eeling in that den,
"what have you been up to all these years?"

     "My  dear,  it is  what <i>you</i> have  been up  to that we are here to  talk
about. I've  been  watching you,  my dear. I'm a faithful  old body and I've
kept my eye on you." As he spoke the bar and the bar-tender, the blue wicker
furniture, the gambling-machines, the wireless, the couple of youths dancing
on the oilcloth,  the youths sniggering round the slots, the  purple-veined,
stiffly dressed elderly man drinking in the corner  opposite  us,  the whole
drab and furtive joint, seemed to fade, and I was back in Oxford looking out
over Christ Church meadow through a window of Ruskin Gothic. "I went to your
first  exhibition,"  said Anthony; "I  found it  -- 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
was something a little <i>gentlemanly</i>  about your painting. You must remember I
arm 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 do next?'

     "The next thing  I  saw was your  very handsome volume  -- <i>Village  and
Provincial Architecture,</i> was it called?  Quite a tome, my dear, and what did
I find? Charm again. 'Not quite  my cup  of  tea,'  I thought; 'this is  too
English.' I have  the fancy I for rather spicy things, you know, not for the
shade  of the cedar  tree, the  cucumber sandwich, the silver cream-jug, the
English  girl dressed  in whatever  English girls do wear for  tennis -- not
that,  not Jane Austen,  <i>not</i>  M-m-miss M-m-mitford. Then,  to be frank, dear
Charles, I despaired of you. 'I am a  degenerate old d-d-dago,' I said, 'and
Charles -- I speak of your art, my dear -- is a dean's  daughter in flowered
muslin.'

     "Imagine  then  my excitement at luncheon to-day. Everyone  was talking
about  you.  My  hostess  was  a  friend of  my mother's,  a Mrs. Stuyvesant
Oglander;  a  friend of yours, too, my dear. Such  a frump!  Not at all  the
society  I imagined  you  to keep.  1 However, they  had  all been  to  your
exhibition, but it  was <i>you</i> f they  talked  of, how you had broken away,  my
dear, gone to the tropics, become a  Gauguin, a Rimbaud. You can imagine how
my old heart leaped. <sup></sup>

     "' Poor  Celia,' they said,  'after all she's done  for  him.' 'He owes
everything  to  her. It's too bad.' 'And with  Julia,' they said, 'after the
way she behaved in America.' 'Just as she was going back 1 to Rex.'

     " 'But the pictures,' I said; 'tell me about <i>them'</i>

     '"Oh, the pictures,' they said: 'they're most peculiar.' 'Not at 1  all
what he  usually does.'  'Very forceful.'  'Quite  barbaric.' 'if  call them
downright unhealthy,' said Mrs. Stuyvesant Oglander.

     "My dear, I could hardly keep still in my chair. I wanted  tof dash out
of  the house and  leap in a  taxi and say, 'Take me  to Charles's unhealthy
pictures.' Well, I  went, but the gallery after  J  luncheon  was so full of
absurd women  in  the sort  of hats they'i] should  be  made to <i>eat,</i>  that I
rested  a little --I rested here witfcl Cyril and  Tom and these saucy boys.
Then  I came  back  at the unfashionable  time of five o'clock, all agog, my
dear; and  what  did  I  find? I  found, my  dear, a very  naughty and  very
successful practical joke. It reminded me of dear Sebastian when he liked so
much to dress  up in false whiskers.  It was charm again,  my dear,  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 am
happy to say, than  either  of us shows -- when I <i>warned</i> you. I took you out
to dinner  to warn you of charm.  I warned you expressly and in great detail
of the Flyte family.  Charm is the great English  blight. It does  not exist
outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills
love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed <i>you."</i>

     The youth called Tom approached us again. "Don't be a tease,  Toni; buy
me 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 and
Julia's go past with Julia's sour-faced  maid strutting  beside the  porter.
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 dinner  and  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 the junction.  It was  night  as we
drew out of  Paddington, and the glow  of the town gave  place  first to the
scattered lights of the suburbs, then to the 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,  a
luncheon  party at Margot's, ending  up  with half  an hour's  well-reasoned
abuse of my pictures in a pansy bar. ... I think Celia knows about us."

     "Well, she had to know some time."

     "Everyone  seems  to  know.  My  pansy friend  had not been  in  London
twenty-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  the
darkness;  the little circle of gin and vermouth in the glasses i lengthened
to oval, contracted again,  with the  sway of the carriage, touched the lip,
lapped  back again, never  spilt; I was  leaving  the  day behind me.  Julia
pulled off  her hat  and tossed it into  the rack  above  her, and shook her
night-dark hair with a little sigh of ease -- a sigh fit for the pillow, the
sinking firelight and  a bedroom window open to the 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 his
Canadian  accent and acquired instead the hoarse, loud tone that  was common
to all his friends, as though their voices were perpetually strained to make
themselves heard above a crowd,  as though, with youth forsaking them, there
was no timdi to wait  the opportunity to speak, no  time to listen,  no time
ten reply; time for a laugh -- a throaty mirthless laugh, the base| currency
of goodwill.

     There  were  half  a dozen  of these friends in the  Tapestry  Hall ill
politicians,  "young conservatives" in the early forties, with spar hair and
high blood-pressure; a socialist  from the coal mines wh  had already caught
their clear accents, whose  cigars came lid pieces  in his  lips, whose hand
shook  when he poured hir out a  drink; a lovesick columnist,  who alone was
silent, glc ing sombrely on the only woman of the party; a financier  oldafl
than the rest, and, one might guess from the way they treated him, richer; a
woman they called "Grizel," a knowing rake whom,  in their hearts,  they all
feared a little.

     They  all  feared  Julia, too,  Grizel included. She greeted  them  and
apologized for  not being  there  to welcome them,  with  a  formality which
hushed 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 bur 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 to
the bottom of Mare Nostrum?  Why didn't we blow Spezia to blazes. Why didn't
we land on Pantelleria?"

     "Franco's simply a  German agent. They tried  to  put him in to prepare
air'bases 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 arc 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-day just 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 and
Nelson ..."

     ". . . <i>My</i> country of Hawkins and Drake."

     ". . . <i>My</i> country of Palmerston . . ."

     "Would you very  much  mind not doing that?"'said Grizel the columnist,
who had been  attempting in a maudlin manner  to  twist her wrist. "I  don't
happen to enjoy it."

     "I wonder which is the more horrible," I said, "Celia's Art and Fashion
or Rex's Politics and Money."

     "Why worry about them?"

     "Oh, my darling,  why is  it  that  love makes me hate the world?  It's
supposed to have quite the opposite effect.  I feel as though'  all mankind,
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
taken possession of it. They can't hurt us, can they?"

     "Not to-night; not now."

     "Not for how many nights?"


     <i>Chapter Three</i>

     "Do  you remember," said Julia, in the tranquil, lime-scented  evening,
"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
has done to-day?"

     It had been an afternoon of  low cloud and  summer squalls, so overcast
that at times I had stopped work  and roused Julia from the light  trance in
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  had
gone early to our baths, and on coming down, dressed for dinner, in the last
half-hour of the day,  we  found the world transformed; the sun had emerged;
the wind had fallen to a soft breeze which gently stirred the blossom in the
limes and carried its fragrance, fresh from  the  late rains, to  merge with
the sweet breath  of  box  and  the drying  stone. The shadow of the obelisk
spanned the terrace.

     I had carried two garden cushions from the shelter of the colonnade and
put them on the rim of the fountain. There Julia sat, in a tight little gold
tunic and a white gown, one  hand in  the water idly turning an emerald ring
to catch  the fire of the sunset;  the  carved animals mounted over her dark
head in a  cumulus of green moss and glowing stone and dense shadow, and the
waters  round  them  flashed  and  bubbled and broke into scattered beads of
flame.

     ". . . So much to remember," she  said. "How many days have  there been
'since 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  glum
memories  of childhood I  revisited  its pitch-pine  corridors  and dripping
walls! How querulously my  father and I, seated side  by side in  my uncle's
Humber,  approached the avenue of Wellingtonias knowing that  at  the 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; and  besides them,
perhaps already  arrived,  perhaps  every  moment expected,  my wife  and my
children.  This  annual  sacrifice  united us;  here  among  the  holly  and
mistletoe  and  the  cut spruce, the parlour  games ritually performed,  the
brandy-butter  and the Carlsbad plums,  the  village choir in the pitch-pine
minstrekl gallery, gold twine and  sprigged  wrapping-paper, she and I weril
accepted, whatever ugly rumours had been afloat in the past yeafJ as man and
wife. "We  must  keep  it  up,  whatever  it  costs  us, fc the sake  of the
children," my wife said.

     "Yes, two  Christmases. . . . And  the three days of good tas before  I
followed you to Capri."

     "Our first summer."

     "Do you remember how  I  hung  about Naples, then followe how we met by
arrangement on. the hill path and how flat fell?"

     "I  went back to the villa and said, 'Papa, who do you think arrived at
the  hotel?'  and he said, 'Charles Ryder,  I suppose.'  said, 'Why  did you
think of him?' and  Papa  replied, 'Cara  came back from Paris with the news
that  you  and  he  were inseparable  He  seems to have  a  penchant  for my
children. However, brir him here. I think we have the room.'"

     "There was the time you had jaundice and wouldn't let 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  Londc  Your  goodwill
mission  to  your father-in-law. The time you  went  to Oxford to paint  the
picture they didn't like. Oh, yes, quite' hundred days."

     "A hundred days  wasted out of two years  and a bit ... a day when  you
were not in my heart; not a day's coldness mistrust or disappointment."

     "Never that."

     We fell  silent;  only  the birds  spoke in a multitude of smalj  clear
voices in the lime-trees; only the waters spoke among the carved stones.

     Julia took  the handkerchief from  my  breast pocket and her hand; then
lit a cigarette. I feared to break  the spell of memories, but  for once our
thoughts had not kept  pace together, for  when  at length  Julia spoke, 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 or
two with you of real peace."

     "Isn't this peace?"

     The sun had sunk now to the line of woodland beyond the valley; all the
opposing slope was already in twilight, but the lakes below us  were aflame;
the light grew in  strength and splendour as it neared death, spreading long
shadows across the pasture, falling full  on the rich  stone  spaces of  the
house, firing the  panes in the windows, glowing  on  cornices and colonnade
and dome, drawing out  all  the  hidden sweetness  of colour  and scent from
earth  and stone and  leaf, glorifying the head  and golden 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. There must 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 so
hard 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 dinner
was 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 message would 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 <i>does</i> he do
in London?"

     It was often  a matter  for speculation between us -- giving  birth  to
many fantasies, for  Bridey  was a mystery;  a creature from under ground; a
hard-snouted,  burrowing, hibernating animal who shunned the  light.  He had
been completely without action  in all his years of adult life; the talk  of
his  going  into the army, 1 and into Parliament, and into a monastery,  had
all come to nothing. All that he was known with certainty to have done--andi
this  because  in a season  of scant news it had  formed  the  subject of  a
newspaper article  entitled peer's unusual hobby -- was to form a collection
of  match-boxes;  he  kept  them  mounted  on  boards, card-indexed,  yearly
occupying a  larger and larger space  in  his small house in Westminster. At
first he was  bashful  about the  notoriety  which the newspaper caused, but
later  greatly pleased, for he found it the means of  his getting into touch
with  other  collectors  in  all  parts  of  the  world  with  whom  he  now
corresponded  and swapped duplicates. Other than  this  he was not  known to
have  any  interests. He  remained Joint-Master of the Marchmain  and hunted
with them dutifully  on their two days a week when  he was at home; he never
hunted with  the neighbouring  pack, who  had the better country. He had  no
real zest for sport, and had not been out a dozen times that season; he  had
few friends; he visited his aunts;  he went to public  dinners  held  in the
Catholic interest. At Brideshead he  performed all unavoidable local duties,
bringing with him to platform and  fettfil and committee room  his own  thin
mist of clumsiness and aloofness.

     "There  was  a  girl found  strangled  with  a piece  of barbed wire at
Wandsworth 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, coming
ponderously into the room in the  bottle-green velvet smoking suit which  he
kept at Brideshead and always wore when he was there. At thirty-eight he 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; he
seemed to accept me, without curiosity,  as one  of the household. Twice  in
the  past two  years  he  had  surprised me  by what  seemed to  be  acts of
friendship; last Christmas he sent me a photograph of  himself  in the robes
of a Knight of Malta, and shortly afterwards he asked me to go with him to a
dining club. Both acts had  an explanation:  he  had had more  copies of his
portrait printed than he knew what to do with; he was  proud of his club. It
was a surprising association  of men quite  eminent in their professions who
met once a  month for an cvp-ning  of  ceremonious buffoonery;  each had his
sobriquet-- Bridey  was called  "Brother Grandee"--and a specially  designed
jewel  worn like an order of chivalry, symbolizing it; they had club buttons
for their waistcoats and an elaborate ritual for the introduction of guests;
after dinner a paper was read and facetious speeches made. There was plainly
some  competition  to bring guests of  distinction, and since Bridey had few
friends,  and  since I was tolerably well-known, I was invited. Even on that
convivial  evening I  could  feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of
social  uneasiness, creating,  rather, a pool of general embarrassment about
himself 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  f
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 from
architecture, and much more difficult."

     His conversation  abounded in long pauses during which his  mind seemed
to remain motionless;  he always brought one back with a start  to the exact
point where he had stopped. Now after more than a minute he said: "The world
is full of different subjects."

     "Very true, Bridey."

     "If I were a painter," he said, "I should choose an entirely  different
subject every time;  subjects  with plenty  of  action in  them like .  . ."
Another pause.  What, I wondered, was  coming? <i>"The Flying Scotsman"'?</i>  "<i>The
Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade"?  "Henley' Regatta"?</i>  Then  surprisingly he
said:". . .  like  <i>'Macbeth</i>.'" There was something supremely preposterous in
the  idea  of  Bridey  as  a  painter  of action  pictures;  he  was usually
preposterous yet seldom quite absurd.  He achieved dignity by his remoteness
and agelessness; he was still half-child, already half-veteran; there seemed
no spark of contemporary life in him; he had a kind of massive rectitude and
impermeability, an  indifference to  the  world,  which  compelled  respect.
Though we  often laughed at<sup>: </sup>him, he was never wholly ridiculous;
at times he was even formidable.

     We talked  of the news  from Central Europe until, suddenly ill cutting
across this barren topic, Bridey asked: "Where are Mummy's jewels?"

     "This was hers," said Julia, "and this.  Cordelia and I had all her own
things. The family jewels went to the bank."

     "It's so long since  I've seen them--I don't know that I ever saw  them
all. What is  there?  Aren't there some  rather  famous rubies, someone  was
telling me?"

     "Yes, a necklace. Mummy used often to wear it, don't you remember ? And
there are the pearls  --  she always had those out. But most of it stayed in
the  bank  year after  year.  There are  some  hideous  diamond  fenders,  I
remember,  and a  Victorian  diamond collar no one could wear now. There's a
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  debt
again?"

     "No, no, nothing like that."

     Bridey was a slow  and copious eater.  Julia and I  watched him between
the candles. Presently he said: "If I was Rex . . .".His mind seemed full of
such suppositions: "If I  was Archbishop of Westminster," "If I was head  of
the Great Western Railway," "If I was an actress"--as though it  were a mere
trick  of fate  that  he  was none of  these things, and he might awake  any
morning to find the matter adjusted. "If I  was Rex I should want 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 his
glass. "You have only to wait until Monday to see it in  black and white  in
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
I think of in her connection. She is a big woman."

     "Fat?"

     "No, big. She is called Mrs. Muspratt; her  Christian name is Beryl.  I
have 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 just
gone 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 said
with complete gravity.
     Julia trembled on the verge  of laughter, recovered her self-possession
and asked: "You're not marrying her for her matchboxes?"

     "No, no; the whole  collection was left to the Falmouth Town Library. I
have  a great affection  for her. In spite of all her difficulties she  is a
very  cheerful woman,,  very  fond of  acting.  She  is  connected with  the
Catholic Players' Guild."

     "Does Papa know?"

     "I had a  letter  from him this  morning giving me his approval. He has
been urging me to marry for some time."

     It  occurred  to  both  Julia and myself  simultaneously  that we  were
allowing curiosity and surprise to predominate; now we congratulated him  in
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 brought
her down with you."

     He said nothing, sipped and gazed.

     "Bridey," said Julia. "You sly, smug old brute, why haven't you brought
her 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 and
invite her. She'll think us most peculiar leaving  her alone at a  time like
this."

     "She has  the children," said Brideshead.  "Besides, you <i>are</i>  peculiar,
aren't you?"

     "What can you mean?"

     Brideshead  raised  his  head  and looked  solemnly at his  sister, and
continued  in  the same  simple  way,  as  though  he  were  saying  nothing
particularly different from what had gone before, "I couldn't ask  her here,
as things are. It wouldn't be suitable. After all, I am a lodger  here. This
is Rex's house at the moment, as far as it's anybody's. What goes 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,  it
seemed. "Of course, Rex and I want her to come."

     "Oh yes,  I  don't doubt that.  The difficulty is  quite otherwise." He
finished his port, refilled  his  glass, and pushed the decanter towards me.
"You  must  understand that  Beryl is a  woman of strict  Catholic principle
fortified by the prejudices of the  middle class. I  couldn't possibly bring
her here. It is a matter of  indifference whether you choose  to live in sin
with  Rex  or  Charles or  both --  I have always avoided enquiry  into  the
details  of your menage  --but in no  case would Beryl consent  to  be  your
guest."

     Julia rose. "Why, you pompous ass . . ." she said,  stopped, and turned
towards the door.

     At first  I thought she was overcome by laughter; then, as I opened the
door  to  her,  I saw with consternation that she was in tears. I hesitated.
She slipped past me without a glance.

     "I  may  have  given  the  impression  that  this  was  a  marriage  of
convenience,"  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 ardently attracted."

     "Bridey, what a bloody offensive thing to say to Julia!"

     "There was nothing she should object to. I was merely stating!  a  fact
well known to her."


     She was not in the  library; I mounted to her  room, but she  J was not
there. I paused by  her  laden dressing-table wonderingT if she  would come.
Then  through the  open  window, as the  light  I  streamed out  across  the
terrace, into the dusk, to the fountain which in that house seemed always to
draw us  to  itself  for comfort and refreshment,  I caught the glimpse of a
white skirt against  I  the stones. It  was nearly night. I found her in the
darkest  refuge, on  a  wooden seat,  in a  bay  of  the  clipped  box which
encircled the basin. I took  her in my arms and she pressed 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 that
old 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 seen
her so moved or felt so powerless to help.

     "How  dare he  speak  to you  like that?" I said. "The cold-blooded old
humbug . . ." But I was failing her in sympathy.

     "No," she said, "it's not that. He's  quite right.  They know all about
it, Bridey and his widow; they've  got it in black and white; they bought it
for a penny at the church door. You cat get  anything there for  a penny, in
black  and white, and nobody to see that you  pay; only an  old woman 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 in the 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 cover  a
lifetime.

     " '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's  not  what they mean. That's  not Bridey's  pennyworth. He means just
what it says in black and white.

     <i>"Living in sin,</i>  with sin, by sin, for sin, every hour, every day, year
in, year out. Waking up with sin in  the morning, seeing the curtains  drawn
on  sin, bathing  it,  dressing  it,  clipping diamonds to  it,  feeding it,
showing it round, giving it a good time, putting it to sleep at night with a
tablet of Dial if it's fretful.

     "Always  the same, like an idiot child  carefully  nursed, guarded from
the world. 'Poor Julia,' they say, 'she can't go out. She's got to take care
of 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 in
the water fend counting the days of happiness; now under the first stars and
the last grey whisper of day, all this mysterious tumult of sorrow! What had
happened to  us in  the  Painted  Parlour? What shadow  had  fallen  in  the
candlelight? Two rough sentences and a trite phrase. She was beside herself;
her voice, now muffled in my breast,  now clear and anguished, came to me in
single words and broken sentences, which may be strung together thus: --

     "Past and future; the years when I was trying to be a good wife, in the
cigar smoke,  while time crept on and the counters clicked on the backgammon
board, and the man who was  'dummy' at the men's  table  filled the glasses;
when I was trying  to bear his child,  torn in  pieces by something  already
dead; putting him, away, forgetting him, finding you,  the  past  two  years
with you, all  the future with you, all  the future with or without you, war
coming, world ending -- sin.

     "A word from  so  long ago, from  Nanny Hawkins stitching by the hearth
and the nightlight burning before the Sacred Heart. Cordelia and me with the
catechism, in  Mummy's room, before luncheon on  Sundays. Mummy carrying  my
sin  with her to church,  bowed under it  and  the  black lace veil,  in the
chapel; slipping out  with it in London before the fires were lit; taking it
with her through  the empty  streets, where  the milkman's ponies stood with
their forefeet on the pavement; Mummy dying with my sin eating 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  in the
dark little study at Farm  Street with  the shining oilcloth; hanging in the
dark church  where only the old char-  woman raises the dust and  one candle
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 forever;
never  the cool  sepulchre  and the  grave clothes spread on the stone slab,
never the  oil and spices in the dark  cave; always I the midday sun and the
dice clicking for the seamless coat.

     "Never the  shelter of the cave or of the  castle  walls. Outcast il in
the desolate spaces where the hyenas roam at night and  the  1 rubbish heaps
smoke  in the daylight. No  way back;  the gates barred; all  the saints and
angels posted along  the  walls. Nothing  but bare stone and  dust  and  the
smouldering  dumps.  Thrown away, scrapped, rotting  down; the  old man with
lupus and the  forked stick who limps out at nightfall to turn the rubbish,,
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
I had seen her."

     Between her tears she talked herself  into silence. I could do nothing;
I was adrift  in a  strange sea; my hands on the  metal-spun threads of  her
tunic 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 her cigarette
on the way from the station; as far as when she was out of mind, 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 her feet.

     "Well,"  she said, in a  voice  much  like  normal. "Bridey is  one for
bombshells, isn't he?"

     I followed  her  into  the  house  and  to  her  room; she  sat  at her
looking-glass.  "Considering  that  I've  just  recovered  from   a  fit  of
hysteria,"  she said, "I  don't  call that  at  all  bad."  Her  eyes seemed
unnaturally large and bright, her cheeks pale with two spots of high colour,
where, as a  girl,  she  used to put a  dab of rouge. "Most hysterical women
look as if they had a bad cold. You'd  better change your 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 a
detective 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 making over
the whole estate right away."

     I remembered how Rex had greeted  me on  my first arrival at Brideshead
as Julia's guest. "A very happy arrangement," he had said. "Suits me down to
the ground. The old boy keeps the place up; Bridey does all the feudal 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 faker 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't
know that  it  would go very well  here. You know,  oak dressers  and coffin
stools 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 house
until bed-time. An hour ago, I  thought, in  the  black refuge  in  the  box
hedge,  she  wept  her heart out  for  the  death of  her God;  now  she  is
discussing whether  Beryl's children shall take the old smoking-room  or the
schoolroom for their own. I was all at sea.

     "Julia," I said  later, when Brideshead had gone  upstairs,  "have  you
ever seen a picture of Holman Hunt's called 'The Awakened Conscience'?"

     "No."

     I had seen a copy of <i>Pre-Raphaelitism</i> in the  library some days before;
I  found  it  again  and read her Ruskin's description.  She  laughed  quite
happily.

     "You're perfectly right. That's exactly what I did feel."

     "But,  darling, I  can't  believe that all that tempest of emotion came
just  from a  few words of  Bridey's. You  must have been thinking about  it
before."

     "Hardly at all;  now and then; more,  lately, with the  Last  Trump  so
near."

     "Of course it's a thing psychologists could  explain; a preconditioning
from childhood; feelings  of guilt from the nonsense you  were taught in the
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 as
definitely as I did. I've gone too far; there's no turning back  now; I know
that, if that's wha you mean by thinking it all bosh.  All I can hope 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  go  out  again. The moon
should be up by now."

     The moon was full and high. We walked  round the house; under the limes
Julia  paused and idly  snapped off one  of  the  long  shoots,  last year's
growth, that fringed  their boles, and  stripped it as  she walked, making a
switch, as children do, but with petulant movements that were not a child's,
snatching nervously  at  the leaves and crumpling them  between her 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 fountain
in  a  nobleman's  grounds.  Act  One, Sunset;  Act  Two, Dusk;  Act  Three,
Moonlight. The characters keep assembling at  the fountain for no very clear
reason."

     "Comedy?"

     "Drama. Tragedy.  Farce.  What you  will. This  is  the  reconciliation
scene."

     "Was there a quarrel?"

     "Estrangement and misunderstanding in Act Two."

     "Oh,  don't talk  in  that  damned bounderish  way. Why  must  you  see
everything secondhand? Why must this be a play? Why  must my conscience be 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 swift
veering moods. Suddenly  she  cut me  across  the face  with  her switch,  a
vicious, 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-peeled wand  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 my
cheek. I held her at arm's length and  she  put  down  her head, stroking my
hand on her shoulder with her face, catlike,  but,  unlike a cat, leaving  a
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 to
the lighted hall she said:  "Your poor  face," touching  the weals with  her
fingers. "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 I saw
over her shoulder in  the glass a face that was dazed with weariness like  a
retreating soldier's, and beside it my own, streaked with two crimson lines.

     "So  tired,"  she repeated,  taking off her  gold tunic and letting, it
fall to the floor, "tired and crazy and good for nothing."

     I saw her to bed; the blue lids fell over her eyes; her pale lips moved
on the pillow, but whether to  wish me good-night or to murmur a prayer -- a
jingle  of  the  nursery  that  came to her now in the twilit world  between
sorrow  and  sleep;  some ancient  pious  rhyme that had come down to  Nanny
Hawkins from  centuries of  bedtime  whispering, through all the changes  of
language, from the days  of pack-horses on the Pilgrim's  Way  -- 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  their
manganese?"

     "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  right into  it,
smack into  a tank, broadside-on. Gave himself  up for dead.  . . . 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?
It was 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 as
he was able to get things for nothing.  The moment anyone  stands up to him,
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 speech
from' 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 are bound
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 have
a big cigar? Hullo, you two going out?"

     "Yes, Rex," said Julia. "Charles and I are going into the moon-light."

     We shut the windows behind us and the  voices ceased; the moonlight lay
like  hoar-frost on the terrace  and the music of the fountain  crept in our
ears; the  stone balustrade of the terrace might have been the Trojan walls,
and in  the silent park might have stood the Grecian tents where Cressid lay
that night.

     "A few days, a few months."

     "No time to be lost."

     "A lifetime between  the rising of the mooii  and its setting. Then the
dark."


     <i>Chapter Four</i>

     "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 settle
down with Julia bang  at our gates.  The children look on it as their  home,
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 the other day what
a good playroom it would make--big enough for badminton."

     "Robin can have the Old Rectory."

     "Now with  regard to money, Celia and  Robin  naturally  don't want  to
accept anything  for themselves, but there's the question of  the children'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 seen
a few divorces  in my time, and I've never known one work out so happily for
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 miricl saying
there have been times in the last two years when I thought you were treating
Celia a  bit rough. It's hard to tell with one's own sister, but I've always
thought her a jolly attractive girl, the sort of girl any chap would be glad
to have--artistic, too,  just down your street.  But I  must admit you're  a
good picker.  I've always had a soft  spot for Julia. Anyway, as things have
turned out everyone seems satisfied. Robin's been mad about Celia for a year
or more. D'you know him?"

     "Vaguely.  A  half-baked, pimply  youth  as  I  remember him."  "Oh,  I
wouldn't  quite say that. He's rather young, of  course, but the great thing
is  that  Johnjohn and Caroline adore him. You've got two grand kids  there,
Charles. Remember me to Julia; wish her all the best for old time's sake."


     "So  you're  being  divorced,"  said  my  father.  "Isn't  that  rather
unnecessary, 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 seeing
you together  and thinking how  happy you looked, and wondering  why. You'll
find  it  very  disturbing,  you  know,  starting  off  again.  How  old are
you--thirty-four? That's  no age to  be starting. You ought  to be  settling
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 wishing
he hadn't married and  trying  to  get  out of it  -- though  I  never  felt
anything of the kind myself --  but to get rid of one wife  and take up with
another immediately  is beyond all reason.  Celia was always perfectly civil
to me. I had quite a liking for her, in a way. If you couldn't be happy with
her, why on  earth should you  expect to be happy  with anyone else? 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 marry
again, well and good; let her. That's  your business and  hers. But I should
have thought Julia and I were quite happy as we are. You can't say I've been
difficult. Lots of chaps would have cut  up nasty. I  hope I'm a man  of the
world. I've had my own fish to fry, too. But a  divorce is a different thing
altogether; I've never known a divorce do anyone any good."

     "That's your affair and Julia's."

     "Oh, Julia's set on it. What I hoped was, you might be able to talk her
round.  I've tried to keep out of the  way as much as I could; if I've  been
around too much,  just tell me, I shan't mind. But there's too much going on
altogether  at the moment,  what with Bridey wanting me  to clear out 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 as
smoothly with him as he had planned. I knew nothing of finance,  but I heard
it  said  that his dealings were badly looked on by orthodox  conservatives;
even  his  good qualities  of geniality and impetuosity counted against him,
for his parties at  Brideshead got  talked about. There was always too  much
about him in the papers; he was one with the press lords and their sad-eyed,
smiling hangers-on; in his speeches he said the sort of thing  which "made a
story" in Fleet Street, and that did him no good with his party chiefs; only
war could put Rex's fortunes right and carry him into power. A divorce would
do Him no harm  with these cronies; it  was  rather that  with  a  big  bank
running he could not look 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
marrying another. It sounds rather complicated, but  my dear' --  she called
me 'my dear' about twenty times -- 'I've usually found every Catholic family
has one lapsed member, and it's often the nicest.'"

     Julia had just returned from  a luncheon party given by Lady Rosscommon
in honour of Brideshead's engagement.

     "What's she like?"

     "Majestic and voluptuous; common, of  course; might be Irish  or Jewish
or both; husky voice, big mouth, small eyes, dyed  hair -- I'll tell you one
thing,  she's lied to Bridey about her age. She's a good forty-five. I don't
see  her providing  an heir. Bridey  can't take his eyes  off  her.  He  was
gloating on her in the most revolting way all through luncheon."

     "Friendly?"

     "Goodness, yes, in a condescending way. You see, I imagine 1 she's been
used  to  bossing  things  rather in  naval circles,  with  flag-lieutenants
trotting 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 it put her
rather at ease to have me there as the black  sheep. She concentrated on me,
in fact; asked my advice about shops and things; said, rather pointedly, she
hoped to see me  often <i>in London.</i>  I think Bridey's scruples only extend  to
her sleeping under the same roof with me. Apparently I can do her no serious
harm in a hat-shop or hairdresser's ' or lunching at the Ritz. The  scruples
are all on Bridey's part, anyway; the widow is madly tough."

     "Does she boss him?"

     "Not yet,  much.  He's  in an amorous  stupor, poor beast,  and doesn't
quite know where  he is. She's just a good-hearted  woman who wants  a  good
home for her children and isn't going to let anything get in her way.  She's
playing up the religious stuff at j the moment for all it's worth. I daresay
she'll ease up a bit when she's settled."


     The divorces were much talked of among our friends; even in that summer
of general  alarm  there were still corners where  private affairs commanded
first attention. My wife was able to put it across  that  the business was a
matter of congratulation for her and reproach for me; that  she had  behaved
wonderfully, had stood it longer  than anyone but she would have done; Robin
was seven years younger and a little immature for his age, they whispered in
their  private  corners,  but he was  absolutely  devoted to poor Celia, and
really  she deserved it after all she had been through. As for Julia and me,
that was an old story. "To put it crudely," said my cousin Jasper, as though
he had ever in his life put anything otherwise:  "I don't see why you bother
to marry."

     Summer passed; delirious crowds  cheered  Neville Chamberlain's  return
from Munich;  Rex made a rabid  speech in the House of Commons which  sealed
his fate one way  or the other; sealed it, as is  sometimes done  with 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 was  necessary  for  Rex and  Julia  to separate
formally, and since, for the  time being, Brideshead was still her home, she
remained there and  Rex  removed  his trunks and  valet  to their  house  in
London. Evidence was taken against Julia and me in my flat. A date was fixed
for  Brideshead's  wedding, early  in  the Christmas holidays, so  that  his
future stepchildren might take part.
     One  afternoon  in  November Julia  and  I stood  at  a  window in  the
drawing-room watching  the wind at work stripping  the  lime-trees, sweeping
down the yellow leaves, sweeping them up and round and along the terrace and
lawns, trailing them through puddles and over the wet grass, pasting them on
walls and window-panes, leaving  them at length in sodden  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
approached through 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 evening
when  we dined together and she  spoke  of being a  nun; the evening when  I
painted the drawing-room at Marchmain House.

     "She was an enchanting child."

     "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
went with  the ambulance came back  when the  war was over;  she  stayed on,
getting people  back  to their homes,  helping in  the prison camps. An  odd
girl. 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 all
that burning love spending itself on serum  injections and delousing powder.
When  she arrived,  tired from  her  journey,  rather  shabby, moving in the
manner  of one who has no interest in pleasing, I thought her an ugly woman.
It  was  odd,  I  thought, how  the same ingredients, differently dispensed,
could produce  Brideshead,  Sebastian, Julia and her. She  was  unmistakably
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 to gross suffering as
to lose the finer shades of  pleasure.  She looked more  than her twenty-six
years;  hard  living  had roughened her;  constant  intercourse in a foreign
tongue had  worn  away the nuances of speech; she straddled a little  as she
sat by the fire, and when she said, "It's wonderful  to be home," it sounded
to my ears like the grunt of an animal returning to its basket.

     Those  were  the impressions of the first half-hour, sharpened  by  the
contrast  with  Julia's white  skin and silk and  jewelled hair  and with my
memories 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. It looks
as though there'll be plenty of the same sort of work over here soon."

     Then she said: "Is it too late to see Nanny?"

     "No, she sits up to all hours with her wireless." We went up, all three
together,  to  the old  nursery. Julia and  I  always spent part of our  day
there. Nanny Hawkins and my father were two people who  seemed impervious to
change; neither  an  hour older than when  I first knew them. A wireless set
had now been  added  to  Nanny  Hawkins's small assembly  of  pleasures--the
rosary,  the <i>Peerage</i> with its neat brown-paper wrapping protecting  the  red
and gold covers, the photographs and holiday souvenirs -- on her table. When
we broke it to her  that Julia and I  were to be married,  she  said, "Well,
dear, I hope it's all for the best," for it  was not part of her religion to
question the propriety of Julia's actions.

     Brideshead had never been a favourite with her; she greeted the news of
his engagement with "He's certainly taken long enough to  make up his mind,"
and, when  the  search through  Debrett afforded  no  information about 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 were
coming."

     "I brought you some lace."

     "Well, dear, that is nice.  Just like her poor Ladyship used to wear at
mass. Though why they  made it black I never did understand, seeing lace  is
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 of
seeing 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, I
began 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 to
Tunis. He's with the monks there."

     "I hope they look after him properly. I expect they find him a  regular
handful. He always sends to me at Christmas, but it's not the same as having
him home.  Why you must all always be going abroad  I  never did understand.
Just  like his  Lordship. When there was that talk  about going to  war with
Munich, I said  to  myself, there's Cordelia and Sebastian and  his 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  beard
now, you know, and he's very religions."

     "That  I won't believe, not even if I see it. He  was  always a  little
heathen. Brideshead  was  one  for church, not  Sebastian. And a beard, only
fancy; such a nice fair skin as he had; always looked clean  though he'd not
been near water all  day, while Brideshead there  was no doing anything with
scrub as you might."

     "It's frightening," Julia once said, "to think how  completely you have
forgotten Sebastian."

     "He was the forerunner."

     "That's what  you said in the storm.  I've thought  since: perhaps I am
only a forerunner, too."

     Perhaps, I thought,  while  her words still hung in the  air between us
like a  wisp of  tobacco smoke -- a thought to  fade and  vanish  like smoke
without a  trace -- perhaps  all our loves  are merely hints  and symbols; a
hill of many invisible  crests; doors that open as in a dream to reveal only
a further  stretch  of  carpet and another door; perhaps you and I are types
and   this   sadness   which  sometimes  falls  between  us   springs   from
disappointment in our search, each straining  through and beyond the  other,
snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always
a pace or two ahead of us.

     I had not forgotten Sebastian. He was with me daily in Julia; or rather
it 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.
"How  do I know I shan't suddenly turn out to be somebody else? It's an easy
way to chuck."

     I had not forgotten Sebastian; every stone of the house had a memory of
him, and  when I heard him spoken of by Cordelia as someone she  had  seen a
month  ago,  my lost friend filled  my thoughts. When we left the nursery, 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'd just arrived  from North Africa.  A  down-and-out  called  Flyte,  who
people  said was an English lord, whom the fathers had  found  starving  and
taken in at a monastery near Carthage.  That was how the story reached me. I
knew it couldn't be quite true--however  little we  did for Sebastian, he at
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 all
about  him;  he was in  the infirmary of the  head house  of some missionary
fathers. The  consul's story was that Sebastian had turned up in  Tunis  one
day, some weeks before, in  a motor bus from Algiers,  and had applied to be
taken on as a missionary lay brother. The fathers took one look  at him  and
turned him down.  Then he started  drinking. He lived in a little<i>.'</i> hotel on
the  edge of the Arab quarter. I went to see the place  later; it was a  bar
with a  few rooms  over it, kept  by a Greek, smelling of hot oil and garlic
and stale wine and old clothes, a place where the small Greek  traders  came
and  played  draughts and listened to the wireless. He stayed there  a month
drinking Greek absinthe, occasionally wandering out, they didn't know where,
coming back and drinking again. They were afraid he j would come to harm and
followed him sometimes, but he only went to the church or took a car to  the
monastery outside the town. They loved him there. He's still loved, you see,
wherever he goes, whatever condition  he's  in. It's a thing about him he'll
never lose. You should have heard the proprietor and his family talk of him,
tears running down  their cheeks; they'd  clearly robbed him right and left,
but they'd looked after him and tried j  to make him eat'his meals. That was
the thing that shocked  them about  him:  that he wouldn't eat; there he was
with all that money, so thin. Some of the clients of the place came in while
we were talking in very peculiar French; they all had the same story: such a
<i>good</i> man, they  said, it  made them unhappy to sec him so low.  They thought
very ill of  his family for  leaving  him like that; it couldn't happen with
their people, they said, and I daresay they're right.

     "Anyway,  that  was  later; after the consulate I went straight  to the
monastery and saw the Superior.  He was a grim old Dutch  man  who had spent
fifty  years in Central  Africa.  He told  me  his  part of  the story;  how
Sebastian had turned up,  just  as the consul said,  with  his  beard  and a
suitcase, and asked to be admitted as a lay brother. 'He was  very earnest,'
the Superior  said -- Cordelia imitated his guttural  tones; she  had had an
aptitude for  mimicry, I remembered, in  the schoolroom -- "  'please do not
think there is any doubt  of that -- he is  quite sane and quite in earnest.
He wanted to go to the bush, as far away as he could get, among the simplest
people,  to the cannibals.  The  Superior said: 'We have no cannibals in our
missions.'  He  said, well, pygmies  would do, or  just  a primitive village
somewhere on a  river;  or  lepers--lepers would do  best of  anything.  The
Superior  said: 'We have plenty  of lepers, but they live in our settlements
with doctors and nuns.  It is all very  orderly.' He thought again, and said
perhaps lepers were not what he wanted, was there not some small church by a
river -- he  always wanted  a river you see --which he could look after when
the priest was away. The Superior said;  'Yes, there are  such churches. Now
tell me  about,  yourself.' 'Oh,  I'm nothing,' he said. 'We see  some queer
fish'" -- Cordelia lapsed again into mimicry; " 'he was a queer fish, but he
was  very  earnest.'  The Superior  told  him  about  the novitiate  and the
training and said: 'You are not a young man. You do  not seem strong to me.'
He  said: 'No,  I don't want to be trained. I don't want  to do things  that
need  training.' The  Superior said:  'My friend, you  need a missionary for
yourself,' and he said: 'Yes, of course.' Then he sent him away.

     "Next  day he came back again.  He had  been drinking.  He said  he had
decided to become a novice and be trained. 'Well,' said the Superior, 'there
are certain things that are impossible for a man in the bush. One of them is
drinking. It is not the worst thing, but  it  is nevertheless quite fatal. I
sent him away.' Then he kept coming two or three times a week, always drunk,
until the Superior gave orders that the porter was to keep  him out. I said,
'Oh dear, I'm afraid  he  was  a  terrible  nuisance to you,' but  of course
that's a thing  they don't  understand  in a  place like that. The  Superior
simply said, 'I did  not  think there  was anything  I could  do to help him
except pray.' He was a very holy old man and recognized it in others."

     "Holiness?"

     "Oh yes, Charles, that's what you've got to understand about Sebastian.

     "Well, finally one day they found Sebastian lying outside the main gate
unconscious; he had walked out  -- usually he took a  car -- and fallen down
and lain  there all night. At first  they thought he was merely drunk again;
then they  realized he was very ill, so they put him in the infirmary, where
he'd been ever since.

     "I stayed  a  fortnight with him till  he  was over the  worst  of  his
illness. He looked terrible, any  age, rather bald  with a straggling beard,
but he had his old sweet manner. They'd given him a room to himself; it  was
barely more than a monk's cell with a bed and a crucifix and white walls. At
first he couldn't talk much and  was not at all surprised to see me; then he
was surprised and wouldn't talk much, until just before I was going, when he
told me all that had been  happening to him. It was' mostly about Kurt,  his
German  friend. Well, you  met him, so  you  know  all about that. He sounds
gruesome, but  as long as Sebastian had him to look after, he  was happy. He
told  me  he'd practically given up drinking at one time  while  he and Kurt
lived together. Kurt was ill and had  a  wound that wouldn't heal. Sebastian
saw him through that. Then they went to Greece when  Kurt got well. You know
how Germans sometimes seem to discover a sense of decency when they get to a
classical country. It  seems  to  have worked with Kurt.  Sebastian says  he
became quite human  in Athens.  Then he got sent to prison; I couldn't quite
make out why; apparently it wasn't particularly  his fault-- some brawl with
an official. Once he was locked up the German authorities got at him. It was
the  time when  they were  rounding up all their nationals from all parts of
the world to make them into Nazis. Kurt didn't at all want  to leave Greece.
But the Greeks didn't want him, and he was marched straight from prison with
a lot of other toughs into a German boat and shipped home.

     "Sebastian went after him, and for a year could find no  trace. Then in
the end he ran him to earth dressed as a storm trooper in a provincial town.
At  first  he wouldn't have anything to do with  Sebastian; spouted  all the
official jargon about the rebirth of  his country, and his belonging  to his
country and finding  t self-realization in the life of the race. But  it was
only skin-deep with him. Six years  of  Sebastian had taught him more than a
year  of  Hitler; eventually he chucked  it, admitted he hated Germany,  and
wanted to get out. I don't  know how much it was simply the call of the easy
life, sponging on Sebastian, bathing in  the Mediterranean, sitting about in
caf&amp;, having his shoes polished. Sebastian says it wasn't entirely that;
Kurt had  just begun to grow  up in Athens. It may be he's right. Anyway, he
decided  to try and get out. But it didn't work. He  always got into trouble
whatever  he  did,  Sebastian said.  They  caught  him  and  put  him  in  a
concentration camp. Sebastian couldn't get  near  him or hear a word of him;
he couldn't even find what  camp  he was in; he hung about for nearly a year
in Germany,  drinking again, until one day in his cups he took up with a man
who was just out of the camp where  Kurt  had been, and learned that  he had
hanged himself in his hut the first week.

     "So that was the end of Europe for  Sebastian. He went back to Morocco,
where he had been happy, and gradually drifted down the coast, from place to
place,  until one day when he had sobered up -- his  drinking goes in pretty
regular bouts  now--he conceived  the idea of escaping to the  savages.  And
there he was.

     "I didn't suggest his  coming home. I knew he wouldn't,  and he was too
weak still to  argue it out. He seemed quite happy by the time I left. He'll
never  be able to go into  the bush, of course, or join  the  order, but the
Father Superior is going to take charge of him.  They had the idea of making
him a sort of under-porter; there are  usually a  few  odd  hangers-on in  a
religious house, you know; people who can't quite fit in either to the world
or the monastic rule.  I suppose I'm something of the sort myself. But  as I
don't happen to drink, I'm more employable."

     We had reached the turn in  our walk, the stone  bridge at the foot  of
the last  and  smallest  lake, under  which  the  swollen waters fell  in  a
cataract to the stream  below;  beyond  the  path doubled back  towards  the
house. We paused at the parapet looking down into the dark water.

     "I  once  had  a  governess who jumped  off  this  bridge  and  drowned
herself."

     "Yes, I know."

     "How could you know?"

     "It  was  the  first thing  I ever heard about  you---before I ever met
you."

     "How very odd. . . ."

     "Have you told Julia this about Sebastian?"

     "The substance of it; not quite as I told you. She never loved him, you
know, as we do."

     <i>"Do"</i> The word reproached me; there was no past tense in Cordelia's verb
"to love."

     "Poor SebastianI" I said. "It's too pitiful. How will it end?"

     "I think I can tell  you exactly, Charles. I've  seen others  like him,
and I believe they are very near  and  dear to God. He'll live on, half  in,
half out of the  community, a familiar figure pottering round with his broom
and  his  bunch of keys. He'll  be a  great favourite with the old  fathers,
something of a joke I to the novices. Everyone will know about his drinking;
he'll disappear for two or three days every month or so, and they'll all nod
and smile and  say in their  various  accents, 'Old Sebastian's on the spree
again,' and then  he'll come back  dishevelled  and  shamefaced  and be more
devout for a  day or  two in the  chapel. He'll probably have little  hiding
places about  the garden where  he keeps a  bottle and takes a  swig now and
then on the  sly. They'll  bring him forward to  act as guide, whenever they
have an  English-speaking  visitor;  and he will be completely  charming, so
that before  they go they'll ask about him and perhaps  be given a hint that
he  has high  connections  at home. If he lives  long enough, generations of
missionaries in all kinds of remote places will think of him  as a queer old
character  who  was  somehow part of the  Hope  of  their student days,  and
remember him  in  their  masses.  He'll  develop  little  eccentricities  of
devotion, intense personal cults of his own; he'll be found in the chapel at
odd times  and missed when he's expected. Then one morning, after one of his
drinking bouts, he'll be  picked up at the gate dying,  and  show by  a mere
flicker  of the eyelid  that he  is conscious  when they give  him  the last
sacraments. It's not such a bad way of getting through one's life."

     I thought of the  joyful  youth with the Teddy-bear under the flowering
chestnuts. "It's not what one would  have  foretold,"  I said. "I suppose he
doesn't suffer?"

     "Oh,  yes, I think he does. One can have no idea what the suffering may
be, to be maimed as he is -- no dignity, no  power of  will. No  one is ever
holy without  suffering. It's  taken that form with him.  . . . I've seen so
much  suffering in the last few  years; there's so much coming for everybody
soon.  It's the  spring  of love  . .  ." And  then  in  condescension to my
paganism, she added: "He's in a very  beautiful place, you know,  by the sea
--  white cloisters,  a bell tower,  rows of  green  vegetables,  and a monk
watering them when the sun is low."

     I laughed. "You knew I wouldn't understand?"

     "You and  Julia . . ."she said. And then,  as we moved on  towards  the
house, "When you met  me last night did you think, 'Poor Cordelia,  such  an
engaging child,  grown up  a  plain and pious spinster, full of good works'?
Did you think 'thwarted'?"

     It was no time  for prevarication. "Yes," I said, "I  did; I don't now,
so much."

     "It's  funny," she said,  "that's exactly the word I thought of for you
and Julia. When we were up in the  nursery with Nanny. Thwarted passion,'  I
thought."

     She spoke with that  gentle, infinitesimal inflection of mockery  which
descended to her from her mother, but later that evening the words came back
to me poignantly.

     Julia wore the embroidered  Chinese robe which  she  often used when we
were dining alone at Brideshead; it was a robe whose weight  and stiff folds
stressed her repose; her neck rose exquisitely from the plain gold circle at
her throat; her hands lay still  among  the dragons in her lap.  It was thus
that  I had  rejoiced  to see  her nights without number,  and  that  night,
watching her as she sat between the firelight and the shaded lamp, unable to
look away for love of her  beauty, I suddenly thought, When else have I seen
her  like  this?  Why am I reminded of another moment of vision? And it came
back to me that this was  how she  had sat in the liner, before  the  storm;
this  was how she had  looked; and I  realized that she  had regained what I
thought  she had  lost  for ever, the magical sadness which had drawn  me to
her, the thwarted look that  had seemed  to say, "Surely I was made for some
other purpose than this?"

     That night I woke in the darkness and lay awake turning over in my mind
the conversation  with Cordelia.  How  I had  said,  "You  knew I  would not
understand?"  How  often, it seemed to  me, I was brought  up short,  like a
horse in full stride suddenly refusing an obstacle, backing from  the spurs,
too shy even to put his nose at it and look at the thing.

     And another image came to me, of an arctic hut and a trapper alone with
his  furs and oil  lamp and log  fire; the remains of supper on the table, a
few books, skis in the corner; everything dry and neat and warm inside,  and
outside the last  blizzard of  winter raging and the snow piling up  against
the door. Quite silently a great weight forming against the timber; the bolt
straining in its socket; minute by minute in the darkness  outside the white
heap sealing  the door, until  quite soon, when the wind dropped and the sun
came out on the ice slopes  and the  thaw set in, a block would move,  slide
and tumble, high above, gather way,  gadier weight, till  the whole hillside
seemed to be falling,  and the little  lighted  place would  crash open  and
splinter and disappear, rolling with the avalanche into the ravine.


     <i>Chapter Five</i>

     my divorce case, or rather my wife's, was due  to be heard at about the
same time as Brideshead was  to be  married. Julia's would not come up  till
the following term;  meanwhile  the game of General Post--moving my property
from  the Old Rectory to my flat, my wife's from my flat to the Old Rectory,
Julia's from Rex's house and from Brideshead to my flat, Rex's from  Brides,
head to his  house, and Mrs. Muspratt's from Falmouth to Brides, head -- was
in full swing and we were all, in varying degrees, homeless, when a halt was
called and  Lord Marchmain,  with a  taste for  the dramatically inopportune
which was plainly the prototype of his elder son's, declared his  intention,
in view of the international  situation, of returning to England and passing
his declining years in his old home.

     The only member of the  family to whom this change promised any benefit
was Cordelia, who had  been  sadly  abandoned in  the  turmoil.  Brideshead,
indeed, had made a formal request to  her to consider his house her home for
as long as  it suited her,  but  when  she learned  that  her  sister-in-law
proposed to  install her children there for  the  holidays immediately after
the wedding,  in the charge  of a sister  of  hers and the  sister's friend,
Cordelia had decided to move, too,  and  was talking  of setting up alone in
London.  She now found  herself, Cinderella-like, promoted chatelaine, while
her brother  and  his  wife, who  had  till  that  moment  expected to  find
themselves, within a matter of days, absolute owners of the entire property,
were without  a  roof;  the deeds  of conveyance, engrossed  and  ready  for
signing,  were rolled up, tied and put away in one of the black tin boxes in
Lincoln's Inn.  It was bitter  for Mrs.  Muspratt;  she was not an ambitious
woman;  something very much less grand than  Brideshead would have contented
her heartily; but she did  aspire  to finding  some shelter for her children
over  Christmas.  The  house  at Falmouth  was  stripped  and  up for  sale;
moreover, Mrs. Muspratt  had taken leave of the place with some  justifiably
rather large talk of her new establishment; they could not return there. She
was obliged in a hurry to move her furniture from Lady Marchmain's room to a
disused coachhouse and to take a furnished villa at Torquay. She was not, as
I  have said,  a woman of high ambition, but, having had her expectations so
much raised,  it was disconcerting to be brought so low so  suddenly. In the
village the  working  party who had been  preparing  the decorations for the
bridal  entry began unpicking the B's on the  bunting and  substituting M's,
obliterating the Earl's points and stencilling  balls  and strawberry leaves
on the painted coronets, in preparation for Lord Marchmain's return.

     News of his intentions came first to the solicitors, then to, Cordelia,
then to Julia  and  me, in a rapid succession of contradictory cables.  Lord
Marchmain  would arrive in time  for the  wedding; he would arrive after the
wedding, having seen Lord and Lady Brideshead on their way through Paris; he
would see them in Rome. He was not well enough to travel at all; he was just
starting; he had unhappy memories of winter at Brideshead and would not come
until spring was  well advanced and the heating apparatus overhauled; he was
coming alone; he was bringing his Italian household; he wished his return to
be  unannounced  and to lead a life  of complete seclusion; he would give  a
ball.  At last a date in January was chosen  which proved to be  the correct
one.
     Plender preceded him by some days; there was a difficulty here. Plender
was not an original member  of the Brideshead  household;  he  had been Lord
Marchmain's servant in  the yeomanry,  and had only once met Wilcox,  on the
painful  occasion of the removal of his master's luggage when it was decided
not to return from  the war; then Plender had been valet, as, officially, he
still was, but he had in the past years introduced a kind of curate, a Swiss
body-servant, to attend to the wardrobe and also, when occasion arose,  lend
a hand with less dignified tasks about the  house, and had in  effect become
major-domo  of that fluctuating  and  mobile  household;  sometimes  he even
referred to himself on the telephone  as the  "secretary." There was an acre
of thin ice between him and Wilcox.

     Fortunately the two men took a liking to one anodier, and the thing was
solved in a series of three-cornered discussions with  Cordelia. Plender and
Wilcox became  Joint Grooms of the Chambers, like Blues and Life Guards with
equal precedence, Plender having  as his particular  province his Lordship's
own apartments, and Wilcox  a sphere of influence in the public  rooms;  the
senior footman  was given a black  coat and promoted butler, the nondescript
Swiss, on arrival,  was  to  have full  valet's  status; there was a general
increase in wages to meet the new dignities, and all were content.

     Julia and I, who had left Brideshead a month before, thinking we should
not return, moved  back for the reception. When the day came,  Cordelia went
to the station  and we remained to greet him  at home.  It  was a bleak  and
gusty day.  Cottages and  lodges were  decorated; plans  for  a bonfire that
night and for the village silver  band to play on the terrace were put down,
but the house flag that had not flown for twenty-five years was hoisted over
the  pediment, and flapped sharply against the  leaden sky.  Whatever  harsh
voices might be bawling into the microphones of Central Europe, and whatever
lathes spinning in the armament factories, the return of Lord  Marchmain was
a matter of first importance in his own neighbourhood.

     He was due at  three o'clock. Julia and  I  waited in  the drawing-room
until Wilcox, who had arranged with the station-master to  be kept informed,
announced  "The train is signalled," and  a  minute later, "The train is in;
his  Lordship is on the way." Then we  went to the front portico and  waited
there with the upper,' servants. Soon  the Rolls appeared at the turn in the
drive, followed at some distance by the two vans. It drew up; first Cordelia
got out, then Cara; there was a pause, a rug was handed to theu chauffeur, a
stick to the footman;  then  a leg was cautiously  thrust I forward. Plender
was  by now at the car door;  another servant  -- the  Swiss  valet  --  had
emerged from a van; together  they lifted jj Lord Marchmain out and  set him
on his feet;  he felt  for  his  stick grasped it,  and stood for  a  minute
collecting his strength for the I few low steps which led to the front door.

     Julia gave a little sigh of surprise and  touched my  hand. We had seen
him nine months  ago at Monte Carlo,  when  he had  j  been  an  upright and
stately figure, little changed from when I first  met him in Venice.  Now he
was an old  man.  Plender had told us  his master had been unwell lately; he
had not prepared us for j this.

     Lord  Marchmain  stood  bowed  and shrunken,  weighed down ...  by  his
great-coat, a  white muffler fluttering untidily at his throat,  a cloth cap
pulled  low  on his forehead, his face white and lined, his nose coloured by
the cold;  the tears which gathered in his  eyes came not  from  emotion but
from the east  wind;  he  breathed heavily. Cara tucked  in the end  of  his
muffler and whispered  something  to  him.  He  raised  a  gloved  hand -- a
schoolboy's glove  of  grey  wool  --  and made a  small, weary  gesture  of
greeting to the group at the door; then, very  slowly, with his eyes on thfl
ground before him, he made his way into the house.

     They took off his  coat and  cap and muffler  and  the kind of  leather
jerkin which  he wore under them; thus  stripped  he seemed  more  than ever
wasted but more elegant; he had cast the shabbiness of extreme fatigue. Cara
straightened his tie; he wiped  his  eyes  with a bandanna  handkerchief and
shuffled with' his stick to the hall fire.

     There was  a  little heraldic chair by the chimney-piece,  one of a set
which stood against the walls, a little, inhospitable,  flat-seated thing, a
mere  excuse  for the  elaborate  armorial  painting  on its back, on which,
perhaps, no one,  not even a weary footman, had ever sat  since it was made;
there Lord Marchmain sat and wiped his eyes.

     "It's the cold," he said. "I'd  forgotten  how  cold  it is in England.
Quite bowled me over."

     "Can I get you anything, my lord?"

     "Nothing, thank you. Cara, where are those confounded pills?"

     "Alex, the doctor said not more than three times a day."

     "Damn the doctor. I feel quite bowled-over."

     Cara produced a  blue bottle  from her bag  and Lord Marchmain  took  a
pill. Whatever was in it seemed to revive him.  He remained seated, his long
legs stuck out  before him, his cane  between  them, his chin on  its  ivory
handle,  but he began to  take notice of  us  all, to  greet  us and to give
orders.

     'Tm afraid I'm  not at all the thing to-day; the journey's taken it out
of  me.  Ought to  have waked a night  at Dover. Wilcox, what rooms have you
prepared for me?"

     "Your old ones, my lord."

     "Won't  do; not  till  I'm fit again.  Too many stairs; must  be on the
ground floor. Plender, get a bed made up for me downstairs."

     Plender and Wilcox exchanged an anxious glance.

     "Very good, my lord. Which room shall we put it in?"

     Lord  Marchmain thought' for a moment.  "The Chinese drawing-room; and,
Wilcox, the 'Queen's bed.'"

     "The Chinese drawing-room, my lord, the 'Queen's bed'?"

     "Yes, yes. I may be spending some time there in the next few weeks."

     The Chinese drawing-room  was one  I had never  seen  used; in fact one
could not  normally go further into  it than  a small roped area  round  the
door, where sight-seers were corralled on the days the house was open to the
public; it  was  a splendid  uninhabitable museum of Chippendale carving and
porcelain and  lacquer and painted hangings; the "Queen's  bed," too, was an
exhibition piece, a vast velvet tent like the Baldachino at St. Peter's. Had
Lord Marchmain planned this lying-in-state  for  himself, I wondered, before
he left the sunshine of Italy? Had he thought of it during the scudding rain
of his long, fretful journey? Had it come to him at that moment, an awakened
memory of childhood, a dream in the nursery -- "When I'm grown up I'll sleep
in the Queen's bed in the  Chinese drawing-room" --  the apotheosis of adult
grandeur?
     Few  things, certainly, could have caused more  stir in the house. What
had  been  foreseen  as a  day of formality became  one of  fierce exertion;
housemaids began making a  fire, removing covers,  unfolding  linen;  men in
aprons,  never  normally seen, shifted furniture; the estate carpenters were
collected  to  dismantle the bed. It came down the main staircase in pieces,
at intervals  during the  afternoon; huge sections of rococo, velvet-covered
cornice; the twisted gilt and velvet columns which formed  its  posts; beams
of  unpolished  wood,  made  not to  be  seen,  which  performed  invisible,
structural functions  below the  draperies;  plumes  of dyed feathers, which
sprang from gold-mounted ostrich eggs and  crowned the  canopy; finally, the
mattresses with four toiling men  to each. Lord Marchmain  seemed  to derive
comfort from the consequences  of his whim; he sat by the  fire watching the
bustle, while we stood in a half-circle--Cara, Cordelia," Julia and I -- and
talked to him.

     Colour came back to his cheeks and light to his eyes. "Brides-head  and
his wife dined with me  in  Rome," he said. "Since we are all members of the
family" -- and his  eye  moved  ironically from Cara  to me  -- "I can speak
without reserve. I found her deplorable. Her former  consort, I  understand,
was  a seafaring man and, presumably, the  less exacting, but how my son, at
the ripe age of thirty-eight, with, unless things have changed very  much, a
very free choice  among the women of England, can have settled on--I suppose
I must call her so--<i>Beryl . . ."</i> He left the sentence eloquently unfinished.

     Lord  Marchmain showed no inclination to move, so  presently we drew up
chairs -- the little  heraldic chairs, for everything else in the  hall  was
ponderous--and sat round him.

     "I daresay  I  shall not be really fit  again  until  summer comes," he
said. "I look to you four to amuse me."

     There seemed little we could do at the  moment  to lighten  the  rather
sombre mood; he, indeed,  was  the most cheerful  of us. "Tell me," he said,
"the circumstances of Brideshead's courtship."

     We told him what we knew.

     "Match-boxes,"   he   said.   "Match-boxes.   I    think   she's   past
child-bearing."

     Tea was brought us at the hall fireplace.

     "In  Italy," he said, "no one believes there will be a  war. They think
it will  all be 'arranged.' I suppose,  Julia, you no longer have access  to
political information? Cara, here,  is  fortunately  a  British  subject  by
marriage.  It is  not  a  thing  she customarily mentions, but it may  prove
valuable. She is legally Mrs. Hicks, are you not, my dear? We know little of
Hicks, but we shall be grateful  to him, none the less, if it comes  to war.
And  you," he said, turning the attack to  me, "you will no doubt  become an
official artist?"

     "No. As  a matter  of fact I am negotiating now for a commission in the
Special Reserve."

     "Oh, but you should be an artist. I had one with my squadron during the
last war, for weeks -- until we went up to the line."

     This  waspishness  was  new. I  had  always been  aware  of a frame  of
malevolence under his urbanity,  now it protruded like his  own sharp  bones
through the sunken skin.
     It  was  dark  before the  bed was finished; we  went  to  see it, Lord
Marchmain stepping quite briskly now through the intervening rooms.

     "I congratulate you. It really looks remarkably well. Wilcox, I seem to
remember  a  silver  basin and ewer--they  stood in  a  room we  called 'the
Cardinal's dressing-room,'  I think  -- suppostt we  had  them  here on  the
console. Then  if  you will send Plender and Gaston to  me, the luggage  can
wait till  to-morrow -- simply'  the  dressingose and  what I  need  for the
night.  Plender will know. If you will leave me  with Plender and  Gaston, I
will go  td '  bed. We  will meet  later;  you  will dine here  and  keep me
amused."

     We turned to go; as I was at the door he called me back.

     "It looks very well, does it not?"

     "Very well."

     "You might paint it, eh --and call it "The Death Bed'?"


     "Yes," said Cara, "he has come home to die."

     "But when he first arrived he was talking so confidently of recovery."

     "That  was because he  was so ill. When he is himself, he  knows  he is
dying and accepts  it. His sickness is up and  down; one day,  sometimes for
several days on end, he is strong and lively and then he is ready for death,
then  he is down and afraid. I  do not | know how it will be when he is more
and more down.  That must come in  good time.  The doctors in Rome gave  him
less than a year. There is someone coining from London, I think to-morrow, j
who will tell us more."

     "What is it?"

     "His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word."

     That  evening  Lord  Marchmain  was  in good spirits; the room I had  a
Hogarthian  aspect, with the  dinner-table set for  the four  of us  by  the
grotesque,  chinoiserie chimney-piece,  and the old  j man propped among his
pillows, sipping  champagne,  tasting,'  praising, and failing  to  eat  the
succession of dishes which  had been prepared for his homecoming. Wilcox had
brought out for the occasion the gold plate, which I had  not before seen in
use; that and the gilt mirrors and the lacquer  and the drapery of the great
bed and  Julia's  mandarin  coat gave  the  scene  an  air  of pantomime, of
Aladdin's cave.

     Just at the end, when the time came for us to go, his spirits flagged.

     "I shall not  sleep," he said. "Who  is  going to  sit  with  me? Cara,
<i>carissima,</i>  you are fatigued. Cordelia, will you  watch for an hour  in this
Gethsemane?"

     Next morning I asked her how the night had passed.

     "He went to sleep almost at once. I came in to  see  him at two to make
up the fire; the lights were on, but he was asleep again. He must have woken
up and turned them on; he had to get out of bed to. do that. I think perhaps
he is afraid of the dark."

     It was natural, with her hospital experience, that Cordelia should take
charge  of  her  father. When  the  doctors  came  that day they  gave their
instructions to her, instinctively.

     "Until he gets worse,"  she said,  "I and the valet can look after him.
We don't want nurses in the house before they are needed." At this stage the
doctors  had  nothing  to  recommend  except to  keep  him  comfortable  and
administer certain drugs when his attacks came on. "How long will it be?"

     "Lady Cordelia, there are men walking  about  in  hearty old  age  whom
their doctors gave a  week  to live.  I have learned one thing in  medicine:
never prophesy."

     These  two  men had  made  a long  journey  to tell her this; the local
doctor was there to accept the same advice in technical phrases.

     That   night   Lord  Marchmain  reverted  to   the  topic  of  his  new
daughter-in-law; it had never  been long out of his mind, finding expression
in various sly hints throughout the day; now he lay  back in his pillows and
talked of her at length.

     "I have never been much moved by family piety until now," he said, "but
I am frankly appalled at the prospect of--  of Beryl taking what was once my
mother's place in this house. Why
     should  that uncouth pair sit here childless while  the place  crumbles
about their ears? I will not disguise from you that I have take a dislike to
Beryl.

     "Perhaps  it was unfortunate that we  met in Rome. Anywhere  else might
have  been more sympathetic. And yet, if one comes  to  consider  it,  where
could I  have met  her without repugnance? We  dined  at Ranieri's;  it is a
quiet  little restaurant I have fire  quented for years -- no doubt you know
it. Beryl seemed  to fill the place. I, of course,  was host, though to hear
Beryl press my son with food, you  might have thought otherwise.  Brideshead
was always a greedy boy; a wife who has  his best interests at  heart should
seek to restrain him. However, that is a matter ol small importance.

     "She had  no doubt  heard of me as a man of irregular  life. I can only
describe  her manner  to me as  roguish. A naughty  old man, that's what she
thought I was. I suppose she  had met naughty old admirals and knew how they
should  be humoured; a stage-door  chappie,  a bit of a lad ... I could  not
attempt to reproduce her conversation. I will give you one example.

     "They had been to  an audience at  the Vatican that morning; a blessing
for their marriage -- I did not follow attentively ---something  of the kind
had happened before  I gathered, some previous husband,  some previous Pope.
She described, rather vivaciously, how on this earlier occasion she had gone
with  a whole  body  of newly married couples, mostly Italians of all ranks,
some  of  the simpler  girls in their  wedding  dresses,  and  how each  had
appraised  the other, the  bridegrooms  looking  the brides over,  comparing
their own with one another's, and so  fordi. Then  she  said, 'This time, of
course,  we were  in  private,  but do you know,  Lord Marchmain,  I felt as
though it was I who was leading in the bride.'

     "It was said with  great indelicacy. I have not  yet quite fathomed her
meaning. Was she making  a play on my son's name, or  was she, do you think,
referring  to  his undoubted virginity?  I fancy the  latter. Anyway, it was
with pleasantries of that kind that we passed the evening.

     "I don't think she  would be quite in her proper  element here, do you?
Who shall I leave k to? The entail ended with me, you know. Sebastian, alas,
is out of  the question. Who wants it? <i>Quis?</i> Would you like it, Cara? No, of
course  you would  not.  Cordelia? I think I  shall leave  it  to Julia  and
Charles."

     "Of course not, Papa, it's Bridey's."

     "And . . . Beryl's? I will have Gregson down one day  soon  and go over
the matter. It is time I brought my will up to date; it is full of anomalies
and anachronisms. ... I have rather a fancy for the idea of installing Julia
here; so beautiful  this  evening,  my dear; so beautiful always; much, much
more suitable."

     Shortly after this he sent to London for his solicitor, but, on the day
he came, Lord  Marchmain was suffering from an attack and would not see him.
"Plenty of time," he said,  between painful gasps for breath, "another  day,
when I am stronger," but the  choice of his heir was constantly in his mind,
and he referred often to the time when Julia  and I should be married and in
possession.
     "Do you think he really means to leave it to us?" I asked Julia.

     "Yes, I think he does.'

     "But it's monstrous for Bridey."

     "Is it? I don't think  he cares much for the  place. I do, you know. He
and Beryl would be much more content in some little house somewhere."

     "You mean to accept it?"

     "Certainly. It's Papa's to leave as he likes. I think you  and I  would
be very happy here."

     It  opened a prospect;  the  prospect one  gained at  the  turn of  the
avenue,  as I had first  seen it with Sebastian, of the secluded valley, the
lakes falling away one below the other, the old house in the foreground, the
rest  of the world abandoned and forgotten; a world of  its own of peace and
love  and beauty;  a soldier's dream  in a foreign  bivouac; such a prospect
perhaps as  a hig pinnacle  of the temple afforded after the hungry  days in
desert and the jackal-haunted nights.  Need I reproach myself if sometimes I
was rapt in the vision?

     The weeks of illness wore on and  the  life of the house kept pace with
the faltering strength of the sick man.  There days when  Lord Marchmain was
dressed, when he stood at the window or moved  on  his valet's arm from fire
to  fire  through  if the rooms of the ground floor, when  visitors came and
went --  neighbours and people  from the estate, men of business from London
-- parcels of new  books were  opened and discussed,  a piano moved into the
Chinese drawing-room; once at the end of February, on a  single,  unexpected
day of brilliant sunshine, he  called for  a car and got as far as the hall,
had  on his fur  coat and  reached  the  front door.  Then suddenly  he lost
interest  in  the drive, said, "Not now. Later. One day in the summer," took
his man's arm again and was led back to his chair. Once ho had the humour of
changing  his room and  gave  detailed  orders  for  a  move to the  Painted
Parlour; the  chinoiserie, he said disturbed his  rest -- he kept the lights
full on at night -- but again lost heart, countermanded everything, and kept
his room.

     On other days the house was hushed as he sat high in  bed,]' propped by
his pillows, with labouring breath;  even then Wanted  to have us round him;
night or day he could not bead to be alone; when he could not speak his eyes
followed us, and  ii| anyone  left  the  room he would  look distressed, and
Cara, sitting I  often for hours at  a time by his side  against the pillows
with  atilj  arm .in his,  would  say, "It's all right, Alex,  she's  coming
back."

     Brideshead and his wife returned  from their honeymoon and stayed a few
nights; it was one of the bad times, and Lord Marchmain refused to have them
near him. It was Beryl's first  visit, and she would  have been unnatural if
she had  shown  no" curiosity  about  what had  nearly been,  and now  again
promised  soon to be, her home. Beryl was natural  enough,  and surveyed the
place fairly thoroughly  in the days she was there. In the  strange disorder
caused  by  Lord  Marchmain's illness, it must have seemed  capable of  much
improvement; she referred once or twice to  the  way in which establishments
of similar  size had  been managed  at  various  Government  Houses  she had
visited. Brideshead took her visiting among the  tenants by day,  and in the
evenings she talked to me of painting,  or to Cordelia  of hospitals,  or to
Julia  of clothes, with  cheerful assurance.  The  shadow of  betrayal,  the
knowledge of how precarious were their just expectations, was all one-sided.
I was not easy with  them;  but that was no new thing to Brideshead;  in the
little  circle  of shyness in which he  was  used to  move, my guilt  passed
unseen.
     Eventually it  became clear  that Lord Marchmain did not  intend to see
more  of them.  Brideshead was admitted alone for a  minute's  leave-taking;
then they left.

     "There's  nothing  we  can do here,"  said  Brideshead,  "and it's very
distressing for Beryl. We'll come back if things get worse."

     The bad spells became longer and more frequent; a nurse was engaged. "I
never saw such a room," she said, "nothing like it anywhere; no conveniences
of any sort." She tried to have  her patient moved upstairs, where there was
running  water,  a dressing-room  for herself, a  "sensible" narrow bed  she
could  "get round"  --what she  was  used to--but  Lord Marchmain would  not
budge. Soon, as days  and  nights became  indistinguishable to him, a second
nurse   was  installed;  the  specialists  came  again   from  London;  they
recommended a new and rather daring  treatment, but his body seemed weary of
all drugs and  did not  respond. Presently there were no good spells, merely
brief fluctuations in the speed of his decline.

     Brideshead was called. It was the Easter  holidays  and  Beryl was busy
with her children. He came alone, and haying stood silently for some minutes
beside his  father, who sat  silently looking at  him, he left the room and,
joining the  rest of  us who wertfj in the  library,  said, "Papa must see a
priest."

     It was not the first  time  the topic had  come  up. In the early days,
when Lord Marchmain  first  arrived, the parish priest-since the chapel  was
shut there was a new church and presbytery in Melstead  -- had come to  call
as a  matter of politeness. Cor