went to see the place later; it was a bar
with a few rooms over it, kept by a Greek, smelling of hot oil and garlic
and stale wine and old clothes, a place where the small Greek traders came
and played draughts and listened to the wireless. He stayed there a month
drinking Greek absinthe, occasionally wandering out, they didn't know where,
coming back and drinking again. They were afraid he j would come to harm and
followed him sometimes, but he only went to the church or took a car to the
monastery outside the town. They loved him there. He's still loved, you see,
wherever he goes, whatever condition he's in. It's a thing about him he'll
never lose. You should have heard the proprietor and his family talk of him,
tears running down their cheeks; they'd clearly robbed him right and left,
but they'd looked after him and tried j to make him eat'his meals. That was
the thing that shocked them about him: that he wouldn't eat; there he was
with all that money, so thin. Some of the clients of the place came in while
we were talking in very peculiar French; they all had the same story: such a
good man, they said, it made them unhappy to sec him so low. They thought
very ill of his family for leaving him like that; it couldn't happen with
their people, they said, and I daresay they're right.
"Anyway, that was later; after the consulate I went straight to the
monastery and saw the Superior. He was a grim old Dutch man who had spent
fifty years in Central Africa. He told me his part of the story; how
Sebastian had turned up, just as the consul said, with his beard and a
suitcase, and asked to be admitted as a lay brother. 'He was very earnest,'
the Superior said -- Cordelia imitated his guttural tones; she had had an
aptitude for mimicry, I remembered, in the schoolroom -- " 'please do not
think there is any doubt of that -- he is quite sane and quite in earnest.
He wanted to go to the bush, as far away as he could get, among the simplest
people, to the cannibals. The Superior said: 'We have no cannibals in our
missions.' He said, well, pygmies would do, or just a primitive village
somewhere on a river; or lepers--lepers would do best of anything. The
Superior said: 'We have plenty of lepers, but they live in our settlements
with doctors and nuns. It is all very orderly.' He thought again, and said
perhaps lepers were not what he wanted, was there not some small church by a
river -- he always wanted a river you see --which he could look after when
the priest was away. The Superior said; 'Yes, there are such churches. Now
tell me about, yourself.' 'Oh, I'm nothing,' he said. 'We see some queer
fish'" -- Cordelia lapsed again into mimicry; " 'he was a queer fish, but he
was very earnest.' The Superior told him about the novitiate and the
training and said: 'You are not a young man. You do not seem strong to me.'
He said: 'No, I don't want to be trained. I don't want to do things that
need training.' The Superior said: 'My friend, you need a missionary for
yourself,' and he said: 'Yes, of course.' Then he sent him away.
"Next day he came back again. He had been drinking. He said he had
decided to become a novice and be trained. 'Well,' said the Superior, 'there
are certain things that are impossible for a man in the bush. One of them is
drinking. It is not the worst thing, but it is nevertheless quite fatal. I
sent him away.' Then he kept coming two or three times a week, always drunk,
until the Superior gave orders that the porter was to keep him out. I said,
'Oh dear, I'm afraid he was a terrible nuisance to you,' but of course
that's a thing they don't understand in a place like that. The Superior
simply said, 'I did not think there was anything I could do to help him
except pray.' He was a very holy old man and recognized it in others."
"Holiness?"
"Oh yes, Charles, that's what you've got to understand about Sebastian.
"Well, finally one day they found Sebastian lying outside the main gate
unconscious; he had walked out -- usually he took a car -- and fallen down
and lain there all night. At first they thought he was merely drunk again;
then they realized he was very ill, so they put him in the infirmary, where
he'd been ever since.
"I stayed a fortnight with him till he was over the worst of his
illness. He looked terrible, any age, rather bald with a straggling beard,
but he had his old sweet manner. They'd given him a room to himself; it was
barely more than a monk's cell with a bed and a crucifix and white walls. At
first he couldn't talk much and was not at all surprised to see me; then he
was surprised and wouldn't talk much, until just before I was going, when he
told me all that had been happening to him. It was' mostly about Kurt, his
German friend. Well, you met him, so you know all about that. He sounds
gruesome, but as long as Sebastian had him to look after, he was happy. He
told me he'd practically given up drinking at one time while he and Kurt
lived together. Kurt was ill and had a wound that wouldn't heal. Sebastian
saw him through that. Then they went to Greece when Kurt got well. You know
how Germans sometimes seem to discover a sense of decency when they get to a
classical country. It seems to have worked with Kurt. Sebastian says he
became quite human in Athens. Then he got sent to prison; I couldn't quite
make out why; apparently it wasn't particularly his fault-- some brawl with
an official. Once he was locked up the German authorities got at him. It was
the time when they were rounding up all their nationals from all parts of
the world to make them into Nazis. Kurt didn't at all want to leave Greece.
But the Greeks didn't want him, and he was marched straight from prison with
a lot of other toughs into a German boat and shipped home.
"Sebastian went after him, and for a year could find no trace. Then in
the end he ran him to earth dressed as a storm trooper in a provincial town.
At first he wouldn't have anything to do with Sebastian; spouted all the
official jargon about the rebirth of his country, and his belonging to his
country and finding t self-realization in the life of the race. But it was
only skin-deep with him. Six years of Sebastian had taught him more than a
year of Hitler; eventually he chucked it, admitted he hated Germany, and
wanted to get out. I don't know how much it was simply the call of the easy
life, sponging on Sebastian, bathing in the Mediterranean, sitting about in
caf&, having his shoes polished. Sebastian says it wasn't entirely that;
Kurt had just begun to grow up in Athens. It may be he's right. Anyway, he
decided to try and get out. But it didn't work. He always got into trouble
whatever he did, Sebastian said. They caught him and put him in a
concentration camp. Sebastian couldn't get near him or hear a word of him;
he couldn't even find what camp he was in; he hung about for nearly a year
in Germany, drinking again, until one day in his cups he took up with a man
who was just out of the camp where Kurt had been, and learned that he had
hanged himself in his hut the first week.
"So that was the end of Europe for Sebastian. He went back to Morocco,
where he had been happy, and gradually drifted down the coast, from place to
place, until one day when he had sobered up -- his drinking goes in pretty
regular bouts now--he conceived the idea of escaping to the savages. And
there he was.
"I didn't suggest his coming home. I knew he wouldn't, and he was too
weak still to argue it out. He seemed quite happy by the time I left. He'll
never be able to go into the bush, of course, or join the order, but the
Father Superior is going to take charge of him. They had the idea of making
him a sort of under-porter; there are usually a few odd hangers-on in a
religious house, you know; people who can't quite fit in either to the world
or the monastic rule. I suppose I'm something of the sort myself. But as I
don't happen to drink, I'm more employable."
We had reached the turn in our walk, the stone bridge at the foot of
the last and smallest lake, under which the swollen waters fell in a
cataract to the stream below; beyond the path doubled back towards the
house. We paused at the parapet looking down into the dark water.
"I once had a governess who jumped off this bridge and drowned
herself."
"Yes, I know."
"How could you know?"
"It was the first thing I ever heard about you---before I ever met
you."
"How very odd. . . ."
"Have you told Julia this about Sebastian?"
"The substance of it; not quite as I told you. She never loved him, you
know, as we do."
"Do" The word reproached me; there was no past tense in Cordelia's verb
"to love."
"Poor SebastianI" I said. "It's too pitiful. How will it end?"
"I think I can tell you exactly, Charles. I've seen others like him,
and I believe they are very near and dear to God. He'll live on, half in,
half out of the community, a familiar figure pottering round with his broom
and his bunch of keys. He'll be a great favourite with the old fathers,
something of a joke I to the novices. Everyone will know about his drinking;
he'll disappear for two or three days every month or so, and they'll all nod
and smile and say in their various accents, 'Old Sebastian's on the spree
again,' and then he'll come back dishevelled and shamefaced and be more
devout for a day or two in the chapel. He'll probably have little hiding
places about the garden where he keeps a bottle and takes a swig now and
then on the sly. They'll bring him forward to act as guide, whenever they
have an English-speaking visitor; and he will be completely charming, so
that before they go they'll ask about him and perhaps be given a hint that
he has high connections at home. If he lives long enough, generations of
missionaries in all kinds of remote places will think of him as a queer old
character who was somehow part of the Hope of their student days, and
remember him in their masses. He'll develop little eccentricities of
devotion, intense personal cults of his own; he'll be found in the chapel at
odd times and missed when he's expected. Then one morning, after one of his
drinking bouts, he'll be picked up at the gate dying, and show by a mere
flicker of the eyelid that he is conscious when they give him the last
sacraments. It's not such a bad way of getting through one's life."
I thought of the joyful youth with the Teddy-bear under the flowering
chestnuts. "It's not what one would have foretold," I said. "I suppose he
doesn't suffer?"
"Oh, yes, I think he does. One can have no idea what the suffering may
be, to be maimed as he is -- no dignity, no power of will. No one is ever
holy without suffering. It's taken that form with him. . . . I've seen so
much suffering in the last few years; there's so much coming for everybody
soon. It's the spring of love . . ." And then in condescension to my
paganism, she added: "He's in a very beautiful place, you know, by the sea
-- white cloisters, a bell tower, rows of green vegetables, and a monk
watering them when the sun is low."
I laughed. "You knew I wouldn't understand?"
"You and Julia . . ."she said. And then, as we moved on towards the
house, "When you met me last night did you think, 'Poor Cordelia, such an
engaging child, grown up a plain and pious spinster, full of good works'?
Did you think 'thwarted'?"
It was no time for prevarication. "Yes," I said, "I did; I don't now,
so much."
"It's funny," she said, "that's exactly the word I thought of for you
and Julia. When we were up in the nursery with Nanny. Thwarted passion,' I
thought."
She spoke with that gentle, infinitesimal inflection of mockery which
descended to her from her mother, but later that evening the words came back
to me poignantly.
Julia wore the embroidered Chinese robe which she often used when we
were dining alone at Brideshead; it was a robe whose weight and stiff folds
stressed her repose; her neck rose exquisitely from the plain gold circle at
her throat; her hands lay still among the dragons in her lap. It was thus
that I had rejoiced to see her nights without number, and that night,
watching her as she sat between the firelight and the shaded lamp, unable to
look away for love of her beauty, I suddenly thought, When else have I seen
her like this? Why am I reminded of another moment of vision? And it came
back to me that this was how she had sat in the liner, before the storm;
this was how she had looked; and I realized that she had regained what I
thought she had lost for ever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to
her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some
other purpose than this?"
That night I woke in the darkness and lay awake turning over in my mind
the conversation with Cordelia. How I had said, "You knew I would not
understand?" How often, it seemed to me, I was brought up short, like a
horse in full stride suddenly refusing an obstacle, backing from the spurs,
too shy even to put his nose at it and look at the thing.
And another image came to me, of an arctic hut and a trapper alone with
his furs and oil lamp and log fire; the remains of supper on the table, a
few books, skis in the corner; everything dry and neat and warm inside, and
outside the last blizzard of winter raging and the snow piling up against
the door. Quite silently a great weight forming against the timber; the bolt
straining in its socket; minute by minute in the darkness outside the white
heap sealing the door, until quite soon, when the wind dropped and the sun
came out on the ice slopes and the thaw set in, a block would move, slide
and tumble, high above, gather way, gadier weight, till the whole hillside
seemed to be falling, and the little lighted place would crash open and
splinter and disappear, rolling with the avalanche into the ravine.
Chapter Five
my divorce case, or rather my wife's, was due to be heard at about the
same time as Brideshead was to be married. Julia's would not come up till
the following term; meanwhile the game of General Post--moving my property
from the Old Rectory to my flat, my wife's from my flat to the Old Rectory,
Julia's from Rex's house and from Brideshead to my flat, Rex's from Brides,
head to his house, and Mrs. Muspratt's from Falmouth to Brides, head -- was
in full swing and we were all, in varying degrees, homeless, when a halt was
called and Lord Marchmain, with a taste for the dramatically inopportune
which was plainly the prototype of his elder son's, declared his intention,
in view of the international situation, of returning to England and passing
his declining years in his old home.
The only member of the family to whom this change promised any benefit
was Cordelia, who had been sadly abandoned in the turmoil. Brideshead,
indeed, had made a formal request to her to consider his house her home for
as long as it suited her, but when she learned that her sister-in-law
proposed to install her children there for the holidays immediately after
the wedding, in the charge of a sister of hers and the sister's friend,
Cordelia had decided to move, too, and was talking of setting up alone in
London. She now found herself, Cinderella-like, promoted chatelaine, while
her brother and his wife, who had till that moment expected to find
themselves, within a matter of days, absolute owners of the entire property,
were without a roof; the deeds of conveyance, engrossed and ready for
signing, were rolled up, tied and put away in one of the black tin boxes in
Lincoln's Inn. It was bitter for Mrs. Muspratt; she was not an ambitious
woman; something very much less grand than Brideshead would have contented
her heartily; but she did aspire to finding some shelter for her children
over Christmas. The house at Falmouth was stripped and up for sale;
moreover, Mrs. Muspratt had taken leave of the place with some justifiably
rather large talk of her new establishment; they could not return there. She
was obliged in a hurry to move her furniture from Lady Marchmain's room to a
disused coachhouse and to take a furnished villa at Torquay. She was not, as
I have said, a woman of high ambition, but, having had her expectations so
much raised, it was disconcerting to be brought so low so suddenly. In the
village the working party who had been preparing the decorations for the
bridal entry began unpicking the B's on the bunting and substituting M's,
obliterating the Earl's points and stencilling balls and strawberry leaves
on the painted coronets, in preparation for Lord Marchmain's return.
News of his intentions came first to the solicitors, then to, Cordelia,
then to Julia and me, in a rapid succession of contradictory cables. Lord
Marchmain would arrive in time for the wedding; he would arrive after the
wedding, having seen Lord and Lady Brideshead on their way through Paris; he
would see them in Rome. He was not well enough to travel at all; he was just
starting; he had unhappy memories of winter at Brideshead and would not come
until spring was well advanced and the heating apparatus overhauled; he was
coming alone; he was bringing his Italian household; he wished his return to
be unannounced and to lead a life of complete seclusion; he would give a
ball. At last a date in January was chosen which proved to be the correct
one.
Plender preceded him by some days; there was a difficulty here. Plender
was not an original member of the Brideshead household; he had been Lord
Marchmain's servant in the yeomanry, and had only once met Wilcox, on the
painful occasion of the removal of his master's luggage when it was decided
not to return from the war; then Plender had been valet, as, officially, he
still was, but he had in the past years introduced a kind of curate, a Swiss
body-servant, to attend to the wardrobe and also, when occasion arose, lend
a hand with less dignified tasks about the house, and had in effect become
major-domo of that fluctuating and mobile household; sometimes he even
referred to himself on the telephone as the "secretary." There was an acre
of thin ice between him and Wilcox.
Fortunately the two men took a liking to one anodier, and the thing was
solved in a series of three-cornered discussions with Cordelia. Plender and
Wilcox became Joint Grooms of the Chambers, like Blues and Life Guards with
equal precedence, Plender having as his particular province his Lordship's
own apartments, and Wilcox a sphere of influence in the public rooms; the
senior footman was given a black coat and promoted butler, the nondescript
Swiss, on arrival, was to have full valet's status; there was a general
increase in wages to meet the new dignities, and all were content.
Julia and I, who had left Brideshead a month before, thinking we should
not return, moved back for the reception. When the day came, Cordelia went
to the station and we remained to greet him at home. It was a bleak and
gusty day. Cottages and lodges were decorated; plans for a bonfire that
night and for the village silver band to play on the terrace were put down,
but the house flag that had not flown for twenty-five years was hoisted over
the pediment, and flapped sharply against the leaden sky. Whatever harsh
voices might be bawling into the microphones of Central Europe, and whatever
lathes spinning in the armament factories, the return of Lord Marchmain was
a matter of first importance in his own neighbourhood.
He was due at three o'clock. Julia and I waited in the drawing-room
until Wilcox, who had arranged with the station-master to be kept informed,
announced "The train is signalled," and a minute later, "The train is in;
his Lordship is on the way." Then we went to the front portico and waited
there with the upper,' servants. Soon the Rolls appeared at the turn in the
drive, followed at some distance by the two vans. It drew up; first Cordelia
got out, then Cara; there was a pause, a rug was handed to theu chauffeur, a
stick to the footman; then a leg was cautiously thrust I forward. Plender
was by now at the car door; another servant -- the Swiss valet -- had
emerged from a van; together they lifted jj Lord Marchmain out and set him
on his feet; he felt for his stick grasped it, and stood for a minute
collecting his strength for the I few low steps which led to the front door.
Julia gave a little sigh of surprise and touched my hand. We had seen
him nine months ago at Monte Carlo, when he had j been an upright and
stately figure, little changed from when I first met him in Venice. Now he
was an old man. Plender had told us his master had been unwell lately; he
had not prepared us for j this.
Lord Marchmain stood bowed and shrunken, weighed down ... by his
great-coat, a white muffler fluttering untidily at his throat, a cloth cap
pulled low on his forehead, his face white and lined, his nose coloured by
the cold; the tears which gathered in his eyes came not from emotion but
from the east wind; he breathed heavily. Cara tucked in the end of his
muffler and whispered something to him. He raised a gloved hand -- a
schoolboy's glove of grey wool -- and made a small, weary gesture of
greeting to the group at the door; then, very slowly, with his eyes on thfl
ground before him, he made his way into the house.
They took off his coat and cap and muffler and the kind of leather
jerkin which he wore under them; thus stripped he seemed more than ever
wasted but more elegant; he had cast the shabbiness of extreme fatigue. Cara
straightened his tie; he wiped his eyes with a bandanna handkerchief and
shuffled with' his stick to the hall fire.
There was a little heraldic chair by the chimney-piece, one of a set
which stood against the walls, a little, inhospitable, flat-seated thing, a
mere excuse for the elaborate armorial painting on its back, on which,
perhaps, no one, not even a weary footman, had ever sat since it was made;
there Lord Marchmain sat and wiped his eyes.
"It's the cold," he said. "I'd forgotten how cold it is in England.
Quite bowled me over."
"Can I get you anything, my lord?"
"Nothing, thank you. Cara, where are those confounded pills?"
"Alex, the doctor said not more than three times a day."
"Damn the doctor. I feel quite bowled-over."
Cara produced a blue bottle from her bag and Lord Marchmain took a
pill. Whatever was in it seemed to revive him. He remained seated, his long
legs stuck out before him, his cane between them, his chin on its ivory
handle, but he began to take notice of us all, to greet us and to give
orders.
'Tm afraid I'm not at all the thing to-day; the journey's taken it out
of me. Ought to have waked a night at Dover. Wilcox, what rooms have you
prepared for me?"
"Your old ones, my lord."
"Won't do; not till I'm fit again. Too many stairs; must be on the
ground floor. Plender, get a bed made up for me downstairs."
Plender and Wilcox exchanged an anxious glance.
"Very good, my lord. Which room shall we put it in?"
Lord Marchmain thought' for a moment. "The Chinese drawing-room; and,
Wilcox, the 'Queen's bed.'"
"The Chinese drawing-room, my lord, the 'Queen's bed'?"
"Yes, yes. I may be spending some time there in the next few weeks."
The Chinese drawing-room was one I had never seen used; in fact one
could not normally go further into it than a small roped area round the
door, where sight-seers were corralled on the days the house was open to the
public; it was a splendid uninhabitable museum of Chippendale carving and
porcelain and lacquer and painted hangings; the "Queen's bed," too, was an
exhibition piece, a vast velvet tent like the Baldachino at St. Peter's. Had
Lord Marchmain planned this lying-in-state for himself, I wondered, before
he left the sunshine of Italy? Had he thought of it during the scudding rain
of his long, fretful journey? Had it come to him at that moment, an awakened
memory of childhood, a dream in the nursery -- "When I'm grown up I'll sleep
in the Queen's bed in the Chinese drawing-room" -- the apotheosis of adult
grandeur?
Few things, certainly, could have caused more stir in the house. What
had been foreseen as a day of formality became one of fierce exertion;
housemaids began making a fire, removing covers, unfolding linen; men in
aprons, never normally seen, shifted furniture; the estate carpenters were
collected to dismantle the bed. It came down the main staircase in pieces,
at intervals during the afternoon; huge sections of rococo, velvet-covered
cornice; the twisted gilt and velvet columns which formed its posts; beams
of unpolished wood, made not to be seen, which performed invisible,
structural functions below the draperies; plumes of dyed feathers, which
sprang from gold-mounted ostrich eggs and crowned the canopy; finally, the
mattresses with four toiling men to each. Lord Marchmain seemed to derive
comfort from the consequences of his whim; he sat by the fire watching the
bustle, while we stood in a half-circle--Cara, Cordelia," Julia and I -- and
talked to him.
Colour came back to his cheeks and light to his eyes. "Brides-head and
his wife dined with me in Rome," he said. "Since we are all members of the
family" -- and his eye moved ironically from Cara to me -- "I can speak
without reserve. I found her deplorable. Her former consort, I understand,
was a seafaring man and, presumably, the less exacting, but how my son, at
the ripe age of thirty-eight, with, unless things have changed very much, a
very free choice among the women of England, can have settled on--I suppose
I must call her so--Beryl . . ." He left the sentence eloquently unfinished.
Lord Marchmain showed no inclination to move, so presently we drew up
chairs -- the little heraldic chairs, for everything else in the hall was
ponderous--and sat round him.
"I daresay I shall not be really fit again until summer comes," he
said. "I look to you four to amuse me."
There seemed little we could do at the moment to lighten the rather
sombre mood; he, indeed, was the most cheerful of us. "Tell me," he said,
"the circumstances of Brideshead's courtship."
We told him what we knew.
"Match-boxes," he said. "Match-boxes. I think she's past
child-bearing."
Tea was brought us at the hall fireplace.
"In Italy," he said, "no one believes there will be a war. They think
it will all be 'arranged.' I suppose, Julia, you no longer have access to
political information? Cara, here, is fortunately a British subject by
marriage. It is not a thing she customarily mentions, but it may prove
valuable. She is legally Mrs. Hicks, are you not, my dear? We know little of
Hicks, but we shall be grateful to him, none the less, if it comes to war.
And you," he said, turning the attack to me, "you will no doubt become an
official artist?"
"No. As a matter of fact I am negotiating now for a commission in the
Special Reserve."
"Oh, but you should be an artist. I had one with my squadron during the
last war, for weeks -- until we went up to the line."
This waspishness was new. I had always been aware of a frame of
malevolence under his urbanity, now it protruded like his own sharp bones
through the sunken skin.
It was dark before the bed was finished; we went to see it, Lord
Marchmain stepping quite briskly now through the intervening rooms.
"I congratulate you. It really looks remarkably well. Wilcox, I seem to
remember a silver basin and ewer--they stood in a room we called 'the
Cardinal's dressing-room,' I think -- suppostt we had them here on the
console. Then if you will send Plender and Gaston to me, the luggage can
wait till to-morrow -- simply' the dressingose and what I need for the
night. Plender will know. If you will leave me with Plender and Gaston, I
will go td ' bed. We will meet later; you will dine here and keep me
amused."
We turned to go; as I was at the door he called me back.
"It looks very well, does it not?"
"Very well."
"You might paint it, eh --and call it "The Death Bed'?"
"Yes," said Cara, "he has come home to die."
"But when he first arrived he was talking so confidently of recovery."
"That was because he was so ill. When he is himself, he knows he is
dying and accepts it. His sickness is up and down; one day, sometimes for
several days on end, he is strong and lively and then he is ready for death,
then he is down and afraid. I do not | know how it will be when he is more
and more down. That must come in good time. The doctors in Rome gave him
less than a year. There is someone coining from London, I think to-morrow, j
who will tell us more."
"What is it?"
"His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word."
That evening Lord Marchmain was in good spirits; the room I had a
Hogarthian aspect, with the dinner-table set for the four of us by the
grotesque, chinoiserie chimney-piece, and the old j man propped among his
pillows, sipping champagne, tasting,' praising, and failing to eat the
succession of dishes which had been prepared for his homecoming. Wilcox had
brought out for the occasion the gold plate, which I had not before seen in
use; that and the gilt mirrors and the lacquer and the drapery of the great
bed and Julia's mandarin coat gave the scene an air of pantomime, of
Aladdin's cave.
Just at the end, when the time came for us to go, his spirits flagged.
"I shall not sleep," he said. "Who is going to sit with me? Cara,
carissima, you are fatigued. Cordelia, will you watch for an hour in this
Gethsemane?"
Next morning I asked her how the night had passed.
"He went to sleep almost at once. I came in to see him at two to make
up the fire; the lights were on, but he was asleep again. He must have woken
up and turned them on; he had to get out of bed to. do that. I think perhaps
he is afraid of the dark."
It was natural, with her hospital experience, that Cordelia should take
charge of her father. When the doctors came that day they gave their
instructions to her, instinctively.
"Until he gets worse," she said, "I and the valet can look after him.
We don't want nurses in the house before they are needed." At this stage the
doctors had nothing to recommend except to keep him comfortable and
administer certain drugs when his attacks came on. "How long will it be?"
"Lady Cordelia, there are men walking about in hearty old age whom
their doctors gave a week to live. I have learned one thing in medicine:
never prophesy."
These two men had made a long journey to tell her this; the local
doctor was there to accept the same advice in technical phrases.
That night Lord Marchmain reverted to the topic of his new
daughter-in-law; it had never been long out of his mind, finding expression
in various sly hints throughout the day; now he lay back in his pillows and
talked of her at length.
"I have never been much moved by family piety until now," he said, "but
I am frankly appalled at the prospect of-- of Beryl taking what was once my
mother's place in this house. Why
should that uncouth pair sit here childless while the place crumbles
about their ears? I will not disguise from you that I have take a dislike to
Beryl.
"Perhaps it was unfortunate that we met in Rome. Anywhere else might
have been more sympathetic. And yet, if one comes to consider it, where
could I have met her without repugnance? We dined at Ranieri's; it is a
quiet little restaurant I have fire quented for years -- no doubt you know
it. Beryl seemed to fill the place. I, of course, was host, though to hear
Beryl press my son with food, you might have thought otherwise. Brideshead
was always a greedy boy; a wife who has his best interests at heart should
seek to restrain him. However, that is a matter ol small importance.
"She had no doubt heard of me as a man of irregular life. I can only
describe her manner to me as roguish. A naughty old man, that's what she
thought I was. I suppose she had met naughty old admirals and knew how they
should be humoured; a stage-door chappie, a bit of a lad ... I could not
attempt to reproduce her conversation. I will give you one example.
"They had been to an audience at the Vatican that morning; a blessing
for their marriage -- I did not follow attentively ---something of the kind
had happened before I gathered, some previous husband, some previous Pope.
She described, rather vivaciously, how on this earlier occasion she had gone
with a whole body of newly married couples, mostly Italians of all ranks,
some of the simpler girls in their wedding dresses, and how each had
appraised the other, the bridegrooms looking the brides over, comparing
their own with one another's, and so fordi. Then she said, 'This time, of
course, we were in private, but do you know, Lord Marchmain, I felt as
though it was I who was leading in the bride.'
"It was said with great indelicacy. I have not yet quite fathomed her
meaning. Was she making a play on my son's name, or was she, do you think,
referring to his undoubted virginity? I fancy the latter. Anyway, it was
with pleasantries of that kind that we passed the evening.
"I don't think she would be quite in her proper element here, do you?
Who shall I leave k to? The entail ended with me, you know. Sebastian, alas,
is out of the question. Who wants it? Quis? Would you like it, Cara? No, of
course you would not. Cordelia? I think I shall leave it to Julia and
Charles."
"Of course not, Papa, it's Bridey's."
"And . . . Beryl's? I will have Gregson down one day soon and go over
the matter. It is time I brought my will up to date; it is full of anomalies
and anachronisms. ... I have rather a fancy for the idea of installing Julia
here; so beautiful this evening, my dear; so beautiful always; much, much
more suitable."
Shortly after this he sent to London for his solicitor, but, on the day
he came, Lord Marchmain was suffering from an attack and would not see him.
"Plenty of time," he said, between painful gasps for breath, "another day,
when I am stronger," but the choice of his heir was constantly in his mind,
and he referred often to the time when Julia and I should be married and in
possession.
"Do you think he really means to leave it to us?" I asked Julia.
"Yes, I think he does.'
"But it's monstrous for Bridey."
"Is it? I don't think he cares much for the place. I do, you know. He
and Beryl would be much more content in some little house somewhere."
"You mean to accept it?"
"Certainly. It's Papa's to leave as he likes. I think you and I would
be very happy here."
It opened a prospect; the prospect one gained at the turn of the
avenue, as I had first seen it with Sebastian, of the secluded valley, the
lakes falling away one below the other, the old house in the foreground, the
rest of the world abandoned and forgotten; a world of its own of peace and
love and beauty; a soldier's dream in a foreign bivouac; such a prospect
perhaps as a hig pinnacle of the temple afforded after the hungry days in
desert and the jackal-haunted nights. Need I reproach myself if sometimes I
was rapt in the vision?
The weeks of illness wore on and the life of the house kept pace with
the faltering strength of the sick man. There days when Lord Marchmain was
dressed, when he stood at the window or moved on his valet's arm from fire
to fire through if the rooms of the ground floor, when visitors came and
went -- neighbours and people from the estate, men of business from London
-- parcels of new books were opened and discussed, a piano moved into the
Chinese drawing-room; once at the end of February, on a single, unexpected
day of brilliant sunshine, he called for a car and got as far as the hall,
had on his fur coat and reached the front door. Then suddenly he lost
interest in the drive, said, "Not now. Later. One day in the summer," took
his man's arm again and was led back to his chair. Once ho had the humour of
changing his room and gave detailed orders for a move to the Painted
Parlour; the chinoiserie, he said disturbed his rest -- he kept the lights
full on at night -- but again lost heart, countermanded everything, and kept
his room.
On other days the house was hushed as he sat high in bed,]' propped by
his pillows, with labouring breath; even then Wanted to have us round him;
night or day he could not bead to be alone; when he could not speak his eyes
followed us, and ii| anyone left the room he would look distressed, and
Cara, sitting I often for hours at a time by his side against the pillows
with atilj arm .in his, would say, "It's all right, Alex, she's coming
back."
Brideshead and his wife returned from their honeymoon and stayed a few
nights; it was one of the bad times, and Lord Marchmain refused to have them
near him. It was Beryl's first visit, and she would have been unnatural if
she had shown no" curiosity about what had nearly been, and now again
promised soon to be, her home. Beryl was natural enough, and surveyed the
place fairly thoroughly in the days she was there. In the strange disorder
caused by Lord Marchmain's illness, it must have seemed capable of much
improvement; she referred once or twice to the way in which establishments
of similar size had been managed at various Government Houses she had
visited. Brideshead took her visiting among the tenants by day, and in the
evenings she talked to me of painting, or to Cordelia of hospitals, or to
Julia of clothes, with cheerful assurance. The shadow of betrayal, the
knowledge of how precarious were their just expectations, was all one-sided.
I was not easy with them; but that was no new thing to Brideshead; in the
little circle of shyness in which he was used to move, my guilt passed
unseen.
Eventually it became clear that Lord Marchmain did not intend to see
more of them. Brideshead was admitted alone for a minute's leave-taking;
then they left.
"There's nothing we can do here," said Brideshead, "and it's very
distressing for Beryl. We'll come back if things get worse."
The bad spells became longer and more frequent; a nurse was engaged. "I
never saw such a room," she said, "nothing like it anywhere; no conveniences
of any sort." She tried to have her patient moved upstairs, where there was
running water, a dressing-room for herself, a "sensible" narrow bed she
could "get round" --what she was used to--but Lord Marchmain would not
budge. Soon, as days and nights became indistinguishable to him, a second
nurse was installed; the specialists came again from London; they
recommended a new and rather daring treatment, but his body seemed weary of
all drugs and did not respond. Presently there were no good spells, merely
brief fluctuations in the speed of his decline.
Brideshead was called. It was the Easter holidays and Beryl was busy
with her children. He came alone, and haying stood silently for some minutes
beside his father, who sat silently looking at him, he left the room and,
joining the rest of us who wertfj in the library, said, "Papa must see a
priest."
It was not the first time the topic had come up. In the early days,
when Lord Marchmain first arrived, the parish priest-since the chapel was
shut there was a new church and presbytery in Melstead -- had come to call
as a matter of politeness. Cor