Acknowledging this, she had sought outside advice, and Mr. Samgrass had been found to help her. He was a youflg history don, a short, plump man, dapper in dress, with sparse hair brushed flat on an over-large head, neat hands, small feet and the general appearance of being too often bathed. His manner was genial and his speech idiosyncratic. We came to know him well. It was Mr. Samgrass's particular aptitude to help others with their work, but he was himself the author of several stylish little books. He was a great delver in muniment-rooms and had a sharp nose for the picturesque. Sebastian spoke less than the truth when he described him as "someone of Mummy's"; he was someone of almost everyone's who possessed anything to attract him. Mr. Samgrass was a genealogist and a legitimist; he loved 1 dispossessed royalty and knew the exact validity of the rival claims of the pretenders to many thrones; he was not a man of religious habit, but he knew more than most Catholics about their Church; he had friends in the Vatican and, could talk at length of policy and appointments, saying which contemporary ecclesiastics were in good favour, which in bad, what recent theological hypothesis was suspect, and how this or that Jesuit or Dominican had skated on thin ice or sailed near the wind in his Lenten discourses; he had everything except the Faith, and later liked to attend benediction in the chapel at Brideshead and see the ladies of the family with their necks arched in devotion under their black lace mantillas; he loved forgotten scandals in high life and was an expert on putative parentage; he claimed to love the past, but I always felt that he thought all the splendid company, living or dead, with whom he associated, slightly absurd; it was Mr. Samgrass who was real, the rest were an insubstantial pageant. He was the Victorian tourist, solid and patronizing, for whose amusement these foreign things were paraded. And there was something a little too brisk about his. literary manners; I suspected the existence of a concealed typewriter somewhere in his panelled rooms. He was with Lady Marchmain when I first met them, and I thought then that she could not have found a greater contrast to herself than this intellectual-on-the-make, nor a better foil to her own charm. It was not her way to make a conspicuous entry into anyone's life, but towards the end of that week Sebastian said rather sourly: "You and Mummy seem very thick" -- and I realized that in fact I was being drawn into intimacy by swift, imperceptible stages, for she was impatient of any human relationship that fell short of it. By the time that she left I had promised to spend all next vacation, except Christmas itself, at Brideshead. * * * One Monday morning a week or two later I was in Sebastian's room waiting for him to return from a tutorial, when Julia walked in, followed by a large man whom she introduced as "Mr. Mottram" and addressed as "Rex." They were motoring up from a house where they had spent the week-end, they explained, and had stopped in Oxford for luncheon. Rex Mottram was warm and confident in a checked ulster; Julia cold and rather shy in furs; she made straight for the fire and crouched over it shivering. "We hoped Sebastian might give us luncheon," she said. "Failing him we can always try Boy Mulcaster, but I somehow thought we should eat better with Sebastian, and we're very hungry. We've been literally starved all the week-end at the Chasms'." "He and Sebastian are both lunching with me. Come too." So, without demur, they joined the party in my rooms, one of the last of the old kind that I gave. Rex Mottram exerted himself to make an impression. He was a handsome fellow with dark hair growing low on his forehead and heavy black eyebrows. He spoke with an engaging Canadian accent. One quickly learned all that he wished one to know about him, that he was a lucky man with money, a member of Parliament, a gambler, a good fellow; that he played golf regularly with the Prince of Wales and was on easy terms with "Max" and "F.E." and "Gertie" Lawrence and Augustus John and Carpentier -- with anyone, it seemed, who happened to be mentioned. Of the University he said: "No, I was never here. It just means you start life three years behind the other fellow." His life, so far as he made it known, began in the war, where he had got a good M.C. serving with the Canadians and had ended as A.D.C. to a popular general. He cannot have been more than thirty at the time we met him, but he seemed very old to us in Oxford. Julia treated him, as she seemed to treat all the world, with mild disdain, but with an air of possession. During luncheon she sent him to the car for her cigarettes, and once or twice when he was talking very big, she apologized for him, saying: "Remember he's a colonial," to which he replied with boisterous laughter. When he had gone I asked who he was. "Oh, just someone of Julia's," said Sebastian. , We were slightly surprised a week later to get a telegram from him asking us and Boy Mulcaster to dinner in London on the following night for "a party of Julia's." "I don't think he knows anyone young," said Sebastian; "all his friends are leathery old sharks in the City and the House of Commons. Shall we go?" We discussed it, and because our life at Oxford was now so much in the shadows, we decided that we would. "Why does he want Boy?" "Julia and I have known him all our lives. I suppose, finding him at lunch with you, he thought he was a chum." We had no great liking for Mulcaster, but the three of us were in high spirits when, having got leave for the night from our colleges, we drove off on the London road in Hardcastle's car. We were to spend the night at Marchmain House. We went there to dress and, while we dressed, drank a bottle of champagne. As we came downstairs Julia passed us going up to her room still in her day clothes. "I'm going to be late," she said; "you boys had better go on to Rex's. It's heavenly of you to come." "What is this party?" "A ghastly charity ball I'm involved with. Rex insisted on giving a dinner party for it. See you there." Rex Mottram lived within walking distance of Marchmain House. "Julia's going to be late," we said, "she's only just gone up to dress." "That means an hour. We'd better have some wine." A woman who was introduced as "Mrs. Champion" said: "I'm sure she'd sooner we started, Rex." "Well, let's have some wine first anyway." "Why a Jeroboam, Rex?" she said peevishly. "You always want to have everything too big." "Won't be too big for us," he said, taking the bottle in his own hands and easing the cork. There were two girls there, contemporaries of Julia's; they all seemed involved in the management of the ball. Mulcaster knew them of old and they, without much relish I thought, knew him. Mrs. Champion talked to Rex. Sebastian and I found ourselves drinking alone together as we always did. At length Julia arrived, unhurried, exquisite, unrepentant. "You shouldn't have let him wait," she said. "It's his Canadian courtesy." Rex Mottram was a liberal host, and by the end of dinner the three of us who had come from Oxford Were rather drunk. While we were standing in the hall waiting for the girls to come down and Rex and Mrs. Champion had drawn away from us, talking acrimoniously, in low voices, Mulcaster said, "I say, let's slip away from this ghastly dance and go to Ma Mayfield's." "Whois Ma Mayfield?" "You know Ma Mayfield. Everyone knows Ma Mayfield of the Old Hundredth. I've got a regular there --a sweet little thing called Effie. There'd be the devil to pay if Effie heard I'd been to London and hadn't been in to see her. Come and meet Effie at Ma Mayfield's." "All right," said Sebastian, "let's meet Effie at Ma Mayfield's." "We'll take another bottle of pop off the good Mottram and then leave the bloody dance and go to the Old Hundredth. How about that?" It was not a difficult matter to leave the ball; the girls whom Rex Mottram had collected had many friends there and, after we had danced together once or twice, our table began to fill up; Rex Mottram ordered more and more wine; presently the three of us were together on the pavement. "D'you know where this place is?" "Of course I do. A hundred Sink Street." "Where's that?" "Just off Leicester Square. Better take the car." "Why?" "Always better to have one's own car on an occasion like this." We did not question this reasoning, and there lay our mistake. The car was in the forecourt of Marchmain House within a hundred yards of the hotel where we had been dancing. Mul-caster drove and, after some wandering, brought us safely to Sink Street. A commissionaire at one side of a dark doorway and a middle-aged man in evening dress on the other side of it, standing with his face to the wall cooling his forehead on the bricks, indicated our destination. "Keep out, you'll be poisoned," said the middle-aged man. "Members?" said the commissionaire. "The name is Mulcaster," said Mulcaster. "Viscount Mulcaster." "Well, try inside," said the commissionaire. "You'll be robbed and given a dose," said the middle-aged man. Inside the dark doorway was a bright hatch. "Members?" asked a stout woman, in evening dress. "I like that," said Mulcaster. "You ought to know me by now." "Yes, dearie," said the woman without interest. "Ten bob each." "Oh, look here, I've never paid before." "Daresay not, dearie. We're full up to-night so it's ten bob. Anyone who comes after you will have to pay a quid. You're lucky." "Let me speak to Mrs. Mayfield." "I'm Mrs. Mayfield. Ten bob each." "Why, Ma, I didn't recognize you in your finery. You know me, don't you? Boy Mulcaster." "Yes, duckie. Ten bob each." We paid, and the man who had been standing between us and the inner door now made way for us. Inside it was hot and crowded, for the Old Hundredth was then at the height of its success. We found a table and ordered a bottle; the waiter took payment before he opened it. "Where's Effie to-night?" asked Mulcaster. "Effie 'oo?" "Effie, one of the girls who's always here. The pretty dark one." "There's lots of girls works here. Some of them's dark and some of them's fair. You might call some of them pretty. I haven't the time to know them by name." "I'll go and look for her," said Mulcaster. While he was away two girls stopped near our table and looked at us curiously. "Come on," said one to the other, "we're wasting our time. They're only fairies." Presently Mulcaster returned in triumph with Effie to whom, without its being ordered, the waiter immediately brought a plate of eggs and bacon. "First bite I've had all the evening," she said. "Only thing that's any good here is the breakfast; makes you fair peckish hanging about." "That's another six bob," said the waiter. When her hunger was appeased, Effie dabbed her mouth and looked at us. "I've seen you here before, often, haven't I?" she said to me. "I'm afraid not." "But I've seen you?" to Mulcaster. "Well, I should rather hope so. You haven't forgotten our little evening in September?" "No, darling, of course not. You were the boy in the Guards who cut your toe, weren't you?" "Now, Effie, don't be a tease." "No, that was another night, wasn't it? I know--you were with Bunty the time the police were in and we all hid in the place they keep the dustbins." "Effie loves pulling my leg, don't you, Effie? She's annoyed with me for staying away so Jong, aren't you?" "Whatever you say, I know I have seen you before somewhere." "Stop teasing." "I wasn't meaning to tease. Honest. Want to dance?" "Not at the minute." "Thank the Lord. My shoes pinch something terrible to-night." Soon she and Mulcaster were deep in conversation. Sebastian leaned back and said to me: "I'm going to ask that pair to join us." The two unattached women who had considered us earlier were again circling towards us. Sebastian smiled and rose to greet them; soon they, too, were eating heartily. One had the face of a skull, the other of a sickly child. The Death's Head seemed destined for me. "How about a little party," she said, "just the six of us over at my place?" "Certainly," said Sebastian. "We thought you were fairies when you came in." "That was our extreme youth." Death's Head giggled. "You're a good sport," she said. "You're very sweet really," said the Sickly Child. "I must just tell Mrs. Mayfield we're going out." It was still early, not long after midnight, when we regained the street. The commissionaire tried to persuade us to take a taxi. "I'll look after your car, sir. I wouldn't drive yourself, sir, really I wouldn't." But Sebastian took the wheel and the two women sat one on the other beside him, to show him the way. Effie and Mulcaster and I sat in the back. I think we cheered a little as we drove off. We did not drive far. We turned into Shaftesbury Avenue and were making for Piccadilly when we narrowly escaped a head-on collision with a taxi-cab. "For Christ's sake," said Effie, "look where you're going. D'you want to murder us all?" "Careless fellow that," said Sebastian. "It isn't safe the way you're driving," said Death's Head. "Besides, we ought to be on the other side of the road." "So we should," said Sebastian, swinging abruptly across. "Here, stop. I'd sooner walk." "Stop? Certainly." He put on the brakes and we came abruptly to a halt broadside across the road. Two policemen quickened their stride and approached us. "Let me out of this," said Effie, and made her escape with a leap and a scamper. The rest of us were caught. "I am sorry if I am impeding the traffic, officer," said Sebastian with care, "but the lady insisted on my stopping for her to get out. She would take no denial. As you will have observed, she was pressed for time. A matter of nerves you know." "Let me talk to him," said Death's Head. "Be a sport, handsome; no one's seen anything but you. The boys don't mean any harm. I'll get them into a taxi and see them home quiet." The policemen looked us over, deliberately, forming their own judgment. Even then everything might have been well had not Mulcaster joined in. "Look here, my good man," he said. "There's no need for you to notice anything. We've just come from Ma Mayfield's. I reckon she pays you a nice retainer to keep your eyes shut. Well, you can keep 'em shut on us too and you won't be the losers by it." That resolved any doubts which the policemen may have felt. In a short time we were in the cells. I remember little of the journey there or the process of admission. Mukaster, I think, protested vigorously and, when we were made to empty our pockets, accused his gaolers of theft. Then we were locked in, and my first clear memory is of tiled walls with a lamp set high up under thick glass, a bunk, and a door, which had no handle on my side. Somewhere to the left of me Sebastian and Mulcaster were raising Cain. Sebastian had been steady on his legs and fairly composed on the way to the station; now, shut in, he seemed in a frenzy and was pounding the door, and shouting: "Damn you, I'm not drunk. Open this door. I insist on seeing the doctor. I tell you I'm not drunk," while Mulcaster, beyond, cried: "My God, you'll pay for this! You're making a great mistake, I can tell you. Telephone the Home Secretary. Send for my solicitors. I will have habeas corpus." Groans of protest rose from the other cells where various tramps and pickpockets were trying to get some sleep: "Aw, pipe down!" "Give a man some peace, can't yer?" . . . "Is this a blinking lock-up or a looney-house?" And the sergeant, going his1 rounds, admonished them through the grille: "You'll be here all night if you don't sober up." . I sat on the'bunk in low spirits and dozed a little. Presently the racket subsided and Sebastian called: "I say, Charles, are you there?" "Here I am." "This is the hell of a business." "Can't we get bail or something?" Mulcaster seemed to have fallen asleep. "I tell you the man -- Rex Mottram. He'd be in his element here." We had some difficulty in getting into touch with him; it was half an hour before the policeman in charge answered my bell. At last he consented, rather sceptically, to send a telephone message to the hotel where the ball was being held. There was another long delay and then our prison doors were open. Seeping through the squalid air of the police station, the sour smell of dirt and disinfectant, came the sweet, rich smoke of a Havana cigar -- of two Havana cigars, for the sergeant in charge was smoking also. Rex stood in the charge room looking the embodiment -- indeed, the burlesque--:of power and prosperity; he wore a fur-lined overcoat with broad astrakhan lapels and a silk hat. The police were deferential and eager to help. "We had to do our duty," they said. "Took the young gentlemen into custody for their own protection." Mulcaster looked crapulous and began a confused complaint that he had been denied legal representation and civil rights. Rex said: "Better leave all the talking to me." I was clear-headed now and watched and listened with fascination while Rex settled our business. He examined the charge sheets, spoke affably to the men who had made the arrest; with the slightest perceptible nuance he opened the way for bribery and quickly covered it when he saw that things had now lasted too long and the knowledge had been too widely shared; he undertook to deliver us at the magistrate's court at ten next morning, and then led us away. His car was outside. "It's no use discussing things to-night. Where are you sleeping?" "Marchers," said Sebastian. "You'd better come to me. I can fix you up for to-night. Leave everything to me." It was plain that he rejoiced in his efficiency. Next morning the display was even more impressive." I awoke with the startled and puzzled sense of being in a strange room,, and in the first seconds of consciousness the memory of the evening before returned, first as though of a nightmare, then of reality. Rex's valet was unpacking a suitcase. On seeing me move he went to the wash-hand stand and poured something from a bottle. "I think I have everything from Marchmain House," he said. "Mr. Mottram sent round to Heppel's for this." I took the draught and felt better. A man was there from Trumper's to shave us. Rex joined us at breakfast. "It's important to make a good appearance at the court," he said. "Luckily none of you look much the worse for wear." After breakfast the barrister arrived and Rex delivered a summary of the case. "Sebastian's in a jam," he said. "He's liable to anything up to six months' imprisonment for being drunk in charge of a car. You'll come up before Grigg unfortunately. He takes rather a grim view of cases of this sort. All that will happen this morning is that we shall ask to have Sebastian held over for a week to prepare the defence. You two will plead guilty, say you're sorry, and pay your five-bob fine. I'll see what can be done about squaring the evening papers. The Star may be difficult. "Remember, the important thing is to keep out all mention of the Old Hundredth. Luckily the tarts were sober and aren't being charged, but their names have been taken as witnesses. If we try and break down the police evidence, they'll be called. We've got to avoid that at all costs, so we shall have to swallow the police story whole and appeal to the magistrate's good nature not to wreck a young man's career for a single boyish indiscretion. It'll work all right. We shall need a don to give evidence of good character. Julia tells me you have a tame one called Samgrass. He'll do. Meanwhile your story is simply that you came up from Oxford for a perfectly respectable dance, weren't used to wine, had too much, and lost the way driving home. "After that we shall have to see about fixing things with your authorities at Oxford." "I told them to call my solicitors," said Mulcaster, "and they refused. They've put themselves hopelessly in the wrong, and I don't see why they should get away with it." "For heaven's sake don't start any kind of argument. Just plead guilty and pay up. Understand?" Mulcaster grumbled but submitted. Everything happened at court as Rex had predicted. At half past ten we stood in Bow Street, Mulcaster and I free men, Sebastian bound over to appear in a week's time. Mulcaster had kept silent about his grievance; he and I were admonished and fined five shillings each and fifteen shillings costs. Mulcaster was becoming rather irksome to us, and it was with relief that we heard his plea of other business in London. The barrister bustled off and Sebastian and I were left alone and disconsolate. "I suppose Mummy's got to hear about it," he said. "Damn, damn, damn! It's cold. I won't go home. I've nowhere to go. Let's just slip back to Oxford and wait for them to bother us" The raffish habitues of the police court came and went up and down the steps; still we stood on the windy corner, undecided. "Why not get hold of Julia?" "I might go abroad." "My dear Sebastian, you'll only be given a talking-to and fined a few pounds." "Yes, but it's all the bother--Mummy and Bridey and all the family and the dons. I'd sooner go to prison. If I just slip away abroad they can't get me back, can they? That's what people do when the police are after them. I know Mummy will make it seem she has to bear the whole brunt of the business." "Let's telephone Julia and get her to meet us somewhere and talk it over." We met at Gunter's in Berkeley Square. Julia, like most women then, wore a green hat pulled down to her eyes with a diamond arrow in it; she had a small dog under her arm, three-quarters buried in the fur of her, coat. She greeted us with an unusual show of interest. "Well, you are a pair of pickles; I must say you look remarkably well on it. The only time I got tight I was paralysed all the next day. I do think you might have taken me with you. The ball was positively lethal, and I've always longed to go to the Old Hundredth. No one will ever take me. Is it heaven?" "So you know all about that, too?" "Rex telephoned me this morning and told me everything.! What were your girl friends like?" "Don't be prurient," said Sebastian. "Mine was like a skull." "Mine was like a consumptive." "Goodness" It had clearly raised us in Julia's estimation that we had been out with women; to. her they were the point of interest. "Does Mummy know?" "Not about your skulls and consumptives. She knows you were in the clink. I told her. She was divine about it, o course. You know anything Uncle Ned did was always perfect, and hr,| got locked up once for taking a bear into one of Lloyd George's meetings, so she really feels quite human about the whole thing. I She wants you both to lunch with her." "Oh God!" "The only trouble is the papers and the family. Have you, I got an awful family, Charles?" "Only a father. He'll never hear about it." "Ours are awful. Poor Mummy is in for a ghastly time withvI them. They'll be writing letters and paying visits of sympathy, i and all the time at the back of their minds one half will be saying, 'That's what comes of bringing the boy up a Catholic,' and the' other half will say, 'That's what comes of sending him to Eton instead of Stonyhurst.' Poor Mummy can't get it right." We lunched with Lady Marchmain. She accepted the whole thing with humorous resignation. Her only reproach was: "I can't think why you went off and stayed with Mr. Mottram* f You might have come and told me about it first. . . . "How am I going to explain it to all the family?" she asked. "They will be so shocked to find that they're more upset about j it than I am. Do you know my sister-in-law, Fanny Rosscommon? She has always thought I brought the children up badly. Now I am beginning to think she must be right." When we left I said: "She couldn't have been more charming. What were you so worried about?" "I can't explain," said Sebastian miserably. A week later when Sebastian came up for trial he was fined ten pounds. The newspapers reported it with painful prominence, one of them under the ironic headline: "Marquis's Son Unused to Wine." The magistrate said that it was only through the prompt action of the police that he was not up on a grave charge . . . "It is purely by good fortune that you do not bear the responsibility of a serious accident. . . ." Mr. Samgrass gave evidence that Sebastian bore an irreproachable character and that a brilliant future at the University was in jeopardy. The papers took hold of this too --"Model Student's Career at Stake." But for Mr. Samgrass's evidence, said the magistrate, he would have been disposed to give an exemplary sentence; the law was the same for an Oxford undergraduate as for any young hooligan, indeed the better the home the more shameful the offence. . . . It was not only at Bow Street that Mr. Samgrass was of value. At Oxford he showed all the zeal and acumen which were Rex Mottram's in London. He interviewed the college authorities, the proctors, the Vice-Chancellor; he induced Monsignor Bell to call on the Dean of Christ Church; he arranged for Lady March-main to talk to the Chancellor himself; and, as a result of all this, the three of us were gated for the rest of the term, Hardcastle, for no very clear reason, was again deprived of the use of his car, and the affair blew over. The most lasting penalty we suffered was our intimacy with Rex Mottram and Mr. Samgrass, but since Rex's life was in London in a world of politics and high finance and Mr. Samgrass's nearer to our own at Oxford, it was from him we suffered the more. For the rest of that term he haunted us. Now that we were gated we could not spend our evenings together, and from nine o'clock onwards were alone and at Mr. Samgrass's mercy. Hardly an evening seemed to pass but he called on one or the other of us. He spoke of "our little escapade" as though he, too, had been iri the cells, and had that bond with us. ... Once I climbed out of college and Mr. Samgrass found me in Sebastian's rooms after the gate was shut and that, too, he made into a bond. It did not surprise me, therefore, when I arrived at Brideshead, to find Mr. Samgrass, as though in wait for me, sitting alone before the fire in the room they called the "Tapestry Hall." "You find me in solitary possession," he said, and indeed he seemed to possess the hall and the sombre scenes of venery that hung round it, to possess the caryatids on either side of the fireplace, to possess me, as he rose to take my hand and greet me like a host: "This morning," he continued, "we had a lawn meet of the Marchmain Hounds -- a deliciously archaic spectacle -- and all our young friends are fox hunting, even Sebastian who, you will not be surprised to hear, looked remarkably elegant in his pink coat. Brideshead was impressive rather than elegant; he is Joint-master with a local figure of fun named Sir Walter Strickland-Venables. I wish the two of them could be included in these rather humdrum tapestries--they would give a note of fantasy. "Our hostess remained at home; also a convalescent Dominican who has read too much Maritain and too little Hegel; Sir Adrian Person, of course, and two rather forbidding Magyar cousins -- I have tried them in German and in French, but in neither tongue are they diverting. All these have now driven off to visit a neighbour. I have been spending a cosy afternoon before the fire with the incomparable Charlus. Your arrival emboldens me to ring for some tea. How can I prepare you for the party? Alas, it breaks up to-morrow. Lady Julia departs to celebrate the New Year elsewhere, and takes the beau-monde with her. I shall miss the pretty creatures about the house -- particularly one Celia; she is the sister of our old companion in adversity, Boy Mulcaster, and wonderfully unlike him. She has a bird-like style of conversation, pecking away at the subject in a way I find most engaging, and a school-monitor style of dress which I can only call 'saucy.' I shall miss her, for I do not go to-morrow. To-morrow I start work in earnest on our hostess's book -- which, believe me, is a treasure house of period gems; pure authentic 1914." Tea was brought and, soon after it, Sebastian returned; he had lost the hunt early, he said, and hacked home; the others were not long after him, having been .fetched by car at the end of the day; Brideshead was absent; he had business at the kennels and Cordelia had gone with him. The rest filled the hall and were soon eating scrambled eggs and crumpets; and Mr. Samgrass, who had lunched at home and dozed all the afternoon before the fire, ate eggs and crumpets with them. Presently Lady Marchmain's party returned; and when, before we went upstairs to dress for dinner, she said, "Who's coming to chapel for the rosary?" and Sebastian and Julia said they must have their baths at once, Mr. Samgrass went with her and the friar. "I wish Mr. Samgrass would go," said Sebastian, in his bath; "I'm sick of being grateful to him." In the course of the next fortnight distaste for Mr. Samgrass came to be a little unspoken secret throughout the house; in his presence Sir Adrian Porson's fine old eyes seemed to search a distant horizon and his lips set in classic pessimism. Only the Hungarian cousins who, mistaking the status of tutor, took him for an unusually privileged upper servant, were unaffected by his presence. Mr. Samgrass, Sir Adrian Porson, the Hungarians, the friar, Brideshead, Sebastian, Cordelia, were all who remained of the Christmas party. Religion predominated in the house; not only in its practices-- the daily mass and rosary, morning and evening in the chapel -- but in all its intercourse. "We must make a Catholic of Charles," ' Lady Marchmain said, and we had many little talks together during my visits when she delicately steered the subject into a holy quarter. After the first of these Sebastian said: "Has Mummy been having one of her 'little talks' with you? She's always doing it. I wish to hell she wouldn't." One was never summoned for a little talk, or consciously led to it; it merely happened, when she wished to speak intimately, that one found oneself alone with her, if it was summer in a secluded walk by the lakes or in a corner of the walled rose gardens; if it was winter in her sitting-room on the first floor. This room was all her own; she had taken it for herself and changed it so that, entering, one seemed to be in another house. She had lowered the ceiling, and the elaborate cornice which, in one form or another, graced every room, was lost to view; the walls, once panelled in brocade, were stripped and washed blue and spotted with innumerable little water-colours of fond association; the air was sweet with the fresh scent of flowers and musty pot-pourri; her library in soft leather covers, well-read works of poetry and piety, filled a small rosewood bookcase; the chimney-piece was covered with small personal treasures -- an ivory Madonna, a plaster St. Joseph, posthumous miniatures of her three soldier brothers. When Sebastian and I lived alone at Brideshead during that brilliant August we had kept out of his mother's room. Scraps of conversation come back to me with the memory of her room. I remember her saying: "When I was a girl we were comparatively poor, but still much richer than most of the world, and when I married I became very rich. It used to worry me, and I thought it wrong to have so many beautiful things when others had nothing. Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. The poor have always been the favourites of God and His saints, but I believe that it is one of the special achievements of Grace to sanctify the whole of life, riches included. Wealth in pagan Rome was necessarily something cruel; it's not any more." I said something about a camel and the eye of a needle and she rose happily to the point. "But of course" she said, "it's very unexpected for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, but the gospel is simply a catalogue of unexpected things. It's not to be expected that an ox and an ass should worship at the crib. Animals are always doing the oddest things in the lives of the saints. It's all part of the poetry, the Alice-in-Wonderland side, of religion." But I was as untouched by her faith as I was by her charm; or, rather, I was touched by both alike. I had no mind then for anything except Sebastian, and I saw him already as being threatened, though I did not yet know how black was the threat. His constant, despairing prayer was to be let alone. By the blue waters and rustling palm of his own mind he was happy and harmless as a Polynesian; only when the big ship dropped anchor beyond the coral reef, and the cutter beached in the lagoon, and, up the golden slope that had never known the print of a boot there trod the grim invasion of trader, adminis-. trator, missionary and tourist--only then was it time to disinter the archaic weapons of the tribe and sound the drums in the hills; or, more easily, to turn from the sunlit door and lie alone in the darkness, where the impotent, painted deities paraded the walls in vain, and cough his heart out among the rum bottles. And since Sebastian counted among the intruders his own conscience and all claims of human affection, his days in Arcadia were numbered. For in this, to me, tranquil time Sebastian took fright. I knew him well in that mood of alertness and suspicion, like a deer suddenly lifting his head at the far notes of the hunt; I had seen him grow wary at the thought of his family or his religion; now I found I, too, was suspect. He did not fail in love, but he lost his jay of it, for I was no longer part of his solitude. As my intimacy with his family grew I became part of the world which he sought to escape; I became one of the bonds which held him. That was the part for which his mother, in all our little talks, was seeking to fit me. Everything was left unsaid. It was only dimly and at rare moments that I suspected what was afoot. Outwardly Mr. Samgrass was the only enemy. For a fortnight Sebastian and I remained at Brideshead, leading our own life. His brother was engaged in sport and estate management; Mr. Samgrass was at work in the library on Lady Marchmain's book; Sir Adrian Porson demanded most of Lady Marchmain's time./ We saw little of them except in the evenings; there was room under that domed roof for a wide variety of independent lives. After a fortnight Sebastian said: "I can't stand Mr. Samgrass any more. Let's go to London," so he came to stay with me and now began to use my home in preference to Marchers. My father liked him. "I think your friend very amusing," he said. "Ask him often." Then, back at Oxford, we took up again the life that seemed to be shrinking in the cold air. The sadness that had been strong in Sebastian the term before gave place to a kind of sullenness even towards me. He was sick at heart somewhere, I did not know how, and I grieved for him, unable to help. When he was gay now it was usually because he was drunk, and when drunk he developed an obsession of "mocking Mr. Samgrass." He composed a ditty of which the refrain was, "Green arse, Samgrass -- Samgrass green arse," sung to the tune of St. Mary's chime, and he would thus serenade him, perhaps once a week, under his windows. Mr. Samgrass was distinguished as being the first don to have a private telephone installed in his rooms. Sebastian in his cups used to ring him up and sing him this simple song. And all this Mr. Samgrass took in good part, as it is called,, smiling obsequiously when we met, but with growing confidence, as though each outrage in some way strengthened his hold on Sebastian. It was during this term that I began to realize that Sebastian was a drunkard in quite a different sense from myself. I got drunk often, but through an excess of high spirits, in the love of the moment, and the wish to prolong and enhance it; Sebastian drank to escape. As we together grew older and more serious I drank less, he more. I found that sometimes after I had gone back to my college, he sat up late and alone, soaking. A succession of disasters came on him so swiftly and with such unexpected violence that it is hard to say when exactly I recognized that my friend was in deep trouble. I knew it well enough in the Easter vacation. Julia used to say, "Poor Sebastian. It's something chemical in him." That was the cant phrase of the time, derived from heaven knows what misconception of popular science. "There's something chemical between them" was used to explain the overmastering hate or love of any two people. It was the old concept of determinism in a new form. I do not believe there was anything chemical in my friend. The Easter party at Brideshead was a bitter time, culminating in a small but unforgettably painful incident. Sebastian got very drunk before dinner in his mother's house, and thus marked the beginning of a new epoch in his melancholy record of deterioration, the first step in the flight from his family which brought him to ruin. It was at the end of the day when the large Easter party left Brideshead. It was called "the Easter party," though in fact it began on the Tuesday of Easter Week, for the Flytes all went into retreat at the guest house of a monastery from Maundy Thursday until Easter. This year Sebastian had said he would not go, but at the last moment had yielded, and came home in a state of acute depression from which I totally failed to raise him. He had been drinking very hard for a week -- only I knew how hard -- and drinking in a nervous, surreptitious way, totally unlike his old habit. During the party there was always a grog tray in the library, and Sebastian took to slipping in there at odd moments during the day without saying anything even to me. The house was largely deserted during the day. I was at work painting another panel in the little garden-room in the colonnade. Sebastian complained of a cold, stayed in, and during all that time was never quite sober; he escaped attention by being silent. Now and then I noticed him attract curious glances, but most of the party knew him too slightly to see the change in him while his own family were occupied, each with his particular guests. When I remonstrated he said, "I can't stand all these people about," but it was when they finally left and he had to face his family at close quarters that he broke down. The