Free Mr. Tasker's Gods by T. F. Powys

his pigs.
    Henry had discovered something queer: that this harmless, quiet churchwarden, this vestry-meeting Mr. Tasker, was not really Mr. Tasker at all, but a sort of mask that was worn by a brute beast of the most foul nature. Henry had heard the shout. It had come from somewhere that is below humanity and from something of which man is but the surface. Looking at Mr. Tasker’sface, Henry had a momentary glimpse of this thing, and a sudden impulse overcame him to strike at it—he saw blood. A moment later he was himself again, staring as before at the rusty hinge of the sty gate.
    His brother, the curate, expressed himself as very interested in the weight of the fat pigs, that were the next exhibit, and that were shortly to be killed. He talked to the dairyman about the different ways of curing bacon in order to make it a fit and proper article for a gentleman’s breakfast table.
    The pigs in the sties were finishing the remainder of their afternoon tea. They had some of their feet still in the trough, and they squealed and sucked and stamped in the dung.
    And to Mr. Tasker they were—pigs. No word to him was more sacred.
    By this time John considered that he had been polite enough to his father’s churchwarden, and, thanking him very much for letting them look at such very fine pigs, the brothers departed. As soon as they had left the yard, the pigs and Mr. Tasker were lost to John’s mind, while other little problems presented their petitions.
    The visit in Henry’s case quite outweighed the cares and troubles or the joys of the garden that he had to think of. He could not forget the heavy-laden, overworked, dreary look, and the eyes dragged open fixed upon a great bucket of swill. And he could not forget the ugly thingout of which that human shout had come. His spirit, so light hitherto, had received a weight upon it, a weight that had begun to make him feel what man is, a weight harder to bear than the cross. He could not understand his brother, who at once began to speak of something else. The something else was the interest that bankers charge upon lent money. Henry, for the first time in his life, did not even hear his brother.
    On their way to the dairy Henry had walked lightly and had picked some white clover, but now he even forgot to open the gate for his brother, who, however, by standing back, reminded him of his duty.
    During the afternoon Alice had tidied and dusted the best rooms, and had read, to her great contentment, a letter that she had found upon the floor of the room occupied by the Rev. John. A letter that came from an address that Alice knew well enough was not ‘the dear girl’s.’ It was time for her to lay the cloth for tea when she entered Henry’s room. Henry never left his things about, and the room was arranged like a monk’s cell. Alice did not mean to waste her time there, so she gave a flick with her duster at the bookcase. Her blow, directed with a maidenly violence, dislodged a volume, that fell down and lay open upon the floor. Alice left it there. ‘Those dry books had best lie upon the floor,’ was her comment.
    When the two brothers returned from theirvisit to the dairy they found the doctor reading an article called ‘Money’ in the Hampton Magazine. Henry did not wait for the meal that was called supper; he went up to his own room, and nobody missed him. One of the brothers said in answer to the mother, ‘Oh yes, Henry is home, he has gone to bed,’ and there they all left him.
    In Mr. Turnbull’s mind’s eye there was the sobbing form of the new teacher. The Rev. John was thinking of the old power that the barons used to exercise over the maidens in the villages. He had read English history at Oxford. Dr. George was wondering whether a certain patient would pay his bill, and Mrs. Turnbull was thinking of her jam, and they talked about the new expedition to the South Pole.
    Henry had gone to his room in