Mr. Tasker's Gods by T. F. Powys Read Free Book Online Page A

quite a usual vicarage day, a day of meals and lazy endurance, a day of slow kitchen labour.
    There was, however, a slight activity shown by that stout good-humoured lady, Mrs. Turnbull, who gave sundry directions about the preparing of a bedroom for her eldest son, the Rev. John Turnbull, who was to come the next day.
    The Rev. John Turnbull was, as we know, acurate in the West End, and, while enjoying himself in the best possible manner, he had the very serious business of finding a wife with money always before him. He went forth every afternoon , like a hunter, and followed respectable rich families almost to their bankers’ doors. He was polite and genial, the sort of young man who gives cigarettes out of a silver case to tramps. He was very friendly to every one, and enjoyed a good reputation amongst the Church well-wishers because he once or twice a week strode up a side street, in a long black garment that touched his toes, smoking a cigarette and talking to any one he met, and all for the encouragement of the Church. His rector watched him with a kindly eye and a daughter. He was really a very hard-working young man, who could always sign his name quite clearly in red ink. He was indeed a good fellow in his own way and understood his mystery, and lived a very cheerful life in the kindly bosom of the Anglican Church.
    His religion was to him a part of the game, a very good game. He could pass the bread and wine, smile condolingly at a drunkard, and sadly, a waywardly sad smile, at a girl of the streets. One hundred poor typists wrote to him every week, or more often, and he referred them to the parish magazine, in which was his photo. He spoke to a member of Parliament about the typists, and the member undertook to look into their long hours. The curate told them all aboutthe member and his kindness in the parish magazine.
    The Rev. John began work in his church quite early in the morning, and was really tired when he left off for lunch. At that meal, except on Fridays, he indulged in a half bottle of Burgundy . After lunch he sometimes went to see an old man who was ruptured, so that he might have a little time to compose himself before continuing his hunt after rich girls. At the afternoon tea-table, his quarry having been run to earth, he talked of Socialism and about the way poor people are trodden down by the greedy rich. And if the quarry was touched at his account of the slums, he then went on to tell of the temptations to growing children, in those evil places. And then, if his hearers were not bored, he told them about his friend—he always called him his friend—who lived in a garret. He was the old man with the rupture. The Rev. John explained how his friend lived a beautiful life, spending his sad eternal bedtime in reading the Gospels, and that his friend was writing a book about St. Luke because his own name happened to be Luke.
    This happy curate spent his evenings at the Workmen’s Club, and talked a great deal to a radical tailor, who did not go very far with the red flag because he had saved enough money to buy two houses. The young clergyman had a special kind of sickly smile that he brought outfor the good tailor. He likewise played billiards with a printer’s devil, holding at the same time a cigarette at the very outside of his lips in true Oxford fashion while he aimed at the balls.
    His stroll home at night had been once or twice delayed for a few hours—there is always something a man must do—but generally speaking he arrived at his lodgings at twelve-thirty and read a paper volume of short stories for an hour and then went to bed, very pleased with himself and very pleased with the world, at half-past one.
    When at his country home, he patronized his younger brother, the idiot, and gave him cigarettes , a cheaper kind than he gave to tramps, and he talked to him in quite a friendly tone as he did to the gardener. He had now come home to tell his parents that he was engaged to a dear