"Do I love Easu?" he asked himself. And he writhed over in bed in disgust. He loathed Easu. If he could crush him absolutely to powder, he would crush him to powder. Make him extinct.
"Lord, Lord!" he groaned. "I loathe Easu. I loathe him."
What was amiss with him? Did he want to leave off loathing Easu? Was that the root of his sickness and fever?
But when he thought of Easu's figure and face, he knew he didn't want to leave off loathing him. He did loathe him, whether he wanted to or not, and the fact to him was sacred. It went right through the core of him.
"Lord! Lord!" he groaned, writhing in fever. "Lord, help me to loathe him properly. Lord, I'll kill him if you want me to; and if you don't want me to, I won't. I'll kill him if you want me to. But if you don't want me to, I won't care any more."
The pledge seemed to soothe him. At the back of Jack's consciousness was always this mysterious Lord, to whom he cried in the night. And this Lord put commands upon him, but so darkly, Jack couldn't easily find out what the commands were. The Aunts had always said, the command was to be a good, loving little boy. But when he tried being a good, loving little boy, his soul seemed to lose his Lord, and turn wicked. That was what made him fear hell. When he seemed to lose connection with his great, mysterious Lord, with whom he communed absolutely alone, he became aware of hell. And he couldn't share with his Aunts that Jesus whom they always commended. At the Sacrament, something in his soul stood cold, and he knew this was no Sacrament to him.
He had his own Lord. And when he could get into communication or communion, with his own Lord, he always felt well and right again.
Now, in his pain and battered fever, he was fighting for his Lord again.
"Lord, I don't love Easu, and I'll kill him if you want me to. But if you don't want me to, I won't, I won't, I won't bother any more."
This pledge and this submission soothed him strangely. He felt he was coming back to his own Lord. It was a pledge, and he would keep it. He gave no pledge to love Easu. Only not to kill him, if the Lord didn't want it; and to kill him, if the Lord did.