Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, from Project Gutenberg Canada (2024)

The Sacred and Profane Memoriesof Captain Charles Ryder

by Evelyn Waugh

Author's Note

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Book I. Et in Arcadia ego

Book II. A Twitch upon the Thread

Epilogue

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

Prologue

When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, Ipaused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below methrough the grey mist of early morning. We were leaving that day. Whenwe marched in, three months before, the place was under snow; now thefirst leaves of spring were unfolding. I had reflected then that,whatever scenes of desolation lay ahead of us, I never feared one morebrutal than this, and I reflected now that it had no single happy memoryfor me.

Here love had died between me and the army.

Here the tram lines ended, so that men returning fuddled from Glasgowcould doze in their seats until roused by the conductress at theirjourney's end. There was some way to go from the tram-stop to the campgates; a quarter of a mile in which they could button their blouses andstraighten their caps before passing the guard-room, a quarter of a milein which concrete gave place to grass at the road's edge. This was theextreme limit of the city, a fringe of drift-wood above high-water mark.Here the close, hom*ogeneous territory of housing estates and cinemasended and the hinterland began.

The camp stood where, until quite lately, had been pasture andploughland; the farmhouse still stood in a fold of the hill and hadserved us for battalion offices; ivy still supported part of what hadonce been the walls of a fruit garden; half an acre of mutilated oldtrees behind the wash-houses survived of an orchard. The place had beenmarked for destruction before the army came to it. Had there beenanother year of peace, there would have been no farmhouse, no wall, noapple trees. Already half a mile of concrete road lay between bare claybanks, and on either side a chequer of open ditches showed where themunicipal contractors had designed a system of drainage. Another year ofpeace would have made the place part of the neighbouring suburb. Now thehuts where we had wintered waited their turn for destruction.

Over the way, the subject of much ironical comment, half hidden even inwinter by its embosoming trees, lay the municipal lunatic asylum, whosecast-iron railings and noble gates put our rough wire to shame. We couldwatch the madmen, on clement days, sauntering and skipping among thetrim gravel walks and pleasantly planted lawns; happy collaborationistswho had given up the unequal struggle, all doubts resolved, all dutydone, the undisputed heirs-at-law of a century of progress, enjoying theheritage at their ease. As we marched past the men used to shoutgreetings to them through the railings--"Keep a bed warm for me, chum. Ishan't be long"--but Hooper, my newest-joined platoon commander, grudgedthem their life of privilege: "Hitler would put them in a gas chamber,"he said; "I reckon we can learn a thing or two from him."

Here, when we marched in at midwinter, I brought a company of strong andhopeful men; word had gone round among them, as we moved from the moorsto this dockland area, that we were at last in transit for the MiddleEast. As the days passed and we began clearing the snow and levelling aparade ground, I saw their disappointment change to resignation. Theysnuffed the smell of the fried-fish shops and co*cked their ears tofamiliar, peace-time sounds of the works' siren and the dance-hall band.On off-days they slouched now at street corners and sidled away at theapproach of an officer for fear that, by saluting, they would lose facewith their new mistresses. In the company office there was a crop ofminor charges and requests for compassionate leave; while it was stillhalf-light, day began with the whine of the malingerer and the glum faceand fixed eye of the man with a grievance.

And I, who by every precept should have put heart into them--how could Ihelp them, who could so little help myself? Here the colonel under whomwe had formed was promoted out of our sight and succeeded by a youngerand less lovable man, cross-posted from another regiment. There were fewleft in the mess now of the batch of volunteers who trained together atthe outbreak of war; one way and another they were nearly all gone--somehad been invalided out, some promoted to other battalions, some postedto staff jobs, some had volunteered for special service, one had gothimself killed on the field firing range, one had beencourt-martialled--and their places were taken by conscripts; thewireless played incessantly in the ante-room nowadays, and much beer wasdrunk before dinner; it was not as it had been.

Here at the age of thirty-nine I began to be old. I felt stiff and wearyin the evenings and reluctant to go out of camp; I developed proprietaryclaims to certain chairs and newspapers; I regularly drank three glassesof gin before dinner, never more or less, and went to bed immediatelyafter the nine o'clock news. I was always awake and fretful an hourbefore reveille.

Here my last love died. There was nothing remarkable in the manner ofits death. One day, not long before this last day in camp, as I layawake before reveille, in the Nissen hut, gazing into the completeblackness, amid the deep breathing and muttering of the four otheroccupants, turning over in my mind what I had to do that day--had I putin the names of two corporals for the weapon-training course? Should Iagain have the largest number of men overstaying their leave in thebatch due back that day? Could I trust Hooper to take the candidatesclass out map-reading?--as I lay in that dark hour, I was aghast torealize that something within me, long sickening, had quietly died, andfelt as a husband might feel, who, in the fourth year of his marriage,suddenly knew that he had no longer any desire, or tenderness, oresteem, for a once-beloved wife; no pleasure in her company, no wish toplease, no curiosity about anything she might ever do or say or think;no hope of setting things right, no self-reproach for the disaster. Iknew it all, the whole drab compass of marital disillusion; we had beenthrough it together, the army and I, from the first importunatecourtship until now, when nothing remained to us except the chill bondsof law and duty and custom. I had played every scene in the domestictragedy, had found the early tiffs become more frequent, the tears lessaffecting, the reconciliations less sweet, till they engendered a moodof aloofness and cool criticism, and the growing conviction that it wasnot myself but the loved one who was at fault. I caught the false notesin her voice and learned to listen for them apprehensively; I recognizedthe blank, resentful stare of incomprehension in her eyes, and theselfish, hard set of the corners of her mouth. I learned her, as onemust learn a woman one has kept house with, day in, day out, for threeand a half years; I learned her slatternly ways, the routine andmechanism of her charm, her jealousy and self-seeking, and her nervoustrick with the fingers when she was lying. She was stripped of allenchantment now and I knew her for an uncongenial stranger to whom I hadbound myself indissolubly in a moment of folly.

So, on this morning of our move, I was entirely indifferent as to ourdestination. I would go on with my job, but I could bring to it nothingmore than acquiescence. Our orders were to entrain at 0915 hours at anear-by siding, taking in the haversack the unexpired portion of theday's ration; that was all I needed to know. The companysecond-in-command had gone on with a small advance party. Company storeshad been packed the day before. Hooper had been detailed to inspect thelines. The company was parading at 0730 hours with their kit-bags piledbefore the huts. There had been many such moves since the wildlyexhilarating morning in 1940 when we had erroneously believed ourselvesdestined for the defence of Calais. Three or four times a year sincethen we had changed our location; this time our new commanding officerwas making an unusual display of "security" and had even put us to thetrouble of removing all distinguishing badges from our uniforms andtransport. It was "valuable training in active service conditions," hesaid. "If I find any of these female camp followers waiting for us theother end, I'll know there's been a leakage."

The smoke from the cookhouses drifted away in the mist and the camp layrevealed as a planless maze of short-cuts, superimposed on theunfinished housing-scheme, as though disinterred at a much later date bya party of archæologists.

The Pollock diggings provide a valuable link between the citizen-slave communities of the twentieth century and the tribal anarchy which succeeded them. Here you see a people of advanced culture, capable of an elaborate draining system and the construction of permanent highways, overrun by a race of the lowest type. The measure of the newcomers may be taken by the facts that their women were devoid of all personal adornment and that the dead were removed to burying places a great distance from the settlement--a sure sign of primitive taboo....

Thus, I thought, the pundits of the future might write; and, turningaway, I greeted the company sergeant-major: "Has Mr. Hooper been round?"

"Haven't seen him at all this morning, sir."

We went to the dismantled company office, where I found a window newlybroken since the barrack-damages book was completed. "Wind-in-the-night,sir," said the sergeant-major.

(All breakages were thus attributable, or to "Sappers'-demonstration,sir.")

Hooper appeared; he was a sallow youth with hair combed back, withoutparting, from his forehead, and a flat, Midland accent; he had been inthe company two months.

The troops did not like Hooper because he knew too little about his workand would sometimes address them individually as "George" atstand-easies, but I had a feeling which almost amounted to affection forhim, largely by reason of an incident on his first evening in mess.

The new colonel had been with us less than a week at the time and we hadnot yet taken his measure. He had been standing rounds of gin in theante-room and was slightly boisterous when he first took notice ofHooper.

"That young officer is one of yours, isn't he, Ryder?" he said to me."His hair wants cutting."

"It does, sir," I said. It did. "I'll see that it's done."

The colonel drank more gin and began to stare at Hooper, saying audibly,"My God, the officers they send us now!"

Hooper seemed to obsess the colonel that evening. After dinner hesuddenly said very loudly: "In my late regiment if a young officerturned up like that, the other subalterns would bloody well have cut hishair for him."

No one showed any enthusiasm for this sport, and our lack of responseseemed to inflame the colonel. "You," he said, turning to a decent boyin A Company, "go and get a pair of scissors and cut that youngofficer's hair for him."

"Is that an order, sir?"

"It's your commanding officer's wish and that's the best kind of order Iknow."

"Very good, sir."

And so, in an atmosphere of chilly embarrassment, Hooper sat in a chairwhile a few snips were made at the back of his head. At the beginning ofthe operation I left the ante-room, and later apologized to Hooper forhis reception. "It's not the sort of thing that usually happens in thisregiment," I said.

"Oh, no hard feelings," said Hooper. "I can take a bit of sport."

Hooper had no illusions about the army--or rather no special illusionsdistinguishable from the general, enveloping fog from which he observedthe universe. He had come to it reluctantly, under compulsion, after hehad made every feeble effort in his power to obtain deferment. Heaccepted it, he said, "like the measles." Hooper was no romantic. He hadnot as a child ridden with Rupert's horse or sat among the camp fires atXanthus-side; at the age when my eyes were dry to all save poetry--thatstoic, red-skin interlude which our schools introduce between the fastflowing tears of the child and the man--Hooper had wept often, but neverfor Henry's speech on St. Crispin's Day, nor for the epitaph atThermopylæ. The history they taught him had had few battles in it but,instead, a profusion of detail about humane legislation and recentindustrial change. Gallipoli, Balaclava, Quebec, Lepanto, Bannockburn,Roncesvales, and Marathon--these, and the Battle in the West whereArthur fell, and a hundred such names whose trumpet-notes, even now inmy sere and lawless state, called to me irresistibly across theintervening years with all the clarity and strength of boyhood, soundedin vain to Hooper.

He seldom complained. Though himself a man to whom one could notconfidently entrust the simplest duty, he had an overmastering regardfor efficiency and, drawing on his modest commercial experience, hewould sometimes say of the ways of the army in pay and supply and theuse of man-hours: "They couldn't get away with that in business."

He slept sound while I lay awake fretting.

In the weeks that we were together Hooper became a symbol to me of YoungEngland, so that whenever I read some public utterance proclaiming whatYouth demanded in the Future and what the world owed to Youth, I wouldtest these general statements by substituting "Hooper" and seeing ifthey still seemed as plausible. Thus in the dark hour before reveille Isometimes pondered: "Hooper Rallies," "Hooper Hostels," "InternationalHooper Co-operation" and "the Religion of Hooper." He was the acid testof all these alloys.

So far as he had changed at all, he was less soldierly now than when hearrived from his OCTU. This morning, laden with full equipment, helooked scarcely human. He came to attention with a kind of shufflingdance-step and spread a wool-gloved palm across his forehead.

"I want to speak to Mr. Hooper, sergeant-major... well, where thedevil have you been? I told you to inspect the lines."

"'M I late? Sorry. Had a rush getting my gear together."

"That's what you have a servant for."

"Well I suppose it is, strictly speaking. But you know how it is. He hadhis own stuff to do. If you get on the wrong side of these fellows theytake it out of you other ways."

"Well, go and inspect the lines now."

"Rightyoh."

"And for Christ's sake don't say 'rightyoh.'"

"Sorry. I do try to remember. It just slips out."

When Hooper left the sergeant-major returned.

"C.O. just coming up the path, sir," he said.

I went out to meet him.

There were beads of moisture on the hog-bristles of his little redmoustache.

"Well, everything squared up here?"

"Yes, I think so, sir."

"Think so? You ought to know."

His eyes fell on the broken window. "Has that been entered in thebarrack-damages?"

"Not yet, sir."

"Not yet? I wonder when it would have been if I hadn't seen it."

He was not at ease with me, and much of his bluster rose from timidity,but I thought none the better of it for that.

He led me behind the huts to a wire fence which divided my area from thecarrier-platoon's, skipped briskly over and made for an overgrown ditchand bank which had once been a field boundary on the farm. Here he begangrubbing with his walkingstick like a truffling pig and presently gave acry of triumph. He had disclosed one of those deposits of rubbish whichare dear to the private soldier's sense of order: the head of a broom,the lid of a stove, a bucket rusted through, a sock, a loaf of bread,lay under the dock and nettle among cigarette packets and empty tins.

"Look at that," said the commanding officer. "Fine impression that givesto the regiment taking over from us."

"That's bad," I said.

"It's a disgrace. See everything there is burned before you leave camp."

"Very good, sir. Sergeant-major, send over to the carrier-platoon andtell Captain Brown that the C.O. wants this ditch cleared up."

I wondered whether the colonel would take this rebuff; so did he. Hestood a moment irresolutely prodding the muck in the ditch, then heturned on his heel and strode away.

"You shouldn't do it, sir," said the sergeant-major, who had been myguide and prop since I joined the company. "You shouldn't really."

"That wasn't our rubbish."

"Maybe not, sir, but you know how it is. If you get on the wrong side ofsenior officers they take it out of you other ways."

* * * * *

As we marched past the madhouse two or three elderly inmates gibberedand mouthed politely behind the railings.

"Cheeroh, chum, we'll be seeing you"; "We shan't be long now"; "Keepsmiling till we meet again," the men called to them.

I was marching with Hooper at the head of the leading platoon.

"I say, any idea where we're off to?"

"None."

"D'you think it's the real thing?"

"No."

"Just a flap?"

"Yes."

"Everyone's been saying we're for it. I don't know what to think really.Seems so silly somehow, all this drill and training if we never go intoaction."

"I shouldn't worry. There'll be plenty for everyone in time."

"Oh, I don't want much you know. Just enough to say I've been in it."

A train of antiquated coaches were waiting for us at the siding; anR.T.O. was in charge; a fatigue party was loading the last of thekit-bags from the trucks to the luggage vans. In half an hour we wereready to start and in an hour we started.

My three platoon commanders and myself had a carriage to ourselves. Theyate sandwiches and chocolate, smoked and slept. None of them had a book.For the first three or four hours they noted the names of the towns andleaned out of the windows when, as often happened, we stopped betweenstations. Later they lost interest. At midday and again at dark sometepid cocoa was ladled from a container into our mugs. The train movedslowly South through flat, drab main-line scenery.

The chief incident in the day was the C.O.'s "Order Group." We assembledin his carriage, at the summons of an orderly, and found him and theadjutant wearing their steel helmets and equipment. The first thing hesaid was: "This is an Order Group. I expect you to attend properlydressed. The fact that we happen to be in a train is immaterial." Ithought he was going to send us back but, after glaring at us, he said:"Sit down....

"The camp was left in a disgraceful condition. Wherever I went I foundevidence that officers are not doing their duty. The state in which acamp is left is the best possible test of the efficiency of regimentalofficers. It is on such matters that the reputation of a battalion andits commander rests. And"--Did he in fact say this or am I finding wordsfor the resentment in his voice and eye? I think he left it unsaid--"Ido not intend to have my professional reputation compromised by theslackness of a few temporary officers."

We sat with our note-books and pencils waiting to take down the detailsof our next jobs. A more sensitive man would have seen that he hadfailed to be impressive; perhaps he saw, for he added in a petulantschoolmasterish way: "All I ask is loyal co-operation."

Then he referred to his notes and read:--

"Orders.

"Information. The battalion is now in transit between location A andlocation B. This is a major L of C and is liable to bombing and gasattack from the enemy.

"Intention. I intend to arrive at location B.

"Method. Train will arrive at destination at approximately2315 hours..." and so on.

The sting came at the end under the heading, "Administration." CCompany, less one platoon, was to unload the train on arrival at thesiding where three three-tonners would be available for moving allstores to a battalion dump in the new camp; work to continue untilcompleted; the remaining platoon was to find a guard on the dump andperimeter sentries for the camp area.

"Any questions?"

"Can we have an issue of cocoa for the working party?"

"No. Any more questions?"

When I told the sergeant-major of these orders he said: "Poor old CCompany struck unlucky again"; and I knew this to be a reproach for myhaving antagonized the commanding officer.

I told the platoon commanders.

"I say," said Hooper, "it makes it awfully awkward with the chaps.They'll be fairly browned-off. He always seems to pick on us for thedirty work."

"You'll do guard."

"Okeydoke. But I say, how am I to find the perimeter in the dark?"

Shortly after blackout we were disturbed by an orderly making his waylugubriously down the length of the train with a rattle. One of the moresophisticated sergeants called out "Deuxième service."

"We are being sprayed with liquid mustard-gas," I said. "See that thewindows are shut." I then wrote a neat little situation-report to saythat there were no casualties and nothing had been contaminated; thatmen had been detained to decontaminate the outside of the coach beforedetraining. This seemed to satisfy the commanding officer, for we heardno more from him. After dark we all slept.

At last, very late, we came to our siding. It was part of our trainingin security and active service conditions that we should eschew stationsand platforms. The drop from the running board to the cinder track madefor disorder and breakages in the darkness.

"Fall-in on the road below the embankment. C Company seem to be takingtheir time as usual, Captain Ryder."

"Yes sir. We're having a little difficulty with the bleach."

"Bleach?"

"For decontaminating the outside of the coaches, sir."

"Oh, very conscientious, I'm sure. Skip it and get a move on."

By now my half-awake and sulky men were clattering into shape on theroad. Soon Hooper's platoon had marched off into the darkness; I foundthe lorries, organized lines of men to pass the stores from hand to handdown the steep bank, and, presently, as they found themselves doingsomething with an apparent purpose in it, they got more cheerful. Ihandled stores with them for the first half-hour; then broke off to meetthe company second-in-command who came down with the first returningtruck.

"It's not a bad camp," he reported; "big private house with two or threelakes. Looks as if we might get some duck if we're lucky. Village withone pub and a post office. No town within miles. I've managed to get ahut between the two of us."

By four in the morning the work was done. I drove in the last lorry,through tortuous lanes where the overhanging boughs whipped the windscreen; somewhere we left the lane and turned into a drive; somewhere wereached an open space where two drives converged and a ring of stormlanterns marked the heap of stores. Here we unloaded the truck and, atlong last, followed the guides to our quarters, under a starless sky,with a fine drizzle of rain beginning now to fall.

* * * * *

I slept until my servant called me, rose wearily, dressed and shaved insilence. It was not till I reached the door that I asked thesecond-in-command, "What's this place called?"

He told me and, on the instant, it was as though someone had switchedoff the wireless, and a voice that had been bawling in my ears,incessantly, fatuously, for days beyond number, had been suddenly cutshort; an immense silence followed, empty at first, but gradually, as myoutraged sense regained authority, full of a multitude of sweet andnatural and long-forgotten sounds--for he had spoken a name that was sofamiliar to me, a conjuror's name of such ancient power, that, at itsmere sound, the phantoms of those haunted late years began to takeflight.

Outside the hut I stood awed and bemused between two realities and twodreams. The rain had ceased but the clouds hung low and heavy overhead.It was a still morning and the smoke from the cookhouse rose straight tothe leaden sky. A cart-track, once metalled, then overgrown, now ruttedand churned to mud, followed the contour of the hillside and dipped outof sight below a knoll, and on either side of it lay the haphazardlitter of corrugated iron, from which rose the rattle and chatter andwhistling and catcalls, all the zoo-noises of the battalion beginning anew day. Beyond and about us, more familiar still, lay an exquisiteman-made landscape. It was a sequestered place, enclosed and embraced ina single, winding valley. Our camp lay along one gentle slope; oppositeus the ground led, still unravished, to the neighbourly horizon, andbetween us flowed a stream--it was named the Bride and rose not twomiles away at a farm called Bridesprings, where we used sometimes towalk to tea; it became a considerable river lower down before it joinedthe Avon--which had been dammed here to form three lakes, one no morethan a wet slate among the reeds, but the others more spacious,reflecting the clouds and the mighty beeches at their margin. The woodswere all of oak and beech, the oak grey and bare, the beech faintlydusted with green by the breaking buds; they made a simple, carefullydesigned pattern with the green glades and the wide green spaces--Didthe fallow deer graze here still?--and, lest the eye wander aimlessly, aDoric temple stood by the water's edge, and an ivy-grown arch spannedthe lowest of the connecting weirs. All this had been planned andplanted a century and a half ago so that, at about this date, it mightbe seen in its maturity. From where I stood the house was hidden by agreen spur, but I knew well how and where it lay, couched among thelime-trees like a hind in the bracken. Which was the mirage, which thepalpable earth?

Hooper came sidling up and greeted me with his much imitated butinimitable salute. His face was grey from his night's vigil and he hadnot yet shaved.

"B Company relieved us. I've sent the chaps off to get cleaned up."

"Good."

"The house is up there, round the corner."

"Yes," I said.

"Brigade Headquarters are coming there next week. Great barrack of aplace. I've just had a snoop round. Very ornate, I'd call it. And aqueer thing, there's a sort of R.C. church attached. I looked in andthere was a kind of service going on--just a padre and one old man. Ifelt very awkward. More in your line than mine." Perhaps I seemed not tohear; in a final effort to excite my interest he said: "There's afrightful great fountain, too, in front of the steps, all rocks and sortof carved animals. You never saw such a thing."

"Yes, Hooper, I did. I've been here before."

The words seemed to ring back to me enriched from the vaults of mydungeon.

"Oh well, you know all about it. I'll go and get cleaned up."

I had been there before; I knew all about it.

Book I. Et in Arcadia ego

Chapter One

"I have been here before," I said; I had been there before; first withSebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, whenthe ditches were white with fool's-parsley and meadowsweet and the airheavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour,such as our climate affords once or twice a year, when leaf and flowerand bird and sun-lit stone and shadow seem all to proclaim the glory ofGod; and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was tothat first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest.

That day, too, I had come not knowing my destination. It was EightsWeek. Oxford--submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse,so quickly have the waters come flooding in--Oxford, in those days, wasstill a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walkedand spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her greyspringtime, and the rare glory of her summer days--such as thatday--when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high andclear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft vapours of athousand years of learning. It was this cloistral hush which gave ourlaughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over theintervening clamour. Here, discordantly, in Eights Week, came a rabbleof womankind, some hundreds strong, twittering and fluttering over thecobbles and up the steps, sight-seeing and pleasure-seeking, drinkingclaret cup, eating cucumber sandwiches; pushed in punts about the river,herded in droves to the college barges; greeted in the Isis and in theUnion by a sudden display of peculiar, facetious, wholly distressingGilbert and Sullivan badinage, and by peculiar choral effects in thecollege chapels. Echoes of the intruders penetrated every corner, and inmy own college was no echo, but an original fount of the grossestdisturbance. We were giving a ball. The front quad, where I lived, wasfloored and tented; palms and azaleas were banked round the porter'slodge; worst of all, the don who lived above me, a mouse of a manconnected with the Natural Sciences, had lent his rooms for a Ladies'Cloakroom, and a printed notice proclaiming this outrage hung not sixinches from my oak.

No one felt more strongly about it than my scout.

"Gentlemen who haven't got ladies are asked as far as possible to taketheir meals out in the next few days," he announced despondently. "Willyou be lunching in?"

"No, Lunt."

"So as to give the servants a chance, they say. What a chance! I've gotto buy a pin-cushion for the Ladies' Cloakroom. What do they want withdancing? I don't see the reason in it. There never was dancing before inEights Week. Commem. now is another matter being in the vacation, butnot in Eights Week as if teas and the river wasn't enough. If you askme, sir, it's all on account of the war. It couldn't have happened butfor that." For this was 1923 and for Lunt, as for thousands of others,things could never be the same as they had been in 1914. "Now wine inthe evening," he continued, as was his habit, half in and half out ofthe door, "or one or two gentlemen to luncheon, there's reason in. Butnot dancing. It all came in with the men back from the war. They weretoo old and they didn't know and they wouldn't learn. That's the truth.And there's some even goes dancing with the town at the Masonic--but theproctors will get them, you see.... Well, here's Lord Sebastian. Imustn't stand here talking when there's pin-cushions to get."

Sebastian entered--dove-grey flannel, white crepe-de-chine, a Charvettie, my tie as it happened, a pattern of postage stamps--"Charles, whatin the world's happening at your college? Is there a circus? I've seeneverything except elephants. I must say the whole of Oxford has becomemost peculiar suddenly. Last night it was pullulating with women.You're to come away at once, out of danger. I've got a motor-car and abasket of strawberries and a bottle of Château Peyraguey--which isn't awine you've ever tasted, so don't pretend. It's heaven withstrawberries."

"Where are we going?"

"To see a friend."

"Who?"

"Name of Hawkins. Bring some money in case we see anything we want tobuy. The motor-car is the property of a man called Hardcastle. Returnthe bits to him if I kill myself; I'm not very good at driving."

Beyond the gate, beyond the winter garden that was once the lodge, stoodan open, two-seater Morris-Cowley. Sebastian's Teddy-bear sat at thewheel. We put him between us--"Take care he's not sick"--and drove off.The bells of St. Mary's were chiming nine; we escaped collision with aclergyman, black-straw-hatted, white-bearded, pedalling quietly down thewrong side of the High Street, crossed Carfax, passed the station, andwere soon in open country on the Botley Road; open country was easilyreached in those days.

"Isn't it early?" said Sebastian. "The women are still doing whateverwomen do to themselves before they come downstairs. Sloth has undonethem. We're away. God bless Hardcastle."

"Whoever he may be."

"He thought he was coming with us. Sloth undid him too. Well, I did tellhim ten. He's a very gloomy man in my college. He leads a double life.At least I assume he does. He couldn't go on being Hardcastle, day andnight, always, could he? Or he'd die of it. He says he knows my father,which is impossible."

"Why?"

"No one knows Papa. He's a social leper. Hadn't you heard?"

"It's a pity neither of us can sing," I said.

At Swindon we turned off the main road and, as the sun mounted high, wewere among dry-stone walls and ashlar houses. It was about eleven whenSebastian, without warning, turned the car into a cart-track andstopped. It was hot enough now to make us seek the shade. On asheep-cropped knoll under a clump of elms we ate the strawberries anddrank the wine--as Sebastian promised, they were delicious together--andwe lit fat, Turkish cigarettes and lay on our backs, Sebastian's eyes onthe leaves above him, mine on his profile, while the blue-grey smokerose, untroubled by any wind, to the blue-green shadows of foliage, andthe sweet scent of the tobacco merged with the sweet summer scentsaround us and the fumes of the sweet, golden wine seemed to lift us afinger's breadth above the turf and hold us suspended.

"Just the place to bury a crock of gold," said Sebastian. "I should liketo bury something precious in every place where I've been happy andthen, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and digit up and remember."

* * * * *

This was my third term since matriculation, but I date my Oxford lifefrom my first meeting with Sebastian, which had happened, by chance, inthe middle of the term before. We were in different colleges and camefrom different schools; I might well have spent my three or four yearsin the University and never have met him, but for the chance of hisgetting drunk one evening in my college and of my having ground-floorrooms in the front quadrangle.

I had been warned against the dangers of these rooms by my cousinJasper, who alone, when I first came up, thought me a suitable subjectfor detailed guidance. My father offered me none. Then, as always, heeschewed serious conversation with me. It was not until I was within afortnight of going up that he mentioned the subject at all; then hesaid, shyly and rather slyly: "I've been talking about you. I met yourfuture Warden at the Athenæum. I wanted to talk about Etruscan notionsof immortality; he wanted to talk about extension lectures for theworking-class; so we compromised and talked about you. I asked him whatyour allowance should be. He said, 'Three hundred a year; on no accountgive him more; that's all most men have.' I thought that a deplorableanswer. I had more than most men when I was up, and my recollectionis that nowhere else in the world and at no other time, do a few hundredpounds, one way or the other, make so much difference to one'simportance and popularity. I toyed with the idea of giving you sixhundred," said my father, snuffling a little, as he did when he wasamused, "but I reflected that, should the Warden come to hear of it, itmight sound deliberately impolite. So I shall give you five hundred andfifty."

I thanked him.

"Yes, it's indulgent of me, but it all comes out of capital, youknow.... I suppose this is the time I should give you advice. I neverhad any myself except once from your cousin Alfred. Do you know in thesummer before I was going up, your cousin Alfred rode over to Boughtonespecially to give me a piece of advice? And do you know what thatadvice was? 'Ned,' he said, 'there's one thing I must beg of you.Always wear a tall hat on Sundays during term. It is by that, morethan anything, that a man is judged.' And do you know," continued myfather, snuffling deeply, "I always did? Some men did, some didn't. Inever saw any difference between them or heard it commented on, but Ialways wore mine. It only shows what effect judicious advice can have,properly delivered at the right moment. I wish I had some for you, but Ihaven't."

My cousin Jasper made good the loss; he was the son of my father's elderbrother, to whom he referred more than once, only half facetiously, as"the Head of the Family"; he was in his fourth year and, the termbefore, had come within appreciable distance of getting his rowing blue;he was secretary of the Canning and president of the J.C.R.--aconsiderable person in college. He called on me formally during my firstweek and stayed to tea; he ate a very heavy meal of honey-buns, anchovytoast and Fuller's walnut cake, then he lit his pipe and, lying back inthe basket chair, laid down the rules of conduct which I should follow;he covered most subjects; even to-day I could repeat much of what hesaid, word for word. "...You're reading History? A perfectlyrespectable school. The very worst is English Literature and the nextworst is Modern Greats. You want either a first or a fourth. There is novalue in anything between. Time spent on a good second is time thrownaway. You should go to the best lectures--Arkwright on Demosthenes forinstance--irrespective of whether they are in your school or not....Clothes. Dress as you do in a country house. Never wear a tweed coat andflannel trousers--always a suit. And go to a London tailor; you getbetter cut and longer credit.... Clubs. Join the Carlton now and theGrid at the beginning of your second year. If you want to run for theUnion--and it's not a bad thing to do--make your reputation outsidefirst, at the Canning or the Chatham, and begin by speaking on thepaper.... Keep clear of Boar's Hill..." The sky over the opposinggables glowed and then darkened; I put more coal on the fire and turnedon the light, revealing in their respectability his London-made plusfours and his Leander tie.... "Don't treat dons like schoolmasters;treat them as you would the vicar at home.... You'll find you spendhalf your second year shaking off the undesirable friends you made inyour first.... Beware of the Anglo-Catholics--they're all sodomiteswith unpleasant accents. In fact, steer clear of all the religiousgroups; they do nothing but harm...."

Finally, just as he was going, he said, "One last point. Change yourrooms." They were large, with deeply recessed windows and painted,eighteenth-century panelling; I was lucky as a freshman to get them."I've seen many a man ruined through having ground-floor rooms in thefront quad," said my cousin with deep gravity. "People start droppingin. They leave their gowns here and come and collect them before hall;you start giving them sherry. Before you know where you are, you'veopened a free bar for all the undesirables of the college."

I do not know that I ever, consciously, followed any of this advice. Icertainly never changed my rooms; there were gillyflowers growing belowthe windows which on summer evenings filled them with fragrance.

It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one's youth with a false precocityor a false innocence; to tamper with the dates marking one's stature onthe edge of the door. I should like to think--indeed I sometimes dothink--that I decorated those rooms with Morris stuffs and Arundelprints and that my shelves were filled with seventeenth-century foliosand French novels of the second empire in Russia-leather andwatered-silk. But this was not the truth. On my first afternoon Iproudly hung a reproduction of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" over the fire andset up a screen, painted by Roger Fry with a Provençal landscape, whichI had bought inexpensively when the Omega workshops were sold up. Idisplayed also a poster by McKnight Kauffer and Rhyme Sheets from thePoetry Bookshop, and, most painful to recall, a porcelain figure ofPolly Peachum which stood between black tapers on the chimney-piece. Mybooks were meagre and commonplace--Roger Fry's Vision and Design; theMedici Press edition of A Shropshire Lad; Eminent Victorians; somevolumes of Georgian Poetry; Sinister Street; and South Wind--andmy earliest friends fitted well into this background; they were Collins,a Wykehamist, an embryo don, a man of solid reading and childlikehumour, and a small circle of college intellectuals, who maintained amiddle course of culture between the flamboyant "æsthetes" and theproletarian scholars who scrambled fiercely for facts in the lodginghouses of the Iffley Road and Wellington Square. It was by this circlethat I found myself adopted during my first term; they provided the kindof company I had enjoyed in the sixth form at school, for which thesixth form had prepared me; but even in the earliest days, when thewhole business of living at Oxford, with rooms of my own and my owncheque book, was a source of excitement, I felt at heart that this wasnot all that Oxford had to offer.

At Sebastian's approach these grey figures seemed quietly to fade intothe landscape and vanish, like highland sheep in the misty heather.Collins had exposed the fallacy of modern æsthetics to me: "...Thewhole argument from Significant Form stands or falls by volume. If youallow Cézanne to represent a third dimension on his two-dimensionalcanvas, then you must allow Landseer his gleam of loyalty in thespaniel's eye"--but it was not until Sebastian, idly turning the page ofClive Bell's Art, read: "'Does anyone feel the same kind of emotionfor a butterfly or a flower that he feels for a cathedral or a picture?'Yes. I do," that my eyes were opened.

I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him. That was unavoidablefor, from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year byreason of his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities ofbehaviour which seemed to know no bounds. My first sight of him was aswe passed in the door of Germer's, and, on that occasion, I was struckless by his looks than by the fact that he was carrying a largeTeddy-bear.

"That," said the barber, as I took his chair, "was Lord Sebastian Flyte.A most amusing young gentleman."

"Apparently," I said coldly.

"The Marquis of Marchmain's second boy. His brother, the Earl ofBrideshead, went down last term. Now he was very different, a veryquiet gentleman, quite like an old man. What do you suppose LordSebastian wanted? A hair brush for his Teddy-bear; it had to have verystiff bristles, not, Lord Sebastian said, to brush him with, but tothreaten him with a spanking when he was sulky. He bought a very niceone with an ivory back and he's having 'Aloysius' engraved on it--that'sthe bear's name." The man, who, in his time, had had ample chance totire of undergraduate fantasy, was plainly captivated by him. I,however, remained censorious and subsequent glimpses of Sebastian,driving in a hansom cab and dining at the George in false whiskers, didnot soften me, although Collins, who was reading Freud, had a number oftechnical terms to cover everything.

Nor, when at last we met, were the circ*mstances propitious. It wasshortly before midnight in early March; I had been entertaining thecollege intellectuals to mulled claret; the fire was roaring, the air ofmy room heavy with smoke and spice, and my mind weary with metaphysics.I threw open my windows and from the quad outside came the not uncommonsounds of bibulous laughter and unsteady steps. A voice said: "Hold up";another, "Come on"; another, "Plenty of time... House... till Tomstops ringing"; and another, clearer than the rest, "D'you know I feelmost unaccountably unwell. I must leave you a minute," and thereappeared at my window the face I knew to be Sebastian's--but not as Ihad formerly seen it, alive and alight with gaiety; he looked at me fora moment with unseeing eyes and then, leaning forward well into theroom, he was sick.

It was not unusual for dinner parties to end in that way; there was infact a recognized tariff on such occasions for the comfort of the scout;we were all learning, by trial and error, to carry our wine. There wasalso a kind of insane and endearing orderliness about Sebastian'schoice, in his extremity, of an open window. But, when all is said, itremained an unpropitious meeting.

His friends bore him to the gate and, in a few minutes, his host, anamiable Etonian of my year, returned to apologize. He, too, was tipsyand his explanations were repetitive and, towards the end, tearful. "Thewines were too various," he said; "it was neither the quality nor thequantity that was at fault. It was the mixture. Grasp that and you havethe root of the matter. To understand all is to forgive all."

"Yes," I said, but it was with a sense of grievance that I faced Lunt'sreproaches next morning.

* * * * *

"A couple of jugs of mulled claret between the five of you," Lunt said,"and this had to happen. Couldn't even get to the window. Those thatcan't keep it down are better without it."

"It wasn't one of my party. It was someone from out of college."

"Well, it's just as nasty cleaning it up, whoever it was."

"There's five shillings on the sideboard."

"So I saw and thank you, but I'd rather not have the money and not havethe mess, any morning."

I took my gown and left him to his task. I still frequented the lectureroom in those days, and it was after eleven when I returned to college.I found my room full of flowers; what looked like, and, in fact, was,the entire day's stock of a market-stall stood in every conceivablevessel in every part of the room. Lunt was secreting the last of them inbrown paper preparatory to taking them home.

"Lunt, what is all this?"

"The gentleman from last night, sir, he left a note for you."

The note was written in conté crayon on a whole sheet of my choiceWhatman H.P. drawing paper: I am very contrite. Aloysius won't speak tome until he sees I am forgiven, so please come to luncheon to-day.Sebastian Flyte. It was typical of him, I reflected, to assume I knewwhere he lived; but then, I did know.

"A most amusing gentleman, I'm sure it's quite a pleasure to clean upafter him. I take it you're lunching out, sir. I told Mr. Collins andMr. Partridge so--they wanted to have their commons in here with you."

"Yes, Lunt, lunching out."

That luncheon party--for party it proved to be--was the beginning of anew epoch in my life, but its details are dimmed for me and confused byso many others, almost identical with it, that succeeded one anotherthat term and the next, like romping cupids in a Renaissance frieze.

I went there uncertainly, for it was foreign ground and there was atiny, priggish, warning voice in my ear which in the tones of Collinstold me it was seemly to hold back. But I was in search of love in thosedays, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognizedapprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in thewall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on anenclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked byany window, in the heart of that grey city.

Sebastian lived at Christ Church, high in Meadow Buildings. He was alonewhen I came, peeling a plover's egg taken from the large nest of moss inthe centre of the table.

"I've just counted them," he said. "There were five each and two over,so I'm having the two. I'm unaccountably hungry to-day. I put myselfunreservedly in the hands of Dolbear and Goodall, and feel so druggedthat I've begun to believe that the whole of yesterday evening was adream. Please don't wake me up."

He was magically beautiful, with that epicene quality which in extremeyouth sings aloud for love and withers at the first cold wind.

His room was filled with a strange jumble of objects--a harmonium in agothic case, an elephant's-foot waste-paper basket, a dome of wax fruit,two disproportionately large Sèvres vases, framed drawings byDaumier--made all the more incongruous by the austere college furnitureand the large luncheon table. His chimney-piece was covered with cardsof invitation from London hostesses.

"That beast Hobson has put Aloysius in the bedder," he said. "Perhapsit's as well as there wouldn't have been any plovers' eggs for him.D'you know, Hobson hates Aloysius? I wish I had a scout like yours. Hewas sweet to me this morning where some people might have been quitestrict."

The party assembled. There were three Etonian freshmen, mild, elegant,detached young men who had all been to a dance in London the nightbefore, and spoke of it as though it had been the funeral of a near butunloved kinsman. Each as he came into the room made first for theplovers' eggs, then noticed Sebastian and then myself with a polite lackof curiosity which seemed to say: "We should not dream of being sooffensive as to suggest that you never met us before."

"The first this year," they said. "Where do you get them?"

"Mummy sends them from Brideshead. They always lay early for her."

When the eggs were gone and we were eating the lobster Newburg, the lastguest arrived.

"My dear," he said, "I couldn't get away before. I was lunching with myp-p-preposterous tutor. He thought it very odd my leaving when I did. Itold him I had to change for F-f-footer."

From the moment he arrived the newcomer took charge, talking in aluxurious, self-taught stammer; teasing; caricaturing the guests at hisprevious luncheon; telling lubricious anecdotes of Paris and Berlin; anddoing more than entertain--transfiguring the party, shedding a vivid,false light of eccentricity upon everyone so that the three prosaicEtonians seemed suddenly to become creatures of his fantasy.

This, I did not need telling, was Anthony Blanche, the "æsthete" parexcellence, a byword of iniquity from Cherwell Edge to Somerville, ayoung man who seemed to me, then, fresh from the sombre company of theCollege Essay Society, ageless as a lizard, as foreign as a Martian. Hehad been pointed out to me often in the streets, as he moved with hisown peculiar stateliness, as though he had not fully accustomed himselfto coat and trousers and was more at his ease in heavy, embroideredrobes; I had heard his voice in the George challenging the conventions;and now meeting him, under the spell of Sebastian. I found myselfenjoying him voraciously, like the fine piece of cookery he was.

After luncheon he stood on the balcony with a megaphone which hadappeared surprisingly among the bric-à-brac of Sebastian's room, and inlanguishing, sobbing tones recited passages from The Waste Land to thesweatered and muffled throng that was on its way to the river.

"'I, Tiresias, have foresuffered all,'" he sobbed to them from theVenetian arches--

"Enacted on this same d-divan or b-bed,
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the l-l-lowest of the dead...."

And then, stepping lightly into the room, "How I have surprised them!All b-boatmen are Grace Darlings to me."

We sat on sipping Cointreau while the mildest and most detached of theEtonians sang "Home they brought her warrior dead" to his ownaccompaniment on the harmonium.

It was four o'clock before we broke up.

Anthony Blanche was the first to go. He took formal and complimentaryleave of each of us in turn. To Sebastian he said: "My dear, I shouldlike to stick you full of barbed arrows like a p-p-pin-cushion," and tome: "I think it's perfectly brilliant of Sebastian to have discoveredyou. Where do you lurk? I shall come down your burrow and ch-chivvy youout like an old st-t-toat."

The others left soon after him. I rose to go with them, but Sebastiansaid: "Have some more Cointreau," so I stayed and later he said, "I mustgo to the Botanical Gardens."

"Why?"

"To see the ivy."

It seemed a good enough reason and I went with him. He took my arm as wewalked under the walls of Merton.

"I've never been to the Botanical Gardens," I said.

"Oh, Charles, what a lot you have to learn! There's a beautiful archthere and more different kinds of ivy than I knew existed. I don't knowwhere I should be without the Botanical Gardens."

When at length I returned to my rooms and found them exactly as I hadleft them that morning, I detected a jejune air that had not irked mebefore. What was wrong? Nothing except the golden daffodils seemed to bereal. Was it the screen? I turned it face to the wall. That was better.

It was the end of the screen. Lunt never liked it, and after a few dayshe took it away, to an obscure refuge he had under the stairs, full ofmops and buckets.

That day was the beginning of my friendship with Sebastian, and thus itcame about, that morning in June, that I was lying beside him in theshade of the high elms watching the smoke from his lips drift up intothe branches.

* * * * *

Presently we drove on and in another hour were hungry. We stopped at aninn, which was half farm also, and ate eggs and bacon, pickled walnutsand cheese, and drank our beer in a sunless parlour where an old clockticked in the shadows and a cat slept by the empty grate.

We drove on and in the early afternoon came to our destination:wrought-iron gates and twin, classical lodges on a village green, anavenue, more gates, open parkland, a turn in the drive; and suddenly anew and secret landscape opened before us. We were at the head of avalley and below us, half a mile distant, prone in the sunlight, greyand gold amid a screen of boskage, shone the dome and columns of an oldhouse.

"Well?" said Sebastian, stopping the car. Beyond the dome lay recedingsteps of water and round it, guarding and hiding it, stood the softhills.

"Well?"

"What a place to live in!" I said.

"You must see the garden front and the fountain." He leaned forward andput the car into gear. "It's where my family live." And even then, raptin the vision, I felt, momentarily, like a wind stirring the tapestry,an ominous chill at the words he used--not "That is my home," but "It'swhere my family live."

"Don't worry," he continued, "they're all away. You won't have to meetthem."

"But I should like to."

"Well, you can't. They're in London, dancing."

We drove round the front into a side court--"Everything's shut up. We'dbetter go in this way"--and entered through the fortress-like,stone-flagged, stone-vaulted passages of the servants' quarters--"I wantyou to meet Nanny Hawkins. That's what we've come for"--and climbeduncarpeted, scrubbed elm stairs, followed more passages of wide boardscovered in the centre by a thin strip of drugget, through passagescovered by linoleum, passing the wells of many minor staircases and manyrows of crimson and gold fire buckets, up a final staircase, gated atthe head, where at last we reached the nurseries, high in the dome inthe centre of the main block.

Sebastian's Nanny was seated at the open window; the fountain lay beforeher, the lakes, the temple, and, far away on the last spur, a glitteringobelisk; her hands lay open in her lap and, loosely between them, arosary; she was fast asleep. Long hours of work in her youth, authorityin middle life, repose and security in her age, had set their stamp onher lined and serene face.

"Well," she said, waking; "this is a surprise."

Sebastian kissed her.

"Who's this?" she said, looking at me. "I don't think I know him."

Sebastian introduced us.

"You've come just the right time. Julia's here for the day. She was upwith me nearly all the morning telling me about London. Such a timethey're all having. It's dull without them. Just Mrs. Chandler and twoof the girls and old Bert. And then they're all going on holidays andthe boiler's being done out in August and you going to see his Lordshipin Italy, and the rest on visits, it'll be October before we're settleddown again. Still, I suppose Julia must have her enjoyment the same asother young ladies, though what they always want to go to London for inthe best of the summer and the gardens all out, I never have understood.Father Phipps was here on Thursday and I said exactly the same to him,"she added as though she had thus acquired sacerdotal authority for heropinion.

"D'you say Julia's here?"

"Yes, dear, you must have just missed her. It's the Conservative Women.Her Ladyship was to have done them, but she's poorly. Julia won't belong; she's leaving immediately after her speech, before the tea."

"I'm afraid we may miss her again."

"Don't do that, dear, it'll be such a surprise to her seeing you, thoughshe ought to wait for the tea, I told her, it's what the ConservativeWomen come for. Now what's the news? Are you studying hard at yourbooks?"

"Not very, I'm afraid, Nanny."

"Ah, cricketing all day long I expect, like your brother. He found timeto study, too, though. He's not been here since Christmas, but he'll behere for the Agricultural I expect. Did you see this piece about Juliain the paper? She brought it down for me. Not that it's nearly goodenough of her, but what it says is very nice. 'The lovely daughterwhom Lady Marchmain is bringing out this season... witty as well asornamental... the most popular débutante,' well that's no more thanthe truth, though it was a shame to cut her hair; such a lovely head ofhair she had just like her Ladyship's. I said to Father Phipps it's notnatural. He said, 'Nuns do it,' and I said, 'Well, surely, Father, youaren't going to make a nun out of Lady Julia? The very idea!'"

Sebastian and the old woman talked on. It was a charming room, oddlyshaped to conform with the curve of the dome. The walls were papered ina pattern of ribbon and roses. There was a rocking horse in the cornerand an oleograph of the Sacred Heart over the mantelpiece; the emptygrate was hidden by a bunch of pampas grass and bulrushes; laid out onthe top of the chest of drawers and carefully dusted were the collectionof small presents which had been brought home to her at various times byher children, carved shell and lava, stamped leather, painted wood,china, bog oak, damascened silver, blue-john, alabaster, coral, thesouvenirs of many holidays.

Presently Nanny said: "Ring the bell, dear, and we'll have some tea. Iusually go down to Mrs. Chandler, but we'll have it up here to-day. Myusual girl has gone to London with the others. The new one is just upfrom the village. She didn't know anything at first, but she's comingalong nicely. Ring the bell."

But Sebastian said we had to go.

"And Miss Julia? She will be upset when she hears. It would have beensuch a surprise for her."

"Poor Nanny," said Sebastian when we left the nursery. "She does havesuch a dull life. I've a good mind to bring her to Oxford to live withme, only she'd always be trying to send me to church. We must go quicklybefore my sister gets back."

"Which are you ashamed of, her or me?"

"I'm ashamed of myself," said Sebastian gravely. "I'm not going to haveyou get mixed up with my family. They're so madly charming. All my lifethey've been taking things away from me. If they once got hold of youwith their charm, they'd make you their friend, not mine, and I won'tlet them."

"All right," I said. "I'm perfectly content. But am I not going to beallowed to see any more of the house?"

"It's all shut up. We came to see Nanny. On Queen Alexandra's Day it'sall open for a shilling. Well, come and look if you want to...."

He led me through a baize door into a dark corridor; I could dimly see agilt cornice and vaulted plaster above; then, opening a heavy,smooth-swinging, mahogany door, he led me into a darkened hall. Lightstreamed through the cracks in the shutters. Sebastian unbarred one, andfolded it back; the mellow afternoon sun flooded in, over the barefloor, the vast, twin fireplaces of sculptured marble, the coved ceilingfrescoed with classic deities and heroes, the gilt mirrors and scagliolapilasters, the islands of sheeted furniture. It was a glimpse only, suchas might be had from the top of an omnibus into a lighted ballroom; thenSebastian quickly shut out the sun. "You see," he said; "it's likethis."

His mood had changed since we had drunk our wine under the elm trees,since we had turned the corner of the drive and he had said: "Well?"

"You see, there's nothing to see. A few pretty things I'd like to showyou one day--not now. But there's the chapel. You must see that. It's amonument of art nouveau."

The last architect to work at Brideshead had sought to unify its growthwith a colonnade and flanking pavilions. One of these was the chapel. Weentered it by the public porch (another door led direct to the house);Sebastian dipped his fingers in the water stoup, crossed himself andgenuflected; I copied him. "Why do you do that?" he asked crossly.

"Just good manners."

"Well, you needn't on my account. You wanted to do sight-seeing; howabout this?"

The whole interior had been gutted, elaborately refurnished andredecorated in the arts-and-crafts style of the last decade of thenineteenth century. Angels in printed cotton smocks, rambler-roses,flower-spangled meadows, frisking lambs, texts in Celtic script, saintsin armour, covered the walls in an intricate pattern of clear, brightcolours. There was a triptych of pale oak, carved so as to give it thepeculiar property of seeming to have been moulded in plasticine. Thesanctuary lamp and all the metal furniture were of bronze, hand-beatento the patina of a pock-marked skin; the altar steps had a carpet ofgrass-green, strewn with white and gold daisies.

"Golly," I said.

"It was Papa's wedding present to Mamma. Now, if you've seen enough,we'll go."

On the drive we passed a closed Rolls-Royce driven by a chauffeur; inthe back was a vague, girlish figure who looked round at us through thewindow.

"Julia," said Sebastian. "We only just got away in time."

We stopped to speak to a man with a bicycle--"That was old Bat," saidSebastian--and then were away, past the wrought-iron gates, past thelodges and out on the road heading back to Oxford.

"I'm sorry," said Sebastian after a time. "I'm afraid I wasn't very nicethis afternoon. Brideshead often has that effect on me. But I had totake you to see Nanny."

Why? I wondered; but said nothing (Sebastian's life was governed by acode of such imperatives. "I must have pillar-box red pyjamas," "Ihave to stay in bed until the sun works round to the windows," "I'veabsolutely got to drink champagne to-night!") except, "It had quitethe reverse effect on me."

After a long pause he said petulantly, "I don't keep asking youquestions about your family."

"Neither do I about yours."

"But you look inquisitive."

"Well, you're so mysterious about them."

"I hoped I was mysterious about everything."

"Perhaps I am rather curious about people's families--you see, it's nota thing I know about. There is only my father and myself. An aunt keptan eye on me for a time but my father drove her abroad. My mother waskilled in the war."

"Oh... how very unusual."

"She went to Serbia with the Red Cross. My father has been rather odd inthe head ever since. He just lives alone in London with no friends, andfootles about collecting things."

Sebastian said, "You don't know what you've been saved. There are lotsof us. Look them up in Debrett."

His mood was lightening now. The further we drove from Brideshead themore he seemed to cast off his uneasiness--the almost furtiverestlessness and irritability that had possessed him. The sun was behindus as we drove, so that we seemed to be in pursuit of our own shadows.

"It's half-past five. We'll get to Godstow in time for dinner, drink atthe Trout, leave Hardcastle's motor-car and walk back by the river.Wouldn't that be best?"

* * * * *

That is the full account of my first brief visit to Brideshead; could Ihave known then that so small a thing, in other days, would beremembered with tears by a middle-aged captain of infantry?

Chapter Two

Towards the end of that summer term I received the last visit and GrandRemonstrance of my cousin Jasper. I was just free of the schools, havingtaken the last paper of History Previous on the afternoon before;Jasper's subfusc suit and white tie proclaimed him still in the thick ofit; he had, too, the exhausted but resentful air of one who fears he hasfailed to do himself full justice on the subject of Pindar's Orphism.Duty alone had brought him to my rooms that afternoon, at greatinconvenience to himself and, as it happened, to me, who, when he caughtme in the door, was on my way to make final arrangements about a dinnerI was giving that evening. It was one of several parties designed tocomfort Hardcastle--one of the tasks that had lately fallen to Sebastianand me since, by leaving his car out, we had got him into grave troublewith the proctors.

Jasper would not sit down; this was to be no cosy chat; he stood withhis back to the fireplace and, in his own phrase, talked to me "like anuncle."

"...I've tried to get in touch with you several times in the lastweek or two. In fact, I have the impression you are avoiding me. If thatis so, Charles, I can't say I'm surprised.

"You may think it none of my business, but I feel a sense ofresponsibility. You know as well as I do that since your--well, sincethe war, your father has not been really in touch with things--lives inhis own world. I don't want to sit back and see you making mistakeswhich a word in season might save you from.

"I expected you to make mistakes your first year. We all do. I got inwith some thoroughly objectionable O.S.C.U. men who ran a mission tohop-pickers during the long vac. But you, my dear Charles, whether yourealize it or not, have gone straight, hook, line and sinker, into thevery worst set in the University. You may think that, living in digs,I don't know what goes on in college; but I hear things. In fact, I hearall too much. I find that I've become a figure of mockery on youraccount at the Dining Club. There's that chap Sebastian Flyte you seeminseparable from. He may be all right, I don't know. His brotherBrideshead was a very sound fellow. But this friend of yours looks oddto me, and he gets himself talked about. Of course, they're an oddfamily. The Marchmains have lived apart since the war, you know. Anextraordinary thing; everyone thought they were a devoted couple. Thenhe went off to France with his Yeomanry and just never came back. It wasas if he'd been killed. She's a Roman Catholic, so she can't get adivorce--or won't, I expect. You can do anything at Rome with money,and they're enormously rich. Flyte may be all right, but AnthonyBlanche--now there's a man there's absolutely no excuse for."

"I don't particularly like him myself," I said.

"Well, he's always hanging round here, and the stiffer element incollege don't like it. They won't stand for him at the House. He was inMercury again last night. None of these people you go about with pullany weight in their own colleges, and that's the real test. They thinkbecause they've got a lot of money to throw about, they can do anything.

"And that's another thing. I don't know what allowance my uncle makesyou, but I don't mind betting you're spending double. All this," hesaid, including in a wide sweep of his hand the evidences of profligacyabout him. It was true; my room had cast its austere winter garments,and, by not very slow stages, assumed a richer wardrobe. "Is that paidfor?" (The box of a hundred cabinet Partagas on the sideboard.) "Orthose?" (A dozen frivolous, new books on the table.) "Or those?" (ALalique decanter and glasses.) "Or that peculiarly noisome object?" (Ahuman skull lately purchased from the School of Medicine, which, restingin a bowl of roses, formed, at the moment, the chief decoration of mytable. It bore the motto Et in Arcadia ego inscribed on its forehead.)

"Yes," I said, glad to be clear of one charge. "I had to pay cash forthe skull."

"You can't be doing any work. Not that that matters, particularly ifyou're making something of your career elsewhere--but are you? Have youspoken at the Union or at any of the clubs? Are you connected with anyof the magazines? Are you even making a position in the O.U.D.S.? Andyour clothes!" continued my cousin. "When you came up I rememberadvising you to dress as you would in a country house. Your presentget-up seems an unhappy compromise between the correct wear for atheatrical party at Maidenhead and a glee-singing competition in agarden suburb.

"And drink--no one minds a man getting tight once or twice a term. Infact, he ought to, on certain occasions. But I hear you're constantlyseen drunk in the middle of the afternoon."

He paused, his duty discharged. Already the perplexities of theexamination school were beginning to re-assert themselves in his mind.

"I'm sorry, Jasper," I said. "I know it must be embarrassing for you,but I happen to like this bad set. I like getting drunk at luncheon,and though I haven't yet spent quite double my allowance, I undoubtedlyshall before the end of term. I usually have a glass of champagne aboutthis time. Will you join me?"

So my cousin Jasper despaired and, I learned later, wrote to his fatheron the subject of my excesses who, in his turn, wrote to my father,who took no action or particular thought in the matter, partly becausehe had disliked my uncle for nearly sixty years and partly because, asJasper had said, he lived in his own world now, since my mother's death.

Thus, in broad outline, Jasper sketched the more prominent features ofmy first year; some detail may be added on the same scale.

I had committed myself earlier to spend the Easter vacation with Collinsand, though I would have broken my word without compunction, and left myformer friend friendless, had Sebastian made a sign, no sign was made;accordingly Collins and I spent several economical and instructive weekstogether in Ravenna. A bleak wind blew from the Adriatic among thosemighty tombs. In a hotel bedroom, designed for a warmer season, I wrotelong letters to Sebastian and called daily at the post office for hisanswers. There were two, each from a different address, neither givingany plain news of himself, for he wrote in a style of remote fantasy(...Mummy and two attendant poets have three bad colds in the head,so I have come here. It is the feast of S. Nichodemus of Thyatira, whowas martyred by having goatskin nailed to his pate, and is accordinglythe patron of bald heads. Tell Collins, who I am sure will be baldbefore us. There are too many people here, but one, praise heaven! hasan ear-trumpet, and that keeps me in good humour. And now I must try tocatch a fish. It is too far to send it to you so I will keep thebackbone...) which left me fretful. Collins made notes for a littlethesis pointing out the inferiority of the original mosaics to theirphotographs. Here was planted the seed of what became his life'sharvest. When, many years later, there appeared the first massive volumeof his still unfinished work on Byzantine Art, I was touched to find,among two pages of polite, preliminary acknowledgments of debt, my ownname: ...To Charles Ryder, with the aid of whose all-seeing eyes Ifirst saw the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia and San Vitale....

I sometimes wonder whether, had it not been for Sebastian, I might havetrodden the same path as Collins round the cultural water-wheel. Myfather in his youth sat for All Souls and, in a year of hot competition,failed; other successes and honours came his way later, but that earlyfailure impressed itself on him, and through him on me, so that I cameup with an ill-considered sense that there lay the proper and naturalgoal of the life of reason. I, too, should doubtless have failed, but,having failed, I might perhaps have slipped into a less august academiclife elsewhere. It is conceivable, but not, I believe, likely, for thehot spring of anarchy rose from deep furnaces where was no solid earth,and burst into the sunlight--a rainbow in its cooling vapours--with apower the rocks could not repress.

In the event, that Easter vacation formed a short stretch of level roadin the precipitous descent of which Jasper warned me. Descent or ascent?It seems to me that I grew younger daily with each adult habit that Iacquired. I had lived a lonely childhood and a boyhood straitened by warand overshadowed by bereavement; to the hard bachelordom of Englishadolescence, the premature dignity and authority of the school system, Ihad added a sad and grim strain of my own. Now, that summer term withSebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what Ihad never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirtsand liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue ofgrave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that felllittle short of the joy of innocence. At the end of the term I took myfirst schools; it was necessary to pass, if I was to remain at Oxford,and pass I did, after a week in which I forbade Sebastian my rooms andsat up to a late hour, with iced black coffee and charcoal biscuits,cramming myself with the neglected texts. I remember no syllable of themnow, but the other, more ancient, lore which I acquired that term willbe with me in one shape or another to my last hour.

"I like this bad set and I like getting drunk at luncheon"; that wasenough then. Is more needed now?

Looking back, now, after twenty years, there is little I would have leftundone or done otherwise. I could match my cousin Jasper's game-co*ckmaturity with a sturdier fowl. I could tell him that all the wickednessof that time was like the spirit they mix with the pure grape of theDouro, heady stuff full of dark ingredients; it at once enriched andretarded the whole process of adolescence as the spirit checks thefermentation of the wine, renders it undrinkable, so that it must lie inthe dark, year in, year out, until it is brought up at last fit for thetable.

I could tell him, too, that to know and love one other human being isthe root of all wisdom. But I felt no need for these sophistries as Isat before my cousin, saw him, freed from his inconclusive struggle withPindar, in his dark grey suit, his white tie, his scholar's gown; heardhis grave tones and, all the time, savoured the gillyflowers in fullbloom under my windows. I had my secret and sure defence, like atalisman worn in the bosom, felt for in the moment of danger, found andfirmly grasped. So I told him what was not in fact the truth, that Iusually had a glass of champagne about that time, and asked him to joinme.

* * * * *

On the day after Jasper's Grand Remonstrance I received another, indifferent terms and from an unexpected source.

All the term I had been seeing rather more of Anthony Blanche than myliking for him warranted. I lived now among his friends, but ourfrequent meetings were more of his choosing than mine, for I held him inconsiderable awe.

In years he was barely my senior, but he seemed then to be burdened withthe experience of the Wandering Jew. He was indeed a nomad of nonationality.

An attempt had been made in his childhood to make an Englishman of him;he was two years at Eton; then in the middle of the war he had defiedthe submarines, rejoined his mother in the Argentine, and a clever andaudacious schoolboy was added to the valet, the maid, the twochauffeurs, the Pekinese and the second husband. Criss-cross about theworld he travelled with them, waxing in wickedness like a Hogarthianpage-boy. When peace came they returned to Europe to hotels andfurnished villas, spas, casinos and bathing beaches. At the age offifteen, for a wager, he was disguised as a girl and taken to play atthe big table in the Jockey Club at Buenos Aires; he dined with Proustand Gide and was on closer terms with Cocteau and Diaghilev; Firbanksent him his novels with fervent inscriptions; he had aroused threeirreconcilable feuds in Capri; he had practised black art in Cefalu; hehad been cured of drug-taking in California and of an Oedipus complex inVienna.

At times we all seemed children beside him--at most times, but notalways, for there was a bluster and zest in Anthony which the rest of ushad shed somewhere in our more leisured adolescence, on the playingfield or in the schoolroom; his vices flourished less in the pursuit ofpleasure than in the wish to shock, and in the midst of his polishedexhibitions I was often reminded of an urchin I had once seen in Naples,capering derisively, with obscene, unambiguous gestures, before a partyof English tourists; as he told the tale of his evening at the gamingtable one could see in the roll of his eye just how he had glanced,covertly, over the dwindling pile of chips at his stepfather's party;while we had been rolling one another in the mud at football and gorgingourselves with crumpets, Anthony had helped oil fading beauties onsub-tropical sands and had sipped his apéritif in smart little bars,so that the savage we had tamed was still rampant in him. He wascompetitive in the bet-you-can't-do-this style of the private school;you had only to mention the name of your bootmaker for him to recommendan Armenian at Biarritz who catered especially for fetishists, or toname a house where you had stayed, for him to describe a palace hefrequented in Madrid. He was cruel, too, in the wanton, insect-maimingmanner of the very young and fearless, like a little boy, charging, headdown, small fists whirling, at the school prefects.

He asked me to dinner, and I was a little disconcerted to find that wewere to dine alone. "We are going to Thame," he said. "There is adelightful hotel there, which luckily doesn't appeal to the Bullingdon.We will drink Rhine wine and imagine ourselves... where? Not on aj-j-jaunt with J-J-Jorrocks, anyway. But first we will have ourapéritif."

At the George bar he ordered "Four Alexander co*cktails, please," rangedthem before him with a loud "Yum-yum" which drew every eye, outraged,upon him. "I expect you would prefer sherry, but, my dear Charles, youare not going to have sherry. Isn't this a delicious concoction? Youdon't like it? Then I will drink it for you. One, two, three, four, downthe red lane they go. How the students stare!" And he led me out tothe waiting motor-car.

"I hope we shall find no undergraduates there. I am a little out ofsympathy with them for the moment. You heard about their treatment of meon Thursday? It was too naughty. Luckily I was wearing my oldestpyjamas and it was an evening of oppressive heat, or I might have beenseriously cross." Anthony had a habit of putting his face near one whenhe spoke; the sweet and creamy co*cktail had tainted his breath. I leanedaway from him in the corner of the hired car.

"Picture me, my dear, alone and studious. I had just bought a ratherforbidding book called Antic Hay, which I knew I must read beforegoing to Garsington on Sunday, because everyone was bound to talk aboutit, and it's so banal saying you have not read the book of the moment,if you haven't. The solution I suppose is not to go to Garsington, butthat didn't occur to me until this moment. So, my dear, I had anomelet and a peach and a bottle of Vichy water and put on my pyjamas andsettled down to read. I must say my thoughts wandered, but I keptturning the pages and watching the light fade, which in Peckwater, mydear, is quite an experience--as darkness falls the stone seemspositively to decay under one's eyes. I was reminded of some of thoseleprous façades in the vieux port at Marseille, until suddenly I wasdisturbed by such a bawling and caterwauling as you never heard, andthere, down in the little piazza, I saw a mob of about twenty terribleyoung men, and do you know what they were chanting? 'We want Blanche.We want Blanche,' in a kind of litany. Such a public declaration!Well, I saw it was all up with Mr. Huxley for the evening, and I mustsay I had reached a point of tedium when any interruption was welcome. Iwas stirred by the bellows, but, do you know, the louder they shoutedthe shyer they seemed? They kept saying 'Where's Boy?' 'He's BoyMulcaster's friend,' 'Boy must bring him down.' Now you may or may notknow 'Boy' Mulcaster. Seen at a distance--at some considerabledistance--you might think him rather personable: a lanky, old-fashionedyoung man, you might think; but look at him closer and his face allfalls to pieces in an idiot gape. People are rather free with the word'degenerate.' They have even used it of me. If you want to know what areal degenerate is, look at Boy Mulcaster. He came to Le Touquet atEaster and, in some extraordinary way, I seemed to have asked him tostay. Well, my mother is used to me, but my poor stepfather foundMulcaster very hard to understand. You see my stepfather is a d-d-dagoand therefore has a very high opinion of the English aristocracy. Hecouldn't quite fit Mulcaster into his idea of a lord, and really Icouldn't explain him; he lost some infinitesimal sum at cards, and as aresult expected me to pay for all his treats--well, Mulcaster was inthis party; I could see his ungainly form shuffling about below and hearhim saying: 'It's no good. He's out. Let's go back and have a drink?' Sothen I put my head out of the window and called to him: 'Good evening,Mulcaster, old sponge and toady, are you lurking among the hobbledehoys?Have you come to repay me the three hundred francs I lent you for thepoor drab you picked up in the Casino? It was a nigg*rdly sum for hertrouble, and what a trouble, Mulcaster. Come up and pay me, poorhooligan!'

"That, my dear, seemed to put a little life into them, and up the stairsthey came, clattering. About six of them came into my room, the reststood mouthing outside. My dear, they looked too extraordinary. Theyhad been having one of their ridiculous club dinners, and they were allwearing coloured tail-coats--a sort of livery. 'My dears,' I said tothem, 'you look like a lot of most disorderly footmen.' Then one ofthem, rather a juicy little piece, accused me of unnatural vices. 'Mydear,' I said, 'I may be inverted but I am not insatiable. Come backwhen you are alone.' Then they began to blaspheme in a very shockingmanner, and suddenly I, too, began to be annoyed. Really, I thought,when I think of all the hullabaloo there was when I was seventeen, andthe Duc de Vincennes (old Armand, of course, not Philippe) challenged meto a duel for an affair of the heart, and very much more than theheart, I assure you, with the duch*ess (Stefanie, of course, not oldPoppy)--now, to submit to impertinence from these pimply, tipsyvirgins... Well, I gave up the light, bantering tone and let myself bejust a little offensive.

"Then they began saying, 'Get hold of him. Put him in Mercury.' Now asyou know I have two sculptures by Brancusi and several pretty things andI did not want them to start getting rough, so I said, pacifically,'Dear sweet clodhoppers, if you knew anything of sexual psychology youwould know that nothing could give me keener pleasure than to bemanhandled by you meaty boys. It would be an ecstasy of the verynaughtiest kind. So if any of you wishes to be my partner in joy comeand seize me. If, on the other hand, you simply wish to satisfy someobscure and less easily classified libido and see me bathe, come with mequietly, dear louts, to the fountain.'

"Do you know, they all looked a little foolish at that? I walked downwith them and no one came within a yard of me. Then I got into thefountain and, you know, it was really most refreshing, so I sportedthere a little and struck some attitudes, until they turned about andwalked sulkily home, and I heard Boy Mulcaster saying, 'Anyway, we didput him in Mercury.' You know, Charles, that is just what they'll besaying in thirty years' time. When they're all married to scraggy littlewomen like hens and have cretinous, porcine sons like themselves,getting drunk at the same club dinner in the same coloured coats,they'll still say, when my name is mentioned, 'We put him in Mercury onenight,' and their barn-yard daughters will snigg*r and think theirfather was quite a dog in his day, and what a pity he's grown so dull.Oh, la fatigue du Nord!"

It was not, I knew, the first time Anthony had been ducked, but theincident seemed much on his mind, for he reverted to it again at dinner.

"Now you can't imagine an unpleasantness like that happening toSebastian, can you?"

"No," I said; I could not.

"No, Sebastian has charm." He held up his glass of hock to thecandlelight and repeated, "Such charm. Do you know, I went round tocall on Sebastian next day? I thought the tale of my evening'sadventures might amuse him. And what do you think I found--besides, ofcourse, his amusing toy bear? Mulcaster and two of his cronies of thenight before. They looked very foolish and Sebastian, as composed asMrs. P-p-ponsonby-de-Tomkyns in P-p-punch, said, 'You know LordMulcaster, of course,' and the oafs said, 'Oh, we just came to see howAloysius was,' for they find the toy bear just as amusing as we do--or,shall I hint, just a teeny bit more? So off they went. And I said,'S-s-sebastian, do you realize that those s-sycophantic s-slugs insultedme last night, and but for the warmth of the weather might have given mea s-s-severe cold?' and he said, 'Poor things. I expect they weredrunk.' He has a kind word for everyone you see; he has such charm.

"I can see he has completely captivated you, my dear Charles. Well, I'mnot surprised. Of course, you haven't known him as long as I have. I wasat school with him. You wouldn't believe it, but in those days peopleused to say he was a little bitch; just a few unkind boys who knew himwell. Everyone in pop liked him, of course, and all the masters. Iexpect it was really that they were jealous of him. He never seemed toget into trouble. The rest of us were constantly being beaten in themost savage way, on the most frivolous pretexts, but never Sebastian. Hewas the only boy in my house who was never beaten at all. I can see himnow, at the age of fifteen. He never had spots you know; all the otherboys were spotty. Boy Mulcaster was positively scrofulous. But notSebastian. Or did he have one, rather a stubborn one at the back of hisneck? I think, now, that he did. Narcissus, with one pustule. He and Iwere both Catholics, so we used to go to mass together. He used to spendsuch a time in the confessional, I used to wonder what he had to say,because he never did anything wrong; never quite; at least, he nevergot punished. Perhaps he was just being charming through the grille. Ileft under what is called a 'cloud,' you know--I can't think why it iscalled that; it seemed to me a glare of unwelcome light; the processinvolved a series of harrowing interviews with my tutor. It wasdisconcerting to find how observant that mild old man proved to be. Thethings he knew about me, which I thought no one--except possiblySebastian--knew. It was a lesson never to trust mild old men--orcharming schoolboys; which?

"Shall we have another bottle of this wine, or of something different?Something different, some bloody, old Burgundy, eh? You see, Charles, Iunderstand all your tastes. You must come to France with me and drinkthe wine. We will go at the vintage. I will take you to stay at theVincennes'. It is all made up with them now, and he has the finest winein France; he and the Prince de Portallon--I will take you there, too. Ithink they would amuse you, and of course they would love you. I wantto introduce you to a lot of my friends. I have told Cocteau about you.He is all agog. You see, my dear Charles, you are that very rare thing,An Artist. Oh yes, you must not look bashful. Behind that cold, English,phlegmatic exterior you are An Artist. I have seen those little drawingsyou keep hidden away in your room. They are exquisite. And you, dearCharles, if you will understand me, are not exquisite; but not at all.Artists are not exquisite. I am; Sebastian, in a kind of way, isexquisite; but the Artist is an eternal type, solid, purposeful,observant--and, beneath it all, p-p-passionate, eh, Charles?

"But who recognizes you? The other day I was speaking to Sebastian aboutyou, and I said, 'But you know Charles is an artist. He draws like ayoung Ingres,' and do you know what Sebastian said? 'Yes, Aloysius drawsvery prettily, too, but of course he's rather more modern.' Socharming; so amusing.

"Of course those that have charm don't really need brains. Stefanie deVincennes intoxicated me four years ago; but I was besotted with her,crawling with love like lice. My dear, I even used the same colouredvarnish for my toe-nails. I used her words and lit my cigarette in thesame way and spoke with her tone on the telephone so that the duke usedto carry on long and intimate conversations with me, thinking that I washer. It was largely that which put his mind on pistol and sabres in suchan old-fashioned manner. My stepfather thought it an excellent educationfor me. He thought it would make me grow out of what he calls my'English habits.' Poor man, he is very South American. Well, I have keptmy 'English habits,' but I think I lost something else. At seventeen Imight have been anything; an artist even; it is not impossible; it is inthe blood. At twenty-one I am what you see me. To have squanderedeverything, so young, on a woman who, except that I was morepresentable, would as soon have had her chiropodist for her lover....I never heard anyone speak an ill word of Stefanie, except the duke;everyone loved her, whatever she did."

Anthony had lost his stammer in the deep waters of his old romance. Itcame floating back to him, momentarily, with the coffee and liqueurs."Real G-g-green Chartreuse, made before the expulsion of the monks.There are five distinct tastes as it trickles over the tongue. It islike swallowing a sp-spectrum. Do you wish Sebastian was with us? Ofcourse you do. Do I? I wonder. How our thoughts do run on that littlebundle of charm to be sure. I think you must be mesmerizing me, Charles.I bring you here, at very considerable expense, my dear, simply to talkabout myself, and I find I talk of no one except Sebastian. It's oddbecause there's really no mystery about him except how he came to beborn of such a very sinister family.

"I forget if you know his family. Now there, my dear, is a subject forthe poet--for the poet of the future who must be also apsychoanalyst--and perhaps a diabolist, too. I don't suppose he'll everlet you meet them. He's far too clever. They're all charming, of course,and quite, quite gruesome. Do you ever feel there is something ateeny bit gruesome about Sebastian? No? Perhaps I imagine it; it'ssimply that he looks so like the rest of them, sometimes.

"There's Brideshead who's something archaic, out of a cave that's beensealed for centuries. He has the face as though an Aztec sculptor hadattempted a portrait of Sebastian; he's a learned bigot, a ceremoniousbarbarian, a snowbound lama.... Well, anything you like. But notJulia, oh, not Lady Julia. She is one thing only, Renaissance tragedy.You know what she looks like. Who could help it? Her photograph appearsas regularly in the illustrated papers as the advertisem*nts forBeecham's Pills. A face of flawless Florentine Quattrocento beauty;almost anyone else with those looks would have been tempted to becomeartistic; not Lady Julia; she's as smart as--well, as smart as Stefanie.Nothing greenery-yallery about her. So gay, so correct, so unaffected.Dogs and children love her, other girls love her--my dear, she's afiend--a passionless, acquisitive, intriguing, ruthless killer. Iwonder if she's incestuous. I doubt it; all she wants is power. Thereought to be an Inquisition especially set up to burn her. There'sanother sister, too, I believe, in the schoolroom. Nothing is known ofher yet except that her governess went mad and drowned herself notlong ago. I'm sure she's abominable. So you see there was really verylittle left for poor Sebastian to do except be sweet and charming.

"It's when one gets to the parents that a bottomless pit opens. My dear,such a pair. How does Lady Marchmain manage it? It is one of thequestions of the age. You have seen her? Very, very beautiful; noartifice, her hair just turning grey in elegant silvery streaks, norouge, very pale, huge-eyed--it is extraordinary how large those eyeslook and how the lids are veined blue where anyone else would havetouched them with a fingertip of paint; pearls and a few great starlikejewels, heirlooms, in ancient settings, a voice as quiet as a prayer,and as powerful. And Lord Marchmain, well, a little fleshy perhaps, butvery handsome, a magnifico, a voluptuary, Byronic, bored,infectiously slothful, not at all the sort of man you would expect tosee easily put down. And that Reinhardt nun, my dear, has destroyedhim--but utterly. He daren't show his great purple face anywhere. He isthe last, historic, authentic case of someone being hounded out ofsociety. Brideshead won't see him, the girls mayn't, Sebastian does, ofcourse, because he's so charming. No one else goes near him. Why, lastSeptember Lady Marchmain was in Venice staying at the Palazzo Fogliere.To tell you the truth she was just a teeny bit ridiculous in Venice. Shenever went near the Lido, of course, but she was always drifting aboutthe canals in a gondola with Sir Adrian Porson--such attitudes, my dear,like Madame Récamier; once I passed them and I caught the eye of theFogliere gondolier, whom, of course, I knew, and, my dear, he gave mesuch a wink. She came to all the parties in a sort of cocoon ofgossamer, my dear, as though she were part of some Celtic play or aheroine from Maeterlinck; and she would go to church. Well, as youknow, Venice is the one town in Italy where no one ever has goneto church. Anyway, she was rather a figure of fun that year, and thenwho should turn up, in the Maltons' yacht, but poor Lord Marchmain. He'dtaken a little palace there, but was he allowed in? Lord Malton put himand his valet into a dinghy, my dear, and transhipped him there and theninto the steamer for Trieste. He hadn't even his mistress with him. Itwas her yearly holiday. No one ever knew how they heard Lady Marchmainwas there. And, do you know, for a week Lord Malton slunk about as if hewas in disgrace? And he was in disgrace. The Principessa Fogliere gavea ball and Lord Malton was not asked nor anyone from his yacht--even thede Pañoses. How does Lady Marchmain do it? She has convinced the worldthat Lord Marchmain is a monster. And what is the truth? They weremarried for fifteen years or so and then Lord Marchmain went to the war;he never came back but formed a connection with a highly talenteddancer. There are a thousand such cases. She refuses to divorce himbecause she is so pious. Well, there have been cases of that before.Usually, it arouses sympathy for the adulterer; not for Lord Marchmainthough. You would think that the old reprobate had tortured her, stolenher patrimony, flung her out of doors, roasted, stuffed and eaten hischildren, and gone frolicking about wreathed in all the flowers of Sodomand Gomorrah; instead of what? Begetting four splendid children by her,handing over to her Brideshead and Marchmain House in St. James's andall the money she can possibly want to spend, while he sits with a snowyshirt-front at Larue's with a personable, middle-aged lady of thetheatre, in the most conventional Edwardian style. And she meanwhilekeeps a small gang of enslaved and emaciated prisoners for her exclusiveenjoyment. She sucks their blood. You can see the tooth-marks all overAdrian Porson's shoulders when he is bathing. And he, my dear, was thegreatest, the only, poet of our time. He's bled dry; there's nothingleft of him. There are five or six others of all ages and sexes, likewraiths following her round. They never escape once she's had her teethinto them. It is witchcraft. There's no other explanation.

"So you see we mustn't blame Sebastian if at times he seems a littleinsipid--but then you don't blame him, do you, Charles? With that verymurky background, what could he do except set up as being simple andcharming, particularly as he isn't very well endowed in the Top Storey.We couldn't claim that for him, could we, much as we love him?

"Tell me candidly, have you ever heard Sebastian say anything you haveremembered for five minutes? You know, when I hear him talk, I amreminded of that in some ways nauseating picture of 'Bubbles.'Conversation, as I know it, is like juggling; up go the balls and theballoons and the plates, up and over, in and out, spinning and leaping,good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bangif you miss them. But when dear Sebastian speaks it is like a littlesphere of soapsuds drifting off the end of an old clay pipe, anywhere,full of rainbow light for a second and then--phut!--vanished, withnothing left at all, nothing.

"Stefanie was like that: never dull; at least never really dull; atleast not for the first year; and then, my dear, when she had become ahabit, Boredom grew like a cancer in the breast, more and more; theanguished suspense of watching the lips you hunger for, framing thewords, the death sentence, of sheer triteness! I felt the oxygen beingpumped out of the atmosphere all round me; I felt myself expiring in avacuum while all the while I could see through the bell-glass the lovedexecutioner. And she went on with the murder in a gentle, leisurely way,quite, quite unconscious that she was doing any harm. It is not anexperience I would recommend for An Artist at the tenderest stage of hisgrowth, to be strangled with charm."

And then Anthony spoke of the proper experiences of an artist, of theappreciation and criticism and stimulus he should expect from hisfriends, of the hazards he should take in the pursuit of emotion, of onething and another while I fell drowsy and let my mind wander a little.So we drove home, but his words, as we swung over Magdalen Bridge,recalled the central theme of our dinner. "Well, my dear, I've no doubtthat first thing to-morrow you'll trot round to Sebastian and tell himeverything I've said about him. And I will tell you two things: one,that it will not make the slightest difference to Sebastian's feelingfor me and, secondly, my dear--and I beg you to remember this though Ihave plainly bored you into a condition of coma--that he willimmediately start talking about that amusing bear of his. Good night.Sleep innocently."

* * * * *

But I slept ill. Within an hour of tumbling drowsily to bed I was awakeagain, thirsty, restless, hot and cold by turns and unnaturally excited.I had drunk a lot, but neither the mixture of wines, nor the Chartreuse,nor the Mavrodaphne Trifle, nor even the fact that I had sat immobileand almost silent throughout the evening instead of clearing the fumes,as we normally did, in some light frenzy of drunken nonsense, explainsthe distress of that hag-ridden night. No dream distorted the images ofthe evening into horrific shapes. It seemed I heard St. Mary's strikeeach quarter till dawn. The figures of nightmare were already racingthrough my brain as throughout the wakeful hours I repeated to myselfAnthony's words, catching his accent, soundlessly, and the stress andcadence of his speech, while under the closed lips I saw his pale,candle-lit face as it had fronted me across the dinner-table. Onceduring the hours of darkness I brought to light the drawings in mysitting-room and sat at the open window, turning them over. Everythingwas black and dead-still in the quadrangle; only at the quarter-hoursthe bells awoke and sang over the gables. I drank soda water and smokedand fretted, until light began to break and the rustle of a risingbreeze turned me back to my bed.

* * * * *

When I awoke Lunt was at the open door. "I let you lie," he said, "Ididn't think you'd be going to the Corporate Communion."

"You were quite right."

"Most of the freshmen went and quite a few second- and third-year men.It's all on account of the new chaplain. There was never CorporateCommunion before--just Holy Communion for those that wanted it andchapel and evening chapel."

It was the last Sunday of term; the last of the year. As I went to mybath the quad filled with gowned and surpliced undergraduates driftingfrom chapel to hall. As I came back they were standing in groups,smoking; Jasper had cycled in from his digs to be among them.

I walked down the empty Broad to breakfast, as I often did on Sundays,at a teashop opposite Balliol. The air was full of bells from thesurrounding spires and the sun, casting long shadows across the openspaces, dispelled the fears of night. The teashop was hushed as alibrary; a few solitary men from Balliol and Trinity, in bedroomslippers, looked up as I entered, then turned back to their Sundaynewspapers. I ate my scrambled eggs and bitter marmalade with the zestwhich in youth follows a restless night. I lit a cigarette and sat on,while one by one the Balliol and Trinity men paid their bills andshuffled away, slip-slop, across the street to their colleges. It wasnearly eleven when I left, and during my walk I heard the change-ringingcease and, all over the town, give place to the single chime, whichwarned the city that service was about to start.

None but church-goers seemed abroad that morning; undergraduates andgraduates and wives and tradespeople, walking with that unmistakableEnglish church-going pace which eschewed equally both haste and idlesauntering; holding, bound in black lambskin and white celluloid, theliturgies of half a dozen conflicting sects; on their way to St.Barnabas, St. Columba, St. Aloysius, St. Mary's, Pusey House,Blackfriars and heaven knows where besides; to restored Norman andrevived Gothic, to travesties of Venice and Athens; all in the summersunshine going to the temples of their race. Four proud infidels aloneproclaimed their dissent; four Indians from the gates of Balliol, infreshly laundered white flannels and neatly pressed blazers, withsnow-white turbans on their heads, and in their plump, brown handsbright cushions, a picnic basket and the Unpleasant Plays of BernardShaw, making for the river.

In the Cornmarket a party of tourists stood on the steps of theClarendon Hotel discussing a road map with their chauffeur, whileopposite, through the venerable arch of the Golden Cross, I greeted agroup of undergraduates from my college who had breakfasted there andnow lingered with their pipes in the creeper-hung courtyard. A troop ofBoy Scouts, church-bound too, bright with coloured ribbons and badges,loped past in unmilitary array, and at Carfax I met the Mayor andcorporation, in scarlet gowns and gold chains, preceded by wand bearersand followed by no curious glances, in procession to the preaching atthe City Church. In St. Aldates I passed a crocodile of choir-boys, instarched collars and peculiar caps, on their way to Tom Gate and theCathedral. So through a world of piety I made my way to Sebastian.

He was out. I read the letters, none of them very revealing, thatlittered his writing-table, and scrutinized the invitation cards on hischimney-piece--there were no new additions. Then I read Lady into Foxuntil he returned.

"I've been to mass at the Old Palace," he said. "I haven't been all thisterm, and Monsignor Bell asked me to dinner twice last week, and I knowwhat that means. Mummy's been writing to him. So I sat bang in frontwhere he couldn't help seeing me and absolutely shouted the Hail Marysat the end; so that's over. How was dinner with Antoine? What did youtalk about?"

"Well, he did most of the talking. Tell me, did you know him at Eton?"

"He was sacked my first half. I remember seeing him about. He always hasbeen a noticeable figure."

"Did he go to church with you?"

"I don't think so, why?"

"Has he met any of your family?"

"Charles, how very peculiar you're being to-day. No. I don't supposeso."

"Not your mother at Venice?"

"I believe she did say something about it. I forget what. I think shewas staying with some Italian cousins of ours, the Foglieres, andAnthony turned up with his family at the hotel, and there was some partythe Foglieres gave that they weren't asked to. I know Mummy saidsomething about it when I told her he was a friend of mine. I can'tthink why he should want to go to a party at the Foglieres'--theprincess is so proud of her English blood that she talks of nothingelse. Anyway, no one objected to Antoine--much, I gather. It was hismother they thought difficult."

"And who is the duch*ess de Vincennes?"

"Poppy?"

"Stefanie."

"You must ask Antoine that. He claims to have had an affair with her."

"Did he?"

"There was something--I forget what. I think he was stuck in a liftwith her once at Miami and the old duke made a scene."

"Not a grand passion?"

"Good God, no! Why all this interest?"

"I just wanted to find out how much truth there was in what Anthony saidlast night."

"I shouldn't think a word. That's his great charm."

"You may think it charming. I think it's devilish. Do you know he spentthe whole of yesterday evening trying to turn me against you, and almostsucceeded?"

"Did he? How silly. Aloysius wouldn't approve of that at all, would you,you pompous old bear?"

Chapter Three

I returned home for the Long Vacation without plans and without money.To cover end-of-term expenses I had sold my Omega screen to Collins forten pounds, of which I now kept four; my last cheque overdrew my accountby a few shillings, and I had been told that, without my father'sauthority, I must draw no more. My next allowance was not due untilOctober. I was thus faced with a bleak prospect and, turning the matterover in my mind, I felt something not far off remorse for theprodigality of the preceding weeks.

I had started the term with my battels paid and over a hundred pounds inhand. All that had gone, and not a penny paid out where I could getcredit. There had been no reason for it, no great pleasure unattainableelse; it had gone in ducks and drakes. Sebastian often chid me withextravagance, but I resented his censure for a large part of my moneywent on and with him. His own finances were perpetually, vaguelydistressed. "It's all done by lawyers," he said helplessly, "and Isuppose they embezzle a lot. Anyway, I never seem to get much. Ofcourse, Mummy would give me anything I asked for."

"Then why don't you ask her for a proper allowance?"

"Oh, Mummy likes everything to be a present. She's so sweet," he said,adding one more line to the picture I was forming of her.

Now Sebastian had disappeared into that other life of his where I wasnot asked to follow, and I was left, instead, forlorn and regretful.

How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of ouryouth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflectingdissipation, Dresden figures of pastoral gaiety! Our wisdom, we preferto think, is all of our own gathering, while, if the truth be told, itis, most of it, the last coin of a legacy that dwindles with time. Thereis no candour in a story of early manhood which leaves out of accountthe home-sickness for nursery morality, the regrets and resolutions ofamendment, the black hours which, like zero on the roulette table, turnup with roughly calculable regularity.

Thus I spent the first afternoon at home, wandering from room to room,looking from the plate-glass windows in turn on the garden and thestreet, in a mood of vehement self-reproach.

My father, I knew, was in the house, but his library was inviolable, andit was not until just before dinner that he appeared to greet me. He wasthen in his late fifties, but it was his idiosyncrasy to seem much olderthan his years; to see him one might have put him at seventy, to hearhim speak at nearly eighty. He came to me now, with the shufflingmandarin-tread which he affected, and a shy smile of welcome. When hedined at home--and he seldom dined elsewhere--he wore a frogged velvetsmoking suit of the kind which had been fashionable many years beforeand was to be so again, but, at that time, was a deliberate archaism.

"My dear boy, they never told me you were here. Did you have a veryexhausting journey? They gave you tea? You are well? I have just made asomewhat audacious purchase from Sonerschein's--a terra-cotta bull ofthe fifth century. I was examining it and forgot your arrival. Was thecarriage very full? You had a corner seat?" (He travelled so rarelyhimself that to hear of others doing so always excited his solicitude.)"Hayter brought you the evening paper? There is no news, of course--sucha lot of nonsense."

Dinner was announced. My father from long habit took a book with him tothe table and then, remembering my presence, furtively dropped it underhis chair. "What do you like to drink? Hayter, what have we for Mr.Charles to drink?"

"There's some whiskey."

"There's whiskey. Perhaps you like something else? What else have we?"

"There isn't anything else in the house, sir."

"There's nothing else. You must tell Hayter what you would like and hewill get it in. I never keep any wine now. I am forbidden it and no onecomes to see me. But while you are here, you must have what you like.You are here for long?"

"I'm not quite sure, Father."

"It's a very long vacation," he said wistfully. "In my day we used togo on what were called 'reading parties,' always in mountainous areas.Why? Why," he repeated petulantly, "should alpine scenery be thoughtconducive to study?"

"I thought of putting in some time at an art school--in the life class."

"My dear boy, you'll find them all shut. The students go to Barbison orsuch places and paint in the open air. There was an institution in myday called a 'sketching club'--mixed sexes" (snuffle), "bicycles"(snuffle), "pepper-and-salt knickerbockers, holland umbrellas and, itwas popularly thought, free love." (Snuffle) "Such a lot of nonsense.I expect they still go on. You might try that."

"One of the problems of the vacation is money, Father."

"Oh, I shouldn't worry about a thing like that at your age."

"You see, I've run rather short."

"Yes?" said my father without any sound of interest.

"In fact I don't quite know how I'm going to get through the next twomonths."

"Well, I'm the worst person to come to for advice. I've never been'short,' as you so painfully call it. And yet what else could you say?Hard up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stony-broke?" (Snuffle) "Onthe rocks? In Queer Street? Let us say you are in Queer Street and leaveit at that. Your grandfather once said to me, 'Live within your means,but if you do get into difficulties, come to me. Don't go to the Jews.'Such a lot of nonsense. You try. Go to those gentlemen in Jermyn Streetwho offer advances on note of hand only. My dear boy, they won't giveyou a sovereign."

"Then what do you suggest my doing?"

"Your cousin Melchior was imprudent with his investments and got into avery queer street. He went to Australia."

I had not seen my father so gleeful since he found two pages ofsecond-century papyrus between the leaves of a Lombardic breviary.

"Hayter, I've dropped my book."

It was recovered for him from under his feet and propped against theepergne. For the rest of dinner he was silent save for an occasionalsnuffle of merriment which could not, I thought, be provoked by the workhe read.

Presently we left the table and sat in the garden-room; and there,plainly, he put me out of his mind; his thoughts, I knew, were far away,in those distant ages where he moved at ease, where time passed incenturies and all the figures were defaced and the names of hiscompanions were corrupt readings of words of quite other meaning. He satin an attitude which to anyone else would have been one of extremediscomfort, askew in his upright armchair, with his book held high andobliquely to the light. Now and then he took a gold pencil case from hiswatch-chain and made an entry in the margin. The windows were open tothe summer night; the ticking of the clocks, the distant murmur oftraffic on the Bayswater Road, and my father's regular turning of thepages were the only sounds. I had thought it impolitic to smoke a cigarwhile pleading poverty; now in desperation I went to my room and fetchedone. My father did not look up. I pierced it, lit it, and with renewedconfidence said, "Father, you surely don't want me to spend the wholevacation here with you?"

"Eh?"

"Won't you find it rather a bore having me at home for so long?"

"I trust I should not betray such an emotion even if I felt it," said myfather mildly and turned back to his book.

The evening passed. Eventually all over the room clocks of diversepattern musically chimed eleven. My father closed his book and removedhis spectacles. "You are very welcome, my dear boy," he said. "Stay aslong as you find it convenient." At the door he paused and turned back."Your cousin Melchior worked his passage to Australia before themast." (Snuffle) "What, I wonder, is 'before the mast'?"

* * * * *

During the sultry week that followed my relations with my fatherdeteriorated sharply. I saw little of him during the day; he spent hourson end in the library; now and then he emerged and I would hear himcalling over the banisters: "Hayter. Call me a cab." Then he would beaway, sometimes for half an hour or less, sometimes for a whole day; hiserrands were never explained. Often I saw trays going up to him at oddhours, laden with meagre nursery snacks--rusks, glasses of milk, bananasand so forth. If we met in a passage or on the stairs he would look atme vacantly and say "Ah-ha" or "Very warm," or "Splendid, splendid," butin the evening, when he came to the garden-room in his velvet smokingsuit, he always greeted me formally.

The dinner table was our battlefield.

On the second evening I took my book with me to the dining-room. Hismild and wandering eye fastened on it with sudden attention, and as wepassed through the hall he surreptitiously left his own on a side table.When we sat down he said plaintively: "I do think, Charles, you mighttalk to me. I've had a very exhausting day. I was looking forward to alittle conversation."

"Of course, Father. What shall we talk about?"

"Cheer me up. Take me out of myself"; (petulantly) "tell me all aboutthe new plays."

"But I haven't been to any."

"You should, you know, you really should. It's not natural in a youngman to spend all his evenings at home."

"Well, Father, as I told you, I haven't much money to spare fortheatre-going."

"My dear boy, you must not let money become your master in this way.Why, at your age, your cousin Melchior was part owner of a musicalpiece. It was one of his few happy ventures. You should go to the playas part of your education. If you read the lives of eminent men you willfind that quite half of them made their first acquaintance with dramafrom the gallery. I am told there is no pleasure like it. It is therethat you find the real critics and devotees. It is called 'sitting withthe gods.' The expense is nugatory, and even while you wait foradmission in the street you are diverted by 'buskers.' We will sit withthe gods together one night. How do you find Mrs. Abel's cooking?"

"Rather insipid."

"It was inspired by my sister Philippa. She gave Mrs. Abel ten menus,and they have never been varied. When I am alone I do not notice what Ieat, but now that you are here, we must have a change. What would youlike? What is in season? Are you fond of lobsters? Hayter, tell Mrs.Abel to give us lobsters to-morrow night."

Dinner that evening consisted of a white, tasteless soup, over-friedfillets of sole with a pink sauce, lamb cutlets propped against a coneof mashed potato, stewed pears in jelly standing on a kind of spongecake.

"It is purely out of respect for your Aunt Philippa that I dine at thislength. She laid it down that a three-course dinner was middle-class.'If you once let the servants get their way,' she said, 'you will findyourself dining nightly off a single chop.' There is nothing I shouldlike more. In fact, that is exactly what I do when I go to my club onMrs. Abel's evening out. But your aunt ordained that at home I must havesoup and three courses; some nights it is fish, meat and savoury, onothers it is meat, sweet, savoury--there are a number of possiblepermutations.

"It is remarkable how some people are able to put their opinions inlapidary form; your aunt had that gift.

"It is odd to think that she and I once dined together nightly--just asyou and I do, my boy. Now she made unremitting efforts to take me outof myself. She used to tell me about her reading. It was in her mindto make a home with me, you know. She thought I should get into funnyways if I was left on my own. Perhaps I have got into funny ways. HaveI? But it didn't do. I got her out in the end."

There was an unmistakable note of menace in his voice as he said this.

It was largely by reason of my Aunt Philippa that I now found myself somuch a stranger in my father's house. After my mother's death she cameto live with my father and me, no doubt, as he said, with the idea ofmaking her home with us. I knew nothing, then, of the nightly agonies atthe dinner table. My aunt made herself my companion, and I accepted herwithout question. That was for a year. The first change was that shere-opened her house in Surrey which she had meant to sell, and livedthere during my school terms, coming to London only for a few days'shopping and entertainment. In the summer we went to lodgings togetherat the seaside. Then in my last year at school she left England. "I gother out in the end," he said with derision and triumph of that kindlylady, and he knew that I heard in the words a challenge to myself.

As we left the dining-room my father said, "Hayter, have you saidanything yet to Mrs. Abel about the lobsters I ordered for to-morrow?"

"No, sir."

"Do not do so."

"Very good, sir."

And when we reached our chairs in the garden-room he said: "I wonderwhether Hayter had any intention of mentioning lobsters. I rather thinknot. Do you know, I believe he thought I was joking?"

* * * * *

Next day, by chance, a weapon came to hand. I met an old acquaintance ofschool days, a contemporary of mine named Jorkins. I never had muchliking for Jorkins. Once, in my Aunt Philippa's day, he had come to tea,and she had condemned him as being probably charming at heart, butunattractive at first sight. Now I greeted him with enthusiasm and askedhim to dinner. He came and showed little alteration. My father must havebeen warned by Hayter that there was a guest, for instead of his velvetsuit he wore a tail coat; this, with a black waistcoat, very highcollar, and very narrow white tie, was his evening dress; he wore itwith an air of melancholy as though it were court mourning, which he hadassumed in early youth and, finding the style sympathetic, had retained.He never possessed a dinner jacket.

"Good evening, good evening. So nice of you to come all this way."

"Oh, it wasn't far," said Jorkins, who lived in Sussex Square.

"Science annihilates distance," said my father disconcertingly. "You areover here on business?"

"Well, I'm in business, if that's what you mean."

"I had a cousin who was in business--you wouldn't know him; it wasbefore your time. I was telling Charles about him only the other night.He has been much in my mind. He came," my father paused to give fullweight to the bizarre word--"a cropper."

Jorkins giggled nervously. My father fixed him with a look of reproach.

"You find his misfortune the subject of mirth? Or perhaps the word Iused was unfamiliar; you no doubt would say that he 'folded up.'"

My father was master of the situation. He had made a little fantasy forhimself, that Jorkins should be an American, and throughout the eveninghe played a delicate, one-sided parlour-game with him, explaining anypeculiarly English terms that occurred in the conversation, translatingpounds into dollars, and courteously deferring to him with such phrasesas "Of course, by your standards..."; "All this must seem veryparochial to Mr. Jorkins"; "In the vast spaces to which you areaccustomed..." so that my guest was left with the vague sense thatthere was a misconception somewhere as to his identity, which he nevergot the chance of explaining. Again and again during dinner he sought myfather's eye, thinking to read there the simple statement that this formof address was an elaborate joke, but met instead a look of such mildbenignity that he was left baffled.

Once I thought my father had gone too far, when he said: "I am afraidthat, living in London, you must sadly miss your national game."

"My national game?" asked Jorkins, slow in the uptake, but scenting thathere, at last, was the opportunity for clearing the matter up.

My father glanced from him to me and his expression changed fromkindness to malice; then back to kindness again as he turned once moreto Jorkins. It was the look of a gambler who lays down fours against afull house. "Your national game," he said gently, "cricket," and hesnuffled uncontrollably, shaking all over and wiping his eyes with hisnapkin. "Surely, working in the City, you find your time on thecricket-field greatly curtailed?"

At the door of the dining-room he left us. "Good night, Mr. Jorkins," hesaid. "I hope you will pay us another visit when you next 'cross theherring pond.'"

"I say, what did your governor mean by that? He seemed almost to think Iwas American."

"He's rather odd at times."

"I mean all that about advising me to visit Westminster Abbey. It seemedrum."

"Yes. I can't quite explain."

"I almost thought he was pulling my leg," said Jorkins in puzzled tones.

* * * * *

My father's counter-attack was delivered a few days later. He sought meout and said, "Mr. Jorkins is still here?"

"No, Father, of course not. He only came to dinner."

"Oh, I hoped he was staying with us. Such a versatile young man. Butyou will be dining in?"

"Yes."

"I am giving a little dinner party to diversify the rather monotonousseries of your evenings at home. You think Mrs. Abel is up to it? No.But our guests are not exacting. Sir Cuthbert and Lady Orme-Herrick arewhat might be called the nucleus. I hope for a little music afterwards.I have included in the invitations some young people for you."

My presentiments of my father's plan were surpassed by the actuality. Asthe guests assembled in the room which my father, withoutself-consciousness, called "the Gallery," it was plain to me that theyhad been carefully chosen for my discomfort. The "young people" wereMiss Gloria Orme-Herrick, a student of the cello; her fiancé, a baldyoung man from the British Museum; and a monoglot Munich publisher. Isaw my father snuffling at me from behind a case of ceramics as he stoodwith them. That evening he wore, like a chivalric badge of battle, asmall red rose in his buttonhole.

Dinner was long and chosen, like the guests, in a spirit of carefulmockery. It was not of Aunt Philippa's choosing, but had beenreconstructed from a much earlier period, long before he was of an ageto dine downstairs. The dishes were ornamental in appearance andregularly alternated in colour between red and white. They and the winewere equally tasteless. After dinner my father led the German publisherto the piano and then, while he played, left the dining-room to show SirCuthbert Orme-Herrick the Etruscan bull in the gallery.

It was a gruesome evening, and I was astonished to find, when at lastthe party broke up, that it was only a few minutes after eleven. Myfather helped himself to a glass of barley-water and said: "What verydull friends I have! You know, without the spur of your presence Ishould never have roused myself to invite them. I have been verynegligent about entertaining lately. Now that you are paying me such along visit, I will have many such evenings. You liked Miss GloriaOrme-Herrick?"

"No."

"No? Was it her little moustache you objected to or her very large feet?Do you think she enjoyed herself?"

"No."

"That was my impression also. I doubt if any of our guests will countthis as one of their happiest evenings. That young foreigner playedatrociously, I thought. Where can I have met him? And Miss ConstantiaSmethwick--where can I have met her? But the obligations ofhospitality must be observed. As long as you are here, you shall not bedull."

Strife was internecine during the next fortnight, but I suffered themore, for my father had greater reserves to draw on and a widerterritory for manoeuvre, while I was pinned to my bridgehead between theuplands and the sea. He never declared his war aims, and I do not tothis day know whether they were purely punitive--whether he had reallyat the back of his mind some geopolitical idea of getting me out of thecountry, as Aunt Philippa had been driven to Bordighera and my cousinMelchior to Darwin, or whether, as seems most likely, he fought for thesheer love of a battle, in which indeed he shone.

I received one letter from Sebastian, a conspicuous object which wasbrought to me in my father's presence one day when he was lunching athome; I saw him look curiously at it and bore it away to read insolitude. It was written on, and enveloped in, heavy late-Victorianmourning paper, black-coroneted and black-bordered. I read it eagerly:--

BRIDESHEAD CASTLE
WILTSHIRE

Dearest Charles,--

I found a box of this paper at the back of a bureau so I must write to you as I am mourning for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors despaired of it from the start.

Soon I am off to Venice to stay with my papa in his palace of sin. I wish you were coming. I wish you were here.

I am never quite alone. Members of my family keep turning up and collecting luggage and going away again, but the white raspberries are ripe.

I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.

Love or what you will.

S.

I knew his letters of old; I had had them at Ravenna; I should not havebeen disappointed; but that day as I tore the stiff sheet across and letit fall into the basket, and gazed resentfully across the grimy gardensand irregular backs of Bayswater, at the jumble of soil pipes andfire-escapes and protuberant little conservatories, I saw, in my mind'seye, the pale face of Anthony Blanche, peering through the stragglingleaves as it had peered through the candle flames at Thame, and heard,above the murmur of traffic, his clear tones... "You mustn't blameSebastian if at times he seems a little insipid.... When I hearhim talk I am reminded of that in some ways nauseating picture of'Bubbles.'... Boredom... like a cancer in the breast...."

For days after that I thought I hated Sebastian; then one Sundayafternoon a telegram came from him, which dispelled that shadow, addinga new and darker one of its own.

My father was out and returned to find me in a condition of feverishanxiety. He stood in the hall with his Panama hat still on his head andbeamed at me.

"You'll never guess how I have spent the day; I have been to the Zoo. Itwas most agreeable; the animals seem to enjoy the sunshine so much."

"Father, I've got to leave at once."

"Yes?"

"A great friend of mine--he's had a terrible accident. I must go to himat once. Hayter's packing for me, now. There's a train in half an hour."

I showed him the telegram, which read simply: GRAVELY INJURED COME ATONCE. SEBASTIAN.

"Well," said my father. "I'm sorry you are upset. Reading this message Ishould not say that the accident was as serious as you seem tothink--otherwise it would hardly be signed by the victim himself. Still,of course, he may well be fully conscious but blind or paralysed with abroken back. Why exactly is your presence so necessary? You have nomedical knowledge. You are not in holy orders. Do you hope for alegacy?"

"I told you, he is a great friend."

"Well, Orme-Herrick is a great friend of mine, but I should not gotearing off to his deathbed on a warm Sunday afternoon. I should doubtwhether Lady Orme-Herrick would welcome me. However, I see you have nosuch doubts. I shall miss you, my dear boy, but do not hurry back on myaccount."

Paddington Station on that August Sunday evening, with the sun streamingthrough the obscure panes of its roof, the bookstalls shut, and the fewpassengers strolling unhurried beside their porters, would have sootheda mind less agitated than mine. The train was nearly empty. I had mysuitcase put in the corner of a third-class carriage and took a seat inthe dining-car. "First dinner after Reading, sir; about seven o'clock.Can I get you anything now?" I ordered gin and vermouth; it was broughtto me as we pulled out of the station. The knives and forks set up theirregular jingle; the bright landscape rolled past the windows. But I hadno mind for these smooth things; instead, fear worked like yeast in mythoughts, and the fermentation brought to the surface, in great gobs ofscum, the images of disaster: a loaded gun held carelessly at a stile, ahorse rearing and rolling over, a shaded pool with a submerged stake, anelm bough falling suddenly on a still morning, a car at a blind corner;all the catalogue of threats to civilized life rose and haunted me; Ieven pictured a homicidal maniac mouthing in the shadows swinging alength of lead pipe. The cornfields and heavy woodland sped past, deepin the golden evening, and the throb of the wheels repeated monotonouslyin my ears, "You've come too late. You've come too late. He's dead. He'sdead. He's dead."

I dined and changed trains to the local line, and in twilight came toMelstead Carbury, which was my destination.

"Brideshead, sir? Yes, Lady Julia's in the yard."

I recognized her at once; I could not have failed to. She was sitting atthe wheel of an open car.

"You're Mr. Ryder? Jump in." Her voice was Sebastian's and his her wayof speaking.

"How is he?"

"Sebastian? Oh, he's fine. Have you had dinner? Well, I expect it wasbeastly. There's some more at home. Sebastian and I are alone, so wethought we'd wait for you."

"What's happened to him?"

"Didn't he say? I expect he thought you wouldn't come if you knew. He'scracked a bone in his ankle so small that it hasn't a name. But theyX-rayed it yesterday and told him to keep it up for a month. It's agreat bore to him, putting out all his plans; he's been making the mostenormous fuss.... Everyone else has gone. He tried to make me stayback with him. Well, I expect you know how maddeningly pathetic he canbe. I almost gave in, and then I said: 'Surely there must be someoneyou can get hold of,' and he said everybody was away or busy and,anyway, no one else would do. But at last he agreed to try you, and Ipromised I'd stay if you failed him, so you can imagine how popular youare with me. I must say it's noble of you to come all this way at amoment's notice." But as she said it I heard, or thought I heard, a tinynote of contempt in her voice that I should be so readily available.

"How did he do it?"

"Believe it or not, playing croquet. He lost his temper and tripped overa hoop. Not a very honourable scar."

She so much resembled Sebastian that, sitting beside her in thegathering dusk, I was confused by the double illusion of familiarity andstrangeness. Thus, looking through strong lenses one may watch a manapproaching from afar, study every detail of his face and clothes,believe one has only to put out a hand to touch him, marvel that he doesnot hear one, and look up as one moves, and then seeing him with thenaked eye suddenly remember that one is to him a distant speck,doubtfully human. I knew her and she did not know me. Her dark hair wasscarcely longer than Sebastian's, and it blew back from her forehead ashis did; her eyes on the darkling road were his, but larger, her paintedmouth was less friendly to the world. She wore a bangle of charms on herwrist and in her ears little gold rings. Her light coat revealed an inchor two of flowered silk; skirts were short in those days, and her legs,stretched forward to the controls of the car, were spindly, as was alsothe fashion. Because her sex was the palpable difference between thefamiliar and the strange, it seemed to fill the space between us, sothat I felt her to be especially female as I had felt of no womanbefore.

"I'm terrified of driving at this time of the evening," she said. "Theredoesn't seem anyone left at home who can drive a car. Sebastian and Iare practically camping out here. I hope you haven't come expecting apompous party." She leaned forward to the locker for a box ofcigarettes.

"No thanks."

"Light one for me, will you?"

It was the first time in my life that anyone had asked this of me, andas I took the cigarette from my lips and put it in hers, I caught a thinbat's squeak of sexuality, inaudible to any but me.

"Thanks. You've been here before. Nanny reported it. We both thought itvery odd of you not to stay to tea with me."

"That was Sebastian."

"You seem to let him boss you about a good deal. You shouldn't. It'svery bad for him."

We had turned the corner of the drive now; the colour had died in thewoods and sky and the house seemed painted in grisaille, save for thecentral golden square at the open doors. A man was waiting to take myluggage.

"Here we are."

She led me up the steps and into the hall, flung her coat on a marbletable, and stooped to fondle a dog which came to greet her. "I wouldn'tput it past Sebastian to have started dinner."

At that moment he appeared between the pillars at the further end,propelling himself in a wheel-chair. He was in pyjamas and dressing-gownwith one foot heavily bandaged.

"Well, darling, I've collected your chum," she said, again with a barelyperceptible note of contempt.

"I thought you were dying," I said, conscious then, as I had been eversince I arrived, of the predominating emotion of vexation, rather thanof relief, that I had been bilked of my expectations of a grand tragedy.

"I thought I was, too. The pain was excruciating. Julia, do you think ifyou asked him, Wilcox would give us champagne to-night?"

"I hate champagne and Mr. Ryder has had dinner."

"Mister Ryder? Mister Ryder? Charles drinks champagne at all hours.Do you know, seeing this great swaddled foot of mine, I can't get it outof my mind that I have gout, and that gives me a craving for champagne?"

We dined in a room they called "the Painted Parlour." It was a spaciousoctagon, later in design than the rest of the house; its walls wereadorned with wreathed medallions, and across its dome prim Pompeianfigures stood in pastoral groups. They and the satin-wood and ormolufurniture, the carpet, the hanging bronze candelabrum, the mirrors andsconces, were all a single composition, the design of one illustrioushand. "We usually eat here when we're alone," said Sebastian, "it's socosy."

While they dined I ate a peach and told them of the war with my father.

"He sounds a perfect poppet," said Julia. "And now I'm going to leaveyou boys."

"Where are you off to?"

"The nursery. I promised Nanny a last game of halma." She kissed the topof Sebastian's head. I opened the door for her. "Good night, Mr. Ryder,and good-bye. I don't suppose we'll meet to-morrow. I'm leaving early. Ican't tell you how grateful I am to you for relieving me at thesick-bed."

"My sister's very pompous to-night," said Sebastian, when she was gone.

"I don't think she cares for me," I said.

"I don't think she cares for anyone much. I love her. She's so like me."

"Do you? Is she?"

"In looks I mean and the way she talks. I wouldn't love anyone with acharacter like mine."

When we had drunk our port I walked beside Sebastian's chair through thepillared hall to the library, where we sat that night and nearly everynight of the ensuing month. It lay on the side of the house thatoverlooked the lakes; the windows were open to the stars and the scentedair, to the indigo and silver, moonlit landscape of the valley and thesound of water falling in the fountain.

"We'll have a heavenly time alone," said Sebastian, and when nextmorning, while I was shaving, I saw from my bathroom window Julia, withluggage at her back, drive from the forecourt and disappear at thehill's crest, without a backward glance, I felt a sense of liberationand peace such as I was to know years later when, after a night ofunrest, the sirens sounded the All Clear.

Chapter Four

The languor of Youth--how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly,how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, theillusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth--allsave this--come and go with us through life; again and again in riperyears we experience, under a new stimulus, what we thought had beenfinally left behind, the authentic impulse to action, the renewal ofpower and its concentration on a new object; again and again a new truthis revealed to us in whose light all our previous knowledge must berearranged. These things are a part of life itself; but languor--therelaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered andself-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earththrobbing to our own pulse--that belongs to Youth alone and dies withit. Perhaps in the mansions of Limbo the heroes enjoy some suchcompensation for their loss of the Beatific Vision; perhaps the BeatificVision itself has some remote kinship with this lowly experience; I, atany rate, believed myself very near heaven, during those languid days atBrideshead.

* * * * *

"Why is this house called a 'Castle'?"

"It used to be one until they moved it."

"What can you mean?"

"Just that. We had a castle a mile away, down by the village. Then inInigo Jones's time we took a fancy to the valley and pulled the castledown, carted the stones up here and built a new house. I'm glad theydid, aren't you?"

"If it was mine I'd never live anywhere else."

"But you see, Charles, it isn't mine. Just at the moment it is, butusually it's full of ravening beasts. If it could only be like thisalways--always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysiusin a good temper...."

It is thus I like to remember Sebastian, as he was that summer, when wewandered alone together through that enchanted palace; Sebastian in hiswheel-chair spinning down the box-edged walks of the kitchen gardens insearch of alpine strawberries and warm figs, propelling himself throughthe succession of hothouses, from scent to scent and climate to climate,to cut the muscat grapes and choose orchids for our buttonholes;Sebastian hobbling, with a pantomime of difficulty, to the oldnurseries, sitting beside me on the thread-bare, flowered carpet withthe toy-cupboard empty about us and Nanny Hawkins stitching complacentlyin the corner, saying, "You're one as bad as the other; a pair ofchildren the two of you. Is that what they teach you at college?"Sebastian prone on the sunny seat in the colonnade, as he was now, and Iin a hard chair beside him, trying to draw the fountain.

"Is the dome by Inigo Jones, too? It looks later."

"Oh, Charles, don't be such a tourist. What does it matter when it wasbuilt, if it's pretty?"

"It's the sort of thing I like to know."

"Oh dear, I thought I'd cured you of all that--the terrible Mr.Collins."

It was an æsthetic education to live within those walls, to wander fromroom to room, from the Soanesque library to the Chinese drawing-room,adazzle with gilt pagodas and nodding mandarins, painted paper andChippendale fret-work, from the Pompeian parlour to the greattapestry-hung hall which stood unchanged, as it had been designed twohundred and fifty years before; to sit, hour after hour, in the pillaredshade looking out on the terrace.

This terrace was the final consummation of the house's plan; it stood onmassive stone ramparts above the lakes, so that from the hall steps itseemed to overhang them, as though, standing by the balustrade, onecould have dropped a pebble into the first of them immediately belowone's feet. It was embraced by the two arms of the colonnade; beyond thepavilions groves of lime led to the wooded hillsides. Part of theterrace was paved, part planted with flower-beds and arabesques of dwarfbox; taller box grew in a dense hedge, making a wide oval, cut intoniches and interspersed with statuary, and, in the centre, dominatingthe whole splendid space, rose the fountain; such a fountain as onemight expect to find in a piazza of Southern Italy, such a fountain aswas, indeed, found there a century ago by one of Sebastian's ancestors;found, purchased, imported and re-erected in an alien but welcomingclimate.

Sebastian set me to draw it. It was an ambitious subject for anamateur--an oval basin with an island of formal rocks at its centre; onthe rocks grew, in stone, formal tropical vegetation and wild Englishfern in its natural fronds; through them ran a dozen streams thatcounterfeited springs, and round them sported fantastic tropicalanimals, camels and camelopards and an ebullient lion all vomitingwater; on the rocks, to the height of the pediment, stood an Egyptianobelisk of red sandstone--but, by some odd chance, for the thing was farbeyond me, I brought it off and by judicious omissions and some stylishtricks, produced a very passable echo of Piranesi. "Shall I give it toyour mother?" I asked.

"Why? You don't know her."

"It seems polite. I'm staying in her house."

"Give it to Nanny," said Sebastian.

I did so, and she put it among the collection on the top of her chest ofdrawers, remarking that it had quite a look of the thing, which she hadoften heard admired but could never see the beauty of, herself.

I was myself in almost the same position as Nanny Hawkins.

Since the days when, as a schoolboy, I used to bicycle round theneighbouring parishes, rubbing brasses and photographing fonts, I havenursed a love of architecture, but though in opinion I had made thateasy leap, characteristic of my generation, from the puritanism ofRuskin to the puritanism of Roger Fry, my sentiments at heart wereinsular and mediaeval.

This was my conversion to the baroque. Here under that high and insolentdome, under those tricky ceilings; here, as I passed through thosearches and broken pediments to the pillared shade beyond and sat, hourby hour, before the fountain, probing its shadows, tracing its lingeringechoes, rejoicing in all its clustered feats of daring and invention, Ifelt a whole new system of nerves alive within me, as though the waterthat spurted and bubbled among its stones was indeed a life-givingspring.

* * * * *

One day in a cupboard we found a large japanned-tin box of oil paintsstill in workable condition.

"Mummy bought them a year or two ago. Someone told her that you couldonly appreciate the beauty of the world by trying to paint it. Welaughed at her a great deal about it. She couldn't draw at all, andhowever bright the colours were in the tubes, by the time Mummy hadmixed them up, they came out a kind of khaki." Various dry, muddy smearson the palette confirmed this statement. "Cordelia was always made towash the brushes. In the end we all protested and made Mummy stop."

The paints gave us the idea of decorating the office; this was a smallroom opening on the colonnade; it had once been used for estatebusiness, but was now derelict, holding only some garden games and a tubof dead aloes; it had plainly been designed for a softer use; perhaps asa tea-room or study, for the plaster walls were decorated with delicaterococo panels and the roof was prettily groined. Here, in one of thesmaller oval frames, I sketched a romantic landscape, and in the daysthat followed filled it out in colour, and by luck and the happy mood ofthe moment, made a success of it. The brush seemed somehow to do whatwas wanted of it. It was a landscape without figures, a summer scene ofwhite cloud and blue distances, with an ivy-clad ruin in the foreground,rocks and a waterfall affording a rugged introduction to the recedingparkland behind. I knew little of oil painting and learned its ways as Iworked. When, in a week, it was finished, Sebastian was eager for me tostart on one of the larger panels. I made some sketches. He called for afête champêtre with a ribboned swing and a Negro page and a shepherdplaying the pipes, but the thing languished. I knew it was good chancethat had made my landscape, and that this elaborate pastiche was toomuch for me.

One day we went down to the cellars with Wilcox and saw the empty bayswhich had once held a vast store of wine; one transept only was usednow; there the bins were well stocked, some of them with vintages fiftyyears old.

"There's been nothing added since his Lordship went abroad," saidWilcox. "A lot of the old wine wants drinking up. We ought to have laiddown the eighteens and twenties. I've had several letters about it fromthe wine merchants, but her Ladyship says to ask Lord Brideshead, and hesays to ask his Lordship, and his Lordship says to ask the lawyers.That's how we get low. There's enough here for ten years at the rateit's going, but how shall we be then?"

Wilcox welcomed our interest; we had bottles brought up from every bin,and it was during those tranquil evenings with Sebastian that I firstmade a serious acquaintance with wine and sowed the seed of that richharvest which was to be my stay in many barren years. We would sit, heand I, in the Painted Parlour with three bottles open on the table andthree glasses before each of us; Sebastian had found a book onwine-tasting, and we followed its instructions in detail. We warmed theglass slightly at a candle, filled a third of it, swirled the wineround, nursed it in our hands, held it to the light, breathed it, sippedit, filled our mouths with it and rolled it over the tongue, ringing iton the palate like a coin on a counter, tilted our heads back and let ittrickle down the throat. Then we talked of it and nibbled Bath Oliverbiscuits, and passed on to another wine; then back to the first, then onto another, until all three were in circulation and the order of glassesgot confused, and we fell out over which was which, and we passed theglasses to and fro between us until there were six glasses, some of themwith mixed wines in them which we had filled from the wrong bottle, tillwe were obliged to start again with three clean glasses each, and thebottles were empty and our praise of them wilder and more exotic.

"...It is a little, shy wine like a gazelle."

"Like a leprechaun."

"Dappled, in a tapestry meadow."

"Like a flute by still water."

"...And this is a wise old wine."

"A prophet in a cave."

"...And this is a necklace of pearls on a white neck."

"Like a swan."

"Like the last unicorn."

And we would leave the golden candlelight of the dining-room for thestarlight outside and sit on the edge of the fountain, cooling our handsin the water and listening drunkenly to its splash and gurgle over therocks.

"Ought we to be drunk every night?" Sebastian asked one morning.

"Yes, I think so."

"I think so too."

* * * * *

We saw few strangers. There was the agent, a lean and pouchy colonel,who crossed our path occasionally and once came to tea. Usually wemanaged to hide from him. On Sundays a monk was fetched from aneighbouring monastery to say mass and breakfast with us. He was thefirst priest I ever met; I noticed how unlike he was to a parson, butBrideshead was a place of such enchantment to me that I expectedeverything and everyone to be unique; Father Phipps was in fact a bland,bun-faced man with an interest in county cricket which he obstinatelybelieved us to share.

"You know, Father, Charles and I simply don't know about cricket."

"I wish I'd seen Tennyson make that fifty-eight last Thursday. That musthave been an innings. The account in The Times was excellent. Did yousee him against the South Africans?"

"I've never seen him."

"Neither have I. I haven't seen a first-class match for years--not sinceFather Graves took me when we were passing through Leeds, after we'dbeen to the induction of the Abbot at Ampleforth. Father Graves managedto look up a train which gave us three hours to wait on the afternoon ofthe match against Lancashire. That was an afternoon. I remember everyball of it. Since then I've had to go by the papers. You seldom go tosee cricket?"

"Never," I said, and he looked at me with the expression I have seensince in the religious, of innocent wonder that those who exposethemselves to the dangers of the world should avail themselves so littleof its varied solace.

Sebastian always heard his mass, which was ill-attended. Brideshead wasnot an old-established centre of Catholicism. Lady Marchmain hadintroduced a few Catholic servants, but the majority of them, and allthe cottagers, prayed, if anywhere, among the Flyte tombs in the littlegrey church at the gates.

Sebastian's faith was an enigma to me at that time, but not one which Ifelt particularly concerned to solve. I had no religion. I was taken tochurch weekly as a child, and at school attended chapel daily, but, asthough in compensation, from the time I went to my public school I wasexcused church in the holidays. The view implicit in my education wasthat the basic narrative of Christianity had long been exposed as amyth, and that opinion was now divided as to whether its ethicalteaching was of present value, a division in which the main weight wentagainst it; religion was a hobby which some people professed and othersdid not; at the best it was slightly ornamental, at the worst it was theprovince of "complexes" and "inhibitions"--catchwords of the decade--andof the intolerance, hypocrisy, and sheer stupidity attributed to it forcenturies. No one had ever suggested to me that these quaint observancesexpressed a coherent philosophic system and intransigeant historicalclaims; nor, had they done so, would I have been much interested.

Often, almost daily, since I had known Sebastian, some chance word inhis conversation had reminded me that he was a Catholic, but I took itas a foible, like his Teddy-bear. We never discussed the matter until onthe second Sunday at Brideshead, when Father Phipps had left us and wesat in the colonnade with the papers, he surprised me by saying: "Ohdear, it's very difficult being a Catholic."

"Does it make much difference to you?"

"Of course. All the time."

"Well, I can't say I've noticed it. Are you struggling againsttemptation? You don't seem much more virtuous than me."

"I'm very, very much wickeder," said Sebastian indignantly.

"Well then?"

"Who was it used to pray, 'Oh God, make me good, but not yet'?"

"I don't know. You, I should think."

"Why, yes, I do, every day. But it isn't that." He turned back to thepages of the News of the World and said, "Another naughtyscout-master."

"I suppose they try and make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?"

"Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensibleto me."

"But, my dear Sebastian, you can't seriously believe it all."

"Can't I?"

"I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox andthe ass."

"Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea."

"But you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea."

"But I do. That's how I believe."

"And in prayers? You think you can kneel down in front of a statue andsay a few words, not even out loud, just in your mind, and change theweather; or that some saints are more influential than others, and youmust get hold of the right one to help you on the right problem?"

"Oh yes. Don't you remember last term when I took Aloysius and left himbehind I didn't know where? I prayed like mad to St. Anthony of Paduathat morning, and immediately after lunch there was Mr. Nichols atCanterbury Gate with Aloysius in his arms, saying I'd left him in hiscab."

"Well," I said, "if you can believe all that and you don't want to begood, where's the difficulty about your religion?"

"If you can't see, you can't."

"Well, where?"

"Oh, don't be a bore, Charles. I want to read about a woman in Hullwho's been using an instrument."

"You started the subject. I was just getting interested."

"I'll never mention it again... Thirty-eight other cases were takeninto consideration in sentencing her to six months--golly!"

But he did mention it again, some ten days later, as we were lying onthe roof of the house, sunbathing and watching through a telescope theAgricultural Show which was in progress in the park below us. It was amodest two-day show serving the neighbouring parishes, and survivingmore as a fair and social gathering than as a centre of seriouscompetition. A ring was marked out in flags, and round it had beenpitched half a dozen tents of varying size; there was a judges' box, andsome pens for livestock; the largest marquee was for refreshments, andthere the farmers congregated in numbers. Preparations had been going onfor a week. "We shall have to hide," said Sebastian as the dayapproached. "My brother will be here. He's in his element at theAgricultural Show." So we lay on the roof under the balustrade.

Brideshead came down by train in the morning and lunched with ColonelFender, the agent. I met him for five minutes on his arrival. AnthonyBlanche's description was peculiarly apt; he had the Flyte face, carvedby an Aztec. We could see him now, through the telescope, moving affablyamong the tenants, stopping to greet the judges in their box, leaningover a pen gazing seriously at the cattle.

"Queer fellow, my brother," said Sebastian.

"He looks normal enough."

"Oh, but he's not. If you only knew, he's much the craziest of us, onlyit doesn't come out at all. He's all twisted inside. He wanted to be apriest, you know."

"I didn't."

"I think he still does. He nearly became a Jesuit, straight fromStonyhurst. It was awful for Mummy. She couldn't exactly try and stophim, but of course it was the last thing she wanted. Think what peoplewould have said--the eldest son; it's not as if it had been me. And poorPapa. The Church has been enough trouble to him without that happening.There was a frightful to-do--monks and monsignori running round thehouse like mice, and Brideshead just sitting glum and talking about thewill of God. He was the most upset, you see, when Papa went abroad--muchmore than Mummy really. Finally they persuaded him to go to Oxford andthink it over for three years. Now he's trying to make up his mind. Hetalks of going into the Guards and into the House of Commons and ofmarrying. He doesn't know what he wants. I wonder if I should have beenlike that, if I'd gone to Stonyhurst. I should have gone, only Papa wentabroad before I was old enough, and the first thing he insisted on wasmy going to Eton."

"Has your father given up religion?"

"Well, he's had to in a way; he only took to it when he married Mummy.When he went off, he left that behind with the rest of us. You must meethim. He's a very nice man."

Sebastian had never spoken seriously of his father before.

I said: "It must have upset you all when your father went away."

"All but Cordelia. She was too young. It upset me at the time. Mummytried to explain it to the three eldest of us so that we wouldn't hatePapa. I was the only one who didn't. I believe she wishes I did. I wasalways his favourite. I should be staying with him now, if it wasn't forthis foot. I'm the only one who goes. Why don't you come too? You'd likehim."

A man with a megaphone was shouting the results of the last event in thefield below; his voice came faintly to us.

"So you see we're a mixed family religiously. Brideshead and Cordeliaare both fervent Catholics; he's miserable, she's bird-happy; Julia andI are half-heathen; I am happy, I rather think Julia isn't; Mummy ispopularly believed to be a saint and Papa is excommunicated--and Iwouldn't know which of them was happy. Anyway, however you look at it,happiness doesn't seem to have much to do with it, and that's all Iwant.... I wish I liked Catholics more."

"They seem just like other people."

"My dear Charles, that's exactly what they're not--particularly in thiscountry, where they're so few. It's not just that they're a clique--as amatter of fact, they're at least four cliques all blackguarding eachother half the time--but they've got an entirely different outlook onlife; everything they think important is different from other people.They try and hide it as much as they can, but it comes out all the time.It's quite natural, really, that they should. But you see it's difficultfor semi-heathens like Julia and me."

We were interrupted in this unusually grave conversation by loud,childish cries from beyond the chimney-stacks, "Sebastian, Sebastian."

"Good heavens!" said Sebastian, reaching for a blanket. "That soundslike my sister Cordelia. Cover yourself up."

"Where are you?"

There came into view a robust child of ten or eleven; she had theunmistakable family characteristics, but had them ill-arranged in afrank and chubby plainness, two thick old-fashioned pigtails hung downher back.

"Go away, Cordelia. We've got no clothes on."

"Why? You're quite decent. I guessed you were here. You didn't know Iwas about, did you? I came down with Bridey and stopped to see FrancisXavier." To me, "He's my pig. Then we had lunch with Colonel Fender andthen the show. Francis Xavier got a special mention. That beast Randalgot first with a mangy animal. Darling Sebastian, I am pleased to seeyou again. How's your poor foot?"

"Say how-d'you-do to Mr. Ryder."

"Oh, sorry. How d'you do?" All the family charm was in her smile."They're all getting pretty boozy down there, so I came away. I say,who's been painting the office? I went in to look for a shooting stickand saw it."

"Be careful what you say. It's Mr. Ryder."

"But it's lovely. I say, did you really? You are clever. Why don'tyou both dress and come down? There's no one about."

"Bridey's sure to bring the judges in."

"But he won't. I heard him making plans not to. He's very sour to-day.He didn't want me to have dinner with you, but I fixed that. Come on.I'll be in the nursery when you're fit to be seen."

* * * * *

We were a sombre little party that evening. Only Cordelia was perfectlyat ease, rejoicing in the food, the lateness of the hour and herbrothers' company. Brideshead was three years older than Sebastian andI, but he seemed of another generation. He had the physical tricks ofhis family, and his smile, when it rarely came, was as lovely as theirs;he spoke, in their voice, with a gravity and restraint which in mycousin Jasper would have sounded pompous and false, but in him wasplainly unassumed and unconscious.

"I am so sorry to miss so much of your visit," he said to me. "You arebeing looked after properly? I hope Sebastian is seeing to the wine.Wilcox is apt to be rather grudging when he is on his own."

"He's treated us very liberally."

"I am delighted to hear it. You are fond of wine?"

"Very."

"I wish I were. It is such a bond with other men. At Magdalen I tried toget drunk more than once, but I did not enjoy it. Beer and whiskey Ifind even less appetising. Events like this afternoon's are a torment tome in consequence."

"I like wine," said Cordelia.

"My sister Cordelia's last report said that she was not only the worstgirl in the school, but the worst there had ever been in the memory ofthe oldest nun."

"That's because I refused to be an Enfant de Marie. Reverend Mother saidthat if I didn't keep my room tidier I couldn't be one, so I said, Well,I won't be one, and I don't believe Our Blessed Lady cares two hootswhether I put my gym shoes on the left or the right of my dancing shoes.Reverend Mother was livid."

"Our Lady cares about obedience."

"Bridey, you mustn't be pious," said Sebastian. "We've got an atheistwith us."

"Agnostic," I said.

"Really? Is there much of that at your college? There was a certainamount at Magdalen."

"I really don't know. I was one long before I went to Oxford."

"It's everywhere," said Brideshead.

Religion seemed an inevitable topic that day. For some time we talkedabout the Agricultural Show. Then Brideshead said, "I saw the Bishop inLondon last week. You know, he wants to close our chapel."

"Oh, he couldn't," said Cordelia.

"I don't think Mummy will let him," said Sebastian.

"It's too far away," said Brideshead. "There are a dozen families roundMelstead who can't get here. He wants to open a mass centre there."

"But what about us?" said Sebastian. "Do we have to drive out on wintermornings?"

"We must have the Blessed Sacrament here," said Cordelia. "I likepopping in at odd times; so does Mummy."

"So do I," said Brideshead, "but there are so few of us. It's not asthough we were old Catholics with everyone on the estate coming to mass.It'll have to go sooner or later, perhaps after Mummy's time. The pointis whether it wouldn't be better to let it go now. You are an artist,Ryder, what do you think of it æsthetically?"

"I think it's beautiful," said Cordelia with tears in her eyes.

"Is it Good Art?"

"Well, I don't quite know what you mean," I said warily. "I think it's aremarkable example of its period. Probably in eighty years it will begreatly admired."

"But surely it can't be good twenty years ago and good in eighty years,and not good now?"

"Well, it may be good now. All I mean is that I don't happen to likeit much."

"But is there a difference between liking a thing and thinking it good?"

"Bridey, don't be so Jesuitical," said Sebastian, but I knew that thisdisagreement was not a matter of words only, but expressed a deep andimpassable division between us; neither had any understanding of theother, nor ever could.

"Isn't that just the distinction you made about wine?"

"No. I like and think good the end to which wine is sometimes themeans--the promotion of sympathy between man and man. But in my own caseit does not achieve that end, so I neither like it nor think it good forme."

"Bridey, do stop."

"I'm sorry," he said, "I thought it rather an interesting point."

"Thank God I went to Eton," said Sebastian.

After dinner Brideshead said: "I'm afraid I must take Sebastian away forhalf an hour. I shall be busy all day to-morrow, and I'm off immediatelyafter the show. I've a lot of papers for Father to sign. Sebastian musttake them out and explain them to him. It's time you were in bed,Cordelia."

"Must digest first," she said. "I'm not used to gorging like this atnight. I'll talk to Charles."

"Charles?" said Sebastian. "Charles? Mister Ryder, to you, child."

"Come on, Charles."

When we were alone she said: "Are you really an agnostic?"

"Does your family always talk about religion all the time?"

"Not all the time. It's a subject that just comes up naturally, doesn'tit?"

"Does it? It never has with me before."

"Then perhaps you are an agnostic. I'll pray for you."

"That's very kind of you."

"I can't spare you a whole rosary you know. Just a decade. I've got sucha long list of people. I take them in order and they get a decade aboutonce a week."

"I'm sure it's more than I deserve."

"Oh, I've got some harder cases than you. Lloyd George and the Kaiserand Olive Banks."

"Who is she?"

"She was bunked from the convent last term. I don't quite know what for.Reverend Mother found something she'd been writing. D'you know, if youweren't an agnostic, I should ask you for five shillings to buy a blackgod-daughter?"

"Nothing will surprise me about your religion."

"It's a new thing a missionary priest started last term. You send fivebob to some nuns in Africa and they christen a baby and name her afteryou. I've got six black Cordelias already. Isn't it lovely?"

When Brideshead and Sebastian returned, Cordelia was sent to bed.Brideshead began again on our discussion.

"Of course, you are right really," he said. "You take art as a means notas an end. That is strict theology, but it's unusual to find an agnosticbelieving it."

"Cordelia has promised to pray for me," I said.

"She made a novena for her pig," said Sebastian.

"You know all this is very puzzling to me," I said.

"I think we're causing scandal," said Brideshead.

That night I began to realize how little I really knew of Sebastian, andto understand why he had always sought to keep me apart from the rest ofhis life. He was like a friend made on board ship, on the high seas; nowwe had come to his home port.

* * * * *

Brideshead and Cordelia went away; the tents were struck on the showground, the flags uprooted; the trampled grass began to regain itscolour; the month that had started in leisurely fashion came swiftly toits end. Sebastian walked without a stick now and had forgotten hisinjury.

"I think you'd better come with me to Venice," he said.

"No money."

"I thought of that. We live on Papa when we get there. The lawyers paymy fare--first-class and sleeper. We can both travel third for that."

And so we went; first by the long, cheap sea-crossing to Dunkirk,sitting all night on deck under a clear sky, watching the grey dawnbreak over the sand-dunes; then to Paris, on wooden seats, where wedrove to the Lotti, had baths and shaved, lunched at Foyot's, which washot and half-empty, loitered sleepily among the shops and sat long in ahalf-empty café waiting till the time of our train; then in the warm,dusty evening to the Gare de Lyon, to the slow train South; again thewooden seats, a carriage full of the poor, visiting theirfamilies--travelling as the poor do in Northern countries, with amultitude of small bundles and an air of patient submission toauthority--and sailors returning from leave. We slept fitfully, joltingand stopping, changed once in the night, slept again and awoke in anempty carriage, with pine woods passing the windows and the distant viewof mountain peaks. New uniforms at the frontier, coffee and bread at thestation buffet, people round us of Southern grace and gaiety; on againinto the plains, conifers changing to vine and olive, a change of trainsat Milan; garlic sausage, bread and a flash of Orvieto bought from atrolley (we had spent all our money save for a few francs, in Paris);the sun mounted high and the country glowed with heat; the carriagefilled with peasants, ebbing and flowing at each station; the smell ofgarlic was overwhelming in the hot carriage. At last in the evening wearrived at Venice.

A sombre figure was there to meet us. "Papa's valet, Plender."

"I met the express," said Plender. "His Lordship thought you must havelooked up the train wrong. This seemed only to come from Milan."

"We travelled third."

Plender tittered politely. "I have the palace gondola here. I shallfollow with the luggage in the vaporetto. His Lordship has gone to theLido. He was not sure he would be home before you--that was when weexpected you on the express. He should be there by now."

He led us to the waiting boat. The gondoliers wore green and whitelivery and silver plaques on their arms; they smiled and bowed.

"Palazzo. Pronto."

"Si, Signor Plender."

And we floated away.

"You've been here before?"

"No."

"I came once before--from the sea. This is the way to arrive."

"Ecco ci siamo, signori."

The palace was a little less than it sounded, a narrow Palladian façade,mossy steps, a dark archway of rusticated stone. One boatman leaptashore, made fast to the post, rang the bell; the other stood on theprow keeping the craft in to the steps. The doors opened; a man inrather raffish summer livery of striped linen led us up the stairs fromshadow into light; the piano nobile was in full sunshine, ablaze withfrescoes of the school of Tintoretto.

"The marchese at Lido coming quick. Your sleeping this way please.Making wash at once."

Our rooms were on the floor above; reached by a precipitous marblestaircase, they were shuttered against the afternoon sun; the butlerthrew them open and we looked on to the Grand Canal; the beds hadmosquito nets.

"Mostica not now."

There was a little bulbous press in each room, a misty, gilt-framedmirror, and no other furniture. The floor was of bare marble slabs.

"Make hot wash," said the butler, leaving us.

"A bit bleak?" asked Sebastian.

"Bleak? Look at that." I led him again to the window and theincomparable pageant below and about us.

"No, you couldn't call it bleak."

A tremendous explosion next door announced a setback to the hot wash. Wewent to investigate and found a bathroom which seemed to have been builtin a chimney. There was no ceiling; instead the walls ran straightthrough the floor above to the open sky. An antiquated geyser wassending out clouds of steam, a strong smell of gas and a tiny trickle ofcold water.

"No good."

"Si, si, subito, signori."

The butler ran to the top of the staircase and began to shout down it; afemale voice, more strident than his, answered. Sebastian and I returnedto the spectacle below our windows. Presently the argument came to anend and a woman and child appeared, who smiled at us, scowled at thebutler, and put on Sebastian's press a silver basin and ewer of boilingwater. The butler meanwhile unpacked and folded our clothes and, lapsinginto Italian, told us of the unrecognized merits of the geyser, untilsuddenly co*cking his head sideways he became alert, said "Il signormarchese," and darted downstairs.

"We'd better look respectable before meeting Papa," said Sebastian. "Weneedn't dress. I gather he's alone at the moment."

I was full of curiosity to meet Lord Marchmain. When I did so I wasfirst struck by his normality, which, as I saw more of him, I found tobe studied. It was as though he were conscious of a Byronic aura, whichhe considered to be in bad taste and was at pains to suppress. He wasstanding on the balcony of the saloon which was the main living-room ofthe palace, and, as he turned to greet us, his face was in deep shadow.I was aware only of a tall and upright figure.

"Darling Papa," said Sebastian, "how young you are looking!"

He kissed Lord Marchmain on the cheek and I, who had not kissed myfather since I left the nursery, stood shyly behind him.

"This is Charles. Don't you think my father very handsome, Charles?"

Lord Marchmain shook my hand.

"Whoever looked up your train," he said--and his voice also wasSebastian's--"made a bêtise. There's no such one."

"We came on it."

"You can't have. There was only a slow train from Milan at that time. Iwas at the Lido. I have taken to playing tennis there with theprofessional in the early evening. It is the only time of day when it isnot too hot. I hope you boys will be fairly comfortable upstairs. Thishouse seems to have been designed for the comfort of only one person,and I am that one. I have a room the size of this and a very decentdressing-room. Cara has taken possession of the other sizeable room."

I was fascinated to hear him speak of his mistress, so simply andcasually; later I suspected that it was done for effect, for me.

"How is she?"

"Cara? Well, I hope. She will be back with us to-morrow. She is visitingsome American friends at a villa on the Brenta Canal. Where shall wedine? We might go to the Luna, but it is filling up with English now.Would you be too dull at home? Cara is sure to want to go out to-morrow,and the cook here is really quite excellent."

He had moved away from the window and now stood in the full eveningsunlight, with the red damask of the walls behind him. It was a nobleface, a controlled one, just, it seemed, as he planned it to be;slightly weary, slightly sardonic, slightly voluptuous. He seemed in theprime of life; it was odd to think that he was only a few years youngerthan my father.

We dined at a marble table in the windows; everything was either ofmarble, or velvet, or dull, gilt gesso, in this house. Lord Marchmainsaid, "And how do you plan your time here? Bathing or sight-seeing?"

"Some sight-seeing, anyway," I said.

"Cara will like that--she, as Sebastian will have told you, is yourhostess here. You can't do both, you know. Once you go to the Lido thereis no escaping--you play backgammon, you get caught at the bar, you getstupefied by the sun. Stick to the churches. You've just come fromEngland?"

"Yes, it was lovely there."

"Was it? Was it? It has been my tragedy that I abominate the Englishcountryside. I suppose it is a disgraceful thing to inherit greatresponsibilities and to be entirely indifferent to them. I am all thesocialists would have me be, and a great stumbling-block to my ownparty. Well, my elder son will change all that, I've no doubt, if theyleave him anything to inherit.... Why, I wonder, are Italian sweetsalways thought to be so good? There was always an Italian pastry-cook atBrideshead until my father's day. He had an Austrian, so much better.And now I suppose there is some British matron with beefy forearms."

After dinner we left the palace by the street door and walked through amaze of bridges and squares and alleys, to Florian's for coffee, andwatched the grave crowds crossing and re-crossing under the Campanile."There is nothing quite like a Venetian crowd," said Lord Marchmain."The country is crawling with Communists, but an American woman tried tosit here the other night with bare shoulders and they drove her away bycoming to stare at her, quite silently; they were like circling gullscoming back and back to her, until she left. Our countrymen are muchless dignified when they attempt to express moral disapproval."

An English party had just then come from the water-front, made for atable near us, and then suddenly moved to the other side, where theylooked askance at us and talked with their heads close together. "Thatis a man and his wife I used to know when I was in politics. A prominentmember of your church, Sebastian."

As we went up to bed that night Sebastian said: "He's rather a poppet,isn't he?"

* * * * *

Lord Marchmain's mistress arrived next day. I was nineteen years old andcompletely ignorant of women. I could not with any certainty recognize aprostitute in the streets. I was therefore not indifferent to the factof living under the roof of an adulterous couple, but I was old enoughto hide my interest. Lord Marchmain's mistress, therefore, found me witha multitude of conflicting expectations about her, all of which were,for the moment, disappointed by her appearance. She was not a voluptuousToulouse-Lautrec odalisque; she was not a "little bit of fluff"; she wasa middle-aged, well-preserved, well-dressed, well-mannered woman such asI had seen in countless public places and occasionally met. Nor did sheseem marked by any social stigma. On the day of her arrival we lunchedat the Lido, where she was greeted at almost every table.

"Vittoria Corombona has asked us all to her ball on Saturday."

"It is very kind of her. You know I do not dance," said Lord Marchmain.

"But for the boys? It is a thing to be seen--the Corombona palace lit upfor the ball. One does not know how many such balls there will be in thefuture."

"The boys can do as they like. We must refuse."

"And I have asked Mrs. Hacking Brunner to luncheon. She has a charmingdaughter. Sebastian and his friend will like her."

"Sebastian and his friend are more interested in art than heiresses."

"But that is what I have always wished," said Cara, changing her pointof attack adroitly. "I have been here more times than I can count andAlex has not once let me inside San Marco even. We will becometourists, yes?"

We became tourists; Cara enlisted as guide a midget Venetian nobleman towhom all doors were open, and with him at her side and a guide-book inher hand, she came with us, flagging sometimes but never giving up, aneat, prosaic figure amid the immense splendours of the place.

The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly--perhaps too sweetly;I was drowning in honey, stingless. On some days life kept pace with thegondola, as we nosed through the side-canals and the boatman uttered hisplaintive musical bird-cry of warning; on other days, with thespeed-boat bouncing over the lagoon in a stream of sun-lit foam; it lefta confused memory of fierce sunlight on the sands and cool, marbleinteriors; of water everywhere, lapping on smooth stone, reflected in adapple of light on painted ceilings; of a night at the Corombona palacesuch as Byron might have known, and another Byronic night fishing forscampi in the shallows of Chioggia, the phosphorescent wake of thelittle ship, the lantern swinging in the prow and the net coming up fullof weed and sand and floundering fishes; of melon and prosciutto onthe balcony in the cool of the morning; of hot cheese sandwiches andchampagne co*cktails at the English bar.

I remember Sebastian looking up at the Colleoni statue and saying, "It'srather sad to think that whatever happens you and I can never possiblyget involved in a war."

I remember most particularly one conversation towards the end of myvisit.

Sebastian had gone to play tennis with his father and Cara at lastadmitted to fatigue. We sat in the late afternoon at the windowsoverlooking the Grand Canal, she on the sofa with a piece of needlework,I in an armchair, idle. It was the first tune we had been alonetogether.

"I think you are very fond of Sebastian," she said.

"Why, certainly."

"I know of these romantic friendships of the English and the Germans.They are not Latin. I think they are very good if they do not go on toolong."

She was so composed and matter-of-fact that I could not take her amiss,but I failed to find an answer. She seemed not to expect one butcontinued stitching, pausing sometimes to match the silk from a work bagat her side.

"It is a kind of love that comes to children before they know itsmeaning. In England it comes when you are almost men; I think I likethat. It is better to have that kind of love for another boy than for agirl. Alex you see had it for a girl, for his wife. Do you think heloves me?"

"Really, Cara, you ask the most embarrassing questions. How should Iknow? I assume..."

"He does not. But not the littlest piece. Then why does he stay with me?I will tell you; because I protect him from Lady Marchmain. He hatesher; but you can have no conception how he hates her. You would thinkhim so calm and English--the milord, rather blasé, all passion dead,wishing to be comfortable and not to be worried, following the sun, withme to look after that one thing that no man can do for himself. Myfriend, he is a volcano of hate. He cannot breathe the same air as she.He will not set foot in England because it is her home; he can scarcelybe happy with Sebastian because he is her son. But Sebastian hates hertoo."

"I'm sure you're wrong there."

"He may not admit it to you. He may not admit it to himself; they arefull of hate--hate of themselves. Alex and his family.... Why do youthink he will never go into Society?"

"I always thought people had turned against him."

"My dear boy, you are very young. People turn against a handsome,clever, wealthy man like Alex? Never in your life. It is he who hasdriven them away. Even now they come back again and again to be snubbedand laughed at. And all for Lady Marchmain. He will not touch a handwhich may have touched hers. When we have guests I see him thinking,'Have they perhaps just come from Brideshead? Are they on their way toMarchmain House? Will they speak of me to my wife? Are they a linkbetween me and her whom I hate?' But, seriously, with my heart, that ishow he thinks. He is mad. And how has she deserved all this hate? Shehas done nothing except be loved by someone who was not grown-up. I havenever met Lady Marchmain; I have seen her once only; but if you livewith a man you come to know the other women he has loved. I know LadyMarchmain very well. She is a good and simple woman who has been lovedin the wrong way.

"When people hate with all that energy, it is something in themselvesthey are hating. Alex is hating all the illusions of boyhood--innocence,God, hope. Poor Lady Marchmain has to bear all that. He loved me for atime, quite a short time, as a man loves his own strength; it is simplerfor a woman; she has not all these ways of loving.

"Now Alex is very fond of me and I protect him from his own innocence.We are comfortable."

"Sebastian is in love with his own childhood. That will make him veryunhappy. His Teddy-bear, his Nanny... and he is nineteen yearsold...."

She stirred on her sofa, shifting her weight so that she could look downat the passing boats, and said in fond, mocking tones: "How good it isto sit in the shade and talk of love," and then added with a suddenswoop to earth, "Sebastian drinks too much."

"I suppose we both do."

"With you it does not matter. I have watched you together. WithSebastian it is different. He will be a drunkard if someone does notcome to stop him. I have known so many. Alex was nearly a drunkard whenhe met me; it is in the blood. I see it in the way Sebastian drinks.It is not your way."

* * * * *

We arrived in London on the day before term began. On the way fromCharing Cross I dropped Sebastian in the forecourt of his mother'shouse. "Here is 'Marchers,'" he said with a sigh which meant the end ofa holiday. "I won't ask you in, the place is probably full of my family.We'll meet at Oxford." I drove on to Hyde Park Gardens.

My father greeted me with his usual air of mild regret.

"Here to-day," he said; "gone to-morrow. I seem to see very little ofyou. Perhaps it is dull for you here. How could it be otherwise? Youhave enjoyed yourself?"

"Very much. I went to Venice."

"Yes. Yes. I suppose so. The weather was fine?"

When he went to bed after an evening of silent study, he paused to ask:"The friend you were so much concerned about, did he die?"

"No."

"I am very thankful. You should have written to tell me. I worried abouthim so much."

Chapter Five

"It is typical of Oxford," I said, "to start the new year in autumn."

Everywhere, on cobble and gravel and lawn, the leaves were falling andin the college gardens the smoke of the bonfires joined the wet rivermist, drifting across the grey walls; the flags were oily underfoot andas, one by one, the lamps were lit in the windows round the quad, thegolden lights were diffuse and remote, like those of a foreign villageseen from the slopes outside; new figures in new gowns wandered throughthe twilight under the arches and the familiar bells now spoke of ayear's memories.

The autumnal mood possessed us both as though the riotous exuberance ofJune had died with the gillyflowers, whose scent at my windows nowyielded to the damp leaves, smouldering in a corner of the quad.

It was the first Sunday evening of term.

"I feel precisely one hundred years old," said Sebastian.

He had come up the night before, a day earlier than I, and this was ourfirst meeting since we parted in the taxi.

"I've had a talking-to from Monsignor Bell this afternoon. That makesthe fourth since I came up--my tutor, the junior dean, Mr. Samgrass ofAll Souls, and now Monsignor Bell."

"Who is Mr. Samgrass of All Souls?"

"Just someone of Mummy's. They all say that I made a very bad start lastyear, that I have been noticed, and that if I don't mend my ways Ishall get sent down. How does one mend one's ways? I suppose one joinsthe League of Nations Union, and reads the Isis every week, and drinkscoffee in the morning at the Cadena café, and smokes a great pipe andplays hockey and goes out to tea on Boar's Hill and to lectures atKeble, and rides a bicycle with a little tray full of note-books anddrinks cocoa in the evening and discusses sex seriously. Oh, Charles,what has happened since last term? I feel so old."

"I feel middle-aged. That is infinitely worse. I believe we have had allthe fun we can expect here."

We sat silent in the firelight as darkness fell.

"Anthony Blanche has gone down."

"Why?"

"He wrote to me. Apparently he's taken a flat in Munich--he has formedan attachment to a policeman there."

"I shall miss him."

"I suppose I shall, too, in a way."

We fell silent again and sat so still in the firelight that a man whocame in to see me stood for a moment in the door and then went awaythinking the room empty.

"This is no way to start a new year," said Sebastian; but this sombreOctober evening seemed to breathe its chill, moist air over thesucceeding weeks. All that term and all that year Sebastian and I livedmore and more in the shadows and, like a fetish, hidden first from themissionary and at length forgotten, the toy bear, Aloysius, satunregarded on the chest-of-drawers in Sebastian's bedroom.

There was a change in both of us. We had lost the sense of discoverywhich had infused the anarchy of our first year. I began to settle down.

Unexpectedly, I missed my cousin Jasper, who had got his first in Greatsand was now cumbrously setting about a life of public mischief inLondon; I needed him to shock; without that massive presence the collegeseemed to lack solidity; it no longer provoked and gave point to outrageas it had done in the summer. Moreover, I had come back glutted and alittle chastened, with the resolve to go slow. Never again would Iexpose myself to my father's humour; his whimsical persecution hadconvinced me, as no rebuke could have done, of the folly of livingbeyond my means. I had had no talking-to this term; my success inHistory Previous and a beta minus in one of my Collections papers hadput me on easy terms with my tutor--which I managed to maintain withoutundue effort.

I kept a tenuous connection with the History School, wrote my two essaysa week and attended an occasional lecture. Besides this I started mysecond year by joining the Ruskin School of Art; two or three mornings aweek we met, about a dozen of us--half, at least, the daughters of NorthOxford--among the casts from the antique at the Ashmolean Museum; twicea week we drew from the nude in a small room over a teashop; some painswere taken by the authorities to exclude any hint of lubricity on theseevenings, and the young woman who sat to us was brought from London forthe day and not allowed to reside in the University city; one flank,that nearer the oil-stove, I remember, was always rosy and the othermottled and puckered as though it had been plucked. There, in the smellof the oil lamp, we sat astride the donkey stools and evoked a barelyvisible wraith of Trilby. My drawings were worthless; in my own rooms Idesigned elaborate little pastiches, some of which, preserved by friendsof the period, come to light occasionally to embarrass me.

We were instructed by a man of about my age, who treated us withdefensive hostility; he wore very dark blue shirts, a lemon-yellow tieand horn-rimmed glasses, and it was largely by reason of this warningthat I modified my own style of dress until it approximated to what mycousin Jasper would have thought suitable for country-house visiting.Thus soberly dressed and happily employed I became a fairly respectablemember of my college.

With Sebastian it was different. His year of anarchy had filled a deep,interior need of his, the escape from reality, and as he found himselfincreasingly hemmed in, where he once felt himself free, he became attimes listless and morose, even with me.

We kept very much to our own company that term, each so much bound up inthe other that we did not look elsewhere for friends. My cousin Jasperhad told me that it was normal to spend one's second year shaking offthe friends of one's first, and it happened as he said. Most of myfriends were those I had made through Sebastian; together we shed themand made no others. There was no renunciation. At first we seemed to seethem as often as ever; we went to parties but gave few of our own. I wasnot concerned to impress the new freshmen who, like their Londonsisters, were here being launched in society; there were strange facesnow at every party and I, who a few months back had been voracious ofnew acquaintances, now felt surfeited; even our small circle ofintimates, so lively in the summer sunshine, seemed dimmed and muted nowin the pervading fog, the river-borne twilight that softened andobscured all that year for me. Anthony Blanche had taken something awaywith him when he went; he had locked a door and hung the key on hischain; and all his friends, among whom he had always been a stranger,needed him now.

The Charity matinée was over, I felt; the impresario had buttoned hisastrakhan coat and taken his fee and the disconsolate ladies of thecompany were without a leader. Without him they forgot their cues andgarbled their lines; they needed him to ring the curtain up at the rightmoment; they needed him to direct the limelights; they needed hiswhisper in the wings, and his imperious eye on the leader of the band;without him there were no photographers from the weekly press, noprearranged goodwill and expectation of pleasure. No stronger bond heldthem together than common service; now the gold lace and velvet werepacked away and returned to the costumier and the drab uniform of theday put on in its stead. For a few happy hours of rehearsal, for a fewecstatic minutes of performance, they had played splendid parts, theirown great ancestors, the famous paintings they were thought to resemble;now it was over and in the bleak light of day they must go back to theirhomes; to the husband who came to London too often, to the lover wholost at cards, and to the child who grew too fast.

Anthony Blanche's set broke up and became a bare dozen lethargic,adolescent Englishmen. Sometimes in later life they would say: "Do youremember that extraordinary fellow we used all to know atOxford--Anthony Blanche? I wonder what became of him." They lumberedback into the herd from which they had been so capriciously chosen andgrew less and less individually recognizable. The change was not soapparent to them as to us, and they still congregated on occasions inour rooms; but we gave up seeking them. Instead we formed the taste forlower company and spent our evenings, as often as not, in Hogarthianlittle inns in St. Ebb's and St. Clement's and the streets between theold market and the canal, where we managed to be gay and were, Ibelieve, well liked by the company. The Gardener's Arms and the Nag'sHead, the Druid's Head near the theatre, and the Turf in Hell Passageknew us well; but in the last of these we were liable to meet otherundergraduates--pub-crawling hearties from BNC--and Sebastian becamepossessed by a kind of phobia, like that which sometimes comes over menin uniform against their own service, so that many an evening was spoiltby their intrusion, and he would leave his glass half empty and turnsulkily back to college.

It was thus that Lady Marchmain found us when, early in that Michaelmasterm, she came for a week to Oxford. She found Sebastian subdued, withall his host of friends reduced to one, myself. She accepted me asSebastian's friend and sought to make me hers also, and in doing so,unwittingly struck at the roots of our friendship. That is the singlereproach I have to set against her abundant kindness to me.

Her business in Oxford was with Mr. Samgrass of All Souls, who now beganto play an increasingly large part in our lives. Lady Marchmain wasengaged in making a memorial book for circulation among her friends,about her brother, Ned, the eldest of three legendary heroes all killedbetween Mons and Paschendaele; he had left a quantity of papers--poems,letters, speeches, articles; to edit them even for a restricted circleneeded tact and countless decisions in which the judgment of an adoringsister was liable to err. Acknowledging this, she had sought outsideadvice, and Mr. Samgrass had been found to help her.

He was a young history don, a short, plump man, dapper in dress, withsparse hair brushed flat on an over-large head, neat hands, small feetand the general appearance of being too often bathed. His manner wasgenial and his speech idiosyncratic. We came to know him well.

It was Mr. Samgrass's particular aptitude to help others with theirwork, but he was himself the author of several stylish little books. Hewas a great delver in muniment-rooms and had a sharp nose for thepicturesque. Sebastian spoke less than the truth when he described himas "someone of Mummy's"; he was someone of almost everyone's whopossessed anything to attract him.

Mr. Samgrass was a genealogist and a legitimist; he loved dispossessedroyalty and knew the exact validity of the rival claims of thepretenders to many thrones; he was not a man of religious habit, but heknew more than most Catholics about their Church; he had friends in theVatican and could talk at length of policy and appointments, sayingwhich contemporary ecclesiastics were in good favour, which in bad, whatrecent theological hypothesis was suspect, and how this or that Jesuitor Dominican had skated on thin ice or sailed near the wind in hisLenten discourses; he had everything except the Faith, and later likedto attend benediction in the chapel at Brideshead and see the ladies ofthe family with their necks arched in devotion under their black lacemantillas; he loved forgotten scandals in high life and was an expert onputative parentage; he claimed to love the past, but I always felt thathe thought all the splendid company, living or dead, with whom heassociated, slightly absurd; it was Mr. Samgrass who was real, the restwere an insubstantial pageant. He was the Victorian tourist, solid andpatronizing, for whose amusem*nt these foreign things were paraded. Andthere was something a little too brisk about his literary manners; Isuspected the existence of a concealed typewriter somewhere in hispanelled rooms.

He was with Lady Marchmain when I first met them, and I thought thenthat she could not have found a greater contrast to herself than thisintellectual-on-the-make, nor a better foil to her own charm. It was nother way to make a conspicuous entry into anyone's life, but towards theend of that week Sebastian said rather sourly: "You and Mummy seem verythick"--and I realized that in fact I was being drawn into intimacy byswift, imperceptible stages, for she was impatient of any humanrelationship that fell short of it. By the time that she left I hadpromised to spend all next vacation, except Christmas itself, atBrideshead.

* * * * *

One Monday morning a week or two later I was in Sebastian's room waitingfor him to return from a tutorial, when Julia walked in, followed by alarge 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 waswarm and confident in a checked ulster; Julia cold and rather shy infurs; she made straight for the fire and crouched over it shivering.

"We hoped Sebastian might give us luncheon," she said. "Failing him wecan always try Boy Mulcaster, but I somehow thought we should eat betterwith Sebastian, and we're very hungry. We've been literally starved allthe 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 ofthe old kind that I gave. Rex Mottram exerted himself to make animpression. He was a handsome fellow with dark hair growing low on hisforehead and heavy black eyebrows. He spoke with an engaging Canadianaccent. 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, agood fellow; that he played golf regularly with the Prince of Wales andwas on easy terms with "Max" and "F.E." and "Gertie" Lawrence andAugustus John and Carpentier--with anyone, it seemed, who happened to bementioned. Of the University he said: "No, I was never here. It justmeans 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 gota good M.C. serving with the Canadians and had ended as A.D.C. to apopular general.

He cannot have been more than thirty at the time we met him, but heseemed very old to us in Oxford. Julia treated him, as she seemed totreat 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 ortwice when he was talking very big, she apologized for him, saying:"Remember he's a colonial," to which he replied with boisterouslaughter.

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 himasking us and Boy Mulcaster to dinner in London on the following nightfor "a party of Julia's."

"I don't think he knows anyone young," said Sebastian; "all his friendsare leathery old sharks in the City and the House of Commons. Shall wego?"

We discussed it, and because our life at Oxford was now so much in theshadows, we decided that we would.

"Why does he want Boy?"

"Julia and I have known him all our lives. I suppose, finding him atlunch with you, he thought he was a chum."

We had no great liking for Mulcaster, but the three of us were in highspirits when, having got leave for the night from our colleges, we droveoff on the London road in Hardcastle's car.

We were to spend the night at Marchmain House. We went there to dressand, while we dressed, drank a bottle of champagne. As we camedownstairs Julia passed us going up to her room still in her dayclothes.

"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 adinner 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'dsooner we started, Rex."

"Well, let's have some wine first anyway."

"Why a Jeroboam, Rex?" she said peevishly. "You always want to haveeverything too big."

"Won't be too big for us," he said, taking the bottle in his own handsand easing the cork.

There were two girls there, contemporaries of Julia's; they all seemedinvolved in the management of the ball. Mulcaster knew them of old andthey, without much relish I thought, knew him. Mrs. Champion talked toRex. Sebastian and I found ourselves drinking alone together as wealways did.

At length Julia arrived, unhurried, exquisite, unrepentant. "Youshouldn'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 uswho had come from Oxford were rather drunk. While we were standing inthe hall waiting for the girls to come down and Rex and Mrs. Championhad drawn away from us, talking acrimoniously, in low voices, Mulcastersaid, "I say, let's slip away from this ghastly dance and go to MaMayfield's."

"Who is 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 bethe devil to pay if Effie heard I'd been to London and hadn't been in tosee 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 leavethe bloody dance and go to the Old Hundredth. How about that?"

It was not a difficult matter to leave the ball; the girls whom RexMottram had collected had many friends there and, after we had dancedtogether once or twice, our table began to fill up; Rex Mottram orderedmore and more wine; presently the three of us were together on thepavement.

"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 carwas in the forecourt of Marchmain House within a hundred yards of thehotel where we had been dancing. Mulcaster drove and, after somewandering, brought us safely to Sink Street. A commissionaire at oneside of a dark doorway and a middle-aged man in evening dress on theother side of it, standing with his face to the wall cooling hisforehead 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 whocomes 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 doornow made way for us. Inside it was hot and crowded, for the OldHundredth was then at the height of its success. We found a table andordered 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 ofthem's fair. You might call some of them pretty. I haven't the time toknow 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 uscuriously. "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 itsbeing 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 anygood 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 eveningin September?"

"No, darling, of course not. You were the boy in the Guards who cut yourtoe, weren't you?"

"Now, Effie, don't be a tease."

"No, that was another night, wasn't it? I know--you were with Bunty thetime the police were in and we all hid in the place they keep thedustbins."

"Effie loves pulling my leg, don't you, Effie? She's annoyed with me forstaying away so long, 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 backand said to me: "I'm going to ask that pair to join us."

The two unattached women who had considered us earlier were againcircling 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 asickly child. The Death's Head seemed destined for me. "How about alittle 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 tellMrs. Mayfield we're going out."

It was still early, not long after midnight, when we regained thestreet. The commissionaire tried to persuade us to take a taxi. "I'lllook after your car, sir. I wouldn't drive yourself, sir, really Iwouldn't."

But Sebastian took the wheel and the two women sat one on the otherbeside him, to show him the way. Effie and Mulcaster and I sat in theback. I think we cheered a little as we drove off.

We did not drive far. We turned into Shaftesbury Avenue and were makingfor Piccadilly when we narrowly escaped a head-on collision with ataxi-cab.

"For Christ's sake," said Effie, "look where you're going. D'you want tomurder us all?"

"Careless fellow that," said Sebastian.

"It isn't safe the way you're driving," said Death's Head. "Besides, weought 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 theroad. Two policemen quickened their stride and approached us.

"Let me out of this," said Effie, and made her escape with a leap and ascamper.

The rest of us were caught.

"I am sorry if I am impeding the traffic, officer," said Sebastian withcare, "but the lady insisted on my stopping for her to get out. Shewould take no denial. As you will have observed, she was pressed fortime. A matter of nerves you know."

"Let me talk to him," said Death's Head. "Be a sport, handsome; no one'sseen anything but you. The boys don't mean any harm. I'll get them intoa 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 noticeanything. We've just come from Ma Mayfield's. I reckon she pays you anice retainer to keep your eyes shut. Well, you can keep 'em shut on ustoo and you won't be the losers by it."

That resolved any doubts which the policemen may have felt. In a shorttime we were in the cells.

I remember little of the journey there or the process of admission.Mulcaster, I think, protested vigorously and, when we were made to emptyour pockets, accused his gaolers of theft. Then we were locked in, andmy first clear memory is of tiled walls with a lamp set high up underthick 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 tothe station; now, shut in, he seemed in a frenzy and was pounding thedoor, and shouting: "Damn you, I'm not drunk. Open this door. I insiston 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 greatmistake, I can tell you. Telephone the Home Secretary. Send for mysolicitors. I will have habeas corpus."

Groans of protest rose from the other cells where various tramps andpickpockets were trying to get some sleep: "Aw, pipe down!" "Give a mansome peace, can't yer?"... "Is this a blinking lock-up or alooney-house?" And the sergeant, going his rounds, admonished themthrough 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 theracket 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 anhour before the policeman in charge answered my bell. At last heconsented, rather sceptically, to send a telephone message to the hotelwhere the ball was being held. There was another long delay and then ourprison doors were open.

Seeping through the squalid air of the police station, the sour smell ofdirt and disinfectant, came the sweet, rich smoke of a Havana cigar--oftwo Havana cigars, for the sergeant in charge was smoking also.

Rex stood in the charge room looking the embodiment--indeed, theburlesque--of power and prosperity; he wore a fur-lined overcoat withbroad astrakhan lapels and a silk hat. The police were deferential andeager to help.

"We had to do our duty," they said. "Took the young gentlemen intocustody for their own protection."

Mulcaster looked crapulous and began a confused complaint that he hadbeen denied legal representation and civil rights. Rex said: "Betterleave all the talking to me."

I was clear-headed now and watched and listened with fascination whileRex settled our business. He examined the charge sheets, spoke affablyto the men who had made the arrest; with the slightest perceptiblenuance he opened the way for bribery and quickly covered it when he sawthat things had now lasted too long and the knowledge had been toowidely shared; he undertook to deliver us at the magistrate's court atten 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. Leaveeverything to me."

It was plain that he rejoiced in his efficiency.

Next morning the display was even more impressive. I awoke with thestartled and puzzled sense of being in a strange room, and in the firstseconds of consciousness the memory of the evening before returned,first as though of a nightmare, then of reality. Rex's valet wasunpacking a suitcase. On seeing me move he went to the wash-hand standand poured something from a bottle. "I think I have everything fromMarchmain House," he said. "Mr. Mottram sent round to Heppel's forthis."

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 atthe court," he said. "Luckily none of you look much the worse for wear."

After breakfast the barrister arrived and Rex delivered a summary of thecase.

"Sebastian's in a jam," he said. "He's liable to anything up to sixmonths' imprisonment for being drunk in charge of a car. You'll come upbefore Grigg unfortunately. He takes rather a grim view of cases of thissort. All that will happen this morning is that we shall ask to haveSebastian held over for a week to prepare the defence. You two willplead guilty, say you're sorry, and pay your five-bob fine. I'll seewhat can be done about squaring the evening papers. The Star may bedifficult.

"Remember, the important thing is to keep out all mention of the OldHundredth. Luckily the tarts were sober and aren't being charged, buttheir names have been taken as witnesses. If we try and break down thepolice evidence, they'll be called. We've got to avoid that at allcosts, so we shall have to swallow the police story whole and appeal tothe magistrate's good nature not to wreck a young man's career for asingle boyish indiscretion. It'll work all right. We shall need a don togive evidence of good character. Julia tells me you have a tame onecalled Samgrass. He'll do. Meanwhile your story is simply that youcame up from Oxford for a perfectly respectable dance, weren't used towine, had too much, and lost the way driving home.

"After that we shall have to see about fixing things with yourauthorities 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 theyshould get away with it."

"For heaven's sake don't start any kind of argument. Just plead guiltyand pay up. Understand?"

Mulcaster grumbled but submitted.

Everything happened at court as Rex had predicted. At half past ten westood in Bow Street, Mulcaster and I free men, Sebastian bound over toappear in a week's time. Mulcaster had kept silent about his grievance;he and I were admonished and fined five shillings each and fifteenshillings costs. Mulcaster was becoming rather irksome to us, and it waswith relief that we heard his plea of other business in London. Thebarrister bustled off and Sebastian and I were left alone anddisconsolate.

"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 toOxford and wait for them to bother us."

The raffish habitués of the police court came and went up and down thesteps; 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 fewpounds."

"Yes, but it's all the bother--Mummy and Bridey and all the family andthe dons. I'd sooner go to prison. If I just slip away abroad they can'tget me back, can they? That's what people do when the police are afterthem. I know Mummy will make it seem she has to bear the whole brunt ofthe business."

"Let's telephone Julia and get her to meet us somewhere and talk itover."

We met at Gunter's in Berkeley Square. Julia, like most women then, worea green hat pulled down to her eyes with a diamond arrow in it; she hada 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 onit. The only time I got tight I was paralysed all the next day. I dothink 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 takeme. Is it heaven?"

"So you know all about that, too?"

"Rex telephoned me this morning and told me everything. What were yourgirl 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 hadbeen 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 theclink. I told her. She was divine about it, of course. You know anythingUncle Ned did was always perfect, and he got locked up once for taking abear into one of Lloyd George's meetings, so she really feels quitehuman about the whole thing. She wants you both to lunch with her."

"Oh God!"

"The only trouble is the papers and the family. Have you got an awfulfamily, Charles?"

"Only a father. He'll never hear about it."

"Ours are awful. Poor Mummy is in for a ghastly time with them. They'llbe writing letters and paying visits of sympathy, and all the time atthe back of their minds one half will be saying, 'That's what comes ofbringing the boy up a Catholic,' and the other half will say, 'That'swhat comes of sending him to Eton instead of Stonyhurst.' Poor Mummycan't get it right."

We lunched with Lady Marchmain. She accepted the whole thing withhumorous resignation. Her only reproach was: "I can't think why you wentoff and stayed with Mr. Mottram. You might have come and told me aboutit first....

"How am I going to explain it to all the family?" she asked. "They willbe so shocked to find that they're more upset about it than I am. Do youknow my sister-in-law, Fanny Rosscommon? She has always thought Ibrought the children up badly. Now I am beginning to think she must beright."

When we left I said: "She couldn't have been more charming. What wereyou 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 underthe ironic headline: "Marquis's Son Unused to Wine." The magistrate saidthat it was only through the prompt action of the police that he was notup on a grave charge... "It is purely by good fortune that you do notbear the responsibility of a serious accident...." Mr. Samgrass gaveevidence that Sebastian bore an irreproachable character and that abrilliant future at the University was in jeopardy. The papers took holdof this too--"Model Student's Career at Stake." But for Mr. Samgrass'sevidence, said the magistrate, he would have been disposed to give anexemplary sentence; the law was the same for an Oxford undergraduate asfor any young hooligan, indeed the better the home the more shameful theoffence....

It was not only at Bow Street that Mr. Samgrass was of value. At Oxfordhe showed all the zeal and acumen which were Rex Mottram's in London. Heinterviewed the college authorities, the proctors, the Vice-Chancellor;he induced Monsignor Bell to call on the Dean of Christ Church; hearranged for Lady Marchmain to talk to the Chancellor himself; and, as aresult 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 ofhis car, and the affair blew over. The most lasting penalty we sufferedwas our intimacy with Rex Mottram and Mr. Samgrass, but since Rex's lifewas in London in a world of politics and high finance and Mr. Samgrass'snearer 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 couldnot spend our evenings together, and from nine o'clock onwards werealone and at Mr. Samgrass's mercy. Hardly an evening seemed to pass buthe called on one or the other of us. He spoke of "our little escapade"as though he, too, had been in the cells, and had that bond withus.... Once I climbed out of college and Mr. Samgrass found me inSebastian's rooms after the gate was shut and that, too, he made into abond. It did not surprise me, therefore, when I arrived at Brideshead,to find Mr. Samgrass, as though in wait for me, sitting alone before thefire in the room they called the "Tapestry Hall."

"You find me in solitary possession," he said, and indeed he seemed topossess the hall and the sombre scenes of venery that hung round it, topossess the caryatids on either side of the fireplace, to possess me, ashe rose to take my hand and greet me like a host: "This morning," hecontinued, "we had a lawn meet of the Marchmain Hounds--a deliciouslyarchaic spectacle--and all our young friends are fox hunting, evenSebastian who, you will not be surprised to hear, looked remarkablyelegant in his pink coat. Brideshead was impressive rather than elegant;he is Joint-master with a local figure of fun named Sir WalterStrickland-Venables. I wish the two of them could be included in theserather humdrum tapestries--they would give a note of fantasy.

"Our hostess remained at home; also a convalescent Dominican who hasread too much Maritain and too little Hegel; Sir Adrian Porson, ofcourse, and two rather forbidding Magyar cousins--I have tried them inGerman and in French, but in neither tongue are they diverting. Allthese have now driven off to visit a neighbour. I have been spending acosy afternoon before the fire with the incomparable Charlus. Yourarrival emboldens me to ring for some tea. How can I prepare you for theparty? Alas, it breaks up to-morrow. Lady Julia departs to celebrate theNew Year elsewhere, and takes the beau-monde with her. I shall miss thepretty creatures about the house--particularly one Celia; she is thesister of our old companion in adversity, Boy Mulcaster, and wonderfullyunlike him. She has a bird-like style of conversation, pecking away atthe subject in a way I find most engaging, and a school-monitor style ofdress which I can only call 'saucy.' I shall miss her, for I do not goto-morrow. To-morrow I start work in earnest on our hostess'sbook--which, believe me, is a treasure house of period gems; pureauthentic 1914."

Tea was brought and, soon after it, Sebastian returned; he had lost thehunt early, he said, and hacked home; the others were not long afterhim, having been fetched by car at the end of the day; Brideshead wasabsent; he had business at the kennels and Cordelia had gone with him.The rest filled the hall and were soon eating scrambled eggs andcrumpets; and Mr. Samgrass, who had lunched at home and dozed all theafternoon before the fire, ate eggs and crumpets with them. PresentlyLady Marchmain's party returned; and when, before we went upstairs todress for dinner, she said, "Who's coming to chapel for the rosary?" andSebastian 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 sickof being grateful to him."

In the course of the next fortnight distaste for Mr. Samgrass came to bea little unspoken secret throughout the house; in his presence SirAdrian Porson's fine old eyes seemed to search a distant horizon and hislips set in classic pessimism. Only the Hungarian cousins who, mistakingthe 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 dailymass and rosary, morning and evening in the chapel--but in all itsintercourse. "We must make a Catholic of Charles," Lady Marchmain said,and we had many little talks together during my visits when shedelicately steered the subject into a holy quarter. After the first ofthese 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; itmerely happened, when she wished to speak intimately, that one foundoneself alone with her, if it was summer in a secluded walk by the lakesor in a corner of the walled rose gardens; if it was winter in hersitting-room on the first floor.

This room was all her own; she had taken it for herself and changed itso that, entering, one seemed to be in another house. She had loweredthe ceiling, and the elaborate cornice which, in one form or another,graced every room, was lost to view; the walls, once panelled inbrocade, were stripped and washed blue and spotted with innumerablelittle water-colours of fond association; the air was sweet with thefresh scent of flowers and musty pot-pourri; her library in soft leathercovers, well-read works of poetry and piety, filled a small rosewoodbookcase; the chimney-piece was covered with small personaltreasures--an ivory Madonna, a plaster St. Joseph, posthumous miniaturesof her three soldier brothers. When Sebastian and I lived alone atBrideshead during that brilliant August we had kept out of his mother'sroom.

Scraps of conversation come back to me with the memory of her room. Iremember her saying: "When I was a girl we were comparatively poor, butstill much richer than most of the world, and when I married I becamevery rich. It used to worry me, and I thought it wrong to have so manybeautiful things when others had nothing. Now I realize that it ispossible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. Thepoor have always been the favourites of God and His saints, but Ibelieve that it is one of the special achievements of Grace to sanctifythe whole of life, riches included. Wealth in pagan Rome was necessarilysomething cruel; it's not any more."

I said something about a camel and the eye of a needle and she rosehappily to the point.

"But of course" she said, "it's very unexpected for a camel to gothrough the eye of a needle, but the gospel is simply a catalogue ofunexpected things. It's not to be expected that an ox and an assshould worship at the crib. Animals are always doing the oddest thingsin the lives of the saints. It's all part of the poetry, theAlice-in-Wonderland side, of religion."

But I was as untouched by her faith as I was by her charm; or, rather, Iwas touched by both alike. I had no mind then for anything exceptSebastian, and I saw him already as being threatened, though I did notyet know how black was the threat. His constant, despairing prayer wasto be let alone. By the blue waters and rustling palm of his own mind hewas happy and harmless as a Polynesian; only when the big ship droppedanchor 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 trodthe grim invasion of trader, administrator, missionary and tourist--onlythen was it time to disinter the archaic weapons of the tribe and soundthe drums in the hills; or, more easily, to turn from the sun-lit doorand lie alone in the darkness, where the impotent, painted deitiesparaded the walls in vain, and cough his heart out among the rumbottles.

And since Sebastian counted among the intruders his own conscience andall claims of human affection, his days in Arcadia were numbered. For inthis, to me, tranquil time Sebastian took fright. I knew him well inthat mood of alertness and suspicion, like a deer suddenly lifting hishead at the far notes of the hunt; I had seen him grow wary at thethought of his family or his religion; now I found I, too, was suspect.He did not fail in love, but he lost his joy of it, for I was no longerpart of his solitude. As my intimacy with his family grew I became partof the world which he sought to escape; I became one of the bonds whichheld him. That was the part for which his mother, in all our littletalks, was seeking to fit me. Everything was left unsaid. It was onlydimly and at rare moments that I suspected what was afoot.

Outwardly Mr. Samgrass was the only enemy. For a fortnight Sebastian andI remained at Brideshead, leading our own life. His brother was engagedin sport and estate management; Mr. Samgrass was at work in the libraryon Lady Marchmain's book; Sir Adrian Porson demanded most of LadyMarchmain's time. We saw little of them except in the evenings; therewas 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 myhome in preference to Marchers. My father liked him. "I think yourfriend very amusing," he said. "Ask him often."

* * * * *

Then, back at Oxford, we took up again the life that seemed to beshrinking in the cold air. The sadness that had been strong in Sebastianthe term before gave place to a kind of sullenness even towards me. Hewas 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 drunkhe developed an obsession of "mocking Mr. Samgrass." He composed a dittyof 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 distinguishedas being the first don to have a private telephone installed in hisrooms. Sebastian in his cups used to ring him up and sing him thissimple song. And all this Mr. Samgrass took in good part, as it iscalled, 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 adrunkard in quite a different sense from myself. I got drunk often, butthrough an excess of high spirits, in the love of the moment, and thewish to prolong and enhance it; Sebastian drank to escape. As wetogether grew older and more serious I drank less, he more. I found thatsometimes 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 suchunexpected violence that it is hard to say when exactly I recognizedthat my friend was in deep trouble. I knew it well enough in the Eastervacation.

Julia used to say, "Poor Sebastian. It's something chemical in him."

That was the cant phrase of the time, derived from heaven knows whatmisconception of popular science. "There's something chemical betweenthem" was used to explain the overmastering hate or love of any twopeople. It was the old concept of determinism in a new form. I do notbelieve there was anything chemical in my friend.

The Easter party at Brideshead was a bitter time, culminating in a smallbut unforgettably painful incident. Sebastian got very drunk beforedinner in his mother's house, and thus marked the beginning of a newepoch in his melancholy record of deterioration, the first step in theflight from his family which brought him to ruin.

It was at the end of the day when the large Easter party leftBrideshead. It was called "the Easter party," though in fact it began onthe Tuesday of Easter Week, for the Flytes all went into retreat at theguest house of a monastery from Maundy Thursday until Easter. This yearSebastian 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 failedto raise him.

He had been drinking very hard for a week--only I knew how hard--anddrinking in a nervous, surreptitious way, totally unlike his old habit.During the party there was always a grog tray in the library, andSebastian took to slipping in there at odd moments during the daywithout saying anything even to me. The house was largely desertedduring the day. I was at work painting another panel in the littlegarden-room in the colonnade. Sebastian complained of a cold, stayed in,and during all that time was never quite sober; he escaped attention bybeing silent. Now and then I noticed him attract curious glances, butmost of the party knew him too slightly to see the change in him, whilehis own family were occupied, each with his particular guests.

When I remonstrated he said, "I can't stand all these people about," butit was when they finally left and he had to face his family at closequarters that he broke down.

The normal practice was for a co*cktail tray to be brought into thedrawing-room at six; we mixed our own drinks and the bottles wereremoved when we went to dress; later just before dinner co*cktailsappeared again, this time handed round by the footmen.

Sebastian disappeared after tea; the light had gone and I spent the nexthour playing Mah Jong with Cordelia. At six I was alone in thedrawing-room, when he returned; he was frowning in a way I knew all toowell, and when he spoke I recognized the drunken thickening in hisvoice.

"Haven't they brought the co*cktails yet?" He pulled clumsily on thebell-rope.

I said, "Where have you been?"

"Up with Nanny."

"I don't believe it. You've been drinking somewhere."

"I've been reading in my room. My cold's worse to-day."

When the tray arrived he slopped gin and vermouth into a tumbler andcarried it out of the room with him. I followed him upstairs, where heshut his bedroom door in my face and turned the key.

I returned to the drawing-room full of dismay and foreboding.

The family assembled. Lady Marchmain said: "What's become of Sebastian?"

"He's gone to lie down. His cold is worse."

"Oh dear, I hope he isn't getting flu. I thought he had a feverish lookonce or twice lately. Is there anything he wants?"

"No, he particularly asked not to be disturbed."

I wondered whether I ought to speak to Brideshead, but that grim,rock-crystal mask forbade all confidence. Instead, on the way upstairsto dress, I told Julia.

"Sebastian's drunk."

"He can't be. He didn't even come for a co*cktail."

"He's been drinking in his room all the afternoon."

"How very peculiar! What a bore he is! Will he be all right for dinner?"

"No."

"Well, you must deal with him. It's no business of mine. Does he oftendo this?"

"He has lately."

"How very boring."

I tried Sebastian's door, found it locked and hoped he was sleeping, butwhen I came back from my bath, I found him sitting in the armchairbefore my fire; he was dressed for dinner, all but his shoes, but histie was awry and his hair on end; he was very red in the face andsquinting slightly. He spoke indistinctly.

"Charles, what you said was quite true. Not with Nanny. Been drinkingwhiskey up here. None in the library now party's gone. Now party's goneand only Mummy. Feeling rather drunk. Think I'd better havesomething-on-a-tray up here. Not dinner with Mummy."

"Go to bed," I told him. "I'll say your cold's worse."

"Much worse."

I took him to his room, which was next to mine, and tried to get him tobed, but he sat in front of his dressing-table squinnying at himself inthe glass, trying to remake his bow tie. On the writing-table by thefire was a half-empty decanter of whiskey. I took it up, thinking hewould not see, but he spun round from the mirror and said: "You put thatdown."

"Don't be an ass, Sebastian. You've had enough."

"What the devil's it got to do with you? You're only a guest here--myguest. I drink what I want to in my own house."

He would have fought me for it at that moment.

"Very well," I said, putting the decanter back, "only for God's sakekeep out of sight."

"Oh, mind your own business. You came here as my friend; now you'respying on me for my mother, I know. Well, you can get out, and tell herfrom me that I'll choose my friends and she her spies in future."

So I left him and went down to dinner.

"I've been in to Sebastian," I said. "His cold has come on rather badly.He's gone to bed and says he doesn't want anything."

"Poor Sebastian," said Lady Marchmain. "He'd better have a glass of hotwhiskey. I'll go and have a look at him."

"Don't Mummy, I'll go," said Julia rising.

"I'll go," said Cordelia, who was dining down that night, for a treatto celebrate the departure of the guests. She was at the door andthrough it, before anyone could stop her.

Julia caught my eye and gave a tiny, sad shrug.

In a few minutes Cordelia was back, looking grave. "No, he doesn't seemto want anything," she said.

"How was he?"

"Well, I don't know, but I think he's very drunk," she said.

"Cordelia."

Suddenly the child began to giggle. "'Marquis's Son Unused to Wine,'"she quoted. "'Model Student's Career Threatened.'"

"Charles, is this true?" asked Lady Marchmain.

"Yes."

Then dinner was announced, and we went to the dining-room, wherethe subject was not mentioned.

When Brideshead and I were left alone he said: "Did you say Sebastianwas drunk?"

"Yes."

"Extraordinary time to choose. Couldn't you stop him?"

"No."

"No," said Brideshead, "I don't suppose you could. I once saw my fatherdrunk, in this room. I wasn't more than about ten at the time. You can'tstop people if they want to get drunk. My mother couldn't stop myfather, you know."

He spoke in his odd, impersonal way. The more I saw of this family, Ireflected, the more singular I found them. "I shall ask my mother toread to us to-night."

It was the custom, I learned later, always to ask Lady Marchmain to readaloud on evenings of family tension. She had a beautiful voice and greathumour of expression. That night she read part of The Wisdom of FatherBrown. Julia sat with a stool covered with manicure things andcarefully revarnished her nails; Cordelia nursed Julia's Pekinese;Brideshead played patience; I sat unoccupied studying the pretty groupthey made, and mourning my friend upstairs.

But the horrors of that evening were not yet over.

It was sometimes Lady Marchmain's practice, when the family were alone,to visit the chapel before going to bed. She had just closed her bookand proposed going there when the door opened and Sebastian appeared. Hewas dressed as I had last seen him, but now instead of being flushed hewas deathly pale.

"Come to apologize," he said.

"Sebastian, dear, do go back to your room," said Lady Marchmain. "We cantalk about it in the morning."

"Not to you. Come to apologize to Charles. I was bloody to him and he'smy guest. He's my guest and my only friend and I was bloody to him."

A chill spread over us. I led him back to his room; his family went totheir prayers. I noticed when we got upstairs that the decanter was nowempty. "It's time you were in bed," I said.

Sebastian began to weep. "Why do you take their side against me? I knewyou would if I let you meet them. Why do you spy on me?"

He said more than I can bear to remember, even at twenty years'distance. At last I got him to sleep and very sadly went to bed myself.

Next morning, he came to my room very early, while the house stillslept; he drew the curtains and the sound of it woke me, to find himthere fully dressed, smoking, with his back to me, looking out of thewindows to where the long dawn-shadows lay across the dew and the firstbirds were chattering in the budding tree-tops. When I spoke he turned aface which showed no ravages of the evening before, but was fresh andsullen as a disappointed child's.

"Well," I said. "How do you feel?"

"Rather odd. I think perhaps I'm still a little drunk. I've just beendown to the stables trying to get a car but everything was locked. We'reoff."

He drank from the water-bottle by my pillow, threw his cigarette fromthe window, and lit another with hands which trembled like an old man's.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know. London, I suppose. Can I come and stay with you?"

"Of course."

"Well, get dressed. They can send our luggage on by train."

"We can't just go like this."

"We can't stay."

He sat on the window-seat looking away from me, out of the window.Presently he said: "There's smoke coming from some of the chimneys. Theymust have opened the stables now. Come on."

"I can't go," I said. "I must say good-bye to your mother."

"Sweet bulldog."

"Well, I don't happen to like running away."

"And I couldn't care less. And I shall go on running away, as far and asfast as I can. You can hatch up any plot you like with my mother; Ishan't come back."

"That's how you talked last night."

"I know. I'm sorry, Charles. I told you I was still drunk. If it's anycomfort to you, I absolutely detest myself."

"It's no comfort at all."

"It must be a little, I should have thought. Well, if you won't come,give my love to Nanny."

"You're really going?"

"Of course."

"Shall I see you in London?"

"Yes, I'm coming to stay with you."

He left me but I did not sleep again; nearly two hours later a footmancame with tea and bread and butter and set my clothes out for a new day.

* * * * *

Later that morning I sought Lady Marchmain; the wind had freshened andwe stayed indoors; I sat near her before the fire in her room, while shebent over her needlework and the budding creeper rattled on thewindow-panes.

"I wish I had not seen him," she said. "That was cruel. I do not mindthe idea of his being drunk. It is a thing all men do when they areyoung. I am used to the idea of it. My brothers were wild at his age.What hurt last night was that there was nothing happy about him."

"I know," I said. "I've never seen him like that before."

"And last night of all nights... when everyone had gone and therewere only ourselves here--you see, Charles, I look on you very much asone of ourselves. Sebastian loves you--when there was no need for him tomake an effort to be gay. And he wasn't gay. I slept very little lastnight, and all the time I kept coming back to that one thing: he was sounhappy."

It was impossible for me to explain to her what I only half understoodmyself; even then I felt, "She will learn it soon enough. Perhaps sheknows it now."

"It was horrible," I said. "But please don't think that's his usualway."

"Mr. Samgrass told me he was drinking too much all last term."

"Yes, but not like that--never before."

"Then why now? Here? With us? All night I have been thinking and prayingand wondering what I was to say to him, and now, this morning, he isn'there at all. That was cruel of him, leaving without a word. I don't wanthim to be ashamed--it's being ashamed that makes it all so wrong ofhim."

"He's ashamed of being unhappy," I said.

"Mr. Samgrass says he is noisy and high-spirited. I believe," she said,with a faint light of humour streaking the clouds, "I believe you and hetease Mr. Samgrass rather. It's naughty of you. I'm very fond of Mr.Samgrass, and you should be too, after all he's done for you. But Ithink perhaps if I were your age and a man, I might be just a littleinclined to tease Mr. Samgrass myself. No, I don't mind that, but lastnight and this morning are something quite different. You see, it's allhappened before."

"I can only say I've seen him drunk often and I've been drunk with himoften, but last night was quite new to me."

"Oh, I don't mean with Sebastian. I mean years ago. I've been through itall before with someone else whom I loved. Well, you must know what Imean--with his father. He used to be drunk in just that way. Someonetold me he is not like that now. I pray God it's true and thank God forit with all my heart, if it is. But the running away--he ran away,too, you know. It was as you said just now, he was ashamed of beingunhappy. Both of them unhappy, ashamed and running away. It's toopitiful. The men I grew up with"--and her great eyes moved from theembroidery to the three miniatures in the folding leather case on thechimney-piece--"were not like that. I simply don't understand it. Doyou, Charles?"

"Only very little."

"And yet Sebastian is fonder of you than of any of us, you know. You'vegot to help him. I can't."

I have here compressed into a few sentences what, there, required many.Lady Marchmain was not diffuse, but she took hold of her subject in afeminine, flirtatious way, circling, approaching, retreating, feinting;she hovered over it like a butterfly; she played "grandmother's steps"with it, getting nearer the real point imperceptibly while one's backwas turned, standing rooted when she was observed. The unhappiness, therunning away--these made up her sorrow, and in her own way she exposedthe whole of it, before she was done. It was an hour before she had saidall she meant to say. Then, as I rose to leave her, she added as thoughin an afterthought: "I wonder have you seen my brother's book? It hasjust come out."

I told her I had looked through it in Sebastian's rooms.

"I should like you to have a copy. May I give you one? They were threesplendid men; Ned was the best of them. He was the last to be killed,and when the telegram came, as I knew it would come, I thought: 'Nowit's my son's turn to do what Ned can never do now.' I was alone then.He was just going to Eton. If you read Ned's book you'll understand."

She had a copy lying ready on her bureau. I thought at the time, "Sheplanned this parting before ever I came in. Had she rehearsed all theinterview? If things had gone differently would she have put the bookback in the drawer?"

She wrote her name and mine on the fly-leaf, the date and place.

"I prayed for you, too, in the night," she said.

I closed the door behind me, shutting out the bondieuserie, the lowceiling, the chintz, the lambskin bindings, the views of Florence, thebowls of hyacinth and pot-pourri, the petit point, the intimatefeminine, modern world, and was back under the coved and coffered roof,the columns and entablature of the central hall, in the august,masculine atmosphere of a better age.

I was no fool; I was old enough to know that an attempt had been made tosuborn me and young enough to have found the experience agreeable.

I did not see Julia that morning, but just as I was leaving Cordelia ranto the door of the car and said: "Will you be seeing Sebastian? Pleasegive him my special love. Will you remember--my special love?"

* * * * *

In the train to London I read the book Lady Marchmain had given me. Thefrontispiece reproduced the photograph of a young man in Grenadieruniform, and I saw plainly revealed there the origin of that grim maskwhich, in Brideshead, overlaid the gracious features of his father'sfamily; this was a man of the woods and caves, a hunter, a judge of thetribal council, the repository of the harsh traditions of a people atwar with their environment. There were other illustrations in the book,snapshots of the three brothers on holiday, and in each I traced thesame archaic lines; and remembering Lady Marchmain, starry and delicate,I could find no likeness to her in these sombre men.

She appeared seldom in the book; she was older than the eldest of themby nine years and had married and left home while they were schoolboys;between her and them stood two other sisters; after the birth of thethird daughter there had been pilgrimages and pious benefactions inrequest for a son, for theirs was a wide property and an ancient name;male heirs had come late and, when they came, in a profusion which atthe time seemed to promise continuity to the line which, in the tragicevent, ended abruptly with them.

The family history was typical of the Catholic squires of England; fromElizabeth's reign till Victoria's they lived sequestered lives amongtheir tenantry and kinsmen, sending their sons to school abroad; oftenmarrying there--inter-marrying, if not, with a score of families likethemselves, debarred from all preferment; and learning, in those lostgenerations, lessons which could still be read in the lives of the lastthree men of the house.

Mr. Samgrass's deft editorship had assembled and arranged a curiouslyhom*ogeneous little body of writing--poetry, letters, scraps of ajournal, an unpublished essay or two--which all exhaled the samehigh-spirited, serious, chivalrous, other-worldly air; and the lettersfrom their contemporaries, written after their deaths, all in varyingdegrees of articulateness, told the same tale of men who were, in allthe full flood of academic and athletic success, of popularity and thepromise of great rewards ahead, seen somehow as set apart from theirfellows, garlanded victims, devoted to the sacrifice. These men must dieto make a world for Hooper; they were the aborigines, vermin by right oflaw, to be shot off at leisure so that things might be safe for thetravelling salesman, with his polygonal pince-nez, his fat wethand-shake, his grinning dentures. I wondered, as the train carried mefarther and farther from Lady Marchmain, whether perhaps there was noton her, too, the same blaze, marking her and hers for destruction byother ways than war. Did she see a sign in the red centre of her cosygrate and hear it in the rattle of creeper on the window-pane, thiswhisper of doom?

Then I reached Paddington and, returning home, found Sebastian there,and the sense of tragedy vanished, for he was gay and free as when Ifirst met him.

"Cordelia sent you her special love."

"Did you have a 'little talk' with Mummy?"

"Yes."

"Have you gone over to her side?"

The day before I would have said: "There aren't two sides"; that day Isaid, "No, I'm with you, Sebastian contra mundum."

And that was all the conversation we had on the subject, then or ever.

* * * * *

But the shadows were closing round Sebastian. We returned to Oxford andonce again the gillyflowers bloomed under my windows and the chestnutlit the streets and the warm stones strewed their flakes upon thecobble; but it was not as it had been; there was midwinter inSebastian's heart.

The weeks went by; we looked for lodgings for the coming term and foundthem in Merton Street, a secluded, expensive little house near thetennis court.

Meeting Mr. Samgrass, whom we had seen less often of late, I told him ofour choice. He was standing at the table in Blackwell's where recentGerman books were displayed, setting aside a little heap of purchases.

"You're sharing digs with Sebastian?" he said. "So he is coming upnext term?"

"I suppose so. Why shouldn't he be?"

"I don't know why; I somehow thought perhaps he wasn't. I'm always wrongabout things like that. I like Merton Street."

He showed me the books he was buying, which, since I knew no German,were not of interest to me. As I left him he said: "Don't think meinterfering, you know, but I shouldn't make any definite arrangementin Merton Street until you're sure."

I told Sebastian of this conversation and he said: "Yes, there's a ploton. Mummy wants me to go and live with Monsignor Bell."

"Why didn't you tell me about it?"

"Because I'm not going to live with Monsignor Bell."

"I still think you might have told me. When did it start?"

"Oh, it's been going on. Mummy's very clever you know. She saw she'dfailed with you. I expect it was the letter you wrote after readingUncle Ned's book."

"I hardly said anything."

"That was it. If you were going to be any help to her, you would havesaid a lot. Uncle Ned is the test, you know."

But it seemed she had not quite despaired, for a few days later I got anote from her which said: I shall be passing through Oxford on Tuesdayand hope to see you and Sebastian. I would like to see you alone forfive minutes before I see him. Is that too much to ask? I will come toyour rooms at about twelve.

She came; she admired my rooms.... "My brothers Simon and Ned werehere, you know. Ned had rooms on the garden front. I wanted Sebastian tocome here, too, but my husband was at Christ Church and, as you know, hetook charge of Sebastian's education"; she admired my drawings..."everyone loves your paintings in the garden-room. We shall neverforgive you if you don't finish them." Finally, she came to her point.

"I expect you've guessed already what I have come to ask. Quite simply,is Sebastian drinking too much this term?"

I had guessed; I answered: "If he were, I shouldn't answer. As it is, Ican say, 'No.'"

She said: "I believe you. Thank God!" and we went together to luncheonat Christ Church.

That night Sebastian had his third disaster and was found by the juniordean at one o'clock, wandering round Tom Quad hopelessly drunk.

I had left him morose but completely sober at a few minutes beforetwelve. In the succeeding hour he had drunk half a bottle of whiskeyalone. He did not remember much about it when he came to tell me nextmorning.

"Have you been doing that a lot," I asked--"drinking by yourself afterI've gone?"

"About twice; perhaps four times. It's only when they start botheringme. I'd be all right if they'd only leave me alone."

"They won't now," I said.

"I know."

We both knew that this was a crisis. I had no love for Sebastian thatmorning; he needed it, but I had none to give.

"Really," I said, "if you are going to embark on a solitary bout ofdrinking every time you see a member of your family, it's perfectlyhopeless."

"Oh, yes," said Sebastian with great sadness. "I know. It's hopeless."

But my pride was stung because I had been made to look a liar and Icould not respond to his need.

"Well, what do you propose to do?"

"I shan't do anything. They'll do it all."

And I let him go without comfort.

Then the machinery began to move again, and I saw it all repeated as ithad happened in December; Mr. Samgrass and Monsignor Bell saw the Deanof Christ Church; Brideshead came up for a night; the heavy wheelsstirred and the small wheels spun. Everyone was exceedingly sorry forLady Marchmain, whose brothers' names stood in letters of gold on thewar memorial, whose brothers' memory was fresh in many breasts.

She came to see me and, again, I must reduce to a few words aconversation which took us from Holywell to the Parks, throughMesopotamia, and over the ferry to North Oxford, where she was stayingthe night with a houseful of nuns who were in some way under herprotection.

"You must believe," I said, "that when I told you Sebastian was notdrinking, I was telling you the truth, as I knew it."

"I know you wish to be a good friend to him."

"That is not what I mean. I believed what I told you. I still believe itto some extent. I believe he has been drunk two or three times before,not more."

"It's no good, Charles," she said. "All you can mean is that you havenot as much influence or knowledge of him as I thought. It is no goodeither of us trying to believe him. I've known drunkards before. One ofthe most terrible things about them is their deceit. Love of truth isthe first thing that goes.

"After that happy luncheon together. When you left he was so sweet tome, just as he used to be as a little boy, and I agreed to all hewanted. You know I had been doubtful about his sharing rooms with you. Iknow you'll understand me when I say that. You know that we are all fondof you apart from your being Sebastian's friend. We should miss you somuch if you ever stopped coming to stay with us. But I want Sebastian tohave all sorts of friends, not just one. Monsignor Bell tells me henever mixes with the other Catholics, never goes to the Newman, veryrarely goes to mass even. Heaven forbid that he should only knowCatholics, but he must know some. It needs a very strong faith tostand entirely alone and Sebastian isn't strong.

"But I was so happy at luncheon on Tuesday that I gave up all myobjections; I went round with him and saw the rooms you had chosen. Theyare charming. And we decided on some furniture you could have fromLondon to make them nicer. And then, on the very night after I had seenhim! No, Charles, it is not in the Logic of the Thing."

As she said it I thought, That's a phrase she's picked up from one ofher intellectual hangers-on.

"Well," I said, "have you a remedy?"

"The College are being extraordinarily kind. They say they will not sendhim down provided he goes to live with Monsignor Bell. It's not a thingI could have suggested myself, but it was the Monsignor's own idea. Hespecially sent a message to you to say how welcome you would always be.There's not room for you actually in the old Palace, but I daresay youwouldn't want that yourself."

"Lady Marchmain, if you want to make him a drunkard that's the way to doit. Don't you see that any idea of his being watched would be fatal?"

"Oh, dear, it's no good trying to explain. Protestants always thinkCatholic priests are spies."

"I don't mean that." I tried to explain but made a poor business of it."He must feel free."

"But he's been free, always, up till now, and look at the result."

We had reached the ferry; we had reached a deadlock. With scarcelyanother word I saw her to the convent, then took the bus back to Carfax.

Sebastian was in my rooms waiting for me. "I'm going to cable to Papa,"he said. "He won't let them force me into this priest's house."

"But if they make it a condition of your coming up?"

"I shan't come up. Can you imagine me--serving mass twice a week,helping at tea parties for shy Catholic freshmen, dining with thevisiting lecturer at the Newman, drinking a glass of port when we haveguests, with Monsignor Bell's eye on me to see I don't get too much,being explained, when I was out of the room, as the rather embarrassinglocal inebriate who's being taken in because his mother is so charming?"

"I told her it wouldn't do," I said.

"Shall we get really drunk to-night?"

"It's the one time it could do no conceivable harm," I said.

"Contra mundum?"

"Contra mundum."

"Bless you, Charles. There aren't many evenings left to us."

And that night, the first time for many weeks, we got deliriously drunktogether; I saw him to the gate as all the bells were striking midnight,and reeled back to my rooms under a starry heaven which swam dizzilyamong the towers, and fell asleep in my clothes as I had not done for ayear.

* * * * *

Next day Lady Marchmain left Oxford, taking Sebastian with her.Brideshead and I went to his rooms to sort out what he would have senton and what leave behind.

Brideshead was as grave and impersonal as ever. "It's a pity Sebastiandoesn't know Monsignor Bell better," he said. "He'd find him a charmingman to live with. I was there my last year. My mother believes Sebastianis a confirmed drunkard. Is he?"

"He's in danger of becoming one."

"I believe God prefers drunkards to a lot of respectable people."

"For God's sake," I said, for I was near to tears that morning, "whybring God into everything?"

"I'm sorry. I forgot. But you know that's an extremely funny question."

"Is it?"

"To me. Not to you."

"No, not to me. It seems to me that without your religion Sebastianwould have the chance to be a happy and healthy man."

"It's arguable," said Brideshead. "Do you think he will need thiselephant's-foot again?"

That evening I went across the quad to visit Collins. He was alone withhis texts working by the failing light at his open window. "Hullo," hesaid. "Come in. I haven't seen you all the term. I'm afraid I've nothingto offer you. Why have you deserted the smart set?"

"I'm the loneliest man in Oxford," I said. "Sebastian Flyte's been sentdown."

Presently I asked him what he was doing in the Long Vacation. He toldme; it sounded excruciatingly dull. Then I asked him if he had got digsfor next term. Yes, he told me, rather far out but very comfortable. Hewas sharing with Tyngate, the secretary of the College Essay Society.

"There's one room we haven't filled yet. Barker was coming, but he feelsnow he's standing for president of the Union he ought to be nearer in."

It was in both our minds that perhaps I might take that room.

"Where are you going?"

"I was going to Merton Street with Sebastian Flyte. That's no usenow."

Still neither of us made the suggestion and the moment passed. When Ileft he said, "I hope you find someone for Merton Street," and I said,"I hope you find someone for the Iffley Road," and I never spoke to himagain.

There was only ten days of term to go; I got through them somehow andreturned to London as I had done in such different circ*mstances theyear before, with no plans made.

"That very good-looking friend of yours," asked my father--"is he notwith you?"

"No."

"I quite thought he had taken this over as his home. I'm sorry. I likedhim."

"Father, do you particularly want me to take my degree?"

"I want you to? Good gracious, why should I want such a thing? No useto me. Not much use to you either, as far as I've seen."

"That's exactly what I've been thinking. I thought perhaps it was rathera waste of time going back to Oxford."

Until then my father had taken only a limited interest in what I wassaying; now he put down his book, took off his spectacles, and looked atme hard. "You've been sent down," he said. "My brother warned me ofthis."

"No, I've not."

"Well, then, what's all the talk about?" he asked testily, resuming hisspectacles, searching for his place on the page. "Everyone stays up atleast three years. I knew one man who took seven to get a pass degree intheology."

"I only thought that if I was not going to take up one of theprofessions where a degree is necessary, it might be best to start nowon what I intend doing. I intend to be a painter."

But to this my father made no answer at the time.

The idea, however, seemed to take root in his mind; by the time we spokeof the matter again it was firmly established.

"When you're a painter," he said suddenly at Sunday luncheon, "you'llneed a studio."

"Yes."

"Well, there isn't a studio here. There isn't even a room you coulddecently use as a studio. I'm not going to have you painting in thegallery."

"No. I never meant to."

"Nor will I have undraped models all over the house, nor critics withtheir horrible jargon. And I don't like the smell of turpentine. Ipresume you intend to do the thing thoroughly and use oil paint?" Myfather belonged to a generation which divided painters into the seriousand the amateur, according as they used oil or water.

"I don't suppose I should do much painting the first year. Anyway, Ishould be working at a school."

"Abroad?" asked my father hopefully. "There are some excellent schoolsabroad I believe."

It was all happening rather faster than I had intended.

"Abroad or here. I should have to look round first."

"Look round abroad," he said.

"Then you agree to my leaving Oxford?"

"Agree? Agree? My dear boy, you're twenty-two."

"Twenty," I said, "twenty-one in October."

"Is that all? It seems much longer."

* * * * *

A letter from Lady Marchmain completes this episode.

My dear Charles [she wrote],

Sebastian left me this morning to join his father abroad. Before he went I asked him if he had written to you. He said no, so I must write, tho' I can hardly hope to say in a letter what I could not say on our last walk. But you must not be left in silence.

The College has sent Sebastian down for a term only, and will take him back after Christmas on condition he goes to live with Mgr. Bell. It is for him to decide. Meanwhile Mr. Samgrass has very kindly consented to take charge of him. As soon as his visit to his father is over Mr. Samgrass will pick him up and they will go together to the Levant, where Mr. Samgrass has long been anxious to investigate a number of orthodox monasteries. He hopes this may be a new interest for Sebastian.

Sebastian's stay here has not been happy.

When they come home at Christmas I know Sebastian will want to see you, and so shall we all. I hope your arrangements for next term have not been too much upset and that everything will go well with you.

Yours sincerely,
TERESA MARCHMAIN

I went to the garden-room this morning and was so very sorry.

Chapter Six

"And when we reached the top of the pass," said Mr. Samgrass, "we heardthe galloping horses behind, and two soldiers rode up to the head of thecaravan and turned us back. The General had sent them, and they reachedus only just in time. There was a band, not a mile ahead."

He paused, and his small audience sat silent, conscious that he hadsought to impress them but in doubt as to how they could politely showtheir interest.

"A band?" said Julia. "Goodness!"

Still he seemed to expect more. At last Lady Marchmain said, "I supposethe sort of folk-music you get in those parts is very monotonous."

"Dear Lady Marchmain, a band of brigands." Cordelia, beside me on thesofa, began to giggle noiselessly. "The mountains are full of them.Stragglers from Kemal's army; Greeks who got cut off in the retreat.Very desperate fellows, I assure you."

"Do pinch me," whispered Cordelia.

I pinched her and the agitation of the sofa-springs ceased.

"Thanks," she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

"So you never got to wherever-it-was," said Julia. "Weren't you terriblydisappointed, Sebastian?"

"Me?" said Sebastian from the shadows beyond the lamplight, beyond thewarmth of the burning logs, beyond the family circle and the photographsspread out on the card-table. "Me? Oh, I don't think I was there thatday, was I, Sammy?"

"That was the day you were ill."

"I was ill," he repeated like an echo, "so I never should have got towherever-it-was, should I, Sammy?"

"Now this, Lady Marchmain, is the caravan at Aleppo in the courtyardof the inn. That's our Armenian cook, Begedbian; that's me on the pony;that's the tent folded up; that's a rather tiresome Kurd who wouldfollow us about at the time.... Here I am in Pontus, Ephesus,Trebizond, Krak-des-chevaliers, Samothrace, Batum--of course, I haven'tgot them in chronological order yet."

"All guides and ruins and mules," said Cordelia. "Where's Sebastian?"

"He," said Mr. Samgrass, with a hint of triumph in his voice, as thoughhe had expected the question and prepared the answer, "he held thecamera. He became quite an expert as soon as he learned not to put hishand over the lens, didn't you, Sebastian?"

There was no answer from the shadows. Mr. Samgrass delved again into hispig-skin satchel.

"Here," he said, "is a group taken by a street photographer on theterrace of the St. George Hotel at Beirut. There's Sebastian."

"Why," I said, "there's Anthony Blanche, surely?"

"Yes, we saw quite a lot of him; met him by chance at Constantinople. Adelightful companion. I can't think how I missed knowing him. He camewith us all the way to Beirut."

Tea had been cleared away and the curtains drawn. It was two days afterChristmas, the first evening of my visit; the first, too, of Sebastian'sand Mr. Samgrass's, whom to my surprise I had found on the platform whenI arrived.

Lady Marchmain had written three weeks before: I have just heard fromMr. Samgrass that he and Sebastian will be home for Christmas as wehoped. I had not heard from them for so long that I was afraid they werelost and did not want to make any arrangements until I knew. Sebastianwill be longing to see you. Do come to us for Christmas if you canmanage it, or as soon after as you can.

Christmas with my uncle was an engagement I could not break, so Itravelled across country and joined the local train midway, expecting tofind Sebastian already established; there he was, however, in the nextcarriage to mine, and when I asked him what he was doing Mr. Samgrassreplied with such glibness and at such length, telling me of mislaidluggage and of Cook's being shut over the holidays, that I was at onceaware of some other explanation which was being withheld.

Mr. Samgrass was not at ease; he maintained all the physical habits ofself-confidence, but guilt hung about him like stale cigar smoke, and inLady Marchmain's greeting of him I caught a note of anticipation. Hekept up a lively account of his tour during tea, and then Lady Marchmaindrew him away with her, upstairs, for a "little talk." I watched him gowith something near compassion; it was plain to anyone with a pokersense that Mr. Samgrass held a very imperfect hand and, as I watched himat tea, I began to suspect that he was not only bluffing but cheating.There was something he must say, did not want to say, and did not quiteknow how to say to Lady Marchmain about his doings over Christmas, but,more than that, I guessed, there was a great deal he ought to say andhad no intention at all of saying about the whole Levantine tour.

"Come and see Nanny," said Sebastian.

"Please, can I come, too?" said Cordelia.

"Come on."

We climbed to the nursery in the dome. On the way Cordelia said: "Aren'tyou at all pleased to be home?"

"Of course I'm pleased," said Sebastian.

"Well, you might show it a bit. I've been looking forward to it somuch."

Nanny did not particularly wish to be talked to; she liked visitors bestwhen they paid no attention to her and let her knit away, and watchtheir faces and think of them as she had known them as small children;their present goings-on did not signify much beside those earlyillnesses and crimes.

"Well," she said, "you are looking peaky. I expect it's all thatforeign food doesn't agree with you. You must fatten up now you're back.Looks as though you'd been having some late nights, too, by the look ofyour eyes--dancing, I suppose." (It was ever Nanny Hawkins's belief thatthe upper classes spent most of their leisure evenings in the ballroom.)"And that shirt wants darning. Bring it to me before it goes to thewash."

Sebastian certainly did look ill; five months had wrought the change ofyears in him. He was paler, thinner, pouchy under the eyes, drooping inthe corners of his mouth, and he showed the scars of a boil on the sideof his chin; his voice seemed flatter and his movements alternatelylistless and jumpy; he looked down-at-heel, too, with clothes and hair,which formerly had been happily negligent, now unkempt; worst of all,there was a wariness in his eye which I had surprised there at Easter,and which now seemed habitual to him.

Restrained by this wariness I asked him nothing of himself, but told himinstead about my autumn and winter. I told him about my rooms in the IleSt.-Louis and the art school, and how good the old teachers were and howbad the students.

"They never go near the Louvre," I said, "or, if they do, it's onlybecause one of their absurd reviews has suddenly 'discovered' a masterwho fits in with that month's æsthetic theory. Half of them are out tomake a popular splash like Picabia; the other half quite simply want toearn their living doing advertisem*nts for Vogue and decorating nightclubs. And the teachers still go on trying to make them paint likeDelacroix."

"Charles," said Cordelia, "Modern Art is all bosh, isn't it?"

"Great bosh."

"Oh, I'm so glad. I had an argument with one of our nuns and she said weshouldn't try and criticize what we didn't understand. Now I shall tellher I have had it straight from a real artist, and snubs to her."

Presently it was time for Cordelia to go to her supper, and forSebastian and me to go down to the drawing-room for our co*cktails.Brideshead was there alone, but Wilcox followed on our heels to say tohim: "Her Ladyship would like to speak to you upstairs, my lord."

"That's unlike Mummy, sending for anyone. She usually lures them upherself."

There was no sign of the co*cktail tray. After a few minutes Sebastianrang the bell. A footman answered. "Mr. Wilcox is upstairs with herLadyship."

"Well, never mind, bring in the co*cktail things."

"Mr. Wilcox has the keys, my lord."

"Oh... well, send him in with them when he comes down."

We talked a little about Anthony Blanche--"He had a beard in Istanbul,but I made him take it off"--and after ten minutes Sebastian said:"Well, I don't want a co*cktail, anyway; I'm off to my bath," and leftthe room.

It was half-past seven; I supposed the others had gone to dress, but, asI was going to follow them, I met Brideshead coming down.

"Just a moment, Charles, there's something I've got to explain. Mymother has given orders that no drinks are to be left in any of therooms. You'll understand why. If you want anything, ring and askWilcox--only better wait until you're alone. I'm sorry, but there itis."

"Is that necessary?"

"I gather very necessary. You may or may not have heard, Sebastian hadanother outbreak as soon as he got back to England. He was lost overChristmas. Mr. Samgrass only found him yesterday evening."

"I guessed something of the kind had happened. Are you sure this is thebest way of dealing with it?"

"It's my mother's way. Will you have a co*cktail, now that he's goneupstairs?"

"It would choke me."

I was always given the room I had on my first visit; it was next toSebastian's, and we shared what had once been a dressing-room and hadbeen changed to a bathroom twenty years back by the substitution for thebed of a deep, copper, mahogany-framed bath, that was filled by pullinga brass lever heavy as a piece of marine engineering; the rest of theroom remained unchanged; a coal fire always burned there in winter. Ioften think of that bathroom--the water-colours dimmed by steam and thehuge towel warming on the back of the chintz armchair--and contrast itwith the uniform, clinical little chambers, glittering with chromiumplate and looking-glass, which pass for luxury in the modern world.

I lay in the bath and then dried slowly by the fire, thinking all thetime of my friend's black homecoming. Then I put on my dressing-gown andwent to Sebastian's room, entering, as I always did, without knocking.He was sitting by his fire half-dressed, and he started angrily when heheard me and put down a tooth-glass.

"Oh, it's you. You gave me a fright."

"So you got a drink," I said.

"I don't know what you mean."

"For Christ's sake," I said, "you don't have to pretend with me! Youmight offer me some."

"It's just something I had in my flask. I've finished it now."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing. A lot. I'll tell you sometime."

I dressed and called in for Sebastian, but found him still sitting as Ihad left him, half-dressed over his fire.

Julia was alone in the drawing-room.

"Well," I asked, "what's going on?"

"Oh, just another boring family potin. Sebastian got tight again, sowe've all got to keep an eye on him. It's too tedious."

"It's pretty boring for him, too."

"Well, it's his fault. Why can't he behave like anyone else? Talking ofkeeping an eye on people, what about Mr. Samgrass? Charles, do younotice anything at all fishy about that man?"

"Very fishy. Do you think your mother saw it?"

"Mummy only sees what suits her. She can't have the whole householdunder surveillance. I'm causing anxiety, too, you know."

"I didn't know," I said, adding humbly, "I've only just come fromParis," so as to avoid giving the impression that any trouble she mightbe in was not widely notorious.

It was an evening of peculiar gloom. We dined in the Painted Parlour.Sebastian was late, and so painfully excited were we, that I think itwas in all our minds that he would make some sort of low-comedyentrance, reeling and hiccuping. When he came it was, of course, withperfect propriety; he apologized, sat in the empty place and allowed Mr.Samgrass to resume his monologue, uninterrupted and, it seemed, unheard.Druses, patriarchs, icons, bed-bugs, romanesque remains, curious dishesof goat and sheeps' eyes, French and Turkish officials--all thecatalogue of Near Eastern travel was provided for our amusem*nt.

I watched the champagne go round the table. When it came to Sebastian hesaid: "I'll have whiskey, please," and I saw Wilcox glance over his headto Lady Marchmain and saw her give a tiny, hardly perceptible nod. AtBrideshead they used small individual spirit decanters which held abouta quarter of a bottle, and were always placed, full, before anyone whoasked for it; the decanter which Wilcox put before Sebastian was halfempty. Sebastian raised it very deliberately, tilted it, looked at it,and then in silence poured the liquor into his glass, where it coveredtwo fingers. We all began talking at once, all except Sebastian, so thatfor a moment Mr. Samgrass found himself talking to no one, telling thecandlesticks about the Maronites; but soon we fell silent again, and hehad the table until Lady Marchmain and Julia left the room.

"Don't be long, Bridey," she said, at the door, as she always said, andthat evening we had no inclination to delay. Our glasses were filledwith port and the decanter at once taken from the room. We drank quicklyand went to the drawing-room, where Brideshead asked his mother to read,and she read The Diary of a Nobody with great spirit until teno'clock, when she closed the book and said she was unaccountably tired,so tired that she would not visit the chapel that night.

"Who's hunting to-morrow?" she asked.

"Cordelia," said Brideshead. "I'm taking that young horse of Julia's,just to show him the hounds; I shan't keep him out more than a couple ofhours."

"Rex is arriving sometime," said Julia. "I'd better stay in to greethim."

"Where's the meet?" said Sebastian suddenly.

"Just here at Flyte St. Mary."

"Then I'd like to hunt, please, if there's anything for me."

"Of course. That's delightful. I'd have asked you, only you used alwaysto complain so of being made to go out. You can have Tinkerbell. She'sbeen going very nicely this season."

Everyone was suddenly pleased that Sebastian wanted to hunt; it seemedto undo some of the mischief of the evening. Brideshead rang the bellfor whiskey.

"Anyone else want any?"

"Bring me some, too," said Sebastian, and, though it was a footman thistime and not Wilcox, I saw the same exchange of glance and nod betweenthe servant and Lady Marchmain. Everyone had been warned. The two drinkswere brought in, poured out already in the glasses, like "doubles" at abar, and all our eyes followed the tray, as though we were dogs in adining-room smelling game.

The good humour engendered by Sebastian's wish to hunt persisted,however; Brideshead wrote out a note for the stables, and we all went upto bed quite cheerfully.

Sebastian got straight to bed; I sat by his fire and smoked a pipe. Isaid: "I rather wish I was coming out with you to-morrow."

"Well," he said, "you wouldn't see much sport. I can tell you exactlywhat I'm going to do. I shall leave Bridey at the first covert, hackover to the nearest good pub and spend the entire day quietly soaking inthe bar parlour. If they treat me like a dipsomaniac, they can bloodywell have a dipsomaniac. I hate hunting, anyway."

"Well, I can't stop you."

"You can, as a matter of fact--by not giving me any money. They stoppedmy banking account, you know, in the summer. It's been one of my chiefdifficulties. I pawned my watch and cigarette case to ensure a happyChristmas, so I shall have to come to you to-morrow for my day'sexpenses."

"I won't. You know perfectly well I can't."

"Won't you, Charles? Well, I daresay I shall manage on my own somehow.I've got rather clever at that lately--managing on my own. I've had to."

"Sebastian, what have you and Mr. Samgrass been up to?"

"He told you at dinner--ruins and guides and mules, that's what Sammy'sbeen up to. We decided to go our own ways, that's all. Poor Sammy'sreally behaved rather well so far. I hoped he would keep it up, but heseems to have been very indiscreet about my happy Christmas. I supposehe thought if he gave too good an account of me, he might lose his jobas keeper.

"He makes quite a good thing out of it, you know. I don't mean that hesteals. I should think he's fairly honest about money. He certainlykeeps an embarrassing little note-book in which he puts down all thetravellers' cheques he cashes and what he spends it on, for Mummy andthe lawyer to see. But he wanted to go to all these places, and it'svery convenient for him to have me to take him in comfort, instead ofgoing as dons usually do. The only disadvantage was having to put upwith my company, and we soon solved that for him.

"We began very much on a Grand Tour, you know, with letters to all thechief people everywhere, and stayed with the Military Governor at Rhodesand the Ambassador at Constantinople. That was what Sammy had signed onfor in the first place. Of course, he had his work cut out keeping hiseye on me, but he warned all our hosts beforehand that I was notresponsible."

"Sebastian."

"Not quite responsible--and as I had no money to spend I couldn't getaway very much. He even did the tipping for me, put the note into theman's hand and jotted the amount down then and there in his note-book.My lucky time was at Constantinople. I managed to make some money atcards one evening when Sammy wasn't looking. Next day I gave him theslip and was having a very happy hour in the bar at the Tokatlian whenwho should come in but Anthony Blanche with a beard and a Jew boy.Anthony lent me a tenner just before Sammy came panting in andrecaptured me. After that I didn't get a minute out of sight; theEmbassy staff put us in the boat to Piræus and watched us sail away. Butin Athens it was easy. I simply walked out of the Legation one day afterlunch, changed my money at Cook's, and asked about sailings toAlexandria just to fox Sammy, then went down to the port in a bus, founda sailor who spoke American, lay up with him till his ship sailed, andpopped back to Constantinople, and that was that.

"Anthony and the Jew boy shared a very nice, tumble-down house near thebazaars. I stayed there till it got too cold, then Anthony and I driftedSouth till we met Sammy by appointment in Syria three weeks ago."

"Didn't Sammy mind?"

"Oh, I think he quite enjoyed himself in his own ghastly way--only ofcourse there was no more high life for him. I think he was a bit anxiousat first. I didn't want him to get the whole Mediterranean Fleet out, soI cabled him from Constantinople that I was quite well and would he sendmoney to the Ottoman Bank. He came hopping over as soon as he got mycable. Of course he was in a difficult position, because I'm of age andnot certified yet, so he couldn't have me arrested. He couldn't leave meto starve while he was living on my money, and he couldn't tell Mummywithout looking pretty silly. I had him all ways, poor Sammy. Myoriginal idea had been to leave him flat, but Anthony was very helpfulabout that, and said it was far better to arrange things amicably; andhe did arrange things very amicably. So here I am."

"After Christmas."

"Yes, I was determined to have a happy Christmas."

"Did you?"

"I think so. I don't remember it much, and that's always a good sign,isn't it?"

* * * * *

Next morning at breakfast Brideshead wore scarlet; Cordelia, very smartherself, with her chin held high over her white stock, wailed whenSebastian appeared in a tweed coat: "Oh, Sebastian, you can't come outlike that. Do go and change. You look so lovely in hunting clothes."

"Locked away somewhere. Gibbs couldn't find them."

"That's a fib. I helped get them out myself before you were called."

"Half the things are missing."

"It's so bad for local prestige. If you only knew how unsmart theStrickland-Venableses are this year. They've even taken their grooms outof top-hats."

It was quarter to eleven before the horses were brought round, but noone else appeared downstairs; it was as though they were in hiding,listening for Sebastian's retreating hooves before showing themselves.

Just as he was about to start, when the others were already mounted,Sebastian beckoned me into the hall. On the table beside his hat,gloves, whip and sandwiches, lay the flask he had put out to be filled.He picked it up and shook it; it was empty.

"You see," he said, "I can't even be trusted that far. It's they who aremad, not me. Now you can't refuse me money."

I gave him a pound.

"More," he said.

I gave him another and watched him mount and trot after his brother andsister.

Then, as though it were his cue on the stage, Mr. Samgrass came to myelbow, put an arm in mine, and led me back to the fire. He warmed hisneat little hands and then turned to warm his seat.

"So Sebastian is in pursuit of the fox," he said, "and our littleproblem is shelved for an hour or two?"

I was not going to stand this from Mr. Samgrass.

"I heard all about your Grand Tour, last night," I said.

"Ah, I rather supposed you might have." Mr. Samgrass was undismayed,relieved, it seemed, to have someone else in the know. "I did not harrowour hostess with all that. After all, it turned out far better than onehad any right to expect. I did feel, however, that some explanation wasdue to her of Sebastian's Christmas festivities. You may have observedlast night that there were certain precautions."

"I did."

"You thought them excessive? I am with you, particularly as they tend tocompromise the comfort of our own little visit. I have seen LadyMarchmain this morning. You must not suppose I am just out of bed. Ihave had a little talk upstairs with our hostess. I think we may hopefor some relaxation to-night. Yesterday was not an evening that any ofus would wish to have repeated. I earned less gratitude than I deserved,I think, for my efforts to distract you."

It was repugnant to me to talk about Sebastian to Mr. Samgrass, but Iwas compelled to say: "I'm not sure that to-night would be the best timeto start the relaxation."

"But surely? Why not to-night, after a day in the field underBrideshead's inquisitorial eye? Could one choose better?"

"Oh, I suppose it's none of my business really."

"Nor mine strictly, now that he is safely home. Lady Marchmain did methe honour of consulting me. But it is less Sebastian's welfare than ourown I have at heart at the moment. I need my third glass of port; I needthat hospitable tray in the library. And yet you specifically adviseagainst it to-night. I wonder why. Sebastian can come to no mischiefto-day. For one thing, he has no money. I happen to know. I saw to it. Ieven have his watch and cigarette case upstairs. He will be quiteharmless... as long as no one is so wicked as to give him any...Ah, Lady Julia, good morning to you, good morning. And how is the Pekethis hunting morning?"

"Oh, the Peke's all right. Listen. I've got Rex Mottram coming hereto-day. We simply can't have another evening like last night. Someonemust speak to Mummy."

"Someone has. I spoke. I think it will be all right."

"Thank God for that. Are you painting to-day, Charles?"

It had been the custom that on every visit to Brideshead I painted amedallion on the walls of the garden-room. The custom suited me well,for it gave me a good reason to detach myself from the rest of theparty; when the house was full the garden-room became a rival to thenursery, where from time to time people took refuge to complain aboutthe others; thus without effort I kept in touch with the gossip of theplace. There were three finished medallions now, each rather pretty inits way, but unhappily each in a different way, for my tastes hadchanged and I had become more dexterous in the eighteen months since theseries was begun. As a decorative scheme, they were a failure. Thatmorning was typical of the many mornings when I had found thegarden-room a sanctuary. There I went and was soon at work. Julia camewith me to see me started and we talked, inevitably, of Sebastian.

"Don't you get bored with the subject?" she asked. "Why must everyonemake such a Thing about it?"

"Just because we're fond of him."

"Well, I'm fond of him too, in a way, I suppose, only I wish he'd behavelike anybody else. I've grown up with one family skeleton, youknow--Papa. Not to be talked of before the servants, not to be talked ofbefore us when we were children. If Mummy is going to start making askeleton out of Sebastian, it's too much. If he wants to be alwaystight, why doesn't he go to Kenya or somewhere where it doesn't matter?"

"Why does it matter less being unhappy in Kenya than anywhere else?"

"Don't pretend to be stupid, Charles. You understand perfectly."

"You mean there won't be so many embarrassing situations for you? Well,all I was trying to say was that I'm afraid there may be an embarrassingsituation to-night if Sebastian gets the chance. He's in a bad mood."

"Oh, a day's hunting will put that all right."

It was touching to see the faith which everybody put in the value of aday's hunting. Lady Marchmain, who looked in on me during the morning,mocked herself for it with that delicate irony for which she was famous.

"I've always detested hunting," she said, "because it seems to produce aparticularly gross kind of caddishness in the nicest people. I don'tknow what it is, but the moment they dress up and get on a horse theybecome like a lot of Prussians. And so boastful after it. The eveningsI've sat at dinner appalled at seeing the men and women I know,transformed into half-awake, self-opinionated, monomaniac louts!...And yet, you know--it must be something derived from centuries ago--myheart is quite light to-day to think of Sebastian out with them.'There's nothing wrong with him really,' I say, 'he's gone hunting'--asthough it were an answer to prayer."

She asked me about my life in Paris. I told her of my rooms with theirview of the river and the towers of Notre Dame. "I'm hoping Sebastianwill come and stay with me when I go back."

"It would have been lovely," said Lady Marchmain, sighing as though forthe unattainable.

"I hope he's coming to stay with me in London."

"Charles, you know it isn't possible. London's the worst place. Even Mr.Samgrass couldn't hold him there. We have no secrets in this house. Hewas lost, you know, all through Christmas. Mr. Samgrass only found himbecause he couldn't pay his bill in the place where he was, so theytelephoned our house. It's too horrible. No, London is impossible; if hecan't behave himself here, with us... We must keep him happy andhealthy here for a bit, hunting, and then send him abroad again with Mr.Samgrass.... You see, I've been through all this before."

The retort was there, unspoken, well-understood by both of us--Youcouldn't keep him; he ran away. So will Sebastian. Because they bothhate you.

A horn and the huntsman's cry sounded in the valley below us.

"There they go now, drawing the home woods. I hope he's having a goodday."

Thus with Julia and Lady Marchmain I reached deadlock, not because wefailed to understand one another, but because we understood too well.With Brideshead, who came home to luncheon and talked to me on thesubject--for the subject was everywhere in the house like a fire deep inthe hold of a ship, below the water-line, black and red in the darkness,coming to light in acrid wisps of smoke that curled up the ladders,crept between decks, oozed under hatches, hung in wreaths on the flats,billowed suddenly from the scuttles and air pipes--with Brideshead, Iwas in a strange world, a dead world to me, in a moon-landscape ofbarren lava, on a plateau where the air struck chill, a high place ofunnaturally clear eyes and of toiling lungs.

He said: "I hope it is dipsomania. That is simply a great misfortunethat we must all help him bear. What I used to fear was that he just gotdrunk deliberately when he liked and because he liked."

"That's exactly what he did--what we both did. It's what he does with menow. I can keep him to that, if only your mother would trust me. If youworry him with keepers and cures he'll be a physical wreck in a fewyears."

"There's nothing wrong in being a physical wreck, you know. There's nomoral obligation to be Postmaster-General or Master of Foxhounds or tolive to walk ten miles at eighty."

"Wrong," I said. "Moral obligation--now you're back on religionagain."

"I never left it," said Brideshead.

"D'you know, Bridey, if I ever felt for a moment like becoming aCatholic, I should only have to talk to you for five minutes to becured. You manage to reduce what seem quite sensible propositions tostark nonsense."

"It's odd you should say that. I've heard it before from other people.It's one of the many reasons why I don't think I should make a goodpriest. It's something in the way my mind works I suppose. I have toturn a thing round and round, like a piece of ivory in a Chinese puzzle,until--click!--it fits into place--but by that time it's upside down toeveryone else. But it's the same bit of ivory, you know."

At luncheon Julia had no thoughts except for her guest who was comingthat day. She drove to the station to meet him and brought him home totea.

"Mummy, do look at Rex's Christmas present."

It was a small tortoise with Julia's initials set in diamonds in theliving shell, and this slightly obscene object, now slipping impotentlyon the polished boards, now striding across the card-table, nowlumbering over a rug, now withdrawn at a touch, now stretching its neckand swaying its withered, antediluvian head, became a memorable part ofthe evening, one of those needle-hooks of experience which catch theattention when larger matters are at stake, and remain in the mind whenthey are forgotten, so that years later it is a bit of gilding, or acertain smell, or the tone of a clock's striking which recalls one to atragedy.

"Dear me," said Lady Marchmain. "I wonder if it eats the same sort ofthings as an ordinary tortoise."

"What will you do when it's dead?" asked Mr. Samgrass. "Can you haveanother tortoise fitted into the shell?"

Rex had been told about the problem of Sebastian--he could scarcely haveendured in that atmosphere without--and had a solution pat. Hepropounded it cheerfully and openly at tea, and after a day ofwhispering it was a relief to hear the thing discussed. "Send him toBorethus at Zurich. Borethus is the man. He works miracles every day atthat sanatorium of his. You know how Charlie Kilcartney used to drink."

"No," said Lady Marchmain, with that sweet irony of hers. "No, I'mafraid I don't know how Charlie Kilcartney drank."

Julia, hearing her lover mocked, frowned at the tortoise, but RexMottram was impervious to such delicate mischief.

"Two wives despaired of him," he said. "When he got engaged to Sylvia,she made it a condition that he should take the cure at Zurich. And itworked. He came back in three months a different man. And he hasn'ttouched a drop since, even though Sylvia walked out on him."

"Why did she do that?"

"Well, poor Charlie got rather a bore when he stopped drinking. Butthat's not really the point of the story."

"No, I suppose not. In fact, I suppose, really, it's meant to be anencouraging story."

Julia scowled at her jewelled tortoise.

"He takes sex cases, too, you know."

"Oh dear, what very peculiar friends poor Sebastian will make inZurich."

"He's booked up for months ahead, but I think he'd find room if I askedhim. I could telephone him from here to-night."

(In his kindest moments Rex displayed a kind of hectoring zeal as if hewere thrusting a vacuum cleaner on an unwilling housewife.)

"We'll think about it."

And we were thinking about it when Cordelia returned from hunting.

"Oh, Julia, what's that? How beastly."

"It's Rex's Christmas present."

"Oh, sorry. I'm always putting my foot in it. But how cruel! It musthave hurt frightfully."

"They can't feel."

"How d'you know? Bet they can."

She kissed her mother, whom she had not seen that day, shook hands withRex, and rang for eggs.

"I had one tea at Mrs. Barney's, where I telephoned for the car, but I'mstill hungry. It was a spiffing day. Jean Strickland-Venables fell inthe mud. We ran from Bengers to Upper Eastrey without a check. I reckonthat's five miles, don't you, Bridey?"

"Three."

"Not as he ran...." Between mouthfuls of scrambled egg she told usabout the hunt.... "You should have seen Jean when she came out ofthe mud."

"Where's Sebastian?"

"He's in disgrace." The words, in that clear, child's voice, had thering of a bell tolling, but she went on: "Coming out in that beastlyrat-catcher coat and mean little tie like something from CaptainMorvin's Riding Academy. I just didn't recognize him at the meet, and Ihope nobody else did. Isn't he back? I expect he got lost."

When Wilcox came to clear the tea, Lady Marchmain asked: "No sign ofLord Sebastian?"

"No, my lady."

"He must have stopped for tea with someone. How very unlike him."

Half an hour later, when Wilcox brought in the co*cktail tray, he said:"Lord Sebastian has just rung up to be fetched from South Twining."

"South Twining? Who lives there?"

"He was speaking from the hotel, my lady."

"South Twining?" said Cordelia. "Goodness, he did get lost!"

When he arrived he was flushed and his eyes were feverishly bright; Isaw that he was two-thirds drunk.

"Dear boy," said Lady Marchmain. "How nice to see you looking so wellagain. Your day in the open has done you good. The drinks are on thetable; do help yourself."

There was nothing unusual in her speech but the fact of her saying it.Six months ago it would not have been said.

"Thanks," said Sebastian. "I will."

* * * * *

A blow, expected, repeated, falling on a bruise, with no smart or shockof surprise, only a dull and sickening pain and the doubt whetheranother like it could be borne--that was how it felt, sitting oppositeSebastian at dinner that night, seeing his clouded eye and gropingmovements, hearing his thickened voice breaking in, ineptly, after longbrutish silences. When at length Lady Marchmain and Julia and theservants left us, Brideshead said: "You'd best go to bed, Sebastian."

"Have some port first."

"Yes, have some port if you want it. But don't come into thedrawing-room."

"Too bloody drunk," said Sebastian nodding heavily. "Like olden times.Gentlemen always too drunk join ladies in olden times."

("And yet, you know, it wasn't," said Mr. Samgrass, trying to bechatty with me about it afterwards, "it wasn't at all like olden times.I wonder where the difference lies. The lack of good humour? The lack ofcompanionship? You know I think he must have been drinking by himselfto-day. Where did he get the money?")

"Sebastian's gone up," said Brideshead when we reached the drawing-room.

"Yes? Shall I read?"

Julia and Rex played bezique; the tortoise, teased by the Pekinese,withdrew into his shell; Lady Marchmain read The Diary of a Nobodyaloud until, quite early, she said it was time for bed.

"Can't I stay up and play a little longer, Mummy? Just three games?"

"Very well, darling. Come in and see me before you go to bed. I shan'tbe asleep."

It was plain to Mr. Samgrass and me that Julia and Rex wanted to be leftalone, so we went, too; it was not plain to Brideshead, who settled downto read The Times, which he had not yet seen that day. Then, going toour side of the house, Mr. Samgrass said: "It wasn't at all like oldentimes."

Next morning I said to Sebastian: "Tell me honestly, do you want me tostay on here?"

"No, Charles, I don't believe I do."

"I'm no help?"

"No help."

So I went to make my excuses to his mother.

"There's something I must ask you, Charles. Did you give Sebastian moneyyesterday?"

"Yes."

"Knowing how he was likely to spend it?"

"Yes."

"I don't understand it," she said. "I simply don't understand how anyonecan be so callously wicked."

She paused, but I do not think she expected any answer; there wasnothing I could say unless I were to start all over again on thatfamiliar, endless argument.

"I'm not going to reproach you," she said. "God knows it's not for me toreproach anyone. Any failure in my children is my failure. But I don'tunderstand it. I don't understand how you can have been so nice in somany ways, and then do something so wantonly cruel. I don't understandhow we all liked you so much. Did you hate us all the time? I don'tunderstand how we deserved it."

I was unmoved; there was no part of me remotely touched by her distress.It was as I had often imagined being expelled from school. I almostexpected to hear her say: "I have already written to inform your unhappyfather." But as I drove away and turned back in the car to take whatpromised to be my last view of the house, I felt that I was leaving partof myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel thelack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do,frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without whichthey cannot pay their way to the nether world.

"I shall never go back," I said to myself.

A door had shut, the low door in the wall I had sought and found inOxford; open it now and I should find no enchanted garden.

I had come to the surface, into the light of common day and the freshsea-air, after long captivity in the sunless coral palaces and wavingforests of the ocean bed.

I had left behind me--what? Youth? Adolescence? Romance? The conjuringstuff of these things, "the Young Magician's Compendium," that neatcabinet where the ebony wand had its place beside the delusive billiardballs, the penny that folded double and the feather flowers that couldbe drawn into a hollow candle.

"I have left behind illusion," I said to myself. "Henceforth I live in aworld of three dimensions--with the aid of my five senses."

I have since learned that there is no such world; but then, as the carturned out of sight of the house, I thought it took no finding, but layall about me at the end of the avenue.

* * * * *

Thus I returned to Paris, and to the friends I had found there and thehabits I had formed. I thought I should hear no more of Brideshead, butlife has few separations as sharp as that. It was not three weeks beforeI received a letter in Cordelia's Frenchified convent hand:--

Darling Charles [she said],

I was so very miserable when you went. You might have come and said good-bye!

I heard all about your disgrace, and I am writing to say that I am in disgrace, too. I sneaked Wilcox's keys and got whiskey for Sebastian and got caught. He did seem to want it so. And there was (and is) an awful row.

Mr. Samgrass has gone (good!), and I think he is a bit in disgrace, too, but I don't know why.

Mr. Mottram is very popular with Julia (bad!) and is taking Sebastian away (bad! bad!) to a German doctor.

Julia's tortoise disappeared. We think it buried itself, as they do, so there goes a packet (expression of Mr. Mottram's).

I am very well.

With love from,
CORDELIA

It must have been about a week after receiving this letter that Ireturned to my rooms one afternoon to find Rex waiting for me.

It was about four, for the light began to fail early in the studio atthat time of year. I could see by the expression on the concierge'sface, when she told me I had a visitor waiting, that there was somethingimpressive upstairs; she had a vivid gift of expressing differences ofa*ge or attraction; this was the expression which meant someone of thefirst consequence, and Rex indeed seemed to justify it, as I found himin his big travelling coat, filling the window that looked over theriver.

"Well," I said. "Well."

"I came this morning. They told me where you usually lunched but Icouldn't see you there. Have you got him?"

I did not need to ask whom. "So he's given you the slip, too?"

"We got here last night and were going on to Zurich to-day. I left himat the Lotti after dinner, as he said he was tired, and went round tothe Travellers' for a game."

I noticed how, even with me, he was making excuses, as though rehearsinghis story for re-telling elsewhere. "As he said he was tired" was good.I could not well imagine Rex letting a half-tipsy boy interfere with hiscards.

"So you came back and found him gone?"

"Not at all. I wish I had. I found him sitting up for me. I had a run ofluck at the Travellers' and cleaned up a packet. Sebastian pinched thelot while I was asleep. All he left me was two first-class tickets toZurich stuck in the edge of the looking-glass. I had nearly threehundred quid, blast him!"

"And now he may be almost anywhere."

"Anywhere. You're not hiding him by any chance?"

"No. My dealings with that family are over."

"I think mine are just beginning," said Rex. "I say, I've got a lot totalk about, and I promised a chap at the Travellers' I'd give him hisrevenge this afternoon. Won't you dine with me?"

"Yes. Where?"

"I usually go to Ciro's."

"Why not Paillard's?"

"Never heard of it. I'm paying you know."

"I know you are. Let me order dinner."

"Well, all right. What's the place again?" I wrote it down for him. "Isit the sort of place you see native life?"

"Yes, you might call it that."

"Well, it'll be an experience. Order something good."

"That's my intention."

I was there twenty minutes before Rex. If I had to spend an evening withhim, it should, at any rate, be in my own way. I remember the dinnerwell--soup of oseille, a sole quite simply cooked in a white winesauce, a caneton à la presse, a lemon soufflé. At the last minute,fearing that the whole thing was too simple for Rex, I added caviareaux blinis. And for wine I let him give me a bottle of 1906 Montrachet,then at its prime, and, with the duck, a Clos de Bère of 1904.

Living was easy in France then; with the exchange as it was, myallowance went a long way and I did not live frugally. It was veryseldom, however, that I had a dinner like this, and I felt well disposedto Rex, when at last he arrived and gave up his hat and coat with theair of not expecting to see them again. He looked round the sombrelittle place with suspicion, as though hoping to see apaches or adrinking party of students. All he saw was four senators with napkinstucked under their beards eating in absolute silence. I could imaginehim telling his commercial friends later: "...interesting fellow Iknow; an art student living in Paris. Took me to a funny littlerestaurant--sort of place you'd pass without looking at--where there wassome of the best food I ever ate. There were half a dozen senatorsthere, too, which shows you it was the right place. Wasn't at all cheapeither."

"Any sign of Sebastian?" he asked.

"There won't be," I said, "until he needs money."

"It's a bit thick, going off like that. I was rather hoping that if Imade a good job of him, it might do me a bit of good in anotherdirection."

He plainly wished to talk of his own affairs; they could wait, Ithought, for the hour of tolerance and repletion, for the cognac; theycould wait until the attention was blunted and one could listen withhalf the mind only; now in the keen moment when the maître d'hôtel wasturning the blinis over in the pan, and, in the background, twohumbler men were preparing the press, we would talk of myself.

"Did you stay long at Brideshead? Was my name mentioned after I left?"

"Was it mentioned? I got sick of the sound of it, old boy. TheMarchioness got what she called a 'bad conscience' about you. She piledit on pretty thick, I gather, at your last meeting."

"'Callously wicked,' 'wantonly cruel.'"

"Hard words."

"'It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pieand eat you up.'"

"Eh?"

"A saying."

"Ah." The cream and hot butter mingled and overflowed separating eachglaucose bead of caviar from its fellows, capping it in white and gold.

"I like a bit of chopped onion with mine," said Rex. "Chap-who-knew toldme it brought out the flavour."

"Try it without first," I said. "And tell me more news of myself."

"Well, of course, Greenacre, or whatever he was called--the snootydon--he came a cropper. That was well received by all. He was theblue-eyed boy for a day or two after you left. Shouldn't wonder if hehadn't put the old girl up to pitching you out. He was always beingpushed down our throats, so in the end Julia couldn't bear it any moreand gave him away."

"Julia did?"

"Well, he'd begun to stick his nose into our affairs you see. Juliaspotted he was a fake, and one afternoon when Sebastian was tight--hewas tight most of the time--she got the whole story of the Grand Tourout of him. And that was the end of Mr. Samgrass. After that theMarchioness began to think she might have been a bit rough with you."

"And what about the row with Cordelia?"

"That eclipsed everything. That kid's a walking marvel--she'd beenfeeding Sebastian whiskey right under our noses for a week. We couldn'tthink where he was getting it. That's when the Marchioness finallycrumbled."

The soup was delicious after the rich blinis--hot, thin, bitter,frothy.

"I'll tell you a thing, Charles, that Ma Marchmain hasn't let on toanyone. She's a very sick woman. Might peg out any minute. GeorgeAnstruther saw her in the autumn and put it at two years."

"How on earth do you know?"

"It's the kind of thing I hear. With the way her family are going on atthe moment, I wouldn't give her a year. I know just the man for her inVienna. He put Sonia Bamfshire on her feet when everyone includingAnstruther had despaired of her. But Ma Marchmain won't do anythingabout it. I suppose it's something to do with her crack-brain religion,not to take care of the body."

The sole was so simple and unobtrusive that Rex failed to notice it. Weate to the music of the press--the crunch of the bones, the drip ofblood and marrow, the tap of the spoon basting the thin slices ofbreast. There was a pause here of a quarter of an hour, while I drankthe first glass of the Clos de Bère and Rex smoked his first cigarette.He leaned back, blew a cloud of smoke across the table and remarked,"You know, the food here isn't half bad; someone ought to take thisplace up and make something of it."

Presently he began again on the Marchmains:--

"I'll tell you another thing, too--they'll get a jolt financially soonif they don't look out."

"I thought they were enormously rich."

"Well, they are rich in the way people are who just let their money sitquiet. Everyone of that sort is poorer than they were in 1914, and theFlytes don't seem to realize it. I reckon those lawyers who manage theiraffairs find it convenient to give them all the cash they want and noquestions asked. Look at the way they live--Brideshead and MarchmainHouse both going full blast, pack of foxhounds, no rents raised, nobodysacked, dozens of old servants doing damn-all, being waited on by otherservants, and then besides all that there's the old boy setting up aseparate establishment--and setting it up on no humble scale either.D'you know how much they're overdrawn?"

"Of course I don't."

"Jolly near a hundred thousand in London. I don't know what they oweelsewhere. Well, that's quite a packet, you know, for people who aren'tusing their money. Ninety-eight thousand last November. It's the kindof thing I hear."

Those were the kind of things he heard, mortal illness and debt, Ithought.

I rejoiced in the Burgundy. How can I describe it? The Pathetic Fallacyresounds in all our praise of wine. For centuries every language hasbeen strained to define its beauty, and has produced only wild conceitsor the stock epithets of the trade. This Burgundy seemed to me, then,serene and triumphant, a reminder that the world was an older and betterplace than Rex knew, that mankind in its long passion had learnedanother wisdom than his. By chance I met this same wine again, lunchingwith my wine merchant in St. James's Street, in the first autumn of thewar; it had softened and faded in the intervening years, but it stillspoke in the pure, authentic accent of its prime and, that day, as atPaillard's with Rex Mottram years before, it whispered faintly, but inthe same lapidary phrase, the same words of hope.

"I don't mean that they'll be paupers; the old boy will always be goodfor an odd thirty thousand a year, but there'll be a shake-up comingsoon, and when the upper classes get the wind up, their first idea isusually to cut down on the girls. I'd like to get the little matter of amarriage settlement through, before it comes."

We had by no means reached the cognac, but here we were on the subjectof himself. In twenty minutes I should have been ready for all he had totell. I closed my mind to him as best I could and gave myself to thefood before me, but sentences came breaking in on my happiness,recalling me to the harsh, acquisitive world which Rex inhabited. Hewanted a woman; he wanted the best on the market, and he wanted hercheap; that was what it amounted to.

"...Ma Marchmain doesn't like me. Well, I'm not asking her to. It'snot her I want to marry. She hasn't the guts to say openly: 'You're nota gentleman. You're an adventurer from the Colonies.' She says we livein different atmospheres. That's all right, but Julia happens to fancymy atmosphere.... Then she brings up religion. I've nothing againsther Church; we don't take much account of Catholics in Canada, butthat's different; in Europe you've got some very posh Catholics. Allright, Julia can go to church whenever she wants to. I shan't try andstop her. It doesn't mean two pins to her, as a matter of fact, but Ilike a girl to have religion. What's more, she can bring the children upCatholic. I'll make all the 'promises' they want.... Then there's mypast. 'We know so little about you.' She knows a sight too much. You mayknow I've been tied up with someone else for a year or two."

I knew; everyone who had ever met Rex knew of his affair with BrendaChampion; knew also that it was from this affair that he derivedeverything which distinguished him from every other stock-jobber: hisgolf with the Prince of Wales, his membership of Bratt's, even hissmoking-room comradeship at the House of Commons; for, when he firstappeared there, his party chiefs did not say of him, "Look, there is thepromising young member for North Gridley who spoke so well on RentRestrictions." They said: "There's Brenda Champion's latest"; it haddone him a great deal of good with men; women he could usually charm.

"Well, that's all washed up. Ma Marchmain was too delicate to mentionthe subject; all she said was that I had 'notoriety.' Well, what doesshe expect as a son-in-law--a sort of half-baked monk like Brideshead?Julia knows all about the other thing; if she doesn't care, I don't seeit's anyone else's business."

After the duck came a salad of watercress and chicory in a faint mist ofchives. I tried to think only of the salad. I succeeded for a time inthinking only of the soufflé. Then came the cognac and the proper hourfor these confidences.

"...Julia's just rising twenty. I don't want to wait till she's ofa*ge. Anyway, I don't want to marry without doing the thing properly...nothing hole-in-corner.... I have to see she isn't jockeyed out ofher proper settlement. I've got to the time now when 'notoriety,' asMa Marchmain calls it, has done its bit. I need setting up solidly. Youknow--St. Margaret's, Westminster, or whatever Catholics have, royaltyand the Prime Minister photographed going in... and afterwards 'thebeautiful Lady Julia Mottram, leading young political hostess'...nothing hole-in-corner. So as the Marchioness won't play ball I'm off tosee the old man and square him. I gather he's likely to agree toanything he knows will upset her. He's at Monte Carlo at the moment. I'dplanned to go on there after dropping Sebastian off at Zurich. That'swhy it's such a bloody bore having lost him."

The cognac was not to Rex's taste. It was clear and pale and it came tous in a bottle free from grime and Napoleonic cyphers. It was only ayear or two older than Rex and lately bottled. They gave it to us invery thin tulip-shaped glasses of modest size.

"Brandy's one of the things I do know a bit about," said Rex. "This is abad colour. What's more, I can't taste it in this thimble."

They brought him a balloon the size of his head. He made them warm itover the spirit lamp. Then he rolled the splendid spirit round, buriedhis face in the fumes, and pronounced it the sort of stuff he put sodain at home.

So, shamefacedly, they wheeled out of its hiding place the vast andmouldy bottle they kept for people of Rex's sort.

"That's the stuff," he said, tilting the treacly concoction till it leftdark rings round the sides of his glass. "They've always got some tuckedaway, but they won't bring it out unless you make a fuss. Have some."

"I'm quite happy with this."

"Well, it's a crime to drink it, if you don't really appreciate it."

He lit his cigar and sat back at peace with the world; I, too, was atpeace in another world than his. We both were happy. He talked of Juliaand I heard his voice, unintelligible at a great distance, like a dog'sbarking miles away on a still night.

* * * * *

At the beginning of May the engagement was announced. I saw the noticein the Continental Daily Mail and assumed that Rex had "squared theold man." But things did not go as expected. The next news I had of themwas in the middle of June, when I read that they had been married veryquietly at the Savoy Chapel. No royalty was present; nor was the PrimeMinister; nor were any of Julia's family. It sounded like a"hole-in-the-corner" affair, but it was not for several years that Iheard the full story.

Chapter Seven

It is time to speak of Julia, who till now has played an intermittentand somewhat enigmatic part in Sebastian's drama. It was thus sheappeared to me at the time, and I to her. We pursued separate aims whichbrought us near to one another, but we remained strangers. She told melater that she had made a kind of note of me in her mind, as, scanningthe shelf for a particular book, one will sometimes have one's attentioncaught by another, take it down, glance at the title page and, saying "Imust read that, too, when I've the time," replace it and continue thesearch. On my side the interest was keener, for there was always thephysical likeness between brother and sister, which, caught repeatedlyin different poses, under different lights, each time pierced me anew;and, as Sebastian in his sharp decline seemed daily to fade and crumble,so much the more did Julia stand out clear and firm.

She was thin in those days, flat-chested, leggy; she seemed all limbsand neck, bodiless, spidery; thus far she conformed to the fashion, butthe hair-cut and the hats of the period, and the blank stare and gape ofthe period, and the clownish dabs of rouge high on the cheekbones, couldnot reduce her to type.

When I first met her, when she met me in the station yard and drove mehome through the twilight that high summer of 1923, she was justeighteen and fresh from her first London season.

Some said it was the most brilliant season since the war, that thingswere getting into their stride again. Julia, by right, was at the centreof it. There were then remaining perhaps half a dozen London houseswhich could be called "historic"; Marchmain House in St. James's was oneof them, and the ball given for Julia, in spite of the ignoble costumeof the time, was by all accounts a splendid spectacle. Sebastian wentdown for it and half-heartedly suggested my coming with him; I refusedand came to regret my refusal, for it was the last ball of its kindgiven there; the last of a splendid series.

How could I have known? There seemed time for everything in those days;the world was open to be explored at leisure. I was so full of Oxfordthat summer; London could wait, I thought.

The other great houses belonged to kinsmen or to childhood friends ofJulia's, and besides them there were countless substantial houses in thesquares of Mayfair and Belgravia, alight and thronged, one or other ofthem, night after night, their music floating out among the plane-trees,couples outside sauntering on the quiet pavements or breathing thesummer air from the balconies. Foreigners returning on post from theirown waste lands wrote home that here they seemed to catch a glimpse ofthe world they had believed lost for ever among the mud and wire, andthrough those halcyon weeks Julia darted and shone, part of the sunshinebetween the trees, part of the candlelight in the mirror's spectrum, sothat elderly men and women, sitting aside with their memories, saw heras herself the blue-bird.

"'Bridey' Marchmain's eldest girl," they said. "Pity he can't see herto-night."

That night and the night after and the night after, wherever she went,always in her own little circle of intimates, she brought to all whoseeyes were open to it a moment of joy, such as strikes deep to the hearton the river's bank when the kingfisher suddenly flames across dappledwater.

This was the creature, neither child nor woman, that drove me throughthe dusk that summer evening, untroubled by love, taken aback by thepower of her own beauty, hesitating on the steps of life; one who hadsuddenly found herself armed, unawares; the heroine of a fairy storyturning over in her hands the magic ring; she had only to stroke it withher fingertips, and whisper the charmed word, for the earth to open ather feet and belch forth her Titanic servant, the fawning monster whowould bring her whatever she asked, but bring it, perhaps, in unwelcomeshape.

She had no interest in me that evening; the jinn rumbled below usuncalled; she lived apart in a little world, within a little world, theinnermost of a system of concentric spheres, like the ivory ballslaboriously carved in ancient China; a little problem troubling hermind--little, as she saw it, in abstract terms and symbols. She waswondering, dispassionately and leagues distant from reality, whom sheshould marry. Thus strategists hesitate over the map, the few pins andlines of coloured chalk, contemplating a change in the pins and lines, amatter of inches, which outside the room, out of sight of the studiousofficers, may engulf past, present and future in ruin or life. She was asymbol to herself then, lacking the life of both child and woman;victory and defeat were changes of pin and line; she knew nothing ofwar.

"If only one lived abroad," she thought, "where these things arearranged between parents and lawyers."

To be married, soon and splendidly, was the unquestioned aim of all herfriends. If she looked further than the wedding, it was to see marriageas the beginning of individual existence; the skirmish where one gainedone's spurs, from which one set out on the true quests of life.

She outshone by far all the girls of her age, but she knew that, in thatlittle world within a world which she inhabited, there were certaingrave disabilities from which she suffered. On the sofas against thewall where the old people counted up the points, there were thingsagainst her. There was the scandal of her father; they had all loved himin the past, the women along the wall, and they most of them loved hermother, yet there was that slight, inherited stain upon her brightnessthat seemed deepened by something in her own way of life--waywardnessand wilfulness, a less disciplined habit than most of hercontemporaries'--that unfitted her for the highest honours; but forthat, who knows?...

One subject eclipsed all others in importance for the ladies along thewall; whom would the young princes marry? They could not hope for purerlineage or a more gracious presence than Julia's; but there was thisfaint shadow on her that unfitted her for the highest honours; there wasalso her religion.

Nothing could have been further from Julia's ambitions than a royalmarriage. She knew, or thought she knew, what she wanted and it was notthat. But wherever she turned, it seemed, her religion stood as abarrier between her and her natural goal.

As it seemed to her, the thing was a dead loss. If she apostasized now,having been brought up in the Church, she would go to hell, while theProtestant girls of her acquaintance, schooled in happy ignorance, couldmarry eldest sons, live at peace with their world, and get to heavenbefore her. There could be no eldest son for her, and younger sons wereindelicate things, necessary, but not to be much spoken of. Younger sonshad none of the privileges of obscurity; it was their plain duty toremain hidden until some disaster perchance promoted them to theirbrothers' places, and, since this was their function, it was desirablethat they should keep themselves wholly suitable for succession. Perhapsin a family of three or four boys, a Catholic might get the youngestwithout opposition. There were of course the Catholics themselves, butthese came seldom into the little world Julia had made for herself;those who did were her mother's kinsmen, who, to her, seemed grim andeccentric. Of the dozen or so wealthy and noble Catholic families, noneat that time had an heir of the right age. Foreigners--there were manyamong her mother's family--were tricky about money, odd in their ways,and a sure mark of failure in the English girl who wed them. What wasthere left?

This was Julia's problem after her weeks of triumph in London. She knewit was not insurmountable. There must, she thought, be a number ofpeople outside her own world who were well qualified to be drawn intoit; the shame was that she must seek them. Not for her the cruel,delicate luxury of choice, the indolent, cat-and-mouse pastimes of thehearth-rug. No Penelope she; she must hunt in the forest.

She had made a preposterous little picture of the kind of man who woulddo: he was an English diplomat of great but not very virile beauty, nowabroad, with a house smaller than Brideshead, nearer to London; he wasold, thirty-two or three, and had been recently and tragically widowed;Julia thought she would prefer a man a little subdued by earlier grief.He had a great career before him but had grown listless in hisloneliness; she was not sure he was not in danger of falling into thehands of an unscrupulous foreign adventuress; he needed a new infusionof young life to carry him to the Embassy at Paris. While professing amild agnosticism himself, he had a liking for the shows of religion andwas perfectly agreeable to having his children brought up Catholic; hebelieved, however, in the prudent restriction of his family to two boysand a girl, comfortably spaced over twelve years, and did not demand, asa Catholic husband might, yearly pregnancies. He had twelve thousand ayear above his pay, and no near relations. Someone like that would do,Julia thought, and she was in search of him when she met me at therailway station. I was not her man. She told me as much, without a word,when she took the cigarette from my lips.

All this I learned about Julia, bit by bit, from the stories she told,from guesswork, knowing her, from what her friends said, from the oddexpressions she now and then let slip, from occasional dreamy monologuesof reminiscences; I learned it as one does learn the former--as it seemsat the time, the preparatory--life of a woman one loves, so that onethinks of oneself as part of it, directing it by devious ways, towardsoneself.

* * * * *

Julia left Sebastian and me at Brideshead and went to stay with an aunt,Lady Rosscommon, in her villa at Cap Ferrat. All the way she ponderedher problem. She had given a name to her widower-diplomat; she calledhim "Eustace," and from that moment he became a figure of fun to her, alittle interior, incommunicable joke, so that when at last such a mandid cross her path--though he was not a diplomat but a wistful major inthe Life Guards--and fall in love with her and offer her just thosegifts she had chosen, she sent him away moodier and more wistful thanever, for by that time she had met Rex Mottram.

Rex's age was greatly in his favour, for among Julia's friends their wasa kind of gerontophilic snobbery; young men were held to be gauche andpimply; it was thought very much more chic to be seen lunching aloneat the Ritz--a thing, in any case, allowed to few girls of that day, tothe tiny circle of Julia's intimates; a thing looked at askance by theelders who kept the score, chatting pleasantly against the walls of theballrooms--at the table on the left as you came in, with a starched andwrinkled old roué whom your mother had been warned of as a girl, than inthe centre of the room with a party of exuberant young bloods. Rex,indeed, was neither starched nor wrinkled; his seniors thought him apushful young cad, but Julia recognized the unmistakable chic--theflavour of "Max" and "F.E." and the Prince of Wales, of the big table inthe Sporting Club, the second magnum and the fourth cigar, of thechauffeur kept waiting hour after hour without compunction--which herfriends would envy. His social position was unique; it had an air ofmystery, even of crime, about it; people said Rex went about armed.Julia and her friends had a fascinated abhorrence of what they called"Pont Street"; they collected phrases that damned their user, and amongthemselves--and often, disconcertingly, in public--talked a languagemade up of them. It was "Pont Street" to wear a signet ring and to givechocolates at the theatre; it was "Pont Street" at a dance to say, "CanI forage for you?" Whatever Rex might be, he was definitely not "PontStreet." He had stepped straight from the underworld into the world ofBrenda Champion, who was herself the innermost of a number of concentricivory spheres. Perhaps Julia recognized in Brenda Champion an intimationof what she and her friends might be in twelve years' time; there was anantagonism between the girl and the woman that was hard to explainotherwise. Certainly the fact of his being Brenda Champion's propertysharpened Julia's appetite for him.

Rex and Brenda Champion were staying at the next villa on Cap Ferrat,taken that year by a newspaper magnate and frequented by politicians.They would not normally have come within Lady Rosscommon's ambit, but,living so close, the parties mingled and at once Rex began warily to payhis court.

All that summer he had been feeling restless. Mrs. Champion had proved adead end; it had all been intensely exciting at first, but now thosebonds, so much more rigid than the bonds of marriage, had begun tochafe. Mrs. Champion lived as, he found, the English seemed apt to do,in a little world within a little world; Rex demanded a wider horizon.He wanted to consolidate his gains; to strike the black ensign, goashore, hang the cutlass up over the chimney and think about the crops.It was time he married; he, too, was in search of a "Eustace," but,living as he did, he met few girls. He knew of Julia; she was by allaccounts top débutante, a suitable prize.

With Mrs. Champion's cold eyes watching behind her sun glasses, therewas little Rex could do at Cap Ferrat except establish a friendlinesswhich could be widened later. He was never entirely alone with Julia,but he saw to it that she was included in most things they did; hetaught her chemin-de-fer, he arranged that it was always in his car thatthey drove to Monte Carlo or Nice; he did enough to make Lady Rosscommonwrite to Lady Marchmain, and Mrs. Champion move him, sooner than theyhad planned, to Antibes.

Julia went to Salzburg to join her mother.

"Aunt Fanny tells me you made great friends with Mr. Mottram. I'm surehe can't be very nice."

"I don't think he is," said Julia. "I don't know that I like nicepeople."

There is proverbially a mystery among most men of new wealth, how theymade their first ten thousand; it is the qualities they showed then,before they became bullies, when every man was someone to be placated,when only hope sustained them and they could count on nothing from theworld but what could be charmed from it, that make them, if they survivetheir triumph, successful with women. Rex, in the comparative freedom ofLondon, became abject to Julia; he planned his life about hers, goingwhere he would meet her, ingratiating himself with those who couldreport well of him to her; he sat on a number of charitable committeesin order to be near Lady Marchmain; he offered his services toBrideshead in getting him a seat in Parliament (but was there rebuffed);he expressed a keen interest in the Catholic Church until he found thatthis was no way to Julia's heart. He was always ready to drive her inhis Hispano wherever she wanted to go; he took her and parties of herfriends to ring-side seats at prize-fights and introduced themafterwards to the pugilists; and all the time he never once made love toher. From being agreeable, he became indispensable to her; from havingbeen proud of him in public she became a little ashamed, but by thattime, between Christmas and Easter, he had become indispensable. Andthen, without in the least expecting it, she suddenly found herself inlove.

It came to her, this disturbing and unsought revelation, one evening inMay, when Rex had told her he would be busy at the House, and, drivingby chance down Charles Street, she saw him leaving what she knew to beBrenda Champion's house. She was so hurt and angry that she could barelykeep up appearances through dinner; as soon as she could, she went homeand cried bitterly for ten minutes; then she felt hungry, wished she hadeaten more at dinner, ordered some bread-and-milk, and went to bedsaying: "When Mr. Mottram telephones in the morning, whatever time itis, say I am not to be disturbed."

Next day she breakfasted in bed as usual, read the papers, telephoned toher friends. Finally she asked: "Did Mr. Mottram ring up by any chance?"

"Oh yes, my lady, four times. Shall I put him through when he ringsagain?"

"Yes. No. Say I've gone out."

When she came downstairs there was a message for her on the hall table.Mr. Mottram expects Lady Julia at the Ritz at 1:30. "I shall lunch athome to-day," she said.

That afternoon she went shopping with her mother; they had tea with anaunt and returned at six.

"Mr. Mottram is waiting, my lady. I've shown him into the library."

"Oh, Mummy. I can't be bothered with him. Do tell him to go home."

"That's not at all kind, Julia. I've often said he's not my favouriteamong your friends, but I have grown quite used to him, almost to likehim. You really mustn't take people up and drop them likethis--particularly people like Mr. Mottram."

"Oh, Mummy, must I see him? There'll be a scene if I do."

"Nonsense, Julia, you twist that poor man round your finger."

So Julia went into the library and came out an hour later engaged to bemarried.

"Oh, Mummy, I warned you this would happen if I went in there."

"You did nothing of the kind. You merely said there would be a scene. Inever conceived of a scene of this kind."

"Anyway, you do like him, Mummy. You said so."

"He has been very kind in a number of ways. I regard him as entirelyunsuitable as your husband. So will everyone."

"Damn everybody."

"We know nothing about him. He may have black blood--in fact he issuspiciously dark. Darling, the whole thing's impossible. I can't seehow you can have been so foolish."

"Well, what right have I got otherwise to be angry with him if he goeswith that horrible old woman? You make a great thing about rescuingfallen women. Well, I'm rescuing a fallen man for a change. I'm savingRex from mortal sin."

"Don't be irreverent, Julia."

"Well, isn't it mortal sin to sleep with Brenda Champion?"

"Or indecent."

"He's promised never to see her again. I couldn't ask him to do thatunless I admitted I was in love with him, could I?"

"Mrs. Champion's morals, thank God, are not my business. Your happinessis. If you must know, I think Mr. Mottram a kind and useful friend, butI wouldn't trust him an inch, and I'm sure he'll have very unpleasantchildren. They always revert. I've no doubt you'll regret the wholething in a few days. Meanwhile nothing is to be done. No one must betold anything or allowed to suspect. You must stop lunching with him.You may see him here, of course, but nowhere in public. You had bettersend him to me and I will have a little talk to him about it."

Thus began a year's secret engagement for Julia; a time of great stress,for Rex made love to her that afternoon for the first time; not as hadhappened to her once or twice before with sentimental and uncertainboys, but with a passion that disclosed the corner of something like itin her. Their passion frightened her, and she came back from theconfessional one day determined to put an end to it.

"Otherwise I must stop seeing you," she said.

Rex was humble at once, just as he had been in the winter, day afterday, when he used to wait for her in the cold in his big car.

"If only we could be married immediately," she said.

For six weeks they remained at arm's length, kissing when they met andparted, sitting meantime at a distance, talking of what they would doand where they would live and of Rex's chances of anunder-secretaryship. Julia was content, deep in love, living in thefuture. Then, just before the end of the session, she learned that Rexhad been staying the week-end with a stockbroker at Sunningdale, when hesaid he was at his constituency, and that Mrs. Champion had been there,too.

On the evening she heard of this, when Rex came as usual to MarchmainHouse, they re-enacted the scene of two months before.

"What do you expect?" he said. "What right have you to ask so much, whenyou give so little?"

She took her problem to Farm Street and propounded it in general terms,not in the confessional, but in a dark little parlour kept for suchinterviews.

"Surely, Father, it can't be wrong to commit a small sin myself in orderto keep him from a much worse one?"

But the gentle old Jesuit was unyielding as rock. She barely listened tohim; he was refusing her what she wanted, that was all she needed toknow.

When he had finished he said, "Now you had better come to the church andmake your confession."

"No, thank you," she said, as though refusing the offer of something ina shop, "I don't think I want to to-day," and walked angrily home.

From that moment she shut her mind against her religion.

And Lady Marchmain saw this and added it to her new grief for Sebastianand her old grief for her husband and to the deadly sickness in herbody, and took all these sorrows with her daily to church; it seemed herheart was transfixed with the swords of her dolours, a living heart tomatch the plaster and paint; what comfort she took home with her, Godknows.

* * * * *

So the year wore on and the secret of the engagement spread from Julia'sconfidantes to their confidantes, and so, like ripples on the water, inever-widening circles, till there were hints of it in the press, andLady Rosscommon as Lady-in-Waiting was closely questioned about it, andsomething had to be done. Then, after Julia had refused to make herChristmas communion and Lady Marchmain had found herself betrayed firstby me, then by Mr. Samgrass, then by Cordelia, in the first grey days of1925, she decided to act. She forbade all talk of an engagement; sheforbade Julia and Rex ever to meet; she made plans for shuttingMarchmain House for six months and taking Julia on a tour of visits totheir foreign kinsmen. It was characteristic of an old, atavisticcallousness that went with her delicacy that, even at this crisis, shedid not think it unreasonable to put Sebastian in Rex's charge on thejourney to Dr. Borethus, and Rex, having failed her in that matter, wenton to Monte Carlo, where he completed her rout. Lord Marchmain did notconcern himself with the finer points of Rex's character; those, hebelieved, were his daughter's business. Rex seemed a rough, healthy,prosperous fellow whose name was already familiar to him from readingthe political reports; he gambled in an open-handed but sensible manner;he seemed to keep reasonably good company; he had a future; LadyMarchmain disliked him. Lord Marchmain was, on the whole, relieved thatJulia should have chosen so well, and gave his consent to an immediatemarriage.

Rex gave himself to the preparations with gusto. He bought her a ring,not, as she expected, from a tray at Cartier's, but in a back room inHatton Garden from a man who brought stones out of a safe in little bagsand displayed them for her on a writing-desk; then another man inanother back room made designs for the setting with a stub of pencil ona sheet of note-paper, and the result excited the admiration of all herfriends.

"How d'you know about these things, Rex?" she asked.

She was daily surprised by the things he knew and the things he did notknow; both, at the time, added to his attraction.

His present house in Westminster was large enough for them both, and hadlately been furnished and decorated by the most expensive firm. Juliasaid she did not want a home in the country yet; they could always takeplaces furnished when they wanted to go away.

There was trouble about the marriage settlement, with which Juliarefused to interest herself. The lawyers were in despair. Rex absolutelyrefused to settle any capital. "What do I want with trustee stock?" heasked.

"I don't know, darling."

"I make money work for me," he said. "I expect fifteen, twenty per cent,and I get it. It's pure waste tying up capital at three and a half."

"I'm sure it is, darling."

"These fellows talk as though I were trying to rob you. It's they whoare doing the robbing. They want to rob you of two thirds of the incomeI can make you."

"Does it matter, Rex? We've got heaps, haven't we?"

Rex hoped to have the whole of Julia's dowry in his hands, to make itwork for him. The lawyers insisted on tying it up, but they could notget, as they asked, a like sum from him. Finally, grudgingly, he agreedto insure his life, after explaining at length to the lawyers that thiswas merely a device for putting part of his legitimate profits intoother people's pockets; but he had some connection with an insuranceoffice which made the arrangement slightly less painful to him, by whichhe took for himself the agent's commission which the lawyers werethemselves expecting.

Last and least came the question of Rex's religion. He had once attendeda royal wedding in Madrid, and he wanted something of the kind forhimself.

"That's one thing your Church can do," he said: "put on a good show. Younever saw anything to equal the cardinals. How many do you have inEngland?"

"Only one, darling."

"Only one? Can we hire some others from abroad?"

It was then explained to him that a mixed marriage was a veryunostentatious affair.

"How d'you mean 'mixed'? I'm not a nigg*r or anything."

"No, darling--between a Catholic and a Protestant."

"Oh, that? Well, if that's all, it's soon unmixed. I'll become aCatholic. What does one have to do?"

Lady Marchmain was dismayed and perplexed by this new development; itwas no good her telling herself that in charity she must assume his goodfaith; it brought back memories of another courtship and anotherconversion.

"Rex," she said. "I sometimes wonder if you realize how big a thing youare taking on in the Faith. It would be very wicked to take a step likethis without believing sincerely."

He was masterly in his treatment of her.

"I don't pretend to be a very devout man," he said, "nor much of atheologian, but I know it's a bad plan to have two religions in onehouse. A man needs a religion. If your Church is good enough for Julia,it's good enough for me."

"Very well," she said, "I will see about having you instructed."

"Look, Lady Marchmain, I haven't the time. Instruction will be wasted onme. Just you give me the form and I'll sign on the dotted line."

"It usually takes some months--often a lifetime."

"Well, I'm a quick learner. Try me."

So Rex was sent to Farm Street to Father Mowbray, a priest renowned forhis triumphs with obdurate catechumens. After the third interview hecame to tea with Lady Marchmain.

"Well, how do you find my future son-in-law?"

"He's the most difficult convert I have ever met."

"Oh dear, I thought he was going to make it so easy."

"That's exactly it. I can't get anywhere near him. He doesn't seem tohave the least intellectual curiosity or natural piety.

"The first day I wanted to find out what sort of religious life he hadhad till now, so I asked him what he meant by prayer. He said: 'Idon't mean anything. You tell me.' I tried to, in a few words, andhe said: 'Right. So much for prayer. What's the next thing?' I gave himthe catechism to take away. Yesterday I asked him whether Our Lord hadmore than one nature. He said: 'Just as many as you say, Father.'

"Then again I asked him: 'Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloudand said "It's going to rain," would that be bound to happen?' 'Oh, yes,Father.' 'But supposing it didn't?' He thought a moment and said, 'Isuppose it would be sort of raining spiritually, only we were too sinfulto see it.'

"Lady Marchmain, he doesn't correspond to any degree of paganism knownto the missionaries."

"Julia," said Lady Marchmain, when the priest had gone, "are you surethat Rex isn't doing this thing purely with the idea of pleasing us?"

"I don't think it enters his head," said Julia.

"He's really sincere in his conversion?"

"He's absolutely determined to become a Catholic, Mummy," and to herselfshe said: In her long history the Church must have had some pretty queerconverts. I don't suppose all Clovis's army were exactlyCatholic-minded. One more won't hurt.

Next week the Jesuit came to tea again. It was the Easter holidays andCordelia was there, too.

"Lady Marchmain," he said. "You should have chosen one of the youngerfathers for this task. I shall be dead long before Rex is a Catholic."

"Oh dear, I thought it was going so well."

"It was, in a sense. He was exceptionally docile, said he acceptedeverything I told him, remembered bits of it, asked no questions. Iwasn't happy about him. He seemed to have no sense of reality, but Iknew he was coming under a steady Catholic influence, so I was willingto receive him. One has to take a chance sometimes--with semi-imbeciles,for instance. You never know quite how much they have understood. Aslong as you know there's someone to keep an eye on them, you do takethe chance."

"How I wish Rex could hear this!" said Cordelia.

"But yesterday I got a regular eye-opener. The trouble with moderneducation is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone overfifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's beenleft out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeablesurface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down intodepths of confusion you didn't know existed. Take yesterday. He seemedto be doing very well. He'd learned large bits of the catechism byheart, and the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary. Then I asked him asusual if there was anything troubling him, and he looked at me in acrafty way and said, 'Look, Father, I don't think you're being straightwith me. I want to join your Church and I'm going to join your Church,but you're holding too much back.' I asked what he meant, and he said:'I've had a long talk with a Catholic--a very pious, well-educated one,and I've learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleepwith your feet pointing East because that's the direction of heaven, andif you die in the night you can walk there. Now I'll sleep with my feetpointing any way that suits Julia, but d'you expect a grown man tobelieve about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one ofhis horses a cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the churchporch, and if you put in a pound note with someone's name on it, theyget sent to hell. I don't say there mayn't be a good reason for allthis,' he said, 'but you ought to tell me about it and not let me findout for myself.'"

"What can the poor man have meant?" said Lady Marchmain.

"You see he's a long way from the Church yet," said Father Mowbray.

"But who can he have been talking to? Did he dream it all? Cordelia,what's the matter?"

"What a chump! Oh, Mummy, what a glorious chump!"

"Cordelia, it was you."

"Oh, Mummy, who could have dreamed he'd swallow it? I told him such alot besides. About the sacred monkeys in the Vatican--all kinds ofthings."

"Well, you've very considerably increased my work," said FatherMowbray.

"Poor Rex," said Lady Marchmain. "You know, I think it makes him ratherlovable. You must treat him like an idiot child, Father Mowbray."

So the instruction was continued, and Father Mowbray at length consentedto receive Rex a week before his wedding.

"You'd think they'd be all over themselves to have me in," Rexcomplained. "I can be a lot of help to them one way and another; insteadthey're like the chaps who issue cards for a casino. What's more," headded, "Cordelia's got me so muddled I don't know what's in thecatechism and what she's invented."

Thus things stood three weeks before the wedding; the cards had goneout, presents were coming in fast, the bridesmaids were delighted withtheir dresses. Then came what Julia called "Bridey's bombshell."

With characteristic ruthlessness he tossed his load of explosive withoutwarning into what, till then, had been a happy family party. The libraryat Marchmain House was being devoted to wedding presents; LadyMarchmain, Julia, Cordelia and Rex were busy unpacking and listing them.Brideshead came in and watched them for a moment.

"Chinky vases from Aunt Betty," said Cordelia. "Old stuff. I rememberthem on the stairs at Buckborne."

"What's all this?" asked Brideshead.

"Mr., Mrs., and Miss Pendle-Garthwaite, one early-morning tea set.Goode's, thirty shillings, jolly mean."

"You'd better pack all that stuff up again."

"Bridey, what do you mean?"

"Only that the wedding's off."

"Bridey."

"I thought I'd better make some enquiries about my prospectivebrother-in-law, as no one else seemed interested," said Brideshead. "Igot the final answer to-night. He was married in Montreal in 1915 to aMiss Sarah Evangeline Cutler, who is still living there."

"Rex, is this true?"

Rex stood with a jade dragon in his hand looking at it critically; thenhe set it carefully on its ebony stand and smiled openly and innocentlyat them all.

"Sure it's true," he said. "What about it? What are you all looking sohit-up about? She isn't a thing to me. She never meant any good. I wasonly a kid, anyhow. The sort of mistake anyone might make. I got mydivorce back in 1919. I didn't even know where she was living tillBridey here told me. What's all the rumpus?"

"You might have told me," said Julia.

"You never asked. Honest, I've not given her a thought in years."

His sincerity was so plain that they had to sit down and talk about itcalmly.

"Don't you realize, you poor sweet oaf," said Julia, "that you can't getmarried as a Catholic when you've another wife alive?"

"But I haven't. Didn't I just tell you we were divorced six yearsago?"

"But you can't be divorced as a Catholic."

"I wasn't a Catholic and I was divorced. I've got the papers somewhere."

"But didn't Father Mowbray explain to you about marriage?"

"He said I wasn't to be divorced from you. Well, I don't want to be. Ican't remember all he told me--sacred monkeys, plenary indulgences, fourlast things--if I remembered all he told me I shouldn't have time foranything else. Anyhow, what about your Italian cousin, Francesca? Shemarried twice."

"She had an annulment."

"All right then, I'll get an annulment. What does it cost? Who do I getit from? Has Father Mowbray got one? I only want to do what's right.Nobody told me."

It was a long time before Rex could be convinced of the existence of aserious impediment to his marriage. The discussion took them to dinner,lay dormant in the presence of the servants, started again as soon asthey were alone, and lasted long after midnight. Up, down and round theargument circled and swooped like a gull, now out to sea, out of sight,cloud-bound, among irrelevances and repetitions, now right on the patchwhere the offal floated.

"What d'you want me to do? Who should I see?" Rex kept asking. "Don'ttell me there isn't someone who can fix this."

"There's nothing to do, Rex," said Brideshead. "It simply means yourmarriage can't take place. I'm sorry from everyone's point of view thatit's come so suddenly. You ought to have told us yourself."

"Look," said Rex. "Maybe what you say is right; maybe strictly by law Ishouldn't get married in your cathedral. But the cathedral is booked; noone there is asking any questions; the Cardinal knows nothing about it;Father Mowbray knows nothing about it. Nobody except us knows a thing.So why make a lot of trouble? Just stay mum and let the thing gothrough, as if nothing had happened. Who loses anything by that? Maybe Irisk going to hell. Well, I'll risk it. What's it got to do with anyoneelse?"

"Why not?" said Julia. "I don't believe these priests know everything. Idon't believe in hell for things like that. I don't know that I believein it for anything. Anyway, that's our lookout. We're not asking you torisk your souls. Just keep away."

"Julia, I hate you," said Cordelia, and left the room.

"We're all tired," said Lady Marchmain. "If there is anything to say,I'd suggest our discussing it in the morning."

"But there's nothing to discuss," said Brideshead, "except what is theleast offensive way we can close the whole incident. Mother and I willdecide that. We must put a notice in The Times and the Morning Post;the presents will have to go back. I don't know what is usual about thebridesmaids' dresses."

"Just a moment," said Rex. "Just a moment. Maybe you can stop usmarrying in your cathedral. All right, to hell, we'll be married in aProtestant church."

"I can stop that, too," said Lady Marchmain.

"But I don't think you will, Mummy," said Julia. "You see, I've beenRex's mistress for some time now, and I shall go on being, married ornot."

"Rex, is this true?"

"No, damn it, it's not," said Rex. "I wish it were."

"I see we shall have to discuss it all again in the morning," saidLady Marchmain faintly. "I can't go on any more now."

And she needed her son's help up the stairs.

* * * * *

"What on earth made you tell your mother that?" I asked, when, yearslater, Julia described the scene to me.

"That's exactly what Rex wanted to know. I suppose because I thought itwas true. Not literally--though you must remember I was only twenty, andno one really knows the 'facts of life' by being told them--but, ofcourse, I didn't mean it was true literally. I didn't know how else toexpress it. I meant I was much too deep with Rex just to be able to say'the marriage arranged will not now take place,' and leave it at that. Iwanted to be made an honest woman. I've been wanting it ever since--cometo think of it."

"And then?"

"And then the talks went on and on. Poor Mummy. And priests came into itand aunts came into it. There were all kinds of suggestions--that Rexshould go to Canada, that Father Mowbray should go to Rome and see ifthere were any possible grounds for an annulment; that I should goabroad for a year. In the middle of it Rex just telegraphed to Papa:'Julia and I prefer wedding ceremony take place by Protestant rites.Have you any objection?' He answered, 'Delighted,' and that settled thematter as far as Mummy stopping us legally went. There was a lot ofpersonal appeal after that. I was sent to talk to priests and nuns andaunts. Rex just went on quietly--or fairly quietly--with the plans.

"Oh, Charles, what a squalid wedding! The Savoy Chapel was the placewhere divorced couples got married in those days--a poky little placenot at all what Rex had intended. I wanted just to slip into a registryoffice one morning and get the thing over with a couple of charwomen aswitnesses, but nothing else would do but Rex had to have bridesmaids andorange blossoms and the wedding march. It was gruesome.

"Poor Mummy behaved like a martyr and insisted on my having her lace inspite of everything. Well, she more or less had to--the dress had beenplanned round it. My own friends came, of course, and the curiousaccomplices Rex called his friends; the rest of the party were veryoddly assorted. None of Mummy's family came, of course; one or two ofPapa's. All the stuffy people stayed away--you know, the Anchorages andChasms and Vanbrughs--and I thought, Thank God for that, they alwayslook down their noses at me, anyhow; but Rex was furious, because it wasjust them he wanted apparently.

"I hoped at one moment there'd be no party at all. Mummy said wecouldn't use Marchers, and Rex wanted to telegraph Papa and invade theplace with an army of caterers headed by the family solicitor. In theend it was decided to have a party the evening before at home to see thepresents--apparently that was all right according to Father Mowbray.Well, no one can ever resist going to see her own present, so that wasquite a success, but the reception Rex gave next day at the Savoy forthe wedding guests was very squalid.

"There was great awkwardness about the tenants. In the end Bridey wentdown and gave them a dinner and bonfire there, which wasn't at all whatthey expected in return for their silver soup-tureen.

"Poor Cordelia took it hardest. She had looked forward so much to beingmy bridesmaid--it was a thing we used to talk about long before I cameout--and of course she was a very pious child, too. At first shewouldn't speak to me. Then on the morning of the wedding--I'd moved toAunt Fanny Rosscommon's the evening before; it was thought moresuitable--she came bursting in before I was up, straight from FarmStreet, in floods of tears, begged me not to marry, then hugged me, gaveme a dear little brooch she'd bought, and said she prayed I'd always behappy. Always happy, Charles!

"It was an awfully unpopular wedding, you know. Everyone took Mummy'sside, as everyone always did--not that she got any benefit from it. Allthrough her life Mummy had all the sympathy of everyone except those sheloved. They all said I'd behaved abominably to her. In fact, poor Rexfound he'd married an outcast, which was exactly the opposite of allhe'd wanted.

"So you see things never looked like going right. There was a hoodoo onus from the start. But I was still nuts about Rex.

"Funny to think of, isn't it?

"You know Father Mowbray hit on the truth about Rex at once, that ittook me a year of marriage to see. He simply wasn't all there. He wasn'ta complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturallydeveloped; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. Ithought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was somethingabsolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age couldproduce. A tiny bit of a man pretending he was the whole.

"Well, it's all over now."

It was ten years later that she said this to me in a storm in theAtlantic.

Chapter Eight

I returned to London in the spring of 1926 for the General Strike.

It was the topic of Paris. The French, exultant as always at thediscomfiture of their former friends, and transposing into their ownprecise terms our mistier notions from across the Channel, foretoldrevolution and civil war. Every evening the kiosks displayed texts ofdoom, and in the cafés acquaintances greeted one half-derisively with:"Ha, my friend, you are better off here than at home, are you not?"until I, and several friends in circ*mstances like my own, cameseriously to believe that our country was in danger and that our dutylay there. We were joined by a Belgian Futurist, who lived under the, Ithink, assumed name of Jean de Brissac la Motte, and claimed the rightto bear arms in any battle anywhere against the lower classes.

We crossed together, in a high-spirited, male party, expecting to findunfolding before us at Dover the history so often repeated of late, withso few variations, from all parts of Europe, that I, at any rate, hadformed in my mind a clear, composite picture of Revolution--the red flagon the post office, the overturned tram, the drunken N.C.O.'s, the gaolopen and gangs of released criminals prowling the streets, the trainfrom the capital that did not arrive. One had read it in the papers,seen it in the films, heard it at café tables again and again for six orseven years now, till it had become part of one's experience, atsecondhand, like the mud of Flanders and the flies of Mesopotamia.

Then we landed and met the old routine of the customs sheds, thepunctual boat-train, the porters lining the platform at Victoria andconverging on the first-class carriages; the long line of waiting taxis.

"We'll separate," we said, "and see what's happening. We'll meet andcompare notes at dinner," but we knew already in our hearts that nothingwas happening; nothing, at any rate, which needed our presence.

"Oh dear," said my father, meeting me by chance on the stairs, "howdelightful to see you again so soon." (I had been abroad fifteenmonths.) "You've come at a very awkward time, you know. They're havinganother of those strikes in two days--such a lot of nonsense--and Idon't know when you'll be able to get away."

I thought of the evening I was forgoing, with the lights coming outalong the banks of the Seine, and the company I should have hadthere--for I was at the time concerned with two emancipated Americangirls who shared a garconnière in Auteuil--and wished I had not come.

We dined that night at the Café Royal. There things were a little morewarlike, for the café was full of undergraduates who had come down for"National Service." One group, from Cambridge, had that afternoon signedon to run messages for Transport House, and their table backed onanother group's, who were enrolled as special constables. Now and thenone or other party would shout provocatively over the shoulder, but itis hard to come into serious conflict back to back, and the affair endedwith their giving each other tall glasses of lager beer.

"You should have been in Budapest when Horthy marched in," said Jean."That was politics."

A party was being given that night in Regent's Park for the "BlackBirds," who had newly arrived in England. One of us had been asked andthither we all went.

To us, who frequented Bricktop's and the Bal Nègre in the Rue Blomet,there was nothing particularly remarkable in the spectacle; I wasscarcely inside the door when I heard an unmistakable voice, an echofrom what now seemed a distant past.

"No," it said, "they are not animals in a zoo, Mulcaster, to begoggled at. They are artists, my dear, very great artists, to berevered."

Anthony Blanche and Boy Mulcaster were at the table where the winestood.

"Thank God here's someone I know," said Mulcaster, as I joined them."Girl brought me. Can't see her anywhere."

"She's given you the slip, my dear, and do you know why? Because youlook ridiculously out of place, Mulcaster. It isn't your kind of partyat all; you ought not to be here; you ought to go away, you know, to theOld Hundredth or some lugubrious dance in Belgrave Square."

"Just come from one," said Mulcaster. "Too early for the Old Hundredth.I'll stay on a bit. Things may cheer up."

"I spit on you," said Anthony. "Let me talk to you, Charles."

We took a bottle and our glasses and found a corner in another room. Atour feet, five members of the "Black Birds" orchestra squatted on theirheels and threw dice.

"That one," said Anthony, "the rather pale one, my dear, konked Mrs.Arnold Frickheimer the other morning on the nut, my dear, with abottle of milk."

Almost immediately, inevitably, we began to talk of Sebastian.

"My dear, he's such a sot. He came to live with me in Marseilles lastyear when you threw him over, and really it was as much as I couldstand. Sip, sip, sip like a dowager all day long. And so sly. I wasalways missing little things, my dear, things I rather liked; once Ilost two suits that had arrived from Lesley and Roberts that morning. Ofcourse, I didn't know it was Sebastian--there were some rather queerfish, my dear, in and out of my little apartment. Who knows better thanyou my taste for queer fish? Well, eventually, my dear, we found thepawnshop where Sebastian was p-p-popping them and then he hadn't gotthe tickets; there was a market for them, too, at the Bistro.

"I can see that puritanical, disapproving look in your eye, dearCharles, as though you thought I had led the boy on. It's one ofSebastian's less lovable qualities that he always gives the impressionof being l-l-led on--like a little horse at a circus. But I assure you Idid everything. I said to him again and again, 'Why drink? If you wantto be intoxicated there are so many much more delicious things.' I tookhim to quite the best man; well, you know him as well as I do, NadaAlopov; and Jean Luxmore and everyone we know has been to him foryears--he's always in the Regina Bar--and then we had trouble over thatbecause Sebastian gave him a bad cheque--a s-s-stumer, my dear--and awhole lot of very menacing men came round to the flat--thugs, mydear--and Sebastian was making no sense at the time and it was all mostunpleasant."

Boy Mulcaster wandered towards us and sat down, without encouragement,by my side.

"Drink running short in there," he said, helping himself from our bottleand emptying it. "Not a soul in the place I ever set eyes on before--allblack fellows."

Anthony ignored him and continued: "So then we left Marseilles and wentto Tangier, and there, my dear, Sebastian took up with his newfriend. How can I describe him? He is like the footman in 'WarningShadows'--a great clod of a German who'd been in the Foreign Legion. Hegot out by shooting off his great toe. It hadn't healed yet. Sebastianfound him, starving as tout to one of the houses in the Kasbah, andbrought him to stay with us. It was too macabre. So back I came, mydear, to good old England--good old England," he repeated, indicatingin an ample gesture the Negroes gambling at our feet, Mulcaster, staringblankly before him, and our hostess who, in pyjamas, now introducedherself to us.

"Never seen you before," she said. "Never asked you. Who are all thiswhite trash, anyway? Seems to me I must be in the wrong house."

"A time of national emergency," said Mulcaster. "Anything may happen."

"Is the party going well?" she asked anxiously. "D'you think FlorenceMills would sing? We've met before," she added to Anthony.

"Often, my dear, but you never asked me to-night."

"Oh dear, perhaps I don't like you. I thought I liked everyone."

"Do you think," asked Mulcaster, when our hostess had left us, "that itmight be witty to give the fire alarm?"

"Yes, Boy, run away and ring it."

"Might cheer things up, I mean."

"Exactly."

So Mulcaster left us in search of the telephone.

"I think Sebastian and his lame chum went to French Morocco," continuedAnthony. "They were in trouble with the Tangier police when I left them.The Marchioness has been a positive pest ever since I came to London,trying to make me get into touch with them. What a time that poorwoman's having! It only shows there's some justice in life."

Presently Miss Mills began to sing and everyone, except the crapplayers, crowded to the next room.

"That's my girl," said Mulcaster. "Over there with that black fellow.That's the girl who brought me."

"She seems to have forgotten you now."

"Yes. I wish I hadn't come. Let's go on somewhere."

Two fire engines drove up as we left and a host of helmeted figuresjoined the throng upstairs.

"That chap, Blanche," said Mulcaster, "not a good fellow. I put him inMercury once."

We went to a number of night clubs. In two years Mulcaster seemed tohave attained his simple ambition of being known and liked in suchplaces. At the last of them he and I were kindled by a great flame ofpatriotism.

"You and I," he said, "were too young to fight in the war. Other chapsfought, millions of them dead. Not us. We'll show them. We'll show thedead chaps we can fight, too."

"That's why I'm here," I said. "Come from overseas, rallying to oldcountry in hour of need."

"Like Australians."

"Like the poor dead Australians."

"What you in?"

"Nothing yet. War not ready."

"Only one thing to join--Bill Meadows's show--Defence Corps. All goodchaps. Being fixed in Bratt's."

"I'll join."

"You member Bratt's?"

"No. I'll join that, too."

"That's right. All good chaps like the dead chaps."

So I joined Bill Meadows's show, which was a flying squad, protectingfood deliveries in the poorer parts of London. First I was enrolled inthe Defence Corps, took an oath of loyalty, and was given a helmet andtruncheon; then I was put up for Bratt's Club and, with a number ofother recruits, elected at a committee meeting specially called for theoccasion. For a week we sat under orders in Bratt's, and thrice a day wedrove out in a lorry at the head of a convoy of milk vans. We werejeered at and sometimes pelted with muck, but only once did we go intoaction.

We were sitting round after luncheon that day when Bill Meadows cameback from the telephone in high spirits.

"Come on," he said. "There's a perfectly good battle in the CommercialRoad."

We drove at great speed and arrived to find a steel hawser stretchedbetween lamp-posts, an overturned truck and a policeman, alone on thepavement, being kicked by half a dozen youths. On either side of thiscentre of disturbance, and at a little distance from it, two opposingparties had formed. Near us, as we disembarked, a second policeman wassitting on the pavement, dazed, with his head in his hands and bloodrunning through his fingers; two or three sympathizers were standingover him; on the other side of the hawser was a hostile knot of youngdockers. We charged in cheerfully, relieved the policeman, and were justfalling upon the main body of the enemy when we came into collision witha party of local clergy and town councillors who arrived simultaneouslyby another route, to try persuasion. They were our only victims, forjust as they went down there was a cry of "Look out. The coppers," and alorry load of police drew up in our rear.

The crowd broke and disappeared. We picked up the peacemakers (only oneof whom was seriously hurt), patrolled some of the side streets lookingfor trouble and finding none, and at length returned to Bratt's. Nextday the General Strike was called off and the country everywhere, exceptin the coal-fields, returned to normal. It was as though a beast longfabled for its ferocity had emerged for an hour, scented danger, andslunk back to its lair. It had not been worth leaving Paris.

Jean, who joined another company, had a pot of ferns dropped on his headby an elderly widow in Camden Town and was in hospital for a week.

* * * * *

It was through my membership of Bill Meadows's squad that Julia learnedI was in England. She telephoned to say her mother was anxious to seeme.

"You'll find her terribly ill," she said.

I went to Marchmain House on the first morning of peace. Sir AdrianPorson passed me in the hall, leaving, as I arrived; he held a bandannahandkerchief to his face and felt blindly for his hat and stick; he wasin tears.

I was shown into the library and in less than a minute Julia joined me.She shook hands with a gentleness and gravity that were unfamiliar; inthe gloom of that room she seemed a ghost.

"It's sweet of you to come. Mummy has kept asking for you, but I don'tknow if she'll be able to see you now, after all. She's just said'good-bye' to Adrian Porson and it's tired her."

"Good-bye?"

"Yes. She's dying. She may live a week or two or she may go at anyminute. She's so weak. I'll go and ask nurse."

The stillness of death seemed in the house already. No one ever sat inthe library at Marchmain House. It was the one ungracious room in eitherof their houses. The bookcases of Victorian oak held volumes of Hansardand obsolete encyclopedias that were never opened; the bare mahoganytable seemed set for the meeting of a committee; the place had the airof being both public and unfrequented; outside lay the forecourt, therailings, the quiet cul-de-sac.

Presently Julia returned.

"No, I'm afraid you can't see her. She's asleep. She may lie like thatfor hours; I can tell you what she wanted. Let's go somewhere else. Ihate this room."

We went across the hall to the small drawing-room where luncheon partiesused to assemble, and sat on either side of the fireplace. Julia seemedto reflect the crimson and gold of the walls and lose some of herwanness.

"First, I know, Mummy wanted to say how sorry she is she was so beastlyto you last time you met. She's spoken of it often. She knows now shewas wrong about you. I'm quite sure you understood and put it out ofyour mind immediately, but it's the kind of thing Mummy can neverforgive herself--it's the kind of thing she so seldom did."

"Do tell her I understood completely."

"The other thing, of course, you have guessed--Sebastian. She wants him.I don't know if that's possible. Is it?"

"I hear he's in a very bad way."

"We heard that, too. We cabled to the last address we had, but there wasno answer. There still may be time for him to see her. I thought of youas the only hope, as soon as I heard you were in England. Will you tryand get him? It's an awful lot to ask, but I think Sebastian would wantit, too, if he realized."

"I'll try."

"There's no one else we can ask. Rex is so busy."

"Yes. I heard reports of all he'd been doing organizing the gas works."

"Oh yes," Julia said with a touch of her old dryness. "He's made a lotof kudos out of the strike."

Then we talked for a few minutes about the Bratt's squad. She told meBrideshead had refused to take any public service because he was notsatisfied with the justice of the cause; Cordelia was in London, in bednow, as she had been watching by her mother all night. I told her I hadtaken up architectural painting and that I enjoyed it. All this talk wasnothing; we had said all we had to say in the first two minutes; Istayed for ten and then left her.

* * * * *

Air France ran a service of a kind to Casablanca; there I took the busto Fez, starting at dawn and arriving in the new town at evening. Itelephoned from the hotel to the British Consul and dined with him thatevening, in his charming house by the walls of the old town. He was akind, serious man.

"I'm delighted someone has come to look after young Flyte at last," hesaid. "He's been something of a thorn in our sides here. This is noplace for a remittance man. The French don't understand him at all. Theythink everyone who's not engaged in trade is a spy. It's not as thoughhe lived like a milord. Things aren't easy here. There's war going onnot thirty miles from this house, though you might not think it. We hadsome young fools on bicycles only last week who'd come to volunteer forAbdul Krim's army.

"Then the Moors are a tricky lot; they don't hold with drink and ouryoung friend, as you may know, spends most of his day drinking. Whatdoes he want to come here for? There's plenty of room for him at Rabator Tangier, where they cater for tourists. He's taken a house in thenative town, you know. I tried to stop him, but he got it from aFrenchman in the Department of Arts. I don't say there's any harm in himbut he's an anxiety. There's an awful fellow sponging on him--a Germanout of the Foreign Legion. A thoroughly bad lot by all accounts. There'sbound to be trouble.

"Mind you, I like Flyte. I don't see much of him. He used to come herefor baths until he got fixed up at his house. He was always perfectlycharming, and my wife took a great fancy to him. What he needs isoccupation."

I explained my errand.

"You'll probably find him at home now. Goodness knows there's nowhere togo in the evenings in the old town. If you like I'll send the porter toshow you the way."

So I set out after dinner, with the consular porter going ahead, lanternin hand. Morocco was a new and strange country to me. Driving that day,mile after mile, up the smooth, strategic road, past the vineyards andmilitary posts and the new, white settlements and the early cropsalready standing high in the vast, open fields, and the hoardingsadvertising the staples of France--Dubonnet, Michelin, Magasin duLouvre--I had thought it all very suburban and up-to-date; now, underthe stars, in the walled city, whose streets were gentle, dustystairways, and whose walls rose windowless on either side, closedoverhead, then opened again to the stars; where the dust lay thick amongthe smooth paving stones and figures passed silently, robed in white, onsoft slippers or hard, bare soles; where the air was scented with clovesand incense and wood smoke--now I knew what had drawn Sebastian here andheld him so long.

The consular porter strode arrogantly ahead with his light swinging andhis tall cane banging; sometimes an open doorway revealed a silent groupseated in golden lamplight round a brazier.

"Very dirty peoples," the porter said scornfully, over his shoulder. "Noeducation. French leave them dirty. Not like British peoples. Mypeoples," he said, "always very British peoples."

For he was from the Sudan Police, and regarded this ancient centre ofhis culture as a New Zealander might regard Rome.

At length we came to the last of many studded doors, and the porter beaton it with his stick.

"British Lord's house," he said.

Lamplight and a dark face appeared at the grating. The consular porterspoke peremptorily, bolts were withdrawn and we entered a smallcourtyard with a well in its centre and a vine trained overhead.

"I wait here," said the porter. "You go with this native fellow."

I entered the house, down a step, and into the living-room. I found agramophone, an oil-stove and, between them, a young man. Later, when Ilooked about me, I noticed other, more agreeable things--the rugs on thefloor, the embroidered silk on the walls, the carved and painted beamsof the ceiling, the heavy, pierced lamp that hung from a chain and castthe soft shadows of its own tracery about the room. But on firstentering, these three things--the gramophone for its noise--it wasplaying a French record of a jazz band; the stove for its smell; and theyoung man for his wolfish look--struck my senses. He was lolling in abasket chair, with a bandaged foot stuck forward on a box; he wasdressed in a kind of thin, mid-European imitation tweed with a tennisshirt open at the neck; the unwounded foot wore a brown canvas shoe.There was a brass tray by his side on wooden legs, and on it were twobeer bottles, a dirty plate, and a saucer full of cigarette-ends; heheld a glass of beer in his hand and a cigarette lay on his lower lipand stuck there when he spoke. He had long fair hair combed back withouta parting and a face that was unnaturally lined for a man of his obviousyouth; one of his front teeth was missing, so that his sibilants camesometimes with a lisp, sometimes with a disconcerting whistle, which hecovered with a giggle; the teeth he had were stained with tobacco andset far apart.

This was plainly the "thoroughly bad lot" of the consul's description,the film footman of Anthony's.

"I'm looking for Sebastian Flyte. This is his house, is it not?" I spokeloudly to make myself heard above the dance music, but he answeredsoftly in English fluent enough to suggest that it was now habitual tohim.

"Yeth. But he isn't here. There's no one but me."

"I've come from England to see him on important business. Can you tellme where I can find him?"

The record came to its end. The German turned it over, wound up themachine, and started it playing again before answering.

"Sebastian's sick. The brothers took him away to the infirmary. Maybethey'll let you thee him, maybe not. I got to go there myself one daythoon to have my foot dressed. I'll ask them then. When he's betterthey'll let you thee him, maybe."

There was another chair and I sat down on it. Seeing that I meant tostay, the German offered me some beer.

"You're not Thebastian's brother?" he said. "Cousin maybe? Maybe youmarried hith thister?"

"I'm only a friend. We were at the University together."

"I had a friend at the University. We studied History. My friend wascleverer than me; a little weak fellow--I used to pick him up and shakehim when I was angry--but tho' clever. Then one day we said: 'What thehell? There is no work in Germany. Germany is down the drain,' so wesaid good-bye to our professors, and they said: 'Yes, Germany is downthe drain. There is nothing for a student to do here now,' and we wentaway and walked and walked and at last we came here. Then we said,'There is no army in Germany now, but we must be tholdiers,' so wejoined the Legion. My friend died of dysentery last year, campaigning inthe Atlas. When he was dead, I said, 'What the hell?' so I shot my foot.It is now full of pus, though I have done it one year."

"Yes," I said. "That's very interesting. But my immediate concern iswith Sebastian. Perhaps you would tell me about him."

"He is a very good fellow, Sebastian. He is all right for me. Tangierwas a stinking place. He brought me here--nice house, nice food, niceservant--everything is all right for me here, I reckon. I like it allright."

"His mother is very ill," I said. "I have come to tell him."

"She rich?"

"Yes."

"Why don't she give him more money? Then we could live at Casablanca,maybe, in a nice flat. You know her well? You could make her give himmore money?"

"What's the matter with him?"

"I don't know. I reckon maybe he drink too much. The brothers will lookafter him. It's all right for him there. The brothers are good fellows.Very cheap there."

He clapped his hands and ordered more beer.

"You thee? A nice thervant to look after me. It is all right."

When I had got the name of the hospital I left.

"Tell Thebastian I am still here and all right. I reckon he's worryingabout me, maybe."

* * * * *

The hospital, where I went next morning, was a collection of bungalowsbetween the old and the new towns. It was kept by Franciscans. I made myway through a crowd of diseased Moors to the doctor's room. He was alayman, clean-shaven, dressed in white, starched overalls. We spoke inFrench, and he told me Sebastian was in no danger, but quite unfit totravel. He had had the grippe, with one lung slightly affected; he wasvery weak; he lacked resistance; what could one expect? He was analcoholic. The doctor spoke dispassionately, almost brutally, with therelish men of science sometimes have for limiting themselves toinessentials, for pruning back their work to the point of sterility; butthe bearded, barefooted brother in whose charge he put me, the man of noscientific pretensions who did the dirty jobs of the ward, had adifferent story.

"He's so patient. Not like a young man at all. He lies there and nevercomplains--and there is much to complain of. We have no facilities. TheGovernment give us what they can spare from the soldiers. And he is sokind. There is a poor German boy with a foot that will not heal andsecondary syphilis, who comes here for treatment. Lord Flyte found himstarving in Tangier and took him in and gave him a home. A realSamaritan."

Poor simple monk, I thought, poor booby. God forgive me!

Sebastian was in the wing kept for Europeans, where the beds weredivided by low partitions into cubicles with some air of privacy. He waslying with his hands on the quilt staring at the wall, where the onlyornament was a religious oleograph.

"Your friend," said the brother.

He looked round slowly.

"Oh, I thought he meant Kurt. What are you doing here, Charles?"

He was more than ever emaciated; drink, which made others fat and red,seemed to wither Sebastian. The brother left us, and I sat by his bedand talked about his illness.

"I was out of my mind for a day or two," he said. "I kept thinking I wasback in Oxford. You went to my house? Did you like it? Is Kurt stillthere? I won't ask you if you liked Kurt; no one does. It's funny--Icouldn't get on without him, you know."

Then I told him about his mother. He said nothing for some time, but laygazing at the oleograph of the Seven Dolours. Then:--

"Poor Mummy. She really was a femme fatale, wasn't she. She killed ata touch."

I telegraphed to Julia that Sebastian was unable to travel, and stayed aweek at Fez, visiting the hospital daily until he was well enough tomove. His first sign of returning strength, on the second day of myvisit, was to ask for brandy. By next day he had got some, somehow, andkept it under the bed-clothes.

The doctor said: "Your friend is drinking again. It is forbidden here.What can I do? This is not a reformatory school. I cannot police thewards. I am here to cure people, not to protect them from vicioushabits, or teach them self-control. Cognac will not hurt him now. Itwill make him weaker for the next time he is ill, and then one day somelittle trouble will carry him off, pouff. This is not a home forinebriates. He must go at the end of the week."

The lay brother said: "Your friend is so much happier to-day, it is likeone transfigured."

Poor simple monk, I thought, poor booby; but he added, "You know why? Hehas a bottle of cognac in bed with him. It is the second I have found.No sooner do I take one away than he gets another. He is so naughty. Itis the Arab boys who fetch it for him. But it is good to see him happyagain when he has been so sad."

On my last afternoon I said, "Sebastian, now your mother's dead"--forthe news had reached us that morning--"do you think of going back toEngland?"

"It would be lovely, in some ways," he said, "but do you think Kurtwould like it?"

"For God's sake," I said, "you don't mean to spend your life with Kurt,do you?"

"I don't know. He seems to mean to spend it with me. 'It'th all rightfor him, I reckon, maybe,'" he said, mimicking Kurt's accent, and thenhe added what, if I had paid more attention, should have given me thekey I lacked; at the time I heard and remembered it, without takingnotice. "You know, Charles," he said, "it's rather a pleasant changewhen all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someoneto look after yourself. Only of course it has to be someone prettyhopeless to need looking after by me."

I was able to straighten his money affairs before I left. He had livedtill then by getting into difficulties and then telegraphing for oddsums to his lawyers. I saw the branch manager of the Bank of Indo-Chinaand arranged for him, if funds were forthcoming from London, to receiveSebastian's quarterly allowance and pay him a weekly sum of pocket moneywith a reserve to be drawn in emergencies. This sum was only to be givento Sebastian personally, and only when the manager was satisfied that hehad a proper use for it. Sebastian agreed readily to all this.

"Otherwise," he said, "Kurt will get me to sign a cheque for the wholelot when I'm tight and then he'll go off and get into all kinds oftrouble."

I saw Sebastian home from the hospital. He seemed weaker in his basketchair than he had been in bed. The two sick men, he and Kurt, satopposite one another with the gramophone between them.

"It was time you came back," said Kurt. "I need you."

"Do you, Kurt?"

"I reckon so. It's not so good being alone when you're sick. That boy'sa lazy fellow--always slipping off when I want him. Once he stayed outall night and there was no one to make my coffee when I woke up. It's nogood having a foot full of pus. Times I can't sleep good. Maybe anothertime I shall slip off, too, and go where I can be looked after." Heclapped his hands but no servant came. "You see?" he said.

"What d'you want?"

"Cigarettes. I got some in the bag under my bed."

Sebastian began painfully to rise from his chair.

"I'll get them," I said. "Where's his bed?"

"No, that's my job," said Sebastian.

"Yeth," said Kurt, "I reckon that's Sebastian's job."

So I left him with his friend in the little enclosed house at the end ofthe alley. There was nothing more I could do for Sebastian.

I had meant to return direct to Paris, but this business of Sebastian'sallowance meant that I must go to London and see Brideshead. I travelledby sea, taking the P. & O. from Tangier, and was home in early June.

* * * * *

"Do you consider," asked Brideshead, "that there is anything vicious inmy brother's connection with this German?"

"No. I'm sure not. It's simply a case of two waifs coming together."

"You say he is a criminal?"

"I said 'a criminal type.' He's been in the military prison and wasdishonourably discharged."

"And the doctor says Sebastian is killing himself with drink?"

"Weakening himself. He hasn't D.T.'s or cirrhosis."

"He's not insane?"

"Certainly not. He's found a companion he happens to like and a placewhere he happens to like living."

"Then he must have his allowance as you suggest. The thing is quiteclear."

In some ways Brideshead was an easy man to deal with. He had a kind ofmad certainty about everything which made his decisions swift and easy.

"Would you like to paint this house?" he asked suddenly. "A picture ofthe front, another of the back on the park, another of the staircase,another of the big drawing-room? Four small oils; that is what my fatherwants done for a record, to keep at Brideshead. I don't know anypainters. Julia said you specialized in architecture."

"Yes," I said. "I should like to very much."

"You know it's being pulled down? My father's selling it. They are goingto put up a block of flats here. They're keeping the name--we can't stopthem apparently."

"What a very sad thing."

"Well, I'm sorry of course. But you think it good architecturally?"

"One of the most beautiful houses I know."

"Can't see it. I've always thought it rather ugly. Perhaps your pictureswill make me see it differently."

This was my first commission; I had to work against time, for thecontractors were only waiting for the final signature to start theirwork of destruction. In spite, or perhaps because, of that--for it is myvice to spend too long on a canvas, never content to leave wellalone--those four paintings are particular favourites of mine, and itwas their success, both with myself and others, that confirmed me inwhat has since been my career.

I began in the long drawing-room, for they were anxious to shift thefurniture, which had stood there since it was built. It was a long,elaborate, symmetrical Adam room, with two bays of windows opening intoGreen Park. The light, streaming in from the west on the afternoon whenI began to paint there, was fresh green from the young trees outside.

I had the perspective set out in pencil and the detail carefully placed.I held back from painting, like a diver on the water's edge; once in Ifound myself buoyed and exhilarated. I was normally a slow anddeliberate painter; that afternoon and all next day, and the day after,I worked fast. I could do nothing wrong. At the end of each passage Ipaused, tense, afraid to start the next, fearing, like a gambler, thatluck must turn and the pile be lost. Bit by bit, minute by minute, thething came into being. There were no difficulties; the intricatemultiplicity of light and colour became a whole; the right colour waswhere I wanted it on the palette; each brush stroke, as soon as it wascomplete, seemed to have been there always.

Presently on the last afternoon I heard a voice behind me say: "May Istay here and watch?"

I turned and found Cordelia.

"Yes," I said, "if you don't talk," and I worked on, oblivious of her,until the failing sun made me put up my brushes.

"It must be lovely to be able to do that."

I had forgotten she was there.

"It is."

I could not even now leave my picture, although the sun was down and theroom fading to monochrome. I took it from the easel and held it up tothe windows, put it back and lightened a shadow. Then, suddenly weary inhead and eyes and back and arm, I gave it up for the evening and turnedto Cordelia.

She was now fifteen and had grown tall, nearly to her full height, inthe last eighteen months. She had not the promise of Julia's fullQuattrocento loveliness; there was a touch of Brideshead already in herlength of nose and high cheekbone; she was in black, mourning for hermother.

"I'm tired," I said.

"I bet you are. Is it finished?"

"Practically. I must go over it again to-morrow."

"D'you know it's long past dinner-time? There's no one here to cookanything now. I only came up to-day, and didn't realize how far thedecay had gone. You wouldn't like to take me out to dinner, would you?"

We left by the garden door, into the park, and walked in the twilight tothe Ritz Grill.

"You've seen Sebastian? He won't come home, even now?"

I did not realize till then that she had understood so much. I said so.

"Well, I love him more than anyone," she said. "It's sad about Marchers,isn't it? Do you know they're going to build a block of flats, and thatRex wanted to take what he called a 'penthouse' at the top. Isn't itlike him? Poor Julia. That was too much for her. He couldn't understandat all; he thought she would like to keep up with her old home. Thingshave all come to an end very quickly, haven't they? Apparently Papa hasbeen terribly in debt for a long time. Selling Marchers has put himstraight again and saved I don't know how much a year in rates. But itseems a shame to pull it down. Julia says she'd sooner that than to havesomeone else live there."

"What's going to happen to you?"

"What, indeed? There are all kinds of suggestions. Aunt Fanny Rosscommonwants me to live with her. Then Rex and Julia talk of taking over halfBrideshead and living there. Papa won't come back. We thought he might,but no.

"They've closed the chapel at Brideshead, Bridey and the Bishop; Mummy'srequiem was the last mass said there. After she was buried the priestcame in--I was there alone. I don't think he saw me--and took out thealtar stone and put it in his bag; then he burned the wads of wool withthe holy oil on them and threw the ash outside; he emptied the holywater stoup and blew out the lamp in the sanctuary and left thetabernacle open and empty, as though from now on it was always to beGood Friday. I suppose none of this makes any sense to you, Charles,poor agnostic. I stayed there till he was gone, and then, suddenly,there wasn't any chapel there any more, just an oddly decorated room. Ican't tell you what it felt like. You've never been to Tenebrae, Isuppose?"

"Never."

"Well, if you had you'd know what the Jews felt about their temple.Quomodo sedet sola civitas... it's a beautiful chant. You ought togo once, just to hear it."

"Still trying to convert me, Cordelia?"

"Oh, no. That's all over, too. D'you know what Papa said when he becamea Catholic? Mummy told me once. He said to her: 'You have brought backmy family to the faith of their ancestors.' Pompous, you know. It takespeople different ways. Anyhow, the family haven't been very constant,have they? There's him gone and Sebastian gone and Julia gone. But Godwon't let them go for long, you know. I wonder if you remember the storyMummy read us the evening Sebastian first got drunk--I mean the badevening. Father Brown said something like 'I caught him' (the thief)'with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to lethim wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with atwitch upon the thread.'"

We scarcely mentioned her mother. All the time we talked, she atevoraciously. Once she said:--

"Did you see Sir Adrian Porson's poem in The Times? It's funny, heknew her best of anyone--he loved her all his life, you know--and yet itdoesn't seem to have anything to do with her at all.

"I got on best with her of any of us, but I don't believe I ever reallyloved her. Not as she wanted or deserved. It's odd I didn't, because I'mfull of natural affections."

"I never really knew your mother," I said.

"You didn't like her. I sometimes think when people wanted to hate Godthey hated Mummy."

"What do you mean by that, Cordelia?"

"Well, you see, she was saintly but she wasn't a saint. No one couldreally hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. Whenthey want to hate Him and His saints they have to find something likethemselves and pretend it's God and hate that. I suppose you thinkthat's all bosh."

"I heard almost the same thing once before--from someone verydifferent."

"Oh, I'm quite serious. I've thought about it a lot. It seems to explainpoor Mummy."

Then this odd child tucked into her dinner with renewed relish.

"First time I've ever been taken out to dinner alone at a restaurant,"she said.

Later: "When Julia heard they were selling Marchers she said: 'PoorCordelia. She won't have her coming-out ball there after all.' It's athing we used to talk about--like my being her bridesmaid. That didn'tcome off either. When Julia had her ball I was allowed down for an hour,to sit in the corner with Aunt Fanny, and she said, 'In six years' timeyou'll have all this.'... I hope I've got a vocation."

"I don't know what that means."

"It means you can be a nun. If you haven't a vocation it's no goodhowever much you want to be; and if you have a vocation, you can't getaway from it, however much you hate it. Bridey thinks he has a vocationand hasn't. I used to think Sebastian had and hated it--but I don't knownow. Everything has changed so much suddenly."

But I had no patience with this convent chatter. I had felt the brushtake life in my hand that afternoon; I had had my finger in the great,succulent pie of creation. I was a man of the Renaissance thatevening--of Browning's Renaissance. I, who had walked the streets ofRome in Genoa velvet and had seen the stars through Galileo's tube,spurned the friars with their dusty tomes and their sunken, jealous eyesand their crabbed hair-splitting speech.

"You'll fall in love," I said.

"Oh, I pray not. I say, do you think I could have another of thosescrumptious meringues?"

Book II. A Twitch upon the Thread

Chapter One

My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one greymorning of war-time.

These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainlyexcept the past--were always with me. Like the pigeons of St. Mark's,they were everywhere, under my feet, singly, in pairs, in littlehoney-voiced congregations, nodding, strutting, winking, rolling thetender feathers of their necks, perching sometimes, if I stood still, onmy shoulder or pecking a broken biscuit from between my lips; until,suddenly, the noon gun boomed and in a moment, with a flutter and sweepof wings, the pavement was bare and the whole sky above dark with atumult of fowl. Thus it was that morning.

These memories are the memorials and pledges of the vital hours of alifetime. These hours of afflatus in the human spirit, the springs ofart, are, in their mystery, akin to the epochs of history, when a racewhich for centuries has lived content, unknown, behind its ownfrontiers, digging, eating, sleeping, begetting, doing what wasrequisite for survival and nothing else, will, for a generation or two,stupefy the world; commit all manner of crimes, perhaps; follow thewildest chimeras, go down in the end in agony, but leave behind a recordof new heights scaled and new rewards won for all mankind; the visionfades, the soul sickens, and the routine of survival starts again.

The human soul enjoys these rare, classic periods, but, apart from them,we are seldom single or unique; we keep company in this world with ahoard of abstractions and reflections and counterfeits of ourselves--thesensual man, the economic man, the man of reason, the beast, the machineand the sleep-walker, and heaven knows what besides, all in our ownimage, indistinguishable from ourselves to the outward eye. We get bornealong, out of sight in the press, unresisting, till we get the chance todrop behind unnoticed, or to dodge down a side street, pause, breathefreely and take our bearings, or to push ahead, outdistance, ourshadows, lead them a dance, so that when at length they catch up withus, they look at one another askance, knowing we have a secret we shallnever share.

For nearly ten years I was thus borne along a road outwardly full ofchange and incident, but never during that time, except sometimes in mypainting--and that at longer and longer intervals--did I come alive as Ihad been during the time of my friendship with Sebastian. I took it tobe youth, not life, that I was losing. My work upheld me, for I hadchosen to do what I could do well, did better daily, and liked doing;incidentally it was something which no one else at that time wasattempting to do. I became an architectural painter. I have always lovedbuilding, holding it to be not only the highest achievement of man butone in which, at the moment of consummation, things were most clearlytaken out of his hands and perfected, without his intention, by othermeans, and I regarded men as something much less than the buildings theymade and inhabited, as mere lodgers and short-term sub-lessees of smallimportance in the long, fruitful life of their homes.

More even than the work of the great architects, I loved buildings thatgrew silently with the centuries, catching and keeping the best of eachgeneration, while time curbed the artist's pride and the Philistine'svulgarity, and repaired the clumsiness of the dull workman. In suchbuildings England abounded, and in the last decade of their grandeur,Englishmen seemed for the first time to become conscious of what beforewas taken for granted, and to salute their achievements at the moment ofextinction. Hence my prosperity, far beyond my merits; my work hadnothing to recommend it except my growing technical skill, enthusiasmfor my subject and independence of popular notions.

The financial slump of the period, which left many painters withoutemployment, served to enhance my success, which was, indeed, itself asymptom of the decline. When the water-holes were dry people sought todrink at the mirage. After my first exhibition I was called to all partsof the country to make portraits of houses that were soon to be desertedor debased; indeed, my arrival seemed often to be only a few paces aheadof the auctioneers, a presage of doom.

I published three splendid folios--Ryder's Country Seats, Ryder'sEnglish Homes, and Ryder's Village and Provincial Architecture, whicheach sold its thousand copies at five guineas apiece. I seldom failed toplease, for there was no conflict between myself and my patrons; we bothwanted the same thing. But as the years passed I began to mourn the lossof something I had known in the drawing-room of Marchmain House and onceor twice since, the intensity and singleness and the belief that it wasnot all done by hand--in a word, the inspiration.

In quest of this fading light I went abroad, in the Augustan manner,laden with the apparatus of my trade, for two years' refreshment amongalien styles. I did not go to Europe; her treasures were safe, too safe,swaddled in expert care, obscured by reverence. Europe could wait. Therewould be a time for Europe, I thought; all too soon the days would comewhen I should need a man at my side to put up my easel and carry mypaints; when I could not venture more than an hour's journey from a goodhotel; when I should need soft breezes and mellow sunshine all day long;then I would take my old eyes to Germany and Italy. Now while I had thestrength I would go to the wild lands where man had deserted his postand the jungle was creeping back to its old strongholds.

Accordingly, by slow but not easy stages, I travelled through Mexico andCentral America in a world which had all I needed, and the change fromparkland and hall should have quickened me and set me right with myself.I sought inspiration among gutted palaces and cloisters embowered inweed, derelict churches where the vampire-bats hung in the dome like dryseed-pods and only the ants were ceaselessly astir tunnelling in therich stalls; cities where no road led, and mausoleums where a single,agued family of Indians sheltered from the rains. There in great labour,sickness and occasionally in some danger, I made the first drawings forRyder's Latin America. Every few weeks I came to rest, finding myselfonce more in the zone of trade or tourism, recuperated, set up mystudio, transcribed my sketches, anxiously packed the completedcanvasses, despatched them to my New York agent, and then set out again,with my small retinue, into the wastes.

I was at no great pains to keep touch with England. I followed localadvice for my itinerary and had no settled route, so that much of mymail never reached me, and the rest accumulated until there was morethan could be read at a sitting. I used to stuff a bundle of lettersinto my bag and read them when I felt inclined, which was incirc*mstances so incongruous--swinging in my hammock under the net bythe light of a storm lantern; drifting down-river, sprawled amidships inthe canoe, with the boys astern of me lazily keeping our nose out of thebank, with the dark water keeping pace with us, in the green shade, withthe great trees towering above us and the monkeys screeching in thesunlight, high overhead among the flowers on the roof of the forest; onthe verandah of a hospitable ranch, where the ice and the dice clicked,and a tiger cat played with its chain on the mown grass--that theyseemed voices so distant as to be meaningless; their matter passed cleanthrough the mind, and out, leaving no mark, like the facts aboutthemselves which fellow travellers distribute so freely in Americanrailway trains.

But despite this isolation and this long sojourn in a strange world, Iremained unchanged, still a small part of myself pretending to be whole.I discarded the experiences of those two years with my tropical kit andreturned to New York as I had set out. I had a fine haul--elevenpaintings and fifty odd drawings--and when eventually I exhibited themin London, the art critics, many of whom hitherto had been patronizingin tone as my success invited, acclaimed a new and richer note in mywork.

Mr. Ryder [the most respected of them wrote] rises like a fresh young trout to the hypodermic injection of a new culture and discloses a powerful facet in the vista of his potentialities... By focusing the frankly traditional battery of his elegance and erudition on the maelstrom of barbarism, Mr. Ryder has at last found himself.

Grateful words, but, alas, not true by a long chalk. My wife, whocrossed to New York to meet me, and saw the fruits of our separationdisplayed in my agent's office, summed the thing up better by saying:"Of course, I can see they're perfectly brilliant and really ratherbeautiful in a sinister way, but somehow I don't feel they are quiteyou."

* * * * *

In Europe my wife was sometimes taken for an American because of herdapper and jaunty way of dressing, and the curiously hygienic quality ofher prettiness; in America she assumed an English softness andreticence. She arrived a day or two before me, and was on the pier whenmy ship docked.

"It has been a long time," she said fondly when we met.

She had not joined the expedition; she explained to our friends that thecountry was unsuitable and she had her son at home. There was also adaughter now, she remarked, and it came back to me that there had beentalk of this before I started, as an additional reason for her stayingbehind. There had been some mention of it, too, in her letters.

"I don't believe you read my letters," she said that night when at last,late, after a dinner party and some hours at a cabaret, we foundourselves alone in our hotel bedroom.

"Some went astray. I remember distinctly your telling me that thedaffodils in the orchard were a dream, that the nurserymaid was a jewel,that the Regency four-poster was a find, but frankly I do not rememberhearing that your new baby was called Caroline. Why did you call itthat?"

"After Charles, of course."

"Ah!"

"I made Bertha Van Halt godmother. I thought she was safe for a goodpresent. What do you think she gave?"

"Bertha Van Halt is a well-known trap. What?"

"A fifteen-shilling book token. Now that Johnjohn has a companion--"

"Who?"

"Your son, darling. You haven't forgotten him, too?"

"For Christ's sake," I said, "why do you call him that?"

"It's the name he invented for himself. Don't you think it sweet? Nowthat Johnjohn has a companion I think we'd better not have any more forsome time, don't you?"

"Just as you please."

"Johnjohn talks of you such a lot. He prays every night for your safereturn."

She talked in this way while she undressed, with an effort to appear atease; then she sat at the dressing-table, ran a comb through her hair,and with her bare back towards me, looking at herself in the glass,said, "I hope you admire my self-restraint."

"Restraint?"

"I'm not asking awkward questions. I may say I've been tormented withvisions of voluptuous half-castes ever since you went away. But Idetermined not to ask and I haven't."

"That suits me," I said.

She left the dressing-table and crossed the room.

"Lights out?"

"As you like. I'm not sleepy."

We lay in our twin beds, a yard or two distant, smoking. I looked at mywatch; it was four o'clock, but neither of us was ready to sleep, for inthat city there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake forenergy.

"I don't believe you've changed at all, Charles."

"No, I'm afraid not."

"D'you want to change?"

"It's the only evidence of life."

"But you might change so that you didn't love me any more."

"There is that risk."

"Charles, you haven't stopped loving me?"

"You said yourself I hadn't changed."

"Well, I'm beginning to think you have. I haven't."

"No," I said, "no; I can see that."

"Were you at all frightened at meeting me to-day?"

"Not the least."

"You didn't wonder if I should have fallen in love with someone else inthe meantime?"

"No. Have you?"

"You know I haven't. Have you?"

"No. I'm not in love."

My wife seemed content with this answer. She had married me six yearsago at the time of my first exhibition, and had done much since then topush our interests. People said she had "made" me, but she herself tookcredit only for supplying me with a congenial background; she had firmfaith in my genius and in the "artistic temperament," and in theprinciple that things done on the sly are not really done at all.

Presently she said: "Looking forward to getting home?" (My father gaveme as a wedding present the price of a house, and I bought an oldrectory in my wife's part of the country.) "I've got a surprise foryou."

"Yes?"

"I've turned the old tithe barn into a studio for you, so that youneedn't be disturbed by the children or when we have people to stay. Igot Emden to do it. Everyone thinks it a great success. There was anarticle on it in Country Life; I brought it for you to see."

She showed me the article: ...happy example of architectural goodmanners.... Sir Joseph Emden's tactful adaptation of traditionalmaterial to modern needs...; there were some photographs; wide oakboards now covered the earthen floor; a high, stone-mullioned bay-windowhad been built in the north wall, and the great timbered roof, whichbefore had been lost in shadow, now stood out stark, well lit, withclean white plaster between the beams; it looked like a village hall. Iremembered the smell of the place, which would now be lost.

"I rather liked that barn," I said.

"But you'll be able to work there, won't you?"

"After squatting in a cloud of sting-fly," I said, "under a sun whichscorched the paper off the block as I drew, I could work on the top ofan omnibus. I expect the vicar would like to borrow the place for whistdrives."

"There's a lot of work waiting for you. I promised Lady Anchorage youwould do Anchorage House as soon as you got back. That's coming down,too, you know--shops underneath and two-roomed flats above. You don'tthink, do you, Charles, that all this exotic work you've been doing isgoing to spoil you for that sort of thing?"

"Why should it?"

"Well, it's so different. Don't be cross."

"It's just another jungle closing in."

"I know just how you feel, darling. The Georgian Society made such afuss, but we couldn't do anything.... Did you ever get my letterabout Boy?"

"Did I? What did it say?"

(Boy Mulcaster was her brother.)

"About his engagement. It doesn't matter now because it's all off, butFather and Mother were terribly upset. She was an awful girl. They hadto give her money in the end."

"No, I heard nothing of Boy."

"He and Johnjohn are tremendous friends, now. It's so sweet to see themtogether. Whenever he comes home the first thing he does is to drivestraight to the Old Rectory. He just walks into the house, pays noattention to anyone else, and hollers out: 'Where's my chum Johnjohn?'and Johnjohn comes tumbling downstairs and off they go into the spinneytogether and play for hours. You'd think, to hear them talk to eachother, they were the same age. It was really Johnjohn who made him seereason about that girl; seriously, you know, he's frightfully sharp. Hemust have heard Mother and me talking, because next time Boy came hesaid: 'Uncle Boy shan't marry horrid girl and leave Johnjohn,' and thatwas the very day he settled for two thousand pounds out of court.Johnjohn admires Boy so tremendously and imitates him in everything.It's so good for them both."

I crossed the room and tried once more, ineffectively, to moderate theheat of the radiators; I drank some iced water and opened the window,but, besides the sharp night air, music was borne in from the next roomwhere they were playing the wireless. I shut it and turned back towardsmy wife.

At length she began talking again, more drowsily.... "The garden'scome on a lot.... The box hedges you planted grew five inches lastyear.... I had some men down from London to put the tennis courtright... first-class cook at the moment..."

As the city below us began to wake we both fell asleep, but not forlong; the telephone rang and a voice of hermaphroditic gaiety said:"Savoy-Carlton-Hotel-goodmorning. It is now a quarter of eight."

"I didn't ask to be called, you know."

"Pardon me?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter."

"You're welcome."

As I was shaving, my wife from the bath said: "Just like old times. I'mnot worrying any more, Charles."

"Good."

"I was so terribly afraid that two years might have made a difference.Now I know we can start again exactly where we left off."

I paused in my shaving.

"When?" I asked. "What? When we left off what?"

"When you went away, of course."

"You are not thinking of something else, a little time before?"

"Oh, Charles, that's old history. That was nothing. It was neveranything. It's all over and forgotten."

"I just wanted to know," I said. "We're back as we were the day I wentabroad, is that it?"

So we started that day exactly where we left off two years before, withmy wife in tears.

* * * * *

My wife's softness and English reticence, her very white, small, regularteeth, her neat rosy finger-nails, her schoolgirl air of innocentmischief and her schoolgirl dress, her modern jewellery, which was madeat great expense to give the impression, at a distance, of having beenmass-produced, her ready, rewarding smile, her deference to me and herzeal in my interests, her motherly heart which made her cable daily tothe nanny at home--in short, her peculiar charm--made her popular amongthe Americans, and our cabin on the day of departure was full ofcellophane packages--flowers, fruit, sweets, books, toys for thechildren--from friends she had known for a week. Stewards, like sistersin a nursing home, used to judge their passengers' importance by thenumber and value of these trophies; we therefore started the voyage inhigh esteem.

My wife's first thought on coming aboard was of the passenger list.

"Such a lot of friends," she said. "It's going to be a lovely trip.Let's have a co*cktail party this evening."

The companion-ways were no sooner cast off than she was busy with thetelephone.

"Julia. This is Celia--Celia Ryder. It's lovely to find you on board.What have you been up to? Come and have a co*cktail this evening and tellme all about it."

"Julia who?"

"Mottram. I haven't seen her for years."

Nor had I; not, in fact, since my wedding day, not to speak to for anytime, since the private view of my exhibition where the four canvassesof Marchmain House, lent by Brideshead, had hung together attractingmuch attention. Those pictures were my last contact with the Flytes; ourlives, so close for a year or two, had drawn apart. Sebastian, I knew,was still abroad; Rex and Julia, I sometimes heard said, were unhappytogether. Rex was not prospering quite as well as had been predicted; heremained on the fringe of the Government, prominent but vaguely suspect.He lived among the very rich, and in his speeches seemed to incline torevolutionary policies, flirting with Communists and fascists. I heardthe Mottrams' names in conversation; I saw their faces now and againpeeping from the Tatler, as I turned the pages impatiently waiting forsomeone to come, but they and I had fallen apart, as one could inEngland and only there, into separate worlds, little spinning planets ofpersonal relationship; there is probably a perfect metaphor for theprocess to be found in physics, from the way in which, I dimlyapprehend, particles of energy group and regroup themselves in separatemagnetic systems, a metaphor ready to hand for the man who can speak ofthese things with assurance; not for me, who can only say that Englandabounded in these small companies of intimate friends, so that, as inthis case of Julia and myself, we could live in the same street inLondon, see at times, a few miles distant, the same rural horizon, couldhave a liking one for the other, a mild curiosity about the other'sfortunes, a regret, even, that we should be separated, and the knowledgethat either of us had only to pick up the telephone and speak by theother's pillow, enjoy the intimacies of the levee, coming in, as itwere, with the morning orange juice and the sun, yet be restrained fromdoing so by the centripetal force of our own worlds, and the cold,interstellar space between them.

My wife, perched on the back of the sofa in a litter of cellophane andsilk ribbons, continued telephoning, working brightly through thepassenger list... "Yes, do of course bring him, I'm told he'ssweet.... Yes, I've got Charles back from the wilds at last; isn't itlovely.... What a treat seeing your name in the list! It's made mytrip... darling, we were at the Savoy-Carlton, too; how can we havemissed you?..." Sometimes she turned to me and said: "I have to makesure you're still really there. I haven't got used to it yet."

I went up and out as we steamed slowly down the river to one of thegreat glass cases where the passengers stood to watch the land slip by."Such a lot of friends," my wife had said. They looked a strange crowdto me; the emotions of leave-taking were just beginning to subside; someof them, who had been drinking till the last moment with those who wereseeing them off, were still boisterous; others were planning where theywould have their deck chairs; the band played unnoticed--all were asrestless as ants.

I turned into some of the halls of the ship, which were huge without anysplendour, as though they had been designed for a railway coach andpreposterously magnified. I passed through vast bronze gates whoseornament was like the trade mark of a cake of soap which had been usedonce or twice; I trod carpets the colour of blotting-paper; the paintedpanels of the walls were like blotting-paper, too: kindergarten work inflat, drab colours; and between the walls were yards and yards ofbiscuit-coloured wood which no carpenter's tool had ever touched, woodthat had been bent round corners, invisibly joined strip to strip,steamed and squeezed and polished; all over the blotting-paper carpetwere strewn tables designed perhaps by a sanitary engineer, squareblocks of stuffing, with square holes for sitting in, and, upholstered,it seemed, in blotting-paper also; the light of the hall was suffusedfrom scores of hollows, giving an even glow, casting no shadows--thewhole place hummed from its hundred ventilators and vibrated with theturn of the great engines below.

Here I am, I thought, back from the jungle, back from the ruins. Here,where wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity. Quomodosedet sola civitas (for I had heard that great lament, which Cordeliaonce quoted to me in the drawing-room of Marchmain House, sung by ahalf-caste choir in Guatemala, nearly a year ago).

A steward came up to me.

"Can I get you anything, sir?"

"A whiskey-and-soda, not iced."

"I'm sorry, sir, all the soda is iced."

"Is the water iced, too?"

"Oh yes, sir."

"Well, it doesn't matter."

He trotted off, puzzled, soundless in the pervading hum.

"Charles."

I looked behind me. Julia was sitting in a cube of blotting-paper, herhands folded in her lap, so still that I had passed by without noticingher.

"I heard you were here. Celia telephoned to me. It's delightful."

"What are you doing?"

She opened the empty hands in her lap with a little eloquent gesture."Waiting. My maid's unpacking; she's been so disagreeable ever since weleft England. She's complaining now about my cabin. I can't think why.It seems a lap to me."

The steward returned with whiskey and two jugs, one of iced water, theother of boiling water; I mixed them to the right temperature. Hewatched and said: "I'll remember that's how you take it, sir."

Most passengers had fads; he was paid to fortify their self-esteem.Julia asked for a cup of hot chocolate. I sat by her in the next cube.

"I never see you now," she said. "I never seem to see anyone I like. Idon't know why."

But she spoke as though it were a matter of weeks rather than of years;as though, too, before our parting we had been firm friends. It was deadcontrary to the common experience of such encounters, when time is foundto have built its own defensive lines, camouflaged vulnerable points,and laid a field of mines across all but a few well-trodden paths, sothat, more often than not, we can only signal to one another from eitherside of the tangle of wire. Here she and I, who were never friendsbefore, met on terms of long and unbroken intimacy.

"What have you been doing in America?"

She looked up slowly from her chocolate and, her splendid, serious eyesin mine, said: "Don't you know? I'll tell you about it sometime. I'vebeen a mug. I thought I was in love with someone, but it didn't turn outthat way." And my mind went back ten years to the evening at Brideshead,when that lovely, spidery child of nineteen, as though brought in for anhour from the nursery and nettled by lack of attention from thegrown-ups, had said: "I'm causing anxiety, too, you know," and I hadthought at the time, though scarcely, it now seemed to me, in longtrousers myself: "How important these girls make themselves with theirlove affairs."

Now it was different; there was nothing but humility and friendlycandour in the way she spoke.

I wished I could respond to her confidence, give some token ofacceptance, but there was nothing in my last, flat, eventful years thatI could share with her. I began instead to talk of my time in thejungle, of the comic characters I had met and the lost places I hadvisited, but in this mood of old friendship the tale faltered and cameto an end abruptly.

"I long to see the paintings," she said.

"Celia wanted me to unpack some and stick them round the cabin for herco*cktail party. I couldn't do that."

"No.... Is Celia as pretty as ever? I always thought she had the mostdelicious looks of any girl of my year."

"She hasn't changed."

"You have, Charles. So lean and grim, not at all the pretty boySebastian brought home with him. Harder, too."

"And you're softer."

"Yes, I think so... and very patient now."

She was not yet thirty, but was approaching the zenith of herloveliness, all her rich promise abundantly fulfilled. She had lost thatfashionable, spidery look; the head that I used to think Quattrocento,which had sat a little oddly on her, was now part of herself and not atall Florentine--not connected in any way with painting or the arts orwith anything except herself, so that it would be idle to itemize anddissect her beauty, which was her own essence, and could only be knownin her and by her authority and in the love I was soon to have for her.

Time had wrought another change, too; not for her the sly, complacentsmile of La Gioconda; the years had been more than "the sound of lyresand flutes," and had saddened her. She seemed to say, "Look at me. Ihave done my share. I am beautiful. It is something quite out of theordinary, this beauty of mine. I am made for delight. But what do Iget out of it? Where is my reward?"

That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was herreward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heartand struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.

"Sadder, too," I said.

"Oh yes, much sadder."

* * * * *

My wife was in exuberant spirits when, two hours later, I returned tothe cabin.

"I've had to do everything. How does it look?"

We had been given, without paying more for it, a large suite of rooms,one so large, in fact, that it was seldom booked except by directors ofthe line, and on most voyages, the chief purser admitted, was given tothose he wished to honour. (My wife was adept in achieving such smalladvantages, first impressing the impressionable with her chic and mycelebrity and, superiority once firmly established, changing quickly toa pose of almost flirtatious affability.) In token of her appreciationthe chief purser had been asked to our party and he, in token of hisappreciation, had sent before him the life-size effigy of a swan,moulded in ice and filled with caviar. This chilly piece of magnificencenow dominated the room, standing on a table in the centre, thawinggently, dripping at the beak into its silver dish. The flowers of themorning delivery hid as much as possible of the panelling (for this roomwas a miniature of the monstrous hall above).

"You must get dressed at once. Where have you been all this time?"

"Talking to Julia Mottram."

"D'you know her? Oh, of course, you were a friend of the dipso brother.Goodness, her glamour!"

"She greatly admires your looks, too."

"She used to be a girl friend of Boy's."

"Surely not?"

"He always said so."

"Have you considered," I asked, "how your guests are going to eat thiscaviar?"

"I have. It's insoluble. But there's all this"--she revealed some traysof glassy tit-bits--"and anyway, people always find ways of eatingthings at parties. D'you remember we once ate potted shrimps with apaper knife?"

"Did we?"

"Darling, it was the night you popped the question."

"As I remember, you popped."

"Well, the night we got engaged. But you haven't said how you like thearrangements."

The arrangements, apart from the swan and the flowers, consisted of asteward already inextricably trapped in the corner behind an improvisedbar, and another steward, tray in hand, in comparative freedom.

"A cinema actor's dream," I said.

"Cinema actors," said my wife; "that's what I want to talk about."

She came with me to my dressing-room and talked while I changed. It hadoccurred to her that, with my interest in architecture, my true métierwas designing scenery for the films, and she had asked two Hollywoodmagnates to the party with whom she wished to ingratiate me.

We returned to the sitting-room.

"Darling, I believe you've taken against my bird. Don't be beastly aboutit in front of the purser. It was sweet of him to think of it. Besides,you know, if you had read about it in a description of asixteenth-century banquet in Venice, you would have said those were thedays to live."

"In sixteenth-century Venice it would have been a somewhat differentshape."

"Here is Father Christmas. We were just in raptures over your swan."

The chief purser came into the room and shook hands powerfully.

"Dear Lady Celia," he said, "if you'll put on your warmest clothes andcome an expedition into the cold storage with me to-morrow, I can showyou a whole Noah's Ark of such objects. The toast will be along in aminute. They're keeping it hot."

"Toast!" said my wife, as though this was something beyond the dreams ofgluttony. "Do you hear that, Charles? Toast."

Soon the guests began to arrive; there was nothing to delay them."Celia," they said, "what a grand cabin and what a beautiful swan!" and,for all that it was one of the largest in the ship, our room was soonpainfully crowded; they began to put out their cigarettes in the littlepool of ice-water which now surrounded the swan.

The purser made a sensation, as sailors like to do, by predicting astorm. "How can you be so beastly?" asked my wife, conveying theflattering suggestion that not only the cabin and the caviar, but thewaves, too, were at his command. "Anyway, storms don't affect a shiplike this, do they?"

"Might hold us back a bit."

"But it wouldn't make us sick?"

"Depends if you're a good sailor. I'm always sick in storms, ever sinceI was a boy."

"I don't believe it. He's just being sad*stic. Come over here, there'ssomething I want to show you."

It was the latest photograph of her children. "Charles hasn't even seenCaroline yet. Isn't it thrilling for him?"

There were no friends of mine there, but I knew about a third of theparty, and talked away civilly enough. An elderly woman said to me, "Soyou're Charles. I feel I know you through and through, Celia's talked somuch about you."

Through and through, I thought. Through and through is a long way,madam. Can you indeed see into those dark places where my own eyes seekin vain to guide me? Can you tell me, dear Mrs. Stuyvesant Oglander--ifI am correct in thinking that is how I heard my wife speak of you--whyit is that at this moment, while I talk to you, here, about myforthcoming exhibition, I am thinking all the time only of when Juliawill come? Why can I talk like this to you, but not to her? Why have Ialready set her apart from humankind, and myself with her? What is goingon in those secret places of my spirit with which you make so free? Whatis cooking, Mrs. Stuyvesant Oglander?

Still Julia did not come, and the noise of twenty people in that tinyroom, which was so large that no one hired it, was the noise of amultitude.

Then I saw a curious thing. There was a little red-headed man whom noone seemed to know, a dowdy fellow quite unlike the general run of mywife's guests; he had been standing by the caviar for twenty minuteseating as fast as a rabbit. Now he wiped his mouth with his handkerchiefand, on the impulse apparently, leaned forward and dabbed the beak ofthe swan, removing the drop of water that had been swelling there andwould soon have fallen. Then he looked round furtively to see if he hadbeen observed, caught my eye, and giggled nervously.

"Been wanting to do that for a long time," he said. "Bet you don't knowhow many drops to the minute. I do, I counted."

"I've no idea."

"Guess. Tanner if you're wrong; half a dollar if you're right. That'sfair."

"Three," I said.

"Coo, you're a sharp one. Been counting 'em yourself." But he showed noinclination to pay this debt. Instead he said: "How d'you figure thisout? I'm an Englishman born and bred, but this is my first time on theAtlantic."

"You flew out perhaps?"

"No, nor over it."

"Then I presume you went round the world and came across the Pacific."

"You are a sharp one and no mistake. I've made quite a bit gettinginto arguments over that one."

"What was your route?" I asked, wishing to be agreeable.

"Ah, that'd be telling. Well, I must skedaddle. So long."

"Charles," said my wife, "this is Mr. Kramm, of Interastral Films."

"So you are Mr. Charles Ryder," said Mr. Kramm.

"Yes."

"Well, well, well." He paused. I waited. "The purser here says we'reheading for dirty weather. What d'you know about that?"

"Far less than the purser."

"Pardon me, Mr. Ryder, I don't quite get you."

"I mean I know less than the purser."

"Is that so? Well, well, well. I've enjoyed our talk very much. I hopethat it will be the first of many."

An Englishwoman said: "Oh, that swan! Six weeks in America has given mean absolute phobia of ice. Do tell me, how did it feel meeting Celiaagain after two years? I know I should feel indecently bridal. ButCelia's never quite got the orange blossom out of her hair, has she?"

Another woman said: "Isn't it heaven saying good-bye and knowing weshall meet again in half an hour and go on meeting every half-hour fordays?"

Our guests began to go, and each on leaving informed me of something mywife had promised to bring me to in the near future; it was the theme ofthe evening that we should all be seeing a lot of each other, that wehad formed one of those molecular systems that physicists canillustrate. At last the swan was wheeled out, too, and I said to mywife, "Julia never came."

"No, she telephoned. I couldn't hear what she said, there was such anoise going on--something about a dress. Quite lucky really, therewasn't room for a cat. It was a lovely party, wasn't it? Did you hate itvery much? You behaved beautifully and looked so distinguished. Who wasyour red-haired chum?"

"No chum of mine."

"How very peculiar! Did you say anything to Mr. Kramm about working inHollywood?"

"Of course not."

"Oh, Charles, you are a worry to me. It's not enough just to stand aboutlooking distinguished and a martyr for Art. Let's go to dinner. We're atthe Captain's table. I don't suppose he'll dine down to-night, but it'spolite to be fairly punctual."

By the time that we reached the table the rest of the party had arrangedthemselves. On either side of the Captain's empty chair sat Julia andMrs. Stuyvesant Oglander; besides them there were an English diplomatand his wife, Senator Stuyvesant Oglander, and an American clergyman atpresent totally isolated between two pairs of empty chairs. Thisclergyman later described himself--redundantly it seemed--as anEpiscopalian Bishop. Husbands and wives sat together here. My wife wasconfronted with a quick decision, and although the steward attempted todirect us otherwise, sat so that she had the Senator and I the Bishop.Julia gave us both a little dismal signal of sympathy.

"I'm miserable about the party," she said, "my beastly maid totallydisappeared with every dress I have. She only turned up half an hourago. She'd been playing ping-pong."

"I've been telling the Senator what he missed," said Mrs. StuyvesantOglander. "Wherever Celia is, you'll find she knows all the significantpeople."

"On my right," said the Bishop, "a significant couple are expected. Theytake all their meals in their cabin except when they have been informedin advance that the Captain will be present."

We were a gruesome circle; even my wife's high social spirit faltered.At moments I heard bits of her conversation.

"...an extraordinary little red-haired man. Captain Foulenough inperson."

"But I understood you to say, Lady Celia, that you were unacquaintedwith him."

"I mean he was like Captain Foulenough."

"I begin to comprehend. He impersonated this friend of yours in order tocome to your party."

"No, no. Captain Foulenough is simply a comic character."

"There seems to have been nothing very amusing about this other man.Your friend is a comedian?"

"No, no. Captain Foulenough is an imaginary character in an Englishpaper. You know, like your 'Popeye.'"

The Senator laid down knife and fork. "To recapitulate: an impostor cameto your party and you admitted him because of a fancied resemblance to afictitious character in a cartoon."

"Yes, I suppose that was it really."

The Senator looked at his wife as much as to say: "Significant people,huh!"

I heard Julia across the table trying to trace, for the benefit of thediplomat, the marriage-connections of her Hungarian and Italian cousins.The diamonds in her hair and on her fingers flashed with fire, but herhands were nervously rolling little balls of crumb, and her starry headdrooped in despair.

The Bishop told me of the goodwill mission on which he was travelling toBarcelona... "a very, very valuable work of clearance has beenperformed, Mr. Ryder. The time has now come to rebuild on broaderfoundations. I have made it my aim to reconcile the so-called Anarchistsand the so-called Communists, and with that in view I and my committeehave digested all the available literature of the subject. Ourconclusion, Mr. Ryder, is unanimous. There is no fundamental diversitybetween the two ideologies. It is a matter of personalities, Mr. Ryder,and what personalities have put asunder personalities can unite...."

On the other side I heard:--

"And may I make so bold as to ask what institutions sponsored yourhusband's expedition?"

The diplomat's wife bravely engaged the Bishop across the gulf thatseparated them.

"And what language will you speak when you get to Barcelona?"

"The language of Reason and Brotherhood, madam," and, turning back tome, "The speech of the coming century is in thoughts not in words. Doyou not agree, Mr. Ryder?"

"Yes," I said. "Yes."

"What are words?" said the Bishop.

"What indeed?"

"Mere conventional symbols, Mr. Ryder, and this is an age rightlysceptical of conventional symbols."

My mind reeled; after the parrot-house fever of my wife's party, and thedeep, unplumbed emotions of the afternoon, after all the exertions of mywife's pleasures in New York, after the months of solitude in thesteaming, green shadows of the jungle, this was too much. I felt likeLear on the heath, like the duch*ess of Malfi bayed by madmen. I summonedcataracts and hurricanes, and as if by conjury the call was immediatelyanswered.

For some time now, though whether it was a mere trick of the nerves Idid not then know, I had felt a recurrent and persistently growingmotion--a heave and shudder of the large dining-room as of the breast ofa man in deep sleep. Now my wife turned to me and said: "Either I am alittle drunk or it's getting rough," and even as she spoke we foundourselves leaning sideways in our chairs; there was a crash and tinkleof falling cutlery by the wall, and on our table the wine-glasses alltogether toppled and rolled over, while each of us steadied the plateand forks and looked at the others with expressions that varied betweenfrank horror in the diplomat's wife and relief in Julia.

The gale which, unheard, unseen, unfelt, in our enclosed and insulatedworld, had for an hour been mounting over us, had now veered and fallenfull on our bows.

Silence followed the crash, then a high, nervous babble of laughter.Stewards laid napkins on the pools of spilt wine. We tried to resume theconversation, but all were waiting, as the little ginger man had watchedthe drop swell and fall from the swan's beak, for the next great blow;it came, heavier than the last.

"This is where I say good-night to you all," said the diplomat's wife,rising.

Her husband led her to their cabin. The dining-room was emptying fast.Soon only Julia, my wife and I were left at the table, andtelepathically, Julia said, "Like King Lear."

"Only each of us is all three of them."

"What can you mean?" asked my wife.

"Lear, Kent, Fool."

"Oh, dear, it's like that agonizing Foulenough conversation over again.Don't try and explain."

"I doubt if I could," I said.

Another climb, another vast drop. The stewards were at work makingthings fast, shutting things up, hustling away unstable ornaments.

"Well, we've finished dinner and set a fine example of British phlegm,"said my wife. "Let's go and see what's on."

Once on our way to the lounge we had all three to cling to a pillar;when we got there we found it almost deserted; the band played but noone danced; the tables were set for tombola but no one bought a card,and the ship's officer, who made a specialty of calling the numbers withall the patter of the lower deck--"sweet sixteen and never beenkissed--key of the door, twenty-one--clickety-click, sixty-six"--wasidly talking to his colleagues; there were a score of scattered novelreaders, a few games of bridge, some brandy drinking in thesmoking-room, but all our guests of two hours before had disappeared.

The three of us sat for a little by the empty dance floor; my wife wasfull of schemes by which, without impoliteness, we could move to anothertable in the dining-room. "It's crazy to go to the restaurant," shesaid, "and pay extra for exactly the same dinner. Only film people gothere, anyway. I don't see why we should be made to."

Presently she said: "It's making my head ache and I'm tired, anyway. I'mgoing to bed."

Julia went with her. I walked round the ship, on one of the covereddecks where the wind howled and the spray leaped up from the darknessand smashed white and brown against the glass screen; men were posted tokeep the passengers off the open decks. Then I, too, went below.

In my dressing-room everything breakable had been stowed away, the doorto the cabin was hooked open, and my wife called plaintively fromwithin.

"I feel terrible. I didn't know a ship of this size could pitch likethis," she said, and her eyes were full of consternation and resentment,like those of a woman who, at the end of her time, at length realizesthat however luxurious the nursing home, and however well paid thedoctor, her labour is inevitable; and the lift and fall of the ship cameregularly as the pains of childbirth.

I slept next door; or, rather, I lay there between dreaming and waking.In a narrow bunk, on a hard mattress, there might have been rest, buthere the beds were broad and buoyant; I collected what cushions I couldfind and tried to wedge myself firm, but through the night I turned witheach swing and twist of the ship--she was rolling now as well aspitching--and my head rang with the creak and thud which now succeededthe hum of fine weather.

Once, an hour before dawn, my wife appeared like a ghost in the doorway,supporting herself with either hand on the jambs, saying: "Are youawake? Can't you do something? Can't you get something from the doctor?"

I rang for the night steward, who had a draught ready prepared, whichcomforted her a little.

And all night between dreaming and waking I thought of Julia; in mybrief dreams she took a hundred fantastic and terrible and obsceneforms, but in my waking thoughts she returned with her sad, starry headjust as I had seen her at dinner.

* * * * *

After first light I slept for an hour or two, then awoke clear-headed,with a joyous sense of anticipation.

The wind had dropped a little, the steward told me, but was stillblowing hard and there was a very heavy swell; "which there's nothingworse than a heavy swell," he said, "for the enjoyment of thepassengers. There's not many breakfasts wanted this morning."

I looked in at my wife, found her sleeping, and closed the door betweenus; then I ate salmon kedgeree and cold Bradenham ham and telephoned fora barber to come and shave me.

"There's a lot of stuff in the sitting-room for the lady," said thesteward; "shall I leave it for the time?"

I went to see. There was a second delivery of cellophane parcels fromthe shops on board, some ordered by radio from friends in New York whosesecretaries had failed to remind them of our departure in time, some byour guests as they left the co*cktail party. It was no day for flowervases; I told him to leave them on the floor and then, struck by thethought, removed the card from Mr. Kramm's roses and sent them with mylove to Julia.

She telephoned while I was being shaved.

"What a deplorable thing to do, Charles! How unlike you!"

"Don't you like them?"

"What can I do with roses on a day like this?"

"Smell them."

There was a pause and a rustle of unpacking. "They've absolutely nosmell at all."

"What have you had for breakfast?"

"Muscat grapes and cantaloup."

"When shall I see you?"

"Before lunch. I'm busy till then with a masseuse."

"A masseuse?"

"Yes, isn't it peculiar. I've never had one before, except once when Ihurt my shoulder hunting. What is it about being on a boat that makeseveryone behave like a film star?"

"I don't."

"How about these very embarrassing roses?"

The barber did his work with extraordinary dexterity--indeed, withagility, for he stood like a swordsman in a ballet sometimes on thepoint of one foot, sometimes on the other, lightly flicking the latheroff his blade and swooping back to my chin as the ship righted herself;I should not have dared use a safety razor on myself.

The telephone rang again.

It was my wife.

"How are you, Charles?"

"Tired."

"Aren't you coming to see me?"

"I came once. I'll be in again."

I brought her the flowers from the sitting-room; they completed theatmosphere of a maternity ward which she had managed to create in thecabin; the stewardess had the air of a midwife, standing by the bed, apillar of starched linen and composure. My wife turned her head on thepillow and smiled wanly; she stretched out a bare arm and caressed withthe tips of her fingers the cellophane and silk ribbons of the largestbouquet. "How sweet people are," she said faintly, as though the galewere a private misfortune of her own which the world in its love wascondoling.

"I take it you're not getting up."

"Oh no, Mrs. Clark is being so sweet." She was always quick to getservants' names. "Don't bother. Come in sometimes and tell me what'sgoing on."

"Now, now, dear," said the stewardess, "the less we are disturbed to-daythe better."

My wife seemed to make a sacred, female rite even of seasickness.

Julia's cabin, I knew, was somewhere below ours. I waited for her by thelift on the main deck; when she came we walked once round the promenade;I held the rail, she took my other arm. It was hard going; through thestreaming glass we saw a distorted world of grey sky and black water.When the ship rolled heavily I swung her round so that she could holdthe rail with her other hand; the howl of the wind was subdued, but thewhole ship creaked with strain. We made the circuit once; then Juliasaid: "It's no good. That woman beat hell out of me, and I feel limp,anyway. Let's sit down."

The great bronze doors of the lounge had torn away from their hooks andwere swinging free with the roll of the ship; regularly and, it seemed,irresistibly, first one, then the other, opened and shut; they paused atthe completion of each half circle, began to move slowly and finishedfast with a resounding clash. There was no real risk in passing them,except of slipping and being caught by that swift, final blow; there wasample time to walk through unhurried, but there was something forbiddingin the sight of that great weight of uncontrolled metal, flapping to andfro, which might have made a timid man flinch or skip through tooquickly; I rejoiced to feel Julia's hand perfectly steady on my arm andknow, as I walked beside her, that she was wholly undismayed.

"Bravo," said a man sitting near by. "I confess I went round the otherway. I didn't like the look of those doors somehow. They've been tryingto fix them all the morning."

There were few people about that day, and that few seemed bound togetherby a camaraderie of reciprocal esteem; they did nothing except sitrather glumly in their armchairs, drink occasionally and exchangecongratulations on not being seasick.

"You're the first lady I've seen," said the man.

"I'm very lucky."

"We are very lucky," he said, with a movement which began as a bow andended as a lurch forward to his knees, as the blotting-paper floordipped steeply between us. The roll carried us away from him, clingingtogether but still on our feet, and we quickly sat where our dance ledus, on the further side, in isolation; a web of life-lines had beenstretched across the lounge, and we seemed like boxers, roped into thering.

The steward approached. "Your usual, sir? Whiskey and tepid water, Ithink. And for the lady? Might I suggest a nip of champagne?"

"D'you know, the awful thing is I would like champagne very much?"said Julia. "What a life of pleasure--roses, half an hour with a femalepugilist, and now champagne!"

"I wish you wouldn't go on about the roses. It wasn't my idea in thefirst place. Someone sent them to Celia."

"Oh, that's quite different. It lets you out completely. But it makes mymassage worse."

"I was shaved in bed."

"I'm glad about the roses," said Julia. "Frankly, they were a shock.They made me think we were starting the day on quite the wrong footing."

I knew what she meant, and in that moment felt as though I had shakenoff some of the dust and grit of ten dry years; then and always, howevershe spoke to me--in half sentences, single words, stock phrases ofcontemporary jargon, in scarcely perceptible movements of eyes or lipsor hands--however inexpressible her thought, however quick and far ithad glanced from the matter in hand, however deep it had plunged, as itoften did, straight from the surface to the depths, I knew; even thatday when I still stood on the extreme verge of love, I knew what shemeant.

We drank our wine and soon our new friend came lurching towards us downthe life-line.

"Mind if I join you? Nothing like a bit of rough weather for bringingpeople together. This is my tenth crossing, and I've never seen anythinglike it. I can see you are an experienced sailor, young lady."

"No. As a matter of fact, I've never been at sea before except coming toNew York and, of course, crossing the Channel. I don't feel sick, thankGod, but I feel tired. I thought at first it was only the massage, butI'm coming to the conclusion it's the ship."

"My wife's in a terrible way. She's an experienced sailor. Only shows,doesn't it?"

He joined us at luncheon, and I did not mind his being there; he hadclearly taken a fancy to Julia, and he thought we were man and wife;this misconception and his gallantry seemed in some way to bring her andme closer together. "Saw you two last night at the Captain's table," hesaid, "with all the nobs."

"Very dull nobs."

"If you ask me, nobs always are. When you get a storm like this you findout what people are really made of."

"You have a predilection for good sailors?"

"Well, put like that I don't know that I do--what I mean is, it makesfor getting together."

"Yes."

"Take us for example. But for this we might never have met. I've hadsome very romantic encounters at sea in my time. If the lady will excuseme, I'd like to tell you about a little adventure I had in the Gulf ofLyons when I was younger than I am now."

We were both weary; lack of sleep, the incessant din and the strainevery movement required, wore us down. We spent that afternoon apart inour cabins. I slept, and when I awoke the sea was as high as ever, inkyclouds swept over us and the glass streamed still with water, but I hadgrown used to the storm in my sleep, had made its rhythm mine, hadbecome part of it, so that I arose strongly and confidently and foundJulia already up and in the same temper.

"What d'you think?" she said. "That man's giving a little 'get-togetherparty' to-night in the smoking-room for all the good sailors. He askedme to bring my husband."

"Are we going?"

"Of course.... I wonder if I ought to feel like the lady our friendmet on the way to Barcelona. I don't, Charles, not a bit."

There were eighteen people at the "get-together party"; we had nothingin common except immunity from seasickness. We drank champagne, andpresently our host said: "Tell you what, I've got a roulette wheel.Trouble is we can't go to my cabin on account of the wife, and we aren'tallowed to play in public."

So the party adjourned to my sitting-room and we played for low stakesuntil late into the night, when Julia left and our host had drunk toomuch wine to be surprised that she and I were not in the same quarters.When all but he had gone he fell asleep in his chair, and I left himthere. It was the last I saw of him, for later, so the steward told mewhen he came from returning the roulette things to the man's cabin, hebroke his collar-bone, falling in the corridor, and was taken to theship's hospital.

All next day Julia and I spent together without interruption; talking,scarcely moving, held in our chairs by the swell of the sea. Afterluncheon the last hardy passengers went to rest and we were alone asthough the place had been cleared for us, as though tact on a Titanicscale had sent everyone tiptoeing out to leave us to one another.

The bronze doors of the lounge had been fixed, but not before two seamenhad been injured and removed to the sick-bay. They had tried variousdevices, lashing with ropes and, later, when these failed, with steelhawsers, but there was nothing to which they could be made fast;finally, they drove wooden wedges under them, catching them in the briefmoment of repose when they were full open, and these held them.

When, before dinner, she went to her cabin to get ready (no one dressedthat night) and I came with her, uninvited, unopposed, expected, andbehind closed doors took her in my arms and first kissed her, there wasno alteration from the mood of the afternoon. Later, turning it over inmy mind, as I turned in my bed with the rise and fall of the ship,through the long, lonely, drowsy night, I recalled the courtships of thepast, dead, ten years; how, knotting my tie before setting out, puttingthe gardenia in my buttonhole, I would plan my evening and think, Atsuch and such a time, at such and such an opportunity, I shall cross thestart-line and open my attack for better or worse; this phase of thebattle has gone on long enough, I would think; a decision must bereached. With Julia there were no phases, no start-line, no tactics atall.

But later that night when she went to bed and I followed her to her doorshe stopped me.

"No, Charles, not yet. Perhaps never. I don't know. I don't know if Iwant love."

Then something, some surviving ghost from those dead ten years--for onecannot die, even for a little, without some loss--made me say, "Love?I'm not asking for love."

"Oh yes, Charles, you are," she said, and putting up her hand gentlystroked my cheek; then shut her door.

And I reeled back, first on one wall, then on the other, of the long,softly lighted, empty corridor; for the storm, it appeared, had the formof a ring. All day we had been sailing through its still centre; now wewere once more in the full fury of the wind--and that night was to berougher than the one before.

* * * * *

Ten hours of talking: what had we to say? Plain fact mostly, the recordof our two lives, so long widely separate, now being knit to one.Through all that storm-tossed night I rehearsed what she had told me;she was no longer the alternate succubus and starry vision of the nightbefore; she had given all that was transferable of her past into mykeeping. She told me, as I have already retold, of her courtship andmarriage; she told me, as though fondly turning the pages of an oldnursery-book, of her childhood; and I lived long, sunny days with her inthe meadows, with Nanny Hawkins on her camp stool and Cordelia asleep inthe pram, slept quiet nights under the dome with the religious picturesfading round the cot as the nightlight burned low and the embers settledin the grate. She told me of her life with Rex and of the secret,vicious, disastrous escapade that had taken her to New York. She, too,had had her dead years. She told me of her long struggle with Rex as towhether she should have a child; at first she wanted one, but learnedafter a year that an operation was needed to make it possible; by thattime Rex and she were out of love, but he still wanted his child, andwhen at last she consented, it was born dead.

"Rex has never been unkind to me intentionally," she said. "It's justthat he isn't a real person at all; he's just a few faculties of a manhighly developed; the rest simply isn't there. He couldn't imagine whyit hurt me to find, two months after we came back to London from ourhoneymoon, that he was still keeping up with Brenda Champion."

"I was glad when I found Celia was unfaithful," I said. "I felt it wasall right for me to dislike her."

"Is she? Do you? I'm glad. I don't like her either. Why did you marryher?"

"Physical attraction. Ambition. Everyone agrees she's the ideal wife fora painter. Loneliness, missing Sebastian."

"You loved him, didn't you?"

"Oh yes. He was the forerunner."

Julia understood.

The ship creaked and shuddered, rose and fell. My wife called to me fromthe next room: "Charles, are you there?"

"Yes."

"I've been asleep such a long while. What time is it?"

"Half-past three."

"It's no better, is it?"

"Worse."

"I feel a little better, though. D'you think they'd bring me some tea orsomething if I rang the bell?"

I got her some tea and biscuits from the night steward.

"Did you have an amusing evening?"

"Everyone's seasick."

"Poor Charles. It was going to have been such a lovely trip, too. It maybe better to-morrow."

I turned out the light and shut the door between us.

Waking and dreaming, through the strain and creak and heave of the longnight, flat on my back with my arms and legs spread wide to check theroll, and my eyes open to the darkness, I lay thinking of Julia.

"...We thought Papa might come back to England after Mummy died, orthat he might marry again, but he lives just as he did. Rex and I oftengo to see him now. I've grown fond of him.... Sebastian's disappearedcompletely... Cordelia's in Spain with an ambulance... Brideyleads his own extraordinary life. He wanted to shut Brideshead afterMummy died, but Papa wouldn't have it for some reason, so Rex and I livethere now, and Bridey has two rooms up in the dome, next to NannyHawkins, part of the old nurseries. He's like a character from Chekhov.One meets him sometimes coming out of the library or on the stairs--Inever know when he's at home--and now and then he suddenly comes in todinner like a ghost quite unexpectedly.

"...Oh, Rex's parties! Politics and money. They can't do anythingexcept for money; if they walk round the lake they have to make betsabout how many swans they see... sitting up till two, amusing Rex'sgirls, hearing them gossip, rattling away endlessly on the backgammonboard while the men play cards and smoke cigars. The cigar smoke... Ican smell it in my hair when I wake up in the morning; it's in myclothes when I dress at night. Do I smell of it now? D'you think thatwoman who rubbed me felt it in my skin?

"...At first I used to stay away with Rex in his friends' houses. Hedoesn't make me any more. He was ashamed of me when he found I didn'tcut the kind of figure he wanted, ashamed of himself for having beentaken in. I wasn't at all the article he'd bargained for. He can't seethe point of me, but whenever he's made up his mind there isn't a pointand he's begun to feel comfortable, he gets a surprise--some man, oreven woman, he respects takes a fancy to me and he suddenly sees thatthere is a whole world of things we understand and he doesn't.... Hewas upset when I went away. He'll be delighted to have me back. I wasfaithful to him until this last thing came along. There's nothing like agood upbringing. Do you know last year, when I thought I was going tohave a child, I'd decided to have it brought up a Catholic? I hadn'tthought about religion before; I haven't since; but just at that time,when I was waiting for the birth, I thought, 'That's one thing I cangive her. It doesn't seem to have done me much good, but my child shallhave it.' It was odd, wanting to give something one had lost oneself.Then, in the end, I couldn't even give that: I couldn't even give herlife. I never saw her; I was too ill to know what was going on, andafterwards for a long time, until now, I didn't want to speak abouther--she was a daughter, so Rex didn't so much mind her being dead.

"I've been punished a little for marrying Rex. You see, I can't get allthat sort of thing out of my mind, quite--Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell,Nanny Hawkins, and the Catechism. It becomes part of oneself, if theygive it one early enough. And yet I wanted my child to have it....Now I suppose I shall be punished for what I've just done. Perhaps thatis why you and I are here together like this... part of a plan."

That was almost the last thing she said to me--"part of a plan"--beforewe went below and parted at her cabin door.

* * * * *

Next day the wind had again dropped, and again we were wallowing in theswell. The talk was less of seasickness now than of broken bones; peoplehad been thrown about in the night, and there had been many nastyaccidents on bathroom floors.

That day, because we had talked so much the day before and because whatwe had to say needed few words, we spoke little. We had books; Juliafound a game she liked. When after long silences we spoke, our thoughts,we found, had kept pace together side by side.

Once I said, "You are standing guard over your sadness."

"It's all I have earned. You said yesterday. My wages."

"An I.O.U. from life. A promise to pay on demand."

Rain ceased at midday; at evening the clouds dispersed and the sun,astern of us, suddenly broke into the lounge where we sat, putting allthe lights to shame.

"Sunset," said Julia, "the end of our day."

She rose and, though the roll and pitch of the ship seemed unabated, ledme up to the boat-deck. She put her arm through mine and her hand intomine, in my great-coat pocket. The deck was dry and empty, swept only bythe wind of the ship's speed. As we made our halting, laborious wayforward, away from the flying smuts of the smoke-stack, we werealternately jostled together, then strained, nearly sundered, arms andfingers interlocked as I held the rail and Julia clung to me, thrusttogether again, drawn apart; then, in a plunge deeper than the rest, Ifound myself flung across her, pressing her against the rail, wardingmyself off her with the arms that held her prisoner on either side, andas the ship paused at the end of its drop as though gathering strengthfor the ascent, we stood thus embraced, in the open, cheek againstcheek, her hair blowing across my eyes; the dark horizon of tumblingwater, flashing now with gold, stood still above us, then came sweepingdown till I was staring through Julia's dark hair into a wide and goldensky, and she was thrown forward on my heart, held up by my hands on therail, her face still pressed to mine.

In that minute, with her lips to my ear and her breath warm in the saltwind, Julia said, though I had not spoken, "Yes, now," and as the shiprighted herself and for the moment ran into calmer waters, Julia led mebelow.

So at sunset I took formal possession of her as her lover. It was notime for the sweets of luxury; they would come, in their season, withthe swallow and the lime-flowers. Now on the rough water, as I was madefree of her narrow loins and, it seemed now, in assuaging that fierceappetite, cast a burden which I had borne all my life, toiled under, notknowing its nature--now, while the waves still broke and thundered onthe prow, the act of possession was a symbol, a rite of ancient originand solemn meaning.

We dined that night high up in the ship, in the restaurant, and sawthrough the bow windows the stars come out and sweep across the sky asonce, I remembered, I had seen them sweep above the towers and gables ofOxford. The stewards promised that to-morrow night the band would playagain and the place be full. We had better book now, they said, if wewanted a good table.

"Oh dear," said Julia, "where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans ofthe storm?"

I could not leave her that night, but early next morning, as once againI made my way back along the corridor, I found I could walk withoutdifficulty; the ship rode easily on a smooth sea, and I knew that oursolitude was broken.

* * * * *

My wife called joyously from her cabin: "Charles, Charles, I feel sowell. What do you think I am having for breakfast?"

I went to see. She was eating a beef-steak.

"I've fixed up for a visit to the hairdresser--do you know they couldn'ttake me till four o'clock this afternoon, they're so busy suddenly? So Ishan't appear till the evening, but lots of people are coming in to seeus this morning, and I've asked Miles and Janet to lunch with us in oursitting-room. I'm afraid I've been a worthless wife to you the last twodays. What have you been up to?"

"One gay evening," I said, "we played roulette till two o'clock, nextdoor in the sitting-room, and our host passed out."

"Goodness. It sounds very disreputable. Have you been behaving, Charles?You haven't been picking up sirens?"

"There was scarcely a woman about. I spent most of the time with Julia."

"Oh, good. I always wanted to bring you together. She's one of myfriends I knew you'd like. I expect you were a godsend to her. She's hadrather a gloomy time lately. I don't expect she mentioned it, but..."my wife proceeded to relate a current version of Julia's journey to NewYork. "I'll ask her to co*cktails this morning," she concluded.

Julia came, and it was happiness enough, now, merely to be near her.

"I hear you've been looking after my husband for me," my wife said.

"Yes, we've become very matey. He and I and a man whose name we don'tknow."

"Mr. Kramm, what have you done to your arm?"

"It was the bathroom floor," said Mr. Kramm, and explained at length howhe had fallen.

That night the Captain dined at his table and the circle was complete,for claimants came to the chairs on the Bishop's right, two Japanese whoexpressed deep interest in his projects for world-brotherhood. TheCaptain was full of chaff at Julia's endurance in the storm, offering toengage her as a seaman; years of sea-going had given him jokes for everyoccasion. My wife, fresh from the beauty parlour, was unravaged by herthree days of distress, and in the eyes of many seemed to outshineJulia, whose sadness had gone and been replaced by an incommunicablecontent and tranquillity; incommunicable save to me; she and I,separated by the crowd, sat alone together close enwrapped, as we hadlain in each other's arms the night before.

There was a gala spirit in the ship that night. Though it meant risingat dawn to pack, everyone was determined that for this one night hewould enjoy the luxury the storm had denied him. There was no solitude.Every corner of the ship was thronged; dance music and high, excitedchatter, stewards darting everywhere with trays of glasses, the voice ofthe officer in charge of tombola: "Kelly's eye--number one; legs,eleven; and we'll Shake the Bag"--Mrs. Stuyvesant Oglander in a papercap, Mr. Kramm and his bandages, the two Japanese decorously throwingpaper streamers and hissing like geese.

I did not speak to Julia, alone, all that evening.

We met for a minute next day on the starboard side of the ship whileeveryone else crowded to port to see the officials come aboard and togaze at the green coastline of Devon.

"What are your plans?"

"London for a bit," she said.

"Celia's going straight home. She wants to see the children."

"You, too?"

"No."

"In London then."

* * * * *

"Charles, the little red-haired man--Foulenough. Did you see? Twoplain-clothes police have taken him off."

"I missed it. There was such a crowd on that side of the ship."

"I found out the trains and sent a telegram. We shall be home by dinner.The children will be asleep. Perhaps we might wake Johnjohn up, just foronce."

"You go down," I said. "I shall have to stay in London."

"Oh, but Charles, you must come. You haven't seen Caroline."

"Will she change much in a week or two?"

"Darling, she changes every day."

"Then what's the point of seeing her now? I'm sorry, my dear, but I mustget the pictures unpacked and see how they've travelled. I must fix upfor the exhibition right away."

"Must you?" she said, but I knew that her resistance ended when Iappealed to the mysteries of my trade. "It's very disappointing.Besides, I don't know if Andrew and Cynthia will be out of the flat.They took it till the end of the month."

"I can go to a hotel."

"But that's so grim. I can't bear you to be alone your first night home.I'll stay and go down to-morrow."

"You mustn't disappoint the children."

"No." Her children, my art, the two mysteries of our trades...

"Will you come for the week-end?"

"If I can."

"All British passports to the smoking-room, please," said a steward.

"I've arranged with that sweet Foreign Office man at our table to get usoff early with him," said my wife.

Chapter Two

It was my wife's idea to hold the private view on Friday.

"We are out to catch the critics this time," she said. "It's high timethey began to take you seriously, and they know it. This is theirchance. If you open on Monday they'll most of them have just come upfrom the country, and they'll dash off a few paragraphs beforedinner--I'm only worrying about the weeklies of course. If we give themthe week-end to think about it, we shall have them in an urbaneSunday-in-the-country mood. They'll settle down after a good luncheon,tuck up their cuffs, and turn out a nice, leisurely, full-length essay,which they'll reprint later in a nice little book. Nothing less will dothis time."

She was up and down from the Old Rectory several times during the monthof preparation, revising the list of invitations and helping with thehanging.

On the morning of the private view I telephoned to Julia and said: "I'msick of the pictures already and never want to see them again, but Isuppose I shall have to put in an appearance."

"D'you want me to come?"

"I'd much rather you didn't."

"Celia sent a card with 'Bring everyone' written across it in green ink.When do we meet?"

"In the train. You might pick up my luggage."

"If you'll have it packed soon I'll pick you up, too, and drop you atthe gallery. I've got a fitting next door at twelve."

When I reached the gallery my wife was standing looking through thewindow to the street. Behind her half a dozen unknown picture-loverswere moving from canvas to canvas, catalogue in hand; they were peoplewho had once bought a woodcut and were consequently on the gallery'slist of patrons.

"No one has come yet," said my wife. "I've been here since ten and it'sbeen very dull. Whose car was that you came in?"

"Julia's."

"Julia's? Why didn't you bring her in? Oddly enough, I've just beentalking about Brideshead to a funny little man who seemed to know usvery well. He said he was called Mr. Samgrass. Apparently he's one ofLord Copper's middle-aged young men on the Daily Beast. I tried tofeed him some paragraphs, but he seemed to know more about you than Ido. He said he'd met me years ago at Brideshead. I wish Julia had comein; then we could have asked her about him."

"I remember him well. He's a crook."

"Yes, that stuck out a mile. He's been talking all about what he calls'the Brideshead set.' Apparently Rex Mottram has made the place a nestof party mutiny. Did you know? What would Teresa Marchmain havethought?"

"I'm going there to-night."

"Not to-night, Charles; you can't go there to-night. You're expectedat home. You promised, as soon as the exhibition was ready, you'd comehome. Johnjohn and Nanny have made a banner with 'Welcome' on it. Andyou haven't seen Caroline yet."

"I'm sorry, it's all settled."

"Besides, Daddy will think it so odd. And Boy is home for Sunday. Andyou haven't seen the new studio. You can't go to-night. Did they askme?"

"Of course; but I knew you wouldn't be able to come."

"I can't now. I could have if you'd let me know earlier. I should adoreto see the 'Brideshead set' at home. I do think you're perfectlybeastly, but this is no time for a family rumpus. The Clarences promisedto come in before luncheon; they may be here any minute."

We were interrupted, however, not by royalty, but by a woman reporterfrom one of the dailies, whom the manager of the gallery now led up tous. She had not come to see the pictures but to get a "human story" ofthe dangers of my journey. I left her to my wife, and next day read inher paper:--

CHARLES "STATELY HOMES" RYDER STEPS OFF THE MAP

That the snakes and vampires of the jungle have nothing on Mayfair is the opinion of socialite artist Ryder, who has abandoned the houses of the great for the ruins of equatorial Africa....

The rooms began to fill and I was soon busy being civil. My wife waseverywhere, greeting people, introducing people, deftly transforming thecrowd into a party. I saw her lead friends forward one after another tothe subscription list that had been opened for the book of Ryder'sLatin America; I heard her say: "No, darling, I'm not at all surprised,but you wouldn't expect me to be, would you? You see Charles lives forone thing--Beauty. I think he got bored with finding it ready-made inEngland; he had to go and create it for himself. He wanted new worlds toconquer. After all, he has said the last word about country houses,hasn't he? Not, I mean, that he's given that up altogether. I'm surehe'll always do one or two more for friends."

A photographer brought us together, flashed a lamp in our faces, and letus part.

Presently there was the slight hush and edging away which follows theentry of a royal party. I saw my wife curtsey and heard her say: "Oh,sir, you are sweet"; then I was led into the clearing and the Duke ofClarence said: "Pretty hot out there I should think."

"It was, sir."

"Awfully clever the way you've hit off the impression of heat. Makes mefeel quite uncomfortable in my great-coat."

"Ha, ha."

When they had gone my wife said: "Goodness, we're late for lunch.Margot's giving a party in your honour," and in the taxi she said: "I'vejust thought of something. Why don't you write and ask the duch*ess'spermission to dedicate Latin America to her?"

"Why should I?"

"She'd love it so."

"I wasn't thinking of dedicating it to anyone."

"There you are; that's typical of you, Charles. Why miss an opportunityto give pleasure?"

There were a dozen at luncheon, and though it pleased my hostess and mywife to say that they were there in my honour, it was plain to me thathalf of them did not know of my exhibition and had come because they hadbeen invited and had no other engagement. Throughout luncheon theytalked without stopping of Mrs. Simpson, but they all, or nearly all,came back with us to the gallery.

The hour after luncheon was the busiest time. There were representativesof the Tate Gallery, the Chantrey Bequest, the National Art CollectionsFund, who all promised to return shortly with colleagues and, in themeantime, reserved certain pictures for further consideration. The mostinfluential critic, who in the past had dismissed me with a few woundingcommendations, peered out at me from between his slouch hat and woollenmuffler, gripped my arm, and said: "I knew you had it. I saw it there.I've been waiting for it."

From fashionable and unfashionable lips alike I heard fragments ofpraise. "If you'd asked me to guess," I overheard, "Ryder's is the lastname would have occurred to me. They're so virile, so passionate."

They all thought they had found something new. It had not been thus atmy last exhibition in these same rooms, shortly before my going abroad.Then there had been an unmistakable note of weariness. Then the talk hadbeen less of me than of the houses, anecdotes of their owners. That samewoman, it came back to me, who now applauded my virility and passion,had stood quite near me, before a painfully laboured canvas, and said,"So facile."

I remembered the exhibition, too, for another reason; it was the week Idetected my wife in adultery. Then, as now, she was a tireless hostess,and I heard her say: "Whenever I see anything lovely nowadays--abuilding or a piece of scenery--I think to myself, 'That's by Charles.'I see everything through his eyes. He is England to me."

I heard her say that; it was the sort of thing she had the habit ofsaying. Throughout our married life, again and again, I had felt mybowels shrivel within me at the things she said. But that day, in thisgallery, I heard her unmoved, and suddenly realized that she waspowerless to hurt me any more; I was a free man; she had given me mymanumission in that brief, sly lapse of hers; my cuckold's horns made melord of the forest.

At the end of the day my wife said: "Darling, I must go. It's been aterrific success, hasn't it? I'll think of something to tell them athome, but I wish it hadn't got to happen quite this way."

So she knows, I thought. She's a sharp one. She's had her nose downsince luncheon and picked up the scent.

I let her get clear of the place and was about to follow--the rooms werenearly empty--when I heard a voice at the turnstile I had not heard formany years, an unforgettable self-taught stammer, a sharp cadence ofremonstration.

"No. I have not brought a card of invitation. I do not even knowwhether I received one. I have not come to a social function; I do notseek to scrape acquaintance with Lady Celia; I do not want my photographin the Tatler; I have not come to exhibit myself. I have come to seethe pictures. Perhaps you are unaware that there are any pictureshere. I happen to have a personal interest in the artist--if that wordhas any meaning for you."

"Antoine," I said, "come in."

"My dear, there is a g-g-gorgon here who thinks I am g-g-gate-crashing.I only arrived in London yesterday, and heard quite by chance atluncheon that you were having an exhibition, so of course I dashedimpetuously to the shrine to pay homage. Have I changed? Would yourecognize me? Where are the pictures? Let me explain them to you."

Anthony Blanche had not changed from when I last saw him; not, indeed,from when I first saw him. He swept lightly across the room to the mostprominent canvas--a jungle landscape--paused a moment, his head co*ckedlike a knowing terrier, and asked: "Where, my dear Charles, did you findthis sumptuous greenery? The corner of a hothouse at T-t-trent orT-t-tring? What gorgeous usurer nurtured these fronds for yourpleasure?"

Then he made a tour of the two rooms; once or twice he sighed deeply,otherwise he kept silence. When he came to the end he sighed once more,more deeply than ever, and said: "But they tell me, my dear, you arehappy in love. That is everything, is it not, or nearly everything?"

"Are they as bad as that?"

Anthony dropped his voice to a piercing whisper: "My dear, let us notexpose your little imposture before these good, plain people"--he gave aconspiratorial glance to the last remnants of the crowd--"let us notspoil their innocent pleasure. We know, you and I, that this is allt-t-terrible t-t-tripe. Let us go, before we offend the connoisseurs. Iknow of a louche little bar quite near here. Let us go there and talkof your other c-c-conquests."

It needed this voice from the past to recall me; the indiscriminatechatter of praise all that crowded day had worked on me like asuccession of advertisem*nt hoardings on a long road, kilometre afterkilometre between the poplars, commanding one to stay at some new hotel,so that when at the end of the drive, stiff and dusty, one arrives atthe destination, it seems inevitable to turn into the yard under thename that had first bored, then angered one, and finally become aninseparable part of one's fatigue.

Anthony led me from the gallery and down a side street to a door betweena disreputable news agent and a disreputable chemist, painted with thewords BLUE GROTTO CLUB. Members Only.

"Not quite your milieu, my dear, but mine, I assure you. After all, youhave been in your milieu all day."

He led me downstairs, from a smell of cats to a smell of gin andcigarette-ends and the sound of a wireless.

"I was given the address by a dirty old man in the Boeuf sur le Toit. Iam most grateful to him. I have been out of England so long, and reallysympathetic little joints like this change so fast. I presented myselfhere for the first time yesterday evening, and already I feel quite athome. Good evening, Cyril."

"'Lo, Toni, back again?" said the youth behind the bar.

"We will take our drinks and sit in a corner. You must remember, mydear, that here you are just as conspicuous and, may I say, abnormal,my dear, as I should be in B-b-bratt's."

The place was painted cobalt; there was cobalt linoleum on the floor.Fishes of silver and gold paper had been pasted haphazard on ceiling andwalls. Half a dozen youths were drinking and playing with theslot-machines; an older, natty, crapulous-looking man seemed to be incontrol; there was some snigg*ring round the fruit-gum machine; then oneof the youths came up to us and said, "Would your friend care to rumba?"

"No, Tom, he would not, and I'm not going to give a drink; not yet,anyway.... That's a very impudent boy, a regular little gold-digger,my dear."

"Well," I said, affecting an ease I was far from feeling in that den,"what have you been up to all these years?"

"My dear, it is what you have been up to that we are here to talkabout. I've been watching you, my dear. I'm a faithful old body and I'vekept my eye on you." As he spoke the bar and the bar-tender, the bluewicker furniture, the gambling-machines, the wireless, the couple ofyouths dancing on the oilcloth, the youths snigg*ring round the slots,the purple-veined, stiffly dressed elderly man drinking in the corneropposite us, the whole drab and furtive joint, seemed to fade, and I wasback in Oxford looking out over Christ Church meadow through a window ofRuskin Gothic. "I went to your first exhibition," said Anthony; "I foundit--charming. There was an interior of Marchmain House, very English,very correct, but quite delicious. 'Charles has done something,' I said;'not all he will do, not all he can do, but something.'

"Even then, my dear, I wondered a little. It seemed to me that there wassomething a little gentlemanly about your painting. You must rememberI am not English; I cannot understand this keen zest to be well-bred.English snobbery is more macabre to me even than English morals.However, I said, 'Charles has done something delicious. What will he donext?'

"The next thing I saw was your very handsome volume--Village andProvincial Architecture, was it called? Quite a tome, my dear, and whatdid I find? Charm again. 'Not quite my cup of tea,' I thought; 'this istoo English.' I have the fancy for rather spicy things, you know, notfor the shade of the cedar tree, the cucumber sandwich, the silvercream-jug, the English girl dressed in whatever English girls do wearfor tennis--not that, not Jane Austen, not M-m-miss M-m-mitford. Then,to be frank, dear Charles, I despaired of you. 'I am a degenerate oldd-d-dago,' I said, 'and Charles--I speak of your art, my dear--is adean's daughter in flowered muslin.'

"Imagine then my excitement at luncheon to-day. Everyone was talkingabout you. My hostess was a friend of my mother's, a Mrs. StuyvesantOglander; a friend of yours, too, my dear. Such a frump! Not at all thesociety I imagined you to keep. However, they had all been to yourexhibition, but it was you they talked of, how you had broken away, mydear, gone to the tropics, become a Gauguin, a Rimbaud. You can imaginehow my old heart leaped.

"'Poor Celia,' they said, 'after all she's done for him.' 'He oweseverything to her. It's too bad.' 'And with Julia,' they said, 'afterthe way she behaved in America.' 'Just as she was going back to Rex.'

"'But the pictures,' I said; 'tell me about them.'

"'Oh, the pictures,' they said; 'they're most peculiar.' 'Not at allwhat he usually does.' 'Very forceful.' 'Quite barbaric.' 'I call themdownright unhealthy,' said Mrs. Stuyvesant Oglander.

"My dear, I could hardly keep still in my chair. I wanted to dash out ofthe house and leap in a taxi and say, 'Take me to Charles's unhealthypictures.' Well, I went, but the gallery after luncheon was so full ofabsurd women in the sort of hats they should be made to eat, that Irested a little--I rested here with Cyril and Tom and these saucy boys.Then I came back at the unfashionable time of five o'clock, all agog, mydear; and what did I find? I found, my dear, a very naughty and verysuccessful practical joke. It reminded me of dear Sebastian when heliked so much to dress up in false whiskers. It was charm again, mydear, simple, creamy English charm, playing tigers."

"You're quite right," I said.

"My dear, of course I'm right. I was right years ago--more years, I amhappy to say, than either of us shows--when I warned you. I took youout to dinner to warn you of charm. I warned you expressly and in greatdetail of the Flyte family. Charm is the great English blight. It doesnot exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything ittouches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles,it has killed you."

The youth called Tom approached us again. "Don't be a tease, Toni; buyme a drink." I remembered my train and left Anthony with him.

As I stood on the platform by the restaurant-car I saw my luggage andJulia's go past with Julia's sour-faced maid strutting beside theporter. They had begun shutting the carriage-doors when Julia arrived,unhurried, and took her place in front of me. I had a table for two.This was a very convenient train; there was half an hour before dinnerand half an hour after it; then, instead of changing to the branch line,as had been the rule in Lady Marchmain's day, we were met at thejunction. It was night as we drew out of Paddington, and the glow of thetown gave place first to the scattered lights of the suburbs, then tothe darkness of the fields.

"It seems days since I saw you," I said.

"Six hours; and we were together all yesterday. You look worn out."

"It's been a day of nightmare--crowds, critics, the Clarences, aluncheon party at Margot's, ending up with half an hour's well-reasonedabuse of my pictures in a pansy bar.... I think Celia knows aboutus."

"Well, she had to know some time."

"Everyone seems to know. My pansy friend had not been in Londontwenty-four hours before he'd heard."

"Damn everybody."

"What about Rex?"

"Rex isn't anybody at all," said Julia; "he just doesn't exist."

The knives and forks jingled on the tables as we sped through thedarkness; the little circle of gin and vermouth in the glasseslengthened to oval, contracted again, with the sway of the carriage,touched the lip, lapped back again, never spilt; I was leaving the daybehind me. Julia pulled off her hat and tossed it into the rack aboveher, and shook her night-dark hair with a little sigh of ease--a sighfit for the pillow, the sinking firelight and a bedroom window open tothe stars and the whisper of bare trees.

* * * * *

"It's great to have you back, Charles; like the old days."

Like the old days? I thought.

Rex, in his early forties, had grown heavy and ruddy; he had lost hisCanadian accent and acquired instead the hoarse, loud tone that wascommon to all his friends, as though their voices were perpetuallystrained to make themselves heard above a crowd, as though, with youthforsaking them, there was no time to wait the opportunity to speak, notime to listen, no time to reply; time for a laugh--a throaty mirthlesslaugh, the base currency of goodwill.

There were half a dozen of these friends in the Tapestry Hall:politicians, "young conservatives" in the early forties, with sparsehair and high blood-pressure; a socialist from the coal mines who hadalready caught their clear accents, whose cigars came to pieces in hislips, whose hand shook when he poured himself out a drink; a lovesickcolumnist, who alone was silent, gloating sombrely on the only woman ofthe party; a financier older than the rest, and, one might guess fromthe way they treated him, richer; a woman they called "Grizel," aknowing rake whom, in their hearts, they all feared a little.

They all feared Julia, too, Grizel included. She greeted them andapologized for not being there to welcome them, with a formality whichhushed them for a minute; then she came and sat with me near the fire,and the storm of talk arose once more and whirled about our ears.

"Of course, he can marry her and make her queen to-morrow."

"We had our chance in October. Why didn't we send the Italian fleet tothe bottom of Mare Nostrum? Why didn't we blow Spezia to blazes. Whydidn't we land on Pantelleria?"

"Franco's simply a German agent. They tried to put him in to prepare airbases to bomb France. That bluff has been called, anyway."

"It would make the monarchy stronger than it's been since Tudor times.The people are with him."

"The press are with him."

"I'm with him."

"Who cares about divorce now except a few old maids who aren't married,anyway?"

"If he has a showdown with the old gang, they'll just disappear like,like..."

"Why didn't we close the Canal? Why didn't we bomb Rome?"

"It wouldn't have been necessary. One firm note..."

"One firm speech."

"One showdown."

"Anyway, Franco will soon be skipping back to Morocco. Chap I saw to-dayjust come from Barcelona..."

"...Chap just come from Fort Belvedere..."

"...Chap just come from the Palazzo Venezia..."

"All we want is a showdown."

"A showdown with Baldwin."

"A showdown with Hitler."

"A showdown with the Old Gang."

"...That I should live to see my country, the land of Clive andNelson..."

"...My country of Hawkins and Drake."

"...My country of Palmerston..."

"Would you very much mind not doing that?" said Grizel to the columnist,who had been attempting in a maudlin manner to twist her wrist. "I don'thappen to enjoy it."

* * * * *

"I wonder which is the more horrible," I said, "Celia's Art and Fashionor Rex's Politics and Money."

"Why worry about them?"

"Oh, my darling, why is it that love makes me hate the world? It'ssupposed to have quite the opposite effect. I feel as though allmankind, and God, too, were in a conspiracy against us."

"They are, they are."

"But we've got our happiness in spite of them; here and now, we've takenpossession of it. They can't hurt us, can they?"

"Not to-night; not now."

"Not for how many nights?"

Chapter Three

"Do you remember," said Julia, in the tranquil, lime-scentedevening, "do you remember the storm?"

"The bronze doors banging."

"The roses in cellophane."

"The man who gave the 'get-together' party and was never seen again."

"Do you remember how the sun came out on our last evening just as it hasdone to-day?"

It had been an afternoon of low cloud and summer squalls, so overcastthat at times I had stopped work and roused Julia from the light trancein which she sat--she had sat so often; I never tired of painting her,forever finding in her new wealth and delicacy--until at length we hadgone early to our baths, and on coming down, dressed for dinner, in thelast half-hour of the day, we found the world transformed; the sun hademerged; the wind had fallen to a soft breeze which gently stirred theblossom in the limes and carried its fragrance, fresh from the laterains, to merge with the sweet breath of box and the drying stone. Theshadow of the obelisk spanned the terrace.

I had carried two garden cushions from the shelter of the colonnade andput them on the rim of the fountain. There Julia sat, in a tight littlegold tunic and a white gown, one hand in the water idly turning anemerald ring to catch the fire of the sunset; the carved animals mountedover her dark head in a cumulus of green moss and glowing stone anddense shadow, and the waters round them flashed and bubbled and brokeinto scattered beads of flame.

"...So much to remember," she said. "How many days have there beensince then, when we haven't seen each other; a hundred, do you think?"

"Not so many."

"Two Christmases"--those bleak, annual excursions into propriety.Boughton, home of my family, home of my cousin Jasper, with what glummemories of childhood I revisited its pitch-pine corridors and drippingwalls! How querulously my father and I, seated side by side in myuncle's Humber, approached the avenue of Wellingtonias knowing that atthe end of the drive we should find my uncle, my aunt, my Aunt Philippa,my cousin Jasper and, of recent years, Jasper's wife and children; andbesides them, perhaps already arrived, perhaps every moment expected, mywife and my children. This annual sacrifice united us; here among theholly and mistletoe and the cut spruce, the parlour games rituallyperformed, the brandy-butter and the Carlsbad plums, the village choirin the pitch-pine minstrels' gallery, gold twine and spriggedwrapping-paper, she and I were accepted, whatever ugly rumours had beenafloat in the past year, as man and wife. "We must keep it up, whateverit costs us, for the sake of the children," my wife said.

"Yes, two Christmases.... And the three days of good taste before Ifollowed you to Capri."

"Our first summer."

"Do you remember how I hung about Naples, then followed, how we met byarrangement on the hill path and how flat it fell?"

"I went back to the villa and said, 'Papa, who do you think has arrivedat the hotel?' and he said, 'Charles Ryder, I suppose.' I said, 'Why didyou think of him?' and Papa replied, 'Cara came back from Paris with thenews that you and he were inseparable. He seems to have a penchant formy children. However, bring him here. I think we have the room.'"

"There was the time you had jaundice and wouldn't let me see you."

"And when I had flu and you were afraid to come."

"Countless visits to Rex's constituency."

"And Coronation Week, when you ran away from London. Your goodwillmission to your father-in-law. The time you went to Oxford to paint thepicture they didn't like. Oh, yes, quite a hundred days."

"A hundred days wasted out of two years and a bit... not a day whenyou were not in my heart; not a day's coldness or mistrust ordisappointment."

"Never that."

We fell silent; only the birds spoke in a multitude of small, clearvoices in the lime-trees; only the waters spoke among their carvedstones.

Julia took the handkerchief from my breast pocket and dried her hand;then lit a cigarette. I feared to break the spell of memories, but foronce our thoughts had not kept pace together, for when at length Juliaspoke, she said sadly: "How many more? Another hundred?"

"A lifetime."

"I want to marry you, Charles."

"One day; why now?"

"War," she said, "this year, next year, sometime soon. I want a day ortwo with you of real peace."

"Isn't this peace?"

The sun had sunk now to the line of woodland beyond the valley; all theopposing slope was already in twilight, but the lakes below us wereaflame; the light grew in strength and splendour as it neared death,spreading long shadows across the pasture, falling full on the richstone spaces of the house, firing the panes in the windows, glowing oncornices and colonnade and dome, drawing out all the hidden sweetness ofcolour and scent from earth and stone and leaf, glorifying the head andgolden shoulders of the woman beside me.

"What do you mean by 'peace'; if not this?"

"So much more"; and then in a chill, matter-of-fact tone she continued:"Marriage isn't a thing we can take when the impulse moves us. Theremust be a divorce--two divorces. We must make plans."

"Plans, divorce, war--on an evening like this."

"Sometimes," said Julia, "I feel the past and the future pressing sohard on either side that there's no room for the present at all."

Then Wilcox came down the steps into the sunset to tell us that dinnerwas ready.

* * * * *

Shutters were up, curtains drawn, candles lit, in the Painted Parlour.

"Hullo, it's laid for three."

"Lord Brideshead arrived half an hour ago, my lady. He sent a messagewould you please not wait dinner for him as he may be a little late."

"It seems months since he was here last," said Julia. "What does he doin London?"

It was often a matter for speculation between us--giving birth to manyfantasies, for Bridey was a mystery; a creature from under ground; ahard-snouted, burrowing, hibernating animal who shunned the light. Hehad been completely without action in all his years of adult life; thetalk of his going into the army, and into Parliament, and into amonastery, had all come to nothing. All that he was known with certaintyto have done--and this because in a season of scant news it had formedthe subject of a newspaper article entitled PEER'S UNUSUAL HOBBY--was toform a collection of match-boxes; he kept them mounted on boards,card-indexed, yearly occupying a larger and larger space in his smallhouse in Westminster. At first he was bashful about the notoriety whichthe newspaper caused, but later greatly pleased, for he found it themeans of his getting into touch with other collectors in all parts ofthe world with whom he now corresponded and swapped duplicates. Otherthan this he was not known to have any interests. He remainedJoint-Master of the Marchmain and hunted with them dutifully on theirtwo days a week when he was at home; he never hunted with theneighbouring pack, who had the better country. He had no real zest forsport, and had not been out a dozen times that season; he had fewfriends; he visited his aunts; he went to public dinners held in theCatholic interest. At Brideshead he performed all unavoidable localduties, bringing with him to platform and fête and committee room hisown thin mist of clumsiness and aloofness.

"There was a girl found strangled with a piece of barbed wire atWandsworth last week," I said, reviving an old fantasy.

"That must be Bridey. He is naughty."

When we had been a quarter of an hour at the table he joined us, comingponderously into the room in the bottle-green velvet smoking suit whichhe kept at Brideshead and always wore when he was there. At thirty-eighthe had grown heavy and bald, and might have been taken for forty-five.

"Well," he said, "well, only you two; I hoped to find Rex here."

I often wondered what he made of me and of my continual presence; heseemed to accept me, without curiosity, as one of the household. Twicein the past two years he had surprised me by what seemed to be acts offriendship; last Christmas he sent me a photograph of himself in therobes of a Knight of Malta, and shortly afterwards he asked me to gowith him to a dining club. Both acts had an explanation: he had had morecopies of his portrait printed than he knew what to do with; he wasproud of his club. It was a surprising association of men quite eminentin their professions who met once a month for an evening of ceremoniousbuffoonery; each had his sobriquet--Bridey was called "BrotherGrandee"--and a specially designed jewel worn like an order of chivalry,symbolizing it; they had club buttons for their waistcoats and anelaborate ritual for the introduction of guests; after dinner a paperwas read and facetious speeches made. There was plainly some competitionto bring guests of distinction, and since Bridey had few friends, andsince I was tolerably well-known, I was invited. Even on that convivialevening I could feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of socialuneasiness, creating, rather, a pool of general embarrassment abouthimself in which he floated with loglike calm.

He sat down opposite me and bowed his sparse, pink head over his plate.

"Well, Bridey. What's the news?"

"As a matter of fact," he said, "I have some news. But it can wait."

"Tell us now."

He made a grimace which I took to mean "not in front of the servants,"and said, "How is the painting, Charles?"

"Which painting?"

"Whatever you have on the stocks."

"I began a sketch of Julia, but the light was tricky all to-day."

"Julia? I thought you'd done her before. I suppose it's a change fromarchitecture, and much more difficult."

His conversation abounded in long pauses during which his mind seemed toremain motionless; he always brought one back with a start to the exactpoint where he had stopped. Now after more than a minute he said: "Theworld is full of different subjects."

"Very true, Bridey."

"If I were a painter," he said, "I should choose an entirely differentsubject every time; subjects with plenty of action in them like..."Another pause. What, I wondered, was coming? "The Flying Scotsman"?"The Charge of the Light Brigade"? "Henley Regatta"? Then surprisinglyhe said: "...like 'Macbeth.'" There was something supremelypreposterous in the idea of Bridey as a painter of action pictures; hewas usually preposterous yet seldom quite absurd. He achieved dignity byhis remoteness and agelessness; he was still half-child, alreadyhalf-veteran; there seemed no spark of contemporary life in him; he hada kind of massive rectitude and impermeability, an indifference to theworld, which compelled respect. Though we often laughed at him, he wasnever wholly ridiculous; at times he was even formidable.

We talked of the news from Central Europe until, suddenly cutting acrossthis barren topic, Bridey asked: "Where are Mummy's jewels?"

"This was hers," said Julia, "and this. Cordelia and I had all her ownthings. The family jewels went to the bank."

"It's so long since I've seen them--I don't know that I ever saw themall. What is there? Aren't there some rather famous rubies, someone wastelling me?"

"Yes, a necklace. Mummy used often to wear it, don't you remember? Andthere are the pearls--she always had those out. But most of it stayed inthe bank year after year. There are some hideous diamond fenders, Iremember, and a Victorian diamond collar no one could wear now. There'sa mass of good stones. Why?"

"I'd like to have a look at them some day."

"I say, Papa isn't going to pop them, is he? He hasn't got into debtagain?"

"No, no, nothing like that."

Bridey was a slow and copious eater. Julia and I watched him between thecandles. Presently he said: "If I was Rex..." His mind seemed full ofsuch suppositions: "If I was Archbishop of Westminster," "If I was headof the Great Western Railway," "If I was an actress"--as though it werea mere trick of fate that he was none of these things, and he mightawake any morning to find the matter adjusted. "If I was Rex I shouldwant to live in my constituency."

"Rex says it saves four days' work a week not to."

"I'm sorry he's not here. I have a little announcement to make."

"Bridey, don't be so mysterious. Out with it."

He made the grimace which seemed to mean "not before the servants."

Later, when port was on the table and we three were alone, Julia said:"I'm not going till I hear the announcement."

"Well," said Bridey sitting back in his chair and gazing fixedly at hisglass. "You have only to wait until Monday to see it in black and whitein the newspapers. I am engaged to be married. I hope you are pleased."

"Bridey. How... how very exciting! Who to?"

"Oh, no one you know."

"Is she pretty?"

"I don't think you would exactly call her pretty; 'comely' is the word Ithink of in her connection. She is a big woman."

"Fat?"

"No, big. She is called Mrs. Muspratt; her Christian name is Beryl. Ihave known her for a long time, but until last year she had a husband;now she is a widow. Why do you laugh?"

"I'm sorry. It isn't the least funny. It's just so unexpected. Is she...is she about your own age?"

"Just about, I believe. She has three children, the eldest boy has justgone to Ampleforth. She is not at all well off."

"But Bridey, where did you find her?"

"Her late husband, Admiral Muspratt, collected match-boxes," he saidwith complete gravity.

Julia trembled on the verge of laughter, recovered her self-possessionand asked: "You're not marrying her for her match-boxes?"

"No, no; the whole collection was left to the Falmouth Town Library. Ihave a great affection for her. In spite of all her difficulties she isa very cheerful woman, very fond of acting. She is connected with theCatholic Players' Guild."

"Does Papa know?"

"I had a letter from him this morning giving me his approval. He hasbeen urging me to marry for some time."

It occurred to both Julia and myself simultaneously that we wereallowing curiosity and surprise to predominate; now we congratulated himin gentler tones from which mockery was almost excluded.

"Thank you," he said, "thank you. I think I am very fortunate."

"But when are we going to meet her? I do think you might have broughther down with you."

He said nothing, sipped and gazed.

"Bridey," said Julia. "You sly, smug old brute, why haven't you broughther here?"

"Oh I couldn't do that, you know."

"Why couldn't you? I'm dying to meet her. Let's ring her up now andinvite her. She'll think us most peculiar leaving her alone at a timelike this."

"She has the children," said Brideshead. "Besides, you are peculiar,aren't you?"

"What can you mean?"

Brideshead raised his head and looked solemnly at his sister, andcontinued in the same simple way, as though he were saying nothingparticularly different from what had gone before, "I couldn't ask herhere, as things are. It wouldn't be suitable. After all, I am a lodgerhere. This is Rex's house at the moment, as far as it's anybody's. Whatgoes on here is his business. But I couldn't bring Beryl here."

"I simply don't understand," said Julia rather sharply. I looked at her.All the gentle mockery had gone; she was alert, almost scared, itseemed. "Of course, Rex and I want her to come."

"Oh yes, I don't doubt that. The difficulty is quite otherwise." Hefinished his port, refilled his glass, and pushed the decanter towardsme. "You must understand that Beryl is a woman of strict Catholicprinciple fortified by the prejudices of the middle class. I couldn'tpossibly bring her here. It is a matter of indifference whether youchoose to live in sin with Rex or Charles or both--I have always avoidedenquiry into the details of your ménage--but in no case would Berylconsent to be your guest."

Julia rose. "Why, you pompous ass..." she said, stopped, and turnedtowards the door.

At first I thought she was overcome by laughter; then, as I opened thedoor to her, I saw with consternation that she was in tears. Ihesitated. She slipped past me without a glance.

"I may have given the impression that this was a marriage ofconvenience," Brideshead continued placidly. "I cannot speak for Beryl;no doubt the security of my position has some influence on her. Indeed,she has said as much. But for myself, let me emphasize, I am ardentlyattracted."

"Bridey, what a bloody offensive thing to say to Julia!"

"There was nothing she should object to. I was merely stating a factwell known to her."

* * * * *

She was not in the library; I mounted to her room, but she was notthere. I paused by her laden dressing-table wondering if she would come.Then through the open window, as the light streamed out across theterrace, into the dusk, to the fountain which in that house seemedalways to draw us to itself for comfort and refreshment, I caught theglimpse of a white skirt against the stones. It was nearly night. Ifound her in the darkest refuge, on a wooden seat, in a bay of theclipped box which encircled the basin. I took her in my arms and shepressed her face to my heart.

"Aren't you cold out here?"

She did not answer, only clung closer to me and shook with sobs.

"My darling, what is it? Why do you mind? What does it matter what thatold booby says?"

"I don't; it doesn't. It's just the shock. Don't laugh at me."

In the two years of our love, which seemed a lifetime, I had not seenher so moved or felt so powerless to help.

"How dare he speak to you like that?" I said. "The cold-blooded oldhumbug..." But I was failing her in sympathy.

"No," she said, "it's not that. He's quite right. They know all aboutit, Bridey and his widow; they've got it in black and white; they boughtit for a penny at the church door. You can get anything there for apenny, in black and white, and nobody to see that you pay; only an oldwoman with a broom at the other end, rattling round the confessionals,and a young woman lighting a candle at the Seven Dolours. Put a penny inthe box, or not, just as you like; take your tract. There you've got it,in black and white.

"All in one word, too, one little, flat, deadly word that covers alifetime.

"'Living in sin'; not just doing wrong, as I did when I went to America;doing wrong, knowing it is wrong, stopping doing it, forgetting. That'snot what they mean. That's not Bridey's pennyworth. He means just whatit says in black and white.

"Living in sin, with sin, by sin, for sin, every hour, every day, yearin, year out. Waking up with sin in the morning, seeing the curtainsdrawn on sin, bathing it, dressing it, clipping diamonds to it, feedingit, showing it round, giving it a good time, putting it to sleep atnight with a tablet of Dial if it's fretful.

"Always the same, like an idiot child carefully nursed, guarded from theworld. 'Poor Julia,' they say, 'she can't go out. She's got to take careof her little sin. A pity it ever lived,' they say, 'but it's so strong.Children like that always are. Julia's so good to her little, mad sin.'"

An hour ago, I thought, under the sunset, she sat turning her ring inthe water and counting the days of happiness; now under the first starsand the last grey whisper of day, all this mysterious tumult of sorrow!What had happened to us in the Painted Parlour? What shadow had fallenin the candlelight? Two rough sentences and a trite phrase. She wasbeside herself; her voice, now muffled in my breast, now clear andanguished, came to me in single words and broken sentences, which may bestrung together thus:--

"Past and future; the years when I was trying to be a good wife, in thecigar smoke, while time crept on and the counters clicked on thebackgammon board, and the man who was 'dummy' at the men's table filledthe glasses; when I was trying to bear his child, torn in pieces bysomething already dead; putting him away, forgetting him, finding you,the past two years with you, all the future with you, all the futurewith or without you, war coming, world ending--sin.

"A word from so long ago, from Nanny Hawkins stitching by the hearth andthe nightlight burning before the Sacred Heart. Cordelia and me with thecatechism, in Mummy's room, before luncheon on Sundays. Mummy carryingmy sin with her to church, bowed under it and the black lace veil, inthe chapel; slipping out with it in London before the fires were lit;taking it with her through the empty streets, where the milkman's poniesstood with their forefeet on the pavement; Mummy dying with my sineating at her, more cruelly than her own deadly illness.

"Mummy dying with it; Christ dying with it, nailed hand and foot;hanging over the bed in the night-nursery; hanging year after year inthe dark little study at Farm Street with the shining oilcloth; hangingin the dark church where only the old charwoman raises the dust and onecandle burns; hanging at noon, high among the crowds and the soldiers;no comfort except a sponge of vinegar and the kind words of a thief;hanging for ever; never the cool sepulchre and the grave clothes spreadon the stone slab, never the oil and spices in the dark cave; always themidday sun and the dice clicking for the seamless coat.

"Never the shelter of the cave or of the castle walls. Outcast in thedesolate spaces where the hyenas roam at night and the rubbish heapssmoke in the daylight. No way back; the gates barred; all the saints andangels posted along the walls. Nothing but bare stone and dust and thesmouldering dumps. Thrown away, scrapped, rotting down; the old man withlupus and the forked stick who limps out at nightfall to turn therubbish, hoping for something to put in his sack, something marketable,turns away with disgust.

"Nameless and dead, like the baby they wrapped up and took away before Ihad seen her."

Between her tears she talked herself into silence. I could do nothing; Iwas adrift in a strange sea; my hands on the metal-spun threads of hertunic were cold and stiff, my eyes dry; I was as far from her in spirit,as she clung to me in the darkness, as when years ago I had lit hercigarette on the way from the station; as far as when she was out ofmind, in the dry, empty years at the Old Rectory and in the jungle.

Tears spring from speech; presently in the silence her weeping stopped.She sat up, away from me, took my handkerchief, shivered, rose to herfeet.

"Well," she said, in a voice much like normal. "Bridey is one forbombshells, isn't he?"

I followed her into the house and to her room; she sat at herlooking-glass. "Considering that I've just recovered from a fit ofhysteria," she said, "I don't call that at all bad." Her eyes seemedunnaturally large and bright, her cheeks pale with two spots of highcolour, where, as a girl, she used to put a dab of rouge. "Mosthysterical women look as if they had a bad cold. You'd better changeyour shirt before going down; it's all tears and lipstick."

"Are we going down?"

"Of course, we mustn't leave poor Bridey on his engagement night."

When I came back to her she said: "I'm sorry for that appalling scene,Charles. I can't explain."

Brideshead was in the library, smoking his pipe, placidly reading adetective story.

"Was it nice out? If I'd known you were going I'd have come, too."

"Rather cold."

"I hope it's not going to be inconvenient for Rex moving out of here.You see, Barton Street is much too small for us and the three children.Besides, Beryl likes the country. In his letter Papa proposed makingover the whole estate right away."

I remembered how Rex had greeted me on my first arrival at Brideshead asJulia's guest. "A very happy arrangement," he had said. "Suits me downto the ground. The old boy keeps the place up; Bridey does all thefeudal stuff with the tenants; I have the run of the house rent-free.All it costs me is the food and the wages of the indoor servants.Couldn't ask fairer than that, could you?"

"I should think he'll be sorry to go," I said.

"Oh, he'll find another bargain somewhere," said Julia; "trust him."

"Beryl's got some furniture of her own she's very attached to. I don'tknow that it would go very well here. You know, oak dressers and coffinstools and things. I thought she could put it in Mummy's old room."

"Yes, that would be the place."

So brother and sister sat and talked about the arrangement of the houseuntil bed-time. An hour ago, I thought, in the black refuge in thebox-hedge, she wept her heart out for the death of her God; now she isdiscussing whether Beryl's children shall take the old smoking-room orthe schoolroom for their own. I was all at sea.

* * * * *

"Julia," I said later, when Brideshead had gone upstairs, "have you everseen a picture of Holman Hunt's called 'The Awakened Conscience'?"

"No."

I had seen a copy of Pre-Raphaelitism in the library some days before;I found it again and read her Ruskin's description. She laughed quitehappily.

"You're perfectly right. That's exactly what I did feel."

"But, darling, I can't believe that all that tempest of emotion camejust from a few words of Bridey's. You must have been thinking about itbefore."

"Hardly at all; now and then; more, lately, with the Last Trump sonear."

"Of course it's a thing psychologists could explain; a preconditioningfrom childhood; feelings of guilt from the nonsense you were taught inthe nursery. You do know at heart that it's all bosh, don't you?"

"How I wish it was!"

"Sebastian once said almost the same thing to me."

"He's gone back to the Church, you know. Of course, he never left it asdefinitely as I did. I've gone too far; there's no turning back now; Iknow that, if that's what you mean by thinking it all bosh. All I canhope to do is to put my life in some sort of order in a human way,before all human order comes to an end. That's why I want to marry you.I should like to have a child. That's one thing I can do.... Let's goout again. The moon should be up by now."

The moon was full and high. We walked round the house; under the limesJulia paused and idly snapped off one of the long shoots, last year'sgrowth, that fringed their boles, and stripped it as she walked, makinga switch, as children do, but with petulant movements that were not achild's, snatching nervously at the leaves and crumpling them betweenher fingers; she began peeling the bark, scratching it with her nails.

Once more we stood by the fountain.

"It's like the setting of a comedy," I said. "Scene: a baroque fountainin a nobleman's grounds. Act One, Sunset; Act Two, Dusk; Act Three,Moonlight. The characters keep assembling at the fountain for no veryclear reason."

"Comedy?"

"Drama. Tragedy. Farce. What you will. This is the reconciliationscene."

"Was there a quarrel?"

"Estrangement and misunderstanding in Act Two."

"Oh, don't talk in that damned bounderish way. Why must you seeeverything secondhand? Why must this be a play? Why must my consciencebe a Pre-Raphaelite picture?"

"It's a way I have."

"I hate it."

Her anger was as unexpected as every change on this evening of swiftveering moods. Suddenly she cut me across the face with her switch, avicious, stinging little blow as hard as she could strike.

"Now do you see how I hate it?"

She hit me again.

"All right," I said, "go on."

Then, though her hand was raised, she stopped and threw the half-peeledwand into the water, where it floated white and black in the moonlight.

"Did that hurt?"

"Yes."

"Did it?... Did I?"

In the instant her rage was gone; her tears, newly flowing, were on mycheek. I held her at arm's length and she put down her head, stroking myhand on her shoulder with her face, catlike, but, unlike a cat, leavinga tear there.

"Cat on the roof-top," I said.

"Beast!"

She bit at my hand, but when I did not move it and her teeth touched me,she changed the bite to a kiss, the kiss to a lick of her tongue.

"Cat in the moonlight."

This was the mood I knew. We turned towards the house. When we came tothe lighted hall she said: "Your poor face," touching the weals with herfingers. "Will there be a mark to-morrow?"

"I expect so."

"Charles, am I going crazy? What's happened to-night? I'm so tired."

She yawned; a fit of yawning took her. She sat at her dressing-table,head bowed, hair over her face, yawning helplessly; when she looked up Isaw over her shoulder in the glass a face that was dazed with wearinesslike a retreating soldier's, and beside it my own, streaked with twocrimson lines.

"So tired," she repeated, taking off her gold tunic and letting it fallto the floor, "tired and crazy and good for nothing."

I saw her to bed; the blue lids fell over her eyes; her pale lips movedon the pillow, but whether to wish me good-night or to murmur aprayer--a jingle of the nursery that came to her now in the twilit worldbetween sorrow and sleep; some ancient pious rhyme that had come down toNanny Hawkins from centuries of bed-time whispering, through all thechanges of language, from the days of pack-horses on the Pilgrim'sWay--I did not know.

Next night Rex and his political associates were with us.

"They won't fight."

"They can't fight. They haven't the money; they haven't the oil."

"They haven't the wolfram; they haven't the men."

"They haven't the guts."

"They're afraid."

"Scared of the French; scared of the Czechs; scared of the Slovaks;scared of us."

"It's a bluff."

"Of course it's a bluff. Where's their tungsten? Where's theirmanganese?"

"Where's their chrome?"

"I'll tell you a thing..."

"Listen to this; it'll be good; Rex will tell you a thing."

"...Friend of mine motoring in the Black Forest, only the other day,just came back and told me about it while we played a round of golf.Well, this friend driving along, turned down a lane into the high road.What should he find but a military convoy? Couldn't stop, drove rightinto it, smack into a tank, broadside-on. Gave himself up fordead.... Hold on, this is the funny part."

"This is the funny part."

"Drove clean through it, didn't scratch his paint. What do you think? Itwas made of canvas--a bamboo frame and painted canvas."

"They haven't the steel."

"They haven't the tools. They haven't the labour. They're half starving.They haven't the fats. The children have rickets."

"The women are barren."

"The men are impotent."

"They haven't the doctors."

"The doctors were Jewish."

"Now they've got consumption."

"Now they've got syphilis."

"Goering told a friend of mine..."

"Goebbels told a friend of mine..."

"Ribbentrop told me that the army just kept Hitler in power so long ashe was able to get things for nothing. The moment anyone stands up tohim, he's finished. The army will shoot him."

"The liberals will hang him."

"The Communists will tear him limb from limb."

"He'll scupper himself."

"He'd do it now if it wasn't for Chamberlain."

"If it wasn't for Halifax."

"If it wasn't for Sir Samuel Hoare."

"And the 1920 Committee."

"Peace Pledge."

"Foreign Office."

"New York banks."

"All that's wanted is a good strong line."

"A line from Rex."

"And a line from me."

"We'll give Europe a good strong line. Europe is waiting for a speechfrom Rex."

"And a speech from me."

"And a speech from me. Rally the freedom-loving peoples of the world.Germany will rise; Austria will rise. The Czechs and the Slovaks arebound to rise."

"To a speech from Rex and a speech from me."

"What about a rubber? How about a whiskey? Which of you chaps will havea big cigar? Hullo, you two going out?"

"Yes, Rex," said Julia. "Charles and I are going into the moonlight."

We shut the windows behind us and the voices ceased; the moonlight laylike hoar-frost on the terrace and the music of the fountain crept inour ears; the stone balustrade of the terrace might have been the Trojanwalls, and in the silent park might have stood the Grecian tents whereCressid lay that night.

"A few days, a few months."

"No time to be lost."

"A lifetime between the rising of the moon and its setting. Then thedark."

Chapter Four

"And of course Celia will have custody of the children."

"Of course."

"Then what about the Old Rectory? I don't imagine you'll want to settledown with Julia bang at our gates. The children look on it as theirhome, you know. Robin's got no place of his own till his uncle dies.After all, you never used the studio, did you? Robin was saying only theother day what a good play-room it would make--big enough forbadminton."

"Robin can have the Old Rectory."

"Now with regard to money, Celia and Robin naturally don't want toaccept anything for themselves, but there's the question of thechildren's education."

"That will be all right. I'll see the lawyers about it."

"Well, I think that's everything," said Mulcaster. "You know, I've seena few divorces in my time, and I've never known one work out so happilyfor all concerned. Almost always, however matey people are at the start,bad blood crops up when they get down to detail. Mind you, I don't mindsaying there have been times in the last two years when I thought youwere treating Celia a bit rough. It's hard to tell with one's ownsister, but I've always thought her a jolly attractive girl, the sort ofgirl any chap would be glad to have--artistic, too, just down yourstreet. But I must admit you're a good picker. I've always had a softspot for Julia. Anyway, as things have turned out everyone seemssatisfied. Robin's been mad about Celia for a year or more. D'you knowhim?"

"Vaguely. A half-baked, pimply youth as I remember him."

"Oh, I wouldn't quite say that. He's rather young, of course, but thegreat thing is that Johnjohn and Caroline adore him. You've got twogrand kids there, Charles. Remember me to Julia; wish her all the bestfor old time's sake."

* * * * *

"So you're being divorced," said my father. "Isn't that ratherunnecessary, after you've been happy together all these years?"

"We weren't particularly happy, you know."

"Weren't you? Were you not? I distinctly remember last Christmas seeingyou together and thinking how happy you looked, and wondering why.You'll find it very disturbing, you know, starting off again. How oldare you--thirty-four? That's no age to be starting. You ought to besettling down. Have you made any plans?"

"Yes. I'm marrying again as soon as the divorce is through."

"Well, I do call that a lot of nonsense. I can understand a man wishinghe hadn't married and trying to get out of it--though I never feltanything of the kind myself--but to get rid of one wife and take up withanother immediately is beyond all reason. Celia was always perfectlycivil to me. I had quite a liking for her, in a way. If you couldn't behappy with her, why on earth should you expect to be happy with anyoneelse? Take my advice, my dear boy, and give up the whole idea."

* * * * *

"Why bring Julia and me into this?" asked Rex. "If Celia wants to marryagain, well and good; let her. That's your business and hers. But Ishould have thought Julia and I were quite happy as we are. You can'tsay I've been difficult. Lots of chaps would have cut up nasty. I hopeI'm a man of the world. I've had my own fish to fry, too. But a divorceis a different thing altogether; I've never known a divorce do anyoneany good."

"That's your affair and Julia's."

"Oh, Julia's set on it. What I hoped was, you might be able to talk herround. I've tried to keep out of the way as much as I could; if I'vebeen around too much, just tell me, I shan't mind. But there's too muchgoing on altogether at the moment, what with Bridey wanting me to clearout of the house; it's disturbing, and I've got a lot on my mind."

Rex's public life was approaching a climacteric. Things had not gone assmoothly with him as he had planned. I knew nothing of finance, but Iheard it said that his dealings were badly looked on by orthodoxconservatives; even his good qualities of geniality and impetuositycounted against him, for his parties at Brideshead got talked about.There was always too much about him in the papers; he was one with thepress lords and their sad-eyed, smiling hangers-on; in his speeches hesaid the sort of thing which "made a story" in Fleet Street, and thatdid him no good with his party chiefs; only war could put Rex's fortunesright and carry him into power. A divorce would do him no harm withthese cronies; it was rather that with a big bank running he could notlook up from the table.

"If Julia insists on a divorce, I suppose she must have it," he said."But she couldn't have chosen a worse time. Tell her to hang on a bit,Charles, there's a good fellow."

* * * * *

"Bridey's widow said: 'So you're divorcing one divorced man and marryinganother. It sounds rather complicated, but my dear'--she called me 'mydear' about twenty times--'I've usually found every Catholic family hasone lapsed member, and it's often the nicest.'"

Julia had just returned from a luncheon party given by Lady Rosscommonin honour of Brideshead's engagement.

"What's she like?"

"Majestic and voluptuous; common, of course; might be Irish or Jewish orboth; husky voice, big mouth, small eyes, dyed hair--I'll tell you onething, she's lied to Bridey about her age. She's a good forty-five. Idon't see her providing an heir. Bridey can't take his eyes off her. Hewas gloating on her in the most revolting way all through luncheon."

"Friendly?"

"Goodness, yes, in a condescending way. You see, I imagine she's beenused to bossing things rather in naval circles, with flag-lieutenantstrotting round and young officers-on-the-make sucking up to her. Well,she clearly couldn't do a great deal of bossing at Aunt Fanny's, so itput her rather at ease to have me there as the black sheep. Sheconcentrated on me, in fact; asked my advice about shops and things;said, rather pointedly, she hoped to see me often in London. I thinkBridey's scruples only extend to her sleeping under the same roof withme. Apparently I can do her no serious harm in a hat-shop orhairdresser's or lunching at the Ritz. The scruples are all on Bridey'spart, anyway; the widow is madly tough."

"Does she boss him?"

"Not yet, much. He's in an amorous stupor, poor beast, and doesn't quiteknow where he is. She's just a good-hearted woman who wants a good homefor her children and isn't going to let anything get in her way. She'splaying up the religious stuff at the moment for all it's worth. Idaresay she'll ease up a bit when she's settled."

* * * * *

The divorces were much talked of among our friends; even in that summerof general alarm there were still corners where private affairscommanded first attention. My wife was able to put it across that thebusiness was a matter of congratulation for her and reproach for me;that she had behaved wonderfully, had stood it longer than anyone butshe would have done; Robin was seven years younger and a little immaturefor his age, they whispered in their private corners, but he wasabsolutely devoted to poor Celia, and really she deserved it after allshe had been through. As for Julia and me, that was an old story. "Toput it crudely," said my cousin Jasper, as though he had ever in hislife put anything otherwise: "I don't see why you bother to marry."

Summer passed; delirious crowds cheered Neville Chamberlain's returnfrom Munich; Rex made a rabid speech in the House of Commons whichsealed his fate one way or the other; sealed it, as is sometimes donewith naval orders, to be opened later at sea. Julia's family lawyers,whose black, tin boxes, painted MARQUIS OF MARCHMAIN,seemed to fill a room, began the slow process of her divorce; my own,brisker firm, two doors down, were weeks ahead with my affairs. It wasnecessary for Rex and Julia to separate formally, and since, for thetime being, Brideshead was still her home, she remained there and Rexremoved his trunks and valet to their house in London. Evidence wastaken against Julia and me in my flat. A date was fixed for Brideshead'swedding, early in the Christmas holidays, so that his futurestepchildren might take part.

One afternoon in November Julia and I stood at a window in thedrawing-room watching the wind at work stripping the lime-trees,sweeping down the yellow leaves, sweeping them up and round and alongthe terrace and lawns, trailing them through puddles and over the wetgrass, pasting them on walls and window-panes, leaving them at length insodden piles against the stonework.

"We shan't see them in spring," said Julia; "perhaps never again."

"Once before," I said, "I went away, thinking I should never return."

"Perhaps years later, to what's left of it, with what's left of us..."

A door opened and shut in the darkling room behind us. Wilcox approachedthrough the firelight into the dusk about the long windows.

"A telephone message, my lady, from Lady Cordelia."

"Lady Cordelia! Where was she?"

"In London, my lady."

"Wilcox, how lovely! Is she coming home?"

"She was just starting for the station. She will be here after dinner."

"I haven't seen her for twelve years," I said--not since the eveningwhen we dined together and she spoke of being a nun; the evening when Ipainted the drawing-room at Marchmain House. "She was an enchantingchild."

"She's had an odd life. First, the convent; then, when that was no good,the war in Spain. I've not seen her since then. The other girls who wentwith the ambulance came back when the war was over; she stayed on,getting people back to their homes, helping in the prison camps. An oddgirl. She's grown up quite plain, you know."

"Does she know about us?"

"Yes, she wrote me a sweet letter."

It hurt to think of Cordelia growing up quite plain; to think of allthat burning love spending itself on serum injections and delousingpowder. When she arrived, tired from her journey, rather shabby, movingin the manner of one who has no interest in pleasing, I thought her anugly woman. It was odd, I thought, how the same ingredients, differentlydispensed, could produce Brideshead, Sebastian, Julia and her. She wasunmistakably their sister, without any of Julia's or Sebastian's grace,without Brideshead's gravity. She seemed brisk and matter-of-fact,steeped in the atmosphere of camp and dressing station, so accustomed togross suffering as to lose the finer shades of pleasure. She looked morethan her twenty-six years; hard living had roughened her; constantintercourse in a foreign tongue had worn away the nuances of speech; shestraddled a little as she sat by the fire, and when she said, "It'swonderful to be home," it sounded to my ears like the grunt of an animalreturning to its basket.

Those were the impressions of the first half-hour, sharpened by thecontrast with Julia's white skin and silk and jewelled hair and with mymemories of her as a child.

"My job's over in Spain," she said; "the authorities were very polite,thanked me for all I'd done, gave me a medal and sent me packing. Itlooks as though there'll be plenty of the same sort of work over heresoon."

Then she said: "Is it too late to see Nanny?"

"No, she sits up to all hours with her wireless." We went up, all threetogether, to the old nursery. Julia and I always spent part of our daythere. Nanny Hawkins and my father were two people who seemed imperviousto change; neither an hour older than when I first knew them. A wirelessset had now been added to Nanny Hawkins's small assembly ofpleasures--the rosary, the Peerage with its neat brown-paper wrappingprotecting the red and gold covers, the photographs and holidaysouvenirs--on her table. When we broke it to her that Julia and I wereto be married, she said, "Well, dear, I hope it's all for the best," forit was not part of her religion to question the propriety of Julia'sactions.

Brideshead had never been a favourite with her; she greeted the news ofhis engagement with "He's certainly taken long enough to make up hismind," and, when the search through Debrett afforded no informationabout Mrs. Muspratt's connections: "She's caught him, I daresay."

We found her, as always in the evening, at the fireside with her teapot,and the wool rug she was making.

"I knew you'd be up," she said. "Mr. Wilcox sent to tell me you werecoming."

"I brought you some lace."

"Well, dear, that is nice. Just like her poor Ladyship used to wear atmass. Though why they made it black I never did understand, seeing laceis white naturally. That is very welcome, I'm sure."

"May I turn off the wireless, Nanny?"

"Why, of course; I didn't notice it was still on, in the pleasure ofseeing you. What have you done to your hair?"

"I know it's terrible. I must get all that put right now I'm back.Darling Nanny."

As we sat there talking, and I saw Cordelia's fond eyes on all of us, Ibegan to realize that she, too, had a beauty of her own.

"I saw Sebastian last month."

"What a time he's been gone! Was he quite well?"

"Not very. That's why I went. It's quite near you know from Spain toTunis. He's with the monks there."

"I hope they look after him properly. I expect they find him a regularhandful. He always sends to me at Christmas, but it's not the same ashaving him home. Why you must all always be going abroad I never didunderstand. Just like his Lordship. When there was that talk about goingto war with Munich, I said to myself, there's Cordelia and Sebastian andhis Lordship all abroad; that'll be very awkward for them."

"I wanted him to come home with me, but he wouldn't. He's got a beardnow, you know, and he's very religious."

"That I won't believe, not even if I see it. He was always a littleheathen. Brideshead was one for church, not Sebastian. And a beard, onlyfancy; such a nice fair skin as he had; always looked clean though he'dnot been near water all day, while Brideshead there was no doinganything with scrub as you might."

* * * * *

"It's frightening," Julia once said, "to think how completely you haveforgotten Sebastian."

"He was the forerunner."

"That's what you said in the storm. I've thought since: perhaps I amonly a forerunner, too."

Perhaps, I thought, while her words still hung in the air between uslike a wisp of tobacco smoke--a thought to fade and vanish like smokewithout a trace--perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; ahill of many invisible crests; doors that open as in a dream to revealonly a further stretch of carpet and another door; perhaps you and I aretypes and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs fromdisappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond theother, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns thecorner always a pace or two ahead of us.

I had not forgotten Sebastian. He was with me daily in Julia; or ratherit was Julia I had known in him, in those distant, Arcadian days.

"That's cold comfort for a girl," she said when I tried to explain. "Howdo I know I shan't suddenly turn out to be somebody else? It's an easyway to chuck."

I had not forgotten Sebastian; every stone of the house had a memory ofhim, and when I heard him spoken of by Cordelia as someone she had seena month ago, my lost friend filled my thoughts. When we left thenursery, I said, "I want to hear all about Sebastian."

"To-morrow. It's a long story."

And next day, walking through the wind-swept park, she told me:--

"I heard he was dying," she said. "A journalist in Burgos told me, who'djust arrived from North Africa. A down-and-out called Flyte, who peoplesaid was an English lord, whom the fathers had found starving and takenin at a monastery near Carthage. That was how the story reached me. Iknew it couldn't be quite true--however little we did for Sebastian, heat least got his money sent him--but I started off at once.

"It was all quite easy. I went to the consulate first and they knew allabout him; he was in the infirmary of the head house of some missionaryfathers. The consul's story was that Sebastian had turned up in Tunisone day, some weeks before, in a motor bus from Algiers, and had appliedto be taken on as a missionary lay brother. The fathers took one look athim and turned him down. Then he started drinking. He lived in a littlehotel on the edge of the Arab quarter. I went to see the place later; itwas a bar with a few rooms over it, kept by a Greek, smelling of hot oiland garlic and stale wine and old clothes, a place where the small Greektraders came and played draughts and listened to the wireless. He stayedthere a month drinking Greek absinthe, occasionally wandering out, theydidn't know where, coming back and drinking again. They were afraid hewould come to harm and followed him sometimes, but he only went to thechurch or took a car to the monastery outside the town. They loved himthere. He's still loved, you see, wherever he goes, whatever conditionhe's in. It's a thing about him he'll never lose. You should have heardthe proprietor and his family talk of him, tears running down theircheeks; they'd clearly robbed him right and left, but they'd lookedafter him and tried to make him eat his meals. That was the thing thatshocked them about him: that he wouldn't eat; there he was with all thatmoney, so thin. Some of the clients of the place came in while we weretalking in very peculiar French; they all had the same story: such agood man, they said, it made them unhappy to see him so low. Theythought very ill of his family for leaving him like that; it couldn'thappen with their people, they said, and I daresay they're right.

"Anyway, that was later; after the consulate I went straight to themonastery and saw the Superior. He was a grim old Dutchman who had spentfifty years in Central Africa. He told me his part of the story; howSebastian had turned up, just as the consul said, with his beard and asuitcase, and asked to be admitted as a lay brother. 'He was veryearnest,' the Superior said"--Cordelia imitated his guttural tones; shehad had an aptitude for mimicry, I remembered, in theschoolroom--"'please do not think there is any doubt of that--he isquite sane and quite in earnest. He wanted to go to the bush, as faraway as he could get, among the simplest people, to the cannibals. TheSuperior said: 'We have no cannibals in our missions.' He said, well,pygmies would do, or just a primitive village somewhere on a river; orlepers--lepers would do best of anything. The Superior said: 'We haveplenty of lepers, but they live in our settlements with doctors andnuns. It is all very orderly.' He thought again, and said perhaps leperswere not what he wanted, was there not some small church by a river--healways wanted a river you see--which he could look after when the priestwas away. The Superior said: 'Yes, there are such churches. Now tell meabout yourself.' 'Oh, I'm nothing,' he said. 'We see some queerfish'"--Cordelia lapsed again into mimicry; "'he was a queer fish, buthe was very earnest.' The Superior told him about the novitiate and thetraining and said: 'You are not a young man. You do not seem strong tome.' He said: 'No, I don't want to be trained. I don't want to do thingsthat need training.' The Superior said: 'My friend, you need amissionary for yourself,' and he said: 'Yes, of course.' Then he senthim away.

"Next day he came back again. He had been drinking. He said he haddecided to become a novice and be trained. 'Well,' said the Superior,'there are certain things that are impossible for a man in the bush. Oneof them is drinking. It is not the worst thing, but it is neverthelessquite fatal. I sent him away.' Then he kept coming two or three times aweek, always drunk, until the Superior gave orders that the porter wasto keep him out. I said, 'Oh dear, I'm afraid he was a terrible nuisanceto you,' but of course that's a thing they don't understand in a placelike that. The Superior simply said, 'I did not think there was anythingI could do to help him except pray.' He was a very holy old man andrecognized 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 gateunconscious; he had walked out--usually he took a car--and fallen downand lain there all night. At first they thought he was merely drunkagain; then they realized he was very ill, so they put him in theinfirmary, where he'd been ever since.

"I stayed a fortnight with him till he was over the worst of hisillness. He looked terrible, any age, rather bald with a stragglingbeard, but he had his old sweet manner. They'd given him a room tohimself; it was barely more than a monk's cell with a bed and a crucifixand white walls. At first he couldn't talk much and was not at allsurprised to see me; then he was surprised and wouldn't talk much, untiljust before I was going, when he told me all that had been happening tohim. It was mostly about Kurt, his German friend. Well, you met him, soyou know all about that. He sounds gruesome, but as long as Sebastianhad him to look after, he was happy. He told me he'd practically givenup drinking at one time while he and Kurt lived together. Kurt was illand had a wound that wouldn't heal. Sebastian saw him through that. Thenthey went to Greece when Kurt got well. You know how Germans sometimesseem to discover a sense of decency when they get to a classicalcountry. It seems to have worked with Kurt. Sebastian says he becamequite human in Athens. Then he got sent to prison; I couldn't quite makeout why; apparently it wasn't particularly his fault--some brawl with anofficial. Once he was locked up the German authorities got at him. Itwas the time when they were rounding up all their nationals from allparts of the world to make them into Nazis. Kurt didn't at all want toleave Greece. But the Greeks didn't want him, and he was marchedstraight from prison with a lot of other toughs into a German boat andshipped home.

"Sebastian went after him, and for a year could find no trace. Then inthe end he ran him to earth dressed as a storm trooper in a provincialtown. At first he wouldn't have anything to do with Sebastian; spoutedall the official jargon about the rebirth of his country, and hisbelonging to his country and finding self-realization in the life of therace. But it was only skin-deep with him. Six years of Sebastian hadtaught 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 muchit was simply the call of the easy life, sponging on Sebastian, bathingin the Mediterranean, sitting about in cafés, having his shoes polished.Sebastian says it wasn't entirely that; Kurt had just begun to grow upin 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 evenfind 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 wasjust out of the camp where Kurt had been, and learned that he had hangedhimself 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, fromplace to place, until one day when he had sobered up--his drinking goesin pretty regular bouts now--he conceived the idea of escaping to thesavages. And there he was.

"I didn't suggest his coming home. I knew he wouldn't, and he was tooweak 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 theidea of making him a sort of under-porter; there are usually a few oddhangers-on in a religious house, you know; people who can't quite fit ineither to the world or the monastic rule. I suppose I'm something of thesort 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 thelast and smallest lake, under which the swollen waters fell in acataract to the stream below; beyond the path doubled back towards thehouse. 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, youknow, as we do."

"Do." The word reproached me; there was no past tense in Cordelia'sverb "to love."

"Poor Sebastian!" I said. "It's too pitiful. How will it end?"

"I think I can tell you exactly, Charles. I've seen others like him, andI 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 hisbroom and his bunch of keys. He'll be a great favourite with the oldfathers, something of a joke to the novices. Everyone will know abouthis 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, 'OldSebastian's on the spree again,' and then he'll come back dishevelledand shamefaced and be more devout for a day or two in the chapel. He'llprobably have little hiding places about the garden where he keeps abottle and takes a swig now and then on the sly. They'll bring himforward to act as guide, whenever they have an English-speaking visitor;and he will be completely charming, so that before they go they'll askabout him and perhaps be given a hint that he has high connections athome. If he lives long enough, generations of missionaries in all kindsof remote places will think of him as a queer old character who wassomehow part of the Hope of their student days, and remember him intheir masses. He'll develop little eccentricities of devotion, intensepersonal cults of his own; he'll be found in the chapel at odd times andmissed when he's expected. Then one morning, after one of his drinkingbouts, he'll be picked up at the gate dying, and show by a mere flickerof the eyelid that he is conscious when they give him the lastsacraments. 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 floweringchestnuts. "It's not what one would have foretold," I said. "I supposehe doesn't suffer?"

"Oh, yes, I think he does. One can have no idea what the suffering maybe, to be maimed as he is--no dignity, no power of will. No one is everholy without suffering. It's taken that form with him.... I've seenso much suffering in the last few years; there's so much coming foreverybody soon. It's the spring of love..." And then in condescensionto my paganism, she added: "He's in a very beautiful place, you know, bythe sea--white cloisters, a bell tower, rows of green vegetables, and amonk 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 thehouse, "When you met me last night did you think, 'Poor Cordelia, suchan engaging child, grown up a plain and pious spinster, full of goodworks'? Did you think 'thwarted'?"

It was no time for prevarication. "Yes," I said, "I did; I don't now, somuch."

"It's funny," she said, "that's exactly the word I thought of for youand Julia. When we were up in the nursery with Nanny. 'Thwartedpassion,' I thought."

She spoke with that gentle, infinitesimal inflection of mockery whichdescended to her from her mother, but later that evening the words cameback to me poignantly.

Julia wore the embroidered Chinese robe which she often used when wewere dining alone at Brideshead; it was a robe whose weight and stifffolds stressed her repose; her neck rose exquisitely from the plain goldcircle 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, andthat night, watching her as she sat between the firelight and the shadedlamp, 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 momentof vision? And it came back to me that this was how she had sat in theliner, before the storm; this was how she had looked; and I realizedthat she had regained what I thought she had lost for ever, the magicalsadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed tosay, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?"

That night I woke in the darkness and lay awake turning over in my mindthe conversation with Cordelia. How I had said, "You knew I would notunderstand?" How often, it seemed to me, I was brought up short, like ahorse in full stride suddenly refusing an obstacle, backing from thespurs, 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 withhis 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 warminside, and outside the last blizzard of winter raging and the snowpiling up against the door. Quite silently a great weight formingagainst the timber; the bolt straining in its socket; minute by minutein the darkness outside the white heap sealing the door, until quitesoon, when the wind dropped and the sun came out on the ice slopes andthe thaw set in, a block would move, slide and tumble, high above,gather way, gather weight, till the whole hillside seemed to be falling,and the little lighted place would crash open and splinter anddisappear, rolling with the avalanche into the ravine.

Chapter Five

My divorce case, or rather my wife's, was due to be heard at about thesame time as Brideshead was to be married. Julia's would not come uptill the following term; meanwhile the game of General Post--moving myproperty from the Old Rectory to my flat, my wife's from my flat to theOld Rectory, Julia's from Rex's house and from Brideshead to my flat,Rex's from Brideshead to his house, and Mrs. Muspratt's from Falmouth toBrideshead--was in full swing and we were all, in varying degrees,homeless, when a halt was called and Lord Marchmain, with a taste forthe dramatically inopportune which was plainly the prototype of hiselder son's, declared his intention, in view of the internationalsituation, of returning to England and passing his declining years inhis old home.

The only member of the family to whom this change promised any benefitwas Cordelia, who had been sadly abandoned in the turmoil. Brideshead,indeed, had made a formal request to her to consider his house her homefor as long as it suited her, but when she learned that hersister-in-law proposed to install her children there for the holidaysimmediately after the wedding, in the charge of a sister of hers and thesister's friend, Cordelia had decided to move, too, and was talking ofsetting up alone in London. She now found herself, Cinderella-like,promoted chatelaine, while her brother and his wife, who had till thatmoment expected to find themselves, within a matter of days, absoluteowners of the entire property, were without a roof; the deeds ofconveyance, engrossed and ready for signing, were rolled up, tied andput away in one of the black tin boxes in Lincoln's Inn. It was bitterfor Mrs. Muspratt; she was not an ambitious woman; something very muchless grand than Brideshead would have contented her heartily; but shedid aspire to finding some shelter for her children over Christmas. Thehouse at Falmouth was stripped and up for sale; moreover, Mrs. Muspratthad taken leave of the place with some justifiably rather large talk ofher new establishment; they could not return there. She was obliged in ahurry to move her furniture from Lady Marchmain's room to a disusedcoachhouse and to take a furnished villa at Torquay. She was not, as Ihave said, a woman of high ambition, but, having had her expectations somuch raised, it was disconcerting to be brought so low so suddenly. Inthe village the working party who had been preparing the decorations forthe bridal entry began unpicking the B's on the bunting and substitutingM's, obliterating the Earl's points and stencilling balls and strawberryleaves on the painted coronets, in preparation for Lord Marchmain'sreturn.

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 arriveafter the wedding, having seen Lord and Lady Brideshead on their waythrough Paris; he would see them in Rome. He was not well enough totravel at all; he was just starting; he had unhappy memories of winterat Brideshead and would not come until spring was well advanced and theheating apparatus overhauled; he was coming alone; he was bringing hisItalian household; he wished his return to be unannounced and to lead alife of complete seclusion; he would give a ball. At last a date inJanuary was chosen which proved to be the correct one.

Plender preceded him by some days; there was a difficulty here. Plenderwas not an original member of the Brideshead household; he had been LordMarchmain's servant in the yeomanry, and had only once met Wilcox, onthe painful occasion of the removal of his master's luggage when it wasdecided 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 kindof curate, a Swiss body-servant, to attend to the wardrobe and also,when occasion arose, lend a hand with less dignified tasks about thehouse, and had in effect become major-domo of that fluctuating andmobile household; sometimes he even referred to himself on the telephoneas the "secretary." There was an acre of thin ice between him andWilcox.

Fortunately the two men took a liking to one another, and the thing wassolved in a series of three-cornered discussions with Cordelia. Plenderand Wilcox became Joint Grooms of the Chambers, like Blues and LifeGuards with equal precedence, Plender having as his particular provincehis Lordship's own apartments, and Wilcox a sphere of influence in thepublic rooms; the senior footman was given a black coat and promotedbutler, the nondescript Swiss, on arrival, was to have full valet'sstatus; 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 shouldnot return, moved back for the reception. When the day came, Cordeliawent to the station and we remained to greet him at home. It was a bleakand gusty day. Cottages and lodges were decorated; plans for a bonfirethat night and for the village silver band to play on the terrace wereput down, but the house flag that had not flown for twenty-five yearswas hoisted over the pediment, and flapped sharply against the leadensky. Whatever harsh voices might be bawling into the microphones ofCentral Europe, and whatever lathes spinning in the armament factories,the return of Lord Marchmain was a matter of first importance in his ownneighbourhood.

He was due at three o'clock. Julia and I waited in the drawing-roomuntil Wilcox, who had arranged with the station-master to be keptinformed, announced "The train is signalled," and a minute later, "Thetrain is in; his Lordship is on the way." Then we went to the frontportico and waited there with the upper servants. Soon the Rollsappeared at the turn in the drive, followed at some distance by the twovans. It drew up; first Cordelia got out, then Cara; there was a pause,a rug was handed to the chauffeur, a stick to the footman; then a legwas cautiously thrust forward. Plender was by now at the car door;another servant--the Swiss valet--had emerged from a van; together theylifted Lord Marchmain out and set him on his feet; he felt for hisstick, grasped it, and stood for a minute collecting his strength forthe few low steps which led to the front door.

Julia gave a little sigh of surprise and touched my hand. We had seenhim nine months ago at Monte Carlo, when he had been an upright andstately figure, little changed from when I first met him in Venice. Nowhe was an old man. Plender had told us his master had been unwelllately; he had not prepared us for this.

Lord Marchmain stood bowed and shrunken, weighed down by his great-coat,a white muffler fluttering untidily at his throat, a cloth cap pulledlow on his forehead, his face white and lined, his nose coloured by thecold; the tears which gathered in his eyes came not from emotion butfrom the east wind; he breathed heavily. Cara tucked in the end of hismuffler and whispered something to him. He raised a gloved hand--aschoolboy's glove of grey wool--and made a small, weary gesture ofgreeting to the group at the door; then, very slowly, with his eyes onthe ground before him, he made his way into the house.

They took off his coat and cap and muffler and the kind of leatherjerkin which he wore under them; thus stripped he seemed more than everwasted but more elegant; he had cast the shabbiness of extreme fatigue.Cara straightened his tie; he wiped his eyes with a bandannahandkerchief and shuffled with his stick to the hall fire.

There was a little heraldic chair by the chimney-piece, one of a setwhich stood against the walls, a little, inhospitable, flat-seatedthing, a mere excuse for the elaborate armorial painting on its back, onwhich, perhaps, no one, not even a weary footman, had ever sat since itwas 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 longlegs stuck out before him, his cane between them, his chin on its ivoryhandle, but he began to take notice of us all, to greet us and to giveorders.

"I'm afraid I'm not at all the thing to-day; the journey's taken it outof me. Ought to have waited a night at Dover. Wilcox, what rooms haveyou prepared for me?"

"Your old ones, my lord."

"Won't do; not till I'm fit again. Too many stairs; must be on theground 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 onecould not normally go further into it than a small roped area round thedoor, where sight-seers were corralled on the days the house was open tothe public; it was a splendid, uninhabitable museum of Chippendalecarving and porcelain and lacquer and painted hangings; the "Queen'sbed," too, was an exhibition piece, a vast velvet tent like theBaldachino at St. Peter's. Had Lord Marchmain planned thislying-in-state for himself, I wondered, before he left the sunshine ofItaly? Had he thought of it during the scudding rain of his long,fretful journey? Had it come to him at that moment, an awakened memoryof childhood, a dream in the nursery--"When I'm grown up I'll sleep inthe Queen's bed in the Chinese drawing-room"--the apotheosis of adultgrandeur?

Few things, certainly, could have caused more stir in the house. Whathad been foreseen as a day of formality became one of fierce exertion;housemaids began making a fire, removing covers, unfolding linen; men inaprons, never normally seen, shifted furniture; the estate carpenterswere collected to dismantle the bed. It came down the main staircase inpieces, at intervals during the afternoon; huge sections of rococo,velvet-covered cornice; the twisted gilt and velvet columns which formedits posts; beams of unpolished wood, made not to be seen, whichperformed invisible, structural functions below the draperies; plumes ofdyed feathers, which sprang from gold-mounted ostrich eggs and crownedthe canopy; finally, the mattresses with four toiling men to each. LordMarchmain seemed to derive comfort from the consequences of his whim; hesat by the fire watching the bustle, while we stood in ahalf-circle--Cara, Cordelia, Julia and I--and talked to him.

Colour came back to his cheeks and light to his eyes. "Brideshead andhis wife dined with me in Rome," he said. "Since we are all members ofthe family"--and his eye moved ironically from Cara to me--"I can speakwithout reserve. I found her deplorable. Her former consort, Iunderstand, was a seafaring man and, presumably, the less exacting, buthow my son, at the ripe age of thirty-eight, with, unless things havechanged very much, a very free choice among the women of England, canhave settled on--I suppose I must call her so--Beryl..." He leftthe sentence eloquently unfinished.

Lord Marchmain showed no inclination to move, so presently we drew upchairs--the little heraldic chairs, for everything else in the hall wasponderous--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 rathersombre mood; he, indeed, was the most cheerful of us. "Tell me," hesaid, "the circ*mstances of Brideshead's courtship."

We told him what we knew.

"Match-boxes," he said. "Match-boxes. I think she's past childbearing."

Tea was brought us at the hall fireplace.

"In Italy," he said, "no one believes there will be a war. They think itwill all be 'arranged.' I suppose, Julia, you no longer have access topolitical information? Cara, here, is fortunately a British subject bymarriage. It is not a thing she customarily mentions, but it may provevaluable. She is legally Mrs. Hicks, are you not, my dear? We knowlittle of Hicks, but we shall be grateful to him, none the less, if itcomes to war. And you," he said, turning the attack to me, "you will nodoubt become an official artist?"

"No. As a matter of fact I am negotiating now for a commission in theSpecial Reserve."

"Oh, but you should be an artist. I had one with my squadron during thelast war, for weeks--until we went up to the line."

This waspishness was new. I had always been aware of a frame ofmalevolence under his urbanity, now it protruded like his own sharpbones through the sunken skin.

It was dark before the bed was finished; we went to see it, LordMarchmain stepping quite briskly now through the intervening rooms.

"I congratulate you. It really looks remarkably well. Wilcox, I seem toremember a silver basin and ewer--they stood in a room we called 'theCardinal's dressing-room,' I think--suppose we had them here on theconsole. Then if you will send Plender and Gaston to me, the luggage canwait till to-morrow--simply the dressing-case and what I need for thenight. Plender will know. If you will leave me with Plender and Gaston,I will go to bed. We will meet later; you will dine here and keep meamused."

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 isdying and accepts it. His sickness is up and down; one day, sometimesfor several days on end, he is strong and lively and then he is readyfor death, then he is down and afraid. I do not know how it will be whenhe is more and more down. That must come in good time. The doctors inRome gave him less than a year. There is someone coming from London, Ithink to-morrow, 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 had aHogarthian aspect, with the dinner-table set for the four of us by thegrotesque, chinoiserie chimney-piece, and the old man propped among hispillows, sipping champagne, tasting, praising, and failing to eat thesuccession of dishes which had been prepared for his homecoming. Wilcoxhad brought out for the occasion the gold plate, which I had not beforeseen in use; that and the gilt mirrors and the lacquer and the draperyof the great bed and Julia's mandarin coat gave the scene an air ofpantomime, 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 inthis 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 upthe fire; the lights were on, but he was asleep again. He must havewoken up and turned them on; he had to get out of bed to do that. Ithink perhaps he is afraid of the dark."

It was natural, with her hospital experience, that Cordelia should takecharge of her father. When the doctors came that day they gave theirinstructions to her, instinctively.

"Until he gets worse," she said, "I and the valet can look after him. Wedon't want nurses in the house before they are needed."

At this stage the doctors had nothing to recommend except to keep himcomfortable 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 theirdoctors gave a week to live. I have learned one thing in medicine: neverprophesy."

These two men had made a long journey to tell her this; the local doctorwas there to accept the same advice in technical phrases.

That night Lord Marchmain reverted to the topic of his newdaughter-in-law; it had never been long out of his mind, findingexpression in various sly hints throughout the day; now he lay back inhis pillows and talked of her at length.

"I have never been much moved by family piety until now," he said, "butI am frankly appalled at the prospect of--of Beryl taking what was oncemy mother's place in this house. Why should that uncouth pair sit herechildless while the place crumbles about their ears? I will not disguisefrom you that I have taken a dislike to Beryl.

"Perhaps it was unfortunate that we met in Rome. Anywhere else mighthave been more sympathetic. And yet, if one comes to consider it, wherecould I have met her without repugnance? We dined at Ranieri's; it is aquiet little restaurant I have frequented for years--no doubt you knowit. Beryl seemed to fill the place. I, of course, was host, though tohear Beryl press my son with food, you might have thought otherwise.Brideshead was always a greedy boy; a wife who has his best interests atheart should seek to restrain him. However, that is a matter of smallimportance.

"She had no doubt heard of me as a man of irregular life. I can onlydescribe her manner to me as roguish. A naughty old man, that's what shethought I was. I suppose she had met naughty old admirals and knew howthey should be humoured; a stage-door chappie, a bit of a lad... Icould not attempt to reproduce her conversation. I will give you oneexample.

"They had been to an audience at the Vatican that morning; a blessingfor their marriage--I did not follow attentively--something of the kindhad happened before I gathered, some previous husband, some previousPope. She described, rather vivaciously, how on this earlier occasionshe had gone with a whole body of newly married couples, mostly Italiansof all ranks, some of the simpler girls in their wedding dresses, andhow each had appraised the other, the bridegrooms looking the bridesover, comparing their own with one another's, and so forth. Then shesaid, 'This time, of course, we were in private, but do you know, LordMarchmain, 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 hermeaning. Was she making a play on my son's name, or was she, do youthink, 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 it 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 toJulia and Charles."

"Of course not, Papa, it's Bridey's."

"And... Beryl's? I will have Gregson down one day soon and go overthe matter. It is time I brought my will up to date; it is full ofanomalies and anachronisms.... I have rather a fancy for the idea ofinstalling Julia here; so beautiful this evening, my dear; so beautifulalways; much, much more suitable."

Shortly after this he sent to London for his solicitor, but, on the dayhe came, Lord Marchmain was suffering from an attack and would not seehim. "Plenty of time," he said, between painful gasps for breath,"another day, when I am stronger," but the choice of his heir wasconstantly in his mind, and he referred often to the time when Julia andI 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. Heand 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 could bevery 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 lakesfalling away one below the other, the old house in the foreground, therest of the world abandoned and forgotten; a world of its own of peaceand love and beauty; a soldier's dream in a foreign bivouac; such aprospect perhaps as a high pinnacle of the temple afforded after thehungry days in the desert and the jackal-haunted nights. Need I reproachmyself if sometimes I was rapt in the vision?

* * * * *

The weeks of illness wore on and the life of the house kept pace withthe faltering strength of the sick man. There were days when LordMarchmain was dressed, when he stood at the window or moved on hisvalet's arm from fire to fire through the rooms of the ground floor,when visitors came and went--neighbours and people from the estate, menof business from London--parcels of new books were opened and discussed,a piano moved into the Chinese drawing-room; once at the end ofFebruary, on a single, unexpected day of brilliant sunshine, he calledfor a car and got as far as the hall, had on his fur coat and reachedthe front door. Then suddenly he lost interest in the drive, said, "Notnow. Later. One day in the summer," took his man's arm again and was ledback to his chair. Once he had the humour of changing his room and gavedetailed orders for a move to the Painted Parlour; the chinoiserie, hesaid, disturbed his rest--he kept the lights full on at night--but againlost heart, countermanded everything, and kept his room.

On other days the house was hushed as he sat high in bed, propped by hispillows, with labouring breath; even then he wanted to have us roundhim; night or day he could not bear to be alone; when he could not speakhis eyes followed us, and if anyone left the room he would lookdistressed, and Cara, sitting often for hours at a time by his sideagainst the pillows with an 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 fewnights; it was one of the bad times, and Lord Marchmain refused to havethem near him. It was Beryl's first visit, and she would have beenunnatural if she had shown no curiosity about what had nearly been, andnow again promised soon to be, her home. Beryl was natural enough, andsurveyed the place fairly thoroughly in the days she was there. In thestrange disorder caused by Lord Marchmain's illness, it must have seemedcapable of much improvement; she referred once or twice to the way inwhich establishments of similar size had been managed at variousGovernment Houses she had visited. Brideshead took her visiting amongthe tenants by day, and in the evenings she talked to me of painting, orto Cordelia of hospitals, or to Julia of clothes, with cheerfulassurance. The shadow of betrayal, the knowledge of how precarious weretheir 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 shynessin which he was used to move, my guilt passed unseen.

Eventually it became clear that Lord Marchmain did not intend to seemore 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 verydistressing for Beryl. We'll come back if things get worse."

The bad spells became longer and more frequent; a nurse was engaged. "Inever saw such a room," she said, "nothing like it anywhere; noconveniences 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 LordMarchmain would not budge. Soon, as days and nights becameindistinguishable to him, a second nurse was installed; the specialistscame again from London; they recommended a new and rather daringtreatment, but his body seemed weary of all drugs and did not respond.Presently there were no good spells, merely brief fluctuations in thespeed of his decline.

Brideshead was called. It was the Easter holidays and Beryl was busywith her children. He came alone, and having stood silently for someminutes beside his father, who sat silently looking at him, he left theroom and, joining the rest of us who were in the library, said, "Papamust see a priest."

It was not the first time the topic had come up. In the early days, whenLord Marchmain first arrived, the parish priest--since the chapel wasshut there was a new church and presbytery in Melstead--had come to callas a matter of politeness. Cordelia had put him off with apologies andexcuses, but when he was gone she said: "Not yet. Papa doesn't want himyet."

Julia, Cara and I were there at the time; we each had something to say,began to speak, and thought better of it. It was never mentioned betweenthe four of us, but Julia, alone with me, said, "Charles, I see greatChurch trouble ahead."

"Can't they even let him die in peace?"

"They mean something so different by 'peace.'"

"It would be an outrage. No one could have made it clearer, all hislife, what he thought of religion. They'll come now, when his mind'swandering and he hasn't the strength to resist, and claim him as adeathbed penitent. I've had a certain respect for their Church up tillnow. If they do a thing like that I shall know that everything stupidpeople say about them is quite true--that it's all superstition andtrickery." Julia said nothing. "Don't you agree?" Still Julia saidnothing. "Don't you agree?"

"I don't know, Charles. I simply don't know."

And, though none of us spoke of it, I felt the question ever present,growing through all the weeks of Lord Marchmain's illness; I saw it whenCordelia drove off early in the mornings to mass; I saw it as Cara tookto going with her; this little cloud, the size of a man's hand, that wasgoing to swell into a storm among us.

Now Brideshead, in his heavy, ruthless way, planted the problem downbefore us.

"Oh, Bridey, do you think he would?" asked Cordelia.

"I shall see that he does," said Brideshead. "I shall take Father Mackayin to him to-morrow."

Still the clouds gathered and did not break; none of us spoke. Cara andCordelia went back to the sick-room; Brideshead looked for a book, foundone, and left us.

"Julia," I said, "how can we stop this tomfoolery?"

She did not answer for some time; then: "Why should we?"

"You know as well as I do. It's just--just an unseemly incident."

"Who am I to object to unseemly incidents?" she asked sadly. "Anyway,what harm can it do? Let's ask the doctor."

We asked the doctor, who said: "It's hard to say. It might alarm him ofcourse; on the other hand, I have known cases where it has had awonderfully soothing effect on a patient; I've even known it act as apositive stimulant. It certainly is usually a great comfort to therelations. Really I think it's a thing for Lord Brideshead to decide.Mind you, there is no need for immediate anxiety. Lord Marchmain is veryweak to-day; to-morrow he may be quite strong again. Is it not usual towait a little?"

"Well, he wasn't much help," I said to Julia, when we left him.

"Help? I really can't quite see why you've taken it so much at heartthat my father shall not have the last sacraments."

"It's such a lot of witchcraft and hypocrisy."

"Is it? Anyway, it's been going on for nearly two thousand years. Idon't know why you should suddenly get in a rage now." Her voice rose;she was swift to anger of late months. "For Christ's sake, write to TheTimes; get up and make a speech in Hyde Park; start a 'No Popery'riot--but don't bore me about it. What's it got to do with you or mewhether my father sees his parish priest?"

I knew these fierce moods of Julia's, such as had overtaken her at thefountain in moonlight, and dimly surmised their origin; I knew theycould not be assuaged by words. Nor could I have spoken, for the answerto her question was still unformed, but lay in a pocket of my mind, likesea-mist in a dip of the sand-dunes; the cloudy sense that the fate ofmore souls than one was at issue; that the snow was beginning to shifton the high slopes.

* * * * *

Brideshead and I breakfasted together next morning with the night-nurse,who had just come off duty.

"He's much brighter to-day," she said. "He slept very nicely for nearlythree hours. When Gaston came to shave him he was quite chatty."

"Good," said Brideshead. "Cordelia went to mass. She's driving FatherMackay back here to breakfast."

I had met Father Mackay several times; he was a stocky, middle-aged,genial Glasgow-Irishman who, when we met, was apt to ask me suchquestions as, "Would you say now, Mr. Ryder, that the painter Titian wasmore truly artistic than the painter Raphael?" and, more disconcertinglystill, to remember my answers: "To revert, Mr. Ryder, to what you saidwhen last I had the pleasure to meet you, would it be right now to saythat the painter Titian..." usually ending with some such reflectionas: "Ah, it's a grand resource for a man to have the talent you have,Mr. Ryder, and the time to indulge it." Cordelia could imitate himbrilliantly.

This morning he made a hearty breakfast, glanced at the headlines of thepaper, and then said with professional briskness: "And now, LordBrideshead, would the poor soul be ready to see me, do you think?"

Brideshead led him out; Cordelia followed and I was left alone among thebreakfast things. In less than a minute I heard the voices of all threeoutside the door.

"...can only apologize."

"...poor soul. Mark you, it was seeing a strange face; depend uponit, it was that--an unexpected stranger. I well understand it."

"...Father, I am sorry... bringing you all this way..."

"Don't think about it at all, Lady Cordelia. Why, I've had bottlesthrown at me in the Gorbals.... Give him time. I've known worse casesmake beautiful deaths. Pray for him... I'll come again... and nowif you'll excuse me I'll just pay a little visit to Mrs. Hawkins. Yes,indeed, I know the way well."

Then Cordelia and Brideshead came into the room.

"I gather the visit was not a success."

"It was not. Cordelia, will you drive Father Mackay home when he comesdown from Nanny? I'm going to telephone to Beryl and see when she needsme home."

"Bridey, it was horrible. What are we to do?"

"We've done everything we can at the moment." He left the room.

Cordelia's face was grave; she took a piece of bacon from the dish,dipped it in mustard and ate it. "Damn Bridey," she said, "I knew itwouldn't work."

"What happened?"

"Would you like to know? We walked in there in a line; Cara was readingthe paper aloud to Papa. Bridey said, 'I've brought Father Mackay to seeyou'; Papa said, 'Father Mackay, I am afraid you have been brought hereunder a misapprehension. I am not in extremis, and I have not been apractising member of your Church for twenty-five years. Brideshead, showFather Mackay the way out.' Then we all turned about and walked away,and I heard Cara start reading the paper again, and that, Charles, wasthat."

I carried the news to Julia, who lay with her bed-table amid a litter ofnewspapers and envelopes. "Mumbo-jumbo is off," I said, "thewitch-doctor has gone."

"Poor Papa."

"It's great sucks to Bridey."

I felt triumphant. I had been right, everyone else had been wrong, truthhad prevailed; the thread that I had felt hanging over Julia and me eversince that evening at the fountain had been averted, perhaps dispelledfor ever; and there was also--I can now confess it--another unexpressed,inexpressible, indecent little victory that I was furtively celebrating.I guessed that that morning's business had put Brideshead someconsiderable way further from his rightful inheritance.

In that I was correct; a man was sent for from the solicitors in London;and in a day or two he came and it was known throughout the house thatLord Marchmain had made a new will. But I was wrong in thinking that thereligious controversy was quashed; it flamed up again after dinner onBrideshead's last evening.

"...What Papa said was, 'I am not in extremis; I have not been apractising member of the Church for twenty-five years.'"

"Not 'the Church,' 'your Church.'"

"I don't see the difference."

"There's every difference."

"Bridey, it's quite plain what he meant."

"I presume he meant what he said. He meant that he had not beenaccustomed regularly to receive the sacraments, and since he was not atthe moment dying, he did not mean to change his ways--yet."

"That's simply a quibble."

"Why do people always think that one is quibbling when one tries to beprecise? His plain meaning was that he did not want to see a priest thatday, but that he would when he was in extremis."

"I wish someone would explain to me," I said, "quite what thesignificance of these sacraments is. Do you mean that if he dies alonehe goes to hell, and that if a priest puts oil on him--"

"Oh, it's not the oil," said Cordelia, "that's to heal him."

"Odder still--well, whatever it is the priest does--that he then goes toheaven? Is that what you believe?"

Cara then interposed: "I think my nurse told me, someone did anyway,that if the priest got there before the body was cold it was all right.That's so, isn't it?"

The others turned on her.

"No, Cara, it's not."

"Of course not."

"You've got it all wrong, Cara."

"Well, I remember when Alphonse de Grenet died, Madame de Grenet had apriest hidden outside the door--he couldn't bear the sight of apriest--and brought him in before the body was cold; she told meherself, and they had a full requiem for him, and I went to it."

"Having a requiem doesn't mean you go to heaven necessarily."

"Madame de Grenet thought it did."

"Well, she was wrong."

"Do any of you Catholics know what good you think this priest can do?" Iasked. "Do you simply want to arrange it so that your father can haveChristian burial? Do you want to keep him out of hell? I only want to betold."

Brideshead told me at some length, and when he had finished Caraslightly marred the unity of the Catholic front by saying in simplewonder, "I never heard that before."

"Let's get this clear," I said; "he has to make an act of will; he hasto be contrite and wish to be reconciled; is that right? But only Godknows whether he has really made an act of will; the priest can't tell;and if there isn't a priest there, and he makes the act of will alone,that's as good as if there were a priest. And it's quite possible thatthe will may still be working when a man is too weak to make any outwardsign of it; is that right? He may be lying, as though for dead, andwilling all the time, and being reconciled, and God understands that; isthat right?"

"More or less," said Brideshead.

"Well, for heaven's sake," I said, "what is the priest for?"

There was a pause in which Julia sighed and Brideshead drew breath asthough to start further subdividing the propositions. In the silenceCara said, "All I know is that I shall take very good care to have apriest."

"Bless you," said Cordelia, "I believe that's the best answer."

And we let the argument drop, each for different reasons, thinking ithad been inconclusive.

Later Julia said: "I wish you wouldn't start these religious arguments."

"I didn't start it."

"You don't convince anyone else and you don't really convince yourself."

"I only want to know what these people believe. They say it's all basedon logic."

"If you'd let Bridey finish, he would have made it all quite logical."

"There were four of you," I said. "Cara didn't know the first thing itwas about, and may or may not have believed it; you knew a bit anddidn't believe a word; Cordelia knew about as much and believed itmadly; only poor Bridey knew and believed, and I thought he made apretty poor show when it came to explaining. And people go round saying,'At least Catholics know what they believe.' We had a fair cross-sectionto-night--"

"Oh, Charles, don't rant. I shall begin to think you're getting doubtsyourself."

* * * * *

The weeks passed and still Lord Marchmain lived on. In June my divorcewas made absolute and my former wife married for the second time. Juliawould be free in September. The nearer our marriage got, the morewistfully, I noticed, Julia spoke of it; war was growing nearer, too--weneither of us doubted that--but Julia's tender, remote, it sometimesseemed desperate longing did not come from any uncertainty outsideherself; it suddenly darkened too, into brief accesses of hate when sheseemed to throw herself against the restraints of her love for me like acaged animal against the bars.

I was summoned to the War Office, interviewed and put on a list in caseof emergency; Cordelia also, on another list; lists were becoming partof our lives once more, as they had been at school--those strips ofpaper on the green baize notice boards which defined success andfailure. No one in that dark office spoke the word "war"; it was taboo;we should be called for if there was "an emergency"--not in case ofstrife, an act of human will; nothing so clear and simple as wrath orretribution; an emergency; something coming out of the waters, a monsterwith sightless face and thrashing tail thrown up from the depths.

Lord Marchmain took little interest in events outside his own room; wetook him the papers daily and made the attempt to read to him, but heturned his head on the pillows and with his eyes followed the intricatepatterns about him. "Shall I go on?" "Please do if it's not boring you."But he was not listening; occasionally at a familiar name he wouldwhisper: "Irwin... I knew him--a mediocre fellow"; occasionally someremote comment: "Czechs make good coachmen; nothing else"; but his mindwas far from world affairs; it was there, on the spot, turned in onhimself; he had no strength for any other war than his own solitarystruggle to keep alive.

I said to the doctor, who was with us daily: "He's got a wonderful willto live, hasn't he?"

"Would you put it like that? I should say a great fear of death."

"Is there a difference?"

"Oh dear, yes. He doesn't derive any strength from his fear, you know.It's wearing him out."

Next to death, perhaps because they are like death, he feared darknessand loneliness. He liked to have us in his room and the lights burnt allnight among the gilt figures; he did not wish us to speak much, but hetalked himself, so quietly that we could often not hear him; he talked,I think, because his was the only voice he could trust, when it assuredhim that he was still alive; what he said was not for us, nor for anyears but his own.

"Better to-day. Better to-day. I can see now, in the corner of thefireplace, where the mandarin is holding his gold bell and the crookedtree is in flower below his feet, where yesterday I was confused andtook the little tower for another man. Soon I shall see the bridge andthe three storks and know where the path leads over the hill.

"Better to-morrow. We live long in our family and marry late.Seventy-three is no age. Aunt Julia, my father's aunt, lived to beeighty-eight, born and died here, never married, saw the fire on beaconhill for the battle of Trafalgar, always called it 'the New House'; thatwas the name they had for it in the nursery and in the fields whenunlettered men had long memories. You can see where the old house stoodnear the village church; they call the field 'Castle Hill,' Horlick'sfield where the ground's uneven and half of it is waste, nettle andbrier in hollows too deep for ploughing. They dug to the foundations tocarry the stone for the new house; the house that was a century old whenAunt Julia was born. Those were our roots in the waste hollows of CastleHill, in the brier and nettle; among the tombs in the old church and thechantrey where no clerk sings.

"Aunt Julia knew the tombs, cross-legged knight and doubleted earl,marquis like a Roman senator, limestone, alabaster, and Italian marble;tapped the escutcheons with her ebony cane, made the casque ring overold Sir Roger. We were knights then, barons since Agincourt; the largerhonours came with the Georges. They came the last and they'll go thefirst; the barony descends in the female line; when Brideshead isburied--he married late--Julia's son will be called by the name hisfathers bore before the fat days; the days of wool shearing and the widecorn lands, the days of growth and building, when the marshes weredrained and the waste land brought under the plough, when one built thehouse, his son added the dome, his son spread the wings and dammed theriver. Aunt Julia watched them build the fountain; it was old before itcame here, weathered two hundred years by the suns of Naples, brought byman-o'-war in the days of Nelson. Soon the fountain will be dry till therain fills it, setting the fallen leaves afloat in the basin and overthe lakes the reeds will spread and close. Better to-day.

"Better to-day. I have lived carefully, sheltered myself from the coldwinds, eaten moderately of what was in season, drunk fine claret, sleptin my own sheets; I shall live long. I was fifty when they dismounted usand sent us into the line; old men stay at the base, the orders said,but Walter Venables, my commanding officer, my nearest neighbour, said:'You're as fit as the youngest of them, Alex.' So I was; so I am now, ifI could only breathe.

"No air; no wind stirring under the velvet canopy; no one has opened thedoor for a thousand years in Aladdin's treasury, deep under ground wherethe jinns burrow like moles and no wind stirs. When the summer comes,"said Lord Marchmain, oblivious of the deep corn and swelling fruit andthe surfeited bees who slowly sought their hives in the heavy afternoonsunlight outside his windows, "when the summer comes I shall leave mybed and sit in the open air and breathe more easily.

"Better to-morrow, when the wind comes down the valley and a man canturn to meet it and fill himself with air like a beast at water. Whowould have thought that all these little gold men, gentlemen in theirown country, could live so long without breathing? Like toads in thecoal, down a deep mine, untroubled. God take it, why have they dug ahole for me? Must a man stifle to death in his own cellars? Plender,Gaston, open the windows."

"The windows are all wide open, my lord."

"I know them. I was born in this house. They open from a cellar into atunnel. It can only be done by gunpowder; bore the rock, cram it withpowder, trace the fuse, crouch under cover round the corner while wetouch it off; we'll blast our way to daylight."

A cylinder of oxygen was placed beside his bed, with a long tube, aface-piece, and a little stop-co*ck he could work himself. Often he said:"It's empty; look, nurse, there's nothing comes out."

"No, Lord Marchmain, it's quite full; the bubble here in the glass bulbshows that; it's at full pressure; listen, don't you hear it hiss? Tryand breathe slowly, Lord Marchmain; quite gently, then you get thebenefit."

"Free as air; that's what they say--'free as air.' I was free once. Icommitted a crime in the name of freedom. Now they bring me my air in aniron barrel."

Once he said: "Cordelia, what became of the chapel?"

"They locked it up, Papa, when Mummy died."

"It was hers, I gave it to her. We've always been builders in ourfamily. I built it for her; pulled down the pavilion that stood there;rebuilt with the old stones; it was the last of the new house to come,the first to go. There used to be a chaplain until the war. Do youremember him?"

"I was too young."

"Then I went away--left her in the chapel praying. It was hers. It wasthe place for her. I never came back to disturb her prayers. They saidwe were fighting for freedom; I had my own victory. Was it a crime?"

"I think it was, Papa."

"Crying to heaven for vengeance? Is that why they've locked me in thiscave, do you think, with a black tube of air and the little yellow menalong the walls, who live without breathing? Do you think that, child?But the wind will come soon, to-morrow perhaps, and we'll breathe again.The ill wind that will blow me good. Better to-morrow."

* * * * *

Thus, till mid-July, Lord Marchmain lay dying, wearing himself down inthe struggle to live. Then, since there was no reason to expect animmediate change, Cordelia went to London to see her women'sorganization about the coming "emergency." That day Lord Marchmain'scondition became suddenly worse. He lay silent and quite still,breathing laboriously; only his open eyes, which sometimes moved aboutthe room, gave any sign of consciousness.

"Is this the end?" Julia asked.

"It is impossible to say," the doctor answered; "when he does die itwill probably be like this. He may recover from the present attack. Theonly thing is not to disturb him. The least shock will be fatal."

"I'm going for Father Mackay," she said.

I was not surprised. I had seen it in her mind all the summer. When shehad gone I said to the doctor, "We must stop this nonsense."

He said: "My business is with the body. It's not my business to arguewhether people are better alive or dead, or what happens to them afterdeath. I only try to keep them alive."

"And you said just now any shock would kill him. What could be worse fora man who fears death, as he does, than to have a priest brought tohim--a priest he turned out when he had the strength?"

"I think it may kill him."

"Then will you forbid it?"

"I've no authority to forbid anything. I can only give my opinion."

"Cara, what do you think?"

"I don't want him made unhappy. That is all there is to hope for now;that he'll die without knowing it. But I should like the priest there,all the same."

"Will you try and persuade Julia to keep him away--until the end? Afterthat he can do no harm."

"I will ask her to leave Alex happy, yes."

In half an hour Julia was back with Father Mackay. We all met in thelibrary.

"I've telegraphed for Bridey and Cordelia," I said. "I hope you agreethat nothing must be done till they arrive."

"I wish they were here," said Julia.

"You can't take the responsibility alone," I said; "everyone else isagainst you. Doctor, tell her what you said to me just now."

"I said that the shock of seeing a priest might well kill him; withoutthat he may survive this attack. As his medical man I must protestagainst anything being done to disturb him."

"Cara?"

"Julia, dear, I know you are thinking for the best, but, you know, Alexwas not a religious man. He scoffed always. We mustn't take advantage ofhim, now he's weak, to comfort our own consciences. If Father Mackaycomes to him when he is unconscious, then he can be buried in the properway, can he not, Father?"

"I'll go and see how he is," said the doctor, leaving us.

"Father Mackay," I said. "You know how Lord Marchmain greeted you lasttime you came; do you think it possible he can have changed now?"

"Thank God, by His grace it is possible."

"Perhaps," said Cara, "you could slip in while he is sleeping, say thewords of absolution over him; he would never know."

"I have seen so many men and women die," said the priest; "I never knewthem sorry to have me there at the end."

"But they were Catholics; Lord Marchmain has never been one except inname--at any rate, not for years. He was a scoffer, Cara said so."

"Christ came to call, not the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

The doctor returned. "There's no change," he said.

"Now, Doctor," said the priest, "how would I be a shock to anyone?" Heturned his bland, innocent, matter-of-fact face first on the doctor,then upon the rest of us. "Do you know what I want to do? It issomething so small, no show about it. I don't wear special clothes, youknow. I go just as I am. He knows the look of me now. There's nothingalarming. I just want to ask him if he is sorry for his sins. I want himto make some little sign of assent; I want him, anyway, not to refuseme; then I want to give him God's pardon. Then, though that's notessential, I want to anoint him. It is nothing, a touch of the fingers,just some oil from this little box, look, it is pure oil, nothing tohurt him."

"Oh, Julia," said Cara, "what are we to say? Let me speak to him."

She went to the Chinese drawing-room; we waited in silence; there was awall of fire between Julia and me. Presently Cara returned.

"I don't think he heard," she said. "I thought I knew how to put it tohim. I said: 'Alex, you remember the priest from Melstead. You were verynaughty when he came to see you. You hurt his feelings very much. Nowhe's here again. I want you to see him just for my sake, to makefriends.' But he didn't answer. If he's unconscious, it couldn't makehim unhappy to see the priest, could it, Doctor?"

Julia, who had been standing still and silent, suddenly moved.

"Thank you for your advice, Doctor," she said. "I take fullresponsibility for whatever happens. Father Mackay, will you please comeand see my father now," and without looking at me, led him to the door.

We all followed. Lord Marchmain was lying as I had seen him thatmorning, but his eyes were now shut; his hands lay, palm-upwards, abovethe bed-clothes; the nurse had her fingers on the pulse of one of them."Come in," she said brightly, "you won't disturb him now."

"D'you mean...?"

"No, no, but he's past noticing anything."

She held the oxygen apparatus to his face and the hiss of escaping gaswas the only sound at the bedside.

The priest bent over Lord Marchmain and blessed him. Julia and Caraknelt at the foot of the bed. The doctor, the nurse and I stood behindthem.

"Now," said the priest, "I know you are sorry for all the sins of yourlife, aren't you? Make a sign, if you can. You're sorry, aren't you?"But there was no sign. "Try and remember your sins; tell God you aresorry. I am going to give you absolution. While I am giving it, tell Godyou are sorry you have offended Him." He began to speak in Latin. Irecognized the words Ego te absolvo in nomine Patris... and saw thepriest make the sign of the cross. Then I knelt, too, and prayed: "OGod, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thingas sin," and the man on the bed opened his eyes and gave a sigh, thesort of sigh I had imagined people made at the moment of death, but hiseyes moved so that we knew there was still life in him.

I suddenly felt the longing for a sign, if only of courtesy, if only forthe sake of the woman I loved, who knelt in front of me, praying, Iknew, for a sign. It seemed so small a thing that was asked, the bareacknowledgment of a present, a nod in the crowd. All over the worldpeople were on their knees before innumerable crosses, and here thedrama was being played again by two men--by one man, rather, and henearer death than life; the universal drama in which there is only oneactor.

The priest took the little silver box from his pocket and spoke again inLatin, touching the dying man with an oily wad; he finished what he hadto do, put away the box and gave the final blessing. Suddenly LordMarchmain moved his hand to his forehead; I thought he had felt thetouch of the chrism and was wiping it away. "O God," I prayed, "don'tlet him do that." But there was no need for fear; the hand moved slowlydown his breast, then to his shoulder, and Lord Marchmain made the signof the cross. Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a littlething, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to mefrom my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top tobottom.

It was over; we stood up; the nurse went back to the oxygen cylinder;the doctor bent over his patient. Julia whispered to me: "Will you seeFather Mackay out? I'm staying here for a little."

Outside the door Father Mackay became the simple, genial man I had knownbefore. "Well, now, and that was a beautiful thing to see. I've known ithappen that way again and again. The devil resists to the last momentand then the Grace of God is too much for him. You're not a Catholic, Ithink, Mr. Ryder, but at least you'll be glad for the ladies to have thecomfort of it."

As we were waiting for the chauffeur, it occurred to me that FatherMackay should be paid for his services. I asked him awkwardly. "Why,don't think about it, Mr. Ryder. It was a pleasure," he said, "butanything you care to give is useful in a parish like mine." I found Ihad three pounds in my note-case and gave them to him. "Why, indeed,that's more than generous. God bless you, Mr. Ryder. I'll call again,but I don't think the poor soul has long for this world."

Julia remained in the Chinese drawing-room until, at five o'clock thatevening, her father died, proving both sides right in the dispute,priest and doctor.

* * * * *

Thus I come to the broken sentences which were the last words spokenbetween Julia and me, the last memories.

When her father died Julia remained some minutes with his body; thenurse came to the next room to announce the news and I had a glimpse ofher, through the open door, kneeling at the foot of the bed, and of Carasitting by her. Presently the two women came out together, and Juliasaid to me: "Not now; I'm just taking Cara up to her room; later."

While she was still upstairs Brideshead and Cordelia arrived fromLondon; when at last we met alone it was by stealth, like young lovers.

Julia said: "Here in the shadow, in the corner of the stair--a minute tosay good-bye."

"So long to say so little."

"You knew?"

"Since this morning; since before this morning; all this year."

"I didn't know till to-day. Oh, my dear, if you could only understand.Then I could bear to part, or bear it better. I should say my heart wasbreaking, if I believed in broken hearts. I can't marry you, Charles; Ican't be with you ever again."

"I know."

"How can you know?"

"What will you do?"

"Just go on--alone. How can I tell what I shall do? You know the wholeof me. You know I'm not one for a life of mourning. I've always beenbad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am,the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. That iswhat it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him. One can onlyhope to see one step ahead. But I saw to-day there was one thingunforgivable--like things in the schoolroom, so bad they areunpunishable, that only Mummy could deal with--the bad thing I was onthe point of doing, that I'm not quite bad enough to do; to set up arival good to God's. Why should I be allowed to understand that, and notyou, Charles? It may be because of Mummy, Nanny, Cordelia,Sebastian--perhaps Bridey and Mrs. Muspratt--keeping my name in theirprayers; or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if Igive up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won't quitedespair of me in the end.

"Now we shall both be alone, and I shall have no way of making youunderstand."

"I don't want to make it easier for you," I said; "I hope your heart maybreak; but I do understand."

The avalanche was down, the hillside swept bare behind it; the lastechoes died on the white slopes; the new mound glittered and lay stillin the silent valley.

Epilogue

"The worst place we've struck yet," said the commanding officer; "nofacilities, no amenities, and Brigade sitting right on top of us.There's one pub in Flyte St. Mary with capacity for about twenty--that,of course, will be out of bounds for officers; there's a Naafi in thecamp area. I hope to run transport once a week to Melstead Carbury.Marchmain is ten miles away and damn-all when you get there. It willtherefore be the first concern of company officers to organizerecreation for their men. M.O., I want you to take a look at the lakesto see if they're fit for bathing."

"Very good, sir."

"Brigade expects us to clean up the house for them. I should havethought some of those half-shaven scrimshankers I see lounging roundHeadquarters might have saved us the trouble; however... Ryder, youwill find a fatigue party of fifty and report to the quarteringcommandant at the house at 1045 hours; he'll show you what we're takingover."

"Very good, sir."

"Our predecessors do not seem to have been very enterprising. The valleyhas great potentialities for an assault course and a mortar range.Weapon-training officer, make a recce this morning and get somethinglaid on before Brigade arrives."

"Very good, sir."

"I'm going out myself with the adjutant to recce training areas. Anyonehappen to know this district?"

I said nothing.

"That's all then, get cracking."

* * * * *

"Wonderful old place in its way," said the quartering commandant; "pityto knock it about too much."

He was an old, retired, re-appointed lieutenant-colonel from some milesaway. We met in the space before the main doors, where I had myhalf-company fallen-in, waiting for orders. "Come in. I'll soon show youover. It's a great warren of a place, but we've only requisitioned theground floor and half a dozen bedrooms. Everything else upstairs isstill private property, mostly cram full of furniture; you never sawsuch stuff, priceless some of it.

"There's a caretaker and a couple of old servants live at the top--theywon't be any trouble to you--and a blitzed R.C. padre whom Lady Juliagave a home to--jittery old bird, but no trouble. He's opened thechapel; that's in bounds for the troops; surprising lot use it, too.

"The place belongs to Lady Julia Flyte, as she calls herself now. Shewas married to Mottram, the Minister of whatever-it-is. She's abroad insome woman's service, and I try to keep an eye on things for her. Queerthing the old marquis leaving everything to her--rough on the boys.

"Now this is where the last lot put the clerks; plenty of room, anyway.I've had the walls and fireplaces boarded up you see--valuable old workunderneath. Hullo, someone seems to have been making a beast of himselfhere; destructive beggars, soldiers are! Lucky we spotted it, or itwould have been charged to you chaps.

"This is another good-sized room, used to be full of tapestry. I'dadvise you to use this for conferences."

"I'm only here to clean up, sir. Someone from Brigade will allot therooms."

"Oh, well, you've got an easy job. Very decent fellows the last lot.They shouldn't have done that to the fireplace though. How did theymanage it? Looks solid enough. I wonder if it can be mended?

"I expect the brigadier will take this for his office; the last did.It's got a lot of painting that can't be moved, done on the walls. Asyou see, I've covered it up as best I can, but soldiers get throughanything--as the brigadier's done in the corner. There was anotherpainted room, outside under the pillars--modern work but, if you ask me,the prettiest in the place; it was the signal office and they madeabsolute hay of it; rather a shame.

"This eye-sore is what they used as the mess; that's why I didn't coverit up; not that it would matter much if it did get damaged; alwaysreminds me of one of the costlier knocking-shops, you know--'MaisonJaponaise'... and this was the ante-room..."

It did not take us long to make our tour of the echoing rooms. Then wewent outside on the terrace.

"Those are the other ranks' latrines and wash-house; can't think whythey built them just there; it was done before I took the job over. Allthis used to be cut off from the front. We laid the road through thetrees joining it up with the main drive; unsightly but very practical;awful lot of transport comes in and out; cuts the place up, too. Lookwhere one careless devil went smack through the box-hedge and carriedaway all that balustrade; did it with a three-ton lorry, too; you'dthink he had a Churchill tank at least.

"That fountain is rather a tender spot with our landlady; the youngofficers used to lark about in it on guest nights and it was looking abit the worse for wear, so I wired it in and turned the water off. Looksa bit untidy now; all the drivers throw their cigarette-ends and theremains of the sandwiches there, and you can't get to it to clean it up,since I put the wire round it. Florid great thing, isn't it?...

"Well, if you've seen everything I'll push off. Good day to you."

His driver threw a cigarette into the dry basin of the fountain; salutedand opened the door of the car. I saluted and the quartering commandantdrove away through the new, metalled gap in the lime-trees.

"Hooper," I said, when I had seen my men started, "do you think I cansafely leave you in charge of the work-party for half an hour?"

"I was just wondering where we could scrounge some tea."

"For Christ's sake," I said, "they've only just begun work."

"They're awfully browned-off."

"Keep them at it."

"Rightyoh."

I did not spend long in the desolate ground-floor rooms, but wentupstairs and wandered down the familiar corridors, trying doors thatwere locked, opening doors into rooms piled to the ceiling withfurniture. At length I met an old housemaid carrying a cup of tea."Why," she said, "isn't it Mr. Ryder?"

"It is. I was wondering when I should meet someone I knew."

"Mrs. Hawkins is up in her old room. I was just taking her some tea."

"I'll take it for you," I said, and passed through the baize doors, upthe uncarpeted stairs, to the nursery.

Nanny Hawkins did not recognize me until I spoke, and my arrival threwher into some confusion; it was not until I had been sitting some timeby her fireside that she recovered her old calm. She, who had changed solittle in all the years I knew her, had lately become greatly aged. Thechanges of the last years had come too late in her life to be acceptedand understood; her sight was failing, she told me, and she could seeonly the coarsest needlework. Her speech, sharpened by years of gentleconversation, had reverted now to the soft, peasant tones of its origin.

"...only myself here and the two girls and poor Father Membling whowas blown up, not a roof to his head nor a stick of furniture till Juliatook him in with the kind heart she's got, and his nerves somethingshocking.... Lady Brideshead, too, who I ought by rights to call herLadyship now, but it doesn't come natural, it was the same with her.First, when Julia and Cordelia left to the war, she came here with thetwo boys and then the military turned them out, so they went to London,nor they hadn't been in their house not a month, and Bridey away withthe yeomanry the same as his poor Lordship, when they were blown up too,everything gone, all the furniture she brought here and kept in thecoachhouse. Then she had another house outside London, and the militarytook that, too, and there she is now, when I last heard, in a hotel atthe seaside, which isn't the same as your own home, is it? It doesn'tseem right.

"...Did you listen to Mr. Mottram last night? Very nasty he was aboutHitler. I said to the girl Effie who does for me: 'If Hitler waslistening, and if he understands English, which I doubt, he must feelvery small.' Who would have thought of Mr. Mottram doing so well? And somany of his friends, too, that used to stay here? I said to Mr. Wilcox,who comes to see me regular on the bus from Melstead twice a month,which is very good of him and I appreciate it, I said: 'We wereentertaining angels unawares,' because Mr. Wilcox never liked Mr.Mottram's friends, which I never saw, but used to hear about from all ofyou, nor Julia didn't like them, but they've done very well, haven'tthey?"

At last I asked her: "Have you heard from Julia?"

"From Cordelia, only last week, and they're together still as they havebeen all the time, and Julia sent me love at the bottom of the page.They're both very well, though they couldn't say where, but FatherMembling said, reading between the lines, it was Palestine, which iswhere Bridey's yeomanry is, so that's very nice for them all. Cordeliasaid they were looking forward to coming home after the war, which I amsure we all are, though whether I live to see it, is another story."

I stayed with her for half an hour, and left promising to return often.When I reached the hall I found no sign of work and Hooper lookingguilty.

"They had to go off to draw the bed-straw. I didn't know till SergeantBlock told me. I don't know whether they're coming back."

"Don't know? What orders did you give?"

"Well, I told Sergeant Block to bring them back if he thought it wasworth while; I mean if there was time before dinner."

It was nearly twelve. "You've been hotted again, Hooper. That straw wasto be drawn any time before six to-night."

"Oh Lor; sorry Ryder. Sergeant Block--"

"It's my own fault for going away.... Fall-in the same partyimmediately after dinner, bring them back here and keep them here tillthe job's done."

"Rightyoh. I say, did you say you knew this place before?"

"Yes, very well. It belongs to friends of mine," and as I said the wordsthey sounded as odd in my ears as Sebastian's had done, when, instead ofsaying, "It is my home," he said, "It is where my family live."

"It doesn't seem to make any sense--one family in a place this size.What's the use of it?"

"Well, I suppose Brigade are finding it useful."

"But that's not what it was built for, is it?"

"No," I said, "not what it was built for. Perhaps that's one of thepleasures of building, like having a son, wondering how he'll grow up. Idon't know; I never built anything, and I forfeited the right to watchmy son grow up. I'm homeless, childless, middle-aged, loveless, Hooper."He looked to see if I was being funny, decided that I was, and laughed."Now go back to camp, keep out of the C.O.'s way, if he's back from hisrecce, and don't let on to anyone that we've made a nonsense of themorning."

"Okey, Ryder."

There was one part of the house I had not yet visited, and I went therenow. The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect; theart-nouveau paint was as fresh and bright as ever; the art-nouveau lampburned once more before the altar. I said a prayer, an ancient, newlylearned form of words, and left, turning towards the camp; and as Iwalked back, and the cookhouse bugle sounded ahead of me, I thought:--

The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend;they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year,generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by yearthe great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, insudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was desolate and thework all brought to nothing; Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity ofvanities, all is vanity.

And yet, I thought, stepping out more briskly towards the camp, wherethe bugles after a pause had taken up the second call and were soundingPick-em-up, Pick-em-up, hot potatoes--and yet that is not the lastword; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back.

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come outof their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which Iplayed; something none of us thought about at the time: a small redflame--a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before thebeaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights sawfrom their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again forother soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre orJerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and thetragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among theold stones.

* * * * *

I quickened my pace and reached the hut which served us for ourante-room.

"You're looking unusually cheerful to-day," said the second-in-command.

[End of Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh]