad, I'll larn yer!" Perhaps that boy 
 was angry with some one else. But it was not so 
 much that Alec was angry with his father ; such mere 
 anger would not, of course, have been unusual for 
 him. His emotion was one of new and highly con- 
 scious hatred. He was overpowered by and wonder- 
 ing at this quickening of hatred as a woman is by 
 the quickening of a child : it was a portent of growth, 
 significant, disquieting, uncertain; it was something 
 that would grow not only in itself, but in other parts 
 of him, in very much else. . . . 
 
 As Alec walked, he did not think at all of his step- 
 30
 
 CONFUSIONS 31 
 
 mother, but his father emerged for him rapidly and 
 continuously in a score of those repeated postures 
 of the past. He saw him in his morning irritability, 
 glinting his liverish eye from point to point of the 
 room during the assembling for Prayers, then pounc- 
 ing with the sharpened little claws of his sarcastic 
 and malevolent speech. "Is there some cryptic rea- 
 son, Mervyn, for your turning yourself into a public 
 advertisement of brainless vanity? That necktie and 
 those socks may serve some other purpose, but if they 
 do, it is hidden from me." "What is the point, 
 Alec, of that ridiculous pose you've taken to lately 
 of folding your arms? I see you've even gone to 
 the lengths of perpetuating yourself in a photo- 
 graph in that attitude." "Catherine, do pray use 
 some sort of endeavour not to commit yourself to 
 further folly." 
 
 There was no personal peculiarity of any one of the 
 three of them that he did not customarily gibe at, 
 with intent. He knew just where the nerves were 
 that would respond with sensitive and continued 
 vibration. Alec, in retrospect, smarted most keenly 
 under the memories of his earlier boyhood, fed his 
 hate most on them. He recalled the time when he 
 used to have dancing lessons. "Well, my little danc- 
 ing-man! Strike up! Tra-la-la, fol-de-rol!" His 
 father would skip and jump on the hearthrug, 
 grotesquely encircling an imaginary partner, con- 
 torting his lips to the parody of a social smile. 
 There used to be Shakespeare readings, with a group 
 of neighbours sitting round the drawing-room of one
 
 32 BRUTE GODS 
 
 or another of their houses. His father always took the 
 most prominent part, he would read with extraor- 
 dinary cleverness, with a brilliant sense of certain 
 values of the characters. "Your interpretation of 
 Jacques it 's masterly, Mr. Glaive masterly ! ' ' Mrs. 
 Bevan, the retired actress, had complimented him: 
 Alec could see clearly the deprecating bend of his 
 father's head, his creeping smile. . . . Alec had had 
 to read "Silvius," the shepherd. His father had 
 made him rehearse before the family. He knew that 
 the boy, being then at the most sensitive and morbid 
 period of the awkward age, could hardly be trusted 
 to make Silvius's declarations of love expressively 
 without a little practice. "Oh, Phebe, Phebe, 
 Phebe!" the lad read, in a cracking voice, his cheeks 
 throbbing. "Oh, feeble, feeble, feeble!" his father 
 shot out, with again that familiar creeping smile. 
 At the meeting itself, Alec had read sullenly and 
 monotonously. "If you want everybody to think 
 you a numskull, that's the way to do it!" Mr. Glaive 
 had been too much occupied with his own triumph as 
 Jacques to make any further comment then. Mervyn 
 had played truant, his part had been read by some 
 one else, Alec envying him his courage. Later on, he 
 had followed its example. 
 
 At about fifteen he had begun his defiance, when 
 he had set himself stubbornly not to allow that moist- 
 ening sting of his eyes to help his father's favourable 
 occasions. He would leave the room. "You can- 
 not go when I'm talking to you, sir: haven't you the 
 manners of a gentleman?" To counter this rebellion,
 
 CONFUSIONS 83 
 
 Mr. Glaive had stopped his son's pocket money 
 "until you see fit to apologize for your rudeness." 
 ' ' Stop it for ever, then ! ' ' Alec had told him, bringing 
 ing home the unpleasing fact that the son was grow- 
 ing up out of former reach. The punishment did not 
 last long. "Stopped your pocket money, has he, the 
 old skinflint!" young Lord Aldborough, Lord Yet- 
 minster's son, had observed to Alec under the Study 
 window. Mr. Glaive overheard, and in a few days he 
 handed out the boy's allowance with an air of large 
 generosity. "An act of grace," he had said: "but 
 remember, when you choose to be stubborn in later 
 life, you won't always have a father to deal with. I 
 can't treat you now as though you'd reached a re- 
 sponsible age." He could not stand being censured 
 for parsimony by a young Earl. 
 
 Lord Aldborough Lord Yetminster Lord Charles 
 Freyle Lord Derek Lady Barbara how they had 
 overflowed on them, those people swamped them. 
 Alec's father's house and everything in it seemed a 
 sort of backwash from Lord Yetminster 's great 
 "country seat." And Alec's father, for all that 
 perpetual insistence of his "A Glaive is as good as 
 a Freyle, and better" all the more, indeed, for that 
 assertive repetition, his father seemed responsible for 
 their shadowed situation, guilty of it. The boy did 
 not ask why, nor how, but he bitterly felt that any 
 man with real pride would not have put himself and 
 his family under that big rich house, under all those 
 titles that towered and bristled. It was not that any 
 of the Freyles emphasized their rank: they did not,
 
 34 BRUTE GODS 
 
 not even Lord Aldborough, who was the only one at 
 all inclined to arrogance. It was Alec's father who 
 was for ever putting his sons into that discomfiting 
 conscious relation to the Marquisate and its ap- 
 panages. Members of the Freyle family had loomed 
 heavily for Mervyn and Alec almost from their in- 
 fancy. "Never say 'Lord Freyle.' Only outsiders 
 and foreigners do that. 'Lord Charles Freyle.' Say- 
 ing 'Lord Freyle' will stamp you as a bounder at 
 once, remember that, Mervyn." "In conversation 
 you say 'Lord Yetminster' ; in addressing an envelope 
 put the full title. You see, as I've just written it. 
 Same with Lord Aldborough 'The Earl of Aid- 
 borough' only in addressing letters. You boys drop 
 the title when you're with him, of course: you're near 
 enough to his age." 
 
 They were all "equals": how his father had rubbed 
 that in! And his father lied; they weren't equals. 
 Even if the Glaive family had been older and it 
 was not; Alec's uncle always laughed at the preten- 
 sion but even if it had been, there were hundreds 
 of distant cousins to baronets, and marquises were 
 rare. Sir Julian was an impoverished degraded 
 baronet, too, he associated chiefly with jockeys and 
 horsey adventurers, no one of his own class had any- 
 thing to do with him, he was a drunken red-jowled 
 "sport," with all the usual vices. He was the third 
 baronet, the creation being mere Victorian, given for 
 contributions to the Liberal Party chest. That old 
 fake of its being a revival of a title extinct since 
 James the Second! Alec's resentment grew still more
 
 CONFUSIONS 35 
 
 hostile. The Freyles didn't regard them as equals, 
 Aldborough had called formally on Mervyn at Ox- 
 ford, and with Mervyn 's return call there was an 
 end of the matter. He knew Mervyn as his father's 
 agent's son at home, but that was no reason for his 
 knowing him anywhere else. And the "county 
 people" didn't think them "equals." Their old 
 name! Why, even if it had been old Jim Bovey, 
 the cobbler, was a blood-relative of Lord Beauvais, 
 Alec had heard Lord Beauvais say he was practically 
 certain of it. It wasn't your name that counted, 
 it was your position ; any one could see that, yet his 
 father had fooled them with these false values, ex- 
 posed them to all the choking bitterness of snobbery, 
 handicapped them at the start, stopped their breath 
 for the race. No wonder the Mater couldn't stand 
 it that and everything else 
 
 It had been stupid and cruel. Alec's friend Wil- 
 fred Vail had first made him see these things, had 
 cured him of this Glaive pretentiousness. "We 
 middleclass people," Vail would say, shocking Alec 
 terribly in their early acquaintanceship. "I thought 
 tradesmen were middleclass," he had replied. "Oh, 
 'upper middleclass' for us, if you insist on it, my dear 
 boy!" Alec saw very soon how much easier Wil- 
 fred's undervaluation of his social position made life 
 for him, how it freed him from strain and left him 
 open to the flow of his interests. He could figure 
 his father's consciousness, in Vail's place, of the fact 
 that all his "people" had belonged to the recognized 
 professions, and that his great-uncle had been Lord
 
 36 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Chancellor. But Vail drew his straight line between 
 himself and the county families ; drew it as sharp and 
 black-clear as one of the lines in his excellent 
 mechanical diagrams. He had a singularly French 
 mind, a mind of certainties, bent on simplification of 
 issues by accuracy and logic. 
 
 Unwittingly, Wilfred Vail had opened Alec's eyes 
 to this particular wrong done him by his father, this 
 ridiculous entangling of him in pretence. His 
 father's vanity needed lies for its support, and the 
 nurturing of a family on those lies lent them substance 
 of conviction, strengthened them for their mean 
 ministrations. Alec had come to realize this, from 
 Wilfred, a year ago; he had condemned his father 
 then, resenting him, despising him, angry that he and 
 Mervyn should have been set thus blindfolded and 
 befooled in the way of worldly ridicule. Every one 
 in East Suffolk had heard the story of Mrs. Conyers 
 and her Manx kitten: smart little Mrs. Conyers on 
 the Station platform, dumping the grotesque little 
 tailless beast into a corner of her carriage, with: 
 * ' Now, then, Tips, behave : remember you 're a Manx ! ' ' 
 This and other such humorous satiric strokes of the 
 neighbourhood had gained point and sting for Alec 
 since his friendship with Wilfred Vail. 
 
 But the illumination of this present event was much 
 more powerful. It revealed the past under a much 
 broader gauge of light, it threw meaningly into their 
 mutual relationship the different integral parts of his 
 father's evil. Now, after the first joltings and 
 blurrings of Alec's focus, this vindictive clarity took
 
 CONFUSIONS 37 
 
 settled place. He had never felt his vision so keen, 
 his brain so active and sure. His friend Wilfred had 
 often said to him: "You need intellectual quicken- 
 ing 1 ." Well, now he had it, this quickening. His 
 old double confusing consciousness of his father was 
 gone for good. Before, there had been a queer com- 
 posite picture of the father's advertised self and his 
 self as shown in daily act. The advertisement, dis- 
 played by Glaive himself, by the aunt, by Alec's step- 
 mother, and in earlier days by the housekeeper and 
 the boys' nurse, was of a man just and self-controlled, 
 honourable and generous, kind and clever, a good man 
 and a good father, entitled to respect and obedience 
 by natural right. From as far back in childhood as 
 either of the boys could remember, the association 
 of these qualities with their father had been im- 
 pressed: and the impression of his actual self had 
 been working upon them for the same length of 
 time. Now, all this advertisement was peeled quite 
 away, the authentic and consistent man emerged un- 
 plastered, and Alec, seeing his father for the first 
 time, for the first time realized that he was his father, 
 and so for the first time he could really hate him. 
 
 The boy walked more rapidly, his hatred caught 
 sick and cold at his belly. What right had his father 
 had to cheat and hurt them like this as he had 
 cheated and hurt them when they were such kids, 
 and didn't know, and couldn't do anything? If 
 he had flogged them, that wouldn't have been so bad. 
 Alec had been flogged, of course, at his public school ; 
 that only mattered for the time, all the other chaps
 
 38 BRUTE GODS 
 
 were swished too, no one thought anything of it. 
 His father had never beaten either him or Mervyn. 
 ' ' That wouldn 't have amused him ! ' ' He liked to be 
 cleverer than that in making them cry. Alec very 
 clearly remembered Mervyn 's shame at being seen cry- 
 ing; Mervyn had been angry with him for having 
 seen, he had taken him by the wrist and punched 
 his arm, with tears in his own eyes. "Well nothing 
 their father said could ever make either of them cry 
 again, they had been hardened in that way. All the 
 same, he had left his marks, and he was there. He 
 still had power, he would always be doing something 
 to somebody. The man's active malevolence flashed 
 on Alec. What had he done to the Mater to make 
 her clear out like that? 
 
 The Mater It was very puzzling to think of her, 
 because she seemed, somehow, to have become a new 
 person. It had always been impressed upon Alec 
 that he loved her very much. Certainly it was odd, 
 the house without her. She had always been some- 
 body whom you had to remember to greet, to say 
 good morning and good night and good-bye to, and 
 on whose account you were not to make too much 
 noise. "Not very strong" they said of her. That 
 too had been impressed on the boy also the fact of 
 her beauty, so much so that the word "beautiful" 
 instantly associated itself with her. And he had 
 realized, with definite pride, that she was much better 
 to look at than the women of other households. It 
 used to seem hard luck on other boys that they should 
 have to have their kind of mothers. Alec remembered
 
 CONFUSIONS 39 
 
 how the Mater used to look, in the hall, on her way 
 out for a motor-drive. She wore black furs. His 
 mind strained out to her. Once when they were 
 all at the theatre in London, she had said to him: 
 "You do enjoy it, darling, don't you?" That 
 memory stood out very clear, but nothing came of it ; 
 it hung suspended, without contact. The Mater was 
 a "beautiful," "not very strong" person, closely 
 connected with several things you had to remember, 
 with her place at the dining-table, with being "in 
 her room, ' ' where she had not uncommonly stayed, in- 
 visible to Alec and Mervyn, for days together. When 
 she spoke she made you want to answer in the same 
 kind of low voice. Alec's acceptance of her had been 
 of that completely incurious and passive kind given 
 by young people to the elders who live with them. 
 Yet for all this, and for all the little he had seen or 
 thought of her, she was involved, deeply, in his idea 
 of "home": he always felt she was there. Now she 
 was not, and the readjustments, the challenges 
 clamouring out of that fact were too much for the 
 boy. He stopped his ears to them: he recalled that 
 remark of Mervyn 's to keep them off. 
 
 Of course Mervyn was absolutely right. The Mater 
 was well out of it, you couldn't blame her. Only, as 
 Mervyn said, it was a pity that silly fool Williams 
 had to be mixed up in it. Alec determined not to 
 accept any condolences, direct or indirect. Father 
 Collett would say something about it so would Wil- 
 fred Vail and he would tell them that he thought 
 that he knew his stepmother was right. There had
 
 40 BRUTE GODS 
 
 been enough lies: he wouldn't be like his father. But 
 it wasn't only a question of his father; there were 
 all these other people, the neighbours. They would 
 lie too, they would all of them say the Mater had 
 done wrong, they would say they were sorry for his 
 father, they would support him. Perhaps there 
 hadn't been any special thing his father had done 
 to her, it had been just his general beastliness, gen- 
 eral "bloodiness," that she couldn't stand any longer. 
 Before the rest of the family he had always behaved 
 pretty decently to her, he wasn't rude as he was to 
 Aunt Cathy, he didn't row her as her rowed the 
 others. Alec understood, without worded thought, 
 that his father's feeling for Mrs. Glaive as his per- 
 sonal property prevented him from compromising 
 himself by that kind of attack upon her. He realized, 
 too, that his father's perpetual air of superior forbear- 
 ance with his wife might well be worse to put up 
 with, day in and day out, than any ridicule or in- 
 sult. And there had been certain galled raking tones 
 sometimes carried to the boy's ears from the big bed- 
 room. "What a stupid woman!" he had overheard 
 once: a remark that had touched his memory 
 strangely. For how could "the best mother, the best 
 woman in the world," as his father had often as- 
 sured them she was, be stupid? He knew that he 
 had heard that remark before, said in just that way, 
 in just that place ; he thought he must have dreamed 
 it, till gradually there came from very early child- 
 hood the remembrance of his father having exclaimed 
 upon his real mother in the same phrase.
 
 CONFUSIONS 41 
 
 Alec's real mother was vague and distant, but he 
 remembered one thing about her now, he remembered 
 how she had once cried. She had been reading him 
 a story of Hans Andersen, a story'about Cupid, the 
 little boy who had hit every father and mother with his 
 arrow. "You can ask your mother if this is not 
 true." Alec indignantly had asked. "Yes," she re- 
 plied, and then turned her face and cried with a 
 violence of misery that amazed the child and shocked 
 him. 
 
 It never occurred to Alec that Mrs. Glaive might 
 be "in love" with Carlyon-Williams, he could not 
 imagine her "in love" with anybody: a romantic 
 elopement was too incongruous with his household 
 associations with his stepmother for him to take a 
 moment's view of it. But he knew that what to him- 
 self he called "the smutty part of it" would be vivid 
 to every one, and this shamed and annoyed him. He 
 knew the kind of whispering slant-eyed interest that 
 would be taken by people like Mr. McGill, the lay- 
 reader the "Purity Ghoul," as Mervyn called him, 
 because of his bony sallow face and his activity in 
 a certain organization that aimed at the promotion 
 of virtuousness in "thought, word, and deed." He 
 knew, too, that whenever anything "smutty" came 
 in, people always laughed, and that in this case they 
 would laugh chiefly at his father. It was some satis- 
 faction that his father would mind being laughed at, 
 it was paying him back. He had made his family 
 a laughing-stock, now he'd be one himself "us, too, 
 I suppose, but I don't care!"
 
 42 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Alec's mind went to the adolescent abortive "love- 
 affairs ' ' of Mervyn and himself, to the peculiar acute- 
 ness and eagerness of his father's ridicule of them 
 an eagerness sharpened by jealousy, if the boy had 
 known it. "How's our baby Romeo this morning?" 
 Mervyn had raised his hand at that query, afterwards 
 he told Alec that he had wanted to hit the old man 
 hard: "God knows why I didn't: I wish I had. I 
 will next time. ' ' But nothing came of that. . . . The 
 curious thing was that the father seemed furtively 
 proud of Mervyn 's amours, just as he was of Mervyn 's 
 extravagances: "Young dog, I tell you, Resine " 
 Alec had overheard the sly comment to their doctor: 
 "young dog, I caught him . . . better look out for 
 him, Resine." And Dr. Resine had laughed, he had 
 said something about "the green tree and the dry." 
 People always laughed about things of this kind, they 
 laughed or they were oddly excited, or, like Mr. Mc- 
 Gill, they were earnestly disturbed. 
 
 He began wondering if Frippie Clark would be 
 anywhere about that morning. He hadn't seen her 
 since the half-term holiday six or seven weeks ago. 
 Mervyn thought him "a bit of a rotter" for having 
 anything to do with the girl, Mervyn had changed 
 in some ways since he got engaged to Nita Resine. 
 Wilfred Vail disapproved, too: "I don't like it, 
 Alec, your fooling about with these village 
 'mawthers.' ' Alec had not answered, but his lips 
 grew grim. He resented Wilfred's speaking of 
 Frippie as though there were lots of other village 
 girls just like her. She was quite different, she didn't
 
 CONFUSIONS 43 
 
 make him shy, he never felt himself blushing with 
 her, she put him at ease, and she thought something 
 of him. Other girls didn't tell him where they were 
 going to pick blackberries or look for fossil-shells, 
 and if they had, they wouldn't have been alone when 
 he got there, they wouldn 't have said, in that friendly 
 way: ''Well, give us a kiss, come on." He didn't 
 care whether other people thought he ought to go 
 seeing Frippie or not; he didn't care now. He wasn't 
 going to trouble himself any more about whether it 
 was right. People were wrong about the Mater's 
 going away, and they were probably wrong about 
 other things: they were wrong about this. He'd do 
 as he pleased : he 'd consult himself, not them. Byron 
 had done as he pleased, and he was a great man. 
 He'd tell Wilfred that. Again Alec swished at the 
 gorse, and his lips tightened. 
 
 His father had said that he was to be careful how 
 he behaved. That meant that his good behaviour 
 would be a sort of protection to his father, like the 
 neighbours' sympathy, like their opinions. Well, he 
 wouldn't! If his father and the others didn't like it, 
 so much the better.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ON arrival at Father Collett's, Alec found him- 
 self nervous. "Good morning," he said, 
 without looking at the priest. "I didn't 
 think it would turn out so fine, did you? The rain 
 seems quite to have to have stopped altogether, you 
 know. ' ' 
 
 ''My dear Alec," said the Anglican Father. He 
 held the boy's hand, and drew him towards a chair 
 that had its back to the light. 
 
 "You heard at once, I suppose?" 
 
 "Servants are couriers." 
 
 "And I didn't know all this time." 
 
 "My dear boy, I hope this won't affect your life 
 wrongly. It's that that matters, for us." 
 
 Alec did not answer nor look up. In reaction to 
 the confusions and fermentations and exhaustions 
 that the morning had dealt him, his mind lay back: 
 lying in the wash of spent emotion, in the shallows 
 left by his broken waves of anger and hate, he was 
 relaxed, exposed. His strained will, recalcitrant and 
 seeking respite, beckoned to the sensory pleasure of 
 surrender to the priest's spiritual advances. He lay 
 open to the indulgence of this so complete change 
 of stroke and play upon his consciousness. 
 
 Father Collett stood away from the boy, looking 
 down at him with his live black eyes. Cassock and 
 
 44
 
 CONFUSIONS 45 
 
 tonsure gave new values of force to his powerful 
 build, to his swart breadth of face. After awhile he 
 went to Alec, he put his hand on his shoulder. 
 
 "You feel this a great deal. You must use it. 
 My dear Alec, don't let it warp you, don't let it 
 tarnish you. You're at a dangerous age. You must 
 master this, make it an instrument." 
 
 "My stepmother is absolutely in the right!" Alec's 
 former emotions flickered suddenly. 
 
 "Our Lord would not say that." 
 
 Father Collett sat by the boy's side, and drew his 
 chair to him. One of the things Alec had first liked 
 him for was that he did not say ' ' Our Lerd, ' ' like most 
 other clergymen. 
 
 "But it is true," Collett went on, "that He would 
 not judge as the world judges. He would not speak 
 the world 's language nor think the world 's thoughts. ' ' 
 Alec half -closed his eyes, luxuriously responsive to the 
 familiar measured rhythm of the priest's voice. It 
 was a richly charged voice, a voice of deep quiet 
 flow. "But the world's errors drive us to errors. 
 There is the danger for you now. What has hap- 
 pened should show you where the real division in 
 life lies the division between the life spiritual and 
 the life material. I hope it will show you that. 
 Your stepmother was caught and tangled, poor lady, 
 in one worldly net : she has broken from that, but for 
 what ? The world will tangle her soul no less, now. ' ' 
 
 "Do you say she has done wrong, then?" 
 
 "Yes, in a sense. Because she has done a vain 
 thing, a thing that can leave no posterity for her soul.
 
 46 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Waste and dispersion in effort, that is evil. That is 
 what evil means." 
 
 "That's true, Father I've felt that" He 
 looked up, the priest's eyes subdued him. 
 
 "You have felt it, my dear son, because you are 
 ordained to the spiritual life." Father Collett's tone 
 was possessingly earnest. ' ' Because you are of us. It 
 is a very right and a very profound instinct that urges 
 you against condemnation of your stepmother. That 
 condemnation would be waste of the energy that is 
 given you for reaching up, for reaching on " 
 
 "Of course I don't condemn her! I condemn 
 him!" 
 
 "The man? This Mr." 
 
 "No, my father. I hate him." Alec was no longer 
 lapped and lulled. 
 
 "Ah, yes." Father Collett paused. "I see. But 
 condemning him will not help you, it will frustrate 
 you. 'Judge not that ye be not ' ' 
 
 "But I want to be judged ! I want every one to be, 
 and then we'd have it all cleared up! I want the 
 Day of Judgment " The boy was stirred to an un- 
 expected resistance. "And Christ condemned," he 
 added. 
 
 "We are not Christs. Christ knew that the only 
 way to achieve the only end that is, the goal of com- 
 plete spiritual dedication is to take all the currents 
 of our energy and feeling hatred and ambition and 
 lust and love and turn them to that one great cur- 
 rent of the true life. How can your hatred of your 
 father minister to you ?"
 
 CONFUSIONS 47 
 
 "I don't want it to minister to me. You don't 
 know. You can't know how he's been well, how he's 
 been hurting us all, all these years, trying to make 
 everybody look ridiculous and feel wretched. He's 
 a bad man bad and he ought to be made to pay 
 he ought to be stopped! Do you mean to say you 
 would go on just putting up with it?" Alec demanded 
 passionately. 
 
 "If he only makes people wretched and ridiculous, 
 that is nothing. If he can make them feel vindictive 
 and destructive, that is a great deal. But he can't 
 do that nobody can do that. The responsibility for 
 these feelings of yours lies with yourself, with no one 
 else. The only way, dear Alec, that you can fight 
 against evil is by not admitting evil past the gates 
 of your own spirit. There is no way in which the 
 world can know good except the way of individual 
 spiritual effort. Each must seek the Kingdom of 
 God for himself, must seek the salvation of his own 
 soul. Then all else shall be added to him, and, at 
 the last, to his brethren. What do you think you 
 can do by hatred of your father, by rebellion against 
 him, by 'punishing' him? Whatever evil there may 
 be in him, you cannot conquer that: the conquest 
 of that can only come from within your hostility 
 cannot help his soul " 
 
 "Oh, I hadn't any idea of helping his soul!" Alec 
 breathed hard. 
 
 "If he deserves punishment, God will punish him, 
 in himself."
 
 48 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "I don't want God's way of punishing, I want 
 mine!" 
 
 "Well, then!" 
 
 The priest stood up. He was a little flushed, his 
 black eyes were restless. Alec's determination 
 troubled him, and he could not decide how best to 
 meet it. Leaning on the mantelpiece, he became con- 
 scious of his own physical bulk, conscious of the full 
 and beating flow of his blood. His decision hurried 
 to an arresting and turning of the boy by an exposure 
 of himself, by personal humiliation, by the intimacy, 
 by the thrill that would come of this. 
 
 "You know my mother was a Creole," he said. 
 "And I've heard what they call me here. They call 
 me 'the black bullock.' " 
 
 ' ' Oh, they 're stupid people, everything they say or 
 think is wrong!" 
 
 Father Collett's colour deepened with pleasure at 
 the boy's championship. "I know you think kindly 
 of me, Alec. Why is that why do you?" He was 
 even faltering, and the wistfulness of his look was 
 strange in its contrast with him. 
 
 "Oh, it's because you take me away from every- 
 thing! That's what it is, it's something like dreams, 
 the sort of dreams one likes, you know. I'm not in 
 the same sort of time when I'm with you It's all 
 different" 
 
 "You mean that I touch the past for you?" Col- 
 lett was eager and pleased. 
 
 "Yes. I don't know I can't talk about it, but I 
 do feel it. I dreamt I was in some woods with you,
 
 CONFUSIONS 49 
 
 and was living with you, only you weren't a priest 
 and we wore things that you see in old pictures 
 green sort of mediaeval dress. I had a different 
 name Dexter Foothood extraordinary sort of name. 
 When I woke up, I wrote it down, or I should have 
 forgotten it. There was a church, and we went in. 
 They were burying somebody under the stone floor: 
 everything was Sarum use and, it was absurd, but 
 I was the person they were burying, in a way. You 
 know how mixed up things are in dreams?" 
 
 "Yes. Yes?" The priest was listening with in- 
 tent pleasure. 
 
 "Oh, that's all." Alec shut up, embarrassed. 
 
 ' ' They were burying you. ' ' The fire burnt slow in 
 the man's eyes, and his voice had the grave measure 
 of a ritual. "And yet you lived: and you lived the 
 more. That is what God means by you, and by me. 
 Alec! do you think that I haven't died and been 
 buried lost my life to save it ? That is the one thing 
 needful, that we, after the Pattern of our Saviour, 
 should die that we may rise again. Life everlasting 
 can be won only by the willing and conscious re- 
 nunciation of the life of the flesh. It is hard, this 
 renunciation, but how much harder it was for me than 
 for you!" 
 
 He sat down again by Alec, and the veins of the 
 boy's senses grew slowly charged by him. Again 
 Alec was beckoned to an easing surrender, a surrender 
 of subtle thrill and delicate allure. His spent emo- 
 tion and his physical hunger, in sweet intrigue, ex- 
 posed him. He felt a little faint, and that faintness
 
 50 BRUTE GODS 
 
 indulged him luxuriously. The strong-bodied priest 
 could not know this. Alec was conscious of the 
 privacy of his feeling, he was thus farther indulged. 
 The priest was a vice to him. 
 
 "You don't know, dear boy, with what gross beasts 
 I had to fight. You never can know, because God 
 has given you a nature of far greater refinement than 
 mine. But I did overcome God forbid that I should 
 glory " He made the sign of the cross. "It is 
 in Christ that I glory when I tell you of this. You 
 are nineteen now. When I was nineteen I was 
 capable of any sin, of any degradation. I was guilty 
 of sin, I was degraded. And now, even though I have 
 conquered in Christ the mark of the dead beast is 
 in my face, and will be till I die. Sometimes, Alec, 
 I look horrible horrible " 
 
 The boy pleasurably trembled. ' ' You never would, 
 to me," he said, "never " 
 
 "Ah, Alec! Your friendship is my very great re- 
 ward. These temporary rewards are allowed us 
 weaker ones : they are an earnest, a pledge to comfort 
 faith a symbol. I could never have been your friend 
 if I had not beaten down the evil in me. I am forty- 
 three years old. What should I have been like, now, 
 after twenty-six years, if that evil had beaten me 
 down? You would have shrunk from me Alec " 
 
 "I can't imagine you any different, Father." Alec 
 enjoyed the slight caress that he gave to his tone. 
 
 "Ah, I cam,. You don't know, you can't know. 
 But the enemies of your soul may be more dangerous 
 to you than mine were, more subtle, because they are
 
 CONFUSIONS 51 
 
 less brutish. Spiritual pride is often harder to over- 
 come than carnal lust. You are not carnal, Alec, 
 but you have flames that might consume you. You 
 have fierce energies, hostile energies, energies that 
 would destroy you in seeking to destroy others. You 
 could be proud enough to dare to usurp the Judg- 
 ment Seat of God!" Alec looked away, rather em- 
 barrassed, but tremendously flattered. "These ene- 
 mies of your spirit have covered-up faces, mine 
 showed theirs clear, unmasked. That is why I warn 
 you now, because you have craft against you ; I only 
 had force that could be met with force. Oh, my dear 
 boy, this is the truth, the truth that Christ came for. 
 We must conquer, we must sacrifice everything that 
 stands between us and our fulfilment all passions 
 that are of this world. Pride and hatred must be 
 set underfoot no less than lust and so must all 
 worldly action, all desires that bind the soul to the 
 world's wheels. This is Christ's teaching, and the 
 proof of its eternal truth is that no human being 
 can follow it utterly, and that not one in a million can 
 follow it at all!" 
 
 The priest was speaking more rapidly, more 
 strongly. He clasped his hands and looked before 
 him, sitting erect. 
 
 " Christ commands all our forces. The force that 
 would make a man a great leader in the world, a 
 great captain, a great statesman, a great poet or 
 painter or musician whatever is the force-in-chief 
 of a man's spirit, that must be taken and turned and 
 used wholly to bear the soul on toward its consum-
 
 52 BRUTE GODS 
 
 mation! These men of action men of worldly note 
 men of great careers what shall it profit them? 
 What of the soul that is theirs and God's? To abide 
 in the sphere of one's own soul." He whispered in 
 a passion of reverence. "It is a hard saying, but it 
 is Christ's: 'How hardly shall they that have 
 riches !' He means riches of all kinds, not wealth 
 in money only all qualities and energies that are of 
 worldly use. Martha's humble household helpful- 
 ness even that stayed the freedom of her spiritual 
 movement. It is not only the money-changers who 
 defile the Temple" 
 
 "But I couldn't give myself up like that! I 
 never could." 
 
 ' ' It would be realizing the only living self that you 
 have. You can do it, Alec. You could be a priest 
 a true priest. I am utterly sure of it if you 
 will" 
 
 "You want me to leave all this this wrong that 
 my father has done?" Alec spoke under the sharp 
 tremor of revived feeling. "You want me to leave 
 all that, and all those other horrible disgusting things ! 
 People aren't right in what they do and say about 
 what they call 'immorality,' they don't understand. 
 I must try I must say what I think. It's my father 
 who's wicked and evil, not my stepmother. Why 
 should she have kept on with him, how would that 
 have helped her, spiritually or anyhow else? It 
 would have been just the opposite. I can't see how 
 it can be right just to clear out and think of what 
 you can do for your soul!"
 
 CONFUSIONS 53 
 
 "It is right: growth of one soul leads on the growth 
 of others. You would only poison yourself by this 
 rebellion and revenge and hate, and you would cure 
 nothing, help no one. It is perfectly true that the 
 world condemns sins of the flesh in utter blindness. 
 Reject the world's morality yes: but your rejection 
 must strengthen your acceptance of the morality of 
 Christ. Why is carnal indulgence wrong? Not be- 
 cause of any evil material or physical effects it may 
 have often no such effects come from it. But if 
 they invariably came if family life or the social 
 system the property idea were invariably hurt by 
 what is called unlawful lust, or if the body's health 
 were invariably hurt all this would be a matter of 
 no moment. Christ cared nothing for bodily health, 
 He cared less for family life and the human order- 
 ings of His day ; He was even against them, He knew 
 and denounced their obstructiveness. No. Carnal in- 
 dulgence is wrong and Christ rejected it because it 
 draws off to the lower life, the temporary life, all the 
 fervour, the force, and the quickening that God wills 
 for the higher life, the life eternal. It is a misap- 
 plication of what would lead you to God. This is why 
 the greatest sinners are so near akin to the greatest 
 saints. Between them there is only the difference of 
 choice of direction Saint Augustine the Magda- 
 lene" 
 
 "But then " Alec's gaze was fixed, he hesitated 
 and stammered, while the priest noticed the pallor 
 that heightened his dark eyes. "Then how about
 
 54 BRUTE GODS 
 
 marriage? How is there any difference? I mean in 
 that way for " 
 
 He faltered and closed his eyes against the vertigo 
 that swayed him ; there was motion of blackness. . . . 
 Father Collett took both his hands. "Alec! You're 
 faint my boy I should have seen." He got up 
 and went hurriedly over to the bell. 
 
 "Oh, it's all right. I didn't have breakfast. It's 
 nothing stupid of me." 
 
 Alec found himself pleasurably engaged with this 
 unaccustomed physical faintness, he allied himself 
 with it, he enjoyed being put, in this vagueness, at 
 the mercy of what might come. It gave him a new 
 importance. "This is why people fast," he thought, 
 and he recalled a contemptuous observation of his 
 father's about religious visionaries: "If you eat too 
 much, you dream by night; if you eat too little, you 
 dream by day." 
 
 "You must take some wine and food; you shall 
 have it at once." 
 
 Again the priest's fleshiness weighted him as he 
 looked down at the boy's face, with its delicacy of 
 youth, its lightly turned contours, all its fleeting im- 
 pressionable lines. The lips were now loosely set, the 
 mouth looked larger, it looked unguarded. The ' ' black 
 bullock's" eyes softened with tenderness and admira- 
 tion. This boy must not be wasted in the world 
 coarsened by the world. This must be the hour of 
 his spiritual weaning the very hour. The priest's 
 whole frame went throbbing to win this boy for re- 
 ligion, to win him for the true religious life that was
 
 CONFUSIONS 55 
 
 so rare now, the life that God, in His wisdom, had 
 allowed those who called themselves Christians almost 
 to forget. Ah, if he could win Alec, how his very 
 soul would go out to Christ, in blessed fulfilment. 
 "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace 
 for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." He 
 trembled with his spiritual passion, he drew force and 
 shaking ecstasy for this passion from his bodily 
 strength. "My beloved son," he thought, looking at 
 the boy and the phrase smote him with sweet 
 violence out of its association with Christ. It was 
 frightening and wonderful to think it of Alec, with 
 the Crucifix in view. Ah, he would take him by the 
 hand, away from the secular strife, from vain dis- 
 cordance, from worldly evil, from the soilures of 
 women, and before the Eternal Altar might he not 
 greatly triumph with him under the "Will of God? 
 ' ' This is my beloved son my beloved in whom Thou 
 art well pleased. I have brought him saved him!" 
 The spiritual egoist vibrated with his essential thrill.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FATHER COLLETT chose for Alec what he 
 judged to be the most fortifying of the few 
 wines he had a Nuits of matured virtue. The 
 boy sipped from the green bowl of the glass ; with the 
 long spirally twisted stem slim to his fingers, he re- 
 sponded to the instant working of the wine upon his 
 blood. In his cheeks he felt a luxurious and gradual 
 flicker, there was a light wavy motion of colour in 
 his brain: the refreshment in languor was exquisite. 
 
 He took luncheon with the priest, and it seemed 
 that no food had ever tasted more delicious than the 
 anchovies and the crisp fried sole of that meal. The 
 Nuits was by the side of his plate, and he filled a 
 second glass, happily surprised by the variation of 
 the wine's flavour to harmony with the taste of the 
 fish. His father was out of his mind. 
 
 "This must be a fine claret." He wanted the 
 prestige of a connoisseur. 
 
 "Comparatively, perhaps." Father Collett did not 
 correct the boy's mistake. He looked at him, noting 
 his flush. "It wouldn't be wise, though forgive me, 
 Alec, but after you have been feeling faint I 
 shouldn't take more than two glasses." He poured 
 his own wine a white Bordeaux from its glass, and 
 filled up the tumbler with soda-water. 
 
 "Some people think it's wrong to drink at all," 
 56
 
 CONFUSIONS 57 
 
 said Alec musingly. " There are so many different 
 things that people think wrong. They can't all be 
 right I mean about all these things. How is one to 
 know?" 
 
 ' ' Our Lord knew what was good and what was evil. 
 "We have His guidance. He turned water into wine, 
 and wine into His own blood. If wine were evil, He 
 would not have chosen it to express the most 
 tremendous mystery of His Faith. Surely that is 
 clear " 
 
 "It doesn't seem clear to all these Baptists and 
 Methodists and Wesleyans " 
 
 "My dear boy, their stupid virulence against wine 
 is only one of their many stupid and unpleasant 
 heresies. Wine is eschewed by heretics and Ma- 
 hometans. They hardly concern us." The priest 
 spoke lightly, almost humorously, as he poured a little 
 more Bordeaux into his glass. "Harry " he ad- 
 dressed his boy servant, who came in at that moment, 
 "tell Eugene to cook us something more. We were 
 late getting to lunch today," he added to Alec, en- 
 joying using an expression that suggested their living 
 together. He had seen that the fish hardly met the 
 boy's appetite half-way. 
 
 "It's much nicer not being waited on by maids," 
 said Alec as the door closed. He felt remarkably 
 happy, remarkably well placed; and disposed to a 
 light haphazard ranging along the topics of easy 
 moments. 
 
 ' ' The war constrained me to a parlourmaid for one 
 week. She breathed down my neck, and the terrible
 
 58 BRUTE GODS 
 
 memory of that made it impossible for me to write 
 my sermons. For some time I used to wait on my- 
 self you remember? and I did it very badly, but 
 happily it is a physical impossibility to breathe down 
 one's own neck, and even if it were not, the torment 
 would be more tolerable, self-inflicted." 
 
 Alec filled his glass again with the Burgundy. 
 Father Collett shook his head at him. 
 
 "A shocking scene," he remarked. "A warning, 
 an awful warning. Some one should really have it 
 done as an oleograph for decoration of the very veri- 
 est of Free Church homes. 'The proselytizing priest 
 plying his victim with strong drink.' 'Weaken- 
 ing the Will: or the First Step to Rome.' It would 
 look well on one of those Protestant Calendars. 
 'Reeling Romeward' perhaps that is neater. What 
 will happen to me, Alec, if Mr. Edgar Carrick 'the 
 Reverend Carrick,' I should say should chance to 
 pass by when you totter wine-stained from my gate? 
 No, no, that must never be ! " he cried, laying his hand 
 for an instant on the bottle. 
 
 "All right. I won't take any more." 
 
 Cutlets were brought, with green peas ; the boy ate 
 heartily, Father Collett took only a few mouthfuls. 
 He kept his bantering tone, playing on with his 
 priestly-holiday raillery, his churchy frivolity that 
 showed such sad decay from the old-time mirth of re- 
 fectory and cloister. On Father Collett this 
 "humour" had been artificially imposed by his 
 associations. Alec accepted it uncritically as some- 
 thing that had to do with the priest like his clothes ;
 
 CONFUSIONS 59 
 
 not really important. He lazily remembered that 
 Mervyn didn 't like Father Collett 's jokes. ' ' When he 
 tries to be funny he simply sets my teeth on edge. I 
 think he's awful." Alec didn't mind. Dr. Resine's 
 jokes were what he couldn't stand, because he didn't 
 like Dr. Resine. He looked up at Father Collett and 
 liked very much the look of fondness for him in the 
 sloe-black eyes: and there was a gratifying confirma- 
 tion of the priest's friendly individuality in those 
 joined soft dense eyebrows, unlike the eyebrows of any 
 one else, for one was glossy-black, the other white as 
 milk, with the bridging hair of an intermediate grey. 
 This physical peculiarity seemed in some way co- 
 operative with affection. 
 
 Alec, in being fed, and fed so well his father's 
 cook was no expert grew sportive, he wanted to 
 tease, knowing the priest was fond of him ; he wanted 
 to make him do something that would be rather 
 agitating to him, wanted to stir conflict between the 
 promptings of good judgment and the promptings of 
 fondness. His instinct was like that of a woman 
 who counterbalances and overcomes the strength of 
 her man by her advantage in his being a good deal 
 more committed to his affection than she to hers. 
 Alec cast about for some caprice, some whim that 
 would trouble his companion a little, move him to a 
 troubled resistance, divide his will : it was the flattery 
 of this sport that he wanted, and then the flattery 
 of the priest's yielding to him, as he knew he would. 
 He must feel his power, this way. 
 
 "I wish I knew more about wine," he said sud-
 
 60 BRUTE GODS 
 
 denly. "I mean what wines go with what food. 
 You take the stronger wines and liqueurs after eating, 
 don't you?" 
 
 "You don't. At least not when you're lunching 
 with me. ' ' Father Collett looked ' ' comically severe. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Oh, I meant people generally of course. I know 
 you never drink champagne with fish." 
 
 "No, that would be cruelty to the fish. Unless 
 they're crustaceans, they resent it extremely. And 
 they spoil the champagne, in revenge." 
 
 "I remember my father laughing at the Markby- 
 Levins because they served champagne with turbot at 
 one of their dinners. He said it showed what kind of 
 people they were." 
 
 "Ah. In that case the turbot was avenged by im- 
 pugning the gentility of his tormentors." 
 
 "Brandy's the same kind of thing as champagne, 
 isn't it? Made of the same grapes, I mean?" 
 
 "Unless we chance to be deceived, Alec." 
 
 "Well, I suppose you wouldn't drink brandy with 
 fish, would you? But you could afterwards, with 
 coffee?" 
 
 "It would be possible. Without forfeiting all 
 claim to good breeding. ' ' The priest sipped from his 
 coffee cup, and then remarked : "Will you take sugar 
 with yours?" 
 
 "I have sugar, thanks." 
 
 "And I won't offer you milk or cream, I won't 
 countenance that atrocious Anglo-Saxon barbarism. 
 So well " Father Collett was evidently a little 
 uneasy.
 
 CONFUSIONS 61 
 
 "Oh, I suppose you've given it all away to the sick 
 parishioners ! ' ' 
 
 "'It'? What is 'it'? My dear boy, old Mrs. 
 Mudd must have finished my last bottle drained it 
 to the dregs every drop. Poor soul, it made her so 
 happy, I hadn't the heart to stop her. ' That du hully 
 fare good in the innards,' she said. You see I haven't 
 learnt to talk Suffolk yet, and I doubt if I ever shall ! 
 I'm no linguist." 
 
 "Just a liqueur glass wouldn't hurt, would it, 
 Father?" Alec looked at him with eyes that faintly 
 smiled his confident mischief. "I didn't take another 
 glass of the wine," he added, with a rather touchy 
 plaintiveness. 
 
 "But, my dear innocent child, don't you know that 
 brandy is much stronger than Nuits ?" 
 
 "Yes, but the glass is ever so much smaller ever 
 so much smaller." 
 
 The iteration of the phrase harmonized peculiarly 
 with the mood that the rich wine and plentiful meal 
 had brought him a mood that lent the boy a sense 
 of command at leisure, a sense of being able to afford 
 to wait in this unusual blurred relaxation, to wait and 
 to win. If he could always have a little wine, he 
 thought, he would never be embarrassed. Nothing 
 could make him blush now. 
 
 "Really, Alec" Father Collett spoke after a 
 pause, and his tone was seriously touched. "I would 
 rather you didn't have the brandy. Of course I'm 
 your host I " 
 
 "Oh, don't give it to me because you're my host!
 
 62 BRUTE GODS 
 
 As if I thought of you as a host!" He spoke with 
 shy affection. 
 
 The priest was moved. "You're a young rogue, 
 I'm afraid," he murmured. His eyes moistened, and 
 Alec knew that he would give in. He waited, not 
 drinking his coffee. "But I don't want to give you 
 brandy, I don't think I ought to now, do you?" 
 
 "Well, of course if you think I'm a baby!" 
 
 Father Collett rose, rueful. His emotions were 
 much more entangled than the boy could imagine. He 
 was resentful, a little, of the forcing of his will, but 
 it was much more important to him that he was under 
 temptation, that he was most self-reproachfully and 
 wrestlingly conscious of the secular, all too secular 
 pleasure that hedonists feel in giving attractive 
 young people more than enough to drink. As he went 
 to the sideboard he prayed for strength of resistance. 
 
 "Is that the brandy?" 
 
 "What do you mean, Alec?" 
 
 " 'Cognac,' it says on the label." 
 
 "Well, cognac is brandy. The kind you take with 
 coffee." 
 
 "Yes, but oh, I say, Father, couldn't you give me 
 some of the kind you gave Mervyn ? You know, that 
 time he was caught in the storm and got wet through. 
 He said it was the finest stuff he 'd ever tasted. Just 
 one glass one of those little glasses you really might 
 it wouldn't matter for once " He pleaded charm- 
 ingly, and Father Collett was disturbingly open to the 
 charm. 
 
 "You'll make a Methodist of me, if you go on."
 
 CONFUSIONS 63 
 
 He wavered, while Alec luxuriated in his tyranny that 
 was so favoured, so secure. 
 
 "It's really too bad of you, Alec and my niece 
 Gillian is dining with me tonight, too." 
 
 "Whatever has that got to do with it?" Alec 
 laughed. 
 
 "Oh, you wouldn't ask if you knew her, you 
 wouldn't indeed. She's well, she's an extremely 
 agitating person " 
 
 "Is the real brandy in the sideboard, too, or do you 
 keep it in the cellar ? ' ' 
 
 "Here! It's here!" Collett spoke sharply and 
 excitedly, with a quick shrug. "All right, I give 
 up." He turned in his chair and took out a dif- 
 ferent bottle. "My niece, you see " Again he 
 hesitated, then filled a liqueur glass for Alec and 
 pushed it to him. 
 
 The boy took it, watching, not drinking at once. 
 "You never told me you had a niece?" 
 
 "Oh, Gillian is a very dark secret. Besides, it's 
 only quite lately that she's been about here at all 
 and you were at school. ' ' 
 
 "Why is she agitating?" 
 
 "Oh, she talks about things that don't concern me, 
 the sort of things I have no opinion on. You see, 
 Alec, when I decided to become a priest I decided 
 at the same time to keep clear, altogether, of all the 
 disputes of our times. Even religious disputes. I 
 am no controversialist." He spoke with a shade of 
 contempt. "We shouldn't be seduced by cleverness. 
 We should tame it!"
 
 64 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "She's clever, then, is she?" 
 
 "Oh, Gillian lives in disputation, she lives in noth- 
 ing else. We don't speak one another's language, 
 it's very trying. She's a disciple of freedom for her 
 sex a preacher of it. Heaven knows what more 
 freedom they want. They got the vote, I'd hoped 
 that would keep them quiet " 
 
 "Where is she staying?" Alec had forgotten his 
 brandy. 
 
 "Oh, let me see " 
 
 "Why surely you know?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, of course just for the moment I " 
 The priest was disconcerted. He wished he had not 
 mentioned Gillian in that moment when he was reach- 
 ing out for some topic to divert the boy. Still, Gillian 
 was not so very young, she was twenty-six. He must 
 represent her as a blue-stocking. "She's staying with 
 the Burkes." He had to answer Alec's expectant 
 look. "She knows them in London. Miss Burke is 
 coming to dinner with her, and I'm sure I hope she'll 
 keep her in order. I shan't be able to not after 
 your bad behaviour ! ' ' 
 
 Alec was reminded, and drank. "The coffee's 
 cold," he said mischievously, "I won't waste it on 
 that." Unversed though he was, he could respond to 
 that crispness and sharpness of old brandy, to that 
 hint it gives of the dry curl-back and crackle of 
 champagne, while holding off in finer reserve from 
 the welcoming palate. 
 
 "What a ripping brandy! It's worth behaving 
 badly to get it. Would your niece think my step-
 
 CONFUSIONS 65 
 
 mother was right? Is her name the same as 
 yours ? ' ' 
 
 ''Gillian Collett would think anything right that 
 most other people think wrong. I often tell her 
 that she's wonderfully simple " 
 
 "I'd like to meet her! Here's her good health!" 
 
 "My dear boy," the priest rose hurriedly "do 
 you know it's nearly three o'clock?" 
 
 "Is it? And I ought to have been home at twelve 
 for the guv 'nor 's pi. jaw Oh, sorry!" 
 
 "Why?" Father Collett opened the door. "Be- 
 cause your name for a moral talk throws ridicule on 
 part of the stock-in-trade of my profession ? Well ! ' ' 
 He laughed and went on into the study. 
 
 The boy's sense of well-being flowered richly. It 
 seemed so good, all this: the well-appointed orderly 
 little house, the religious pictures of subdued colour, 
 the shelves with their peaceful weight of books, the 
 French windows opening out to the amiable warmth 
 that the afternoon had brought, the quiet smooth 
 green lawn that lay beyond and all these pleasant 
 things were so wonderfully ripened and secured by 
 the good food, the good drink, by the lingering din- 
 ing-room impression of white linen and bright silver, 
 cut glass and flowers and china. . . . 
 
 "I want to talk to you, you know, Alec." 
 
 "Oh . . . yes." Alec took a cigarette from a 
 gold and blue box, stamped with the arms of Siena, 
 and the priest lighted it for him gravely. "What 
 kind of a girl is your niece, Father? You don't mind 
 my asking?"
 
 66 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "Oh, haven't I given you an idea of her?" The 
 priest's face clouded. 
 
 "Yes but I mean well, in herself, you know. 
 What exactly does she do? Does she do anything?" 
 
 "My dear boy, she's always doing everything ! She 
 edits a paper called The Woman's Republic that 
 nothing would induce me to read. She used to work 
 in one of those Government Offices in London. She 
 writes articles, she speaks in public. She 's been doing 
 that kind of thing for nearly ten years." His em- 
 phasis of the period of time was almost feminine. 
 
 "Oh. But why don't you tell me what she's like?" 
 Alec insisted, partly out of curiosity, partly from a 
 wish to tease the priest's reluctance. 
 
 "I can't describe people. She's dark she's about 
 the usual height, I suppose she's oh, really, Alec, 
 I don't know! She looks younger than she is, I 
 think." 
 
 "Well, she couldn't be so awfully old, being your 
 niece. ' ' 
 
 "My elder brother's daughter. He married young. 
 My dear boy, don't you want to talk to me about 
 yourself? Isn't there anything ?" 
 
 Alec shook his head and looked down. He felt 
 ashamed, because the conversation about Gillian 
 Collett had suggested the girl Frippie to his mind, 
 in a way not congruous with the priest's spiritual 
 philosophy. 
 
 Father Collett was silent. He took a cigarette, 
 turned it over and scrutinized it, as though it were 
 some rare insect or moth. "Alec," he said at last,
 
 CONFUSIONS 67 
 
 "there was a boy came to me this morning, just be- 
 fore you were here. He had wronged a young girl, 
 and he came to ask me if he should marry her. He 
 said he would if I told him to. She will have a 
 child very soon." 
 
 "Who is she? Do I know her?" 
 
 "Oh, one of the village girls. I advised him 
 strongly not to marry her. Because I know that 
 the marriage would spoil his life. She's a light girl, 
 they're utterly unsuited; and it was all much more 
 her fault than his. I very much doubt if he's the 
 only one." He gave Alec a close sudden look. 
 "Surely I was right. Christ's bidding was to give 
 up wives for His sake, not to take them." 
 
 "Yes, imagine, how ridiculous, if he'd told Mary 
 Magdalene to take a husband!" 
 
 "Of all her sins that might have been the worst." 
 
 "Would you say that in a sermon?" Alec was ex- 
 cited by the thought. 
 
 ' ' It might have led her the furthest from God. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, but who is this girl?" 
 
 "Yes, I did right. I think I did right. But it 
 would have been altogether impossible for me to 
 have done differently. Altogether. Oh, if I could 
 bring to you if only I could, Alec the feeling of 
 chastity in youth as a beautiful thing in itself. If 
 I could give you the sense of the romance and fer- 
 vour the fervent mysteries of abstinence, of re- 
 nunciation!" His black eyes flashed. 
 
 "Yes, but Look here, then how about married 
 people? I was going to ask you. Marrying can't
 
 68 BRUTE GODS 
 
 be right, can it? If a man's a rip, he can clear out 
 of it, so can a woman, just like Mary Magdalene. 
 They can get away and be spiritual but a husband 
 can't, and a wife can't, unless she's got some other 
 man to take her away, like the Mater, and you say 
 that's just as bad. I say, Father, why don't you 
 preach all these things you tell me, say it in church, 
 I mean, next Sunday? That'd make them sit up! 
 Say what you said just now about Mary Magdalene 
 won't you?" 
 
 "Oh, Alec! No. To say that in a sermon. It 
 would turn to poison in people's minds. It would 
 be a stumbling-block to the simple. It might destroy 
 what influence I have." Father Collett's face 
 twitched. "I can't attack marriage." He spoke 
 feebly, unlike himself: Alec's suggestion had alarmed 
 him. "And I'm unmarried. Oh, it would sound 
 absurd, they'd " 
 
 "Well, you couldn't say it, could you, Father, if you 
 had a wife! And tell them all about how running 
 after girls and being a bad lot that way isn't nearly so 
 bad as the things these people do who think they're 
 quite 'pi.' Do tell them the real reason why going 
 with girls is wrong, and that the bigger rip a chap is 
 the better chance he has of being religious. That was 
 jolly fine, I thought; it was quite different to what 
 people get up and say in church. But the part about 
 marriage, that's the most important. Oh, you must!" 
 
 "I shouldn't be understood. I should be accused 
 of morbidity and pruriency and all sorts of things. 
 You see, Alec "
 
 CONFUSIONS 69 
 
 "You will preach, that sermon, Father?" Alec 
 was spurred by the excitement of a rising sense of 
 power: he could compel the priest, he felt. "Yes? 
 To please me?" 
 
 Collett looked at him, and then looked away at 
 once. He trembled. His celibacy and religious de- 
 votion had impaired the natural virility of his affec- 
 tions, had made him subject to the kind of sexless 
 fever that young girls have for one another. "I'll 
 preach it, ' ' he said. 
 
 Alec rose, delighted. "It'll be one for the guv'- 
 nor!" he cried. He put his hand on the priest's. 
 Collett drew back. "Next Sunday?" the boy asked. 
 
 "Yes, next Sunday." 
 
 ' ' It doesn 't make you really unhappy ? ' ' 
 
 "You don't care if it does." 
 
 "Of course I care!" Alec reacted from his tri- 
 umph, but was the more stubborn for his reaction. 
 " I '11 get the guv 'nor to go, ' ' he said. ' ' He '11 see ' ' 
 
 "You know, Alec, that boy asked me if he could 
 say how I had advised him. Of course I told him 
 yes. Well, it is all over the village and beyond by 
 now. They'll all connect whatever I say on Sun- 
 day" 
 
 "Yes, and they'll connect it with my stepmother 
 too, won't they?" 
 
 "I suppose so." 
 
 "Coming from you, it will be splendid! It'll show 
 them!" 
 
 "Well, I've given you my word." 
 
 "I must get back. I mustn't miss tea as well as
 
 70 BRUTE GODS 
 
 lunch, and the guv 'nor 's pi.-jaw. I wonder what he 
 said. I know the kind of thing, all of it rot. It's 
 only because he's hit that he minds. Good-bye, and 
 thanks awfully." 
 
 "I was saying you remember that I couldn't 
 have acted differently in that matter. . . . That boy. 
 . . . Because I was once exactly in his case, and I did 
 not marry." 
 
 "What, you?" Alec stopped short, he did not 
 look at the priest, it seemed improper to look at 
 him. 
 
 "I was younger than you at the time. I was just 
 seventeen." He forced himself to look at Alec. 
 "And the girl was not of another class. So naturally 
 pressure was brought on me. But I would not give 
 in and I know I was right. I'm more sure of it 
 now than I was then. Jealousies and hates would 
 have taken the place of carnal love a life-long bar- 
 rier for the soul " 
 
 "Yes, it would be extraordinary for you to be 
 married. ' ' 
 
 "It would have changed my whole life not for 
 good! I couldn't have told the boy to " 
 
 Alec's lips were tight set. "It's unfair!" was his 
 mastering thought. Father Collett wanted him to 
 resist his temptations, wanted him to keep away from 
 girls and all the while he had had his time of that 
 when he was Alec's age when he was two years 
 younger! The boy felt that he had been cheated 
 out of two years. He was jealous and resentful. 
 He was nineteen and he had never What would it
 
 CONFUSIONS 71 
 
 be like, then, this thing that every one, Father 
 Collett as well as the others, made put to be so 
 awfully important? He made up his mind that he 
 would know, that he wouldn't be kept out any longer. 
 Father Collett had been only seventeen. 
 
 "Were you " He hesitated, and his tone was 
 strained, unnaturally dry. "Were you tremendously 
 in love with her and all that? She must have been 
 awfully fond of you. ' ' 
 
 "Of course we were a very strong temptation to 
 one another." The priest ran his fingers in tight 
 pressure along his forehead. "Don't ask me about 
 it, Alec." 
 
 ' ' He had that, ' ' Alec thought. ' ' He had all that. ' ' 
 His imagination leaped burningly. "Well, good- 
 bye," he said. 
 
 "Tell me." Collett was conscious of the warm 
 tremor of the boy's hand. "You will let me ask. 
 You are still untouched, aren't you? You would 
 tell me if You haven't, ever ?" 
 
 "No, I haven't!" 
 
 "Thank God! I had even thought forgive me 
 for it that you might be the father " 
 
 " 'The father'! What of ?" 
 
 "My dear boy ! What a relief to me to be sure to 
 know that you're still " 
 
 "Yes, I am!" Alec amazed the other by the vivid 
 pique of his tone. "But " He hesitated, breathing 
 hard, then: "But I won't be, though!" He let the 
 priest have it, revenging his pique by the cruelty of 
 the stroke.
 
 72 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Collett looked at him with sorrow so deep in his 
 eyes that Alec felt shamed and regretful, felt that 
 he had been a brute to say that. "One feels differ- 
 ently at different times, you know," he stammered. 
 
 "Alec! Is it because I told you, because you know 
 that I ? I shouldn't have told. I was wrong." 
 His mouth quivered. 
 
 "Oh, no, it wasn't that!" The true conjecture 
 touched Alec's pride. 
 
 "You know what great grief I should feel if you 
 stumbled because of me. You know the feeling I 
 have for you, Alec." He put out his hand, and Alec, 
 unconsciously, out of his impatience to be off, moved 
 from him. "Forgive me." Collett 's eyes looked 
 hurt. ' ' My dear Alec ' ' 
 
 He left him, and went through into the little room 
 opening out from his study, a bare room where he 
 prayed and sometimes wrote his sermons. This ser- 
 mon must be written at once. He took a sheet of 
 paper and wrote out three texts slowly and carefully : 
 
 There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or 
 'brethren, or wife, or children, for the Kingdom of 
 God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this 
 present time, and in the world to come, life everlast- 
 ing. 
 
 If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, 
 and mother, and wife and children and brethren and 
 sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my 
 disciple.
 
 CONFUSIONS 73 
 
 The publicans and the harlots go into the Kingdom 
 of God before you. 
 
 "Hate his father." The priest knew that he had 
 done nothing to quell in Alec that other, that secular 
 and self-destructive hate. He had indeed consented 
 to gratify it by this sermon. He had had to consent. 
 "If he had told me to speak of my sin to confess 
 that from the pulpit I think I would do that too, 
 if he told me. ' ' Collett rejoiced, fiercely and bitterly, 
 in his sense of that subordination, of that sacrifice 
 that he would be willing for. Then the strange 
 violent joy that he had was darkened and overpowered 
 by sense of guilt; guilt towards himself and guilt 
 towards the boy who could so move him. . . . The 
 fangs of doubt, as never before so strongly, assailed 
 him : a terrible vision unfolded of the world as it had 
 been since Christ. What if Christ 's death had brought 
 only a strengthening of the bonds of the world's 
 folly, the world's brutality? What if the last horrid 
 wail of disillusion and disbelief, three thousand years 
 after the Crucifixion, should go up to an empty place ? 
 Ah, how far more dreadful and final, that, than the 
 "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" 
 Could that cry have been torn from Jesus by a 
 prophetic vision of the end of the human soul? The 
 priest tried to assure himself that the centuries since 
 the Crucifixion were only a moment in God's sight, 
 that our minds could not reason from them. . . . 
 
 He bent his head, failing. In Flanders these ter- 
 rors had not come to him. He realized that the hap-
 
 74 BRUTE GODS 
 
 piest and serenest time of his life had been then, amid 
 bursting shells and bombs, amid mortal danger and 
 mortal pain. What weakness, what cowardice, he 
 thought, to stand in need of such help outward, acci- 
 dental. 
 
 He reverted to Alec. "I cannot lead him to Life, 
 I am too fond of him. I am not stronger than my 
 affection for him. That makes me an imperfect in- 
 strument." Perhaps he might even be an instru- 
 ment of evil for the boy. Why had he spoken of 
 Gillian? Alec was interested now in Gillian, and 
 Gillian might Gillian would do as she wished, and 
 she was clever. Attractive, in her way, and no one 
 could say that twenty-six was very old. Very often 
 boys And the beginning of it would have been 
 that he, the priest, had named her and talked of her. 
 Grief and jealousy went through him, and in bitterer 
 flow because of Alec's defiant declaration at parting. 
 "My sin will make his sin," he thought. "God for- 
 bids me to win him to grace: He turns me to his 
 hurt for my punishment. " ' ' The Life will lose him : 
 I shall lose him." "Even here Thy hand shall lead 
 me, and Thy right hand shall hold me, ' ' he murmured, 
 in an agonized effort of faith.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ALEC left the priest's house with an eager 
 swing. He felt free. "Just fancy being 
 always in black clothes," he thought, "and 
 doing the same sort of things all your life. I suppose 
 it's all right for him, though." What an extraor- 
 dinary thing that the old chap should have gone on the 
 racket like that. He hadn't been afraid of Alec's 
 splitting on him about it ; that was decent of him. 
 
 A little way along the road he passed a young 
 woman who had been in service with the Glaives just 
 before her recent marriage. "Good arternoon, Mr. 
 Alec, ' ' she said, and smiled, with a look of that under- 
 standing, rather secretive admiration that young mar- 
 ried women have for an attractive man. She noticed 
 how well Alec's Panama hat suited him, with its 
 heightening of the agreeable freshness of his com- 
 plexion. 
 
 ' ' Oh, Elsie, how are you ? ' ' The boy was conscious 
 of her look, conscious of it as more guarded and yet 
 bolder than the look he would have had from a maid. 
 "Where are you going?" 
 
 He wanted to talk to her, he felt the piquancy of 
 her being so lately married. She was different, a 
 little; he did not know how. "Oh, yes, I see " 
 He had not heard her answer, it suddenly embarrassed 
 him, being with her, the two of them together in the 
 
 75
 
 76 BRUTE GODS 
 
 open road. He smiled rather awkwardly, raised his 
 hand and passed on, sorry to leave her. 
 
 "But I want Frippie," he thought. "She's the 
 girl for me ! " He must find her now. Where would 
 she be? Somewhere near her cottage, probably on 
 his way home. Suppose she wasn 't about ? He might 
 turn back and catch up with Elsie: he didn't like 
 doing that, but still After all, Elsie knew about 
 him and Frippie, he 'd been afraid she might say some- 
 thing, but she hadn't, she was a good sort of girl 
 not one of the spiteful sort who sneaked and made 
 trouble. He turned and caught up with her. 
 
 "I say you might tell me, Elsie. Is Frippie 
 Clark up at the cottage, do you know?" 
 
 "I don't know narthin' about her, nor don't want!" 
 
 ' ' Why what do you mean, Elsie ? ' ' Alec was sur- 
 prised by the stubborn vindictiveness of the girl's 
 tone. 
 
 "Oh, narthin'." Elsie modified her expression 
 more becomingly, recovering her sense of the boy's 
 presence. "She's gaddin' round somewhere. What 
 her pore father don 't hev to put up with from her ! ' ' 
 
 "She wouldn't be at the cottage, then?" 
 
 "Yu don' want narthin' to du with her, Mr. 
 Alec" 
 
 ' ' Oh, I only happened to want to see her for a mo- 
 ment " 
 
 "She's gone ridin' that there owd bisticle what 
 young Tom Stevens give her. She 's gone to Malstowe 
 makin' a sight of herself!" 
 
 "I don't see why it's making a sight of herself
 
 CONFUSIONS 77 
 
 to ride a bicycle into Malstowe." Alec continued to 
 be puzzled by Elsie's antagonism. 
 
 The young woman looked up at him with a know- 
 ing furtiveness. He had the impression that her 
 stubbornness and resentment covered something pleas- 
 ing to her, something protective. "Well, I'd best be 
 gettin' along, Mr. Alec," she said, as he stood silent, 
 without giving her any sort of sex-glance. 
 
 Alec walked away, intent on cutting across the road 
 to Malstowe at the next turning. What a good thing 
 he had met Elsie! Elsie's disparagement and re- 
 luctance aided the priest's wine in spurring his wish 
 for Frippie. Girls were funny about girls. The 
 road was dusty, he would have liked a lemon-squash. 
 He wondered if he would have been more or less 
 thirsty if he had had more to drink. He hadn't 
 had enough: he could have wished more courage yet 
 for the meeting with Frippie. Why was it that, for 
 all her release of him from his natural shyness, he 
 never had been able to come really freely to her? 
 Why, after leaving her, had he always felt a fool? 
 It hadn't been her fault, it had been his : some damned 
 thing or other, inside him, had always kept him back. 
 When he was alone, he thought of all sorts of things 
 he could have done, and would do: yet when he was 
 with her, it seemed quite different, he was held off. 
 Silly fool he was rotten silly fool there was no 
 reason other chaps would have had a really good 
 time. Not having seen her for so long would make 
 it harder now, of course. If only he could feel as he 'd 
 felt just after lunch! Everything seemed so easy
 
 78 BRUTE GODS 
 
 then. By the time he met Frippie if he did meet her 
 he supposed he'd be just the same as ever. But he 
 wouldn't! He'd force himself against that, now. 
 And his father wanted him to be careful; well, he'd 
 show him, he'd score off him in that way too. If he 
 got to know, all the better. 
 
 His father was somehow all twisted up with this, 
 he always had been. There were vivid memories 
 from years ago: one memory in particular the first 
 of a little girl called Kathleen who had torn her 
 dress in sliding down the bannisters. She would have 
 fallen and hurt herself, only Alec had caught her; 
 and when she was in his arms, laughing and flushed, 
 and with her torn dress, he wanted to keep her there. 
 He gave her a kiss, not meaning to. Then his father 
 came, he looked in a funny way, said angrily: 
 "Kathleen, how did your dress get torn?" and told 
 Alec to go to his room, where he kept him shut 
 up as a punishment. "We must nip this kind of 
 thing in the bud," he had said. The boy had asked 
 him: "Why do you shut me up in the room because 
 Kathleen tore her dress?" The garment became 
 hugely important and mysterious, he had thought 
 about it perpetually. "I must punish you for your 
 sake, because I love you, ' ' his father had told him, and 
 Alec had been in utter amazement at the lie. 
 
 After that, the enmity of his father to him in this 
 special relation became established. Once, driven by 
 the baffling growth in strength, by the more and more 
 disturbing determination and constancy of those on- 
 comings so inexplicable and uninvited once he had
 
 CONFUSIONS 79 
 
 begun to tell his father, to ask him: but the pounc- 
 ing look in that tawny eye had put him forthwith 
 into an unshakeable silent sullenness, a sullenness and 
 silence which had held well. He was the more puz- 
 zled and troubled, the more resentful of his father. 
 "Was it wrong and why? And how unfair if it 
 was ! ' ' For the first time in his life he was pathetic. 
 Then there had been a time what a little brute 
 he must have been, he reflected when he used to 
 beat trees and things with sticks, and imagine they 
 were people. It was all the same sort of thing as 
 before, only in a different way, rather. That Amer- 
 ican book with descriptions of negroes and negresses 
 being whipped he had enjoyed those descriptions. 
 Everything else used to seem dull. . . . Then the 
 Fox's Book of Martyrs, in his father's study: how 
 exciting that had been, much more exciting than the 
 books he was forbidden to read. He had told Father 
 Collett, thinking that it must mean some dreadful 
 unmatched wickedness in him ; he had been apprehen- 
 sive and thrilled. But the priest had said that it 
 was all perfectly natural and perfectly usual, but that 
 things that were natural and usual were often wrong ; 
 if he thought of making people happy instead of mak- 
 ing them suffer, he would enjoy it just as much 
 and be a better boy. Alec was half convinced then 
 that he was like every one else, but he could not quite 
 bring himself to believe that every one could feel so 
 passionately wicked. Still, Father Collett had dulled 
 the edges of his indulgence: even the penance for 
 sin that he had set himself getting out of his warm
 
 80 BRUTE GODS 
 
 bed in the cold and kneeling at the other end of the 
 room in his nightgown while he said the Creed slowly 
 even this seemed to have less distinguished a point. 
 A little later the powers of life rose up against him 
 more formidably caparisoned strong thrusting 
 beasts, with colours of bright-gold frenzy and dull- 
 red shame. He had said nothing then to Father 
 Collett and, by Jove, he was glad of that now. 
 Now, of course, he understood, just as most people 
 did. Mervyn wasn't worried, why should he be? 
 It didn't really matter much, most chaps knew that: 
 but all the same it didn't seem fair that he should 
 have had to have that sort of a time of it when he 
 was such a kid. If that was Nature she was an old 
 She was as bad as his father, because his father had 
 been unfair and cruel to him in the same kind of 
 way when he was too young to look out for himself. 
 He would tackle this thing and his father he'd 
 tackle them both in the same way, he'd get even by 
 defying and revenging and not caring a damn. Yes, 
 he'd make the very most of his hating his father, 
 and the very most of these wishes that his father had 
 baulked and messed up for him. The boy's decision 
 was in no small degree self -protective, self -preserva- 
 tive: he needed emotions and objectives to stiffen 
 his green growth, and he made passionately his own 
 those that chance brought to his grasp. 
 
 There was only one road by which Frippie could 
 come back on her bicycle from Malstowe. Alec, reach- 
 ing it, looked eagerly along in both directions. Of 
 course he would miss her! If you were too keen on
 
 CONFUSIONS 81 
 
 anything you never got it; you got the best things 
 when you were quit ecasual abou tthem, not execting 
 particularly, not minding much. . . . What should 
 he say to her when they met, how should he begin? 
 Would she get off her bicycle? At once? Perhaps 
 she wouldn't quite like it wouldn't look well. Still, 
 she would manage that all right. Girls always man- 
 aged to do things without doing them, in a sort of 
 way. Would she get off her bicycle, though? The 
 bicycle was a nuisance ; it would have to be left some- 
 where or wheeled along the lane and put against the 
 hedge. That would be better. He could leave all 
 that to her, what was the good of fussing? Alec 
 was vexed by his agitation, it was ridiculous that his 
 heart should be beating so fast. He was by the lane 
 he had had in mind: if she would only come now! 
 It would be awkward meeting her further down the 
 road, with nowhere to go. Why not stay where he 
 was, then? He sat on the stile and lighted a cigar- 
 ette. No one seemed to be about. This waiting was 
 the devil, it would make it much harder when she did 
 come if she did. When they had last met, she had 
 kept him waiting. Mervyn said the reason girls did 
 that was that it was a sort of score off you, it gave 
 them an advantage and bucked them up. Alec 
 wished again that it hadn't been so long since he had 
 seen Frippie. The last time was when he had got up 
 at half -past five, and walked to the East Fields where 
 there were trees : he had met her there. Mervyn had 
 told him he was a fool, because the girl would know 
 he must be awfully keen on her to get up and go out
 
 82 BRUTE GODS 
 
 at that idiotic hour; and if a girl knew you were too 
 keen on her she never liked you so much, and she was 
 never such good sport. ' ' But of course with a girl like 
 her I don't suppose it matters. I wouldn't walk 
 across the road for her!" "Well, he didn't care what 
 Mervyn thought. Of course Mervyn had to be dif- 
 ferent after getting engaged and it would be worse 
 when he was married. 
 
 If they could have met in Blackberry Lane, nearer 
 Malstowe, that would have been ever so much better. 
 Blackberry Lane had a deep poppy-field on the other 
 side of one of its hedges. The Vicar of Malstowe had 
 once preached a whole sermon about Blackberry Lane. 
 It was odd, how much interested every one seemed to 
 be in these things. Except Wilfred Vail: he only 
 laughed, and then began talking of something else. 
 Alec thought for a moment of sending Frippie to the 
 deuce and going to see Wilfred instead. Then he and 
 Wilfred would have one of their drifting afternoons 
 of easy talk and easy companionship. Perhaps he'd 
 find him writing one of his articles for a Motor paper, 
 and they would smoke Russian cigarettes and drink 
 tea with a spoonful or two of whiskey in it. Wil- 
 fred's mother, at tea, would tell stories of Edward 
 FitzGerald and his brother. Would whiskey go well 
 after brandy? No two people could be more utterly 
 different that Wilfred Vail and Father Collett. Wil- 
 fred had said once that if he were dying, the smell 
 of petrol would revive him. Yes, they would potter 
 about the old stable, now used as a garage; Wilfred 
 would tinker with his "baby" car, or with the other,
 
 CONFUSIONS 83 
 
 the large one: or he would put it off till tomorrow. 
 There was very rarely anything in Wilfred's life that 
 he could not put off till tomorrow. Alec, with his 
 urgent and uncertain energy, dimly envied his friend. 
 
 He got off the stile. He would go to Wilfred's. 
 He realized the much more level and peaceful time 
 he would have there, with none of this wondering 
 what he would do and say, none of this looming 
 awkwardness and embarrassment and disappointment. 
 He reacted violently for a moment under the stress 
 of his waiting. It wasn't worth it! He wanted his 
 friend, wanted to see him in those dirty grease- 
 stained overalls of his. Wilfred's image was clear: 
 the large bluish eyes, proclaiming their physical weak- 
 ness and their benevolent intelligence through the 
 round large glasses of those uncompromisingly service- 
 able steel-rimmed spectacles to which he had lately 
 taken: the bearded sallow narrow face, the fleshy 
 nose with its wide nostrils, the fleshy but close-drawn 
 and positively-willed mouth. . . . Wilfred in his 
 garage, working and gradually beginning to sweat 
 growing rather paler. Funny of him to wear a beard 
 when he was only about twenty-five. Just because 
 it had grown when he had scarlet fever. He said it 
 was less trouble to keep it on. Funny chap he was, 
 in some ways. Mervyn thought him an ass, but he 
 wasn't, really, at all. Mervyn didn't know. . . . 
 Alec looked up the lane. Not such a good lane as 
 the one nearer Malstowe, .no, not nearly such a good 
 lane as the lane of the sermon. He pondered. 
 
 Why couldn't he see Frippie's face in his mind as
 
 84 BRUTE GODS 
 
 clearly as Wilfred's? It was absurd, but now he came 
 to think of it, he could hardly tell what she looked 
 like. What was the colour of her eyes? He knew 
 how she would make him feel, though: if he kissed 
 her, he seemed in some queer way to lose her. She 
 came too close, then; everything came too close, it 
 was tantalizing to think how it was. He never could 
 realize kissing her or having her in his arms, couldn 't 
 believe in it, somehow, it wasn't at all like his idea of 
 it when he wasn't with her. There was so much more 
 in what he imagined, his mind was so much freer then. 
 How irritating all this was! But only because he 
 had been a silly fool. He wouldn't be like that any 
 more, he promised himself, uncertainly. 
 
 After all, Parham Lodge was too far, he couldn't 
 get there by tea, he'd arrive unexpectedly. The 
 Vails didn 't like people ' ' dropping in, ' ' not even their 
 intimate friends. He'd be late for tea at home, now. 
 How flat it would be if he went back home. He 
 might start walking home by the Malstowe road, away 
 from Malstowe: a roundabout way, but he'd be going 
 home then, and Frippie might overtake him. 
 
 He started off, ruffled and thwarted and divided, 
 much annoyed with himself for the state he was in. 
 Reaching a point where the road branched, he hesi- 
 tated. Should he leave the road and cut across by 
 the shorter way? He saw a girl walking slowly no 
 sign of a bicycle anywhere. Who was the girl? 
 Why, it was Frippie, of course it was : on foot, why 
 was she on foot, when he had been thinking of her on 
 a bicycle all this time? Alec was bewildered by this
 
 CONFUSIONS 85 
 
 adjustment so suddenly forced on him. He hurried 
 his pace. Further on, the road broadened away from 
 the protective hedges, from the screened lane, he must 
 reach her before she got too far. 
 
 He called to her breathlessly when he was near 
 enough, and the girl stopped and turned, showing 
 him a face that was quite unsurprised. 
 
 "What's happened?" he said. 
 
 "What do you mean, what's happened?" She 
 looked defensive and resentful. 
 
 "I thought you'd be on a bicycle." 
 
 "Oh, I got sick of the old thing. I left it behind 
 at Stevens 's." 
 
 She spoke with hardly more than a trace of the 
 Suffolk accent. Vail had told Alec that the "gay 
 ones" among the country girls were always the first to 
 lose their provincialisms. Besides, Frippie had been 
 in service in Colchester when she was two or three 
 years younger. 
 
 "How did you know I went in on a bicycle?" 
 she asked suspiciously. 
 
 She didn't seem glad to see him, Alec reflected: 
 why did she waste time over a question like that, as 
 if it mattered how he knew? He stood looking at 
 her, resolved that he would remember her face this 
 time. Her eyes were certainly more green than any- 
 thing else a sort of pale green: they used to be 
 friendly, though, they used to have a sort of yielding 
 look that he couldn't describe and couldn't properly 
 remember. She was always paler than the other 
 girls. Her mouth
 
 86 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "Oh, what are you gapin' at me for, like that? 
 What's wrong with me?" she asked, with the same 
 defiant suspicion. 
 
 "Come let's sit down for a bit." Alec looked 
 away from her jerkily. "I haven't seen you for a 
 for a for ever such a long time." 
 
 "We can't go sittin' here." 
 
 "Why not, why can't we?" Alec caught himself 
 up. He remembered that he had decided not to be 
 too eager. 
 
 "There's the men over in that field." She looked 
 down, and half smiled : for a moment she dropped her 
 pettish air, and seemed promisingly sly. 
 
 Alec's heart beat. "They can't see us if we sit 
 down, ' ' he said. ' ' Or why don 't we go through into 
 the lane?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't want." She raised her irregular 
 light eyebrows, and gave him a familiar quick half- 
 puzzled glance. "We'll be seen, standin' an' talkin' 
 like this an' I don't want no bein' silly an' that, 
 not now I don't, what's the good? I should think you 
 wouldn't neither, bein' as " 
 
 "Don't let's stand, then." 
 
 He looked at her again, as she stood making un- 
 certain little semicircles with her toe in the loosening 
 earth. She was much more like herself now. Alec 
 recognized that look she had of being a temporary 
 and accidental occurrence something that you could 
 not count on and that was always on the point of 
 slipping by. She had the same haphazard mouth, 
 the same random fair hair for that blunt gay face
 
 CONFUSIONS 87 
 
 of hers. Not really pretty, perhaps with such a 
 pale skin but oh, Lord! he must touch her. He 
 thought of what Father Collett had told him, he took 
 her hand and pulled her down with him on the grass 
 by the hedge. 
 
 "Don't you! Pullin' me about like that shame- 
 ful! Spoilin' my dress. An' it's so hot!" 
 
 She struggled, pouting like an aggrieved child, vexed 
 by the boy's awkwardly directed impulse. His 
 being so awkward and untaught seemed to belittle 
 her. "He's a fair baby!" she thought. Alec put 
 his arms under hers, he pressed her to him roughly 
 and tightly. She struggled more violently, in a 
 perturbed revulsion that was altogether new to him. 
 He let her go, he was startled and scared. 
 
 "What do you think you're doin' of? Out in the 
 road like this, you must be I've to get back 
 home, I can't stay here, and you so foolish!" She 
 moved away, but did not get up. 
 
 "I didn't know you didn't mind before," he 
 stammered. 
 
 "Don't you go touchin' me, I can't stand that 
 touchin', touchin' " 
 
 She drew further from him, with a jerk of her body. 
 Her face was in queer nervous puckers, and Alec 
 noticed how dark she looked under her flickering eyes. 
 
 "What do you mean?" he said, growing angry with 
 her now that she looked less attractive. "You never 
 used, you know you didn't " 
 
 "Well, I don't want. I ain't feelin' well. I'm 
 goin' home." She sat still.
 
 88 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "But why are you like this? What's the reason?" 
 
 ' ' You fool ! ' ' she cried sharply. ' ' Silly fool, you ! ' ' 
 She leaned forward, shaking, hiding her face. "I'm 
 goin' home." 
 
 ' ' All right, ' ' Alec replied coldly. ' ' Go home then. ' ' 
 
 "I don't know what call you have to talk to me 
 that way! After what she done up at yours! You 
 don't want to talk that way, you don't ! ' ' Her mouth 
 sagged, she turned her back to him, choking. 
 
 Alec, surprised but not ill pleased, wondered what 
 to do. He put his hand tentatively on her arm. 
 
 "I said no touchin'," she gulped. She took his 
 hand away, but kept hold of it, with her back still 
 turned. Alec was silent. He had instant pleasure 
 in those hot little fingers that ran with their nervous 
 animal life fingers of such separately sensitive flesh 
 from his own that possessed them. There was so 
 much more in this than in those blundering kisses 
 Would Father Collett think this wrong? What was 
 it he had said ? That it was using up something that 
 was meant to go to making you more spiritual 
 Alec tried, for piquancy, to recall the priest's argu- 
 ments. 
 
 "Who will you go with when I Oh, I s'pose 
 you'll go with that there Miss Burke." 
 
 "When you what?" 
 
 "Oh, don't you trouble about me. No one wants 
 to trouble about me." Her fingers twitched sharply. 
 "That Miss Burke likes you, you know she do." 
 
 "What, Doreen Burke! I don't believe it. Why 
 do you think "
 
 CONFUSIONS 89 
 
 "Oh, you don't know anything!" She pulled her 
 hand away. "She do, though," she added with con- 
 viction. 
 
 "Well, I don't care if she does!" 
 
 "No, you don't care about any one, I know you 
 don't!" 
 
 "Of course I care about you, Frippie, I " 
 
 The remark sounded very stilted, it sounded silly. 
 "What a fool I am!" he thought. He sought her 
 hand, but she held it tightly clasped with her other 
 one on her lap. 
 
 "I want some one to care about me, proper carin', 
 not just makin' love and all that what's soon over 
 an' done with only it ain't over, neither, not one 
 way, it ain't!" She had half -turned to him, but now 
 she turned away again. 
 
 "Don't cry. Why should you ? You 've nothing to 
 cry about." 
 
 "Oh, that's all you know. That's just like you. I 
 wish I was a man," she declared viciously. "I'd 
 show them all them girls, wouldn't I? Sneaky 
 sniffin' little beasts. I know what I'd do, and I'd 
 do it proper! You don't know how, you don't! I 
 wish I was you. I'd get that Miss Burke and I'd 
 settle her, so she wouldn't go doin' no more of her 
 preachin ' ! Told me Jesus loved me. What call had 
 she, goin' sayin' things like that? 'Wish I was you. 
 I'd give her Jesus!" 
 
 "Why was Miss Burke talking to you? I don't 
 see why she should interfere. It's no business of hers 
 even if you aren't one of the Sunday School sort "
 
 90 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "Oh, an' who told you I wasn't?" She turned 
 and looked at him closely. "Was that why you 
 wouldn't take no notice of me when you was sittin' on. 
 that stile?" 
 
 "What! you don't mean to say you " 
 
 "Don't tell me! You must have seen. I went 
 right by you you couldn't help " 
 
 "I swear I didn't see you. It's the most extraor- 
 dinary thing, Frippie " He was vehement. "I 
 can't think how it could have happened, but I swear 
 it did. I was there waiting for you, looking out. 
 But I thought you'd be on a bicycle, that must have 
 been why. I was looking out for a bicycle, you see " 
 
 "There's lots of things you'll miss, if that's the 
 way you go on!" 
 
 It was impossible not to believe him. Frippie 
 looked at him half-humorously, half -tenderly : he 
 was so much put about, and he had been there wait- 
 ing for her, silly kid! The girl of eighteen felt 
 very much older than he, felt as if she knew so much 
 more. "What's the good of boys?" she thought. 
 She kissed him and then escaped him with equal sud- 
 denness. 
 
 "Frippie! Why do you do like that?" He tried 
 to take her. "You keep on teasing, it's awful, it isn't 
 any fun for me, I can tell you it isn't!" 
 
 "Oh, an' you keep on askin' why why why! I 
 told you I didn't like touchin'. It makes me feel all 
 oh, I don't know. I'm just as good as them, too," 
 she went on irrelevantly, so it seemed to Alec. 
 
 He stared moodily. That letting her go past him
 
 CONFUSIONS 91 
 
 on the road. How Mervyn would laugh, if he knew ! 
 Well. He wouldn 't let anything go by him again, not 
 anything. Surely if he made up his mind 
 
 "Do you care s'posin' they see us together?" she 
 asked suddenly. 
 
 "I thought you did. You said " 
 
 "I don't mind, not now. Oh, what's it matter? 
 You only live once, and if you're always thinkin', 
 thinkin', and lookin' up an' lookin' down, you might 
 as well be dead!" She put her arms round him. 
 "Would you mind if they saw us doin' like that?" 
 
 Alec kissed her, but not so violently, not so much 
 losing himself or her as before, and he let her go 
 before she struggled. 
 
 "I can't." There was a baffling expectancy in her 
 eyes, and Alec formulated the feeling that he had 
 had all the while, that she looked older in some way. 
 "It's no use, it doesn't go right, not now. I say, dear, 
 you're friends with Mr. Vail, couldn't you get him to 
 give you some of them nice grapes out of his glass 
 house, and you give 'em to me. You could, couldn't 
 you?" 
 
 She was eager, much in earnest, oddly tenacious. 
 Catching Alec 's look of reluctance, she at once took his 
 hand. 
 
 "You could get them tomorrow, then we'd meet 
 next day early like we did before, in the East 
 Fields. I have been wantin' a taste of them grapes ! " 
 Her voice curled longingly. 
 
 "Look here I'll buy you some, Frippie. I'll buy 
 them tomorrow some just as good."
 
 92 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "No, they ain't! I want Mr. Vail's. I seen them 
 when I was to the Lodge with Mrs. Whitling. 
 They're lovely, lovely an' black, an' ever so big! I 
 don't want none out of a shop. I want them picked 
 straight out I want you to pick 'em for me, Alec 
 dear. I thought you was fond of me." She gave 
 his hand a feverish squeeze. 
 
 "All right. I will. Give us a kiss!" 
 
 He would realize her kisses now, he thought, he 
 would know how, he was ready : it had been too sud- 
 den before, he hadn't waited enough. 
 
 "You will, really and truly " 
 
 Facing him, she put her two hands against his 
 chest, keeping him back. Her blunt face her jolly 
 libertine dissembling face again recaptured some- 
 thing of its gaiety, but in a strained uneasy excite- 
 ment that overlay her familiar look. 
 
 "Say you want 'em to take home. Say they're 
 for Mrs. Glaive oh, I forgot ! Fancy me sayin ' that ! 
 I 'm awful sorry about her, dear, but then she have 
 money, haven't she, she won't feel nothin' and she've 
 got some one to see to her. 'S rare hard for you an' 
 all, though, ain't it?" 
 
 "Oh, / don't mind!" 
 
 "But you'll get them grapes!" 
 
 The great Glaive calamity did not divert Frippie 
 for more than a moment. Her pale skin, so unlike his 
 own, lightly and seducingly flushed, gave new stim- 
 ulus to the boy. He took her arms, with one hand of 
 his at the curve of the elbow. "You promise?" she 
 urged.
 
 CONFUSIONS 93 
 
 "Oh, of course I promise. Let's have a kiss 
 properly. ' ' 
 
 "And you wouldn't mind bein' seen with me, would 
 you?" 
 
 "Of course I wouldn't!" 
 
 She leaned a little to him, still keeping him back. 
 Then: "There's that Mr. Perry comin'!" she cried 
 low. With what seemed a single movement, capri- 
 cious, skilful, instant, she had slipped away through 
 the hedge.
 
 H 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 * * ~f "f ULLOA, Glaive, where did you spring 
 from?" 
 
 "Hulloa." "Damn that ass Perry," 
 thought Alec. 
 
 "Been for a run or something? Pretty hot, isn't 
 it?" Mr. Herbert Perry, the People's Party man, 
 advanced, lithe and hale, brown and young. He was 
 carrying a case of golf-clubs. "I say." Reaching 
 Alec, he stopped. ' ' Do you know what 's happened ? ' ' 
 
 "Well, what?" 
 
 Alec coloured furiously, connecting the question 
 with his stepmother's flight. His intense annoyance 
 at the man's untimely appearance lapsed for the 
 moment. 
 
 "Yetminster's trying to stop the men going over his 
 land to the Works!" 
 
 "Oh, that right-of-way business." Alec's tone was 
 relieved and indifferent. 
 
 ' ' You don 't realize why, it 's madness. He doesn 't 
 realize " 
 
 Alec, as Perry went on talking, was vividly directed 
 to the various masculine symptoms of the intruder: 
 the facts that rudely projected were the swing of his 
 arms and legs, the roughness and thickness of his 
 clothes, the smell of his pipe-tobacco, the few close- 
 cropped inches of hair under his cap, the razored 
 
 94
 
 CONFUSIONS 95 
 
 skin of his face, the look of his neck and chin, nothing 
 like Frippie's. 
 
 "You don't mind if I talk to you in confidence, 
 Glaive, do you?" Perry began to curb his agitation. 
 "We're walking the same way, aren't we?" He 
 dropped his voice and put a hand on Alec 's arm, try- 
 ing to make the boy feel pleasurably important. 
 "Between ourselves, the men won't stand it. They've 
 gone by that path to their work for the last fifteen 
 years, the old Marquis always let them. They broke 
 the gate this morning." He paused, in the manner 
 of a public speaker. "They'll break it again to- 
 night if they find it up when they come back. Prob- 
 ably they're breaking it now. They won't walk the 
 three-quarters of a mile round twice a day. I know 
 them, Glaive. They won't do it.'* 
 
 "It was just beginning," ran Alec's thoughts. 
 "If only that fool hadn't come along, I could have 
 I would have!" 
 
 "They won't do it," Perry repeated. 
 
 "Well, it's no business of mine, is it?" 
 
 "Yes, it is. Your father's bound to be mixed up 
 in it. There's a whole lot that could be done in an 
 unofficial way; you can help. I'm at a disadvantage 
 as a public man. Anything I might say to Yet- 
 minster would put his back up at once. These Liberal 
 aristocrats! They're worse than the old-fashioned 
 Tories! Lord Beauvais might have done this sort of 
 thing thirty years ago, he'd never do it now. He 
 and his kind know better know how far they can 
 go, and where they have to stop. ' '
 
 96 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "What a sell!" Alec tormentingly reflected. 
 "What a come-down." He had been so determined, 
 too. Then he had only just kissed her without mak- 
 ing anything of it, really; he'd just held her hand. 
 As if he'd taken all that trouble to meet her, just to 
 hold her hand! 
 
 "The political sense of the possible," Perry was 
 saying. "Compromise. Why, it's simply playing 
 straight into Joe Matcham's hands violence " 
 
 "Oh, yes, you dislike that man, don't you?" 
 
 "Not in the least. I dislike his principles or I 
 ought to say I dislike his poisonous errors." 
 
 Perry gave an easy Club-room laugh. He shot out 
 a few strokes at Matcham's political heresies while 
 Alec continued to ponder on the unfruitfulness of his 
 meeting with Frippie. Why was it that there had 
 been so fleetingly little in it? Anything more had 
 seemed so utterly out of his power. Well, perhaps 
 even if Perry hadn't come He tried to console 
 himself. 
 
 "But don't let's talk shop," the politician con- 
 tinued. "Now your father's a shrewd man, he can 
 get Yetminster to see what a rotten mistake he's 
 making. Probably ruin his chances for the Board of 
 Agriculture. ..." 
 
 Perry elaborated this point, while Alec discussed 
 with himself the matter of his promise to Frippie. 
 He couldn't possibly ask Wilfred for the grapes for 
 her. It was the kind of thing Wilfred would con- 
 sider quite unpardonable; he knew Wilfred well 
 enough for that. It might mean a breach of their
 
 CONFUSIONS 97 
 
 friendship, even. Besides, Wilfred would refuse. 
 There was his mother to be considered, he would say 
 they were her grapes, and of course they were. Both 
 Wilfred and his mother would resent more than a 
 little the idea of their hothouse grapes fruit of such 
 careful culture going to gratify the whim of a girl 
 like Frippie. They would feel it as compromising 
 them distastefully, in an undignified way whether 
 any one knew of it or not. 
 
 "... and the men will probably strike. How do 
 you think the Casleys and the Bradwells will like 
 that? Yetminster will alienate them, and they're im- 
 portant. Does he think they'll put up with a strike, 
 just for him to lay out his private Golf Course in 
 peace and quiet? Now, my dear chap, can't you put 
 all this to your father? He doesn't want to have 
 bricks thrown at his head, does he?" 
 
 Alec began to listen. "Will they throw bricks?" 
 he thought. 
 
 "You don't want them to go waylaying you and 
 your brother? It's a question of mutual interests, 
 Glaive. When your interests coincide, you ought to 
 get together. Yetminster simply must climb down 
 gracefully. He can save his face easily enough. 
 There's a very ugly spirit in the men, just the spirit 
 Joe Matcham wants, the spirit he can use bad 
 blood" 
 
 "What '11 happen if he does use it?" asked Alec, 
 listlessly distracted by Matcham 's name. 
 
 " There may be violence. It's serious. They won't 
 stop at gate-smashing. They'll be breaking windows
 
 98 BRUTE GODS 
 
 and burning things up. Remember most of these men 
 have been in the war. They don't care about danger, 
 they won't be afraid. Yetminster doesn't realize how 
 things have changed. ..." 
 
 Of course, if Alec did as Frippie had suggested and 
 asked for the grapes for his family if he said he 
 wanted them for his aunt Mrs. Vail would give them 
 at once and think nothing of it. But he couldn't do 
 that: you couldn't, when you were friends with a 
 man. Even if he wasn't found out, he wouldn't be 
 able to feel that he and Wilfred were friends any 
 more. Of course Frippie couldn 't understand. 
 
 ". . . it'll mean the undoing of all our work here." 
 Perry threw out his well-shaped hand, with its fingers 
 curving inwards. "You ask what '11 happen. Every- 
 thing that's unEnglish will happen. The men will 
 do exactly what Matcham wants them to do. They 
 won't vote at the next Election." 
 
 "Then the Liberal man will get the seat instead 
 of you?" 
 
 "Oh, I'm not thinking of myself." Perry stiff- 
 ened professionally. "The whole thing is much 
 larger than anything personal. Much. It may mean 
 the start of getting the whole country into a mess. 
 This is an important district, politically; may set the 
 ball rolling. If Matcham gets a hold with his crazy 
 'House of "Workers' notions down here 'Labour 
 Separatism' and all because of a private Golf Course. 
 The thing's ridiculous! As if the public Course 
 wasn't good enough for any one! Best on the East 
 Coast"
 
 CONFUSIONS 99 
 
 Alec decided to buy the grapes, and lie to Frippie. 
 He didn't like doing it, but after all she was a girl, 
 and it was the only way out. He became conscious 
 that Perry had stopped talking, that he was noticing 
 his distraction. The boy grew embarrassed. Of 
 course Perry would think he was distracted because of 
 his stepmother. He would have to attend. 
 
 ' ' Do the people you want to vote for you like your 
 going about golfing ? " he asked, glancing at the man 's 
 gentlemanly heather-coloured athletic-looking suit. 
 
 ''My work's in the evenings mostly. I must keep 
 fit." Perry answered with competence and dignity. 
 "They understand that. And, between ourselves, 
 they rather like us to live like gentlemen. I had a 
 twosome with Lord Charles Freyle yesterday." He 
 betrayed some elation. 
 
 "Then why don't you get him to talk to his father 
 for you?" 
 
 "Oh, no. Wouldn't do at all. Couldn't possibly 
 broach the subject with him. It's a matter of diplo- 
 macy, my dear Glaive." Again he became confiden- 
 tial. "It's the right thing for Lord Charles to be on 
 terms with me, don't you see? It's er disarming. 
 And it suits me too: it's the English way, keeps any- 
 thing personal quite out of it, on both sides. The 
 House of Commons way, the sporting way. We under- 
 stand one another. We're enemies, but we're 
 friends. ' ' 
 
 ' ' And you 're both of you against Matcham ! ' ' Alec 
 began to see light. 
 
 "Any sane man would be against Matcham."
 
 100 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "I don't know that I should be, if I were a work- 
 ing-man. His ideas are more well, they're more 
 exciting than yours. ' ' 
 
 " 'Exciting!' Yes, that's just it. People can't 
 stand settling down after the war, they want excite- 
 ment and sensation. "We're rapidly degenerating into 
 a neurotic hysterical nation, Glaive, that's the whole 
 trouble. Matcham is a man utterly ignorant of 
 history and the very elements of economics, and so are 
 all the other men who 're behind these harebrained 
 grotesqueries ! But any quack nostrum for scrapping 
 the Constitution will get a hearing nowadays. This 
 ' Council of Workmen, ' elected by a separated Labour, 
 legislating with the House of Commons as Second 
 Chamber manual workers to vote only for the 
 'Council' candidates Labour in one box and the 
 middle and upper classes in another ! You only have 
 to state the scheme to prove its wildcat absurdity! 
 All the worst evils of class separatism. None of the 
 right fusion and fellowship. It would murder na- 
 tional unity ! ' ' Perry made a forensic gesture. ' ' I 'd 
 back commonsense against 'excitement' any day," he 
 went on more calmly. "Is it commonsense to stick 
 a knife into the Mother of Parliaments? Of course 
 they'll precious soon try to get all the power. We 
 want reform, as we've always had it, that is by the 
 will of the whole nation, through the representatives 
 of the whole nation in the House of Commons. Re- 
 form's a blessing to the People, revolution damns 
 them. Look at Russian experience. We want a true 
 and progressive democracy, not a division of the na-
 
 CONFUSIONS 101 
 
 tion into two hostile camps, with fruitless warfare and 
 interminable deadlocks. ' ' 
 
 "Well, if enough of the people want this separate 
 Council, I suppose they'll get it." Alec was reflect- 
 ing on the uneasy antagonism which he knew his 
 father had for Matcham's Movement. Bricks. . . . 
 He felt friendly to Matcham and wished he under- 
 stood more. 
 
 "The People will get what they want. Of course. 
 It's our business to see they are wisely guided. Do 
 you know that these Separatist people won 't have any 
 members of their precious Council who aren't actually 
 working-men ? As if a man could fit himself for legis- 
 lation in his spare time of an evening! What's to 
 become of intellect? Can we do without intellect, 
 tell me that! God knows I'm a democrat through 
 and through but the People 's Will must be expressed 
 by the real friends of the People by trained men, 
 by educated men with a sense of history and economics 
 or we shall all of us go down to chaos and destruc- 
 tion!" 
 
 Alec was silent, meditating in some comprehension 
 upon the friendly personal relations between Mr. 
 Perry and Lord Charles Freyle. 
 
 "It isn't as if our Party weren't in earnest about 
 Eeform," the young politician went on. "We're 
 pledged to drastic measures tremendously drastic. 
 Why, I've gone so far as to tell the people here and 
 I had authority for doing it, too that hereditary 
 wealth will have to go. Gradually, of course by a 
 gradual raise of the Death Duties. We can't at-
 
 102 BRUTE GODS 
 
 tempt too much at once; that isn't the English 
 way " 
 
 Alec looked up at the rugged highways of the sky, 
 travelled by greenish clouds. He felt much less un- 
 sympathetic with Nature now Nature that was so 
 far off from all this talk. In their indifference to 
 "the unrest of the times" Nature and he were agreed. 
 Still, if this affair could be used against his father, to 
 punish his father, to be revenged on him. . . . 
 
 "Yetminster can't do it," Perry was insisting. 
 "He simply can't do it. Why, he's as bad as 
 Matcham the two extremes! What we want is a 
 decent working compromise between the classes, got 
 at in a decent way. Revolution will never do any- 
 thing in England, the idea's grotesque." 
 
 Alec did not answer. The politician was disap- 
 pointed in him, he had expected him to be flattered by 
 this confidential conversation, enough flattered to let 
 himself be used. Yetminster must have his warning 
 somehow, and at once, or this might be the finishing 
 stroke for the law-abiding party of Parliamentary 
 democratic reform. It might even be the end of his 
 own political career. Already, things had been pretty 
 tricky. Perry was quite clever enough to gauge the 
 dangers of the East Anglian temperament. These 
 people had never wholly trusted him, these Suffolk 
 peasants with their childish suspicions, their obstinate 
 pseudo-shrewdness. "I een't all a duzzy fule," one 
 of them had told him that morning. He had often 
 been disconcerted by the way they had of listening 
 to him without contradiction or comment, and he
 
 CONFUSIONS 103 
 
 knew that Matcham's audiences didn't behave like 
 that. He hadn't felt so sure of the factory workers, 
 either. Still, he had been gaining ground. Things 
 had been looking up, and he had got on famously with 
 the women. Good looks and the personal touch the 
 right manner. He'd been especially successful with 
 the women relatives of his political enemies. That 
 extension of the Suffrage, what a capital thing! 
 Practically the whole female vote would go for him 
 would have gone for him, if it hadn 't been for this 
 cursed affair. It must blow over, it must be made 
 to. Perry thought of the excellent reports he had 
 written to the ''Chief" giving credit to himself with 
 such subtle indirection! Political expression had 
 always come naturally to him: he was born for the 
 life born for a "career" "Well, if this young fool 
 wouldn't help him, hanged if he wouldn't go and have 
 a talk with old Glaive himself. He reflected on the 
 good taste he had shown in not alluding to the Glaive 
 scandal. 
 
 "You'll put in a word, won't you, with your father? 
 That's all I ask." He broke the silence, conciliatory, 
 suggestive. 
 
 "I don't want to be mixed up in it. The whole 
 thing bores me." "Stop them throwing bricks at 
 that devil, ' ' thought the boy. ' ' Not likely ! ' ' They 
 turned a corner. 
 
 "Oh, all right. It's really of no particular conse- 
 quence, after all, what you choose to do. I only
 
 104 BRUTE GODS 
 
 wanted to Why, what the deuce is going on over 
 there?" 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "On the Green. In front of the 'Parrot and 
 Punchbowl.' It's a meeting. Gad, I wonder if the 
 strike's on already!" 
 
 "Joe Matcham's speaking," said Alec, and quick- 
 ened his step. 
 
 "Let him," Perry observed viciously. Then, as a 
 shout came from the assembled men: "I shall go 
 up to your place. If you won 't warn your father and 
 Yetminster, I must." 
 
 "Why not come on and tackle Joe Matcham?" 
 
 "I would with pleasure if I thought it the right 
 move. My judgment is against it, at the present 
 moment. Do more harm than good." 
 
 Alec looked at him contemptuously, and resolved 
 that he would never be like that about anything. 
 He felt oddly thrilled by a sudden sense of the virtues 
 of courage and truth. Tremendously he wanted to 
 hear what Matcham was saying. The elan of a fight 
 flushed his spirit a fight that would somehow be 
 against his father, against what held his father up 
 and gave him his power for hurt.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 AFTER Perry had left him, the boy hurried 
 on toward the Green. He began to recognize 
 some of the men in Matcham's audience 
 men he remembered in earlier days sitting in the 
 "Adult School" with their shiny clothes and greased 
 hair. And there was the man whose son had given 
 Frippie her bicycle ; Stevens, who kept the small iron- 
 monger's shop at Malstowe, a tall spectacled ginger- 
 haired man. He used to be a Radical in the old 
 days, but was always terribly afraid of losing the 
 gentry 's patronage. He was standing now at the back 
 of the crowd, with his long neck craned up towards the 
 speaker. He was the only tradesman, so far as Alec 
 could see. The lower grades of the middle class were 
 represented only by him and by "the Reverend Car- 
 rick" the Independent Church of Christ minister 
 at Cranton, where the large Iron "Works were. There 
 were a few children about, with that curious look 
 of stolid deformity that country children often have. 
 The crowd was mainly of the Works men, none of 
 whom Alec knew by sight: there was a sprinkling 
 of agricultural labourers. The editor of a local paper, 
 a stooped gaunt man, very much the worse for middle 
 age, stood next to Stevens, taking notes. Alec re- 
 membered hearing that he had been recently converted 
 by Matcham, and let him do what he liked with his 
 
 105
 
 106 BRUTE GODS 
 
 journal. The few girls and women who were there 
 all stood together, rather uneasily, on the outskirts. 
 
 As Alec came up, there was a deep roll of laughter, 
 that seemed suddenly to puncture its expanded volume 
 on a sharp staccato point. The Reverend Carrick had 
 laughed last. 
 
 "That's right, Joe!" a man up at the front called 
 out. "We don' want narthin' to du with Parlyment 
 no more!" Alec recognized Jos Clark, Frippie's 
 father. 
 
 "What were they laughing at?" he whispered 
 Stevens eagerly, then looked to the knot of women for 
 Frippie, thinking that she might be there before him. 
 The idea that she was riding a bicycle irrationally 
 stuck. "What did you say?" 
 
 "He was a-mobbin' o' Perry, a-talkin' like he talk," 
 the ironmonger replied, on his guard. 
 
 Joe Matcham held up his hand. 
 
 "Now, boys, I'll tell you straight what we want. 
 We want every man here and every woman to give 
 their word of honour as a worker and that 's as good 
 as the word of honour of a gentleman, and better " 
 
 The men cheered loudly. 
 
 "I want you to give me, one and all, your solemn 
 pledge that you won't cast a vote at the next Elec- 
 tion." 
 
 " Or at any 'lection, Joe ! ' ' Clark shouted, his voice 
 hoarse. 
 
 "Don't worry about 'lection after next. If we 
 'aven't got something worth votin' for by then, we'd 
 best go crawlin' on all fours up t' th' big 'ouse,
 
 CONFUSIONS 107 
 
 and ast 'is lordship to spit on our 'eads to keep 'em 
 cool. 'Ands up them as promise me not to vote next 
 time!" 
 
 Every hand went up, and the crowd 's hoorays were 
 longer and louder. Alec scrutinized Matcham's pale 
 face, with the prominent misshapen nose, thickened 
 at the end, the clinching lips, the smashing chin, the 
 deep-driven grey-green eyes, active with the will of 
 the heavy rough-cast bulged forehead that overhung 
 them. He was a stoutly built man of about fifty, from 
 the North-country, but, except for the emphatic drop- 
 ping of his aitches, the accent was not very marked. 
 Alec wondered why he didn't look triumphant, joyous, 
 with all that cheering that he had made. Instead, 
 he looked grim and level and grave with a gravity 
 driven in as deeply as his eyes, and, like his eyes, 
 lined bitterly round. He gave no room to jubilation. 
 The man seemed girded, held fast, by a cold passion 
 of tragic energy and sacramental hate. Yet he had 
 made them laugh. The boy was strongly drawn to 
 him: he sought identification with that massiveness 
 and weight that so shamed the flimsy lightness of his 
 own adolescence. If he could get such power as that ! 
 He would get it. 
 
 "I tell you, men, I'm glad " Matcham raised 
 his head, and held out his arm with hand and fingers 
 taut. "I'm glad this 'ere 'as 'appened to show us 
 your way of shakin' 'ands with it. There are some 
 questions we're all of us astin' now, and we're astin' 
 them 'ard. What's the good of the vote? What's 
 the good of Parlyment? We know just what
 
 108 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Parl'ment's done for us, and what we say is: 'Not 
 enough.' Extry shillin' on the Pensions or the In- 
 surance! Thank yer for nothin'! What we say is: 
 'Take them sops an' slops of yours, and sit in 'em 
 take a bath in 'em anything you like so long's you 
 take 'em away from us.' Oh, we've got our Labour 
 members an' our Radicals an' our People's Party 
 men! 'Ave we? An' what good do they do us? 
 What good could they do us when we give 'em a salary 
 that puts 'em in the class that's on our necks? Men 
 are 'uman. You know what 'appens. When they've 
 been in that 'Ouse a month they begin to rot and 
 they're clubmen an' fake gentlemen an' 'alf-'oggers 
 an' quarter- 'oggers, an' 'alf of 'em was that already 
 when they tricked the labourin' man into votin' for 
 them. We don't want no more writer Socialists and 
 lawyer Radicals, we want the real thing and no fake. 
 Don 't we know what we want, men ? Don 't we know 
 'ow to get it? Do we think we'll get it by goin' on 
 with bein' tricked by these 'ere Mr. Perrys, and scat- 
 terin' the few good men we do 'ave through a 'Ouse 
 full of lawyers an' wire-pullers an' place- 'unters so 
 that they don't count? We've seen just 'ow much we 
 got by votin', it's time now to see 'ow much we can 
 get by chuckin ' the vote to 'ell ! ' ' 
 
 The last words tore Matcham's worn voice along 
 a ragged edge. He stood with unchanging eyes upon 
 the faces of the crowd. It seemed to Alec that he 
 looked directly and understandingly at him. The 
 boy was much moved. The men were shuffling and 
 shouting, the women began to chatter.
 
 CONFUSIONS 109 
 
 ' ' We know what we want now ! ' ' Matcham shouted, 
 then waited a moment, with hand raised. "We 
 know what. An' that's a law-makin' Council of 
 our own folks and no other folks, elected by us and 
 nobody elst a Council what's our own clean through 
 a Workers' Council that'll mean the Workers' will 
 same as the 'Ouse o' Lords used to mean the Lords' 
 will Men! You can 'ave that Council in three 
 months if you all stand together through the country ! 
 If seven out o' ten of us want it, we can get it in a 
 year! Then we won't 'ave no more cheatin' an' lyin' 
 of us out o' our rights now that they dassn't rob us 
 in the open. Mind you, it ain't only 'ere this '11 be 
 'appenin', it's all over the country all over!" 
 
 He paused, looking with a set distant gaze out over 
 the open fields. His audience remained silent. Sud- 
 denly his eyes were back at them, and his chin set. 
 
 "We can't do it, can't we? Our friend Mr. Perry 
 our nice polite place-seekin ' friend Mr. Tool Perry 
 'e says we can't do it. 'Quite impracticable.' 
 That's what they've always said: if they don't want 
 a thing they say it can't be done. Mr. Perry can 
 wait. Mr. Ga-ma-li-el Perry, in 'is bran-new sporty 
 togs ! 'E 'as very nice manners, we don 't deny, but 
 'e don't know everything. Do you think I'm a 
 dreamer, men? Do I look like a dreamer? Is Mat 
 Ford a dreamer, an' Ben Webber, an' Petey Farrall? 
 I tell ye who's the dreamer now: it's that lord in t' 
 big 'ouse who's dreamin' if 'e thinks 'e can stop you 
 goin' to work by that path over the " 
 
 A burst of cheering cut him off. Alec was surprised
 
 110 BRUTE GODS 
 
 by its intensity and protraction. Those other things 
 that Matcham had said were so much more im- 
 portant. . . . 
 
 ". . . We've got the rights o' things in our 'eads 
 now, an' it'll take more'n the newspapers and the 
 'People's Party' to get 'em out again. Well, boys, 
 the strike airn't off till 'is lordship takes what's left 
 o' that gate away, an' then there are bigger things 
 comin'!" 
 
 These last words were hardly heard through the im- 
 mediate cheers that followed the reference to the gate, 
 and Matcham twisted his lips. 
 
 "Bigger things yet!" he shouted. "What if Yet- 
 minster does give in over this? That won't alter 
 what we're fightin' for. We won't go about sayin': 
 'Airn't 'e kind? Airn't 'e reasonable-like an' doesn't 
 'e love the pore workin' man?' The fight airn't over 
 s 'long's we're under and they're up." Matcham 's 
 gestures grew freer, they had a new violence. He 
 raised a clenched fist and drove it down with an out- 
 ward jerk of his elbow. "We're to see to it that this 
 world airn't the senseless, stoopid, ugly, disgustin' 
 scramblin' an' tusslin' an' bitin' an' tearin' for 
 money as it 'as been all these years! We're to see 
 to it that we 'as a chance to live like men, an' s 'long's 
 one man 'as 'is private car an' 'is big 'ouse an' 'is 
 servants, an' 'underds of others 'ave to weigh in 
 agenst 'im by bein' shoved out of a decent life, so long 
 our fight '11 go on! An' it won't be enough for us 
 that two or three of our men 'ere an' there 'ave a 
 better chance of gettin' rich of risin' in the
 
 CONFUSIONS 111 
 
 world " he stressed the word with savage scorn 
 "than they 'ad before. "We don't want a world where 
 every, man 'as 'is chance of gettin' up an' crushin' 
 others, we want a world where no man 'as the chance 
 o' bein' crushed. We don't want no jugglin' an' 
 shufflin' o' the same old cards. By God, men, is it 
 any better to 'ave an open field for this beastly 
 scramblin' mean cunnin' crafty game o' beggarin' 
 others an' fattenin' yerself ? is it any better to 'ave 
 an open field for this than a close one? It's not a 
 man's game, that, it's a brute's game an' when they 
 talk to you about savin' money up an' goin' on to 
 better wages an' p'raps startin' in business for yerself 
 some day, they're temptin' you to be traitors an' scabs. 
 They're tryin' to turn you away from the brother- 
 hood o' man that's what they're doin'. Ye can't 
 kneel yerselves down to their gods without yer stick 
 yer knees in yer brothers' chests an' on yer brothers' 
 bellies an' the reason is that their gods airn't real 
 gods, they're brutes brutes they're brute gods " 
 He stopped, gasping, and Alec was startled by the 
 greyness that had overspread his face, a greyness 
 notable, menacing. "He een't well, Joe een't," the 
 boy overheard a voice near by. "He du hully talk 
 quare when he een't well. I don't rightly fare 
 t'know what he's arter, du yu?" Even Jos Clark 
 and the Reverend Carrick and the editor looked be- 
 wildered, but they cheered; so did the Works men. 
 Matcham had forgotten them all: not one of the 
 audience, except Alec, had in the least understood 
 him for the last few minutes, but most of them were
 
 112 BRUTE GODS 
 
 stirred by his emotion, drawn for the moment in its 
 tide. Alec was as though battered and ungovernable 
 in a rough sea-surge, feeling danger, exalted by it. 
 He had not looked for Frippie again. 
 
 "Well, boys, God bless yer." Matcham had not 
 wholly recovered himself, he spoke labouring. "Fare 
 th' well. Talkin' airn't much, it's what ye think an' 
 what ye mean. God bless you, women. "We want you 
 fightin' with us, we can't win without you. An' ye '11 
 hold up your 'eads with the best of us, ye 're not like 
 some others who think they're your betters, others 
 with fine white 'ands an' wearin' silks and goin' 'alf 
 naked of an evenin'." The bitter severity of his con- 
 tempt and condemnation seemed to gnaw at the air, 
 and Alec had the sense of gooseflesh. "Women who 
 wouldn't soil their fingernails with a minute of honest 
 work, but soil their honour with the stinkin' muck of 
 'arlotry parasites who can't find nothin' to fill up 
 their idleness with but the wickedness of adultery! 
 Thank God for our women, I say!" Jos Clark 
 gulped uneasily. "Thank God for our wives an' our 
 sisters an ' our comrades in the fight ! ' ' 
 
 Matcham got down from the box, reaching his hand 
 to Jos Clark for support. He went straight into the 
 cheering crowd that pressed to him. They were slap- 
 ping his shoulders and grasping his hands. Those 
 last remarks had been perfectly well understood, as 
 was shown by meaning looks and furtive smiles. The 
 Reverend Carrick clapped till his hands ached. Alec 
 was stunned. Joe Matcham on his father's side! 
 He turned away.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE boy walked off in dulled amazement. 
 His mind hung motionless over the gross 
 and clogged brutality of that denunciation. 
 How was it possible? And Matcham had been so 
 fine ! He had told the truth ; then he had lied, he had 
 discoloured his truth shattered it. Alec quickened 
 to indignation. How had the man dared? What 
 did he know about the Mater, he knew nothing 
 nothing and he could stand up and shout out 
 " Adultery!" as if that were enough. He could say 
 these wrong lying things to please the workmen, be- 
 cause he wanted to end up with their listening to 
 him, and they hadn't been listening properly just 
 before. He said that for effect no, he believed it, 
 you could see that. These men didn't know; what 
 were they worth, what sense of justice could they 
 and Matcham have, except just for themselves ? They 
 thought justice meant their having more money to 
 spend and other people having less! As if there 
 weren't things more important than that. ... It 
 would be worse than anything, being ruled by these 
 people. " Brute gods" but you could see that 
 Matcham would like to send the Mater back, and 
 nothing could be more brutish than that. Carrick 
 would send her back, no doubt, and Stevens damn 
 all of them! Father Collett was much wiser, he 
 
 113
 
 114 BRUTE GODS 
 
 knew much more, he would never. ... If Matcham's 
 lot did get all they wanted, it would be just as easy 
 for his father to be what he had been, to do what he 
 had done just the same; they wouldn't punish him, 
 wouldn't make him pay. . . . 
 
 Those men were shouting again. No, they weren't 
 shouting, exactly, they were hooting. Why? Alec 
 hoped they were hooting Matcham. He turned, and 
 there beyond the "Parrot and Punchbowl," in rapid 
 course toward the Green that lay at the turn of the 
 road, ran the old "two-seater" car with his father 
 driving it, alone. They were threatening him. 
 Perry's remark about bricks rushed back to Alec's 
 mind. Would they attack him? He thrilled and 
 tingled, he began running back. He would have to 
 defend his father, if they. . . . That was the worst 
 of it, he would have to defend him. What would 
 Matcham do? 
 
 Alec ran, keeping his eye on the car. It reached 
 the Green a minute or so before he did, and as his 
 father got out, a stone was flung, smashing one of 
 the car's headlights. Mr. Glaive did not seem to 
 notice, he advanced briskly, with his creeping smile, 
 he held his little figure sharply erect. Another stone 
 was thrown, passing close by him : Alec could not be 
 sure if he had been hit or not. He was darting for- 
 ward as Matcham cried: "Don't 'urt 'im, boys! 
 What's the good o' that?" 
 
 "Mr. Matcham," said Glaive, "you are the chair- 
 man, I believe? May I address your meeting, and if 
 I may, will you get me a hearing?"
 
 CONFUSIONS 115 
 
 "If the men want to 'ear yer, they will 'ear yer." 
 
 "We don't fare to wanter hear narthin' off o' 
 him!" cried the workman who had thrown the first 
 stone. "Why couldn' th' owd man a' come hisself, 
 'stead o' sendin' his little dawg?" 
 
 "Because he went up to London this morning. 
 I've come on my own responsibility." 
 
 "Ho, run awuoy, hev he?" 
 
 "What I have to say won't take two minutes, Mr. 
 Matcham." 
 
 Glaive's tone was one of friendly equal acquaint- 
 anceship. Alec noted, with distasteful admiration, 
 that his father gave no hint of fear. 
 
 "Well, boys." Matcham held up his hand. 
 "Shall we 'ear what Mr. Glaive 'as to say?" 
 
 ' ' Goo on, Joe. Put him up ! " 
 
 "He heen't lost all o' his guts, hev he?" 
 
 "An' no stones, boys. We play fair. Throwin' 
 stones won't 'elp ye." 
 
 Matcham 's voice was tired and hoarse. He leaned 
 heavily on Jos Clark's shoulder. Glaive jumped up 
 on the box, his grey dustcoat blowing about him. 
 
 "If you're expecting any message from Lord Yet- 
 minster, I haven't got one. That's the first thing." 
 He spoke rapidly, with a direct business manner 
 no gesture. "Lord Yetminster had gone to London 
 before I heard of what happened this morning. I 
 want to tell you what I'm going to do, not what he's 
 going to do. You can guess that I wouldn't have 
 come out to speak to you when my heart's crushed by 
 a private grief a heavy personal loss "
 
 116 BRUTE GODS 
 
 His voice trembled slightly, but no more than a 
 man's should. There was a short snicker from one 
 of the men, but it at once died, abortive. The refer- 
 ence had unmistakably touched their sympathies, 
 changed their whole attitude: Matcham and Clark 
 and the Reverend Carrick were the most evidently 
 won over. Alec felt a drying heat on his palate. 
 
 "I wouldn't have come to you men if I hadn't felt 
 I must come. Whatever sorrow or shame " he 
 hushed his voice to the word "whatever disgrace 
 may come upon a man must not interfere with his 
 duty as a citizen." The Eeverend Carrick nodded 
 appreciatively. "I want to tell you that I feel as 
 strongly about this matter as Mr. Matcham or any 
 of you, and I want to tell you this: that either one 
 of two things will happen. ' ' He began to speak with 
 great deliberation, separating each word. "Either 
 Lord Yetminster will let you men go by that path 
 or " he sped up his speech "or I'll resign my posi- 
 tion as agent and help you to break down the gate 
 again tomorrow morning." 
 
 He jumped down from the box almost before he 
 had finished speaking, nodded sharply to Matcham 
 with a quick "Thank you!" and had taken several 
 steps away from the crowd, through the clear space 
 behind the box, before their stupefaction broke in 
 violent cheering. Glaive did not turn his head: he 
 walked on at the same pace to his car and began turn- 
 ing the crank, with his back to the shouting. Alec, 
 who had drifted towards the road to get a better 
 view of his father speaking, advanced from force of
 
 CONFUSIONS 117 
 
 habit to crank the engine for him. ''You here?" 
 Glaive looked up, surprised, but evidently pleased 
 that his son had witnessed the scene. He did not ask 
 why he had not come home before. "Shall I take 
 you back?" he said, as Alec began cranking. The 
 boy shook his head. He noticed that one of his 
 father's fingers was bleeding at the knuckle. Glaive 
 got into the car and drove off, as the men surged 
 out to the road, still shouting, and waving their 
 caps. The eclipsed Matcham waved his with the rest, 
 but Alec thought he looked hit; there was something 
 dejected, disillusioned, something lonely, about his 
 walk and the loose worn hang of his figure. 
 
 The car passed out of sight. A couple of farm men 
 recognized Alec, and one of them said: "Your 
 father 's a game 'un, een 'the?" " Oh, he 's all right, ' ' 
 the boy replied shortly, aware that a number of the 
 men had begun to stare at him, realizing who he was. 
 He was too much in the thick of his thoughts to be 
 embarrassed. There was Matcham, walking off. with 
 Jos Clark and the editor. They must know they 
 were beaten. "What would Frippie think of all this? 
 Would she think anything? Grapes would matter 
 more to her. . . . 
 
 The ginger-haired ironmonger was making for 
 Alec: he looked pleased and cordial, probably he 
 wanted to offer his congratulations. The boy hurried 
 off to escape him. So that was how it had ended, 
 with cranking up the car for his father. And cheers, 
 not bricks. Victory at the price of a hurt knuckle. 
 . . . His father had more courage than he had. Oh,
 
 118 BRUTE GODS 
 
 there could only be one way against him! Alec was 
 choking impotently with tears and rage. Courage 
 cunning it had been a great stroke no one could 
 deny. Father Collett was right: it was possible to 
 be successful and yet altogether contemptible more 
 hateful than ever 'because of the success. Matcham 
 had spoken for his father, then his father had come 
 in and beaten him. And no matter if the Matchams 
 or the Perrys or the Yetminsters were up, his father 
 was bound to win, bound to come in to win, just like 
 that, with his creeping smile.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 **"1T "W" "TELL, fat-head, dinner's over." 
 \\/ "I know that." 
 
 T T "Why didn't you come back with the 
 
 old man?" Mervyn, with a peculiarly English look, 
 lazy and athletic, was lying in a deep chair by the 
 littered dining-table. "He said you were down at 
 that show, he was hugely bucked." 
 
 "Where is he now?" Alec rang the bell for some 
 food. 
 
 "Study." 
 
 "Hope he stays there." 
 
 "Oh, he's in a roarin' good temper. He was 
 frightfully pipped before because you didn 't turn up. 
 Swearin' at you like hell. Silly fool, you might think 
 of me now and again. There I was hangin' round 
 for the bloomin' sermon, and the guv 'nor in the hell 
 of a hair all the while. Then he put it off till four 
 o'clock. Hangin' round again. More naughty 
 temper. Now we have to have it t 'morrow instead 
 just as bad as havin' it twice over. What the devil 
 makes you so late? If you'd come straight back 
 from the 'Parrot,' walkin', you'd have been here be- 
 fore this." Mervyn 's tone was unwontedly worried. 
 
 "Oh I didn't feel like it." Alec was conscious 
 of the impossibility of explaining why he had 
 lingered and gone out of his way. Having refused 
 
 119
 
 120 BRUTE GODS 
 
 to ride with his father, he didn't want it to appear 
 that he had simply walked straight back instead. 
 "What's he doing in the Study?" he added quickly. 
 
 "Makin' out a statement for the Eat." 
 
 "I wonder how the Rat '11 take it." Alec knew 
 how well made out that statement for Lord Yet- 
 minster would be a document of secret diplomacy. 
 He sat down to his warmed-up beef. 
 
 "The Rat?" Mervyn waited till the servant had 
 gone, his upbringing not being sufficiently aristocratic 
 for him to ignore her presence. "Oh, the old man's 
 safe. He knows that. There are too many on his 
 side. Gad, it was rather a brilliant idea, you know. 
 Pretty clever. The gate's gone already, Morris told 
 me." 
 
 "H'm." Alec grunted, depressed by the look of 
 the salt, messed and melted by the brown gravy at 
 the side of his plate. 
 
 "Auntie's gone to bed with a headache." Mervyn 
 spoke with the inflexion of taken-for-granted contempt 
 that always accompanied any reference he made to his 
 Aunt Cathy. "Very peevish. The old man's good 
 spirits quite upset her. Always works that way. 
 Before that, she'd been no end merry and bright 
 not givin' herself away, of course. Gone to bed 
 directly after dinner, and now she'll have indiges- 
 tion." 
 
 He took up the paper, and Alec ate, thinking of 
 Father Collett's niece in the priest's dining-room. 
 They would probably be having dessert at that 
 moment, with port or sherry. Better stuff than this
 
 CONFUSIONS 121 
 
 beer. Alec had given no further thought to the 
 priest's promised sermon. That was crowded out, 
 well forgotten. 
 
 "Did you know that Father Collett had a niece, 
 and she's staying with the Burkes?" he asked his 
 brother. 
 
 "Oh, that foreign-lookin' girl with the untidy 
 black hair ? Met her in Malstowe with Doreen Burke 
 this afternoon. Queer eyes. Damn good opinion of 
 herself, I should say " 
 
 "How old is she? Is she pretty?" 
 
 "Decent sort of figure. Looked as though she 
 didn't wear stays and didn't have to. Don't know 
 about her age, one of those girls it's difficult to tell. 
 Not so awfully young. Didn't attract me, so I didn't 
 think about her bein' pretty. She may be." 
 
 "You're sure she was the one I mean?" 
 
 ' ' Of course she was, ass. Doreen introduced her as 
 Miss Collett, said she was a relation niece or cousin 
 or somethin', I don't remember. Her eyes remind 
 you of the Bullock's, too though, by Gad, her build 
 don't." 
 
 "You saw Nita today, I suppose?" 
 
 "Yes or rather I mean I didn't." Mervyn 
 frowned uneasily and took up his paper again. 
 
 "Oh, was she out? Rough luck." 
 
 Alec finished his meat in silence, while Mervyn kept 
 jerking one leg up and down, in a disconcerting 
 rhythm of unease. Then he dropped the paper on 
 the floor, got up and pulled one of the straight-backed 
 chairs round to Alec's side.
 
 122 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "Look here," he said, sitting by him. "I may as 
 well tell you." He glanced behind him at the door. 
 "Must tell some one. I want to get out of it!" 
 
 ' ' Get out of what ? ' ' Alec stared, startled. 
 
 "Out of being engaged, you idiot!" 
 
 "Good Lord! Well, I'm glad you do." 
 
 "Oh, are you? Plucky lot I care about your bein' 
 glad." Mervyn seemed offended. "God, don't I 
 want to get out of it, though! Of course you can't 
 understand " 
 
 ' ' Why can 't I ? " Alec paused : he was not wholly 
 unprepared for the announcement. He remembered 
 one or two things that he hadn't made much account 
 of at the time. "It must be pretty awful, marrying 
 some one you don't want to marry. Don't you do 
 it. 'S any way I can help?" 
 
 "All very well to say 'Don't you do it.' " 
 Mervyn drew his chair from the table. "You don't 
 know how damn difficult it is, when a thing like that 's 
 been runnin' on so long. You know that girl Dolly 
 Drake. Go on, eat your bloody cheese. Well, fact 
 is I've been gettin' in deeper and deeper with her: 
 I'm up to my bloomin' neck an' over!" 
 
 "What, you don't mean you've ?" Alec was 
 caught back to Frippie and the mystery of his un- 
 known. 
 
 "Of course not. Look out, or 111 punch you in 
 the eye. This is the real thing, I tell you. Do you 
 think it could make all this difference with a girl 
 who wasn't straight? I'd marry Dolly tomorrow if 
 I could."
 
 CONFUSIONS 123 
 
 "Well, of course you can't marry Nita, then. Why, 
 you oughtn't to " Alec stopped, trying to re- 
 member what Dolly Drake looked like. She was a 
 young cousin of Nita's, and she sometimes stayed with 
 the Resines. Alec had only seen her once or twice, 
 he had not noticed her much. "She's only a kid, 
 isn't she?" he asked. 
 
 "Seventeen." 
 
 "When did you first?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't know." Mervyn looked hard at the 
 table-cloth. "It was something about the way don't 
 you know, the way she's made that got me. She's 
 so slim to her waist, then she's different, somehow. 
 But that was only the beginning. Oh, Lord, you 
 can't explain these things. It's the way she looks 
 and the way her face changes when she smiles. She 
 makes me feel she belongs to me, sort of, and then I 
 think how I'm not supposed to have anything to do 
 with her not anything at all that being engaged 
 to Nita makes me an utter outsider for her. Oh, 
 what's the good of talkin' to you, you don't under- 
 stand. I keep thinkin' of how she goes up to her 
 room, and does her hair and washes her face or gets 
 her things out to play tennis in and she might be in 
 the North Pole's far's I'm concerned!" 
 
 ' ' But you were awfully keen on Nita, weren 't you ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' Never so much. ' ' Mervyn was emphatic and con- 
 vinced. "Never like this nothing like. It was dif- 
 ferent with her. Somehow I could always under- 
 stand what I felt about Nita don 't you know, I could 
 get it all all there was. There was nothing noth-
 
 124 BRUTE GODS 
 
 ing past it, if you know what I mean ? This is well, 
 it excites you more in the kind of way girls do excite 
 you, and less much less and much more. I don't 
 know how it is, hang it all." He was trying to say 
 that his feeling for Dolly was both more and less 
 sensual than his feeling for Nita; that, with Dolly, 
 the violence and the diffusion of his emotion were 
 in contradiction. "This thing's like God knows 
 what it's like. I started playin' that old piano when 
 I got back, that seemed to I played all right, too, 
 I can tell you better than I used to when I was 
 in practice. Or p'raps I only thought I was playin' 
 so damn well because of the way I felt. Then Auntie 
 had to come in, and of course I couldn 't go on. ' ' 
 
 "You saw Dolly today, then?" 
 
 "Of course I did. "What do you think? No one 
 else was in. It wasn't on purpose ; I didn't know and 
 she didn't. I'd never kissed her before " 
 
 "She's fond of you, then?" 
 
 Mervyn nodded. He took out his crumpled hand- 
 kerchief and stared at it. 
 
 "What exactly happened?" Alec, flicked by emu- 
 lation, was eager for details of guidance. 
 
 "You don't expect me to tell you, do you?" His 
 brother opened cold eyes at him. ' ' Not likely. ' ' 
 
 "Look here, Mervyn, you simply can't go on be- 
 ing engaged to Nita." 
 
 "If only it hadn't been for this business of the 
 Mater" 
 
 "What has that got to do with it?" 
 
 Alec lit a cigarette and offered one to Mervyn, who
 
 CONFUSIONS 125 
 
 took it absently. The young man went back to his 
 armchair, and sat smoking, thinking. Alec sat by 
 him, near the empty fireplace. 
 
 "It's got a whole lot to do with it. Every one 
 would say we're a rotten lot. The guv 'nor " 
 
 "What the devil does it matter about him? What 
 business has he " Alec's antagonism struck vio- 
 lently. 
 
 "Oh, he'd cut up pretty rough. He'd be fright- 
 fully vicious because it would seem as though the 
 Mater's runnin' off had gone and bust things up in 
 the family. He'd simply hate people sayin' that 
 and of course they would. It would be a score for her, 
 you see: of course it wouldn't really, but that's how 
 the old man would take it, I'm certain. And people 
 are so devilish touchy about morals an' that. Damn 
 funny thing when you think of it," he went on re- 
 flectively, "about the Mater. No reason why she 
 should have stayed on here with him and us, was there 
 if she didn't want to?" 
 
 "Of course there wasn't! But why should you 
 think of him? You're the one who'd have to marry 
 Nita, you'd have to be married to her for God 
 knows how long, too " 
 
 "I know that! But you've no notion how damn- 
 ably difficult it would be to break off. The longer you 
 go on bein' engaged the worse it is. This is dead 
 private, Alec, but I haven't cared not really cared 
 about Nita for the last year or so. We've been en- 
 gaged too long, that's the trouble." 
 
 He paused, thinking of how his love had turned
 
 126 BRUTE GODS 
 
 sour, or evaporated, with the waiting, waiting; he 
 knew the treasure to be lost or spoiled, because 
 guarded from him too long. 
 
 "Well," said Alec, "it's better, anyhow, than if 
 you'd found out after you were married." 
 
 ' ' Rot ! It always happens then. Every one knows 
 that. And it's not so bad because everybody's in the 
 same box. You expect it then, and you know you 
 can't get out of it. I should have had something, 
 too. Can't think how the beastly thing started, ex- 
 actly. She began lookin' different to me, somehow, 
 it got on my nerves, some things she did the way 
 she said things sometimes, an' all that. I s'pose it 
 sounds awfully caddish, but it wasn't my fault, was 
 it? I didn't want not to be in love with her any 
 more didn't do it on purpose, did I? God, how 
 sick I get of bein' always sort of put in brackets 
 with her 'Mervyn an' Nita, Nita an' Mervyn' all 
 the time. It's enough to make any one fed up. Since 
 I got out of the Army it's been ever so much worse. 
 I've seen more of her, you see, been seein' her all the 
 time when I wasn't at Oxford " 
 
 "But how about Dolly? How do you know it 
 wouldn't be just the same if you saw more of her? 
 Wouldn't 'Mervyn and Dolly' get to be just the 
 same?" 
 
 "Shut up." The young man winced sharply at 
 that coupling of names. "Of course it wouldn't be 
 the same, it couldn't be, ever. I'm absolutely certain. 
 I told you it wasn't like Dolly with Nita, not even 
 at the very beginning. Only I didn't know. Of
 
 CONFUSIONS 
 
 course Nita's a jolly pretty girl, and I'm fond of her 
 still, in a way. She's a good sort, and that makes 
 it worse." 
 
 "I can't see what right the guv 'nor has to stop 
 you!" 
 
 "He's known the Resines for years." Mervyn 
 spoke in intense depression. "Up at Oxford with 
 old Dr. Resine an' all that. Nita will have some 
 money, too a fat lot of good that would do me, 
 losin' Dolly! Of course she won't have anything. 
 Her father's dead. She's here for a holiday, works 
 with some milliner in London. You know what the 
 guv 'nor would think of that " 
 
 ' ' Oh, heaps of girls work for their living. Nobody 
 thinks anything of it since the war." 
 
 "Oh, don't they? That's all bluff. At any rate 
 it depends on the kind of work how well it's paid 
 and whether they need to or not. If Dolly has to 
 support herself, that means she's poor, and that's 
 enough for the guv 'nor. That's one of our wonder- 
 ful old family traditions, never to marry a girl with- 
 out money. No Glaive ever has. If I broke off and 
 married Dolly, we'd starve. The guv 'nor would see 
 to that." 
 
 "Couldn't she go on working, just at the start, and 
 you get something to do in London? I should have 
 thought, if you really " Alec broke off, embar- 
 rassed by the reflection that if his father cut Mervyn 
 adrift, he would be the gainer. 
 
 "Rotten arrangement. I couldn't let her work. 
 And the joke of it is that if we married and I got
 
 128 BRUTE GODS 
 
 some rotten job in London we'd both be workin' 
 harder an' we'd both be worse off. Lookin' after a 
 house or a flat without a servant would be harder for 
 her than what she's doin', and she'd be worse paid 
 for it. How damn silly! You don't think of these 
 things till you're up against them and then you 
 wonder why in hell people put up with such bloody 
 foolishness. ' ' 
 
 "Perhaps the Rat might help you. He may be 
 annoyed with the guv 'nor over this gate business " 
 
 "You know it's one of those things one's sup- 
 posed not to talk about, of course but what's the 
 use of always goin' on not sayin', when it's true? 
 Fact is the old man's keen on Nita himself. I've 
 known that a long time. Any one can see by the 
 look in his eyes and the way he kisses her " 
 
 "Good God, the old beast!" Alec flushed with 
 bitter indignation. He saw his father, winning the 
 Factory crowd over, play-acting with his ''great 
 grief" and "personal loss" making copy. 
 
 "Nita knows it too. Somehow I don't think she 
 minds, not really. She seems to it was partly that 
 that put me off, to start with that in a way she 
 well, she almost plays up to him. You know how a 
 girl can. Not that she cares twopence about him 
 in that way, she doesn't, I know, but We've never 
 spoken of it, of course, and don't you, do you hear?" 
 
 "I wish he'd die!" 
 
 "You see, what he wants is to have her about 
 son's wife in the family callin' her his daughter, 
 and that sort of fake, an' bein* able to kiss her.
 
 CONFUSIONS 129 
 
 That's the kind of thing a man seems to want when 
 he's gettin' too old for He wants it all mixed 
 up with a whole lot of fake an' bluff. I tell you, 
 I've watched the guv 'nor a bit. He's been a bit 
 suspicious lately, guesses there's something up. 
 That's why he wants me to chuck Oxford so as to 
 get married this autumn. Says he finds the work 
 too much for him an' wants me here. Wants to fit 
 up the cottage for Nita an' me oh, Lord! In a 
 couple of months we'd be married " 
 
 "Christ!" Alec watched his brother's miserable 
 and frightened face. "And they gave you the 
 D.S.O. for being brave !" He had never seen Mervyn 
 look so weakened, so helpless. 
 
 "Look here!" The young man stirred nervously 
 in his chair. "It isn't only the guv 'nor. I must 
 think of Nita, there's been all these years, it'd be 
 deuced unfair, after all it would be a dishonourable 
 sort of thing, breaking your word, I don't believe the 
 guv 'nor would break his word, not like that, anyhow. 
 It'd be awfully hard luck ; a girl has some pride. You 
 see, if a chap has had an understanding with a girl 
 for five years an' very likely spoiled her chance of 
 marryin' any one else hang it all, it isn't the right 
 thing, whatever way you look at it. I've got to take 
 my medicine, that's all about it matter of honour. 
 You have to sacrifice everything when it's a matter 
 of honour let it all go always have to devil of a 
 sacrifice still " 
 
 The two repeated words arrested Alec. "Sacri- 
 fice." "Honour." The phrase Matcham had given
 
 130 BRUTE GODS 
 
 him "Brute gods" beat his remembrance sting- 
 ingly. It was a phrase that baffled his understanding, 
 vivified his emotion. It meant much more to him 
 than it meant to Matcham, but meant it far more 
 vaguely. Could honour make a brute demand ? "Was 
 this honour of Mervyn's really honour? Constancy 
 fidelity dogs were faithful. 
 
 "Look here, would it oh, damn honour! would 
 it be fair to Nita for you to marry her now ? Couldn 't 
 you go and tell her the whole thing? It would be 
 the truth, anyhow." 
 
 "It would be the same as chucking her. It's the 
 kind of thing a man can't do." 
 
 "You're as important as she is your happiness 
 is." 
 
 "Well, but You see, after all that there's been. 
 There's been such a devil of a lot. You can't wipe 
 that out. After I've said that no other girl could 
 ever make the smallest difference to me, an' she said 
 she'd marry me just the same, an' want to, even if 
 I were smashed up for life or blinded I'd feel such 
 an awful worm." He got up trembling, and walked 
 away to the window. "She'd have done it, too," he 
 said, so low that Alec could hardly hear him. "Why 
 the devil didn't I get a bullet through my head out 
 there?" 
 
 "Oh, I say, Mervyn, you simply can't!" 
 
 Alec was keenly touched: he started to go over to 
 his brother, but shyness thwarted his sympathy, and 
 he held back. He stood, pondering on this fresh 
 instance of the association, the alliance of his father
 
 CONFUSIONS 131 
 
 with the gods of the world. The world was for his 
 father against his stepmother, just as it would be for 
 him against Mervyn. Mervyn had first talked of the 
 guv 'nor, then he had talked of honour and those 
 other things that were against him on the guv 'nor 's 
 side. The winning side! Alec remembered how 
 Matcham's meeting had ended. . . . He looked across 
 to Mervyn, he must persuade him somehow; that 
 mustn't always be the winning side. Mervyn, catch- 
 ing his brother 's glance, tried to pull himself together, 
 jerked his head back stiffly, then turned away, stam- 
 mered "Oh, damn," and sat heavily down by the 
 window, hunched up, his flaxen head between his 
 hands. He looked done for, worse than collapsed. 
 Alec could understand well enough Mervyn 's wanting 
 not to marry Nita, but he was puzzled by his wanting 
 to marry Dolly Drake. The thing was dead serious, 
 any one could see, and Mervyn wasn't the sort of chap 
 who thought he was in love when he wasn't, and made 
 a lot of it. That fellow Williams might be that sort : 
 well, he'd better look out if he tried any nonsense 
 on with the Mater! But Mervyn he'd never even 
 flirted with any one since he got engaged. What a 
 damned shame! 
 
 "Look here, I say." Alec took two or three steps 
 nearer his brother. "Don't you do it, don't be a fool. 
 It'd be it'd be simply hell." 
 
 "Oh, what's the odds? I'd get hell from the guv'- 
 nor if I backed out, and after all he'd be right, in a 
 way he would, and they'd all say he was." 
 
 "No, you wouldn't I promise you you wouldn't "
 
 132 BRUTE GODS 
 
 ' ' You ? What could you do ? " 
 
 "I could you'll see" 
 
 Alec thought: "I could kill him, why not?" 
 Flashes shot in his brain, he stood leaning over to 
 Mervyn, breathing hard, with an excited sense of 
 power. He could be stronger than Mervyn, he felt 
 quite sure he could. Mervyn was weak in some ways, 
 always had been, he would give in unexpectedly, 
 suddenly: how often he'd say: "Oh, what's the 
 odds?" or "Well, let it go, then." He'd never be 
 able to stand up to their father, not in anything like 
 this. Alec must back him to the limit. 
 
 "Anyhow," he went on, "if the guv 'nor cuts you 
 off, I'll give you your share. I swear that, word of 
 honour " 
 
 "Honour," again, he thought. And of course he'd 
 be bound, having said that. But that was different. 
 He was impatient of his reflections. 
 
 "Awfully decent of you. Thanks. All the same, 
 the guv 'nor will probably live till we're both about 
 forty." 
 
 Kill him Alec thought again why not? 
 "Doesn't matter, I'll get money, I can make 
 him" 
 
 What good would Father Collett's way do? he 
 argued with himself. Just leaving it all, what would 
 be the good of that? leaving it, and thinking of 
 nothing but your own blooming soul ! And what good 
 would there be in any other way, except ? Joe 
 Matcham was right about compromise, that fool Perry 
 was wrong. Matcham knew you had to have violence
 
 CONFUSIONS 133 
 
 the only thing to smash these brute gods, as he 
 called them. Of course it was! You only had to 
 look at the two men to see that Matcham was a fine 
 sort of chap and Perry a sneak. 
 
 "I'll manage the guv 'nor all right," the boy in- 
 sisted. If only he could get Mervyn on his feet! 
 That struck-down look he had. . . . 
 
 ' ' Well, I '11 tell the old man. ' ' Mervyn half turned. 
 "Won't be any good. Still, he might put his foot 
 in it, somehow help me without knowing it, with- 
 out meaning to. Just a chance." 
 
 "You won't give in to him, will you?" 
 
 "Oh, shut up." Mervyn relieved his dejection by 
 becoming nervously annoyed. "Do you think I don't 
 want to get out of it? If only I can, but I know I 
 can't, still there might be some way. Oh, I'm talkin' 
 rot!" He got up. "See that handkerchief?" He 
 spoke with a mingling of shyness and bravado. ' ' She 
 threw it back to me. Some one came in, I thought it 
 was Nita, but it was only one of the servants. She 
 threw it back to me from her lap. It was the way 
 she did it so quickly seemed to mean such a lot, 
 somehow, seemed to make a sort of corner for us and 
 showed she cared for me, her doin' it like that. 
 Dropped from my sleeve, an' I'd left it when I heard 
 somebody outside by the door. And she said, in 
 quite a natural voice: 'Oh, I forgot you don't like 
 being called Lieutenant Glaive.' As if that was 
 the sort of thing we'd been sayin'. Does make a 
 difference, you know, when you have to be careful 
 an ' not let any one find out. Makes everything worth
 
 134 BRUTE GODS 
 
 so much more, makes it so exciting. "With Nita, of 
 course Funny thing, what a lot her throwin' that 
 handkerchief back like that seemed to mean " 
 
 He paused, while Alec reflected that it probably 
 meant she was used to doing it. 
 
 ''She's got brown hair and her eyes it's her 
 colour, too. If only she hadn't looked so beastly well 
 the first time I met her, an' so different to Nita. It 
 was that that did it." 
 
 ''Yes, Nita's fair, and I suppose she isn't awfully 
 strong. ' ' 
 
 "Nita's jolly pretty. I know she is. But Dolly's 
 something else I can't Oh, I'm hit and hit 
 badly, an' what's the use of talkin'? I'm talkin' 
 like an ass. I'm only fit to go to bed, I'm all done 
 in. What were you up to this afternoon, away all 
 that time?" 
 
 "Oh, I was with Frippie Clark." 
 
 "Christ you were!" Mervyn laughed raggedly. 
 "That's all right, eh? You were with Frippie, and 
 I was What a pair of rotters! What a bleedin' 
 family ! Good-night, after that ! ' ' 
 
 Alec, as Mervyn left him, vindictively resisted 
 the application of these phrases. It wasn't they who 
 were rotters, it was the way everything went that 
 was rotten. His rebellious hatred struck further 
 down. Let his father try to stop Mervyn : he wouldn't 
 forgive him that, or anything else, either! He'd 
 hit back, he'd hit hard. 
 
 Alec's sense of the world's wrongness and his sense 
 of his father's wrongness were in clouded blend: he
 
 CONFUSIONS 135 
 
 saw his father's evil drawn out and spread over the 
 general surface, but never, for all its radiation, clear 
 of its personal known character. The evil concentred 
 the more vividly for its expansion, and his father 
 stood out, with a deepened blackness, as a symbolic 
 mark for attack. The man was there, the man he 
 knew; he could be reached. The personal stroke 
 would grow for wide range to a stroke against what 
 his father belonged to and what belonged to him, 
 what held rule everywhere, discolouring, spoiling, 
 preventing. . . . Brute gods and the sacrifices of 
 their priests and victims he was in battle against all 
 that in his father, starting from his father. . . . He'd 
 show that he was in the fight.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 MR. GLAIVE, next morning, read the family 
 Prayers in high feather. His "When the 
 wicked man turneth away from his wicked- 
 ness" was jaunty, and the Doxology, which he had 
 read the morning before as though it were the most 
 horrid curse in the language, was friendly and genial : 
 " '"World without end, Amen,' and all goes well with 
 us, doesn't it?" instead of " 'World without end' 
 and be damned to all of you!" Glaive hardly ever 
 swore in words before his family; on the rare occa- 
 sions when he inadvertently did, he pulled up at 
 once, frightfully upset by the compromise of himself, 
 of his position. 
 
 After Prayers he took Mervyn aside by the fire- 
 place. "Telegram from Lord Yetminster," he told 
 him. " 'Follow your own counsel.' Sensible man." 
 He glanced at his bound-up knuckle. ' ' Scars of war, 
 what?" he commented, with a pleased chuckle. 
 "About that other matter, Mervyn." He looked 
 down his sharp little nose. "I've decided to make 
 no move. Dignified silence. Don't you think so? 
 Let 'em both go hang, eh ? " Mervyn nodded. Glaive 
 looked up, catching Alec's sinister gaze. "What's 
 the matter ? ' ' He looked puzzled and annoyed for the 
 
 136
 
 CONFUSIONS 137 
 
 moment, and at once reasserted himself to Mervyn, 
 in a louder voice, so that Alec and the aunt could 
 hear him: "Especially now, you understand, when 
 I've er 'won golden opinions from all sorts of 
 people.' ' He was always fertile in Shakespeare 
 quotations. " 'Worn now in their newest gloss,' ' 
 he continued, with an emphasis of relish on the last 
 word. 
 
 Mervyn nodded again, and handed him a stuffed 
 envelope. " Meant to have given you these before," 
 he said. 
 
 "Oh. Bills." 
 
 Glaive's eyes darted. He took the envelope and 
 sat down at his place. The aunt sat, too, with an 
 invalid air. Alec and Mervyn remained standing, 
 at opposite sides of the table. 
 
 "Lucky for you I've been a careful man." He 
 turned the bills over. Mervyn had put the smaller 
 ones at the top. "By Jove!" The man looked up 
 with a jerk. "Young rascal. Ginnis & Cottrell, 
 thirty-nine pound eight. You do go it. ' ' He paused, 
 and his expression relaxed. "I don't suppose young 
 Aldborough has run up much more with them. Very 
 old firm, used to deal with them myself. What my 
 father would have said to thirty-nine pound eight 
 at a wine and tobacco merchant's. Of course I'm 
 not legally responsible for this, that's why as a gentle- 
 man I have to pay it before any of the others. Ginnis 
 & Cottrell know that, the dogs! They know the 
 name. Hammerton's, tailors, twenty-seven odd. 
 Any more of these thumpers, eh ? " Mervyn, in great
 
 138 BRUTE GODS 
 
 satisfaction at having taken what was so evidently 
 the right moment, winked at Alec who did not re- 
 spond. "At Cambridge they don't let them run up 
 bills over a fiver, have to send them in to the tutor. 
 How would you like that? There's a middleclass ele- 
 ment about Cambridge, and it's been getting worse 
 and worse. ' ' 
 
 Aunt Cathy, reading one of her letters, gave an ex- 
 clamation. 
 
 "What is the matter, Catherine? Do give me 
 some coffee. Well." He stuffed the bills back, and 
 held the envelope up over his shoulder for Mervyn. 
 "I'll write you a cheque for a hundred after break- 
 fast. Remind me. It's not a precedent, mind." 
 
 "Thanks awfully." 
 
 A hundred pounds was considerably more than 
 Mervyn had expected, even under these propitious 
 conditions. He had not gauged the strength of his 
 father's vanity and snobbery in wrestle with his 
 meanness. 
 
 "Pay it into your Bank, then write your own 
 cheques for these fellows. Ginnis & Cottrell first, 
 mind. Much better way. I can 't be bothered writing 
 cheques for all of them separately. Too many im- 
 portant things to be seen to, and besides I'm not a 
 clerk." Glaive was getting his money's worth. He 
 thought of how he would tell Lord Yetminster and 
 other people. But perhaps Mervyn 's extravagance 
 might alarm Dr. Resine. ' ' Time you settled down and 
 married Nita," he went on with a jocular manner. 
 "I'd much rather be writing cheques for fitting out
 
 CONFUSIONS 139 
 
 the cottage. Let's have a talk about that after break- 
 fast, my boy. About your going back to Oxford. I 
 want to put the thing to you man to man. You 
 see, you went up very late, because of the war ; really 
 you're too old for an undergraduate. And degrees 
 don't matter, you know, unless you're going in for 
 the Church or teaching " 
 
 "I'm worried about dear Effie," the aunt remarked 
 mournfully. 
 
 "You're an Oxford man just the same. In my 
 day no man of family ever took a degree." 
 
 "Is Cousin Effie ill?" Alec asked, struggling from 
 this running course of his father's self-expression. 
 
 "Oh, she says she's taking care of herself." 
 
 "Let's see." Mr. Glaive took the letter. "Why, 
 she says she's nearly well! What do you mean?" 
 
 " 'Nearly well' ah, yes." The lady sighed. 
 " 'Nearly well,' " she repeated, shaking her head. 
 "But she wouldn't say she was taking care of her- 
 self if it wasn't something serious." 
 
 ' ' Oh, nonsense ! ' ' 
 
 Mr. Glaive, annoyed by the familiarity of that kind 
 of observation from his sister, applied himself to his 
 plate and showed his displeasure by silence. Alec 
 was relieved of the galling pressure of his father's 
 talk. He thought of the yesterday's breakfast: how 
 different, what a lot had happened to him since. 
 That giggling fit ... he'd never be like that again. 
 He couldn't possibly As they all sat, eating and 
 silent, bent from habit to Glaive's lead, the boy, 
 saving himself instinctively from other more disturb-
 
 140 BRUTE GODS 
 
 ing and dangerous meditations, began thinking about 
 his aunt. Why was she like that? 
 
 Mrs. Mowry had always been ill pleased by serenity 
 and contentment round about her : agitations, lesser 
 troubles and alarms, were the nurturing food of her 
 spirit. A continuous series of such fears or worries 
 she had always contrived for the satisfaction of her 
 needs. Self-protectively, the widow had acquired 
 fertility of invention, or her restlessness in ennui 
 would have driven her melancholy-mad. She might 
 have stagnated in a dreadful chronic depression with- 
 out the kind of excitements and sensations she could 
 make for herself. That these excitements were 
 coloured unkindly and forbiddingly was blame to the 
 malice of the sex-disappointment and the sex-thwart- 
 ing that worked in her. She was thought spiteful, 
 malevolent, a would-be mischief-maker, generally 
 troublesome and ill-natured. As she was ; but her re- 
 pellent qualities were so evidently imposed on her 
 by unhappy and unnatural conditions of life that only 
 the shallow or heartless could have condemned her or 
 not pitied. She wanted to be thought "temper- 
 amental, ' ' difficult but interesting ; she wanted people 
 to give her serious thought, to be put about by her 
 and put out, to the end of the showing of herself as 
 a person of some consequence and appeal : but she only 
 succeeded in being voted a nuisance and ignored. She 
 had made herself as touchy as a proletarian or an 
 Irishman or an American, but her touchiness could 
 not prick the English comfort of her relatives and 
 neighbours, it could only prick her. It was in vain
 
 CONFUSIONS 141 
 
 that she was a mistress of the art of being offended. 
 Yet she went on, thanklessly being thin-skinned. She 
 had been diverted even from the delightful stir of her 
 sister-in-law's elopement by reflections, voiced to the 
 deaf ears of Mr. Glaive and Mervyn, on her not hav- 
 ing been invited somewhere, on her having been passed 
 by somebody or other without recognition in the 
 Malstowe High Street. Equally, she was thanklessly 
 vicious. It was true that she sometimes did make her 
 brother violent and angry, but only when he wanted 
 an excuse for being so, as she knew: and the knowl- 
 edge took away all her pleasure. Besides, his violence 
 and rank rudeness frightened her; she had to stop 
 then. The boys took no notice of her, beyond a mild 
 and casual irritation. She sadly lacked a husband. 
 Her only real intimate was an old village woman to 
 whom she was "kind" in the way of small gifts 
 of food and money, for the sake of the moral prestige 
 of it, for the sake of the idea that it gave her of 
 herself. The old woman was shrewd: she repaid 
 Mrs. Mo wry 's alms and insured them for the future 
 by telling her of unpleasant things that had been hap- 
 pening to neighbours, or by inventing things of the 
 sort, in case of need. And she would cunningly 
 water the widow's morbid ingrowth of suspicion. 
 
 The thoughts that Alec had of his Aunt Cathy 
 went within the circle drawn by the urgency of his 
 present experience and emotion. These he found 
 working toward some revision of his old feeling about 
 her; he began to look at her from new perspectives. 
 Before, he had fallen in with Mervyn 's contempt:
 
 142 BRUTE GODS 
 
 or, Aunt Cathy was there for him as something un- 
 necessary and distasteful, like a cold hot-water bag 
 that you needn't trouble much about so long as you 
 kept it out of the way and could forget that it was 
 there. Now, she had an importance, as being dis- 
 liked and put down by his father. Alec reflected that 
 she had been living with his father longer than he 
 had; her husband had died when Mervyn was a baby 
 killed in an accident on the honeymoon. Aunt 
 Cathy must have been quite young then. All that 
 time she had been with his father, more than twenty 
 years. Of course that was why she was disagreeable 
 and unhappy no wonder. Alec was surprised at 
 himself for never having thought of that before: his 
 father had been a brute to her as well, of course, 
 he must have been, in lots of ways, not only the ways 
 you could see. Same as with all of them same as 
 with the Mater and his own mother there must have 
 been lots you couldn't see, all along. There must 
 be any amount he didn't know about Aunt Cathy. 
 He glanced at her drained dissatisfied face with its 
 dried-in lines, her resentful tightened mouth, her un- 
 quiet washed-out eyes with their air of expectation 
 of affront from ambush. Not her fault. For the 
 first time in his life he was sorry for her, for the 
 first time he wanted to say something that she would 
 like him to say. Cousin Eflfie she was always try- 
 ing to talk about Cousin Effie 
 
 "Are they still living in that hotel?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 The question was so unexpected, so unusual, that
 
 CONFUSIONS 143 
 
 Aunt Cathy jumped. Mr. Glaive looked up quickly 
 and disapprovingly. "I think I'll go to Wethering- 
 ham this week," he said to Mervyn in a tone of 
 superior detachment. 
 
 "You mean Effie and William?" Mrs. Mowry 
 turned to her nephew, she laid down her knife and 
 fork. "Yes, they are. It's a great mistake," she 
 went on with thin positiveness. "A young married 
 couple ought to be keeping house. I call it evading 
 one's responsibilities. Effie says a home is so much 
 trouble. But other girls keep house when they get 
 married, other girls have to." She drew down her 
 lips. 
 
 "I wasn't aware, Catherine, that you had been 
 summoned as arbiter in Effie 's domestic affairs." 
 
 "Oh, no. Of course I should never dream of try- 
 ing to interfere in any way. Still, I must say 
 It doesn't seem right to me. And there are no chil- 
 dren, either," she added, patently aggrieved, but 
 gathering herself back at once as though on the verge 
 of an indelicacy. 
 
 "Do let us keep to matters of our own concern. 
 Our minds and lives are not so empty, I suppose, are 
 they?" Mr. Glaive spoke with studied elocution. 
 
 "Effie seems such a very near relative almost like 
 a daughter, to me." Mrs. Mowry tried to pause 
 noticeably. ' ' But of course, Sidney, I know I under- 
 stand you very well. When our hearts are all so 
 full I know 7 feel quite overwhelmed by it all, 
 still ; yesterday I was quite ill. These poor boys, ' ' she 
 whispered.
 
 144 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "Really, Catherine, I see no useful purpose " 
 
 "I was only thinking, if any other trouble were 
 to come on us, now. Lord Yetminster will stand by 
 you, Sidney, won't he?" 
 
 ' ' Oh, a man has to take risks ! Matters of that kind 
 are quite safely in my hands, Catherine, you should 
 know that by this time. I don't think I'm likely 
 to hang my head!" Alec gave him a bitter look. 
 "It's been one in the eye for that fellow Matcham, 
 he thought he had the strike all going, and now every 
 man's back at work, pleased as Punch! I think we 
 might as well make holiday today and all go out in 
 the big car to Lowestoft or Felixstowe. Lord Yet- 
 minster won't be back till tomorrow. "What do you 
 say ? " He looked round the table, secure in his clever- 
 ness and his generosity. 
 
 "I can't come," said Alec. 
 
 "Why can't you?" 
 
 "Oh, I have to go to Malstowe." The boy be- 
 thought him of Frippie's grapes. 
 
 "Well, we can run in there first not much out 
 of the way." The father was indulgent. 
 
 "I can't. I've lots of things to do." 
 
 "You know very well you haven't anything that's 
 important how should you? Don't be a spoilsport, 
 Alec. You're always running off by yourself some- 
 where or other. What on earth did you do with 
 yourself all yesterday ? You knew I wanted you back 
 at eleven." 
 
 "I went to Father Collett's and stayed to lunch." 
 
 "Oh, you were with Mr. Collett."
 
 CONFUSIONS 145 
 
 Glaive objected to a "Protestant clergyman" call- 
 ing himself ' 'Father," as he had often told his 
 family, but he accepted Collett because he was of good 
 birth and well off, therefore entitled to 'eccentricities. 
 All things considered, he approved of this association 
 of Alec's, and he was mollified now by Alec's having 
 been at the Vicarage the day before. It seemed a 
 becoming and proper thing for the boy to have gone, 
 at such a time, to a spiritual adviser. 
 
 "Well, I think you'd better come with us today," 
 he added in a tone of pleasant decision. 
 
 "I'd rather not." 
 
 "Suit yourself, then," his father retorted sharply. 
 "You have liberty of action, as you know. Too much, 
 perhaps, but that has always been my method. You 
 will come, Mervyn?" 
 
 "Oh, all right." 
 
 Alec looked reproachfully at his brother. Of 
 course he'd go, he thought. The guv 'nor could sign 
 cheques: what a beastly sort of arrangement it all 
 was! But how could Mervyn be expected to He 
 didn't understand, he'd always do the easiest thing 
 and not trouble to think. 
 
 There were three shops where he could buy 
 Frippie's grapes: he'd go to them all to see which 
 had the best, the ones that looked most like Wilfred's. 
 Tomorrow morning he'd see her. If Aunt Cathy 
 knew that, she'd be tremendously worked up. That 
 sort of thing always seemed to fuss her frightfully 
 more than anything else. Alec remembered some 
 occasions. How, when Effie 's little sister, their cousin
 
 146 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Molly, had been staying with them, she had drawn him 
 aside and told him, with a sort of secretive concern, 
 that she didn 't think he and Mervyn ought to take the 
 child on their knees or carry her about as they did. 
 "You forget she's not really a little girl any more," 
 she had said. "It doesn't look nice." She had 
 been quite anxious and upset. She spoke to Molly, 
 too, and Molly had repeated to the boys her aunt's 
 observation that "You'll soon be a little woman, dear 
 Molly; you're getting a big girl now, you know." 
 They had all laughed over that, then they had stopped 
 laughing, suddenly embarrassed. But Aunt Cathy 
 was different from his father about these things, Alec 
 didn't feel that she was in the same way dangerously 
 against him, she never had mattered so much, and 
 she couldn't help it any more than she could help any- 
 thing else. 
 
 The boy again tried to think of something to say 
 to her, he wanted to make her acquaintance. It 
 would be worth while finding out. . . . He looked up 
 at his father, who at once pulled his chair back. The 
 look was one he was not used to, it put him out. He 
 said grace in the tone of one who has just been con- 
 tradicted and can afford to be forbearing, knowing 
 himself in the right. Mrs. Mowry immediately left 
 the room, as though she had been driven from it 
 but knew how to preserve her dignity under the in- 
 sult. "I shall be back in about half-an-hour, Mer- 
 vyn," Mr Glaive remarked tolerantly. "I see you 
 in the Study then." He clipped a cigar. "I have 
 to see to one or two little things in the village."
 
 CONFUSIONS 147 
 
 Now was the time. This affair of Lord Yet- 
 minster's gate had most happily given him a shield, 
 it would be between him and public ridicule. Noth- 
 ing could have better repaired his pricked inflation. 
 It proved that he was "taking the blow like a man." 
 He could face people now, sustained by this proof, 
 put in the right way by it. He went out for an 
 early gleaning of some of those protective "golden 
 opinions ' ' that he had won.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 UNLESS his father allowed him the extrava- 
 gance of taking out the two-seater car, Alec 
 usually walked when he went into Malstowe. 
 There was a motor-cycle belonging to Mervyn, but 
 Alec disliked the things. He also disliked using his 
 own ''push-bicycle," but it was the less unpleasant 
 to him of the two, so this morning he decided to take 
 it. He felt in too much of a hurry to walk. 
 
 It was not long before his haste was curbed. He 
 had hardly ridden five minutes before the back tyre 
 punctured. The accident dismayed him: it seemed 
 like some wilfully malicious intervention between 
 him and an unknown important accomplishment. It 
 was like being held back in a bad dream. Alec was 
 slow and clumsy about repairing: it would probably, 
 he reflected, take him longer to mend the tyre than 
 to walk the rest of the way into Malstowe. If only 
 he had Wilfred Vail ! Wilfred would do it in a couple 
 of minutes. 
 
 He took the bicycle to the side of the road, and be- 
 gan stripping the tyre-cover. No, he couldn't go 
 wheeling the beastly thing into Malstowe. Strug- 
 gling with the cover, he heard the approach of a 
 motor : one of Lord Yetminster 's, he saw as he looked 
 up. He raised his hat as it passed him. Lord Aid- 
 borough and Lady Barbara were in it, the young 
 
 148
 
 CONFUSIONS 149 
 
 nobleman acknowledging the salute with a blank face, 
 his sister smiling as though she were content, Alec 
 thought, to have caught him at a disadvantage. He 
 wished he would catch Lady Barbara at a disadvan- 
 tage. He was "our agent's son, mending his bicycle 
 on the road," that was what he was to these people. 
 Of course it was his father's ridiculous brag, his 
 Glaive pretensions, that made it hurt. "These 
 people" had brought about his father's triumph of 
 yesterday. "Curse them, I wish Matcham would get 
 them!" he mumbled. England a democracy! But 
 even if it were, the important things, the things that 
 clustered and festered in and round his father they 
 might most of them stay just the same. You couldn't 
 trust Matcham after what he 'd said at the end of that 
 speech. All the worst of these "brute gods" would 
 be left. Alec's mind remained vague here, but he 
 clung to the phrase: it eased his rebellious indigna- 
 tion. 
 
 He had been working on the tyre for several im- 
 patient and exasperated minutes when he remem- 
 bered that he had hardly any money not enough to 
 buy the grapes. He had been so reluctant to ask his 
 father for money that morning that he had forgotten. 
 Asking for it would have been putting himself in the 
 same box with Mervyn: curse it, of course he was 
 just like Mervyn in that way dependent. "Would 
 Mervyn just keep on, in his slack way ? Couldn 't he 
 make Mervyn see? Alec wondered how he himself 
 could have managed to live "all these years" without 
 seeing putting up with everything all the time.
 
 150 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Would Mervyn go and marry Nita after all? That 
 cheque for a hundred. If only he knew how to talk 
 to Mervyn, but he couldn't say things clearly even 
 to himself. . . . He'd have to have the grapes charged 
 to their account, he must get them. How beastly 
 it was! He was like a slave his father's slave. 
 How could any one say that was right? If only his 
 father would die he deserved to it was what ought 
 to happen kill him. Alec's hand shook. Damn, 
 he'd never get that tyre on. There was another 
 motor car coming along, too. Not one of Lord Yet- 
 minster's this time, thank heaven. A girl driving 
 oh, yes, Doreen Burke. Did she see him ? She always 
 drove so beastly fast. He raised his hat, standing a 
 little out to the road, with his back to that con- 
 founded bicycle. The car slowed, then stopped a few 
 yards ahead of him. Miss Burke looked round, her 
 fair hair blowing under her tam-o 'shanter. 
 
 "Hulloa, Alec, d'you want a lift?" 
 
 He walked quickly up to her. He had remembered 
 Gillian Collett. Then he remembered that Frippie 
 had said Doreen "liked" him. He looked at her 
 fresh-coloured sensible broad not uncomely face with 
 new interest, but without any new attraction. 
 
 "Yes, thanks, I would. My bicycle punctured." 
 
 "Going to leave it in the hedge? Won't it get 
 stolen?" She wanted to take him with her, but she 
 made difficulties. 
 
 "Oh, no, not with the tyre off." Alec looked back 
 at the maimed thing, sprawled up against the hedge, 
 its wheel up in an awkward exposure like the leg
 
 CONFUSIONS 151 
 
 of a horse dead on its back helpless, eloquent of the 
 pathos of neglect. "I don't care if it is stolen. " He 
 opened the door and got on to the seat beside her. 
 
 "Do you want to drive?" She was thinking that 
 she would like the changing of places with him, her 
 being in the seat he had left, and he in hers. 
 
 "Oh, no; when you drive so much better." Sup- 
 pose Frippie should see them? he thought: and why 
 had Doreen told Frippie that Jesus loved her ? 
 
 "I suppose you'll soon be going up to Oxford?" 
 Doreen Burke wondered if she should ask him to the 
 picnic-lunch they were having that day near Mal- 
 stowe. 
 
 "Oh, not yet. Not for about two months." Those 
 grapes he would get them.the first thing. 
 
 "You'll be up one year at least with your brother. 
 That'll be jolly for you both, won't it?" Alec's 
 hair, she was thinking, was much nicer than Mer- 
 vyn's. Mervyn's was too light like a doll's. Alec 
 had rich hair the sort of colour you saw in pictures. 
 She began to drive more slowly. 
 
 "Yes, the war made him late going up, of course " 
 
 "What have you got on for today?" If she asked 
 him, would he go ? 
 
 "Oh, nothing. Doing one or two things in Mal- 
 stowe, that's all." 
 
 "I suppose you wouldn't " The girl hesitated. 
 He never had cared for "going to things," he was al- 
 most as bad as his friend Wilfred Vail. What was 
 the good of asking him? Anyhow, he mightn't like 
 to go so soon after his stepmother But he seemed
 
 152 BRUTE GODS 
 
 different that morning, and. . . . "Well, if he ac- 
 cepted, then she'd know! "You wouldn't care to 
 join our picnic ? ' ' she inquired diffidently. 
 
 "Oh, yes. Rather." Alec again remembered 
 Gillian Collett. "I'd like to." 
 
 "Good." She replied coldly, to make sure against 
 self -betrayal. "I was rather afraid it might bore you. 
 Just an 'anyhow' sort of affair only thought of it 
 last night. We're going up by the Martello Tower. 
 I expect we '11 play ' silly games. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, that's all right. Rather sport." 
 
 "Would the "foreign-looking girl with the untidy 
 hair and queer eyes" play the silly games too? 
 Alec knew those games, so popular just then among 
 the "young people" of his neighbourhood. They 
 chose on occasion to take up with the amusements of 
 their juniors, they liked doing that by conscious choice. 
 Boys and girls of from eighteen to twenty-five would 
 gather together and play catch-as-catch-can, hunt-the- 
 slipper, "compliments," with agreeable licence to be 
 as noisy and as free as they liked. ' ' Silly games ' ' or 
 "kid games" was the local term: there was great 
 variety of them, outdoor and indoor. Alec himself 
 had hardly ever played ; he had been too shy, and his 
 physical energy did not naturally go that way. 
 
 "Will you play in the Tower or outside?" They 
 had been driving in silence for a minute or so. 
 
 "Outside, I expect. It's such a fine day." 
 
 "Oh." 
 
 Alec had been hoping that they would play in the 
 Tower. It would be easier for him, somehow, indoors,
 
 CONFUSIONS 153 
 
 He must find out something about that girl, though 
 he didn't much like asking. Gillian How queer 
 it seemed putting a girl's Christian name before 
 Father Collett's! Of course it was her being a niece 
 of his that made one want to see what she was like. 
 
 "I suppose your friend is coming?" 
 
 "What friend?" 
 
 "Why, the one who's staying with you. The one 
 who 's a niece of Father Collett 's. I haven 't met her, ' ' 
 he added hurriedly, protecting himself from embar- 
 rassment. 
 
 "Yes, she'll be there, of course. I'm picking her 
 up in Malstowe." Doreen reflected that Gillian was 
 much older than she was. 
 
 "Father Collett says she's awfully I don't know 
 views about things. He seemed a bit afraid of her, 
 in a way." 
 
 "Oh, well, sometimes she is I call her 'my 
 trial'!" Doreen laughed. She knew she had to be 
 careful in talking to Alec about another girl. 
 "Clergymen's relations often are like that, you 
 know," she added in extenuation. 
 
 "Like what, do you mean?" 
 
 "Oh Well, she certainly does say the most aw- 
 ful things! But of course she's quite all right, 
 really " Doreen was in difficulties. "Her bark's 
 worse than her bite. I suppose it amuses her." 
 
 "But what kind of things does she say?" They 
 were in the outskirts of Malstowe : Alec began to be 
 excited. 
 
 "Oh you know. Things that are supposed to
 
 154 BRUTE GODS 
 
 shock you. I don't mind, she doesn't get any rise 
 out of me!" Would Alec think Gillian pretty? 
 
 "Will any of the Eesines be there?" Alec's 
 thoughts went to Dolly Drake. 
 
 "Nita's in Ipswich for the day. I expect that 
 cousin of hers will come." 
 
 Alec looked at the girl. Evidently she disapproved 
 of Dolly. She'd disapprove more if she knew about 
 that handkerchief. He could tell, looking at whole- 
 some fresh-faced Miss Burke, just what she would 
 think of little Dolly's conduct what she did think 
 of his stepmother's, too. Would they all of them be 
 for his father, wasn't there a single one ? Alec 
 saw Matcham and Jos Clark and Aunt Cathy and 
 Doreen Burke, all leaping to join hands together. 
 Father Collett, of course, wasn't on any side, he 
 wouldn't help for or against: but if he were Alec, 
 he wouldn't be able to keep out of it like that. What 
 would this Gillian Collett think? He wanted to 
 know about her. At least she couldn't be like the 
 others. Faced curtly by the antagonism that Society 
 brought and so unanimously to his father's aid, 
 the boy experienced what some might have termed a 
 "hardening of heart." The new boldness, the new 
 unscrupulousness out toward which he had been break- 
 ing, began to set in lines that were more determined 
 and conscious and cold. He'd take every advantage 
 he could get, anything would be fair with so many 
 against him. He 'd look round practise his strength. 
 The boy felt freed, he was put on a new mettle. If 
 he made up his mind not to miss any chance. . . .
 
 CONFUSIONS 155 
 
 "Are you thinking about your exams?" Doreen 
 asked gaily. She was pleased by his abstraction, and 
 then by the way he answered her: "Oh, no!" He 
 spoke emphatically and, she thought, with meaning. 
 
 "Well, here we are." Doreen slowed down to a 
 stop outside a stationer's in the High Street. "She 
 went in here."
 
 DISCLOSURES
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 A' 'PURE LOVE" is one of our realities; but 
 the cries of poetic and moral rapture 
 which this emotional state provokes have 
 perhaps unduly shouted down prose comment on it. 
 Alec fully satisfied romantic convention by the draw- 
 ing out of his whole conscious being to this stranger 
 girl: sense and spirit were so equally committed to 
 the strong interlocking flow that flesh-desire, poeti- 
 cally in that tide-driven union, lost usual aspects for 
 recognition. Mated under the new stress with these 
 other stirrings, it took disguise, to the usual complete 
 complacency of Nature who knows her ends sure, 
 and the usual complete hoodwinking of her unknow- 
 ing instrument. There was, with Alec, no such local- 
 izing of emotion as might give room to ribald sneer: 
 and if he had been informed of the identity of the 
 essential control of his condition with those old known 
 forces of assault in shame and pleasure he would have 
 given the lie, convinced and horrified. Even in his 
 affair with Frippie, he would have resented such an 
 association. 
 
 He also complied with romantic convention by 
 " falling in love at first sight ;" but not because he and 
 Gillian Collett were of sympathies that had to rush 
 together and cleave. It was not that their two selves 
 had bee ncomplementary halves in separation, and 
 
 159
 
 160 BRUTE GODS 
 
 that now the sense of a perfect whole beat instant pulse 
 toward ulfilment. The boy was at once in love because 
 those recent motive hours of his had driven him swift 
 to a point where such an emotional reaction had to be, 
 on protective instinct: and he was subject to Nature's 
 assertion of protest against a wrong weighting of his 
 scale by hate and rebellion at a time when her mating 
 urge had special claim on him. The intensity of 
 feeling that had been roused in him she took and used 
 for herself, moulding accident to her will. With the 
 girl Frippie he could struggle only abortively in the 
 way meant for him, he could not be turned whole- 
 heartedly by her, familiar to his old simplicities and 
 unawakenedness as she was, involved for him in a 
 sensual impulse too light, too mere, too naive. 
 Nature's waste use of that impulse was a means, a 
 step on: for the boy could now be drawn in deeper 
 devotion, in surer exaltation, supported by the con- 
 trast of a desire so slight and raw and meagre and 
 formless in its lack of the mystical interfusions of 
 love. The village girl had not only been too simply 
 female for Alec, she had been too young for him. 
 Gillian Collett's maturer years gave her natural ad- 
 vantage of power over the boy 's adolescence : not only 
 her older mind, but her older looks, the very curves 
 and lines of her face that denoted growth from young 
 girlhood, impressed him to her service. It was her 
 being so well a woman that brought him on to the 
 sacrificial absorption in a new sex-humility that he 
 found a miracle of ecstasy most of all. 
 He was breathless when he saw her, but not shy.
 
 DISCLOSURES 161 
 
 The girl overcame shyness, as she overcame him. It 
 was her eyes in which he was caught at the first 
 moment, eyes that were bright and courageous and 
 mocking; yet, as Mervyn had said, they were like 
 Father Collett's, they were live and affirmative like 
 his. But they were not large, as his were, and instead 
 of sloe-black, the colour was a pale elusive brown, 
 with active iridescence sometimes showing light of 
 green. She gave Alec quick uncertain almost childish 
 looks, looks with shimmering edges, in contrast with 
 the grown character that was so well determined in 
 her face. His vision of her swam. There was a con- 
 fusion in his sense of her dark hair that Mervyn had 
 thought untidy for its being loosely caught and stray- 
 ing a little about her ears and neck: all the boy's 
 perceptions of her were broken and mixed in. The 
 wilful and liberal mouth, in rein, it seemed, from the 
 clear-drawn nose and full brow, the faint and foreign 
 flush of the olive tint which by English complexions 
 showed the colour of some unbelieved-in flower, the 
 startling slightness of figure, the body like the crack 
 of a whip none of these was separate to the boy, all 
 was herself. 
 
 Doreen Burke, who had become nothing, stood be- 
 tween Alec and Gillian, uttering words of which the 
 sound struck him with a purely physical impact ; nor 
 did he take the meaning of Gillian 's words in answer. 
 The perception of her voice was with him, in blend, 
 and particularly in blend with his sense of her eyes: 
 for the voice, too, had edges that seemed to shimmer 
 and break, the tones went in ripples, unexpectedly
 
 162 BRUTE GODS 
 
 changing and shortening and stilling and turning off. 
 She spoke with just the quickness of her glance, with 
 the same baffling conflict of uncertainty and affirma- 
 tion. Doreen, critical of her at this moment, thought 
 her nervous and assertive and curt. Fresh Doreen, 
 with her common Saxon goldishness of hair, her blue 
 and usual eyes, her frank unvarying face, her look 
 of having been built honestly and well, gave Gillian 
 an emphasis none the less impressive to the boy be- 
 cause its cause escaped him. 
 
 They went out to the car. Alec wanted to speak; 
 he was urgent for the gain of some sort of inter- 
 change, something that might relate him to the girl. 
 She had hardly said a word to him : he had stood by. 
 She seemed scarcely to have noticed him, why should 
 she? It would be enough just to be able to know 
 her, a little, he thought. To be able to please her 
 somehow. Anything, so long as he was not left 
 altogether outside. He opened the door to the front 
 of the car for them, in silence. 
 
 "Oh, no," said Doreen, "you'd better drive, Alec." 
 
 " 'Alec'?" Gillian's repetition of his name made 
 his blood run, and Doreen looked at him uneasily. 
 "Then you're the the friend of my uncle's." She 
 had been going to say: "the boy my uncle's been 
 telling me about," but she reflected that he might 
 not like being called a boy or having been talked of. 
 
 "Yes." He looked straight at her, in courage at 
 the mention of a name that was intimate for them 
 both. 
 
 "Oh, I didn't realize " She broke off, recalling
 
 DISCLOSURES 163 
 
 what her uncle had said to her, how anxious he had 
 evidently been that she shouldn't She laughed. 
 
 "What's the matter, why don't we get in?" said 
 Doreen, betraying resentment. Then, to show that she 
 was not jealous, she suggested that she drive, and 
 Alec and Gillian sit behind. "I know the car better, 
 of course." 
 
 ""What am I to do with this nice-looking babe?" 
 Gillian thought. Boys of that age were so awkward 
 to deal with, unless they were very bold or utterly 
 uninteresting. This "Alec" wasn't uninteresting, he 
 couldn't be that, with those very deep eyes. She 
 didn't think he would be bold. . . . 
 
 "Why haven't I met you before?" she asked him. 
 
 "I don't know " He hesitated; what a silly way 
 to answer ! "I didn 't know, ' ' he went on, and then, 
 with forced resolve, to defy his difficulty: "No one 
 ever told me you'd even been down here before!" 
 
 "I haven't, often. I was here last April, though." 
 She wanted to be kind to him, but was at a loss almost 
 as palpable as his. 
 
 "Oh, I was away at school then." 
 
 Alec felt a certain pleasure in thus admitting to 
 her what he felt as the disability and inferiority of 
 his youth. He reached intuitively for the role of page 
 to Gillian, withheld by pride as well as by fear from 
 the daring, even in thought, of being her lover. 
 
 "And then I took Doreen to San Sebastian." 
 Gillian sat sideways in the corner of the seat, observ- 
 ing the boy in scattered glances. He must have met 
 Carlyon-Williams : what did he think of him ? had he
 
 164 BRUTE GODS 
 
 felt that affair very much ? ' ' Now I 'm almost always 
 in London. Are you often there?" 
 
 The curiosity that had prompted the following on 
 of that question was at once satisfied by Alec's re- 
 sponse. 
 
 "Yes," he said, throbbing with the suppression of 
 his excitement. ''I mean, not so often before, but 
 now I'm going up to Oxford I shall be." 
 
 The girl looked away and bit her lip. She would 
 have had to have been very much duller of observa- 
 tion to miss the relation to her of the wondering devo- 
 tion in his eyes. He was a nice boy, really, no wonder 
 Uncle Leonard liked him, but what was she to do? 
 That vivid colour and his auburn hair of course 
 that meant he was "susceptible." A susceptible 
 boy calf-love. But she wasn't a calf: if she had 
 been seventeen, now ! Gillian remonstrated with this 
 accident. Doreen liked him, there was that, too> 
 Now she supposed she would either have to snub him 
 or encourage him. But it was rather brutal to snub 
 any one who would evidently give you so little cause. 
 She thought of last April. ... No one had ever looked 
 at her like that before. It was actually it was a 
 . little disturbing! How absurd! Well, if she en- 
 couraged him, he would get over it soon enough. They 
 drove on in silence, as Gillian tried to determine, with 
 the honesty that she prided herself on cultivating, 
 whether she would really like Alec to get over it so 
 soon. Her division of mind baffled honest conclusion : 
 though she soon became intellectually convinced that 
 it was her vanity that did not want him to draw out,
 
 DISCLOSURES 165 
 
 and some survival of morality or sense of con- 
 venience that did not want him to stay drawn in. 
 She mustn't play with him, she really mustn't 
 especially after the Carlyon- Williams affair though 
 there was a sort of temptation. 
 
 "What games do you want to play, Gill?" Doreen 
 called out, not well pleased by their silence. 
 
 ''Oh, anything, so long as you have to run. And, 
 Doreen, I warn you, I shan't care what happens to 
 my hair." 
 
 "Oh, nobody '11 mind about that." 
 
 Gillian looked smiling at Alec. "What do you 
 think, Mr. Glaive?" She retaliated on the ill nature 
 of Doreen 's remark. 
 
 "Oh, I shouldn't mind!" 
 
 ' ' What wouldn 't you mind ? ' ' 
 
 "Why " He stopped and looked quite invol- 
 untarily pleading. "I mean what you were talking 
 about. I shouldn't mind if your hair came down." 
 
 "I never said it would come down! It might, 
 though " She laughed. "If you're really pre- 
 pared for it!" 
 
 The car stopped, and Gillian opened the door with 
 a sharp impatient movement before Alec could reach 
 over to open it for her. He got quickly out, and she 
 barely touched the sleeve of his outstretched arm as 
 she followed. At once she attached herself to Doreen, 
 she began talking, as they walked towards the Tower, 
 about the arrangements for the day, where they would 
 have lunch, when the others might be expected. 
 Why had she said that to him about her hair? she
 
 166 BRUTE GODS 
 
 kept thinking; she hadn't meant to, but it was lead- 
 ing him on, it was playing. . . . Her uncle would 
 think she had done it on purpose, a usual female trick. 
 It had been Doreen's fault. Gillian felt ashamed of 
 herself, then she felt befooled, then defiant and deter- 
 mined, to no end, then insecure and reckless, as though 
 of danger but what danger was there? then she 
 was nervously buoyant. She laughed frequently, and 
 she several times put up her hand, impatiently de- 
 fensive, to her hair that the little quickening gusts 
 of the sea kept blowing and tangling about her fore- 
 head and her neck. It was trying and silly, how often 
 it crossed her mind that it was the first time any one 
 had ever looked at her like that like this boy. . . . 
 She never gave Alec even a glance now, never spoke 
 to him except as it were through the medium of 
 Doreen. "She doesn't like me," he thought; "she 
 wants to get away from me. ' ' When the others came, 
 he would be kept more easily out, he would lose her 
 still more. His excitement in the suffering he had 
 from her touched the tightened sharp-tuned chords 
 of the upper register of his senses, gave him a strained 
 tremulously pointed acuteness in response that was 
 utterly unfamiliar, with its wavering twinges of 
 ecstasy and eager pain.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 MR. SIDNEY STARR GLAIVE'S good tem- 
 per did not last long. All that morning 
 his elation had gone ebbing, by noon it was 
 drained out. He had been quick to see that his 
 achievement at Matcham's meeting was well dwarfed 
 by his domestic calamity, that people were not going 
 to let their pleasure in the latter event be spoiled by 
 any such modifying diversion of interest as his wish 
 had led him to expect. "Well, he may have pulled 
 that off, but anyhow his wife ran away from him." 
 Adultery was infinitely more appealing to the public 
 mind than any strokes of local politics. Mr. Glaive's 
 nerves were sagging as he came back home from the 
 village. "Dirty-minded people," he thought, calling 
 morality to his support as he remembered the sly 
 looks he had had. And when he had done his best 
 done so well! It was most unfair. That scoundrel 
 Williams! Both of them scoundrels. . . . "Dirty- 
 minded, malicious people." McGill, the lay-reader, 
 had met him in the road intolerable bounder. These 
 intimations of their "regard"! Glaive knew well 
 enough that the only real regard McGill or any one 
 else had was regard for the horns on his head. 
 
 Dr. Resine's visit, breaking in on the very begin- 
 ning of the Study interview with Mervyn, made his 
 sense of failure wince again. The doctor had as- 
 
 167
 
 168 BRUTE GODS 
 
 sociated himself with him, had talked of "our chil- 
 dren." His manner seemed impertinently to dis- 
 credit Glaive's monopoly of injury, to suggest that 
 Glaive, by some fault of his, had hurtfully involved 
 the Resines. "How could you have been such a fool 
 as to let yourself in for this?" was what Dr. Resine 
 hinted, and: "Well, now it's done, we must help 
 you to make the best of a bad job." When a man 
 has been deeply wronged, for him to be treated as 
 a fool! And all the notice Resine had taken of the 
 gate affair was by some stupid casually shot in re- 
 mark about ' ' wigs on the Green ! ' ' There was no un- 
 friendly word between the two men, but the doctor 
 left after their brief colloquy with the impression 
 that ' ' Glaive wasn 't taking the thing well at all, ' ' and 
 Glaive himself, giving his impressive parting hand- 
 shake, was cut by discontent and irritation. His "old 
 friend" was not helping him, not standing by him as 
 he should. 
 
 The injured husband's first emotions had been 
 theatrical, now they were real. Now, he began for the 
 first time really to miss his wife. When his nerves 
 were rasped he had always particularly needed her. 
 The dramatic excitement of her departure and of his 
 rush for London; his absence, and then the further 
 dramatic excitement of his speech on the Green, had 
 carried him over so far: now he realized as a fact 
 that if he called for her she would not come, if he 
 sent for her she would not be there. The astonishing 
 wickedness of her conduct came home to him with 
 a quite new force. She must be absolutely heartless
 
 DISCLOSURES 169 
 
 . . . who could ever have suspected that? And he 
 was getting an old man. What could the law be about 
 to allow this this crime against him ? Why, the law 
 even allowed her to keep the money she had of her 
 own all of it monstrous ! If he 'd run off with an- 
 other woman, he would have had to give Miriam 
 money: yet there were some fools who said that the 
 law was unfair to women! Of course he might get 
 damages out of Williams, but then he'd have to pay 
 for that, one way and another. . . . Mr. Glaive re- 
 membered that under certain ancient laws adultery 
 was punished by death. Too drastic for our day, of 
 course: he would not have wished that; it was his 
 natural nobility and generosity that prevented him 
 from wishing it. He would have liked a heavy 
 sentence of imprisonment, a sentence that could be re- 
 mitted at the husband's will. Surely that would be 
 fair? At least he would have had the opportunity, 
 by remission, of showing that he was noble and gen- 
 erous : as things were, who would know what he was ? 
 He was a fool to them all, a laughing-stock. Yes, the 
 husband should have power to remit the penalty : then 
 the wife, in gratitude, would return to him unless 
 she were lost to all sense of decency. Miriam surely 
 would. But would he take her? His thoughts of 
 imaginary situations played on, a little relieving him. 
 Would it be possible to take her back, after that man 
 . . . ? Could his delicacy of feeling . . . ? No, it 
 would never be the same, he would still be mocked. 
 Better that she should come back, and he be sternly 
 final, immoveably final, in his dismissal : greatly merci-
 
 170 BRUTE GODS 
 
 ful in his reprieve of her ... on condition, of course, 
 that she should never return to that low blackguard. 
 
 Still, the loss would be there. She had so contrived 
 it that his loss was unescapeable. He wanted her, her 
 absence deprived and shocked him. All these five 
 years she had been to his hand, she was now habitual. 
 He had never regretted the marriage never. It was 
 this that made it seem so unfair. And to think that 
 she, with those large truthful eyes, that gentle voice, 
 that loving mouth all her sweet tenderness and 
 humility, as he had thought. . . . She had never 
 crossed him, hardly ever contradicted him. He could 
 see her : tall for a woman she had been had been ! 
 with ample lines of breast and figure ... a stronger 
 appeal than his first wife had ever had for him. 
 How could he get on with any content, any comfort, 
 without her? How could a man be expected not to 
 miss all that, to get used to having to do without so 
 much? To have to lie awake thinking of her with 
 that vile beast, that thief in the night. ... Williams 
 was about twenty years younger than he, not much 
 over thirty. Miriam was thirty-one. How gross! 
 Mr. Glaive's eyes filled with angry tears. 
 
 How easy it had been for her ! He had slept alone 
 that night. All she had to do was to get up when 
 every one was asleep, and leave the house. He had 
 kissed her good night in bed, and when he came in to 
 kiss her good morning a loving husband she was 
 gone. A note left for him on her pillow. He had 
 known exactly what to do : prompt action was always 
 his forte. In his dressing-gown he had gone and told
 
 DISCLOSURES 171 
 
 Mervyn, calmly, briefly, holding up his head. He 
 had gone to his sister, he had said: "You are now 
 the mistress of this house. It is for you to inform 
 the servants at once." Other men might have de- 
 layed weakly, he had fronted the situation. That 
 swine! Of course he had been waiting for her in a 
 car. Nothing could have been simpler for them both. 
 It was outrageous that such a thing should be so easy 
 and so safe. To get up at night, to go out, to get into 
 a car that was all. She knew they were all sound 
 sleepers. 
 
 He must have been utterly blind. Of course other 
 people had seen what was going on ... of course. 
 This hadn't come from a clear sky for them, he could 
 see that. The way they took it ... he had been 
 the only blind one, because of his trust, his love. 
 To think that all these others had seen which way the 
 wind was blowing! For how long had he been a 
 figure of ridicule in the neighbourhood without know- 
 ing it? When he had thought he was making this 
 impression or that, they had really been laughing at 
 him up their sleeves, all that time. Even Catherine 
 it had not been the same astounding shock to her; 
 she must have suspected. 
 
 Mr. Glaive took the note from his breastpocket. It 
 stung him more sharply now, because self-pity held 
 him in closer grip. 
 
 "I am leaving you and going with Hugh C. W. He 
 will not conceal it in any way, neither shall I. If I 
 had told you and then gone, there would only have 
 been useless scenes, and I should not have changed
 
 172 BRUTE GODS 
 
 my mind, so I am going in what seems to be the best 
 way. I have wished to leave you for a long time now, 
 he gave me the strength. You have never cared for 
 me except because of yourself, and you have no right 
 to keep me. The happiness of two people who love 
 one another is more than what you want. I am sorry 
 to leave the boys, but they have their lives before 
 them, an unhappy and weak stepmother would not 
 have done them much good." 
 
 ' ' She admits she is weak, ' ' he thought, wilfully mis- 
 reading. "I suppose Williams wrote the letter for 
 her," he tried to sneer. "If she had told me and 
 then gone. . . . She never would have dared!" He 
 was furious at the charge that he had not cared for 
 her except for his own sake. No one else must ever 
 see that letter, should he destroy it ? He locked it up 
 in his desk. 
 
 The drive to Lowestoft brought out new lines of 
 his loss. He had always liked being seen about with 
 so handsome a woman as his wife, he had liked it con- 
 sciously: the pleasurable response of his vanity had 
 never failed him. Now there was only Catherine. 
 Catherine! Nobody could be proud of being seen 
 about with her. Really it had been a mistake his 
 persuading Catherine not to marry again. She was 
 no credit to a man 's household, a silly tiresome woman 
 to have living with you, the irritation of her wasn't 
 worth the money that she 'd He had been punished 
 for his consideration of her interests in stopping that 
 marriage with an undesirable man. If you were a 
 good brother and a good husband, this was the sort
 
 DISCLOSURES 173 
 
 of thing you got for it ! And why wasn 't Alec there ? 
 The trip wouldn't have been such a fiasco with the 
 four of them. Alec was getting more selfish every- 
 day a selfish young cub. He would talk to him 
 when they got home; he must use his authority, he 
 had always been too indulgent. 
 
 The depressed three of them finished " making 
 holiday" sooner than had been planned. They had 
 a late lunch in Lowestoft, then were walking unwill- 
 ingly down to the sea, when Mervyn, who had hardly 
 spoken a word, said suddenly: "Oh, why not motor 
 on to Yarmouth and go to a Beach Concert?" Then 
 he laughed. Mr. Glaive thought he had never heard 
 so impertinent a laugh. "If you think I'm in a mood 
 for vulgar comic songs!" he snapped back at him. 
 He halted. "You know perfectly well my opinion of 
 Great Yarmouth: it is the vulgarest sea-side place 
 in England!" "Oh, I say, what price Margate?" 
 Mr. Glaive turned from his son to show his displeasure, 
 and they all three found themselves walking back to 
 the hotel where they had lunched. They started home 
 at once. 
 
 Alec, when they arrived, was not there. His 
 father's resentment stirred angrily. Now would have 
 been the time for his proposed family harangue, and 
 he could have given the boy a sound dressing down 
 first. It would have been a help to him, would have 
 eased him, doing that, and then making the digni- 
 fied and resolute address that he had planned. "The 
 subject in my household must now be regarded as 
 closed for good and all." That was how the address
 
 174 BRUTE GODS 
 
 was to end. His rage sputtered out against Alec in 
 vicious little red sparks. The boy could go gadding 
 out, day after day, at a time like this . . . flagrant 
 . . . indecent. He was probably with some loose girl 
 or other. Mr. Glaive's eye had its tawny gleam. 
 
 There awaited him in his study a telegram and a 
 parcel. The telegram was from Lord Yetminster, 
 saying that he would be back that day instead of the 
 next, and could Mr. Glaive call on him that evening 
 after nine? This meant that unless Alec returned 
 very shortly the address must be postponed again. 
 Glaive would have to give time to considering the 
 right line to take with Lord Yetminster, he would 
 have to be quiet, think it over. That statement he 
 had made needed a little revision. If Miriam had 
 been there now, he would have consulted with her, 
 she had often been helpful in such things feminine 
 tact. There it was again! He was being reminded 
 at every turn, he would always keep on being re- 
 minded. . . . Then he must dress, that would take 
 time too. Mr. Glaive did not habitually dress for 
 dinner, but he liked Lord Yetminster and the Freyle 
 family to think that he did: besides, he felt at a dis- 
 advantage when other people were in evening dress 
 and he was not. Miriam would have straightened his 
 tie and selected his most appropriate shirt. 
 
 He looked at the parcel, which was addressed in 
 neat capital letters and had an obliterated postmark. 
 "From the library, I suppose." He was opening it 
 when Mervyn knocked at the study door to complete 
 the interview that Dr. Resine had interrupted.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 ALEC returned a little before dinnertime; he 
 was in the hall as his father, in evening 
 dress, came downstairs. 
 
 "Well, Alec, I want to speak to you." 
 
 "Oh!" The boy started. "All right," he an- 
 swered absently. 
 
 The indifference of his tone ruffled Mr. Glaive more 
 than his former sullenness and hostile looks had done. 
 The man quickened his pace, he led the way to the 
 Study. 
 
 "I have to tell you quite plainly that your con- 
 duct these last days has been most inconsiderate and 
 unbecoming. Most selfish. Do you understand?" 
 
 "How do you mean?" 
 
 "How do I mean!" Alec's dreamy look, his tone 
 of vague curiosity exasperated him. "I mean that I 
 am entitled to some consideration from you. Yester- 
 day you absent yourself for practically the whole day, 
 you say nothing to me about your intentions, you 
 think you can come and go as you please." 
 
 "You never told me I couldn't." 
 
 "No." Glaive was bitter. "You trade on my in- 
 dulgence. That is just it. I want you to under- 
 stand, quite clearly, that so long as you are under 
 age you are under my authority. You knew today 
 
 175
 
 176 BRUTE GODS 
 
 that I wished you to come with us to Lowestof t, didn 't 
 you?" 
 
 ''Oh, yes." 
 
 " 'Oh, yes'!" Mr. Glaive mimicked him savagely. 
 "That didn't matter, I suppose? My wishes count 
 for nothing at all. You are becoming impossible. 
 Are you going to sleep, sir, may I ask? You didn't 
 want to go, so you didn't go, that's it, isn't it? Now 
 what are you grinning about?" Alec's remote smile 
 was the most infuriating thing of all. 
 
 "I didn't mean to. It wasn't at you." Alec 
 looked fixedly at his father, trying to realize that he 
 was there, exactly the same as he had been before. 
 . . . His irrelevance seemed grotesque. 
 
 "Now understand me. If your own sense of what 
 is and what is not decent conduct, decent considera- 
 tion, isn't sufficiently developed, it must be trained. 
 Or you '11 go through the world a nuisance to yourself 
 and every one else. It's for your own good. Con- 
 sideration for others is the first article of a gentle- 
 man's code. It's his starting point. Haven't I con- 
 sidered you all your life long? I've fed you and 
 clothed you and educated you, and all I expect in re- 
 turn is common decency of behaviour! Don't look 
 at me as though you were in the right ! I won 't have 
 that impertinent staring." "Not even the grace to 
 hang his head," he thought. "I've been too lax, 
 that's what it is. Now listen!" He paused, and 
 noticed that the boy's eyes were queerly like his 
 mother's in the early days. With all her faults, 
 Anne would never. . . His hurt revived. "To-
 
 DISCLOSURES 177 
 
 morrow's Sunday. We go all of us to our parish 
 church for the morning service. I myself shall go to 
 the early service, for Communion. You can go or 
 not go to the early service, as you choose. That is 
 your own affair, to be determined according to your in- 
 ward feelings. As you know, I should never dream 
 of dictating in so intimate and personal a matter 
 of conscience and your private state which you alone 
 The Sacrament. . . . That is between you and well, 
 you know. Mervyn is coming with me, and your aunt 
 Catherine. We all feel, under the conditions . . . 
 What I do insist upon is this." He squared himself 
 by the mantelpiece. "That you come to the eleven 
 o'clock service. I shouldn't need to mention it, but 
 you have been irregular in your church attendance, 
 much too irregular. You've been getting into loose 
 slovenly habits all round, I've taken far too little 
 notice " 
 
 "I can't go to the service tomorrow." 
 
 "What! I haven't rightly understood you." 
 
 "No, I can't." 
 
 They had both paled, but both were calm, though 
 with the father the calm was only momentary. 
 
 "You shall!" he broke out in a cold convulsion of 
 anger. "You're up to some lewdness meeting with 
 some low female. I will not be flouted ! Understand 
 that definitely, finally. This ends it. I forbid you 
 to say another word." Alec left the room at once. 
 
 The father, alone, was assaulted by faintness and 
 nausea. He turned, leaning heavily on the mantel- 
 shelf, and was confronted by the reflection of his age-
 
 178 BRUTE GODS 
 
 ing face in the mirror. "Grey hairs," he thought, 
 "grey hairs. And this is how I am treated!" His 
 face was grey, too. Old and he felt ill. They 
 would kill him . . . failing health. People would 
 say he was beginning to ' * break up. ' ' He was divided 
 between self-pity and self-concern. That boy to 
 make him feel ill it was criminal. Criminal. 
 After all his kindness and generosity to them both. 
 He thought of the cheque he had given to Mervyn; 
 his parting with that hundred pounds began to hurt 
 him. "They trade on my affection for them, they 
 trade on it." 
 
 He sat down draggingly. Miriam could have 
 managed Alec, he would have handed him over to her 
 ... no further trouble. Now there was only 
 Catherine useless. If the obstinate young pup de- 
 fied him, what should he do? He passed his hand 
 over his forehead. This fresh aggravation, this fresh 
 difficulty at such a time. One would have thought 
 that any son with a spark of filial feeling. . . . Yet 
 Alec, out of sheer self-will, could hit at him in this 
 way, hit at him when he was down. It was abomin- 
 able! Again his anger leapt. How could he be fit 
 for seeing Lord Yetminster, after this? Feeling ill. 
 He wasn't up to it, he wouldn't go. Lord Yetminster 
 would understand. It would be natural, it would 
 really be the right thing for him not to go. He got 
 up and looked at himself again in the mirror. Yes: 
 Lord Yetminster would see how deeply he had felt it. 
 Perhaps he had better go. Turning, he noticed with 
 intense irritation that Alec had not shut the door
 
 DISCLOSURES 179 
 
 properly; it was slightly ajar. The mixing in of this 
 familiar annoyance with Mr. Glaive's other emotions 
 was surprisingly exacerbating. He swore. Never in 
 any single point was he regarded. "A man's foes 
 . . . those of his own household. ' ' Sighing deeply, he 
 sat down again. The quotation somewhat restored his 
 sense of his importance. 
 
 The dinner-bell rang and he heard the boys coming 
 downstairs; rude intrusions of sound upon him 
 through that negligently closed door. As he was 
 getting up to shut it, he heard Mervyn's lowered 
 voice: "Oh, I say, I didn't ask the old man about 
 what we talked about, you know. I meant to, but 
 I simply couldn't. You don't know what he was like 
 the very worst. Simply awful. ' ' The voice trailed 
 off, and the listening father could not catch Alec's 
 reply. Secrets from him! Conspiracies against him 
 no trust everything that was mean and under- 
 hand. What had they been talking about behind his 
 back? He reflected vindictively that he would find 
 out: he'd know when Mervyn did ask him. His an- 
 swer wouldn't be one to please Mervyn, either, be 
 sure of that! For a boy to speak in such a way of 
 his own father . . . his father who was suffering and 
 wronged, and had just given him a hundred pounds. 
 No feeling the pair of them against him. 
 
 Sitting down on the chair by his desk he was irked 
 by a hard extrusive contact. . . . The parcel that had 
 come that afternoon. He had just untied the string 
 when Mervyn he remembered. Now he would see 
 what it was, they could wait for their dinner till he
 
 180 BRUTE GODS 
 
 came. Why should he be the only one to be put out ? 
 He unwrapped the parcel, and the book that was dis- 
 closed opened of itself in his hands. It was a 
 Eabelais, with the leaves turned down at the chapter 
 of Panurge's consultation in the doubtful matter of 
 cuckoldry.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 ALEC was not occupied by reflections on this 
 lull in his hatred of his father: this com- 
 plete and sudden diversion of his energy, 
 this instant obliteration and replacement of his ob- 
 jective, he did not even partially realize. The figures 
 of Matcham, Perry, Father Collett, Frippie, faded 
 out: she was there for him, she herself, none else. 
 He was no longer perplexedly concerned with ideas 
 about things in Life, with the uncertain troubling 
 suggestions that had risen out of the air of those 
 last two days. This girl who was so much for large 
 ideas, for spreading Causes and reconstructions, whose 
 whole pride was in thinking "we," not "I," had in a 
 moment narrowed Alec's arena to the personal, dyed 
 it with the personal deeply through, from confine to 
 confine. By the accidents of her hair and eyes, and 
 the make of her body. Nothing mattered to him now 
 except as it affected her for him, and him for her. 
 If the "brute gods" left them alone, they could be or 
 not be: if his father kept out, he could be, or not. 
 Rebellion, revenge and hate wilted out of life, foreign 
 growths in a soil which was nothing for them. The 
 important thing was that his father should not stop 
 him here where his sole will lay: injury to his father 
 was of no moment, unless it would help Alec here, 
 and the boy would have done any benefit to his father 
 
 181
 
 182 BRUTE GODS 
 
 or to any one else for the same end. It was thus that 
 the pure and absorbing passion of first love alchem- 
 ized wicked unfilial thoughts and intentions. 
 
 The boy, clutched by Life and reeling under Life's 
 tremendous values, could be grazed for two or three 
 slight moments by surprise at his father, even by pity 
 for him, for his worried vainly assertive buzzing on 
 through an existence that was not life at all, and 
 surely never could have been. His father could never 
 have known never. And Mervyn what a pity that 
 Mervyn could not know, either; that he could think 
 himself in love with that girl Dolly Drake. Alec 
 could have no enthusiasm now for his brother's rap- 
 port with Dolly or breach with Nita: both girls took 
 their places with Doreen Burke for added emphasis 
 of the uniqueness of Gillian. It could not matter 
 much which of the two Mervyn married, Mervyn who 
 was not in love. Dolly! who at the picnic had been 
 flirting with somebody or other, more or less, when- 
 ever Alec noticed her, which was not very often. But 
 he had seen that her eyes were empty; and she was 
 coarse coarsely built yes, "beastly well"; certainly 
 Mervyn was right about that. Mervyn it was a 
 pity: he could not think of him much, he couldn't 
 be awfully sorry how could he? A boy of nine- 
 teen, suddenly upraised to a flaming isolation from 
 the entire universe, may well be enwrapped in his 
 miracle. 
 
 He did not hope that she loved him. Such a 
 miracle as that he could not reach to : the conception 
 of it went beyond light, it went rushing into the void
 
 DISCLOSURES 183 
 
 of black that lies uncompassable beyond the light that 
 is last and brightest. To his quite serious sense it 
 would have been not less than enough to kill him. 
 But in the miracle that he had she took her con- 
 scious part, for she had touched that first astonish- 
 ment of his doubt and fear and pain, and changed 
 it of her will : she had of intent liberated the paling 
 blood of his first emotions to expand and mingle in 
 veins more greatly charged. She had asked him to 
 meet her. She knew. The marvel was theirs. 
 
 For two or three minutes only they had been alone, 
 all that long afternoon. The rest was shouts and 
 chatter and many faces confused to the likeness of 
 one intervening animal substance thought of as "the 
 others." This substance obscured her. She seemed 
 to be dreadfully far off; it was as though at any 
 moment she might vanish. Even when he was quite 
 close to her, as often during a game of Prisoners' 
 Base, "the others" robbed him of any real sense of 
 her. He kept in struggle against thwarting odds. 
 At the end of that game Doreen had said, with a 
 rather petulant snapped laugh: "Now, Alec, you're 
 to be captain of a 'side' in the next. I hope you're 
 duly elated. ' ' The phrase, though so usual to the girl, 
 so much in her type, had struck him heavily. "Duly 
 elated." He pondered on its meaninglessness to him. 
 "Elated" "Gillian" was it possible to think that 
 name, to harbour it? If as captain, with first choice, 
 he were to say: "I'll take Miss Collett," the world 
 might suddenly stop. He chose Doreen. It was for 
 hide-and-seek. Gillian as she passed by him to go
 
 184 BRUTE GODS 
 
 on the other "side," murmured: "You must find 
 me"; she flashed on him the stupendous range of 
 meaning that Doreen's pondered term could have. 
 While they were hiding, Alec, instead of keeping his 
 eyes on the ground according to code, made eager 
 scrutiny. Soon he saw her at the top of the Tower: 
 he could not tell if she had seen him looking. She 
 disappeared behind the parapet. 
 
 When he found her, she was sitting on the sunned 
 stone floor, closely in a corner, her knees drawn up, 
 and her tiny brown hands that Alec had not noticed 
 before, clasping her knees. The attitude seemed to 
 condense and impress her. She was flushed, and, 
 though still, her limbs and features seemed to have 
 underflow of motion. 
 
 "You were slow," she said, smiling quickly, then 
 turning from him. 
 
 "I came at once straight." "The others" could 
 see him, standing up. He sat down, not close to 
 her. They were hidden by the parapet. "Is there 
 any one else hiding up here?" 
 
 "I'm going back to London tomorrow evening, you 
 know. ' ' 
 
 "What do you mean? Won't I see you again? 
 Couldn't you ? Your hair looks very soft," he told 
 her, gravely urgent. "Is it?" 
 
 "That's why it gets like this. Hair's difficult if 
 it's soft difficult to keep in order." 
 
 The boy's question seemed to have stilled the im- 
 patience that had run flecking Gillian's first words. 
 She spoke slowly, shifting her posture : with her chin
 
 DISCLOSURES 185 
 
 resting on her hand she looked at him, with a look 
 that was disquieted, almost sad. "I've annoyed her," 
 he thought. What could he do now? If only he 
 knew just what she would like. Footsteps sounded 
 in ascent on the steps. 
 
 ' ' I '11 be here tomorrow morning, ' ' she said, without 
 any emotion, it seemed, but that of decision. 
 "Eleven." 
 
 "All right." They both rose, and Doreen was 
 there, with some boy. 
 
 With all the driven will of youth, with all youth's 
 illusive sense of power, and youth's proud ignorance 
 of the inevitable unplacated world-old use that is 
 made of it, the use that smells of death, Alec went to 
 the appointment that Sunday morning. He rode 
 Mervyn's motor-bicycle: Mervyn, when he had asked 
 if he might, had said: "I haven't lent it to you, 
 mind; you took it." His father had been at a bed- 
 room window, he had seen him start. ... In a few 
 minutes they would all be going to the Parish Church 
 one of Mr. Braithwaite's sleepy sermons McGill 
 reading the lessons. All these people "the others," 
 all of them they were husks. How could they go on ? 
 
 As the lover rode, wondering, Father Collett, feel- 
 ing anything but a husk, was finally revising the ser- 
 mon that he had been "dared" to give by a teasing 
 boy, slightly drunk. In an hour or so he would be 
 delivering it. Had he in any sense evaded his prom- 
 ise? had he been in any way obscure, guarding him- 
 self? He read intently, with tightened mouth and 
 harassed eyes. At least he believed what he had
 
 186 BRUTE GODS 
 
 written all of it: he would never, so he passionately 
 assured himself, have consented to speak against his 
 belief not even for Alec. 
 
 The boy thought suddenly of his stepmother. He 
 felt, for the first time in thought of her, ashamed. 
 Gillian knew, of course. What a pity that the Mater 
 should have done that, now! It was something that 
 came wrongly, something to be fended off, something 
 of hurt. He would not for the world have soiled her 
 by mention of it. It would be terrible to speak of the 
 Mater or of "Williams in her presence. Alec was 
 perturbed. On the way back yesterday he had seen 
 a man and a girl in one of those shells of houses that 
 the encroaching sea had battered and wrecked near 
 by the Martello Tower: the man had his arms round 
 the girl, their heads were touching. Alec had turned 
 away, repelled. Before, he would have taken it as 
 a matter of course, he might have laughed. Now it 
 seemed disgusting, blasphemous. And his step- 
 mother's elopement had something of the same look, 
 now, but involving him more, so that the shame of it 
 was heightened and much more personal. Such were 
 the workings of feminine refining influence, such were 
 the tricks of sex.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 HE reached the Tower before eleven, and 
 waited for her, lying on the grass of the 
 artificial hill that rose up round the empty 
 moat. It was one of those Towers built in Napo- 
 leonic times for protection along the coast: a heavy 
 Georgian edifice, not much in use either before or 
 since the recent war. The drawbridge was always 
 down, and the gate rarely locked. To the east was 
 the sea, immediately, and westward a stretch of 
 brackish river, with a jutting landing-stage, near 
 which accumulated sail-boats and row-boats small 
 haphazard craft. The southward cut one blankly off : 
 here were dykes and no human signs. Malstowe to 
 the north had at this distance a quality of pictur- 
 esqueness always freshly surprising those familiar 
 with the near aspects of the town : seen in the rise of 
 her hill past the water-reach and the flat-land she 
 suggested by a skilful stroke of pretension, Venice; 
 even the tower of her waterworks helped to impress 
 the resemblance; it was not too unlike a Campanile, 
 seen from there. But river and dykes and flat-land 
 to west and south were prevailingly Dutch: they had 
 the reassuring philosophic repose of Dutch vistas. In 
 the tempered kind warmth of the summer morning 
 those sails of pale yellow and rich red-brown stirred 
 dreamily, and the very smoke from the tavern and 
 the few cottages that lay between river and sea was 
 
 187
 
 188 BRUTE GODS 
 
 half-asleep. What Alec noticed was that there did 
 not seem to be any one about. His keen sentience 
 and beating expectation, in divorce from all these 
 appearances, did not parley with them either in re- 
 sentment or acceptance. The scene looked tolerantly 
 on at him, and continued in its mood. 
 
 He could not see Gillian in his mind with any clear- 
 ness, but this did not tease him as with Frippie: he 
 was full of the sense of her. It was now past eleven. 
 The distant bells of Malstowe Church had finished the 
 tolling of the last ten minutes before the Service 
 hour. Alec looked up along the rough road toward 
 the town; there was no one. He could just discern 
 a sailor a woman carrying a pail. Gillian not in 
 sight. . . . After a minute or two he turned toward 
 the sea, and there she was, within speaking distance 
 of him, walking rapidly along the beach, with un- 
 swinging gait, her head raised. He stood up. She 
 walked looking to the sea, so that her face was from 
 him: there was a loose curl under the tassel of her 
 black fez-like hat. She wore a blue serge dress with a 
 green sash. Alec's eyes widened and lightened at 
 the lines of her straight figure, with their firm and 
 delicate boldness of stroke away from her slight but 
 not boyish hips to her breast and neck, and again 
 away downward to the rippling edge of her skirt that 
 seemed drawn close to her, yet unimpeding. And she 
 came for him, altogether for him: she had banished 
 ''the others." 
 
 Approaching the Tower she turned and saw him. 
 They went to meet each other.
 
 DISCLOSURES 189 
 
 "Now tell me first " She gave no greeting, she 
 spoke with a tightened abruptness, her unsmiling 
 ambiguous glance dropped from him at once. "Tell 
 me just how old you are." 
 
 "Nineteen. Doreen could have told you that." 
 
 "I don't want to talk about you to Doreen. Doreen 
 wants to talk about you to me. She could have told 
 you how old I am, did she?" 
 
 ' ' No of course. ' ' They began walking up the hill 
 to the drawbridge. 
 
 "Well, I'm twenty-six." 
 
 "I shouldn't like you to be any other age. Not 
 for anything." 
 
 Gillian, embarrassed and pleased by the earnest 
 weight of his words, laughed to hide her feelings, then 
 stopped short, ashamed. To behave like a silly girl 
 with that kind of dissimulation, she. . . . How 
 deep his eyes were! Why didn't he give her his 
 arm, going up this steep little hill? She took it, 
 half-defiantly, half-capriciously, then she was almost 
 drawing away. It was as though somehow she had 
 bared him . . . the sensitiveness of his touch went 
 through her, she could feel it tingling in her fingers, 
 alarmingly. She must do something, say something, 
 give some direction to this, not let them both be at 
 the mercy . . . taken aback. Her intellect, intensely 
 conscious, rebelled against this emotional attack, so 
 impertinently sprung upon her, and unfairly, so 
 swerving her from her old lines and meditated action, 
 bidding her " do as she was told, ' ' on the moment, with 
 none of her wonted view of what she did or why she
 
 190 BRUTE GODS 
 
 did it. And it was not as though she were in love 
 with this child, either. She liked him, liked very 
 much his liking her. 
 
 "Tell me about yourself," she demanded with an 
 imperative assertion summoned to her need. She was 
 getting more used to his arm now, it was not quite 
 so "I wanted to know more about you. That's 
 why I came this morning." 
 
 "Oh, I well, that's just what I don'1^- There 
 hasn't really been anything, you see not anything 
 important. Not till now. I suppose I've just gone 
 on." 
 
 He spoke without any shyness, without marked hesi- 
 tation. She had freed him of shyness, he was grate- 
 fully conscious of that. For an instant he thought of 
 Frippie, but then she had freed him because she was 
 so much less than he was, he saw that now. Gillian 
 was so infinitely more, he had only to wait on her 
 power, to rest in it ... no need of anything but that. 
 
 "You only think so." They were at the top of the 
 hill, by the steps that led down to the dry grassy 
 moat. Alec released her arm, but at once took it 
 again, took it afresh, as she felt, with a renewal, in 
 disturbing difference, of that tremor. She drew from 
 him, and then was exasperated with herself for being 
 "coy." These "instinctive girlish movements" 
 really! "Most things that are important happen be- 
 fore you're nineteen," she went on in a common-sense 
 tone. "Inside things, I mean." 
 
 "Oh, no." 
 
 He gave her the same wondering deep look. She
 
 DISCLOSURES 191 
 
 tried to clutch her excitement and scan it: she could 
 not. There were beating wings in her. With head 
 half-turned, she stood looking on the ground, as Alec 
 was speaking. She heard him dimly; he was more 
 decided than he had been before. She liked that. . . . 
 It was with this boy's stepmother that Carlyon- Wil- 
 liams had run off; how queer. . . . He was assuring 
 her that there hadn't been anything important, that 
 nothing had happened, to count. . . . She knew what 
 he meant oh, he meant the usual ' ' I never knew what 
 it was to live till I met you!" She tried to feel 
 cynical, she couldn't, it was all too sweet to her. But 
 comedy broke into her exaltation when she reflected 
 on her attitude head turned, eyes averted, a Royal 
 Academy picture of "First Love" or "A Meeting." 
 She was not young enough to escape the ridiculous- 
 ness of sex. In a half-resentful, half-humourous de- 
 fiance of herself she argued that she wasn't posing, 
 that it would have been a pose for her to have stood 
 anyhow else. Then her mind stiffened, she resolved 
 not to let herself go ; she would think. 
 
 They found themselves walking down the narrow 
 steps together, closely together, as, walking so, they 
 had to be. He felt her hair against his cheek once, 
 lightly. He realized her as neither tall nor short; 
 a head shorter than he, perhaps. He was much more 
 contained and sure than he could have believed he 
 could be : all ungainliness was gone, he had to follow 
 in the line of her poise and grace, to take their sug- 
 gestions. How she helped him ! Again his reflection 
 was grateful: he thought of the rude challenge, the
 
 192 BRUTE GODS 
 
 gross insistence of the emotions that Frippie had 
 made in him their evasions of promise, their false 
 starts and empty conclusions. What there had been 
 was so little, contenting for a time because he didn't 
 know, but what virtue or meaning had those satis- 
 factions held? And when he had reached for more, 
 there had been nothing. No lying intimations, now 
 there would be everything endlessly clear joy and 
 understanding. 
 
 "Why did you take me down here?" She spoke 
 with forced lightness, relieving the importance of their 
 silence. 
 
 "Did I?" 
 
 They stood on the last step. Gillian looked up. 
 There was nothing but Tower and sky, they were 
 walled in. Her heart seemed to be beating in strong 
 little waves that broke in her throat. Why had she 
 allowed this, and, having allowed it, why was she 
 agitated, almost frightened frightened of nothing? 
 She had to make an effort not to tremble. Alec real- 
 ized with bewildering suddennesss that she was stand- 
 ing facing him, with her back to the high wall of the 
 moat. 
 
 "Well!" she exclaimed. "We're here, anyhow!" 
 She gave him one of her racing looks. "No, stay 
 where you are. I want to see Take your hat off, 
 I like your hair. ' ' She told herself defiantly that she 
 would say anything she chose, she invoked arrogance 
 to her rescue from this disconcerting stress. But it 
 was extraordinarily difficult to say anything that 
 wouldn't sound either pointless for them or coquettish
 
 DISCLOSURES 193 
 
 or utterly bald. "Well? We are two ridiculous 
 people ! ' ' She laughed, and put her hands up behind 
 her head, lifting her chin a little. 
 
 ' ' Why are we ? You aren 't. ' ' 
 
 Alec stopped, held by the new look of her throat 
 the look that her raising and turning of her chin 
 had given him. He moved to her under the impulse 
 of that unfamiliar straining curve, that delicate 
 tightening of the pale olive flesh. 
 
 "You're wonderful." He was close to her, he 
 spoke low. "I don't know I didn't know that any 
 one could be so " 
 
 ' ' Oh, I 'm not ! You can 't really I mean you don 't 
 know at all!" 
 
 Her arms dropped, she wavered before him. His 
 look of utmost conviction shamed her words. That 
 religious look of a devotee, it was absorbingly new 
 to her, yet not new, she had in some sort known it. 
 It was terrible that he should be so sure, that his 
 youth should do this to him: it was terrible, and 
 great. That strong eagerness of his mouth, his eyes 
 so darkly lit, his boyish candour, all his unknowing 
 boldness . . . she could have dropped at his feet 
 and humbled herself to him for ever. No other way to 
 hold fast by that tenderness and passion. He could 
 subdue her, this boy who seemed to be at her will. 
 
 ' ' I want you ! " he whispered. ' ' You can 't tell how 
 much I must " 
 
 "But what?" She held out her hands, and he 
 caught them, burning her though. 
 
 "It's not like anything I've ever it's because
 
 194 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Oh, I I love you! May I say that, do you mind? 
 do you?" 
 
 Her mouth shook, she waited for him to say it 
 again. 
 
 " May I kiss you?" 
 
 The girl of twenty-six was wholly taken by that 
 question which no one but a novice can ever ask. 
 The contrast of his diffidence and humility and re- 
 straint with the overpowering and momentous com- 
 pulsion that drove from him, so sure in his mouth and 
 eyes, confirmed her his. She did not answer, she 
 looked hard, then she kissed him, and stayed. 
 
 In that chaste transfiguration of flesh they were 
 lifted, they flew in gold light, in a brightness that 
 turned Time and all else black, made all else nothing. 
 In the quivering expanse of their fused selves light- 
 ning shook, waves of far strange air swept on their 
 unison, moulding it in light and heat, creating it as 
 a third thing, a new being, apart entirely from the 
 cast-off mortalities that lay shrivelled from them, for- 
 gotten. They clasped this new life, transubstantiated 
 flesh and soul in their sacrament. 
 
 When she left his arms, he had part in her still, 
 she being of him still when they sat with hands that 
 clung for full remembrance, full assurance of a pos- 
 session that no heavier physical stamp had blurred, 
 no stamp of Nature's material will. He spoke her 
 name then for the first time. ' ' Gillian ! ' ' Over and 
 again he said it: ''Gillian dear my Gillian." 
 Her looks for him now were from stilled eyes, eyes 
 that had known and rested in the event. She was
 
 DISCLOSURES 195 
 
 pale, her mouth no less than her eyes seemed changed, 
 there was a new severance of her lips. 
 
 "What is it, dear?" he asked anxiously, mistaking 
 for suffering her look of desire to suffer. 
 
 ' ' You do love me ? You are sure ? ' ' 
 
 "I always shall!" 
 
 He touched her soft mutinous hair, kissed her mouth, 
 her mouth only. He was no practised satiated lover, 
 to dally with her neck and throat. She was in swirl 
 of feelings that she could not face in any free regard 
 for what they were: all her instinct battled against 
 the admission of them to her conscious thought. She 
 could but strive feebly for the honesty in which she 
 had such pride, she could only think: "And I'm 
 modern!" Could any woman be modern when it 
 came to this ? This resonance of the mouths of ancient 
 powers and glories. . . . His hair and forehead 
 pressed to her. . . . 
 
 "No, Alec!" She tightened his hand. "Not 
 now. I can't,. I " 
 
 She was afraid. He felt a shiver pass through her, 
 into him. 
 
 "Gillian. You are happy, aren't you?" 
 
 "Am I? I must be I don't know You moved 
 in my heart. All that time, you " 
 
 "You did in mine! But you're trembling, again. 
 Why?" 
 
 "I can't help it. I suppose it's a a sort of wind 
 of love." She bit her lip, ashamed. "What are we 
 to do, Alec? We don't know what to do!" 
 
 "Oh, I never could have thought " He looked
 
 196 BRUTE GODS 
 
 white and spent. "I didn't dare, Gillian. It seemed 
 too wonderful, I couldn't even think it, do you know? 
 "We're we're each other's, aren't we, always?" 
 
 "'Always'?" Her voice broke. "Oh, Alec, if 
 only you weren't so young if I wasn't It isn't 
 fair. You're seven years younger." Gillian sum- 
 moned her strayed forces. She clutched at the reac- 
 tion which seemed for the moment to give her the 
 chance for the honesty which that intellectual con- 
 science of hers demanded. She tried not to feel his 
 hand. ' ' Have you thought just what that means ? ' ' 
 
 "But I told you, dearest, that " His dark eyes 
 were on her in anxious surprise. 
 
 "I know. I know you did. " She saw how eagerly 
 the sun played with his hair. "But you won't think 
 so in five years ' time or less Alec. ' ' 
 
 "111 always think so, you know I will. How could 
 I love any of these young girls like you? They're 
 stupid. You 're only teasing. ' ' 
 
 "Perhaps you couldn't, now. You'll be twenty- 
 three when I'm thirty. Nothing can ever get us away 
 from that." 
 
 She did not wince, but stiffened, under her cruelty 
 to herself. She was of Father Collett's blood. But 
 she could not speak her torturing thoughts further, 
 could not say: "And when you're thirty a middle- 
 aged woman!" Instead, she had to think: "After 
 all, I shouldn't look middle-aged, I'm sure I 
 shouldn't." 
 
 "You might get tired of me," she went on, "you 
 would"
 
 DISCLOSURES 197 
 
 "Tired of you? Why, Gillian dear, you must 
 know " 
 
 "Well, but " There was no arguing with the 
 boy's indignant amaze, but again her reason caught 
 Gillian, caught her in stiffening breeze, billowing out 
 the sails of her theories. "It always happens, it's 
 the way things are. . . . Did you ever read ' Mademoi- 
 selle de Maupin'?" 
 
 "No. I've read some of de Maupassant." He 
 said that so hopefully, so much as though he had done 
 the next best thing, that Gillian for the brief moment 
 could have kissed him in simple affection. ' ' How well 
 you speak French!" 
 
 "I suppose I ought to. The girl in that book 
 she leaves the man after they've loved each other 
 for one for one day." 
 
 "I say! Gillian! You're not going to " He 
 pleaded, alarmed. "You you do like me!" 
 
 "You know I like you. Yes, I suppose so!" She 
 gave a laugh that ran light and shining, child to her 
 voice and eyes. Those sails of theory collapsed quite. 
 For her to lecture him from the text of "Mademoiselle 
 de Maupin"! 
 
 "I never have loved any one at all before!" He 
 flushed over his spent look. 
 
 "Neither have I !" It was true, in an even deeper 
 sense than Alec's assertion. Gillian had the fastid- 
 iousness often found with passionate temperaments 
 that are joined to active minds. "And I want you 
 to love me, Alec, I do, I do! There!" 
 
 She lay yielding in the assurance of his arms. That
 
 198 BRUTE GODS 
 
 first violent shaking transcendence was gone from 
 them now, they rested together in sweet armistice, 
 they were nearer to one another because further from 
 their passion. Gillian felt that her closed lids burnt 
 blue, not red. He kissed her lips, but more tenderly, 
 more consciously. These were not moments of that 
 first huge surge and crash, they did not break so far 
 beyond, they were moments that would come back to 
 surer remembrance. . . . His embrace grew more 
 close, it began to challenge what they had, it flushed 
 her surrender with deeper colour. She had to refuse, 
 to resist; she left him. 
 
 "Alec, ' ' she said. ' ' Oh, I wonder what will happen 
 to us ? It seems so much as if you couldn 't tell ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' We '11 marry, of course ! ' ' 
 
 "Will we?" She stopped, and looked troubled, 
 almost sad. 
 
 "Then we'll always be together always and 
 every one will know!" He spoke triumphantly, 
 proudly. "When people are in love, they always 
 marry, don't they? Unless " 
 
 He broke off, blushing, remembering Gillian's "ad- 
 vanced opinions," wondering. He had not thought 
 of them since seeing her, and their association with 
 her now seemed terribly indelicate. Father Collett's 
 feelings about marriage did not so much as graze him, 
 neither then nor later. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know!" 
 
 Gillian was harassed. She found herself wanting 
 to get Alec to talk of Doreen, she wanted to know if 
 there had been anything between them, anything at
 
 DISCLOSURES 199 
 
 all. She was consumingly anxious for him to say 
 something that would put Doreen far below her. 
 How unworthy this was, she thought, how mean! 
 She rejected her wish. Marriage. . . . She knew 
 what she ought, in that intellectual honesty of hers, 
 to say, but she couldn't not to this boy who loved 
 her, whom she She felt wicked, now. Her natural 
 conscience seemed to be working against her intellec- 
 tual wickedness. She found it equally difficult to live 
 up to her theories or to her desires. "How atavis- 
 tic I am!" she thought. "It's absurd." Then with 
 blinding clearness she saw that the real temptation 
 for she had money enough was to take him and marry 
 him and keep him as long as she could. This, as she 
 saw it, was the real immorality that beckoned her. 
 
 "I couldn't marry you yet, of course." He spoke 
 with a grave young dignity, terribly touching to her. 
 ' ' We could wait a little, we 'd be seeing each other all 
 the time. ' ' The thought of Mervyn and Nita crossed 
 him, but he instantly dismissed them. * ' Oh, it would 
 be, it 'd be simply ! ' ' 
 
 "Well, then we'd certainly we'd know better. 
 No, Alec let me think." 
 
 She sat, drawn up away from him, looking steadily 
 to the far side of the moat. She tried to seek refuge 
 on the familiar ground of her "views." If she at- 
 tacked marriage now, to him, it would be out of sheer 
 virtue ! She thought of the affair of his stepmother, 
 but that was too near him, and too near her: she 
 shrank from any allusion almost as wincingly as he 
 did. And how could she talk talk after this?
 
 200 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Phrases of the articles she had written, the speeches 
 she had made at meetings of "Women Workers" came 
 to her. She felt ashamed of them. They were 
 pedantic, inky, priggish, absurd. If she said them 
 now, how dreadfully ashamed she'd be and it would 
 stop him loving her, she knew it would ! He took her 
 hand, took shyly the fingers only. "Marriage a gross 
 advertisement of purely private relations." Her 
 thoughts went on. "Because two people wish to be 
 bound for ever in a moment of abnormal excitement, 
 that's no excuse for Society's taking a base advantage 
 of them. " " Husband and wife can 't be lovers, unless 
 they're terribly unimaginative, dull, placid people." 
 "Economic independence of women the real solution." 
 "Money conditions made marriage, and change of 
 money conditions will break it." Spectacled phrases! 
 How watery all these words looked, how hollow they 
 sounded, how small they were in the face of this 
 great thing that she and he had felt ! When he held 
 her, she'd have married him for a thousand years, 
 sooner than have lost him for a moment. . . . "Ab- 
 normal excitement" as if a pale phrase like that 
 came near it! All the same her brain would keep 
 beating unconvinced, beating hard: she had to hear 
 that all this was "glamour." Well, even if it were, 
 why should she know? She wouldn't know now, she 
 wouldn't spoil What if it couldn 't last ? Perhaps 
 it would. Anyhow, she didn't care. And she 
 wouldn't say a word to him . . . theories of mar- 
 riage. . . ,
 
 DISCLOSURES 201 
 
 "What's the matter, dear? "What are you think- 
 ing about ? ' ' Alec, suspecting that her look embraced 
 more than him, was jealous. He quickened to her, 
 burned to recall her to himself. They were losing 
 time terribly. 
 
 "Oh, that I was born a little too late, that's all. 
 Even though you were born later!" 
 
 "Do come to me, dear. Please Gillian " 
 
 "Not now." All she could think, then, was in her 
 wish for him to take her again, but the very strength 
 of the wish made the decision of her refusal. "No, 
 not now, I mean it ! " He felt her little nerve-ridden 
 hand quiver on his protesting mouth. He looked at 
 her, lovingly reproachful, and again that eager dark 
 tenderness of his eyes shot through her. Ah, she 
 must keep him now any way just for a little! 
 "Alec!" she exclaimed, with a sudden change of tone, 
 astonishing to him. "If you did stop loving me, I 
 wouldn't keep you I wouldn't not if you " 
 Tears rushed wantonly on her, she turned away. 
 
 "Why should we think about what won't ever hap- 
 pen? Oh, Gillian!" He took her, turning her to 
 him, with a violence overpoweringly sweet to the re- 
 laxing girl. Her eyes, larger and softer with their 
 tears, were lovelier to him than ever. "You mustn't 
 talk like this, you mustn't you mustn't think " 
 
 "Well!" She broke from her yielding to his kiss. 
 "It's a pity I'm not seventeen. I shouldn't talk like 
 that then, and you'd be fairly caught!" Her laugh 
 was insecure,
 
 202 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "I want to be!" 
 
 "Oh, Alec please. I said not, before. You don't 
 care what I say!" 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't know!" She was afraid of his not 
 wanting to be with her again, not wanting it quite 
 so much. "We must go. Tell me: when can you 
 come to London?" 
 
 ' ' Oh, as soon as in a day or two, I '11 come ! ' ' 
 
 "Here's my address." She gave him a card. 
 "You'll telephone?" She blushed deeply, she was 
 heavily struck by shame. "I will, I will," she told 
 herself, rebelling. 
 
 ' ' Yes, could I come tomorrow ? " To Alec the blush 
 meant a new lustre and flash for her eyes. 
 
 "No; the end of the week. 'Tomorrow'!" She 
 teased his comically instant dejection. "I oughtn't 
 to see you there at all!" 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Oh, because my great-great-great-grandmother 
 tells me not to! I don't care, though. You aren't 
 sentimental about money, Alec, are you?" she added, 
 determined to resist her ancestress further. She 
 leaned capriciously, and gave him a light unexpected 
 kiss. "Was it yesterday we first met? At least our 
 acquaintance has 'ripened rapidly,' you'll admit." 
 Her eyes went shimmering. Alec was reminded of 
 Father Collett's vivid changes of mood. 
 
 "And we are engaged, aren't we, Gillian?" 
 
 "Oh, we'll talk about that next time!" Then:
 
 DISCLOSURES 203 
 
 "Look up!" she said, in a low distinct tone of no 
 
 emotion. 
 He looked. The wall behind them was surmounted 
 
 by the incensed face of his father. 
 
 "What is the meaning, sir, of this performance?" 
 "I'll go," Alec whispered, pressing her hand. 
 
 "Wait for me; please wait."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 GILLIAN did not ponder her interruption 
 of the altercation between father and son: 
 it sprang from her sense of indignity in 
 being left alone ' ' down there, ' ' from her more urgent 
 sense of Alec's inexperience needing her protection, 
 and from the rapid-growing violence of her impatience. 
 After three minutes it seemed as though he and his 
 father would go on talking for ever. Some of the 
 first words she could hear : "Go away ! ' ' and ' ' You'd 
 better not!" from Alec: "I will not have it, sir!" 
 then, less distinctly, as they moved from the moat: 
 "... any more immorality, in my family." "If 
 you don 't go, I '11. "... Then only their voices reached 
 her strained hearing, and the moments lengthened. 
 Infinite values wavered in them. . . . She must leave 
 that place, she'd be sunk there. As she got up, her 
 consciousness snapped under a sudden stroke of black, 
 the ground swam against her ; she held herself tightly, 
 driving her feet down. Then, released, she gained 
 the steps of the moat, rapidly climbing them, check- 
 ing herself when the wall no longer concealed her. 
 
 Mr. Glaive, who stood facing the moat, saw her 
 first. He stared, blinked, broke the sentence he was 
 in, broke the change of posture that he had been 
 about to make. He held ground, wary at once. Alec, 
 turning, exclaimed with dropping mouth. 
 
 204
 
 DISCLOSURES 205 
 
 ' ' Mr. Glaive. ' ' Gillian spoke at once, not looking at 
 Alec. " Could you give me a lift back to Malstowe? 
 If you'd be so kind?" 
 
 Glaive, annoyed that he had not done so before, 
 it would have been the correct thing, raised his hat, 
 elaborating the gesture. "I am at your service, of 
 course." He was delighted by his own restraint, by 
 the fine pitch of his formality: the word "breeding" 
 caressed him. 
 
 "Thank you so much. I saw you had your car. 
 If I walked back I'm afraid I might be late. I'm 
 meeting the Burkes, you see." 
 
 "Gillian!" Alec broke in with an indignant vehe- 
 mence that pressed on her hard. "Won't you tell 
 him about us, why won't you ?" 
 
 ' ' Did you ride or walk here, Alec 1 ' ' she asked him. 
 
 "I can't tell him not properly. I thought you'd 
 come to help me!" 
 
 "Motor-cycle," said Mr. Glaive, with a sideways 
 glance at her. 
 
 "Where did you leave it, then?" 
 
 "Gillian, I don't He doesn't understand, he's 
 got it all wrong, I do think you might " 
 
 "I don't see any cycle." She looked inquiringly. 
 
 "He left it at 'The Seven Mariners.' " Mr. 
 Glaive jerked his thumb in the direction of the 
 tavern. 
 
 "Oh, well, that's all right. As your father is be- 
 ing good enough to take me It's a two-seater, isn't 
 it? I'm so sorry, but I'm rather late already. Do 
 you mind ?"
 
 206 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Alee relapsed, confounded, as they walked toward 
 the car. How could she ? What did she mean ? Ah, 
 she would tell his father when they were driving, that 
 was it, of course ! What would she say ? He wanted 
 to be there, he ought to be there. It was awful, being 
 left out like this, it seemed a sort of trick. What 
 would she say ? He must know 
 
 "Well, Alec, will you crank her up?" 
 
 The boy started, he looked at Gillian in appeal, 
 but she would not catch his eye. ''Oh, then it's not 
 a self-starter," she said. 
 
 "No; quite an old car. Does for rough work about 
 the country, though." 
 
 Mr. Glaive's tone was guardedly good humoured. 
 "A clever minx," he thought. He would like to 
 tell her so, in the right way, in a man-of-the-world 
 way. She was certainly pretty. 
 
 Alec cranked. The operation spelt out the memory 
 of Matcham's meeting for him, spelt it slowly, pain- 
 fully. He wrestled with that impertinent recall to 
 dead emotions. But had his father won again, now? 
 No, he hadn't, he never could! It wasn't right, 
 though, that he should be taking Gillian, it looked as 
 though. . . . Why had she done that? "If he hadn't 
 come, I should be with her alone still, we could have 
 walked back to Malstowe together." Alec kindled 
 against his father, but in a moment his anger dis- 
 appeared in the saturation of his loss. She was leav- 
 ing him. If only he could make his father under- 
 stand, or if only his father would go, not be there, 
 that was all he asked, he 'd forgive him anything then.
 
 DISCLOSURES 207 
 
 Absorbed as he was, adolescent as he was, he did not 
 for a moment reflect on or take pride in the girl's 
 spirit, her address. She puzzled him, and he was al- 
 most resentful. 
 
 Gillian waved her hand, smiled: they drove off. 
 His gaze clung to her slight shoulders, "her fez-shaped 
 hat with its blowing tassel, blowing with the curl of 
 her hair, her arm that rested along the edge of the 
 car, her hand that just showed, but now he had lost 
 it. His father ought not to be sitting by her, so near 
 as that, nobody ought! She receded, leaving him in 
 exile. He must be with her, always, he could not 
 bear this, her absence rent him, how could it be 
 borne? That parting seemed to be for ever, he felt 
 that it was for ever, he was convinced, hopelessly, of 
 an eternal severance between them. Absolute cer- 
 tainty of seeing her again was what he demanded; 
 anything less than that was tragically insecure. And 
 there were a hundred things that could happen to 
 cut them apart. Suppose she met with some acci- 
 dent, suppose he did He wished he had not taken 
 Mervyn's motor-cycle, he must ride it very carefully. 
 How distant she was now. Could it be so lately that 
 he had could he have ever held so close that distant 
 figure ? When she was with him she had taken off her 
 hat : he could not remember when, could not remember 
 her doing it ... her hair. . . . 
 
 Something fluttered from the car, something white. 
 Paper, it looked like paper ... a message from her. 
 He ran. It might blow away, blow out to sea, be 
 lost. Everything seemed like that in danger. In a
 
 208 BRUTE GODS 
 
 fever of doubt and insecurity he raced on: he couldn't 
 see the white thing, he was not even sure where it 
 had dropped. It might be that everything depended 
 on his finding it. He felt more and more certain that 
 if he didn't find it he would never see Gillian again. 
 His present loss of her outlined all her values, it 
 deepened them, set him fast in them. Sudden as it 
 had come, and stronger for another's part in it, it 
 blew cold on the boy's molten metal which it hardened 
 to a weight that stayed. He ran unslackingly, with 
 searching eyes. . . . What if she had been snatched 
 from him? Suppose his father were talking to her 
 now, arguing with her, trying to keep her away, to 
 get her to promise? Then he would kill him. There 
 would be no difficulty then, any way would do, 
 wouldn't matter not if his father had done that. 
 But Gillian wouldn't promise, she couldn't. . . .He 
 insisted on this, f alteringly, feeling that he ought to 
 have no doubt. 
 
 There it was, the white thing! To the side of the 
 road, not far ahead, against a telegraph-pole. Alec 
 ran faster. But it wasn't paper. . . . Ah! he under- 
 stood, she had let it drop for him, so that he would 
 have something that belonged to her, so that he would 
 know that she what they called a "token." He 
 thought of a Latin phrase of his recent schooldays: 
 "pignus amoris" "pledge of love" a pledge. He 
 was exalted by delight and joy. This was a message 
 better than writing it was just the assurance he 
 craved something of hers for him. 
 
 He halted by the telegraph-pole, stooped, half
 
 DISCLOSURES 209 
 
 blinded, reaching down with hands that tingled and 
 shook. In a passion of tender reverence, he took the 
 token up. It was his father's handkerchief, a par- 
 ticularly nice clean silk one, for Sunday.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 WILFRED VAIL, half an hour later, was ar- 
 rested in the middle of one of his leisurely 
 engagements by the plugging of a motor- 
 cycle. The sound advanced, turned up the longer 
 one of the two converging drives that led to his 
 house. Vail's wide nostrils gave a slight brisk flutter 
 of expectation. A new engine for him to examine: 
 excellent. He dispatched, shortly, the affair he was 
 in. A new engine: he could tell that at once, for 
 the voice of each motor of the neighbourhood was dis- 
 tinguishable to him. He did not speculate for a mo- 
 ment about this particular motor-cycle's accidental 
 human attachment. 
 
 Alec was slowing down at the end of the drive as 
 his friend emerged from the familiar little one-story 
 annex which stood modestly out from the low white- 
 brick house, enhancing its air of pleasant amplitude. 
 
 ""Why, it's you, Alec! Where did you get the 
 cycle?" 
 
 "Oh, it's Mervyn's." 
 
 "You've never taken it here before." Vail's tone 
 was somewhat aggrieved. "Let's have a look at it. 
 Lord, what a state it's in! You can't keep a motor- 
 cycle any cleaner than you keep your fountain-pen. 
 What a messy person you are ! I shall have to spend 
 most of the afternoon on this." He took his spec- 
 
 210
 
 DISCLOSURES 211 
 
 tacles off, wiped his face, and looked reproachfully 
 at Alec with his pale large blue eyes that shone watery 
 in the sun. "You aren't looking well, either," he 
 said, a shade severely. "Come on, for God's sake 
 let's get out of this glare. What have you been up 
 to?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing particular " Alec leaned the cycle 
 against the wall. 
 
 Wilfred remembered the stepmother's elopement; 
 the motor-cycle had quite put it out of his mind. 
 Of course that accounted for the odd look Alec had 
 had under his scrutiny. They hadn't met since. 
 Poor boy, it must have been a shock of course dis- 
 turbing. He took his arm, with intimate pressure. 
 " I 'd been expecting you now you were home again, ' ' 
 he said. "I've been thinking about you a lot, Alec. 
 You know that. ' ' 
 
 The boy hardly heard him. He was overwhelmed 
 by the strangeness of being here in this known place, 
 with this known friend. It was life in the past ; some 
 self of his that was gone had been in that 
 life. . . . He was remote: yet all the while the force 
 of Wilfred, the force of the scene, were insistent, 
 persuading him of the continuity of the time spent 
 in that place, in that friendship, since and now. It 
 was as though the reality, the existence of Gillian 
 were being challenged. She hadn't been here. It 
 was like the playing of some stratagem upon him. 
 Alec's new eyes unsurely disputed the sceptical, in- 
 different, yet positive claim that these habitual vistas 
 made on his vision.
 
 212 BRUTE GODS 
 
 They went into the house together, still silent. Wil- 
 fred sat down and began rolling himself a very thin 
 cigarette; the tip of his tongue showed red against 
 his beard as he licked the paper. There was the same 
 picture of Hamlet with the skull, in its long frame 
 . . . that picture seen so often through poised clouds 
 of tobacco smoke, at winter midnights. . . . New 
 Year's Eve. Since Alec was fifteen he had spent 
 New Year's with Wilfred. Memories drove up thick, 
 the boy stared at them. It was inexplicable that he 
 should have never even seen her then, and that yet, 
 now, he was here. 
 
 "Poor Alec," Wilfred was thinking, "this thing 
 has evidently hit him pretty hard." "Will you 
 smoke?" he said. 
 
 "Thanks." Alec took a yellow Russian cigarette 
 from the extended case. "I haven't smoked today." 
 
 "Why this outburst of virtue?" 
 
 Alec flushed under his friend's mild incurious 
 glance. "I didn't happen to think of it," he said 
 truthfully. 
 
 Looking out of the window, he was caught by the 
 glint of the conservatory roof in the sun. Frippie's 
 grapes. Another thing he had not happened to think 
 of. Disconcerted, he shut down against Frippie. He 
 wished he had not kissed her. 
 
 "I say, Alec." Wilfred saw that there would be 
 no ease between them until the matter came to surface. 
 "There's nothing I can say or do to help, of course, 
 but I feel with you. You understand that, don't 
 you?"
 
 DISCLOSURES 218 
 
 "But how ? I don't see." Alec blushed more 
 deeply. "I don't see how on earth you can know!" 
 
 "Oh, my dear boy, Suffolk gossip! Why, things 
 get about in five minutes " 
 
 " 'Five minutes'!" Alec echoed him in consterna- 
 tion. He had grotesque visions of spies and couriers. 
 
 "Don't let's talk about it if you don't want to." 
 Wilfred looked at his watch. "Lunch will be soon. 
 Lunch, and stout. Good stout, too, since the war 
 really ended." 
 
 "'I want to talk about it. That's why I came. 
 Have you seen her? I didn't " 
 
 " 'Seen her'?" Wilfred's mathematical mind 
 tried to cope with the question. ' ' I suppose you mean 
 since " 
 
 "No, no; at any time?" 
 
 "Ah!" It flashed upon Wilfred Vail that what 
 Alec meant was, had he ever seen Mrs. Glaive so 
 comport herself as to suggest that she might be a 
 light woman. Really, Alec was very elliptical. "No, 
 I never have," he replied decisively. "I shouldn't 
 be much of a judge, though." 
 
 ' ' Oh, I thought you must have because of what you 
 said about feeling with me. Look here, Wilfred," 
 he went on hurriedly, ' ' I don 't know who told you or 
 what they said, but it's all absolutely different from 
 anything I've ever felt before absolutely." 
 
 ( ' Yes, yes. ' ' Wilfred pulled his chair round to the 
 boy. He took his hand. "I know. But these things 
 one feels them most awfully at the time, but after 
 a while one adapts oneself. It becomes less important,
 
 214 BRUTE GODS 
 
 you see, by degrees one feels it less ; and much sooner 
 than you could have believed, you get over it. ' ' 
 
 "I never shall!" 
 
 "Naturally that's how it seems, now. But well, 
 you'll see. The best thing you can do is to keep 
 your mind off it, all you can." 
 
 ' ' Keep my mind off it ! " 
 
 "Certainly. Thinking about it won't help. The 
 thing's done. "Worrying over it won't bring her 
 back." 
 
 "Oh, you heard about everything." Alec winced. 
 "But I'll get her back. I'll go to her." 
 
 "I shouldn't. After all, that's your father's af- 
 fair, and he " 
 
 "It's not his affair! I won't stand him interfer- 
 ing, I've made up my mind!" 
 
 Wilfred Vail stared at him. "Those modern 
 ideas," he gently deprecated. "Surely I may be 
 dreadfully conservative but your father being mar- 
 ried to her, you see " 
 
 "Oh! Good Lord, that. Why, that wasn't it at 
 all!" 
 
 "What the devil is it, then?" 
 
 "I thought, when you said I thought you'd heard 
 somehow about about Gillian." 
 
 "Gillian? Who in heaven's name is Gillian? 
 Well, I'll be " he noted Alec's expression. "I'll be 
 damned if you're not in love! So that's all it is! 
 That's all that's wrong with you. My dear child 
 my dear " Wilfred leaned his head well back, 
 and laughed loudly. "Alec in love!" He gurgled.
 
 DISCLOSURES 215 
 
 His mirth shook his beard, shook his spectacles. 
 "Really, Alec " He gasped, straightening himself. 
 "I suppose I ought not to, it's partly because I know 
 you so well, you see." Alec's look of utter disgust 
 was too much for him, he leaned back again, com- 
 mitting himself fully to the irrepressible hilarity of 
 the situation. "My dear Alec " He wiped his 
 eyes, recovering. "You mustn't look so indignant, 
 it makes me worse. There's something about a man 
 in love, you see, that's irresistibly funny, just as 
 there is about a man with a bilious attack. You 
 mightn't think it, but I really can sympathize with 
 you. I've had bilious attacks." 
 
 "You've never really been in love, you can't have. 
 You can't have cared properly " 
 
 "Oh, yes, I have. Why, once, that time when I was 
 up at the Music College, I wrote verses to one of them. 
 I went further, I bought her a wrist-watch, used to 
 hang about jewellers' shops for hours. It's true I 
 thought better of it and kept the wrist-watch for 
 myself. Here it is! I wish you'd been in London 
 with me then. You missed a lot of entertainment." 
 
 "I shouldn't have laughed at you!" 
 
 "Oh, yes, you would. It's too late now. Now I 
 intend to be thoroughly middle-aged. Much more 
 convenient. Since I took up with a beard and specta- 
 cles, Mrs. Vail is frequently mistaken for my wife. 
 Come on, let's go and wash. There's no bell. Mrs. 
 Vail has gone gadding off to Bournemouth." He 
 not only always alluded to his mother as "Mrs. Vail," 
 but he so addressed her. It was a part of the for-
 
 216 BRUTE GODS 
 
 mality that kept the corners of their domestic life 
 rounded and smooth. "She's taken Mrs. Leech with 
 her and given the others a holiday. I'm grubbing 
 along with the boy. Just what I like, as you know. 
 The ritual of the household is thoroughly wasteful 
 both of time and labour. It's peculiarly the sphere 
 of woman, and in it she shows peculiarly well her 
 inherent lack of method and love of display. The 
 barbaric, as opposed to the businesslike. A whole- 
 some reminder for you, my dear boy. Come on. Tim- 
 othy will have put something cold on the table. You 
 can tell me all about her while we're getting 
 fed." 
 
 Alec's resentment cooled as they walked up the 
 familiar stairway. Those lurking influences kept 
 creeping back on him. . . . There was Wilfred's bed, 
 without sheets, as always, and with the pillows piled 
 high on account of his nervous heart, so that it 
 shouldn't " drop beats." They had sat together on 
 that bed, watching the dawn come. ' ' The dawn with 
 silver-sandalled feet, ' ' Wilfred had quoted. Alec had 
 never seen that there was anything in poetry before. 
 How was it that Wilfred couldn't understand now? 
 The boy, as he washed his hands and face, wondered. 
 It struck him that Wilfred and his experiences with 
 Wilfred were really much closer to what he felt now 
 than anything else in his life. For it was Wilfred 
 who had first touched his sense of beauty, first made 
 it conscious, given him perception, shown him the 
 romantic urgency of visible things. No one had in- 
 fluenced him anything like as much, before Gillian
 
 DISCLOSURES 217 
 
 came. He had brought things to life words of 
 poetry, the look of the night sky, the pulse of music, 
 everything that she now contained, that passed now in 
 intenser flow to him through her, his only medium. . . . 
 
 "Why have you given up playing, Wilfred?" 
 
 "Oh, you can't play without practice. I don't 
 want to degenerate into an amateur. And you know 
 my poor dear health won 't let me be an artist. ' ' 
 
 "Are you really interested in all this motoring 
 stuff?" 
 
 "Of course I am. Hurry up. What with your 
 being in love and not getting my lunch I shall begin to 
 blaspheme horridly in a moment. Do dry your hands. 
 I never saw anything like the laboured inadequacy 
 of the way you pat them. I wish I could make a 
 first-rate mechanic of you, Alec. When Teddy my 
 good doctor told me without any beating about the 
 bush that if I didn't chuck my sedentary nerve-ex- 
 hausting life I'd go off in a year, that settled it. It's 
 a mistake, physically, to be born when your father's 
 nearly seventy." He took Alec's arm and led him 
 out of the room. "Why, you know the only decent 
 thing I ever composed that Mass they played at the 
 Oratory what did that mean? No proper sleep for 
 a month I got so that I couldn't stir out of the house 
 without you know." He shivered. "Teddy sug- 
 gested some open-air hobby hard physical work and 
 not a hint of nerve-strain. Wise man. Now I sleep 
 nine hours every night and have the nerves of a 
 bricklayer. Try the same cure, it might work with 
 you. Ah. Lunch." They sat down.
 
 218 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "Yes, I know. It was extraordinary how you 
 changed everything, so suddenly." 
 
 "Oh, I'd always had a sneaking interest in 
 mechanics. Music and mechanics are quite near to- 
 gether, really." He deftly carved the cold roast 
 beef. "It's simply the practical instead of the emo- 
 tional application of the same forces. Not so difficult, 
 Alec, not such a wrench to exchange counterpoint and 
 trilling on sixths for cardan shafts and cantilever 
 springs. There's mathematical instinct comes in for 
 both, but in mechanics it's entirely detached, it's cold 
 and clear and impersonal : it leaves you alone. Music 
 wants your life-blood, damn her, music won't be con- 
 tent without raping you body and soul. Too much 
 of a good thing, at least for me it is. Do you know 
 why musicians are nearly always cold and sensual? 
 They haven 't anything left over for love. ' ' 
 
 "That must be why you don't understand." Alec 
 took his chance. 
 
 "Don't understand what?" 
 
 "About me and " 
 
 "Oh, I see. You and what was her name?" 
 
 "Gillian." Alec bent his bead over his plate. 
 
 "Ah, yes. That's to the point. Nature or Life or 
 whatever you choose to call it is playing a well, let's 
 call it a Fugue on you. You're in the score ; the score 
 is you, in fact." 
 
 "And her." 
 
 "Oh, of course one has to have some sort of a 
 theme ! The point is that musicians aren't often used
 
 DISCLOSURES 219 
 
 like that. It 's a ease of two of a trade, you see ; trade- 
 jealousy comes in. When a musician does fall in love, 
 he does bad work at once; sheer spite on Nature's 
 part, I call it. I know when I was making that par- 
 ticular kind of fool of myself, my work went to pieces. 
 We don't make good lovers, either, from the woman's 
 point of view. They like the usual man the Philis- 
 tine." 
 
 Alec resolved to be unimpeachably normal, he hoped 
 he was a Philistine. 
 
 " There's no doubt an artist ought to avoid mar- 
 riage. What a fate for a man of genius! Bread- 
 winner for wife and babes ! ' ' 
 
 ''Well, I'm not an artist." 
 
 "Luckily marriage isn't practicable for you yet, 
 Alec." 
 
 "Not at once, perhaps." The observation annoyed 
 the boy extremely. "It may be soon." 
 
 " 'Soon'!" 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Because you're nineteen. And you aren't either 
 a prince or a peasant." 
 
 "I could be engaged, anyhow." 
 
 "I hope you're not going to tell me you are." 
 
 "Well, not exactly. I shall know when I see her 
 again. ' ' 
 
 "I suppose she's one of those young things one 
 sees about with hair in tails down their backs ? Thin 
 tails of hair and tight backs and school straw hats 
 with monogrammed ribbons." He groaned.
 
 220 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "She isn't young. Not like that." Alec felt ex- 
 tremely glad that she wasn 't. ' She 's twenty-six, ' ' he 
 announced proudly. 
 
 "What! Well, she ought to know better, then. 
 Her age doesn't at all reassure me, Alec. In fact, 
 I find her age rather alarming. Everything depends 
 on her, of course. She might go kidnapping you. 
 . . . Has she money? Who is she?" 
 
 "She's Father Collett's niece." 
 
 "Worse and worse. All the Colletts are well off, 
 I believe. You've taken away some of my appetite, 
 Alec. Yours, I notice, is fairly hearty. A sign of 
 hope, perhaps." 
 
 "I never knew you were against marriage." 
 
 "Why should I be? I'm not married, and very 
 grateful I am for the immense advantages that gives 
 me. I regard bachelorhood as the privilege of the 
 level-headed few. As long as marriage isn't com- 
 pulsory I'm very much against marriage for you, 
 naturally. I don't have to tell you I'm fond of you, 
 Alec." His eyes lighted with that peculiar sincerity 
 and singleness of affection often found in men who 
 are not romantically controlled and who take the com- 
 pensating drive of their sensuality too easily and 
 openly to be harassed or embittered by it. "I don't 
 want you to be grabbed by a girl not yet, anyhow. 
 Later on, of course well, it 's one of those unpleasant 
 things you have to expect, when the time comes " 
 
 "But we'd always be friends just the same." 
 
 "Some hundreds of millions of people have made 
 that remark before you, dear boy, and found out their
 
 DISCLOSURES 221 
 
 mistake." Wilfred finished his glass of stout. "Of 
 course there's one advantage in marrying a girl with 
 money. You can afford to live separately later on. 
 I'm quite sure that hadn't occurred to you " 
 
 "No, it hadn't!" 
 
 ' ' I thought not. Be grateful to me, then, for a new 
 idea. Let me see. Yes, take some tart, I'll go on to 
 cheese. Twenty-six nineteen. I don't think she'll 
 do it. If she were over thirty, she might. Hardly 
 at twenty-six. No, she'd have to be over thirty or 
 under twenty for you to be in any real danger. I 
 feel better now. I'll have another glass of stout." 
 
 In Wilfred's Study afterwards, Alec came tenta- 
 tively to the main purpose of his visit. The approach 
 was difficult, because Wilfred asked none of the usual 
 questions about Gillian. Alec was piqued because his 
 friend betrayed not the smallest curiosity about her 
 appearance or character, did not inquire where they 
 had met, how, or how often. Instead, he talked of 
 the coming Elections, he made Alec tell him of 
 Matcham's meeting and Mr. Glaive's intervention. 
 He had heard fantastic and contradictory rumours 
 that he was anxious to be able to explain and correct. 
 He spoke at length on the threatened economic revo- 
 lution. 
 
 "These people can't win," he declared. "All they 
 can do is to get higher wages, but anything that cuts 
 deeper than that no. I've mixed a lot with work- 
 ing people lately, here and in London. When it comes 
 to any scheme for taking away the money and power 
 from those who have it, they get suspicious at once.
 
 222 BRUTE GODS 
 
 They feel certain they won't get the money, you see, 
 and their idea is that the agitators will. Did you 
 hear what old Bob Haken said to Matcham? 'Ah, 
 'bor, an' yu'll spend it, tu; du yu wouldn' goo 
 a-gittin' on it outer them. Better his owd lordship 
 had it than yu.' That's it exactly." He spoke with 
 satisfaction, he was conservative to the bone, though 
 without a single one of the conservative illusions. His 
 was the unshakeable conservatism of the sceptic. 
 
 Alec, in spite of the divided mind that he brought 
 to his recital of events on the Green, could not help 
 being struck by Wilfred's evident distaste for 
 Matcham. When he came to the phrase that had 
 so obstinately lodged in his brain, his friend caught 
 him up. 
 
 " 'Brute gods,' " he repeated, shortly and coldly. 
 "No doubt. And no doubt he puts up better ones 
 in his mind. What's the good of that to the world? 
 Once let him and the other fools get started on the 
 practical construction work, and their new gods will 
 either dance off into mist or they'll change and be 
 just as 'brutish' as the old ones." 
 
 "I say " Alec felt that this interruption had re- 
 lieved him from the obligation of continuing his ac- 
 count. "I didn't tell you that I mean to say 
 Gillian's going back to London tonight." 
 
 ' ' Oh, is she ? I 'm rather sorry. These things often 
 last longer when there's separation. Much better 
 bring it to a head at once. The amount of energy 
 wasted on this 'reconstruction' talk makes me sick. 
 All any sensible man needs to do is to take condi-
 
 DISCLOSURES 223 
 
 tions as they are and make what he can of them. He 
 can break the rules if necessary, but he won't waste 
 his time trying to alter them or talking about break- 
 ing them, either." 
 
 "Well, that was all my stepmother did broke the 
 rules " 
 
 Alec strove, bewildered. Pieces of a puzzle that 
 wouldn't fit all this, and the assertive memories of 
 the place, of Wilfred: while outside of it all was his 
 determination for Gillian, like a sort of hard funnel 
 through which everything that came to his mind had 
 to go. 
 
 "My dear boy," Wilfred had paused "you know 
 me well enough to know that I'm not morally in- 
 dignant about Mrs. Glaive. I'm only sorry for the 
 break as it affects you, just as I should be sorry if 
 you were hurt by any other natural accident. Where 
 you have marriage you have the other thing. It's 
 curious when you think of it," he stared medita- 
 tively, stroking his beard "how much finer, as a 
 word, 'adultery' is than 'marriage.' Well. I'm no 
 more indignant with the one than I am with the other. 
 Take the world as it is, Alec, take the world as it is." 
 
 He leaned back, profoundly unmoral in his com- 
 plete and impartial acceptance of the moralities to- 
 gether with every one of their logical implications. 
 He had spoken in utter sincerity, too, of "breaking 
 the rules, ' ' out of an individualism which struck from 
 the same root as his conservatism: an individualism 
 that was prepared, on need, to run full tilt at any 
 law or any convention, without abating politic and
 
 224 BRUTE GODS 
 
 general support of law and convention by one jot. 
 
 ' ' I don 't quite know when I shall be able to see her 
 again, of course." Alec carried off the observation 
 by striking a match. 
 
 "No, I suppose you don't. That move of your 
 father's was really wonderfully well timed. That'll 
 keep them quiet for a bit, I'll warrant." 
 
 ' ' I wanted to go up to London this week. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Yes ; well, why not ? Lord Yetminster had a per- 
 fect right, of course. But I don't like to think of 
 those men tramping all the way round, day after day ; 
 I know three or four of them quite well. And be- 
 sides, as your father saw " 
 
 "Perhaps I shall go Tuesday or Wednesday." 
 
 "Ah ! Lord Yetminster usually gets what he wants. 
 Eemember that tussle he had with Sir Hugh? 
 Dicky Podd told me. 'Th' owd Squire he went ahid 
 hully wunnerful. I dunno what he worn't a-goin' 
 ter du. But du yu howd hard there. When last come 
 last he couldn' du narthin' along o' his lordship. Th' 
 owd Squire, he had to set right quiet like a duzzy 
 fule. Ah, 'bor, yu may be quiet and quite a fule.' 
 But no doubt your father " 
 
 "I say, Wilfred! You see it's this way, I simply 
 must get up to London " 
 
 "Motor or train? That reminds me, you know I 
 haven't had a look at that cycle of yours yet. I 
 should say there's two hours' solid overhauling work 
 ahead of us, by the look of it." 
 
 "Look here, wait a second." Alec reddened
 
 DISCLOSURES 225 
 
 furiously, rushing his words. "I haven't money to 
 get to London and I must go." 
 
 "For how long?" Wilfred asked placidly. 
 
 ''Oh just for a day." 
 
 "Better make it a week. A day would be too 
 risky. Twenty pounds would carry you through a 
 week, travel expenses included, I suppose?" Him- 
 self the most frugal of men, never guilty of any 
 extravagance except in buying tools for his motor 
 workshop, "Wilfred Vail ran riot in the excess of his 
 estimates of other people's expenditures, especially in 
 travelling by train and staying away from home. He 
 never did either of these things himself. Between 
 Suffolk and a suburb of London where his mother had 
 another house, he invariably motored. "Well?" 
 
 "Oh, easily." Alec had been too delightedly taken 
 aback to reply at once. 
 
 "The Motor Review people sent me eighteen pounds 
 odd yesterday for articles. So I actually have some- 
 thing in the Bank, which is lucky or unlucky for you 
 as the case may be. You shall have a cheque for 
 twenty pounds three shillings and sevenpence." He 
 took out one of the four fountain-pens that he carried 
 all of them always in perfect order, always with 
 nibs that shone. "Did you know that your small 
 change fell out of your trouser-pocket on to my chair 
 last time you were here? When you're married, you 
 must be more careful. Three and seven. I'd bought 
 myself a small present with it already, and you'd 
 never have got it back if it hadn't been for this cheque
 
 226 BRUTE GODS 
 
 that I'm writing you now. 'Alexander'? I suppose 
 'Alexander' is correct, but how very odd." 
 
 "I say you know It really is awfully thanks 
 awfully." 
 
 "If you've made up your mind to be a fool, you 
 see, nothing can stop you. And if the worst comes 
 to the worst, you can pay me back out of the allow- 
 ance she makes you. Then I shall buy a new lathe. 
 I've been hesitating over it for some time, but your 
 marriage will make me reckless." He handed over 
 the cheque, and Alec, with a beating heart, surveyed 
 the familiar small neat clear handwriting. "The 
 stub will be a memento. The stub will often amuse 
 me." 
 
 "I'll I'll write to you from London." 
 
 "Yes, send me a sonnet or two, do. And now for 
 that filthy cycle of yours. You've no idea how much 
 better it will run. ... Oil and grease, ' ' he ruminated 
 lovingly. "Oil and grease." 
 
 They went out. Cheque or no cheque, there would 
 not have been further hint of estrangement from Wil- 
 fred. The bitter jealous enmity between love and 
 friendship bitter because between the temporary 
 victor and the rival that can wait and win had seldom 
 been so casually disarmed.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 WHEN he got home late that afternoon Alec 
 found his Aunt Cathy hovering about the 
 hall, with nervous importance. 
 
 "Oh, Alec. I've been waiting. Your father he 
 wished me to speak he wishes us to have a talk to- 
 gether." She was deprecating and excited. 
 
 "When did he get back?" Alec was eager for 
 that information. 
 
 "Oh, a long time ago a long time." 
 
 "When, exactly." 
 
 ' ' I couldn 't quite say, Alec. ' ' She became secretive 
 at once, indulging herself with sensational fantastic 
 conjectures about the motive of the boy's question. 
 
 "Oh, surely you must know." 
 
 "No, I really can't remember." She pushed out 
 her lower lip. No doubt Sidney and the boys were 
 keeping something from her. 
 
 "Before lunch?" 
 
 "I think he was late. I don't know." The wish 
 for intrigue urged her: it seemed mysteriously im- 
 portant not to enlighten her nephew. 
 
 ' ' But you must know whether he was late or not. ' ' 
 They walked up the stairs. 
 
 "I really will not be bullied, Alec, I " 
 
 "Was he at lunch at all?" 
 
 "Of course he ate his lunch." 
 227
 
 228 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Alec gave up. They entered the little room that 
 Aunt Cathy called her "boudoir," where she had 
 to have so much of her own company, which she hated. 
 
 "Well, what is it?" 
 
 "I have to take the place of a mother to you now." 
 She sat very erect, reproving his lounging attitude. 
 "You are making your father very unhappy." 
 
 "'Unhappy'? Himf" 
 
 "We must all try to be especially considerate of 
 him now. I'm sure your own niceness of feeling 
 will tell you that." 
 
 "All I want is for him to leave me alone!" 
 
 "He is very much pained and hurt by your dis- 
 obedience. ' ' Mrs. Mo wry was making an effort to re- 
 member all she had prepared to say, and to say it 
 in the right order. "Especially at such a time as 
 this. Now I'm sure, Alec dear, it's only because 
 you've been thoughtless and unrestrained. You won't 
 do it again, will you?" 
 
 "Do what?" 
 
 "You know." Her delicacies obstructed her. The 
 boy's question seemed unfeelingly gross. "It 
 wouldn't be nice for us to to go into any detail, you 
 know it wouldn't. It would be coarse." 
 
 "Oh, all right." He got up. 
 
 "Alec! Won't you promise me?" 
 
 "How can I, if you won't say?" He turned and 
 examined a framed photograph that stood on her 
 writing-desk. 
 
 "I mean not to not to run wild. If you'd just be 
 quiet and think. These bad girls "
 
 DISCLOSURES 229 
 
 ' ' ' Bad girls ' ! " He flashed angrily. 
 
 ''The Clark girl" 
 
 "Oh, Frippie! Don't worry about her. Who is 
 this photo ? I 've never seen it before. ' ' 
 
 4 'Oh." Mrs. Mowry dropped her eyes. "I didn't 
 mean you to I've had it put away for a long while. 
 And you know, it's not only the Clark girl." 
 
 "Well." Alec blushed. Gillian's light quick 
 figure, all her tingling mobilities, were instantly on 
 him. "I don't care" 
 
 "You can't wonder at our anxiety, Alec. To have 
 made a deliberate assignation! Of course no one 
 would mind your meeting nice girls, in a nice way." 
 
 "Did my father say that she wasn't wasn't 
 'nice'?" 
 
 "And then you know that dreadful man that 
 wicked man who has done us all such terrible harm 
 and wrong " 
 
 "Did he say anything?" 
 
 "It was because of her that that man came down 
 here to begin with! And every one knows " 
 
 "What did Father say about her?" 
 
 "I don't at all like to talk about such things " 
 
 "Why shouldn't you tell me what he said?" 
 
 "It shows that there was something quite wrong, 
 you must see. . . . And you're much too young to 
 think seriously of of anything like this, in any case. ' ' 
 
 Alec looked at her in amazement. ' ' Seriously ' ' ! 
 What a word! But of course she couldn't possibly 
 know how he "I want to know what my father 
 said," he insisted.
 
 230 BRUTE GODS 
 
 1 ' Of course he was very much distressed. If you 'd 
 been older, and had met her at people's houses, if 
 you'd had some sort of an understanding, even but 
 it seems you'd only seen her once before! No one 
 could possibly think it right. And just after you 
 had met that that 'Frippie.' Yes, your father 
 knows of that. And when we remember the the very 
 queer opinions, and friends, that Miss Collett is known 
 to have, we can't help being all the more distressed 
 and uneasy. In a way it makes it all really worse, 
 her being a " She could not bring herself to say 
 "lady." "Her being socially well, not of the class 
 of the girl Clark." 
 
 "I should think she wasn't!" His aunt's words 
 and phrases began to ruffle Alec with their ineptness. 
 His father "distressed" Gillian "not of the class" 
 of Frippie. 
 
 "You will end this this foolishness, Alec, will 
 you not? You know you are very dear to us " 
 This last expression seemed to her to confirm, fully, 
 the whole demeanour of her present talk ; Mrs. Mowry 
 felt herself in full achievement of her new prominence 
 in the household. 
 
 "But, Aunt Cathy, you don't in the least, you 
 can't " "Foolishness"! There she was again. 
 "I say, who's that a photo of? It's a jolly pretty 
 girl." 
 
 Aunt Cathy's tightened mouth pulled jerkily down : 
 she stammered, her face twitched, then there came 
 a sob, loud and ungainly in its forcing out from sup- 
 pression. Alec stood, terribly confused and helpless.
 
 DISCLOSURES 231 
 
 He could not look at her, he was too much disturbed 
 to be puzzled by the effect of his simple observation. 
 This sudden indecent intrusion of reality upon pre- 
 tence was too much for him. 
 
 "It was of of me," at length she told him. 
 
 "You! Oh, I say I'm awfully sorry " He sat 
 down, still looking away. 
 
 "Yes." She dried her eyes. "It was taken just 
 before I was married to give to him." She wanted 
 to intimate to Alec that her emotion came from the 
 memory of her husband's untimely death, not from 
 the thoughts of her own lost fruitless youth and 
 prettiness. The truth was that the photograph had 
 been taken when she was a year or so widowed, for 
 the man to whom she was then engaged. "I'm sure 
 it was all for the best," she added. 
 
 ' ' What was ? ' ' Alec half looked up, catching sight 
 of his aunt's neck, struck by its emphasis of her age. 
 
 ' ' Oh, everything. I could have married again, you 
 know, Alec." She flushed a little, with pride: even 
 the worst bitterness of her unconfessed regrets had 
 always been touched with pride and a certain excite- 
 ment. 
 
 "Yes, I remember. Why didn't you?" 
 
 "It wouldn't have been right. Faithfulness is a 
 great thing, Alec, even after death. If you have 
 once truly loved, you never can It wouldn't have 
 been nice." This was her expression of the idealiza- 
 tions that had supported her for a quarter of a 
 century. 
 
 Alec looked at her. She seemed quite different.
 
 232 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Her eyes were bright, her mouth was loosened. ' ' Of 
 course " He hesitated, thinking of ' ' true love ' ' and 
 Gillian. If he were to lose Gillian, he would never 
 marry any one else, of course not. But that wasn't 
 the same. That photograph Aunt Cathy . . . 
 
 "Queen Victoria . . . what a wonderful example 
 she gave!" Alec stared, being of a generation to 
 which Queen Victoria was nothing. "Your father 
 was quite right quite." 
 
 "Father! What had he to do with it?" 
 
 "Why " Malice and revenge, from under deep 
 cover, prompted her. "Why, he made me see how 
 very undesirable " 
 
 ' ' He stopped your marrying again when you wanted 
 to!" 
 
 "Oh, not 'stopped.' He made me see. Of course 
 he did right." 
 
 "Good Lord!" Alec passionately resolved that he 
 would never let his father make him see anything. 
 "Why, he married twice himself!" 
 
 "Ah, and see what's come of it!" 
 
 "He didn't really It wasn't fair! It was just 
 like him!" 
 
 "Oh, you mustn't say that. We mustn't " 
 She could not help being consciously gratified. 
 
 "And you'd only been married for two or three 
 weeks " 
 
 "But it was marriage, Alec." 
 
 Her outward intention was to stress the enduring 
 sanctity of a marriage that might be only of an hour : 
 inwardly she fostered her pride in not being an old
 
 DISCLOSURES 233 
 
 maid. This pride was constant. If any one called 
 her "Miss" she never forgave him. 
 
 They sat silent. Alec, out of his new emotions of 
 that morning, felt sorry for her. He felt indignant 
 and helpless. He thought of Mervyn, in association. 
 He reproached himself with lack of sympathy for 
 Mervyn and Dolly. He had been just as unsympa- 
 thetic there as Wilfred Vail had been for him. After 
 all, what did he know about Dolly ? Mervyn Here, 
 too, his father stood, baulking and evil, a thing to 
 harm them all, spoil every one's life, bite it up, if 
 he could. It was what he had done, and he'd go on. 
 His guilt gathered weight. Alec's anger against his 
 father rose again, with the same cold force. 
 
 "You will see things in the right light, Alec, won't 
 you? You will be true to your conscience?" 
 
 "I'll oh, I don't know what I'll do!" He got 
 up. "Is Mervyn in?" 
 
 "But, Alec" 
 
 "I want to see him. I must go, really." 
 
 ' ' And you won 't promise ? ' ' 
 
 He left, closing the door gently. "Conscience." 
 The word rang memories of childhood. It had always 
 suggested some offensive insect "still" and "small." 
 "I should have thought your conscience would have 
 told you. ' ' Mervyn didn 't seem to be in the house. 
 Alec, opening the side-door, heard him in the region 
 of the stables: 
 
 "She's a la-ady, 
 She has a daughter 
 Whom I adore "
 
 234. BRUTE GODS 
 
 The young man broke off, and started humming the 
 tune, wandering away with his back to the approach- 
 ing Alec. 
 
 "I say, Mervyn " 
 
 "Hulloa, what are you up to? You're a nice kid. 
 I say, you have been going it. ' ' 
 
 "Have you spoken to the guv 'nor yet about you 
 know about you and ?" 
 
 "Oh, I spoke all right. So did he." 
 
 "What did he say?" 
 
 "Wanted to know if we'd "both gone nutty. Said 
 he was beginning to think he was in charge of a lunatic 
 asylum. ' ' 
 
 "What did you?" 
 
 "Oh, he was hopeless. I saw that at once. It's 
 your fault, too, why the devil did you want to go and 
 get cobbed? I didn't know he'd cobbed you, or of 
 course I wouldn't have but it wouldn't have been any 
 good, anyhow. I knew that, really." He sat down 
 on a bench in a corner of the stable. 
 
 "Well, but can't you? Good Lord, it's" 
 
 "Oh, don't get so damned excited. What can / do ? 
 He went on six to the dozen. 'Won't hear of it' 
 'My old friend, Dr. Eesine.' Said I'd be tearin' the 
 last shreds of the family honour. Started talkin' 
 about Dolly, too, but I shut him up there." 
 
 ' ' But he can 't stop you. Why didn 't you say you 'd 
 made up your mind?" 
 
 * ' Oh, confound you, don't you begin now. How the 
 deuce can I marry Dolly on twopence-halfpenny a 
 year? I had to agree not to go back to Oxford, that's
 
 DISCLOSURES 235 
 
 all I got out of it. Lord, he said he'd stop that 
 cheque; he would have, too." 
 
 "Let him. Look here, I've got some money." 
 Alec felt powerful, with that cheque of "Wilfred's in 
 his pocket. "I'll share it with you. Let's both go 
 up to London and be free of him for good. We could 
 get some kind of work " 
 
 "How much have you got?" Mervyn asked scep- 
 tically. 
 
 "Twenty pounds." 
 
 "What the hell's the good of twenty pounds?" 
 
 ' ' Well. He didn 't stop that hundred, did he ? You 
 could get it through at once." 
 
 "Who gave you twenty pounds?" 
 
 "Vail did. Lent it. I'm going to London, you 
 come too, and " 
 
 "Oh, but you see, I agreed " 
 
 ' ' What, you don 't mean to say you agreed to marry 
 Nita!" 
 
 "Oh, damn it all, don't cross-examine me like a 
 blasted lawyer. I didn't exactly." Mervyn began 
 humming again. 
 
 "I don't see why, if you really care about Dolly " 
 
 "What are you after, anyhow? Another elope- 
 ment ? Gad, that would be too damn funny ! ' ' 
 
 "Oh, of course, if you want to laugh " 
 
 "Why shouldn't I? It's no go, that's what it is, 
 you might as well laugh. He's got me, he knows that. 
 I don 't care, I shall manage to see something of Dolly 
 all right, you bet your life. 'Mrs. Dra-ake,' " he half 
 sang, ' ' ' She 's a la-ady, She has a daughter, Whom I
 
 236 BRUTE GODS 
 
 adore. ' Fancy your bein ' struck on that Collett gal, ' ' 
 he added indifferently. 
 
 Alec looked at his brother with a new sharpening 
 of perception. He realized how little dominance of 
 will or spirit there was in him now. Yet he hadn't 
 always been like that. "When the war was on, and be- 
 fore he had got into it, he was different. Had his 
 spirit been used too hard, used up, which was the 
 same, in result, as being broken? Alec, without 
 phrasing his thoughts, had glimpse of the pos- 
 sibility of disintegration of will and spirit by violence, 
 by excess of effort terrifically sustained in the midst 
 of all that unnatural choking abundance of death 
 and torture ; he understood, though vaguely, the isola- 
 tion of himself and all those who, like himself, had 
 been born too late for that call on spirit and will. 
 . . . Mervyn went on with his humming and half- 
 singing. Alec knew what he would say, if he pressed 
 him further. "What's the use?" "Anything for a 
 quiet life." The boy hardened under his brother's 
 acquiescence. He knew now that he'd have to do 
 everything by himself, everything important. 
 
 "Do you know what the guv 'nor said?" Mervyn 
 remarked suddenly. ' ' He said it didn 't really matter 
 much who you married, not after the first year. That 
 if you were anything of a man, you'd make her the 
 right wife for you by then, whatever she was to start 
 with. Queer idea, what? I suppose there may be 
 something in it." 
 
 "Oh, he's never been in love, how could he be?"
 
 DISCLOSURES 237 
 
 ' ' Well, I suppose he meant that after the first year 
 that would be all done with I wonder?" 
 
 "It wouldn't! If you're really in love it lasts for 
 ever, I know it does!" 
 
 "Yes, it does feel that way. Don't see how you 
 know, though, kid like you. Must be time for supper. 
 That's the guv 'nor nosin' about by the shrubbery. 
 Let's clear out. Damn funny how one gets to hate the 
 sight of one's guv 'nor, isn't it? Come along." 
 
 "I want to talk to him." 
 
 "Christ, I don't!" Mervyn sheered off. 
 
 Alec, walking to the shrubbery, felt convincingly 
 that he had given his father his chance, and that his 
 father had deliberately rejected it. He did not see 
 that, with Mr. Glaive, there could never have been 
 any real question of a " chance, ' ' any question of con- 
 scious rejection or acceptance at this set time of his 
 life, least of all. The boy, as he approached, played 
 unwitting comedy in his irresistible sense of being a 
 judge who had passed sentence. 
 
 "Well?" Mr. Glaive screwed up his eyes at him. 
 He thought his demeanour astonishingly insolent. 
 
 ' ' I want to go to London this week. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, indeed." 
 
 "Yes. I'm going to London." 
 
 "I do not allow you to go." 
 
 "All right, then." 
 
 "Do you mean you defy me? I shall not give you 
 one penny not a farthing. I 've had enough of this. ' ' 
 The man's colour drained slowly out. 
 
 ...3 ,
 
 238 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "You're not the only person I can get money 
 from." 
 
 "Oh, I see! I might have expected that. Wil- 
 liams and his gang, they're bent on dishonouring my 
 name to the utmost! They're using you against me, 
 and you can lend yourself to it ! " 
 
 "Williams?" 
 
 "That woman is a a friend, let us say, of his, 
 don't you know that?" 
 
 "I don't care if she is!" Alec missed the impli- 
 cation. 
 
 "If you go, you won't come back." 
 
 "Oh! D'you think I want to?" 
 
 "You admit she gave you money?" 
 
 "I shan't tell you." 
 
 "It is outrageous. I will not have it. You're 
 under age. I I shall appeal to Mr. Collett. Of 
 course I know perfectly well why you want to go to 
 London. Didn't your aunt tell you that it was en- 
 tirely on that woman's account that Williams first " 
 
 "What did you say to to her?" 
 
 "It ought to be enough for you, the knowledge 
 of that association. That should settle the matter 
 absolutely. If you had any sort of regard for me, any 
 sense of the family reputation, any moral sense " 
 
 "What did you say to her?" 
 
 "How dare you take such a tone, sir?" 
 
 Mr. Glaive looked sharply at his son's vivid stiff- 
 ened face. He turned away. His anger and vanity 
 and jealousy began to give ground before the ap- 
 proach of a new attacking force: he laboured un-
 
 DISCLOSURES 239 
 
 easily in the thought of the new humiliation that 
 such a breach with Alec would bring on him. The 
 connection with Miriam a connection terribly, in- 
 decently close disgrace upon disgrace. And here 
 was Alec, silent, obstinate. They would finance him, 
 no doubt . . . anything to feed their malice . . . 
 against him . . . how grossly wicked! 
 
 "You are your own enemy." The father changed 
 his tone, which became grave and reasoned, and con- 
 trolled. "I should not be fair to you, I should be 
 neglecting my responsibility, if I did not point that 
 out. I do not speak of your duty to me. That, I 
 know, you do not regard, not at this moment. Later, 
 you will. No Glaive could ever you will be sorry 
 that you " His voice broke artfully. 
 
 "You haven't told me what she said to you." 
 
 "It is a question of your duty to yourself, it's a 
 question of your career." He intensified the word 
 piously. "Is this a good beginning, Alec I put it 
 to you merely on the grounds of common sense is it 
 beginning well to make a break with your home, to 
 defy your father, your father who has supported and 
 helped and counselled and " his voice dropped, 
 "loved you all these long years?" Carried high on 
 the flow of his idea of himself, he spoke with perfect 
 sincerity. 
 
 "Did you try to persuade her?" 
 
 "I should never act in any way but for your in- 
 terest. I never have, as you well know." Glaive 
 began again to twitch with jealousy of his son and 
 the girl whom he had driven into Malstowe that morn-
 
 240 BRUTE GODS 
 
 ing. The absence of his wife had begun to harass 
 him. Alec must not go to London. "As to my con- 
 versation with Miss Collett " Glaive resolved to be 
 tactful: he would even, in a dignified way, be 
 propitiatory. ' ' As to that ' ' 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "There is nothing to tell you." He paused, with 
 the boy's steady demanding eyes upon him. What 
 audacity! When he had made him! His son! 
 Thank God that Mervyn Recalling his triumph 
 over Mervyn, "You don't imagine," he went on with 
 a familiar swing of sarcasm that reassured him at 
 once, "you don't imagine, do you, that when a woman 
 of her age makes an assignation with a schoolboy the 
 first time she sees him well, there wouldn't be much 
 she could say to his father, would there?" 
 
 "You mean that you didn't talk about me at all?" 
 
 "She was clever enough, experienced enough, not 
 to, and I think I know when to speak and when not to 
 speak. Now, Alec." He remembered his tact. 
 "We've all been under a dreadful strain. Action and 
 reaction. I quite allow for that. I understand, only 
 too well, the terrible influence of example. One evil 
 act. The loosening of one bond in a family may 
 threaten the loosening of all. We have to stand to- 
 gether. As you know, it's not only you I've had 
 to deal with. This trouble with Mervyn and some 
 shady little milliner's apprentice, coming on the very 
 heels of " 
 
 "Lookout!" 
 
 "You are not yourself, Alec. I can't regard either
 
 DISCLOSURES 241 
 
 of you as responsible. But at least Mervyn came to 
 me, he made a clean breast of it, and he ended by see- 
 ing things in the right light." 
 
 "He didn't! Why did you stop Aunt Cathy mar- 
 rying again?" 
 
 "What do you mean?" Mr. Glaive's eye shot 
 angrily. "She told you that?" 
 
 "I know you did." 
 
 "Then disabuse yourself of so so preposterous a 
 notion. Your aunt has always been a perfectly free 
 agent." He determined, viciously, to speak to 
 Catherine. She must have said something. "My 
 advice was given for the best in a matter of which 
 you can know nothing. A matter which it would be 
 most unbecoming in me to discuss with you or with 
 any one." 
 
 Glaive jerked his head impatiently, and started 
 walking back to the house. Alec walked with him, 
 silent, unbelieving. His thoughts of his father's self- 
 ish cruelties, as he saw them, lacked light of older 
 knowledge. He could not realize that Glaive, like 
 your Oriental potentates, found it necessary for his 
 convenience and comfort to have eunuchs about him: 
 the boy could not be expected to appreciate the moral- 
 ity of this predilection which placed his father in such 
 essential support of a society whose rules decree the 
 unsexing of a certain chance few. Nor could Mr. 
 Glaive be expected to explain the matter to him. 
 
 So they walked on without speaking. Mr. Glaive's 
 thoughts turned almost at once from his immaterial 
 sister. The prospect of letting Alec go to Gillian
 
 242 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Collett in London was tormentingly bitter: and why 
 should he, why should he? Who wouldn't be on his 
 side there a father ? But he had to face the fact 
 that if there were a clear break, that would be worse, 
 every one would see it, all eyes would be freshly on 
 him, he knew how. Alec ^nust not go, flouting him: 
 a double calamity, hitting both his jealousy and his 
 self-esteem. He must use all his skill to prevent his 
 son seeing that he was prepared to give way. Surely 
 Alec wouldn 't really go so far. ... If only that un- 
 principled impudent clever wench hadn't given him 
 money ! How could he take it ? No pride. . . . And 
 what obstinacy, what cursed obstinacy! That he 
 should be at the mercy of this young mule! Cath- 
 erine must have been to blame, somehow: if she had 
 had anything to do with it, if she had got herself 
 mixed up in her silly way, he'd pretty soon 
 Glaive's mind struck out in febrile search for some- 
 thing to help him some implement. He felt gravely 
 wronged by a system that gave nothing to his need. 
 There should have been something, it reflected on the 
 general morality that there was not. His sense was 
 that at that moment he ought to have been able to 
 call down a thunderbolt from heaven. 
 
 "You have your work to do for Oxford," he an- 
 nounced with a forced mildness. "This week you 
 were to start coaching with Mr. Braithwaite. You 
 have to pass Smalls, haven't you?" 
 
 '"Smalls'?" Alec half-grunted, half-laughed. 
 The emergences of resemblance between his father and 
 Aunt Cathy were comic. Alec felt, tickling down his 
 back, the ineptitude of this anticlimax.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 DEATH, with its familiar intervention at an 
 awkward haphazard, its familiar accidental 
 wantonness, chose this time. It came up to 
 Alec out of nothing, and addressed itself to him forth- 
 with as an incomparable fact. 
 
 The boy, who could no more take that fact than he 
 could have taken the values of ^Eschylus or Michael 
 Angelo, almost at once ran off from it, with queer 
 brain-buzzings, with specked quiverings of the vistas 
 of his feelings. The tragedy's visible first effect was 
 to make him pull his valise from under the bed and 
 pack it, with a dispatch that was orderly and directed ; 
 indeed, of a meticulous direction unusual to him. He 
 folded each necktie. His mind was traversed by 
 memories of his old nurse, memories of a Malstowe 
 boy with whom he used to go out rat-catching when he 
 was about twelve, schoolday memories, obscene jokes, 
 snatches of poetry. . . . "Down the all-golden 
 waterways, Its feet flew after yesterday's. . . ." 
 "Its feet"? "His feet"? Which was it? "Fear 
 no more the heat o' th' sun, Nor the furious "winter's 
 rages. ..." His nurse used to say it wasn't the 
 wearing the neckties that wore them out, it was the 
 tying them. "That girl's gone and put three 
 blankets on my bed in the middle of the summer, why, 
 I shouldn't need more at Christmas!" Alec reflected 
 
 243
 
 244 BRUTE GODS 
 
 on the certainty of his never forgetting those obser- 
 vations so long as he lived. What was the reason for 
 his remembering them so faithfully, so accurately, 
 with the intonation of each word ? There was nothing 
 round them, nothing else that he could remember. 
 . . . An accident chance no reason, no meaning. 
 That last day at school, the farewell Chapel Service : 
 "Those returning, those returning, Make more faith- 
 ful than before." Hudson major, with his great ugly 
 face, singing lustily. "Faithful"! Aunt Cathy 
 believed in being faithful, that was why. . . . 
 
 But he would not think of Aunt Cathy, nor of 
 Mervyn, nor of his father, nor of He tried hard 
 to think of Gillian, he couldn 't see her, everybody else 
 was more real, that wasn't right, why should they 
 be? Suppose it had been Gillian who had died? A 
 person dying seemed to make everything so awfully 
 unsafe, somehow. He must, must, must go at once. 
 All the more. This determination, sprung from his 
 passion, and already rivalling its dominance, now, 
 under the shock of death, almost replaced it. His 
 recklessness was intensified. Tonight he'd be in 
 London. . . . He went on packing, less carefully, 
 impatiently: he knocked some things on to the floor, 
 he hurried over to the washstand to get his tooth- 
 powder. Dr. Resine must have been in a hurry the 
 evening before. Dr. Resine thought such a lot of him- 
 self, he Alec burst out laughing. The old doctor, 
 with his fat paunch stuck out, he must have been 
 strutting round all over the place, fussing and fum- 
 ing and keeping up his dignity. And all the while
 
 DISCLOSURES 245 
 
 the guv 'nor, in the diningroom, talking, talking, talk- 
 ing rot. . . . Alec sat on the bed, laughing violently. 
 What made it so specially funny was his father not 
 knowing about Dr. Eesine, and Dr. Resine not know- 
 ing about his father; the comic separateness of the 
 two men and of their actions. 
 
 What had happened was that on the yesterday 
 evening Mr. Sidney Starr Glaive, well launched at 
 last on his postponed discourse, doing his best with 
 it, had rejected the interruption of a request from 
 his old friend and near neighbour, the doctor. When 
 there came a tap at the door, he was in the dramatic 
 midst of his exposure of moral issues, both in their 
 larger significances that trailed heavenwards, and in 
 their dispensed application to the recent domestic 
 event : he was engaged, skill at full stride, in putting 
 this domestic event in its final place for himself and 
 his family, and as God saw it. The tap enraged him. 
 
 He had darted to the door and flung it open. 
 
 "You knew you were none of you to come, on any 
 pretext ! ' ' 
 
 "Yes, sir, very sorry, sir, but it's Dr. Eesine 's 
 chauffeur, and he say as how the car hev broke down, 
 and he've a case he fare to hev to goo to at once and 
 please might he borrow ?" 
 
 "Tell the man he's to wait a few minutes." Mr. 
 Glaive slammed the door. 
 
 This annoyance hurt the rest of his harangue, and 
 prolonged it. Those right words that he had had so 
 well in hand for implication of reproof to Alec and 
 Mervyn went awry: he had to go back to them and
 
 246 BRUTE GODS 
 
 pull them straight. But his delayed peroration made 
 amends: "Our union as a family is now, I am con- 
 vinced, more real than ever it was. "We see now that 
 there could have been no real union before this thing 
 happened. Our very foundations were being secretly 
 sapped : the fount of our being was all the while de- 
 filed by the poison of a living lie. Those fair well- 
 springs of our life they had become 'A cistern, for 
 foul toads to knot and gender in.' It is better that 
 we should know, as we know now. The blow has 
 struck hard, but in the very force of its stroke it has 
 welded us firmly. From now on we speak no more 
 of^t: we hold fast, and we hold together." 
 
 "Amen," whispered Mervyn, and Alec, under the 
 reassertion of long association, had to strive against 
 a giggle. Chairs scraped, and again there was a tap 
 at the door. 
 
 "What do you want now?" 
 "Please, sir, Dr. Resine 's chauffeur " 
 "Oh, yes, yes. Can't the man wait a minute or 
 two ? I suppose I shall have to Most inconvenient. 
 It can't be an important patient, or they'd have sent 
 Resine a car of their own. Mervyn, you come with 
 me and see about this." 
 
 It was not till the next day, the Monday, that 
 Alec learnt just how unimportant the patient had 
 been. Dr. Resine had arrived "a minute or two" too 
 late; Frippie Clark and her premature child were 
 dead. She was not in her home, but with an aunt 
 who lived somewhat further from Dr. Resine 's house. 
 Her father had so contrived it, out of a shame quick-
 
 DISCLOSURES 247 
 
 ened by his continual association at the time with his 
 idol, Joe Matcham. 
 
 The young married woman, their former servant 
 Elsie, who had been hanging about near the Glaives' 
 on purpose, gave Alec this information. "Owd Jos 
 Clark," she had said, "he's fair stammed," Suffolk 
 for "bowled over." "What do you think of her 
 now?" was what she looked, but Alec gave her no 
 satisfaction, and she had to relapse compensatingly 
 upon her natural rustic elation at a mortal catastrophe, 
 and upon the prospect of sombre and startling gossip 
 in detail about the affair with the Glaive servants. 
 With Mr. Alec she had to leave out so much! But 
 feminine delicacy would of course cease to be an 
 obstacle in feminine company. 
 
 "He do take it rare hard, pore man. He say he 
 won't be able to look Joe Matcham i' th' face no 
 more ! ' ' 
 
 Alec, at that, had made a sound of contemptuous 
 impatience like a suppressed sneeze. "Oh, well! I 
 must So long, Elsie ! ' ' He left her disappointed 
 and surprised ; she had had only a few scant minutes. 
 
 The boy had gone straight to his room. On the 
 way his first thoughts were of his own guilt, not of 
 his father's. "I never got her those grapes. I never 
 met her that morning. She may have died because 
 of that!" She must have worried about the grapes, 
 he knew she must have. He 'd begun it, and his father 
 had finished finished her off. He'd wanted to kill 
 his father, now he had helped with his father in kill- 
 ing this girl. His father's talk ... he had talked the
 
 248 BRUTE GODS 
 
 girl to death. Alec was not at all occupied by sur- 
 prise either at Frippie's having a child or at his own 
 so recent ignorance of that prospect. Such things 
 happened to village girls who were not " careful"; 
 they might, so he felt, happen at any time; it could 
 never have occurred to him that he might be expected 
 to know beforehand. It was not that he was more 
 "innocent" than most boys of his age and class: 
 it was simply that ''having a child" was not a real 
 concept to him. 
 
 Suddenly, while opening the door of his room, he 
 thought of how he had kissed Frippie, only the other 
 day. He was whelmed in uncomprehended horror, 
 his thoughts stampeded from her: it was then that 
 he took out his valise, with those buzzings and quiver- 
 ings in his brain, while the memories so foreign to 
 the dead girl came on him vivid in a rush, and held 
 him safe. 
 
 Only once again before he left the house did he think 
 of the death which had hastened his leaving. Fasten- 
 ing the straps of his valise, for a moment he ques- 
 tioned: "Ought I to go so soon?" but he did not 
 stay to answer. He went quickly downstairs and put 
 on his hat and coat. He was not either conscious 
 enough or sentimental enough to think that "down 
 the all-golden waterways" Death's feet had flown, 
 or to entertain reflections on what might have been 
 viewed as a step over the coffin of his first love to her 
 successor. Yet she had been his first love, this ill- 
 starred little village strumpet : if she had been merely 
 light to him, his thoughts could have touched her
 
 DISCLOSURES 249 
 
 without that shrinking; he would not have had to go 
 away at once. 
 
 He knocked at his father's Study door. "I'm go- 
 ing to London now," he said. 
 
 "Now?" Mr. Glaive was unprepared, baffled. 
 Taken thus, he could not help looking as he felt, 
 really frightened. "When? How do you think you 
 are going?" 
 
 "I can walk to the village and get a trap to the 
 Station." 
 
 "Oh, for heaven's sake don't do that! What will 
 people think? Alec, I " He confronted his son 
 for an instant, time enough for him to realize the 
 uselessness of any appeal. But, perhaps "Will 
 you not at least listen to Mr. Collett ? ' ' 
 
 "No, I don't want to see him, I couldn't see him " 
 
 ' ' He will be very much hurt if you don 't. I wrote 
 to him yesterday." Mr. Glaive looked at his watch. 
 "I feel sure he'll be up soon, he would hardly come 
 very much later than now." 
 
 "I can't see him. I didn't go to hear his sermon 
 yesterday. ' ' 
 
 ' ' I must say this is hardly the time to be frivolous. 
 Your good taste, at least " 
 
 ' ' What did you write to him ? When do you think 
 he'll be here?" Alec looked apprehensively out of 
 the window. 
 
 "I said nothing but that I was in trouble about 
 you; that I wished very earnestly that he would see 
 fit to use his influence. I asked him to come as soon 
 as he could today."
 
 250 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "He wouldn't make any difference. I must go." 
 Alec turned the door-handle. 
 
 "Well one minute. I must, really, demand of you 
 one minute. I may be doing wrong," he went on 
 in an authoritative tone, "but I have now decided that 
 the best way is to let you learn by experience. It 
 is the only school. Any other father, of course 
 But I have never been the conventional father. My 
 ideas do not run along the usual er grooves. Do 
 you need money? I'll not refuse it you, you shall 
 have it!" Mr. Glaive whipped out his purse. His 
 eyes glistened, he was exhilarated. A gesture like 
 that, at such a time, it was superb! What other 
 father. . . .? Alec was surprised. Good. "Yes, I 
 would give you money." 
 
 "Thanks, I have enough, though." 
 
 "As you will." Having made that large gesture, 
 Glaive was content to be relieved of its material con- 
 sequences. He was still regretting, at intervals, hav- 
 ing given a whole hundred to Mervyn. "You know 
 I have always Well. Perhaps you would be good 
 enough" he spoke with a tinge of his suaver sar- 
 casm "to tell Marshall to get out the two-seater and 
 drive you to the Station?" 
 
 "All right. If you'd rather." Alec was chafing, 
 with continual glances out on to the drive. 
 
 "And one more thing. If I may suppose that you 
 still have some fragment of natural consideration left 
 for me? I don't want unnecessary talk. As a h'm 
 as a matter of simple convenience, I shall say you 
 are staying with a school-friend. To avoid misunder-
 
 DISCLOSURES 251 
 
 standing in the neighbourhood particularly desir- 
 able at this time, you understand? I wish to have a 
 gentleman's agreement with you." 
 
 "Oh, all right." 
 
 "Good-bye," said Mr. Glaive, with the right meas- 
 ure of coldness and restraint. 
 
 Alone, he suppressed the twinges of his jealous 
 moral indignation, though they threatened a special 
 acuteness because Gillian, deliberately committing and 
 binding herself, had told him that she would not 
 under any circumstances marry Alec. . . . The father 
 reflected that his way of dealing with the affair was 
 much the best and wisest. No talk now, no fuss. 
 And Alec wouldn't stay long, surely he couldn't stay 
 long. . . . By calling loudly to mind the pretence that 
 Alec was to stay with a school-friend, Mr. Glaive 
 began almost to believe it. 
 
 Meanwhile the boy, after giving Marshall his orders 
 and having come back for the valise, caught sight of 
 the figure of Father Collett, very black and large, 
 approaching up the drive. He had forgotten him. 
 He hesitated, then went out to meet him, with the 
 valise in his hand. 
 
 "You're going away?" The priest looked grave, 
 not surprised. 
 
 ' ' Yes. I say, I wanted to tell you, I 'm awfully sorry 
 I didn't come yesterday you know to hear you " 
 
 "Oh. Never mind." 
 
 "What what happened?" 
 
 "Nothing happened, my dear boy." 
 
 "Nothing! But you were going to "
 
 252 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "I did. All sermons are alike to them. I kept 
 my promise, Alec. ' ' They turned back together down 
 the drive. 
 
 ' ' I wish I 'd been there. ' ' The boy blushed. 
 
 "You are in love?" 
 
 Alec nodded. 
 
 "With Gillian, then?" 
 
 "Yes, I am." 
 
 "You're going away now to to see her?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well. ' ' A deep shadow of pain was on the priest's 
 face. "It may be better. I think it is better. All 
 this may mean in the end. ..." He broke off, 
 wrought out of his words. "I mean that it shows 
 the difference in you from others, and that gives me 
 my hope. ' ' Alec moved nearer, he could hardly hear 
 him. ' ' You will be drawn, later, with the same force, 
 to another end. You have not, now, that same 
 hatred?" 
 
 "No. No, it's not the same." 
 
 "Ah! She took that away. It was she who did 
 that." 
 
 "I hadn't thought, exactly. I suppose so." 
 
 "Well." Father Collett breathed hard. "All is 
 by His will. Alec, I am resigning the living." 
 
 "Father! Why? Please don't" 
 
 "I can't stay. There is a death to my charge." 
 
 "A death?" 
 
 "I told you, last time, about that girl. If I had 
 advised the marriage " 
 
 "Oh, it was her, then; I didn't"
 
 DISCLOSURES 253 
 
 "You know she is dead." 
 
 ' ' Yes, but that It was my fault, and his ! " 
 
 "Your fault!" 
 
 "Because I didn't want her any more, because I 
 didn't meet her, because I forgot her and made her 
 unhappy. ' ' 
 
 "It was I who made her unhappy. God turns our 
 wisdom into folly, and breaks us on it." 
 
 "It's brutal of him, then!" 
 
 "No. We are blind." They stopped, standing at 
 the gate. 
 
 "Love is brutal, too!" 
 
 "Ah, yes, ours." 
 
 ' ' It might have happened anyhow. It would have. ' ' 
 
 "No, no, she would not have suffered. It would 
 all have been different." 
 
 Alec stood, wondering. That the three of them 
 should have combined to kill her. . . . Who had taken 
 and used them for this, and why? He could not 
 blame his father now, not heavily. 
 
 "The life of the world is sad, and unbeautiful. 
 I have been thinking of resigning for some time, Alec : 
 it was really only because of you that I stayed. Now, 
 there is nothing else for me to do but to go. God 
 has shown me: it was a sign, the girl's death. And 
 the sermon. I speak here to deaf ears. ' ' 
 
 "Couldn't you stay, though, just a little longer?" 
 Alec was seized with that same capricious teasing 
 wish to turn the priest's will. 
 
 "No. I would not. I have already written to the 
 bishop."
 
 254 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "Where will you go?" 
 
 "To Webley. I shall join the Order. It's not 
 really such a sudden decision, Alec. For some while, 
 as I said, I " He was looking on the ground, and 
 then suddenly raised bright eyes to the boy eyes of 
 a peculiar defenceless shining. "You will write to 
 me? Very soon, I mean. I feel I must hear I 
 believe in you, Alec." 
 
 "Well, but You can't be going at once." 
 
 "No. As soon as I can, though. I don't know. 
 I hadn't thought of the time. How long will you 
 be with be away?" 
 
 "I don't know either." The two-seater car ap- 
 proached them. 
 
 "You will write, you will tell me everything?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Alec vaguely as he took the priest's 
 hand. 
 
 Father Collett, looking after the receding car, felt 
 that he could forgive, perhaps all too easily, Alec. 
 He could not forgive Gillian, nor himself.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 MR. CARLYON- WILLIAMS, that saviour of 
 a crushed life, had left the object of his 
 salvation in Torquay, and was himself now 
 returned to London. He found it easier to think up 
 to his ideals of the situation at a distance from it: 
 besides, those last days in Torquay had begun to be a 
 little trying. It was not so easy, he found, to sustain 
 the right role with a constant audience of one, and 
 Miriam sometimes had strange moods. His profound 
 understanding of women, together with his sensitive 
 reaction to the claims of his convenience, had prompted 
 him to leave her for awhile. He had parted from her 
 with the utmost tenderness, a tenderness adequately 
 enough expressed to deserve incorporation in his next 
 novel. She had been very silent, though very: her 
 response would not do for the novel at all. 
 
 One afternoon a week or so after Alec's departure 
 for London, the distinguished author was sitting in 
 a Club named by literary modesty "The Scribblers '/' 
 giving the final touch to one of his articles for The 
 Woman's Republic. At intervals he would keep as- 
 sembling his equipment for confirmation of himself 
 in the role that he now was playing, with the assur- 
 ance of a much more habitual practice, for an audi- 
 ence of many. He had passed through a great ex- 
 perience, a spiritual experience of fine flight through 
 the arena of the higher moralities. His next novel 
 
 255
 
 256 BRUTE GODS 
 
 would be devoted to the exposition of that winged 
 way. He might call it that "The Winged Way" 
 only how could he indicate, on the cover, that 
 "Winged" was to be given two syllables? "Wing'd 
 Way" wouldn't do. ... "The Release of of" 
 ah, "Sabrina" that was splendid, because Sabrina 
 had been beneath the tides. ' ' The Release of Sabrina 
 Wyeherly." " Sabrina 's Release." Better. More 
 distinctive. He took a bit of paper from his pocket 
 and jotted the title down. "Winged way," too: he 
 would bring that in. 
 
 Mr. Carlyon-Williams looked at his hands. They 
 were delicate and white. He had just been washing 
 them. Hands indicated so much: he had certainly 
 improved the look of his by squeezing juice from a 
 lemon upon them every night. Now he would be able 
 to do that again. Since he had been with Miriam 
 he had had to forego the lemon-juice. The odour of 
 it was noticeable, besides he couldn't have risked her 
 seeing. ... A great experience. Washing his hands 
 in the Club Lavatory, he had looked at himself 
 earnestly in the glass. His good looks had not been 
 affected at all; not unfavourably, that is. They 
 seemed to have been heightened, rather, to something 
 indefinably better and nobler. This was as it should 
 be: for Mr. Carlyon-Williams 's expressed philosophy 
 largely lay in a steadfast belief in himself and every 
 one else on his horizon being better and nobler than 
 they really were. Every gesture of his, every tone 
 of his voice, even the way he brushed his pleasantly 
 curling hair, betokened this philosophy.
 
 DISCLOSURES 257 
 
 Miriam, though. . . . He could not make her fit, 
 except by difficulties that were really awkward, into 
 his scheme. Leaning back in his chair, with his manu- 
 script on his knee, he frowned slightly, the gaze of his 
 artificially fine eyes was clouded, his uncontrolled 
 mouth, thin-lipp'd, with its look of emotional esuri- 
 ence, twitched a little. Not for the first time in his 
 life was he ruffled and disconcerted by the fact that 
 women, as soon as you got on really serious terms 
 with them, never behaved as you had planned that they 
 should, never said the things that you had, so to 
 speak, written for them. Not even the women who 
 had been his most whole-hearted disciples, the most 
 ardent admirers of his work. His wife, for instance. 
 She had disappointed him the most of all. If she 
 had really been so enthusiastic over his novels, the 
 least she could have done was to behave something 
 like the people in them. Of course the great mistake 
 there had been the child the intrusion of the child. 
 A mistake he would never repeat. It was true that 
 the amours of his fiction characters were never rudely 
 complicated by the coming of children, they were al- 
 ways mysteriously enriched. Still, the love of the 
 artist himself should be sterile. 
 
 Mr. Carlyon-Williams's career as a husband had 
 been cut short rather more than a year ago. Re- 
 sponsibility for the breach rested entirely with his 
 wife's singular failure to realize the susceptibilities 
 of his temperament. He had found it impossible to 
 stay with her during her confinement : it was terrible 
 to this expert in spiritual suffering to come within
 
 258 BRUTE GODS 
 
 the grosser ranges of physical pain. The man who 
 had celebrated the sacred mysteries of motherhood in 
 half-a-dozen novels was driven post-haste to the 
 Eiviera by the prospect of his wife's initiation: he 
 could not but deprive himself of attendance upon all 
 the poetical and holy circumstances that wait on the 
 miracle of the birth of a child. When he had re- 
 turned the house was closed. Mrs. Carlyon- Williams 
 had gone to live with her mother; from that time on 
 she had refused to see him. 
 
 Nearly half-past five. He must finish revising that 
 article. She would soon be there for it. Now why 
 exactly was Gillian coming, why did she want to, 
 what did it mean ? He had offered to send the article 
 to her Office; he had had a certain delicacy about 
 meeting her again so soon, he had even avoided this 
 Club of which they both were members. But "Oh, 
 I may as well come, ' ' she had said : "I rather want 
 to see you." Mr. Williams, pondering, wished she 
 had said that with a different intonation. The words, 
 even over the telephone, might have been given some 
 undercurrent, so many kinds of undercurrents. 
 There might have been a hint of something, a nuance, 
 something secret and subtle. He now, even in the few 
 outwardly unimportant things he had said to her. . . . 
 She had always been unfeminine, had Gillian: but 
 even the most vauntedly unfeminine women were not 
 unf eminine to him, if they were attractive ; he saw to 
 that. At least, there was the fact : she wanted to see 
 him. And no doubt her tone was merely a blind, 
 she had protected herself by it. Well, he would be
 
 DISCLOSURES 259 
 
 dignified and aloof, she had treated him very badly, 
 and now his affair with Miriam had made her think 
 better of it. Perhaps now. . . . Mr. Williams re- 
 solved to be on the look-out. And he would be care- 
 ful to hold by his present advantage over her; she 
 deserved that he should. . . . Oh, but she had been 
 cold and heartless! Eeally, he should never have 
 risked being involved with her, why had he? He 
 meditated, then found the answer: of course she had 
 wanted to pick his brains. So she had led him on, 
 deceiving him through his love of beauty. 
 
 Ah, he was too easily exposed to beauty, that was 
 it. Miriam ... he must write to Miriam tonight. 
 A pity that it was not so easy or so exciting to write 
 to her now as it had been when he was only her half- 
 acknowledged lover. But his last words to her had 
 been that he would write every day. How unfortu- 
 nate again he was ruffled that when he had prom- 
 ised this he had called her ' ' Gillian. ' ' The two names 
 were in a way alike not an unnatural slip : and some- 
 how the parting and the promise to write had re- 
 minded him of Gillian. Heaven knew the two women 
 were sufficiently unlike, though. ... At least Miriam 
 was womanly. It, was indeed, her unquestionable 
 womanliness that had drawn him so profoundly : a re- 
 action from Gillian 's abruptness, her challenging ways, 
 her casualness, her half-mocking air of being on equal 
 terms, her habit of taking everything for granted, 
 as though there could be nothing between them that 
 really mattered. Miriam was tender and serious, she 
 had the true romantic depths, her appeal was in the
 
 260 BRUTE GODS 
 
 names of Protection and Pity. How healing she had 
 been to him after Gillian's rebuffs! Gillian, who 
 had so crudely tripped up his lovemaking by telling 
 him that he "didn't amuse her, not in that way." 
 Actually, when he had come down specially to Mal- 
 stowe, for the week when she was to be there, she 
 had said that. "Oh, Carl, you mustn't, I'm only 
 human!" was what she should have said. As it was, 
 of course everything was over and almost immedi- 
 ately there had followed the revelation of Miriam 
 Glaive. Miriam of course was very wonderful. . . . 
 Confound that girl, she had put him out of gear, she 
 had brought it all back, he didn't want to see her, 
 his delicacy had prompted him rightly. Perhaps she 
 had telephoned to him out of deliberate malice and 
 mischief. Still, it might be that she ... it might 
 be. . . He set himself to the article.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 WHEN, a few minutes later, he was conscious 
 of Gillian, Mr. Carlyon-Williams con- 
 tinued his task without looking up. She 
 was almost at his elbow before he raised his eyes. 
 He gave a little start, he was mildly taken aback, 
 then he rose, faintly smiling, as though she had 
 brought him up to the surface of a deep dream. 
 
 "I hope I may say 'Well met'?" 
 
 "I don't know why you shouldn't. Have you 
 done with this?" 
 
 She put out her hand for the manuscript. He 
 watched her with gravity well poised, and was glad 
 to see that she seemed a little nervous. 
 
 "There are still the last paragraphs. But I 
 think they can stand. ' ' He bestowed the article upon 
 her. "We might perhaps as you wished to see 
 me." They moved to a more secluded corner. It 
 was one of the less frequented upstairs rooms of the 
 Club, and now, in August, practically deserted. Mr. 
 Carlyon-Willams, prompted by his susceptibilities, 
 remained standing. "You still have the hands of a 
 Tanagra statuette," his voice was low "a statuette 
 of pale bronze." 
 
 ' ' No new tricks since I last saw you ? ' ' 
 
 " 'Tricks'!" He drew back, aggrieved. "It has 
 not been a time for tricks new or old." 
 
 261
 
 262 BRUTE GODS 
 
 1 ' Oh, that 's just what I should have thought it had 
 been. New and old. You don't think I remember?" 
 
 "Ah, you were always determined to misunder- 
 stand!" 
 
 She had attacked him at once, she must be in love 
 with him! Mr. Carlyon-Williams trusted in the 
 literary rule of thumb that a woman never attacks 
 a man unless she's either in love with him or so much 
 piqued by him that it amounts to practically the same 
 thing. "Don't you think I remember?" she had 
 said : she had taken him back to that time of theirs. . . . 
 Of course she was reacting from his capture of Miriam. 
 He gave her one of his deep looks. Certainly she was 
 on edge not quite controlled. He could tell by her 
 lips. Their disdainful flicker had both excited and 
 affronted him : now he was affronted no longer. 
 
 "Since our last meeting " He lowered his voice 
 again, he meant to be a little cruel. "Since then, I 
 have voyaged very far." 
 
 "Have you? Ah, you mean spiritually, of course. 
 At least I haven't misunderstood you there I 
 couldn't." Her laugh discomposed him: it was not 
 in the right tone. 
 
 "You belittle everything," he told her. "Is that 
 the way to reach to whatever value and beauty Life 
 holds? Always to dispraise, to make a mock " 
 
 He went on, but her thoughts were with Alec's 
 stepmother. All her interest in Carlyon-Williams 
 was strained through Alec. She had come to see him 
 under the pressure of her sense of the new startling 
 relation sprung up between them from her love for
 
 DISCLOSURES 263 
 
 the boy whose father's wife he had taken: she had 
 wanted to know if Williams had, after all, been capable 
 of doing this serious thing seriously, of accepting 
 seriously what had been done for him. She knew 
 well enough why he had never been able to reach to 
 herself : because he had never had the courage to give 
 himself up, because he had always remembered that 
 the right thing for him to do was to play the god be- 
 fore women, and that love was an occasion for beauti- 
 ful sentiments. He had been afraid of that passionate 
 clear forth-swept adoration by which Alec had won 
 her afraid of its strength, afraid of its marring of 
 his role. Gillian did not then admit that Carlyon- 
 Williams, if different in this, could have been loved 
 by her; but the concealed contingency affected her, 
 and had sharpened her curiosity about Williams 's 
 emotion for Mrs. Glaive. She had wanted, even 
 jealously, a little, to find out if this adventure proved 
 him capable of love; if he had given to Alec's step- 
 mother what he had so utterly failed to offer to her. 
 But, for Alec 's sake, she hoped that he had ; for Alec 's 
 sake she wanted him to treat Mrs. Glaive well, not 
 simply to go on playing the god to her, for she 
 couldn't live on that nor stay v in it. The poor woman 
 must have looked for romance, for some great emanci- 
 pation through love, some deep equalizing of all Life 's 
 issues for her; and if she found that what she had 
 got was something trifling and wordy, a thing of 
 mock flights and mock subtleties and weak desire in 
 mask What would she do then? And how would 
 Alec be implicated? "What will she do?" Gillian
 
 264 BRUTE GODS 
 
 now asked, for here was Hugh. Carlyon- Williams 
 talking on in quite the old style, not altered in the 
 least, making great play, at that moment, with those 
 pompous monsters, the "eternal verities." And he 
 had begun a toying of sentiment with her at once. 
 
 Mr. Williams continued to expound the wonder and 
 beauty and truth of his far voyage. "I can talk to 
 you." He was sitting by her now, leaning close. 
 "You are the only woman in the world with whom I 
 could talk so about another woman and myself." 
 ("But you've said absolutely nothing that I couldn't 
 have guessed you would say," she thought.) "You 
 and you alone can understand the the inevitability 
 of this thing. It was inevitable, as great artistic 
 creations are. Yes, it had to be. A call that com- 
 pelled : we 'could no other. ' I can't tell you how glad 
 I am that you came today, Gillian. You've brought 
 me just the expression the purge of my feeling 
 that I needed. And you've made me realize the beau- 
 tiful separateness and rarity of that strange special 
 relation we bear to one another. Nothing, of course, 
 can ever affect that. It will always stand, untouched, 
 unshaken, whatever happens. We poor frail accre- 
 tions of humanity! How our poverty and frailness 
 scatter from us at one single sweet breath of that 
 sympathy we know! Yes, some things are eternally 
 true." 
 
 He proceeded to caress their sympathies, while the 
 girl kept wondering, more baffled than before, why 
 he had run off with the stepmother. There couldn't 
 have been force enough in himself for that. Of course
 
 DISCLOSURES 265 
 
 Gillian knew that it was out of pique at his failure 
 with her that the man had begun to take his affair with 
 Mrs. Glaive seriously; but neither pique nor his love 
 of a theatrical coup projecting himself postured in 
 the high-lights could account for the Carlyon-Williams 
 that she knew having committed himself so far and 
 so palpably facing scandal that might hurt him, 
 risking a divorce suit. There must have been some 
 extraordinary determination, some intense driving 
 force from the woman, driving with fury out of sup- 
 pression. Or perhaps she had got him into a position 
 from which he couldn't draw back without looking 
 ridiculous. . . . Alec had never told her anything 
 that made his stepmother in the least definite: she 
 had asked him, she had found it odd that he had so 
 little to say. 
 
 "What is she like?" Gillian interrupted suddenly. 
 "I can't see why you're not with her now." 
 
 "Oh, I return I return very soon. It would 
 hardly do for me to lose touch with with " 
 
 "With the literary life of the metropolis. Of 
 course not. Besides, you had to see how people were 
 taking it to feel the public pulse. Naturally. But 
 tell me something about her." 
 
 ' ' Surely, Gillian, from what I 've said you must have 
 gathered " 
 
 "I haven't gathered anything. You might have 
 been talking of yourself and any woman in the world. 
 I suppose you'd be bound to talk in exactly the same 
 way, whoever the woman was." 
 
 "Egoism is hardly one of my failings." Mr. Wil-
 
 266 BRUTE GODS 
 
 liams secretly expanded under this fresh attack. He 
 was sure she must care. "But to describe Miriam " 
 
 "Yes, in detail, quite simply." 
 
 "Oh, my dear!" He was lightly reproachful. 
 "How can I? I am too too near to her, as it were, 
 surely you can see " It was clear to Mr. Williams 's 
 delicacy that his giving Gillian a detailed and simple 
 description of Miriam would be unbecoming. His 
 impressionist picture of vague emotional complexities 
 had been another affair altogether. "No, don't ask 
 me. Really, it would mean nothing." 
 
 "Well. Tell me," she breathed hard "tell me 
 about her family." 
 
 "Oh, the family!" Mr. Carlyon-Williams felt 
 positively triumphant. Gillian's insistence her evi- 
 dent agitation it could only mean one thing. "I 
 found her crushed and cramped by her family. Ah, 
 my dear, what hideous sacrifices family life demands ! 
 She was in terrible spiritual suffering terrible and 
 constant. At once, I knew; and she knew my sym- 
 pathy. Her husband a vile little snob, nearly twice 
 her age, a withered mean little soul, a vampire of 
 egoism for her, sucking the blood of her every aspira- 
 tion, her every But you must have seen him and the 
 others when you were " 
 
 "Oh, hardly in the most cursory sort of way. 
 j " 
 
 She bit her lip and paled, while Mr. Williams noted 
 these fresh indications of his victory upon her. Of 
 course it was all because of his having taken Miriam.
 
 DISCLOSURES 267 
 
 How strange women were, how erratic, how incalcula- 
 ble, how fascinating in their convolutions! 
 
 "I've never been in the house," she added rapidly. 
 
 "It is a prison," he declared. "Nothing can go 
 free there, neither heart nor -soul nor spirit. In that 
 house it is really terrible, Gillian you have the 
 sense of there not being room for anything 
 noble or fine. And she was shut up there. I thank 
 heaven that I could be the instrument of her release. 
 The highest service that I have ever been allowed. . . . 
 Why, her soul was gradually wasting away! Her 
 heart was being drained dry I ' ' Mr. Williams 's words 
 reassured him. 
 
 "How about the rest of the family?" Gillian felt 
 uneasy and caught. 
 
 "Oh, there was a a sort of an aunt. A most 
 poisonous and malevolent old widow who combined 
 with that weasel of a husband to make Miriam's life 
 intolerable. Why should we speak of such people? 
 I can only feel grateful beyond measure that Miriam 
 is at last clear of them all. Really it is marvellous 
 that she hadn't been wrecked altogether " 
 
 "Weren't there I thought there were some boys." 
 
 "Oh, the stepson. A young fellow with a lacka- 
 daisically insulting manner. Blue eyes, pink cheeks, 
 hair almost flaxen you know the complete Saxon 
 type. They ought never to be allowed to grow up. 
 'Not Angles, but angels' is all very well when they're 
 little boys. Later on, it's the most unsympathetic 
 type I know. She had no comfort in him, I'm sure
 
 268 BRUTE GODS 
 
 of that. That kind of boy doesn't know what sym- 
 pathy means no Celtic feeling. I disliked him at 
 once. Lackadaisical and slangy, no brains whatever. 
 A mere surface. He was in the war, of course ; much 
 good it 's done him ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' He has a brother, hasn 't he ? " 
 
 "My dear girl," "Williams was beginning to be 
 bored "really I take no particular note of school- 
 boys. I always imagined that schools existed for the 
 purpose of keeping them out of sight. The younger 
 boy I suppose he was inking his fingers in some class- 
 room or other; anyhow, I hardly saw him." 
 
 "You did. You must have, I mean." 
 
 ' ' Oh, yes. I dimly recall a gauche youth with long 
 legs and reddish sort of hair. Very shy. He blushed 
 and gulped. I'm afraid I neglected any analysis of 
 his personality." 
 
 Gillian turned her head and shielded her face, lean- 
 ing on her elbow. She was scarlet. She was furious 
 with Williams, he had ridiculed her. And Alec 's hair 
 was beautiful : any one would say so. She must hurt 
 Carlyon- Williams somehow: not only his odiously 
 tolerant ridicule, but his exaggeration of Alec's youth, 
 enraged her; it turned all her doubts back on to her 
 with sharpened and agonizing edge. 
 
 "And now " Mr. Williams, his eyes resting on 
 the girl 's averted head what delicious hair she had ! 
 spoke with discreet tenderness. "Now tell me 
 about yourself." 
 
 "Oh, come, that's good of you!" She looked up, 
 and catching his expression, was seized, for all her
 
 DISCLOSURES 269 
 
 violence of trouble and suffering and rage, with a 
 deliberate, a wicked desire to be provocative, to move 
 his blood. "You really do want to know about me?" 
 
 "Of course." He leaned to her, responding to the 
 mood that her look had given him a response of 
 readier verve because of her contrast with Miriam, 
 who never could have looked like that, so enticingly 
 young and flushed and tumbled. "You know that 
 our shared hours are indestructible for me, whatever 
 happens. Gillian " Her drooped hand was vivid 
 to his senses, and he only just saved himself from 
 repeating his remark about the Tanagra statuette, in 
 the agitation of the moment. Instead, he touched her 
 hand, very lightly. 
 
 "Oh, no!" 
 
 She drew away sharply. She felt ashamed of her- 
 self, grossly disgusted by her instant success in turn- 
 ing him that way. "I'm a courtezan," she thought. 
 "I must have the nature of a courtezan." And, 
 looking at Carlyon-Williams with eyes clear of any 
 sex-attraction for him, she was impressed by the ab- 
 surdity of the spectacle presented by a desirous man : 
 he seemed so intent, so hot, so babyishly grave, so fret- 
 ted, but so comically holding himself together, even 
 with a sort of spurious dignity 
 
 "You mistake me, Gillian." Williams broke the 
 pause, during which he had been thinking out the 
 best line to take with her. "I wish I could tell you 
 a little the thoughts I have of you. I am alto- 
 gether loyal to Miriam, but your sphere and hers are 
 far apart. There can be no conflict for me there.
 
 270 BRUTE GODS 
 
 You mean something to me that is far beyond any 
 mere physical rapport. You " 
 
 He broke off, halted by the fresh stir that the now 
 receding flush of her clear cheeks made in him. Those 
 lively fluctuations of light in her eyes disconcerted his 
 eloquence, so did the little quick ripples that would 
 keep going about her throat and breast. 
 
 ''It's something that goes far past the common sex- 
 excitement," he resumed, recovering himself. "Oh, 
 altogether outsoaring that!" He trembled : he opened 
 greedy arms to his exaltation that he really believed 
 in as pure. "How often I have dreamed that we 
 might> " 
 
 "I'm afraid you flatter us both too much. You 
 oh, well!" Gillian, for all her recognition of his 
 humbug, for all her antagonism, could not help being 
 gratified and pleased by the appeal, but she steadied 
 herself by reflecting that it was one of the most telling 
 that could be offered to a woman's sex-vanity. 
 
 "I really " Williams, noting his effect, and 
 thinking her rejoinder extremely promising, leaned 
 to her. "This coarser and cruder sense-passion in 
 my truer moments I am filled with detestation of 
 it! I know, and you know how intrinsically stale 
 and vulgar " 
 
 " 'Vulgar'!" The girl, remembering, turned from 
 him, and her eyes shone. "Oh, you know nothing 
 about it, then nothing!" 
 
 "My boy!" she thought, and again, as for the first 
 time in the Tower moat, she felt that tremor rise and 
 break through her ; but now she clutched at her sense
 
 DISCLOSURES 271 
 
 of it, in new knowledge, with a grinding tenacity to 
 which she had since grown. Mr. Carlyon-Williams 
 exulted. He could do anything with her now! The 
 signs were unmistakeable. It was not the first time 
 that fervent praise of chaste love had brought him 
 a woman's surrender. Hot and heavy with thoughts 
 of their next appointment, "Oh, my darling!" he 
 whispered. 
 
 "Oh!" She sprang up, she shocked him by her 
 look of genuine anger a look that held its ground 
 against his perplexed disappointment, while her mind 
 framed: "How dare you?" "What do you think 
 I am?" all the conventionalities of indignant pro- 
 test. "You don't know," she said instead, haltingly. 
 
 "What, Gillian, what?" He rose slowly. 
 
 "Oh, I belong to some one else, altogether!" 
 
 ' ' Whal^- ? " He groped, he felt a fool. ' ' What am 
 I to understand by that?" 
 
 "Oh, you can understand all that there is to be 
 understood. ' ' 
 
 "A lover you mean fully?" 
 
 "Fully; yes." 
 
 "Oh, Gillian! You!" 
 
 He sank heavily into the chair, and put his hand 
 over his face. For all the theatricality of the gesture, 
 he was hard hit. He had seemed so near : and even at 
 the times when, before, he had given up hope of her, his 
 consolation had been that she was invincibly cold. 
 He had thus spared himself the sense of personal de- 
 feat, and he could endure the thought of her as un- 
 attainable by him if she were unattainable by any
 
 272 BRUTE GODS 
 
 one else. He could even make for himself something 
 fine out of this, something worthy of inclusion in his 
 biography as a rare spiritual relation, the relation 
 he had been talking of, one shining especially for 
 him, in unique pale lustre . . . the love of a moon- 
 maiden, a matter for literary pride. He had con- 
 vinced himself, in spite of every difficulty she had 
 thrust against him, that he was and must always be 
 the nearest to a lover that her nature could accept. 
 In that conviction he had rested, content with the idea 
 that he could always come back to her and touch her 
 hand and find it virgin. He had wished to come back 
 to her in this way, not now, of course, but after a 
 decent interval. . . . So this was why she had " rather 
 wanted to see" him. . . . Oh, the girl had no feeling, 
 no sensitiveness of fibre . . . cruel. He had dreamed 
 of her as always untouched, with himself in this 
 distinguished close relation to her being so, himself 
 understanding it all with such completeness. And 
 now Mr. Williams, like Mr. Glaive, sided vehe- 
 mently with morality. He forgot all about the recent, 
 the earthier emotions in which Gillian had moved 
 him. He sat with bowed head, redeemed for the 
 moment from his flimsiness, overcome by the blank 
 finality of his loss. Alec had avenged his father. 
 
 When the smitten idealist looked up, Gillian was 
 sitting opposite him reading his article. 
 
 "Of course it's nothing to you," he said, strug- 
 gling against the peevish tone provoked by her heart- 
 less composure. 
 
 "My dear Carl!" She was light-hearted then be-
 
 DISCLOSURES 273 
 
 cause of her relief in having told him and punished 
 him. And she couldn 't pursue revenge with Carlyon- 
 Williams: once having hit him, she had to treat it 
 as a joke. "For a man who's been married and sep- 
 arated and then run off with somebody else's wife, 
 I must say you're rather exacting." 
 
 "You invoke common standards?" Carlyon-Wil- 
 liams looked shocked. "You know how all that " 
 he waved his past from him "how it made its way 
 on me." 
 
 Gillian knew how, more or less, but she was in no 
 mood for the emotional elaborations that would follow 
 any reminder. ' ' "Well, ' ' she said lightly, with a wil- 
 ful flick of the whip, "haven't I been 'made way on' 
 too?" 
 
 "Ah, but but you a girl." 
 
 "Miriam Glaive's sex is not in doubt, I suppose?" 
 
 "Oh, Gillian, I won't argue with you! We're be- 
 yond that, we're beyond words. I had dreamed that 
 we might but alas for dreams! To think that you 
 came to see me out of simple cruelty ! ' ' 
 
 "Oh, but I didn't not in the least! It was be- 
 cause well " She was at a loss; nothing would 
 have induced her to tell him that her lover was Alec 
 Glaive. "Oh, I couldn't have imagined that you'di 
 mind my being being involved, when you're so very 
 deep in yourself." 
 
 "Ah, well! I suppose that now we must always be 
 far apart, calling to one another from distant peaks. 
 I knew you had changed," he said sadly. "And you 
 are sure you have really found the great secret?"
 
 274 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "You can afford to patronize me, of course. When 
 one has found it a dozen times or so when the dis- 
 covery is quite habitual " 
 
 "Gillian, is this generous of you?" There she 
 was again, as in the old days, tripping up his senti- 
 ments and emotions, tumbling them flat over on to 
 their faces. "When you know what I must be feel- 
 ing But be sure," he went on weightily, "that if 
 indeed you have if you are then there is no one 
 more unfeignedly glad for you than I." He looked 
 at her searchingly, with veiled calculation. Perhaps 
 some wave of reaction against surrender and passion 
 might bear her to him yet. "Surely you know that 
 I can understand " 
 
 "Oh, but you can't, you never could I'm sure! 
 That's what I always knew, that's why You, with 
 your ideas, your ideals, your continual deferring to 
 them of everything you begin to feel, your continual 
 forcing into them of every one and everything that 
 comes to you ! That unfortunate woman ! ' ' 
 
 "She does not consider herself so. She was." 
 
 "I dare say! That's the whole pity of it." Gil- 
 lian, in sudden renewal of the agitation that her dis- 
 closure to Williams had quelled, felt her whole body 
 strain and tingle. She cast about for an outlet. Wil- 
 liams hurried his defences against the polemic readi- 
 ness of her mouth, against the lighted threat of her 
 eyes that seemed to hold the start of the spring she 
 was drawn together for. "Look at the kind of people 
 who come here!" she burst out. "Our kind. What
 
 DISCLOSURES 275 
 
 do you think they can do for any society, for any in- 
 dividual?" 
 
 "My dear girl, you really cannot make me answer- 
 able" 
 
 "I hate the sight of them. They injure me they 
 degrade me, can you understand? ever since since 
 he came. Can't you see that they've got all the 
 hypocrisies and sentimentalisms of conventional peo- 
 ple, they can't have their little 'immoralities' with- 
 out pretence any more than a stockbroker can. I 
 won't tell them anything!" she added fiercely. "I 
 won't have them pretending about me, fingering us 
 over!" 
 
 "There's a good deal in what you say." Carlyon- 
 Williams was not ill pleased. His vanity was incom- 
 patible with a high opinion of his contemporaries. ' ' I 
 have certainly felt, myself " 
 
 "Oh, you! What have you done but take ad- 
 vantage of it all? You make copy out of it! All 
 this looseness of mind, this horrible mixture of sen- 
 timentality and slack sensualism that has to have its 
 gilding. You feed on it all the time, you live on it! 
 With your stories of these free, modern men and 
 women, these pretty ones who 'out of the conscious- 
 ness of their new age' " 
 
 ' ' You are most unjust. ' ' Williams flushed angrily. 
 It did seem unpardonably unfair, this striking him 
 in the face with a quotation from that article she 
 had just been reading. "Because you have a lover, 
 I don't see why you should turn on an old friend."
 
 276 BRUTE GODS 
 
 1 ' I want to turn on everything ! ' ' Looking hard at 
 the man, she longed to turn on him most of all, to 
 assault his plumed personality, to lay violent hands on 
 it. But the touch of that personality numbed her 
 fingers, made them blunt and impotent, with the nor 
 warm nor cold numbness of a limb that has "fallen 
 asleep." "I can't take hold of you," she cried, 
 "you're drugged! What a mess we're all of us 
 in!" 
 
 "My dear girl!" Mr. Carlyon-Williams, who had 
 been standing very upright before Gillian since her 
 offence of him, sat down again and drew his chair to 
 her. "I I think you want me to help you, to try 
 to help you, don't you?" He indicated to her, deli- 
 cately, a ministering hand. "You have been thrown, 
 I can see, into a ferment " 
 
 "Not your kind of ferment, though. I don't deal 
 in your emotional specialities, as I've told you before. 
 It's simply that I've never been so unbearably sick- 
 ened by this perpetual fake that you and all the rest 
 of them keep up, of doing everything from the highest 
 motives! You yourself I suppose you've been in 
 love with a dozen women at least, but then of course 
 you've had the highest ideals of all of them ! "Whether 
 it's taking some one else's wife or husband, or keeping 
 a mistress or leaving one, there has to be this per- 
 petual attempt at sublimation, and it rots you all!" 
 She clenched her fist, and her voice rose so sharply 
 that Williams gave a glance round the room. "Any- 
 thing would be better. Why can't you any of you 
 simply do what you want to do and keep quiet ? But
 
 DISCLOSURES 277 
 
 it has to be in the name of some new revelation, 
 some higher law! It's better to be afraid of scandal 
 than to have to lean on that kind of humbug ! ' ' 
 
 "I don't understand you, Gillian. Sincerity is my 
 whole aim " 
 
 "We must have some tightening of the strings." 
 She threw back her head, she looked on past Williams, 
 seeming to leave him out of count, annoying him so 
 much that he resolved not to listen to what she said. 
 "We must get it somehow or it'll mean that the 
 huge effort of the war will simply have done for us 
 altogether. We people After all, what do we do, 
 for all our talk? We've lost the courage even to be 
 wicked. We creep into all our passions by the back 
 doors, we've lost the power of defying or accepting, 
 we're not safe without our texts on the wall to re- 
 mind us and keep us in countenance." 
 
 "Good heavens! If you include me as if I ever 
 aimed at safety!" Mr. Williams felt it very nec- 
 essary to impress himself at that moment. Again 
 she provoked his senses, and now he knew it was no 
 use being provoked. That intransigeant look of hers 
 had always whipped him amorously, and in her 
 present vivid excitement of hostility she breathed her- 
 self too fully out for his peace of mind, she came too 
 physically against him through the mobilities of her 
 mouth, the shining and moistening of her eyes, all the 
 pressures of her unruliness. His susceptibility to 
 beauty sometimes made uncalled for demonstrations. 
 "I defy and I accept with absolute freedom and 
 courage. ' '
 
 278 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "Ah, but you haven't the courage to stand on 
 your own feelings and face them as yours. You 
 never had, that was always the trouble. If only 
 your idealisms hadn 't sophisticated you in that way. ' ' 
 
 She stopped, struck by her having taken from the 
 boy that direct strong passion which this man, with 
 his thwarting mania for Platonic heights and am- 
 biguous fine involutions had had to withhold from her ; 
 struck by the cruel irony of her not being able to 
 keep the boy's gift, not being able to sustain in Alec 
 all that she could so well have held fast by in an older 
 lover. Alec soon would know the inequality that she 
 knew now, the edges of that inequality would show 
 ah, they were showing ! with the lifting of the mists 
 of his first fervours. Young love she couldn't give 
 him young love that he needed: she had hoodwinked 
 him with a counterfeit, and he'd find her out. Gil- 
 lian's state was indeed, as Williams had said, one of 
 "ferment"; but all the suffering of the ferment came, 
 not from her passion, but from her terrible and haunt- 
 ing insecurity. She had begun to feel appallingly 
 caught. More and more cruelly she was rent by the 
 conviction that real completion of love was impossible 
 here, for all her surrender and his. Her experience, 
 her brain, had spoiled her for taking immediate joy as 
 itself, spoiled her for living in the simple beauty of 
 the moment. She could wish, now, that this had 
 never happened to them. She could even reproach 
 Williams for not having been strong and clear enough 
 to give her what might have saved her from this. 
 She was in suffering of a stroke clear from Nature,
 
 DISCLOSURES 279 
 
 a stroke that could have fallen upon her in what con- 
 dition soever of society or morals. This she knew, 
 and knowing, she struck out in a harried abjuring of 
 what was to her now the poor littleness of moral re- 
 form, moral revolution. She was constrained to an 
 attack upon efforts the success or failure of which 
 could mean nothing to her nothing really deeply to 
 any one, so her thoughts cried out. 
 
 Carlyon- Williams, meanwhile, had been protesting 
 to inattentive ears his innocence of sophistication and 
 his profound conviction of the value of true courage. 
 
 "All the same," she interrupted him, "there's no 
 real courage left. It's the most ridiculous of all 
 periods!" 
 
 "Oh, come!" Mr. Williams remembered his 
 written word. "It's the greatest period of recon- 
 struction ever seen so much that's in formation, 
 so much that's being tested. An age of new insight, 
 new demands. And everywhere minorities are wrest- 
 ling for the control of the future. You can't be- 
 lieve that we strive vainly, you used not to think so. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, I used to think that marriage reform and the 
 motto of 'Every woman her own breadwinner' would 
 save us all. But we are ridiculous. We just twitter, 
 and play with our brains, we're as useless for our- 
 selves as we are for what we call 'society.' We go 
 perching on one and another of our little branches 
 while the working-people and the clever politicians 
 are fighting it out between them." It relieved her 
 greatly, this forcing of herself from personal tur- 
 moil to general vistas. "And all the working-people
 
 280 BRUTE GODS 
 
 have got are the better wage and the higher standard 
 of comfort ideals, all the politicians have got is 
 adaptability and shrewdness and their drab doctrine 
 of ' Keep as much of your skin as you can. ' We want 
 some aristocrats to save us, and there aren't any left. 
 Can't people see that all the finer brain-stuff is going 
 under, and that we shall soon get either a rule of 
 lobby and money and journalists or a rule of pro- 
 letarians turned middleclass? And it's our own 
 fault!" 
 
 ' ' "Well. In a sense. There is a danger of material- 
 ism. I've never denied that some of the signs of our 
 times are disquieting. Indeed, I've pointed it out." 
 
 "Oh, so does every one!" She was suddenly on 
 her feet. "It's late." 
 
 ' ' Oh, hardly. Why should you ? ' ' He remembered 
 the letter to Miriam that he would have to write when 
 she had left. She had made that letter all the more 
 difficult. He shrank from the violent readjustment 
 that would be necessary. "Well if you must " 
 Carlyon-Williams took her hand. She would come 
 back to him; it was clear that she was not contented, 
 she was restless, on edge, not happy. ' ' I may at least 
 wish you well?" 
 
 "Oh, yes!" She disappointed him, for she could 
 not help laughing. His wishes seemed to touch her 
 situation with such bizarre futility. " I 'm sorry : but 
 in a way, you see, you can't wish. You don't know. 
 I'm in it in it that's all, and I don't want to give 
 him wings or set him free or put a polish on his soul, 
 I won't say I do, I couldn't be so impertinent, I
 
 DISCLOSURES 281 
 
 only want to why should I tell you, though? I 
 won't!" 
 
 She turned, trembling, she went quickly for vexed 
 fear of his seeing that she was nearly hysterical. 
 Carlyon- Williams stared after her, not quite sure 
 whether she might not be in love with him, after all.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 WHY was it, Alec asked himself in much per- 
 plexity and some indignation, why was it 
 that she had talked, that last time, about 
 his leaving her? Why had she insisted, that day at 
 Richmond, that he had not really burned his boats, 
 when he knew he had? She was his: how could 
 anything alter that? They could have been married 
 by now; really and truly, they were married already. 
 Then, why ? How could she want him to go, to go 
 back to that house where everything would be as it 
 was before, but blank and horrible as it never had 
 been? If they were married, it would be a great 
 thing done, a great confirmation. It would make 
 everything safe; now they weren't safe. Gillian, 
 during those last two days, had communicated her 
 sense of insecurity to him, but, fearing, he tried to 
 feel it as something entirely needless, something that 
 marriage would instantly disperse. He saw marriage 
 as a fine stroke, a grand gesture. Married, he could 
 return home ; married, he could do anything. Above 
 all, he would be sure. 
 
 His was the ever-touching, the impossible and re- 
 ligious resolve to hold fast by what Nature, with her 
 regardless material economy, thrusts from Man's 
 grasp so soon. He moved in that blind drawing on 
 to get the better of Nature by declaring a solemn 
 -"-- p ..'" 282
 
 DISCLOSURES 283 
 
 perpetuity of the most instable and fleeting, the most 
 casual and undurable of all human relations. 
 Bravely, viciously, pathetically, he would have forced 
 Nature, that immemorial violator of love's faith; 
 would have forced her to his strong will of the 
 moment by a binding tremendous confession of it as 
 a will for all his years, a will that had God for 
 sponsor, God, Nature's Overruler. Held in the pas- 
 sionate impulse to cry "Deathless!" at the first sly 
 stench of corruption, hoping thus to outdo death, 
 he would win surer hope with witnesses, divine and 
 mortal, to his cry. 
 
 They loved each other. Why, then! And at first 
 she had not rejected the idea of their marriage, she 
 had only put off. "Oh, don't let's spoil it by think- 
 ing about banns or Registrars!" . . . Incidents of 
 their week's intimacy passed fluttering and lively be- 
 fore him. His first sight of her hair fallen to her 
 waist so fully a woman, that had made her, so fully 
 his own. It had revealed her as woman in a way 
 so utterly strange and wonderful; it had made her 
 immemorial . . . her warmth that hastened out to 
 him . . . those silences along which they lay, far off, 
 and together. 
 
 Why should there have been anything else to re- 
 member? Why had there been that bad day at 
 Richmond, the Sunday? This was the day after he 
 had first feared, and he had to keep on, with his in- 
 experienced tenacity, arguing for marriage, pleading 
 for it, insisting. He spoilt the occasion wholly. 
 Gillian, with nerves sharply strung and fit for touches
 
 284 BRUTE GODS 
 
 of discord, could not cope with him; her normal self 
 failed her. She was out of poise, and that startled 
 and fretted him. She grew as insistent as he; they 
 almost wrangled. She spoke against marriage, say- 
 ing the kind of things she had thought of that day 
 in the moat, and not said, every word seeming, to him, 
 exasperatingly remote and irrelevant, and, to her, 
 bookish. Her words angered her with herself, and 
 out of that very vexation and annoyance, she, in like 
 case with him, had to go on. She could not come 
 too closely to their own matter, to touch what was the 
 real argument, their separating years. She feared 
 thus to bring the whole near weight of that cleaving 
 stroke crashing upon them, and cutting her away. 
 Meanwhile he strove, perplexed, not knowing that he 
 was also striving with himself. Both of them were 
 restless, anxious, fatigued. It was the only com- 
 plete day that they had spent together. On the week- 
 days Gillian went to her Office as usual, so Alec never 
 saw her before about five o'clock. . . . He wouldn't 
 think of that day, it shouldn't count. His thoughts 
 hastened back, intercepted on their way, baulked for 
 awhile, by the consideration that she had told him 
 to come to her later than usual that evening, and 
 had not said why. 
 
 Now under the yoke, now under the spell of his 
 reflections, Alec sat in the little bedroom of the shabby 
 house in Shepherd's Bush where he had found lodg- 
 ing. It was not only a shabby house, it was an 
 extremely shady one; as might have been guessed 
 from the disarmingly respectable and discreet ap-
 
 DISCLOSURES 285 
 
 pearance, the suspiciously reassuring and benevolent 
 demeanour of Mrs. Hannah Bamfield, its tenant. 
 Practically her entire income was, in fact, derived 
 from renting her rooms for purposes of assignation, 
 at five shillings and sixpence a visit. These five and 
 sixpences came in a continuous stream, both from 
 regular and casual customers, and they enabled Mrs. 
 Barnfield to indulge liberally in her passion for the 
 collection of little figures and little animals, mainly of 
 Oriental fabrication, in porcelain and ivory and silver. 
 "So dainty," she said of them, and they were. Her 
 fourteen-year-old son, Alfred, a sickly spectacled boy, 
 helped in a bookseller's shop in the Charing Cross 
 Road, and her daughter Betty, a year or so older 
 than Alfred, in no way resembling him, danced at 
 the Palace Theatre in Turnham Green. But neither 
 of the children brought much of their small earnings 
 to the house. Their mother was generous to them, 
 well satisfied for them to pay for their own clothes 
 and amusements, and for herself to provide their 
 keep out of the wages of sin. 
 
 Alec knew very little of London. On his arrival 
 at Liverpool Street he had taken the Tube Railway, 
 invited by its Entrance which was near the platform 
 at which his train drew up. He asked for a ticket 
 to Netting Hill Gate Gillian's address but, in the 
 train, he decided to go on past that station a little: 
 the neighbourhood would be more or less suburban, 
 and lodgings would therefore be cheaper. He was 
 resolved to make Wilfred 's twenty pounds last as long 
 as possible : he thought he could make it last for five
 
 286 BRUTE GODS 
 
 or six weeks. The money had become very real to 
 him after the Station-master at Malstowe had cashed 
 the cheque. Arrived at Shepherd's Bush he remem- 
 bered having heard of that locality as highly un- 
 fashionable. His father had once contemptuously 
 pronounced its name. So he got off, and, carrying his 
 valise, walked at haphazard. Mrs. Barnfield's house 
 was the first one he saw with the placard "Furnished 
 Rooms" in the window. 
 
 The purpose of this placard was to keep up ap- 
 pearances that were at variance with the reality of 
 Mrs. Barnfield's accommodations: she had no inten- 
 tion of losing money by taking in respectable lodgers 
 for a guinea or so a week. Seeing a youth alone, 
 a youth with hand-luggage, which to her mind 
 guaranteed the propriety of his requirements, she told 
 him at once, from force of habit, that all her rooms 
 were let. She had even begun to shut her door against 
 the boy, when his look of intense and even suffering 
 disappointment arrested her. To Alec this rebuff 
 seemed to doom his whole enterprise to failure. 
 
 "Well," she said. "There's lots o' nice plices a 
 little wye further up the street. Stryenger in London, 
 ain't yer?" 
 
 "Oh, no, not really a stranger. You've got 
 'Furnished Rooms' put up!" 
 
 "Lodgin's is very dear, young man, after the war." 
 Mrs. Barnfield eyed him, and liked him. 
 
 "How much? What ought I to pay?" 
 
 "Well. 'Ow long '11 you want to stye?" 
 
 "Oh, a few weeks, perhaps. I don't quite know."
 
 DISCLOSURES 287 
 
 Mrs. Barnfield tickled her chin, and blinked. She 
 was taken by Alec's difference from the usual run of 
 her customers. "If yer satisfied with a little room at 
 the back" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I don't mind at all." 
 
 "I might let yer 'ave it for a week. After which, 
 I couldn't sye." 
 
 "Thank you very much." 
 
 He stepped eagerly forward. Mrs. Barnfield, fat, 
 neatly dressed and demure, continued to examine him, 
 and continued to find the examination satisfactory. 
 She would give him the smallest room, with the 
 smallest bed. After all, it was a slack time just 
 then. 
 
 "And how much will it be?" asked Alec. The 
 question of price loomed before him with remarkable 
 importance. 
 
 "Oh, I won't be 'ard on yer. Don't you worry. 
 You come with me, an' I'll show yer." 
 
 She led the way, very slowly, upstairs. Outside 
 the door of the room, she told him to "jus' wyte 'arf 
 a minute, ' ' and went in by herself, leaving him on the 
 landing. When she came out she had in her hands a 
 comb, a screwed-up bit of newspaper, a hair-net, a 
 half-consumed cigarette, an empty medicine-bottle, 
 five or six hairpins, and a piece of broken looking- 
 glass. ' ' 'Bin tidyin ' up for you, ' ' she said affably. 
 
 Alec walked into the room, not noticing anything 
 about it except that it was very small, and smelt 
 close. "All right, ' ' he said. ' ' And how much do you 
 want a week?"
 
 288 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "Five and sixpence," she replied, from force of 
 habit. 
 
 "All right," he said again, in pleased surprise. 
 Five and sixpence seemed so very little out of twenty 
 pounds. 
 
 "Y'see " Mrs. Barnfield hesitated. She had 
 realized her slip at once, but now that he looked so 
 pleased she hadn't the heart to correct it. "Well, 
 I wouldn't do it for every one, but bein' as you're 
 a gentleman an' it's a small room an' I'm sure you're 
 nice an' quiet " "Quietness," in Mrs. Barnfield 's 
 eyes, was the most commendable of human virtues. 
 
 "Oh, but of course I'd like to give you your 
 regular price," said Alec reluctantly, little suspect- 
 ing how "regular" the price was. 
 
 "Ho, no. I said five and six, and I keep to what 
 I said. That's 'ow I am." She expanded with her 
 generosity. "I'll interdooce yer to me son Alfred, 
 'case yer lonely, see what I mean? 'E's at the 
 Pictures now, 'e goes most every evenin'. Me 
 daughter, she's up at the Palace, she's in the Profes- 
 sion. Smart kids, they are, my Alfred, now, why 
 'e " A ring at the front door interrupted her, 
 much to the relief of Alec's growing impatience. 
 "Well, I 'ope yez'll be comferble." Excusing herself 
 with an air of marked dignity, even of hauteur, she 
 left him. 
 
 Some five minutes later he had telephoned to 
 Gillian. 
 
 The last frailty in passion is, for a woman, excus- 
 able in tolerant eyes by the oblivious sweep upon her
 
 DISCLOSURES 289 
 
 of an overwhelming impromptu of romantic love. 
 Before that sudden onslaught her defences may drop 
 and she come under pity for misfortune rather than 
 censure for depravity; the charge being laid, with a 
 sigh and a quotation from Thomas Hood or Robert 
 Burns, to Nature's imperious urge, too strong for 
 human weakness. That familiar extenuation cannot 
 be fully pleaded for Gillian. She was, indeed, drawn 
 with power to her young lover, and drawn far more 
 romantically than sensually : her passion sent spread- 
 ing circles far out from the fleshly desire which it 
 compassed. The desire and its expression were in- 
 cidents in the larger emotional outflow, incidents that 
 played their due part, their inevitable part, in rela- 
 tion, for release and change; but, as things in them- 
 selves, they were reduced to an unimportance that 
 can never be understood by sensualists or Puritans. 
 Men and women of these two kindred classes heighten 
 the import of mere sex-action because it is the only 
 expression of passion that they can understand or 
 admit. Indulgence and suppression, the one constant 
 and undiscriminating as the other, involve the same 
 curtailments, the same impoverishments of view. 
 They involve the same obscene decencies and disgusts : 
 Mr. Carlyon-Williams and Mr. McGill, the lay-reader, 
 the "Purity Ghoul," knew these alike. 
 
 If Gillian had loved Alec more sensually, she would 
 have drawn back: that lesser gain would not have 
 been worth her surrender. Out of sensualism she will 
 be condemned. If her nature had been more grossly 
 amorous, and therein colder and narrower; if sex-
 
 290 BRUTE GODS 
 
 consciousness had played as much a part in her life 
 as in the life of the average girl ; even, it may be said, 
 if she had not been, as she was, virgin she would 
 not have given so unreservingly, she would not have 
 rejected the interval, the gradual approach. 
 
 But she knew what she was doing. Her brain held 
 clear. She provoked the event, not he. To her deeper 
 impulses there was added a fevered determination to 
 snatch at the joy and delight that were there now for 
 her as never, not even in blurred likeness, they had 
 been ; and as they never would be again, she was sure 
 of that. She remembered how Carlyon- Williams had 
 failed her ; she saw herself in a destined succession of 
 such failures, unshriven by the one full confession 
 of herself offered by that hour. She knew, even from 
 the beginning, how short that hour must be. If she 
 refused it, the loss would stand firm, and all her 
 theories, her professions of free faith, how bitterly 
 they would mock her! Now, when he had come to 
 her Alec come driving his way, inevitably and at 
 once, breaking down his father's will, finding 
 money . . . He had come before she had said he 
 might. She was touched and moved by that strongly : 
 and while it might have delayed another woman, it 
 hastened her. 
 
 Yet for all this she might not have so consciously 
 formed her decision and struck so directly with it 
 so shamelessly soon, even by the standards of Mrs. 
 Barnfield's amorists had it not been for that in- 
 tellectual sophistication which often does so much 
 worse or so much better than blind feeling. She did,
 
 DISCLOSURES 291 
 
 at one determining moment, allow reason to challenge 
 and to worst sex-instinct for the later as against the 
 present time. Instinct was for hope of the impos- 
 sible, for the trying of all ways to hold him for a 
 longer hour: reason fronted the facts. 
 
 Alec had no sense of sin. His recent reaction 
 against conventional moral values had little to do 
 with this. He felt, very simply, that now he could 
 look the whole world in the face, that the world must 
 open its arms to him. He felt that he could never 
 be ashamed of anything any more. This exultation 
 held for five days: for five days he was as a god, 
 knowing good and not evil. Then suddenly in one 
 of their embraces, the thought came: It had never 
 been quite the same as it was in the Tower moat. 
 From then on, being no longer sure and satisfied, he 
 talked of marriage, and their wills began to pull, 
 straining. He was reaching, as best he could, for re- 
 capture of what she knew he could not have again, 
 from her.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 AS Gillian went from "Williams back to her flat 
 a harsh intolerable hatred of herself drove 
 over her, followed by a racking fear of what 
 that self -hatred might do to Alec. It would turn him 
 terribly against her, it must. . . . Her nerves 
 wavered cruelly, they would break, she couldn't see 
 him. She could not go to Alec from Carlyon- Wil- 
 liams. Some hotel, the nearest hotel. ... If she 
 could get a room, if she could be there alone, safe, 
 in five minutes. . . . 
 
 As soon as she was in the cab, she was attacked 
 by a bitter indignation against Williams. Why, when 
 she didn't love that man, when she never had loved 
 him, never could have loved him Was that true, 
 was that honestly true, that she never could have 
 cared ? Of course it was ! Why, then, had this meet- 
 ing with him now been so important? Why had 
 he this power, to make it impossible for her to see 
 Alec? He shouldn't have, she wouldn't allow it! 
 She wouldn't run away, she wouldn't go to any hotel, 
 it was ridiculous. She resolved to intercept her own 
 flight at once, she told the driver to go to Netting 
 Hill Gate Station. She was in panic as her sudden 
 forced courage, her defiance of her instinct for safety, 
 came up, battling against the leap of her apprehension. 
 She wouldn't, at least, give any other order to the 
 
 292
 
 DISCLOSURES 293 
 
 driver, she couldn't have stood doing that. Why not 
 tell Alec she was ill, when he came? She need only 
 see him for a moment. She would do that: that 
 wouldn't be running away, would it? She wouldn't 
 let him see her strained face, he wouldn't know that 
 she was harsh and nervous and frightened. It 
 wouldn't be fair, seeing him, not when she was like 
 this. She must walk quickly from the Station or he 
 might be there first, waiting . . . walking up and 
 down the street, as he had had to once before. He 
 had no key, he hadn't asked; of course, he wouldn't 
 have thought. He hadn't thought of anything like 
 that, hadn 't thought of passing as her brother ... no 
 intrigue. How untouched he was. . . . 
 
 She was breathless from her haste as she stooped 
 to open the door: at once she went to her bedroom, 
 to the mirror. ' ' How dreadful I look ! I look dread- 
 ful, he mustn't see me." Damp ends of hair clung to 
 her cheeks and to her forehead, her face was pallid 
 and moist, lines showed in it. How could she have 
 failed so in control? It was shameful of her. She 
 tugged at her hair, loosened it out through her fingers, 
 let it fall, hid her face in it. She flung her hair back, 
 drew it tightly back from ears and forehead, laid 
 her face bare, scrutinized herself. ... It was a di- 
 rect stroke, a clear disclosure, that she needed with 
 Alec. But she couldn't look like that. He might 
 he there at once. She went to the bathroom, sponged 
 her face in cold water, rubbed it with a rough towel 
 If she could somehow disguise herself! The bell 
 rang. Her hair down . . . she would leave it, he
 
 294 BRUTE GODS 
 
 liked it. ... She remembered what he had said that 
 first day they met : "I shouldn 't mind if it did come 
 down." She went to the door, called his name, and 
 he answered. "Wait a minute!" she said sharply. 
 She went back to her bedroom, drew her hair tightly 
 back from her ears and forehead, fastened it, fastened 
 it close with hairpins, rolled it behind high on her 
 neck, and so went out to meet him. 
 
 "Why did you make me come so late? Why, 
 Gillian, Gillian dear, what's the matter?" 
 
 " Oh, I just came back. I've been " She turned 
 on the light. 
 
 "What's happened?" 
 
 "Look at me, you're not looking." 
 
 "Why have you ? What have you been doing to 
 your hair ? Do let me " 
 
 "Don't touch it! I don't want you to touch it! 
 Sit there, Alec." 
 
 ' ' Something 's happened, what is it ? Do tell me ' ' 
 
 "You must go back, you must go home. I want you 
 to." 
 
 "Oh, Gillian, again! You promised you wouldn't. 
 You don't want me any more?" 
 
 "I do! I want you to go away before you've 
 stopped wanting me." 
 
 "Do put your hair right, please do." 
 
 "No. I want you to see, I want you to know " 
 
 "But I know I love you. Just because you put 
 your hair like that, do you think that ? But you 
 must change it, you must, and be like you were be- 
 fore."
 
 DISCLOSURES 295 
 
 "You don't know what I was before, you don't 
 know what I am, Alec." 
 
 "Yes, I do, you're Gillian. I don't care about any- 
 thing else." 
 
 "You do really. You must, even if you don't think 
 so. Oh, I can't give you what you really want, what 
 you ought to have!" 
 
 "But why ?" He sat looking at her face that 
 was drawn and driven with its pain, exposed, solitary, 
 braving him. He felt again that it had never been 
 quite as it was in the Tower moat, refusing now, in 
 sharpened loyalty, that feeling. "I couldn't want 
 anything more ! ' ' 
 
 "I don't mean for now, I mean later. No, Alec, 
 you must go. I want to make it easier for you, I've 
 tried to. So long as you do mind going, a little, 
 still. I'd like you to mind a little." 
 
 "I do, most awfully! Do change your hair back, 
 do let me just " 
 
 "No, I can't. We must leave off, don't you see 
 we must?" 
 
 "We can marry. Do let us marry. Let's make it 
 certain. You know what I said before, I feel just 
 the same." 
 
 "Ah, that's it!" She looked up. He was beauti- 
 ful to her, his eagerness was very beautiful. She 
 turned from him. "You're so awfully young!" 
 
 "You mean you're tired of me?" 
 
 "Oh!" She was seized terribly by a longing for 
 him to come clinging to her, she was in misery and 
 fear for her want of him. He mustn't know . . . but
 
 296 BRUTE GODS 
 
 why not, why shouldn't he? "If we keep on any 
 longer," she said, "I shall have to marry you, I can't 
 hold out, and that's why it must stop. Haven't I 
 done everything? I've spoilt it for you already, I 
 know I have, I couldn't help " She still looked 
 down, away from him. "Alec, I know that man 
 very well, did they tell you? Carlyon-Williams. " 
 
 "Oh, they said something about your being 
 friends." 
 
 "I've seen him today, been with him. He used 
 to be fond of me in a way, I ought to have told you. ' ' 
 
 ""What, that chap!" Alec was shocked. "You 
 don't mean to say But you didn't like him, you 
 couldn't have, did you?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't know!" 
 
 "But he didn't he didn't ever kiss you?" 
 
 "Once he did. Oh, it may have been two or three 
 times." 
 
 "They said you were friends. I didn't think " 
 Alec frowned. "But you didn't like him!" 
 
 "Alec. You'll find some girl who'll come to you 
 utterly fresh utterly clear you deserve it. I've 
 robbed her, I know I have, but I've left her a great 
 deal. I won't leave any less." She wanted to add 
 "I love you too much," but she was strong enough 
 not to say that. ' ' Oh, Alec, you don 't know now, but 
 it makes all the difference all the difference. The 
 kind of love I want for you is the only kind that 
 any mother ever wants her boy to have, it's the love 
 you've a right to, and I can't give it you. First love, 
 young love. I know what it ought to be, because
 
 DISCLOSURES 297 
 
 I've been really young too. But I never found any 
 one, not then. It was rather a pity, I suppose " 
 
 "But you've found me." Alec tried to under- 
 stand, he couldn't, his head was throbbing. "And I 
 am your first, you told me I was." He thought of 
 Williams. 
 
 ' ' Oh, in that way, yes ! But I 've thought too much, 
 I've known too much. It's not the same. You'd find 
 out later on. Nothing is surer than that ; if it weren't 
 so sure, I'd stay with you, I'd risk a chance, of course 
 I would! But you'd find out, and it would be ter- 
 rible. I can feel it, and I can't face it. I'd no right 
 to be your first!" 
 
 "What! You don't think it was wicked, you 
 couldn't. ..." 
 
 "If it had been only what people call wicked 
 only sensual It's just because it was more, it's be- 
 cause it was too much and too little ! ' ' 
 
 "Gillian, dear. I don't. . . . Oh, do please put 
 your hair down, don't don't cheat me like that, be 
 like you were, do ! " 
 
 "I couldn't, not now. It would make it harder, 
 saying good-bye." 
 
 "I won't say good-bye!" Alec got up and took 
 her hands. "This isn't the last time," he cried in 
 acute alarm, "it can't be!" 
 
 "It won't be any use, what use could it be after 
 what I've said? You know now " 
 
 "Oh, I don't care about what you said! I didn't 
 even understand it. ' ' 
 
 "But you will. Alec, I'm horribly tired." She
 
 298 BRUTE GODS 
 
 put his hands from her. "You will go, won't you? 
 You wouldn't stay if you knew, you couldn't " 
 
 ' ' But I can come again tomorrow ? ' ' 
 
 "No, no, don't, please don't. Not tomorrow or the 
 next day, at least." 
 
 "The day after? But it's awfully long." 
 
 "I'll write, I'll tell you. I must be alone, I must 
 think, I must get free." 
 
 "You could write and make it sooner." He leaned 
 to kiss her; she put up her hand against him. 
 "Gillian! You're tired of me, that's what it is, I 
 knew it must be you didn't care any more, not so 
 much " 
 
 "Do you? Really, do you? Is it just the same 
 for you? You know it isn't, Alec, not even after a 
 week. ' ' 
 
 "You shouldn't say that!" he declared violently. 
 "It is the same. Why do you talk like this, why do 
 you keep on? We could have been so happy all this 
 time ! And now I 'm not to see you for three days ! ' ' 
 He spoke fretfully. 
 
 "Perhaps in three days. I'm not sure. I oughtn't 
 to see you again, I don't know if I'll let myself be 
 weak." 
 
 "Oh, Gillian, you must!" 
 
 "I won't say now. It's not fair. Don't say any- 
 thing more, Alec, just go, I do beg you." 
 
 "All right, then." 
 
 He turned to go, in pique and disappointment and 
 perplexity. His head ached: she had given him a
 
 DISCLOSURES 299 
 
 headache with the words that came from her aching 
 heart. As he left her, he heard her sob, and he turned 
 back for a moment. ' ' But I want to marry you, ' ' he 
 said, ' ' I do want to, I want it so much ! ' '
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE mornings and afternoons of that past 
 week had exposed Alec to the friendliness 
 of Mrs. Barnfield. Also to her curiosi- 
 ties, for she very soon began to wonder, agreeably, 
 what he did with his evenings, for which he always 
 declined her Alfred's invitations on the ground that 
 he had to "see friends." Betty, the dancer, never 
 got up till nearly noon. Two or three mornings after 
 his arrival, she had run into him on the landing round 
 a corner ; she was in her dressing-gown. ' ' Oh, Billie ! 
 and who'd have thought it was. you?" She darted 
 away, laughing, turning flying curls to him. Before 
 that he had hardly noticed her. A few minutes later, 
 going out, he heard Mrs. Barnfield reproving her 
 daughter for being "free" "runnin' round the 
 'ouse not properly dressed at this time of dye, I'm 
 ashimed of yer!" 
 
 On his condemnation to the three days' absence 
 from Gillian, Alec realized the need of defence against 
 his landlady. She had opened the door for him, had 
 commented on his being back so early, and held him 
 with her talk till his head ached worse than ever. 
 "When he told her that his head ached and that he 
 must go to bed, she made protracted suggestions of 
 remedies. At last he escaped. He slept heavily and 
 dreamlessly. 
 
 300
 
 DISCLOSURES 301 
 
 When lie woke, it was late. His headache was 
 gone. He dressed quickly, slipped out of the house, 
 walked at a great pace to the little tea-shop where 
 he had his breakfasts. Breakfasting was at any rate 
 something to do, something to think of. What he 
 would like would be to move about very rapidly. 
 He wanted a fast motor, an open motor. Well, riding 
 on the top of a motorbus, that would do. After break- 
 fast he took the first 'bus that passed, a 'bus that went 
 westward along streets and roads where traffic was 
 light. Alec -let himself swing in the mere motion, 
 absorbed in the motion, thinking of nothing else. He 
 went to the end of the journey, then he stayed on for 
 the return. 
 
 When the 'bus had almost got back to Shepherd's 
 Bush, it began to rain. The woman sitting next to 
 Alec put up her umbrella. He noticed that she 
 seemed conscious of protecting him with it. He didn 't 
 like that, it embarrassed him and made him nervous; 
 he edged away. "You'll get wet, won't you?" she 
 said. "Oh, I get out here, I live here!" He 
 clambered down hastily and went to his tea-shop. 
 It was time for lunch now. The time had gone, after 
 all. 
 
 He ate lunch as slowly as he could. The rain went 
 on. Perhaps he had better go back to the house for 
 his coat. He might be able to avoid Mrs. Barnfield. 
 He could say he was in a hurry. 
 
 But Mrs. Barnfield was not avoidable. She ap- 
 peared at once, impressively solicitous about his being 
 wet. Yesterday, she told him, he'd had a headache;
 
 302 BRUTE GODS 
 
 now, he'd have a cold. She'd make him some good 
 strong tea, hot. He thanked her, he agreed : it would 
 pass the time. "You ain't doin' anything par- 
 tic ler ? ' ' she queried curiously. ' ' Oh, not now. But 
 I must go out soon again, you know." He wouldn't 
 for anything have admitted that those two evenings 
 were empty. 
 
 When he had drunk his tea, Mrs. Barnfield invited 
 Alec to view her collection of little figures "my 
 ornaments," she called them. She opened the glass 
 front of the bookshelf in which they were locked. 
 Alec examined and admired, Mrs. Barnfield lengthen- 
 ing the period of his admiration by informing him 
 in careful detail about the places and the dates of 
 her purchases. She fingered the tiny objects, one by 
 one, her eyes glazed and excited. Transported by the 
 delicacies of an ivory elephant, she once called Alec 
 "dearie" a term which, from her to him, struck the 
 boy as unprecedentedly odd. Suddenly Betty ap- 
 peared an appearance flung at full pitch ; completely 
 caught by him for its unexpectedness, firmly held. 
 He was startled by. her noticeableness, he found he 
 could not keep his eyes off her long black curls, those 
 dead-black, so separate curls. The reflection that she 
 was "an actress" gratified him: he had never seen an 
 actress in private life before. "But then," he 
 thought, "she's only a kid, she'd hardly count." 
 
 "Hello, Billie!" she said. "Having a squint 
 round the Zoo?" She had none of her mother's 
 Cockney accent; her pronunciation was sometimes too 
 careful.
 
 DISCLOSURES 303 
 
 1 ' ' Billie ' ! ' ' Mrs. Barnfield pouted. i ' The idea ! ' ' 
 
 ''How should I know what his old name is?" 
 The girl started whistling a tune, and went over to the 
 window. " Earning," she observed, with complete in- 
 difference. 
 
 "Well, what of it?" The mother was watching 
 Alec. "Just you tike a taxi up, dearie, I won't 
 grudge the 'arf-a-crown. Penny wise an' poun' 
 foolish never done no good, I say." She invited 
 Alec's wandering attention to a porcelain alligator. 
 
 "Don't you go showing those books round, now!" 
 Betty turned sharply. Alec had stopped thinking 
 what time it was. He took in the unusualness of the 
 colour of her cheeks and her wide mouth. He did not 
 know that she used rouge: she used it skilfully, and 
 might have deceived an observer more expert than he. 
 "See?" she went on, as her mother did not answer. 
 "Because I don't want." 
 
 Mrs. Barnfield gave her a look in which maternal 
 suspicion and maternal understanding were blended. 
 "That'll be all right," she said. 
 
 "Because they're mine. They're private. See?" 
 
 In a few minutes the three of them were looking 
 through the books together. One contained photo- 
 graphs of Betty at various ages and in various cos- 
 tumes, the other was a scrap-book full of press-notices, 
 provincial and suburban, of the various shows in which 
 she had played. She had been on the stage since she 
 was twelve. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried out. "You mustn't see that one. 
 Oh, it doesn't matter, I was only a kid then!"
 
 304 BRUTE GODS 
 
 ' ' She always did have beautiful limbs, from a baby, ' ' 
 Mrs. Barnfield observed with decorous satisfaction. 
 
 Alec bent his head over the photograph. It was of 
 Betty at thirteen, plump and lithe, a too female Cupid. 
 The boy's face was serious, he looked as though he 
 were learning a lesson. "That's a silly one!" 
 Betty gave him an inquisitive glance, and turned the 
 pages. 
 
 There was coquetry in everything she did: in the 
 way she turned those pages, the way she shook back 
 those dead-black curls, the way she drummed on the 
 table with her broad little fingers. In every possible 
 way she threw out her propinquity as a challenge to 
 the boy. 
 
 Mrs. Barnfield was talking feelingly of the tempta- 
 tions of a young girl in London. "Specially when 
 she's in the Profession. They're something terrible, 
 the men are. If you knew, just. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, shut it, Mother!" 
 
 "You may laugh, dearie, but once you give 'em 
 'arf a chanct or nod yer 'ead for 'arf a minute It's 
 watchful as a cat as does it." 
 
 Betty did not answer. She was looking at Alec, 
 and looking at him freely, because his eyes remained 
 fixed on the book of photographs. She liked him, be- 
 cause he had taken no notice of her at any time, be- 
 cause he had been so preoccupied. From the first 
 she had suspected him of being "in love," and she 
 knew, not consciously, that he was loved. Her un- 
 read conviction of this influenced her enormously, the 
 conviction was as profound as it was remote. It was
 
 DISCLOSURES 305 
 
 the undeciphered signs in him of Gillian's love that 
 drew this girl, and challenged her in her turn. Alec 
 kept thinking that she was not so pretty as her photo- 
 graphs, and he wondered why the photographs would 
 be dull if she were not there. 
 
 "My little girl will wait till the right one comes 
 along, I know my Betty! One feller's enough for 
 any girl, and one girl's enough for a feller." ("More 
 than enough," Alec thought, in trouble.) "An' 
 that's what I've always said! A nice girl knows a 
 reel man, one what 11 love an pertect her." Mrs. 
 Barnfield brightened under the propriety of her 
 sentiments. "Why are you so mum, Betts? It ain't 
 like yer " She wanted her child to show off. 
 
 "Oh, tired, that's it. Here, do you want to see this 
 one? Don't go on looking at those stupid old photo- 
 graphs, I'm sick of them!" She pushed the book 
 away, brushing his hand with her hair. 
 
 Alec glanced hurriedly up. "She is pretty," he 
 thought, "at least she's " He looked down, still 
 grave. 
 
 Betty Barnfield did give a first impression of pretti- 
 ness, but that came entirely from her eyes and hair 
 and manner, her gaiety and youth. Certainly she 
 had no beauty. Her nose was blunt, her large mouth 
 lacked grace of curve, there was a certain shapeless- 
 ness about the whole face. And even though she was 
 so young, she had to take warning from her mother's 
 figure and thought for her own. She was already 
 anxiously afraid of growing up to be "one of those 
 awful great big fat girls." But her child's slender-
 
 306 BRUTE GODS 
 
 ness was enticingly tempered, now, by the hints of her 
 physical future, the beginnings that tinged her child's 
 looks with sex. She violently attracted middle-aged 
 men, for whom, unlike many girls of her age, she had 
 a great distaste. She could afford to repulse them 
 unequivocally, thanks to her mother 's equivocal gains. 
 Boys took little heed of her, and, absorbed in her pro- 
 fession, she had been much less occupied with 
 amorous thoughts than are most well brought up 
 young boarding-school girls, nourishing their curiosi- 
 ties and ignorances and dreams that spring in such 
 sensuous plenty from the soil of their guardians' care. 
 Lovemaking, to Betty, was a humorous matter, as- 
 sociated with the repartee of stage-comedians. 
 
 "Who wrote this?" Alec asked. "It's a sonnet, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 "What's that mean?" The child leaned, and tak- 
 ing the book, sharing it with him, she stayed close. 
 "Oh, good-night! The chap that wrote that was 
 dotty!" 
 
 "I like it. I think it's very good." 
 
 "That pome what that Mr. Merridew wrote about 
 you, dearie?" 
 
 ".The first letters of the lines make my name, do 
 you see?" 
 
 "You read 'em down. Clever, ain't it? 'E was 
 an artist, so 'e said, useter sketch. Betty wouldn' 
 take no notice of 'im, an' serve 'im right. 'E wasn' 
 up to no good, a man don't go writin' pomes an' 
 spendin' 'is money on bouquets an' big boxes of 
 chocerlits fer nothin'. Says 'e met 'er by chanct, we
 
 DISCLOSURES 307 
 
 know all about that! 'Ad 'is wicked old eye on 'er 
 fer a week an' more!" 
 
 By chance we met, n chance indeed 
 As kind and bright as hours of May, 
 Releasing song and holiday 
 
 Alec read. "Can I copy this?" he asked. "I'd like 
 to." 
 
 "Can if you like. It won't hurt me!" Betty 
 blushed, and her mother sat looking at them, absorb- 
 ing the intimations of the boy 's request and her ' ' little 
 girl's" mounting colour. 
 
 "A tall feller, 'e was, Mr. Merridew was, with 
 lightish 'air an' wore it long " 
 
 "Oh, he was soft!" 
 
 "0' course I know you never give 'im a moment's 
 thought, 'course not." Mrs. Barnfield spoke with 
 quaint dignity. She slowly rose. "I 'ave some 
 dooties to attend to," she announced. "If you 'ave 
 no objection to excusin' me?" 
 
 With fluttering heart she left them, every fibre of 
 her sprouting thickly in the warmth of her romantic 
 idea of the two of them there together, the "two 
 young people." Mrs. Barnfield was indeed starving 
 for erotic idealizations. If only she had known of 
 the works of Mr. Carlyon- Williams, they would have 
 gone far to satisfy her cravings. Her continual con- 
 tact with the material final certainties of sex-desire, 
 with the last demonstrations, all too practically ar- 
 ranged for, all too sordidly, and all too baldly linked 
 with five and sixpences, had given her the sentimental
 
 308 BRUTE GODS 
 
 aspirations of a schoolgirl. Confronted perpetually 
 by desire's later issue, in a presentment of unnatural 
 severance, Mrs. Barnfield much required a relieving 
 and adjusting complicity with first stirrings, shy 
 beginnings, hopes just born and frail, longings frail 
 and insecure, delicate delays and doubtful tremors, 
 all the early apparatus of blossoming hearts. In 
 these now she dwelt: match-making thoughts lay 
 stilled under the generous flow of her romantic emo- 
 tion. 
 
 "Where's that old pen and ink?" cried Betty. 
 
 "Oh, don't get it. Don't get up." 
 
 "Well, you wanted it, didn't you?" 
 
 Already, before he could struggle with the fact, 
 she was away from him, on tiptoe, reaching up to the 
 top of a shelf. She placed before him an egregiously 
 large, heavy inkstand, with a very small quantity of 
 thickened ink in the well. He watched her with what 
 seemed like stupid attention stupidly close. 
 
 "There's some paper in the drawer, or there ought 
 to be, anyhow!" 
 
 She lifted the table cloth and pulled the drawer 
 open, with a pull so sharp and ungauged that it fell 
 out on the floor, and paper, old letters, penholders 
 and nibs, string and ribbons and pins were scattered. 
 Alec jumped up : they both stooped and gathered the 
 things from the floor. 
 
 "You shouldn't have pulled so hard." 
 
 "What I should do and what I do do are two differ- 
 ent things." 
 
 ' ' Yes, I know. They always are. ' '
 
 DISCLOSURES 309 
 
 "Why don't you come and see me at the show? 
 You might as well." 
 
 He did not answer. Their sudden intimacy be- 
 wildered him, he was bewildered by his sense of the 
 natural odour of her hair, by the way it involved him. 
 Alarmed, he protested against his exultation. 
 
 "I suppose you're always busy in the evenings. 
 Mother says you're never in." 
 
 "Oh, I I could be." Mrs. Barnfield was her 
 mother: a remarkable fact. 
 
 "You're lucky. You can do what you like. I 
 wish I was rich ! ' ' 
 
 "I'm not rich." 
 
 "Well, I wish I was a man then. I wish I was 
 older and could do what I liked. I wish I was as 
 old as you. Anyhow, it's not as though I was a kid 
 any more, that's something." She shot the filled 
 drawer back into its place. 
 
 "You're pretty young, though." 
 
 "When I'm sixteen that'll be next December 
 I'm going to put my hair up, off the stage, I mean I 
 am. I'm just sick to death of being a flapper! 
 There's the paper; I wouldn't copy that old stuff 
 if I were you. Too much like work!" She leaned 
 over his shoulder, letting her glance rest for a 
 moment on the page where his eyes were fixed. 
 "Cheer up, Billie! You're not dead yet!" She 
 pinched his coatsleeve. 
 
 Alec stood up abruptly and faced the girl. 
 
 "I must go," he said. "I must. You see I have 
 to go away, you see " He put out both hands to
 
 310 BRUTE GODS 
 
 her, with no will for the act he took her young arms. 
 "I can't stay any more " 
 
 "I say, you're hurting. That's my arm, you know, 
 thanks awfully. What's up, Billie? What's it all 
 about?" 
 
 "I didn't mean " He relaxed his grasp. "I 
 didn't know I'm sorry." 
 
 ''You're a rum sort of fellow, not knowing what 
 you're doing." Betty rubbed her arm. 
 
 "I didn't mean to hurt you I oughtn't to I'd 
 no idea I'd better go, really I had." 
 
 ' ' Who 's stopping you, then ? ' ' She drew back, her 
 eyes shining at him with the mischief and the pleasure 
 of her satisfaction. "Good-bye, Billie, I must le-eave 
 you ! ' ' She put one foot forward and struck a stage 
 pose, chin tilted and eyes upturned. ' ' Parting is such 
 sweet sorrow, oh ! Did you know they tried to make 
 me play Juliet, and I couldn't do it for toffee ? When 
 she started seeing snakes and kicking up all that dust 
 about it, I had to laugh, an' old Tubby got so wild 
 with me he nearly went off pop ! Such times as we 
 had. Never no more, as the raven said. Not now the 
 war's over. Three cheers. I always said we'd win 
 the damn thing," she drawled, "didn't I, Chorlie?" 
 
 She flung up a leg, caught the toe in her hand, and 
 on the other toe she spun smoothly round. Alec 
 looked at her, without a smile. He set tragic eyes on 
 her foolery. 
 
 "Is it hard, doing that?" 
 
 "Oh, that's nothing! I'm light, all right, though,
 
 DISCLOSURES 311 
 
 aren't I? Light on my feet. Tubby says I'm over- 
 weight, the old beast, says I ought to drink vinegar 
 and not eat cake or sweets. But I don't weigh so 
 much, do I, not more than I ought, just you see!" 
 She went to him, very innocently. 
 
 "No, of course. I I'm sure you don't weigh too 
 much. ' ' 
 
 "Now just look! If I haven't got a spot on my 
 dress! It's ink, I think it is. However did I go 
 and do that?" 
 
 "Where? I don't see it." 
 
 "Don't look too hard, you'll strain your eyesight. 
 Funny eyes you have. "Wouldn't like to meet you 
 alone on a dark and stormy night." 
 
 "Look here. Did I hurt your arm then?" 
 
 "Oh, that's all right, don't mention it, the pleasure 
 is mine! Your eyes are queer, Billie, they're like 
 I don 't know what. No, you don 't ! " Pretending to 
 think he was going to catch at her arms again, she put 
 her hands on his wrists. "Seems as though they 
 don't match your hair, yet they do, sort of. Poor 
 Billie, he looks so upset, I bet he's got the toothache. 
 Which side is it on?" 
 
 1 ' You mustn 't do that ! ' ' 
 
 "Poor thing, I didn't know it hurt." She went 
 on stroking his cheek, her eyes laughed. 
 
 "I don't want you to do it!" 
 
 He kept on hoping that he had hurt her arm. 
 There was her parted mouth with its loose curve . . . 
 he felt . . . how could he feel that? Betty knew at
 
 312 BRUTE GODS 
 
 once what he felt, and she looked at him accordingly. 
 
 "I suppose you're a real good boy, aren't you?" 
 she observed, after a moment. 
 
 " 'Good'?" He was relieved by her having said 
 something. "I don't care about that 'good' doesn't 
 matter it wasn't that " 
 
 " 'Good's' what I am, Billie. That's me." 
 
 "Yes, you look as though you were, there's some- 
 thing But I suppose you can't be, really?" 
 
 "Well, you've nerve! I s'pose you think just be- 
 cause oh, what should I care what you think? 
 Doesn't matter to me." 
 
 "I wouldn't mind if you weren't 'good.' ' 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "Or if nobody was! I don't believe in that. It's 
 something quite different how could I tell you? I 
 can't." 
 
 "What's the trouble, Billie? Come on, tell us, 
 might as well." She was eager and friendly. 
 
 "Oh, I've been made an utter fool of, that's all! 
 It's not your fault but I won't be, not again, I 
 won't!" 
 
 "My fault! I like that!" She laughed uneasily. 
 He was pale, his eyes looked different, she was in- 
 terested intensely . . . his eyes. . . . His girl was 
 going with another fellow, she was glad. ' ' Never you 
 mind, Billie." 
 
 ' ' Oh, I '11 take good care ! I wish you did know. ' ' 
 He looked closely at her. "Good-bye," he said, and 
 was gone. 
 
 The little girl was left puzzled, indignant. She
 
 DISCLOSURES 313 
 
 stood quite still, wondering what it would have been 
 like if he had kissed her. She thought of a boy who 
 had, and then, at once, she hadn 't liked him any more, 
 she hadn't cared, but, before, she thought she did, 
 a little. ... It wouldn't have been like that with 
 Billie. . . . Why hadn't he? " Kissing 's nothing!" 
 "Damn that old scrapbook!" she thought viciously, 
 catching sight of it lying open at the page of the 
 Acrostic verse. She took it and tore the page out. 
 She crumpled it up fiercely ; then, instead of throwing 
 it away, she uncrumpled it and read it through. 
 She wanted him to have it, to keep it. He'd liked it. 
 Alec, upstairs in his room, lay exhausted. He'd 
 been flung down, left there. . . . His tears came slow 
 and cruel.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 IT was no less than appalling to Alec that this 
 young girl should be able so to invite his mind 
 and his sense, that she should beckon to him 
 thus from Gillian's region. For all the dissimilarity 
 between Betty and Gillian, Betty was offering he had 
 a frightful conviction of this the same thing in the 
 end, the same. The shock of this discovery seemed to 
 have a positive physical force : it smote his brain, then 
 clutched it and held it, motionless and fascinated, up 
 against the full face, the brute and punitive face of 
 the fact disclosed. 
 
 In and between the sleep of that night Alec realized 
 more sharply certain identities of his response to 
 either girl, identities that were hideous. In the 
 early morning, and later, there were turnings and 
 changes of the boy's perceptions, shifting focusses of 
 other expressions of that punitive face, other char- 
 acter indications not understood, horribly bewildering. 
 He resolved against the attempt to understand, he re- 
 solved to banish the whole wicked matter: but those 
 pain-struck intensities stayed in him, and the two that 
 empowered them, the two that crossed and merged, 
 and separated and conflicted, the two that were alien 
 and akin, kept their torturing play over and through 
 his senses. 
 
 Alec's physical attraction to Gillian was not done 
 with. It was a more observable thing now, more a 
 
 314
 
 DISCLOSURES 315 
 
 thing in itself than it had been at first. The usual 
 reactions against first disguising romantic fervours 
 would not have had time yet to work their visible way, 
 but Gillian, in trying to obliterate her physical ap- 
 peal had thrown the idea of it into Alec's foreground, 
 she had released him for Betty. Betty had freshened 
 that emphasis so unwittingly put, she had quickened 
 and stiffened it for Gillian as well as for herself. 
 She, the new, the unexpected one, the stranger, could 
 bear Gillian's tokens; could show them even more 
 sharply and strongly and stirringly . . . yes, in some 
 ways she could, he knew now, and she could bring 
 something else. ... It was Gillian who had spoken 
 of young love. Alec suddenly thought of Gillian's 
 encounter with his father that day by the Tower. 
 Suppose his father had found him with Betty ? Betty 
 would never have been like Gillian was then, of course 
 she couldn't. . . . He hadn't liked the way Gillian 
 did all that; he'd never let himself know, before, 
 how he hadn't liked it. ... He must go away. Well, 
 Gillian had wanted him to. Betty didn't want him 
 to, but he would go. It had to end, all of it. He 
 would go away from Betty's house, he would stop 
 wanting Gillian, he had to; he wouldn't take that, 
 not ever again . . . something that could be shared 
 . . . and all the lying of the thing, the deceit . . . 
 vile. He must get ready to go. But he stayed sitting 
 on his bed, stayed in the clinging horror of his dis- 
 gust. He had sense of sin now, sense of evil. 
 
 A door opened and shut sharply. Alec was con- 
 scious of a moving about outside on the landing, he
 
 316 BRUTE GODS 
 
 sat up stiffly, alarmed. There was a whistle, and, 
 after a few moments, Betty's voice calling her mother. 
 The boy listened. 
 
 "What's made you get up so early?" He heard 
 Mrs. Barnfield's voice. "And all dressed up, too!" 
 
 "Well, I suppose I can get up if I want to, can't 
 I ? What you going to do ? " 
 
 "Goin' to do?" Mrs. Barnfield's tone showed some 
 irritation and surprise. "I'm goin' out to buy some 
 meat. ' ' 
 
 "What, now, you are?" 
 
 "Yes, got my 'at on already. You want to come 
 along?" 
 
 " I don 't know. Think I '11 wait awhile. ' ' 
 
 Alec was conscious of Mrs. Barnfield's descent of 
 the stairs; he waited for the sound of the closing of 
 Betty's door. Had she closed it without his hearing? 
 He waited for what seemed a very long time, then he 
 heard, distinctly, a quite different sound the drum- 
 ming of the girl's fingers on the bannisters. At once 
 he went out to her. 
 
 "What do you want?" he asked. 
 
 " Oh ! " She started, she laughed uneasily. ' ' Well, 
 I like that ! ' ' Recovering herself, she looked straight 
 at him. "Asking me what I want, you've got a 
 nerve! I'll have a Scotch and potass, Miss, and be 
 quick about it ! Come along, Billie, come along down, 
 might as well. Come and talk to us, Billie." 
 
 He followed her slowly, he noticed her thin brown 
 stockings. "I'm going away today," he said.
 
 DISCLOSURES 317 
 
 She did not answer, she went straight on into the 
 parlour, and as soon as he was there with her, she 
 shut the door tight. 
 
 ''Don't you like me, eh, Billie?" There was no 
 levity now, no coquetry, in her tone or manner. She 
 looked hard at him, she stood quite still. 
 
 "Why should I tell you?" he said, turning. 
 "What's the good of telling you?" 
 
 "I wouldn't ask you, only I know you do." 
 
 "Well, all right." He took a step towards the 
 door. "If I tell you that, won't it do?" It seemed 
 impossible to get to the door, past her. All he had 
 done was to bring himself nearer her. "I mean, 
 wouldn't you let me go then?" 
 
 "Let you go, what do you mean, Billie? You like 
 me, but you won't Why?" 
 
 "I told you I couldn't. Didn't I tell you? I 
 mustn't." 
 
 "'Mustn't'! Silly! You should just see the 
 bruise you made on my arm," she went on with ap- 
 parent irrelevance. ' ' It looks like anything this morn- 
 ing. Here's that old book." She moved over to the 
 shelf, stooped down, leaned her head so that her black 
 curls slipped over, showing her neck. "I don't want 
 that poem thing." She pretended to tear the page 
 out, then took it from her dress without his seeing. 
 "You keep it, if you want." 
 
 "All right. I mean, thank you. I must go up- 
 stairs, you know, and pack. ' ' 
 
 "Haven't had your breakfast, have you?"
 
 318 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "I don't want any. I mean I do, rather, but I'll 
 go out soon. I'll go out now. There's a place quite 
 near. ' ' 
 
 "I can make coffee, I make it all right, and there's 
 some eggs." 
 
 "It's a place by the Station you know. It's 
 where I nearly always go." 
 
 "You've got a nice handkerchief." 
 
 "Yes. It's my father's, though." He pulled it 
 from his sleeve. "I took it by mistake, I had it 
 washed. Would you like it?" 
 
 " It 's a lovely one. All silk. ' ' 
 
 "You could wear it somehow, couldn't you?" 
 
 She took it from him, shook it out, looked at it. 
 The pleasure of possessing it diverted her. She went 
 to the glass and put the handkerchief round her hair, 
 holding it with her hand behind her head. "Looks 
 all right, doesn't it?" 
 
 "Keep it. You could wear it. Couldn't you wear 
 it close to you ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' What d 'you mean, Billie ? " She laughed. 
 
 "I don't know, I only thought " 
 
 He stood, seeing her broad laughing mouth with its 
 generous animalism. He thought of Gillian's mouth, 
 the intellectual turn it had. Betty was nearer 
 nearer to something. Ah, she was different! She 
 didn't understand, but her brain kept still. 
 
 " 'Thought'!" She came to him, her mouth still 
 laughing. "You da like me! You 're funny! What 
 do you think of us, Billie ? I 'm all right you know 
 what I mean " She let her arms drop, touching
 
 DISCLOSURES 319 
 
 him lightly. "I haven't liked any one else, I never 
 have! What do you think, Billie?" 
 
 ''I told you" 
 
 "I didn't mean anything you know " She 
 blushed. 
 
 She was grave again now, her breath came brokenly. 
 Alec leant to her, and the fragrance of a young fresh 
 girl, a little agitated by love, began to seduce his 
 nostrils. Was this what Gillian had said he ought 
 to have? He wouldn't, he couldn't! Beginning all 
 over again. . . . Alec revolted with a strength that 
 swept him clear of the drawing of the tide. 
 
 "I didn't mean anything we oughtn't," Betty went 
 on. 
 
 "Oh, it isn't that!" 
 
 "I know all about Mother's letting rooms. You 
 don't think I'm you don't think I'm like that, do 
 you ? I wouldn 't answer the bell, I wouldn 't ! " 
 
 He did not reply. He saw her pleading lips, her 
 troubled young eyes, and he turned his head. The 
 passionate loveliness of things flashed before him, he 
 rejected it. 
 
 ' ' Let me go, ' ' he told her, with a decision that could 
 not be defied or cajoled. "You must."
 
 REFUGE
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 Betty, your eyes dance down my heart, 
 Eyes gay and grey and wide apart, 
 That shine with teasing mirth, and yet 
 Teasing, they're kind. . . . 
 
 ALEC, in the train from Liverpool Street, read 
 over the ingenious artist's Acrostic Verse; he 
 smoothed out that crumpled sheet again. 
 
 The important thing to him was to get six pounds. 
 He had spent just about that amount. If he could 
 pay Wilfred back the whole twenty, at once, that 
 would be destroying one trace, at least : that was some- 
 thing that could be done. The boy's mind seized 
 avidly on the idea of this payment, and clung hard to 
 it. For some minutes he thought of nothing else, 
 he held by a recurring effort of will to the refuge of 
 this determination somehow to get six pounds: but 
 he could not work his mind further, could not de- 
 vise any plan, however improbable, by which the 
 money could be got. 
 
 Six pounds. . . . "Envy of April." . . . "Love- 
 ringlets" . . . how did it end up? 
 
 No coming flower or bloom half-sealed 
 For me blows sweeter up the field 
 In spring than you, dear girl of spring 
 Envy of April, you who bring 
 Love-ringlets young and rich and fine, 
 Deep lips that mate with song and wine. 
 323
 
 324 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Alec read in those initial letters the name of the 
 girl who had touched his ailing love and shown it to 
 him, a dead thing. But he did not he would not! 
 love her. Not again he couldn't face it again. 
 He crumpled the sheet and threw it from the hurry- 
 ing train. Six pounds. . . . After all those passionate 
 intimations of life, only dead brute things left, brute 
 dead gods. He had been so certain ! 
 
 He thought of what this love had done, this love 
 that had been so cunning and brutal and mortal a 
 trickster, this lo ve that was dead. Frippie Father 
 Collett he had been made to forget them, he had been 
 closed, insensate, against them, they had been left, for- 
 gotten like that bicycle that he left by the side of the 
 road. Doreen, too. . . . Then, his father 
 
 Alec 's love had robbed him of his hate. The wrongs 
 of his brother, his stepmother, Aunt Cathy, his mother, 
 could cry for vengeance in vain. Now both love and 
 hate were gone. He could have done something with 
 that hate, at least he could have started, with strong 
 impulse, from it. This he knew, and he knew that now 
 he had nothing, that he was left in weakness and in 
 deprivation. 
 
 It was not his disloyalty, his breach of faith to 
 Gillian, it was no such "moral" stir that hurt him. 
 It was the demolition of what had seemed the very 
 fabric of himself, it was the revolutionary shattering 
 of all those high controlling values that were to have 
 held sway for ever. . . . He had been forced, some- 
 how, in some unseen way, unawares, robbed, tricked. 
 A terrible trick wicked a sinister and grinning
 
 REFUGE 325 
 
 hoax. Yet he had loved Gillian, he had been Gil- 
 lian. It had all been real and great, it had been! 
 Yet it was gone. He could trust nothing in himself, 
 after this; he could value nothing, hold to nothing. 
 Betty . . . how different from Gillian she was ! No, 
 he didn't love her, he only wanted her: it was some- 
 thing much less, yet it had driven out the other. 
 Alec did not acknowledge the first processes of his 
 love's decline, nor could he estimate Gillian's wilful 
 part in them. 
 
 Gillian, whose love was alive, did acknowledge and 
 estimate. She paraded every sign noted in those last 
 days, paraded, watched, and made much of each in 
 turn. It was not that she lacked the usual female 
 inclination against admitting anything wounding to 
 sex-dignity : she had it strongly, and fought it strongly, 
 both on principle and to help herself by the occupa- 
 tion. She looked at herself in the glass, she observed 
 her mouth; and she thought how it must have lost 
 its power for him, day by day, hour by hour. Per- 
 haps her freedom from moral inhibitions had helped 
 to take the edge off his desire. Ah, but she had 
 wanted to do that ! It would have been better for her 
 to have been less "emancipated." Better still for 
 her to have been ten years younger. She thought of 
 Alec, with his experimental boldness of a novice. 
 There was still her "work". ... A man and a woman 
 shouldn't have to stay together if either of them 
 didn't want to hadn't she worked to prove the truth 
 and the justice of that? He didn't want to. ... 
 The magazine . . . "the policy of the magazine"
 
 826 BRUTE GODS 
 
 . . . her sense of her importance, her "purpose," 
 her independence. Alec had taken her old life from 
 her. At least, then, he should not have tired of her 
 so soon! "He ought not to! he belongs to me! he 
 doesn't want me!" She watched the emotional flash 
 of her condemnation of him, she shivered in her de- 
 tached brain. "Women should have more pride!" 
 The word "pride" sounded extraordinarily cold. 
 The freezing implications of her loss were traced on 
 her mind with sharp little points like the pricks of 
 an icicle. As a moral reformer she dutifully invoked 
 the solace of the reflection that she suffered not from 
 any human contrivance touching sex, but from an ill 
 inherent in sex itself. 
 
 She wished she did not feel so sorry for Alec. It 
 would have been easier if she could have felt angry, 
 bitter, really indignant. But her mind wouldn 't give 
 indignation or anger a chance : her mind was a wither- 
 ing glare for such relieving emotions. To be denied 
 the safeguard of unreason, that was tragic, it was 
 cruel. Carlyon- Williams had been right when he'd 
 called it an inhuman trick of hers, that trick of ex- 
 posing and criticizing her womanish promptings. 
 Perhaps if she had followed her impulse and turned 
 on Alec, turned on him savagely ... oh, she could 
 have held him, she would have reconciled herself to 
 holding him, in spite of everything, if she had been 
 different, if she had not had that abominably scrupu- 
 lous regard for intelligence ! Why shouldn 't she have 
 played her game, played for her own hand, been a 
 little less cursedly honest with herself and with him ?
 
 REFUGE 327 
 
 Deception would have been better for both of them, 
 and much prettier. . . . Gillian was convinced, now, 
 that if she hadn't been so stiffly, so sophisticatedly 
 honest and proud, if she had let her intellectual con- 
 science go to the devil, and moved unscrupulously, 
 skilfully, in her will, she might have stayed with the 
 boy in a ten years' marriage at the least, binding him 
 to her all the while by the strands of a hundred ideali- 
 ties. Carlyon-Williams could get more out of life 
 than she could, after all ! She reflected that it was 
 no doubt from jealousy that she despised Williams. 
 
 To have kept her brain nagging at her love, at the 
 boy's love, as she had! To have allowed such a 
 tyranny, which was, after all, stupid! If only she 
 could have been like Doreen Burke. . . . She had been 
 frantically moral, in her way, had adhered with her 
 fanatic brain-conscience to that determined premise of 
 the inequality between them, the impossibility of his 
 loving her for long. It was precisely the most rapid 
 and the most sure way of destroying Alec's Alec's 
 his feeling for her. Tears were in her eyes, on her 
 cheeks. The betrayal and the corrosion of love by a 
 thing so studied, so conscious, so made-up and so small 
 it was small now as her morality ! It had robbed 
 them both, meanly: her brain and its morality had 
 robbed them. It would have been so easy to make her- 
 self believe, and him through her, that their glamour 
 was light eternal. They could have gone on together, 
 she was sure sure of that now. Even at the very end, 
 if it had not been for her ridiculous "clear vision," 
 and her pride, she could have won him back. If she 

 
 328 BRUTE GODS 
 
 had summoned even so simple, so natural a quality as 
 tact . . . the tact that she was entirely capable of, 
 but that her "intellectual honesty" habitually com- 
 pelled her to reject. 
 
 When, on her return that day from her Office, she 
 saw the boy walking along the street near her flat, 
 her love for him gave her a new touch. He was a day 
 too soon. He had come sooner than she had said 
 . . . just as he had that time before. Her idea of 
 his expectancy, his impatience of the interval, shot 
 eagerly to embrace her answer to it. Seeing her, he 
 drew his lips grimly: "I wanted to ask you," he 
 began, "I waited so as to ask you " He seemed to 
 be trying to remember something that he had learnt 
 by heart : then to her ' ' "Well, what ? " he replied : "I 
 would like to marry you, I still want to, you know." 
 His tone was controversial. Without answering, she 
 walked on with him by her side till they reached her 
 door, and, feeling for her latchkey, "Why didn't you 
 go home before?" she asked him. "Before you'd 
 found out, before I had to I told you to you 
 know." She suffered from her hurt indignant voice, 
 and at once she sharply wondered what would have 
 happened if she had pretended to misunderstand him, 
 if she had said yes. At least she would have made 
 it different then, and need she have made it what it 
 was? Need she have made him say: "May I go 
 then?" Need she have had to turn from him so 
 that he should not see her eyes ? Need that door have 
 closed, dividing them? The questions lodged with 
 her. She felt wicked because, now that she knew
 
 REFUGE 329 
 
 he did not want to marry her, she could wish so 
 much more urgently than ever that she had brought 
 the marriage about. She knew nothing of Betty. 
 TEven if she had given him the chance, he could not 
 have told her. 
 
 As she undressed, Gillian thought of Carlyon-Wil- 
 liams. The thought of him relieved her, he could be 
 a sort of occupation, why not? She would make 
 him one. She could touch Alec through him, through 
 the stepmother, she wouldn't lose him altogether. . . . 
 What if Mrs. Glaive came back to Alec, through her? 
 She would still have a sort of power in his life, then. 
 "But what does that matter?" "I'll do it anyhow! 
 I'll do it out of sheer devilry! It will be some- 
 thing"
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 " A LEG, you must wait." 
 
 / \ "But I can make it certain, can't I 
 
 A. JL. somehow at once?" 
 
 "How?" Father Collett turned away. 
 
 "I mean make it so that I can't get out of it. 
 You can 't get out of it, can you ? ' ' 
 
 "Not after the final vows." 
 
 ' ' Can 't you take the final vows at once ? ' ' 
 
 "My dear Alec, why are they called 'final'? How 
 in the world could you take them first? There must 
 be probation." 
 
 "But I must take them, I want to bind myself 
 now. Don't you see, I can't wait!" 
 
 His mouth shook. It was utterly unbearable to 
 him, this delay. When he had wanted to marry Gil- 
 lian, he couldn 't : now that he wanted to take religious 
 vows, there was the same horrible putting off. He 
 other way was there ? Alec felt that it would be tor- 
 ture to have to stand by himself, to stand, to move, 
 unbound. 
 
 "It makes me afraid it won't last, Alec, you are 
 so eager " 
 
 "Oh, it will, but I don't want to give anything 
 else a chance of happening in between! I won't. 
 Look here, Father; I'll make it final, I'll make it 
 
 330
 
 REFUGE 331 
 
 final now, I can. I pray God you hear what I'm 
 saying ? I pray Him to destroy me, my soul, I mean, 
 altogether, if I don't take the final vows and keep to 
 them. I wish that. It's my will, and I'll always 
 stand by it, I swear to God ! ' ' 
 
 Alec felt that this declaration would be of enormous 
 import to Father Collett : he could not feel, try as he 
 might, that it was of even considerable import to him- 
 self. 
 
 "You've no right to use God in that way!" The 
 priest, for the first time in Alec's experience, showed 
 anger. 
 
 "Why not? Can't I make myself safe? Can't I 
 get God to make me safe ? "What is the good of him 
 if I can't?" 
 
 "God chooses His own way of helping fretful and 
 disappointed children, He doesn't choose theirs." 
 
 "But you always wanted me to take the religious 
 life, you said I " 
 
 "Yes. But not like this. What has happened to 
 you, Alec ? ' ' He spoke less sternly, much more 
 sadly. 
 
 "You know. I told you." 
 
 "It's just because you thought you were in love 
 and then found you weren 't ? " 
 
 "It's because I want to get out of the way of all 
 that, well out of the way, for good and all! I must 
 make sure it won't happen again, that's the only im- 
 portant thing ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' The only important thing ? It wouldn 't be right, 
 Alec, on those grounds."
 
 332 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "Do you mean you wouldn't receive me?" 
 
 "Well. I don't know. I don't know what they 
 You mustn't press me, Alec. I must think, I must 
 pray." 
 
 "You must tell me, please, at once, whether you will 
 or not. If you won't, I shall find something else to 
 do. ' ' He got up. 
 
 "You'll do what?" 
 
 ' ' I don 't know, but I won 't come back to you. I '11 
 never come back." 
 
 "I couldn't have believed you would take such 
 advantage of my affection. ' ' Father Collett was pale. 
 "How she has changed you!" he added, with in- 
 tense bitterness. 
 
 "Well, will you?" 
 
 "I'll give no promise. I decline absolutely to 
 promise. I will not be stampeded in this way, Alec, 
 it's outrageous, you've no right " The boy turned 
 to the door. ' ' You must listen to me, you must stay ! ' ' 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 ' ' Oh, Alec, you make me betray myself so terribly ! 
 If I did let you go, what would happen then? I 
 suppose I have no right to inquire into your motives, ' ' 
 he said weakly, "to take advantage of my private 
 knowledge " 
 
 ' ' You will let me join the Order then ? ' ' 
 
 "I'll ask Father Renel to receive you as a postu- 
 lant." 
 
 "That will do." 
 
 "It must be with your father's permission. You're 
 not yet twenty."
 
 REFUGE 333 
 
 "Oh, he'll give it. "When do you leave here?" 
 
 "I go to Webley next week. I shall have to come 
 back for awhile." 
 
 "I can go next week then?" 
 
 ' ' Yes. Say the week after next. ' ' 
 
 "All right. But I've taken the vows now, I've 
 taken them. And you have to live away from every- 
 body, don't you? Away from women and every- 
 thing?" 
 
 "Yes: there is no outer life. I warn you, Alec 
 the mortification of the flesh that's only a phrase to 
 you. Perhaps you won't stand it." 
 
 "Oh, I '11 stand that." 
 
 "The fasting, the long periods of silence. They 
 have adopted a modified form of the Trappist Rule. 
 For many days you would be thrown absolutely 
 upon meditation and prayer, upon yourself, under 
 God." 
 
 ' ' Oh, but I could do that, there would be the others. 
 It would be you'd have to, I mean. That's why 
 I could." He had been so far weakened, destroyed 
 so far. 
 
 "You would have no money, ever." 
 
 "I know. There's nothing in that, though; except 
 that I do want six pounds, now." 
 
 "Dear boy; do you think you really do you think 
 you know?" 
 
 "Yes, I do!" 
 
 Father Collett, praying God for guidance, looked 
 at the boy's hardened face. 
 
 "And this has all come from me," he said. "Why
 
 334 BRUTE GODS 
 
 do we struggle to read God's ways? He uses even 
 sin. . . . Alec, she is my daughter. ' ' 
 
 "Oh. Your daughter? Gillian is, you mean? 
 Oh, yes, you told me about your having I remem- 
 ber. ' ' Finding the pause awkward, Alec added : "I 
 hadn't thought of that, somehow. I say, I'm sorry 
 I never wrote to you. I haven't been home yet," 
 he said hesitatingly. 
 
 "It's very late. You had better sleep here." 
 
 "Yes. You see I came by the last train. The 
 seven something. What time does it leave? Seven 
 thirty-seven or twenty-seven. That new train." 
 He wanted to ask for a timetable. "You know, 
 Father, it's twenty-seven, I'm almost sure." He 
 went on about the train with a dreamy tenacity, a 
 queer brooding absorption. 
 
 "Well, I'll get out some sheets for you. So you 
 came from the Station straight to me?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. I wanted to make certain about the 
 monastery the Order." 
 
 "Do you want me for anything else?" Father 
 Collett winced. 
 
 "Yes, if you could lend me six pounds. I want to 
 give it back to Wilfred Vail. He lent it to me to go 
 to London with." 
 
 "Oh, you asked himf" 
 
 "I couldn't have asked you, not for that, could I? 
 I'll get the six pounds from my father soon, but I'd 
 rather, you see, just for the time " 
 
 "Of course I'll lend it to you."
 
 REFUGE 335 
 
 " Thanks awfully." Alec spoke with immense re- 
 lief. "If you could let me have it tonight?" 
 
 The priest assented. He looked hurt and worn. 
 He thought of his prayers for Alec, of how he had 
 prayed that Alec should be called to the religious 
 life, to spiritual dedication. God had answered, and 
 not answered him. It was all disquietingly different 
 from his expectation. Father Collett was entangled 
 in wrong-seeming complications of feeling that vexed 
 him deeply, troubled him deeply. He felt sharply 
 his own weakness, he wondered if God, in afflicting 
 him with weakness, could think it just to punish Alec 
 with the weakness as well as himself. Would that 
 be just? He shuddered at his doubt. Only today 
 Alec was with Gillian. "She lost him too," he 
 thought, and could not but be comforted by that.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 MR. GLAIVE himself opened the front door 
 the next morning to his returning son. 
 He had seen him from the Study window. 
 "So you're back," he said. "You've heard what's 
 happened ? She 's left him. ' ' 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "Run away to the Continent. She's taken up 
 capital, no doubt. None of her dividends are due 
 till next month, that I know. It proves I was right, 
 it was all a trick to disgrace me and the family. 
 Sheer malice. She never cared for him, he didn't, 
 either" 
 
 "Oh, you mean Williams and " 
 
 "That man and his mistress, yes. She's written, 
 says she'll never come back, says she'll live alone. 
 Simple spite, of course. Not that I would ever dream 
 of receiving " 
 
 Alec walked with his father into the diningroom. 
 Aunt Cathy, the only person there, rose on their en- 
 trance and advanced in a frightened and questioning 
 manner. 
 
 "Oh, Sidney!" 
 
 "Alec come back. Been staying with those friends 
 of his you know, school-friends, Mellor, that's the 
 name, isn't it?" 
 
 336
 
 REFUGE 337 
 
 " 'Mellor'? oh, yes." 
 
 Mrs. Mowry regarded them both with melancholy 
 agitation. "How long ago was it," she went on sus- 
 piciously, "since that Dick Mellor came to stay with 
 us? Alec was almost a little boy. " 
 
 "Yes, yes, quite early in the war. When one's 
 friends still had their men servants." 
 
 "You're going to stay at home now, Alec, aren't 
 you?" Mrs. Mowry asked intently. 
 
 "No, I'm not, that's what I was going to " 
 
 "As I was saying, the whole thing's utterly beneath 
 contempt. But they're the ones that are hurt most. 
 The man can't help not being a gentleman, of course. 
 . . . Do you remember, Catherine, he pronounced 
 'valet' 'vally'? The right people the people who 
 have them, you know of course they call them 
 'valets', Anglicize the word. An outsider " 
 
 "I feel so thankful that she's no longer that she's 
 alone, now." 
 
 "We have dismissed the whole matter, Catherine. 
 I would ask you to remember that. I was going to 
 read you this leading article. ' ' He took up the news- 
 paper and settled himself in a chair. "Remarkably 
 sound. Ah, there's Mervyn. Alec came back from 
 the Mellors this morning, I meant to have told you 
 yesterday. I want you to hear this, remarkably well 
 put, just what I was telling Resine the other day." 
 He proceeded to read aloud to them, he soon felt as 
 though he had written the article himself, he read it 
 as though he had. 
 
 The boys stood uneasily by the door. They had
 
 338 BRUTE GODS 
 
 hardly looked at one another. Mrs. Mowry sat with 
 an air of patient intelligence, her hands clasped. 
 Alec thought of the last time the four of them were 
 assembled; he thought of Frippie, wondered how it 
 could be that Prippie was so utterly blotted out. 
 
 The reading ended, and the boys escaped abruptly. 
 Alec felt disturbed by his brother's presence. Of 
 course Mervyn would ask him questions, and he 
 wouldn 't be able to tell him, he couldn 't possibly make 
 him understand. Until they got to the shrubbery, 
 well away from the house, neither of them spoke. 
 Then Mervyn said suddenly : ' ' The day 's fixed. ' ' 
 
 "Fixed? What is?" 
 
 "My gettin' married, of course, what d'you think? 
 Twenty-second of September." 
 
 "Well, you don't care about her, do you?" 
 
 "Shut up. What are you rubbin' it in for?" 
 
 "It's a good thing you don't, that's what I mean. 
 You ought to be glad you aren't in love, it's a good 
 thing, it is really, I tell you I know " 
 
 "Don't talk rot." 
 
 "It isn't rot, I tell you. I mean you won't be like 
 me, you'll never have that sort of It'd be awful 
 having it if you were married, it'd be even worse, 
 you see. I never will, though, I'll take good care!" 
 
 "What the deuce are you babblin' about? You 
 know what I found out? The guv 'nor had a book 
 sent him, some book about cuckolds, that means men 
 whose wives aren't on the square and it was old 
 Resine who sent it, what d'you think of that, turned 
 down the page, foolin' the guv 'nor, d'you see?"
 
 REFUGE 339 
 
 "Well, what ?" 
 
 "I wish to God I could tell him!" 
 
 "Why don't you then?" 
 
 "Not much wedding then, you bet, but, Lord, I 
 can't, it'd be too low down." 
 
 "How good you are!" said Alec contemptuously. 
 
 " 'Good'? What do you mean? I'm not 'good.' 
 Simply can't do it, that's all, wish I could. Damn 
 nuisance. ' ' 
 
 "Perhaps it wouldn't make any difference." 
 
 "Of course it would, you ass. Don't I know the 
 guv 'nor? One thing he can't stand at any price, 
 bein' laughed at. He'd never forgive Resine, never 
 would; do anything to spite him." 
 
 "Well, I'd tell him." Alec was listless. 
 
 "Can't. I got to know through Dolly, you see 
 that's why I couldn't possibly Wouldn't be fair, 
 anyhow. Oh, damn. Don't suppose the whole busi- 
 ness matters so awful much, after all." 
 
 Alec did not feel inclined to contradict him, but 
 "Any thing's fair," he said, "when everything's so 
 unfair. ' ' 
 
 "What's that? Damn funny way of talkin'." 
 
 "Life's only like a sort of cheap suit, that's all, not 
 worth taking care of, isn't worth keeping clean, or 
 anything. ' ' 
 
 "Aunt Cathy gets on my nerves. You know she 
 got wind of my wantin' to back out, guv 'nor told her, 
 I suppose, an' she said she'd given Nita some things, 
 blest if I remember what they were, family things, 
 bloomin' lace or something, and she nearly started
 
 340 BRUTE GODS 
 
 blubbin' over the idea of havin' to take them back. 
 "Women are the limit. She said we'd make such a 
 handsome pair. Pair of trousers. Then there's old 
 Resine," he went on more fretfully. Alec noticed 
 that he looked older, noticed a little twist of set ill- 
 humour about the corners of his lips he wasn't so 
 goodlooking. "Old Resine, with that 'As I always 
 say' you know. Makes me sick. 'A bird in the 
 hand, as I always say.' 'She's no chicken, as I al- 
 ways say.' 'Tell it not in Gath, as I always say.' 
 And Mrs. Resine 's gettin* fatter an' fatter, looks it 
 all the more when she's dressed up, like she will be 
 at the wedding. Says she thinks of me as her 'real 
 son' now, says I must call her 'Mother.' God, what 
 bindles!" 
 
 "I say, what was it like when you first found out 
 that you didn 't care about Nita any more ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' Oh, shut up. I don 't know. ' ' 
 
 " 'Don't know'!" 
 
 "It was so beastly gradual, I didn't think about it 
 at first, didn't want to think. ..." 
 
 "It wasn't that way with me. It was " 
 
 Alec broke off. Mervyn evidently had no interest 
 at all in the way it was with him. There was the 
 guv 'nor, thinking of nothing but the Williams busi- 
 ness, and there was Mervyn only thinking about this 
 marriage . . . both of them the same. 
 
 "I'm going to join the Order at Webley," he an- 
 nounced, raising his voice against his brother's in- 
 difference.
 
 REFUGE 341 
 
 "What for? You aren't really, are you, bet you 
 get fed up. ' ' 
 
 "No, I shan't, I" 
 
 "I'll get used to it all right, I suppose " 
 
 "Oh, that's all you seem to be able to " 
 
 "Oh, well." Mervyn stared, still invoking the 
 poisonous leer of custom. "Well, what's the idea?" 
 He broke his consoling reflection. "Devilish lively 
 idea, I must say. ' ' 
 
 "What 11 the guv 'nor do?" 
 
 "Oh, 'won't trouble him. Get you off his hands. 
 He'll save money. Besides, it's a fairly classy thing 
 to do, joining an Order. It occurred to me, you know, 
 about Dolly. Of course we couldn't marry. If she 
 had to be a servant, that's what I've been thinkin', 
 why the devil shouldn't she go and get some money 
 out of it? Get well paid. They are, now. More 
 than I could do for her. Why shouldn't she, eh?" 
 He seemed much impressed. 
 
 ' ' ' Classy ' ? Why is it classy ? ' ' 
 
 "What, housework? Oh, that bloomin' monastery. 
 Who's the chap who runs it, some relation to Lord 
 Beauvais, isn't he?" 
 
 "Father Eenel." 
 
 "Oh, yes, he's an 'Honourable.' That's good 
 enough, that'll settle it with the guv 'nor. Good old 
 guv 'nor, don't worry about him. He'll come out all 
 right one way and another, don 't you fear. ' ' 
 
 Alec remembered how he had thought of killing 
 his father. Now, he wouldn't have raised his hand.
 
 342 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Mervyn was silent. He was thinking about the mar- 
 riage, of course, about Nita or Dolly. The guv 'nor 
 was thinking about the Mater in France or somewhere. 
 Aunt Cathy . . . she was no good: thinking about 
 her lace, perhaps, thinking of one little thing after 
 another, the way she talked. Alec wanted to go to 
 "Wilfred Vail, but he shrank from having to admit 
 to Wilfred that it was all over so soon. Now that he 
 had the six pounds it did not seem so important to 
 give it back, and there was pain for him in the prospect 
 of meeting his friend, because they really liked one 
 another.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THE visit to Wilfred Vail hung waiting for 
 more than a month, until Alec's refuge at 
 Webley was settled and immediate. Mer- 
 vyn 's departure with his bride for Derbyshire diverted 
 the dull strong shallow current of Alec's persistency, 
 brought him an intervening loneliness and heavy won- 
 dering that turned him to his friend. 
 
 A letter from Gillian, received on the morning after 
 his brother's wedding, gave the boy further need of 
 Wilfred Vail. He could not understand the letter, 
 which Gillian had written for the mere relief of 
 writing it, her conscious reason being that she must 
 make a last effort at clarifying the situation by honesty 
 and frankness. Her ''sheer devilry" had failed her 
 sadly, and she tried to describe the poor collapse of 
 the mood in which she had wanted to act with Wil- 
 liams, who, when she met him, had heard of Miriam's 
 escape to France. She had seen him fresh from the 
 blow; she pictured, with an irony wasted on Alec, 
 his "fortitude," his "unshattered faith." She pre- 
 sented an image of the successful idealist, his faith 
 unshattered, turning his fine back on the changeling 
 faces of his misadventures. She was candid enough 
 to admit that she was edged by a malice not free from 
 envy. "Why should she envy Williams?" Alec 
 thought. ' ' Because he isn 't in love, because she 's un- 
 
 343
 
 344 BRUTE GODS 
 
 happy?" He reflected vaguely: his reflection had 
 little to do with him. 
 
 He found Wilfred reading a book about agricul- 
 tural machinery. His friend's familiar look of mild 
 and lucid satisfaction struck him freshly ; but, unlike 
 Gillian, he was not envious. He knew that what Wil- 
 fred had was not what he himself could have had, 
 but had missed. Wilfred got up and regarded him 
 closely. 
 
 "Well," he said, "so you got tired of your new 
 toy." 
 
 "Oh, you think that was all it all I" 
 
 "I knew you were bound to take it seriously, how- 
 ever it went. Well. And how far did you go ? We 
 may as well stroll in the garden, that's something you 
 can do under any circumstances. Without indecorum. 
 I was thinking about you this morning." He took 
 Alec's arm and they went out together. "Now about 
 your affair? I gather, from developments, that it 
 must have been something more than, shall we say 
 romantically Platonic ? ' ' 
 
 "Oh, yes!" 
 
 1 ' Your first, then. And hers ? ' ' 
 
 "Of course!" 
 
 ' ' Good. ' ' Wilfred nodded benevolently. ' ' Forgive 
 my unseemly curiosity. That's to your credit, Alec. 
 Virginity is a grace at sixteen, an inconvenience at 
 twenty, and a curse at twenty-five. Politics are rather 
 interesting just now. There's no doubt, you know, 
 that your father is a very clever man." 
 
 "I hope I'm not clever, then."
 
 REFUGE 345 
 
 "No. You might have been a sort of a genius with 
 a few additions and alterations, but your qualities 
 were put together so that they wouldn't work. Who 
 knows, though? They may. Don't let me depress 
 you!" 
 
 "I don't want them to work " 
 
 "Your father's qualities certainly work admirably. 
 Look at those roses, they '11 soon be gone. That fellow 
 Perry ought to give him a testimonial, but no doubt 
 he'll give himself one instead. I like the yellow ones 
 the best, the yellow roses. He's getting on famously, 
 certain of the seat now, absolutely certain. But what 
 a mistake that was, that affair in Ireland, killing 
 Matcham, whoever did it " 
 
 "Matcham! What do you?" 
 
 "Didn't you know? In this morning's paper. He 
 was shot in one of those Irish brawls. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Who shot him ? ' ' Alec 's voice shook. 
 
 "A stray bullet, so they say. It was probably ar- 
 ranged. Yes, he was shot dead." 
 
 ' ' What do you mean, ' arranged ' ? " 
 
 ' ' Oh, people will fight just as hard to keep what they 
 have as to get what they haven't. They'll fight 
 harder. More unscrupulously. I don't blame them, 
 but this was a stupid thing. Your father knows 
 better. He knows how to keep his head and do little 
 things in the right way. Funny what little things 
 please them. Yes, and it's a funny thing, Alec, but 
 it's perfectly true, that a man will fight with more 
 energy and more passion to keep his position in society 
 his town house, his country house, his big motor
 
 346 BRUTE GODS 
 
 than he will to get food when he and his family 
 haven't enough of it. That's why the economic rev- 
 olution is impossible. Don't you think of these 
 things ? You '11 realize when you 're a bit older, you '11 
 know " 
 
 "What's the use of knowing things like that? I 
 don't want to. Thank God, I'll be out of it, I'll be 
 out of all that " 
 
 "Oh, we have to know how to take it, of course." 
 
 "It's awful, about Matcham. I shall never forget 
 him. I '11 never forget that time I heard him speak. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, that speech about the 'brute gods.' Yes, you 
 told me. Solemn trivialities " 
 
 "I didn't know Love was a brute god, though, not 
 then. Matcham He made me see in a sort of 
 way, though it wasn't clear. But he set me going. 
 Then I was stopped. That other thing. ' ' 
 
 "How hard you take it. After all, what is it that's 
 happened to you? You fell in love, and you fell out 
 of love. The mask dropped more quickly than usual, 
 apparently. The rose-pink mask. Mask of rose. 
 Well, it dropped, and you were terribly shocked and 
 jolted, of course you were. But yours is an end- 
 lessly common experience." 
 
 "It isn't common. Not the way it happened to me. 
 Oh, it was such beastly lying, it was such treachery 
 and deceit!" 
 
 "It always is. Love's the eternal impostor. A 
 brutal betrayal, I suppose it is, and it always will be, 
 no help for that. 'Whom God hath joined ' Was
 
 REFUGE 347 
 
 that divine irony or merely celibate ignorance, I 
 wonder ? ' ' 
 
 "I suppose I was hit too soon and too hard, too 
 many things at the same time different things all 
 at once. It sounds absurd, but I really do feel finished. 
 I don 't feel I can start again. I can 't stand anything 
 more of that sort." 
 
 ' ' Why not try something of a different sort, then ? ' ' 
 
 "That's just what I am doing. I'm joining that 
 Order of Father Collett's, the one at Webley. It's all 
 settled now." 
 
 "Oh, dear, yes. I've heard, of course. I don't 
 take it seriously in the least. You'd never be fat 
 enough for a monk. This is the place where we felt 
 that sudden warm breath of wind, you remember? 
 Last summer or the summer before. Strawberries 
 were in season at the time, and I knew nothing about 
 motors. You've grown up since then, I can see you 
 have. A little bit, anyhow?" 
 
 "It's horrible, brute force. . . . And Matcham had 
 a fine face. I remember just how he looked. A bul- 
 let can break a brain, you can't get over that. Just 
 brute force. It's how things are. It's awfully deep 
 down in everything, and it's horrible. You can't 
 stop it anyhow. You said yourself that if the brute 
 gods were pulled down there 'd only be new ones grow 
 up. That's true. I can't stand it. I suppose it's 
 human nature I can't stand human nature in me 
 too, perhaps " 
 
 "Oh, quarrel with the world as much as you like! 
 Why not ? Let 's go to lunch, ' '
 
 348 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "The queer thing is that though it was I who left 
 off being in love with Gillian, she'll get over it and I 
 won't." 
 
 "No." Wilfred led him back towards the house. 
 "You won't get over it in that Order of yours, where 
 I expect you'll stay a couple of months. I said you'd 
 grown up, but you may be something of a baby even 
 now. I can't believe in this irreconcilable quarrel 
 with human nature at your age. You'll grow out of 
 that." 
 
 "It would be much worse if I did. But I don't 
 want to 'quarrel' with human nature, with the world. 
 I do know I can't help and I can't stay in it, the 
 whole thing's too horribly clear. I can't live it out. 
 And I can't kill myself. I couldn't even kill my 
 father. I don't think I'm a baby now in any way 
 that will help me. Of course if I were stronger I 
 wouldn't be doing this, I know that. But then if I 
 were weaker, I wouldn't either." 
 
 "But be practical. The point is, don't let Nature 
 quarrel with you. No one could be less intended for 
 abstinence. And after that affair in London, of course 
 that'll make it worse. What will happen is to put 
 it plainly " He put it plainly, and vividly. 
 
 ' ' Oh, that 's nothing. I can easily put up with that. 
 Oh, I forgot, here's that money. Thanks awfully." 
 
 "Well, I'm damned!" Wilfred stopped and 
 examined the notes that lay in his palm. He was 
 visibly impressed by the presence, within so small 
 a compass, of such considerable purchasing power. 
 "That don't look much i' th' hand," he observed
 
 REFUGE 349 
 
 slowly, in Suffolk. "But that fare a lot t' part wuth. 
 Don't you want to keep some of it?" He continued 
 to regard the money, his expression was half -puzzled, 
 it was unworldly. "If I buy a new lathe now, I 
 shall feel just as though you had given it to me." 
 
 "That's what interests you!" 
 
 ' ' Did I hurt your feelings ? I 'm sorry. But after 
 all, however bad the world is, there are still motors, 
 and cigarettes. We've time for one before lunch, I 
 think." 
 
 They turned back down the path, smoking, and Alec 
 felt that it would be hard to part with "Wilfred. How 
 well Wilfred could get on, without being bound! 
 The boy, occupied painfully with their friendship, be- 
 came inattentive. 
 
 "You see," Wilfred was saying, "you've sown your 
 wild oats in such a tearing hurry that the crop won't 
 grow. Not in the right way. That's what I'm afraid 
 of. You'll have to do it all over again. You always 
 were impatient." 
 
 "I've thought about that. This sex thing. It's 
 either marriage or 'wild oats' or cutting off alto- 
 gether. I'd rather cut off, and I don't think I'll 
 want to change, whatever happens. Marriage would 
 be worse." He thought this would appeal to his 
 friend. "Marriage would be worse than the Order." 
 
 "Ah, well then, why not give debauchery a trial? 
 'There were three young men of St. Louis, The 
 pandar, the rake, and the roue ' But I'm perfectly 
 serious. You need a purge of some sort. A month or 
 two of unbridled dissipation in, say, Port Said or
 
 350 BRUTE GODS 
 
 Tangier something quite new would get all this out 
 of your system. With the proper precautions. Of 
 course I can't recommend these places personally, but 
 I have the authority of a friend who's very trust- 
 worthy in such matters. I 'd even lend you the twenty 
 pounds again, you've repaid it so promptly. Twenty 
 pounds would pay your fare one way, anyhow." 
 
 Alec shook his head with a strained smile. "Of 
 course debauchery is less serious than marriage," he 
 said, "but it's sillier." 
 
 "Impossible. Why rail at marriage, though? We 
 aren't married. So it's to be this religious Order. 
 For life, I suppose?" 
 
 ' ' Certainly for life. I have to be a postulant first, 
 but that doesn't " 
 
 ' ' My dear boy, you '11 be out of it before you 're half- 
 way through your postulating." 
 
 "I shan't be." 
 
 "Forgive me if I show lack of tact, but you haven't, 
 I suppose, any actual religious belief?" 
 
 "Oh, I think I have. Does that matter? Yes, 1 
 have. If anything is right, religious belief is right. 
 I mean the real thing, of course." 
 
 "The sort of thing you get in Orders?" 
 
 "The belief Father Collett has. It must be right 
 because it's so utterly against " 
 
 "Human nature!" 
 
 "Yes, and against the world. Yes." 
 
 "You show me religion as the last resort of the 
 pessimist. ' ' 
 
 They were silent, then Alec said suddenly: "Gil-
 
 REFUGE 351 
 
 liau told me once that women " He stopped. The 
 cleverness in the ring of her words made him shy of 
 repeating them. "She said women had always been 
 the camp-followers of the big battalions." 
 
 "Excellent. A capital phrase." 
 
 "Well, that's what we all are, it's what we all turn 
 into if we stay here long enough. You won't, of 
 course, but then I couldn't be you. Most people, if 
 they escape one of the battalions, they find them- 
 selves in with another." 
 
 "But isn't that what you're doing with religion?" 
 
 "That's not the same. It's outside the battalions, 
 it's sort of off their ground. It's my only way, Wil- 
 fred, don't try to argue me out of it." 
 
 "I wouldn't for anything make you more deter- 
 mined by opposition. I know you, you see. When 
 your mouth goes like that, you might as well try 
 to argue with a seized back-axle or a broken crank- 
 shaft. If you must go running for refuge to the 
 arms of a staggering faith I wish your Gillian had 
 lasted longer. I like that phrase of hers. I '11 pass it 
 on to Teddy. Being a doctor, he'll appreciate it. 
 Most doctors despise women, did you know? It's 
 because they " 
 
 "You see, you can go on, Wilfred, as you are. 
 You have your life. You haven't had well, you 
 haven't had anything done to you. I wish I could 
 explain it better. I can't stand the the sort of 
 ignominy of going on, now I'm scrapped." 
 
 "You don't look it, Alec, you don't look scrapped. 
 Even though you did get drunk at the wedding."
 
 352 BRUTE GODS 
 
 "Oh!" Alec blushed. "Well, there was nothing 
 else to do! If you could have seen them all! Poor 
 Mervyn "What did you hear about it ? I remember 
 going from one end of the table to the other and drink- 
 ing up all the champagne that was left in the glasses. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, Carnival?" 
 
 "No, I wanted to show them what I thought. I 
 don't suppose I did, though. It was because of the 
 doctor's jokes, and Mrs. Resine. She looked like a 
 fat old what do you call those old women?" 
 
 " 'Procuress'?" 
 
 "Yes, she looked just like a fat old procuress, there 
 with Nita. Much more like one than Mrs. Barnfield. ' ' 
 
 "Who's Mrs. Barnfield?" 
 
 "Oh, you don't know. It doesn't matter. My 
 father said it was very bad form. Not my getting 
 drunk, so much, he wasn't exactly sober himself. 
 He made a speech, said that his son's wedding made 
 him feel that he 'd live for ever. ' Non omnis moriar, ' 
 that was what he ended up with, and Mervyn said he 
 hoped a good deal of him would, anyhow." 
 
 "Your brother should have said that in his speech 
 of response." 
 
 "Oh, no," Alec replied gravely, "he only said it 
 to me. My father didn't hear. He enjoyed every- 
 thing except my doing that. You know, mopping it 
 up from the bottoms of the glasses like I did. ' ' 
 
 "Yes. A sort of gesture. I understand. You 
 wanted to reduce the whole thing to the level where 
 you thought it ought to be. Bring it into contempt. 
 That's interesting."
 
 REFUGE 353 
 
 ' ' Something like that, I suppose so. A ' gesture. ' I 
 might have found a better one. Perhaps I have 
 or I shall. I suppose I ought to have seen by what 
 happened to Mervyn, I ought to have But with 
 him it was so different." 
 
 "We'll be late for lunch." 
 
 "I'm going." 
 
 Wilfred Vail, looking at him, did not press him to 
 stay. "You'll cut through at the end of the near 
 drive?" was all he said. 
 
 "Yes, I'm walking back. Good-bye." 
 
 "Au revoir." 
 
 Alec's reluctance quickened his steps. He resented 
 the memories of Wilfred that came crowding his 
 brain, he ejected them. He replaced them forcibly 
 with thoughts of Father Collett. He recalled his last 
 interview with the priest, and their parting not a 
 casual parting like this one, although it was only for 
 a short time. Father Collett had spoken impressively, 
 finally. He had made himself believe, by that time, 
 that God pointed Alec. He had talked of Alec's 
 youth. "Your wings of the morning, He has shewn 
 them their way." The boy tried to remember the 
 words, exactly. He had tried the day after his 
 visit to Webley, the day of the wedding. . . . Quota- 
 tions from the Bible. . . . Father Renel, too; he had 
 quoted something . . . fine . . . poetry. The more 
 wine Alec had swallowed, the more it had seemed 
 to him important to remember: he was so sure that 
 the words would sound finer than ever because of 
 his being drunk. But his memory had continued to
 
 354 BRUTE GODS 
 
 grasp emptily. "What a pity Christianity isn't 
 true!" he had exclaimed; and then: "Damn goo' 
 wine. ' ' He recalled now, with shame, how he had re- 
 peated these observations at intervals. He wondered 
 how many times? Had many people heard him? It 
 wasn't fair to Father Collett. . . . What was it that 
 Father Collett had said? "I pray that we may be 
 found worthy . . . worthy to walk together in the 
 sight of the Lord. ' ' Yes. Now he remembered quite 
 clearly. And about religion: "Religion is above 
 what the world calls humanity and what the world 
 calls love." "The only remedy," he had called it; 
 and he had used another word. ' ' The only . tran- 
 scendence of the evils of the soul, of the life that 
 most men know." Alec reflected. People like 
 Matcham fought against what they would call abuses 
 in Life, bad conventions. They thought they could 
 do away with them, and make everything all right. 
 But the brute gods ... it wasn't only that they had 
 the conventions and abuses on their side, they had 
 Life itself. Love that made life, love was in with 
 them, an accomplice. Wilfred Vail saw that, but 
 "he doesn't know it as I do, so it doesn't really 
 matter to him." The last thing Father Collett had 
 said was: "Enter thou into the peace of our Lord." 
 Alec assured himself that he would never leave the 
 Order. Whatever might happen, however he might 
 feel, he would never leave it. The strength of that 
 resolve would be something to live in, whether he 
 believed in anything else or not. Resolved, he walked 
 on, fronting the track cut out before him by his
 
 REFUGE 355 
 
 maimed revengeful will. In refuge, he paid homage ; 
 paid blindly, now, to those outraging brute forces 
 their greatest tribute, their ultimate tribute. 
 
 THE END
 
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