Brideshead Revisited: Book I. Et in Arcadia Ego. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

"And when we reached the top of the pass," said Mr. Samgrass, "we heard
the galloping horses behind, and two soldiers rode up to the head of the
caravan and turned us back. The General had sent them, and they reached us
only just in time. There was a band, not a mile ahead."

He paused, and his small audience sat silent, conscious that he had
sought to impress them but in doubt as to how they could politely show their
interest.

"A band?" said Julia. "Goodness!"

Still he seemed to expect more. At last Lady Marchmain said, "I suppose
the sort of folk-music you get in those parts is very monotonous."

"Dear Lady Marchmain, a band of brigands." Cordelia, beside me on the
sofa, began to giggle noiselessly. "The mountains are full of them.
Stragglers from Kemal's army; Greeks who got cut off in the retreat. Very
desperate fellows, I assure you."

"Do pinch me," whispered Cordelia.

I pinched her and the agitation of the sofa-springs cedsed.

"Thanks," she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

"So you never got to wherever-it-was," said Julia. "Weren't you
terribly disappointed, Sebastian?"

"Me?" said Sebastian from the shadows beyond the lamplight, beyond the
warmth of the burning logs, beyond the family circle and the photographs
spread out on the card-table. "Me? Oh, I don't think I was there that day,
was I, Sammy?"

"That was the day you were ill."

"I was ill," he repeated like an echo, "so I never should have got to
wherever-it-was, should I, Sammy?"

"Now this, Lady Marchmain, is the caravan at Aleppo in the-courtyard of
the inn. That's our Armenian cook, Begedbian; that's me on the pony; that's
the tent folded up; that's a rather tiresome Kurd who would follow us about
at the time. . . . Here I am in Pontus, Ephesus, Trebizond,
Krak-des-chevaliers, Samothrace, Batum -- of course, I haven't got them in
chronological order yet."

"All guides and ruins and mules," said Cordelia. "Where's Sebastian?"

"He," said Mr. Samgrass, with a hint of triumph in his voice, as though
he had expected the question and prepared the answer, "he held the camera.
He became quite an expert as soon as he learned not to put his hand over the
lens, didn't you, Sebastian?"

There was no answer from the shadows. Mr. Samgrass delved again into
his pig-skin satchel.

"Here," he said, "is a group taken by a street photographer on the
terrace of the St. George Hotel at Beirut. There's Sebastian."

"Why," I said, "there's Anthony Blanche, surely?"

"Yes, we saw quite a lot of him; met him by chance at Constantinople. A
delightful companion. I can't think how I missed knowing him. He came with
us all the way to Beirut."

Tea had been cleared away and the curtains drawn. It was two days after
Christmas, the first evening of my visit; the first, too, of Sebastian's and
Mr. Samgrass's, whom to my surprise I had found on the platform when I
arrived.

Lady Marchmain had written three weeks before: I have just heard from
Mr. Samgrass that he and Sebastian will be home for Christmas as we hoped. I
had not heard from them for so long that I was afraid they were lost and did
not want to make any arrangements until I knew. Sebastian will be longing to
see you. Do come to us for Christmas if you can manage it, or as soon after
as you can.

Christmas with my uncle was an engagement I could not break, so I
travelled across country and joined the local train midway, expecting to
find Sebastian already established; there he was, however, in the next
carriage to mine, and when I asked him what he was doing Mr. Samgrass
replied with such glibness and at such length, telling rne of mislaid
luggage and of Cook's being shut over the holidays, that I was at once aware
of some other explanation which was being withheld.

Mr. Samgrass was not at ease; he maintained all the physical habits of
self-confidence, but guilt hung about him like stale cigar smoke, and in
Lady Marchmain's greeting of him I caught a note of anticipation. He kept up
a lively account of his tour during tea, and then Lady Marchmain drew him
away with her, upstairs, for a "little talk." I watched him go with
something near compassion; it was plain to anyone with a poker sense that
Mr. Samgrass held a very imperfect hand and, as I watched him at tea, I
began to suspect that he was not only bluffing but cheating. There was
something he must say, did not want to say, and did not quite know how to
say to Lady Marchmain about his doings over Christmas, but, more than that,
I guessed, there was a great deal he ought to say and had no intention at
all of saying about the whole Levantine tour.

"Come and see Nanny," said Sebastian.

"Please, can I come, too?" said Cordelia.

"Come on."

We climbed to the nursery in the dome. On the way Cordelia said:
"Aren't you at all pleased to be home?"

"Of course I'm pleased," said Sebastian.

"Well, you might show it a bit. I've been looking forward to it so
much."

Nanny did not particularly wish to be talked to; she liked visitors
best when they paid no attention to her and let her knit away, and watch
their faces and think of them as she had known them as small children; their
present goings-on did not signify much beside those early illnesses and
crimes.

"Well," she said, "you are looking peaky. I expect it's all that
foreign food doesn't agree with you. You must fatten up now you're back.
Looks as though you'd been having some late nights, too, by the look of your
eyes -- dancing, I suppose." (It was ever Nanny Hawkins's belief that the
upper classes spent most of their leisure evenings in the ballroom.) "And
that shirt wants darning. Bring it to me before it goes to the wash."

Sebastian certainly did look ill; five months had wrought the change of
years in him. He was paler, thinner, pouchy under the eyes, drooping in the
corners of his mouth, and he showed
the scars of a boil on the side of his chin; his voice seemed flatter
and his movements alternately listless and jumpy; he looked down-at-heel,
too, with clothes and hair, which formerly had been happily negligent, now
unkempt; worst of all, there was a wariness in his eye which I had surprised
there at Easter, and which now seemed habitual to him.

Restrained by this wariness I asked him nothing of himself, but told
him instead about my autumn and winter. I told him about my rooms in the Ile
St.-Louis and the art school, and how good the old teachers were and how bad
the students.

"They never go near the Louvre," I said, "or, if they do, it's only
because one of their absurd reviews has suddenly 'discovered' a master who
fits in with that month's aesthetic theory. Half of them are out to make a
popular splash like Picabia; the other half quite simply want to earn their
living doing advertisements for Vogue and decorating night clubs. And the
teachers still go on trying to make them paint like Delacroix."

"Charles," said Cordelia, "Modern Art is all bosh, isn't it?"

"Great bosh."

"Oh, I'm so glad. I had an argument with one of our nuns and she said
we shouldn't try and criticize what we didn't understand. Now I shall tell
her I have had it straight from a real artist, and snubs to her."

Presently it was time for Cordelia to go to her supper, and for
Sebastian and me to go down to the drawing-room for our cocktails.
Brideshead was there alone, but Wilcox followed on our heels to say to him:
"Her Ladyship would like to speak to you upstairs, my lord."

"That's unlike Mummy, sending for anyone. She usually lures them up
herself."

There was no sign of the cocktail tray. After a few minutes Sebastian
rang the bell. A footman answered. "Mr. Wilcox is upstairs with her
Ladyship."

"Well, never mind, bring in the cocktail things."

''Mr. Wilcox has the keys, my lord."

"Oh . . . well, send him in with them when he comes down."

We talked a little about Anthony Blanche -- "He had a beard in
Istanbul, but I made him take it off" -- and after ten minutes Sebastian
said: "Well, I don't want a cocktail, anyway; I'm off to my bath," and left
the room.

It was half-past seven; I supposed the others had gone to dress, but,
as I was going to follow them, I met Brideshead coming down.

"Just a moment, Charles, there's something I've got to explain. My
mother has given orders that no drinks are to be left in any of the rooms.
You'll understand why. If you want anything, ring and ask Wilcox -- only
better wait until you're alone. I'm sorry, but there it is."

"Is that necessary?"

"I gather very necessary. You may or may not have heard, Sebastian had
another outbreak as soon as he got back to England. He was lost over
Christmas. Mr. Samgrass only found him yesterday evening."

"I guessed something of the kind had happened. Are you sure this is the
best way of dealing with it?"

"It's my mother's way. Will you have a cocktail, now that he's gone
upstairs?"

"It would choke me."

I was always given the room I had on my first visit; it was next to
Sebastian's, and we shared what had once been a dressing-room and had been
changed to a bathroom twenty years back by the substitution for the bed of a
deep, copper, mahogany-framed bath, that was filled by pulling a brass lever
heavy as a piece of marine engineering; the rest of the room remained
unchanged; a coal fire always burned there in winter. I often think of that
bathroom -- the water colours dimmed by steam and the huge towel warming on
the back of the chintz armchair -- and contrast it with the uniform,
clinical little chambers, glittering with chromium plate and looking-glass,
which pass for luxury itf f the modern world.

I lay in the bath and then dried slowly by the fire, thinking all'' the
time of my friend's black home-coming. Then I put on my dressing-gown and
went to Sebastian's room, entering, as I always did, without knocking. He
was sitting by his fire half-dressed, and he started angrily when he heard
me and put down a tooth-glass.

"Oh, it's you. You gave me a fright."

"So you got a drink," I said.

"I don't know what you mean."

"For Christ's sake," I said, "you don't have to pretend with me! You
might offer me some."

"It's just something I had in my flask. I've finished it now."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing. A lot. I'll tell you sometime."

I dressed and called in for Sebastian, but found him still sitting 1 as
I had left him, half-dressed over his fire.

Julia was alone in the drawing-room.

"Well," I asked, "what's going on?"

"Oh, just another boring family potin. Sebastian got tight again, so
we've all got to keep an eye on him. It's too tedious."

"It's pretty boring for him, too."

"Well, it's his fault. Why can't he behave like anyone else? Talking of
keeping an eye on people, what about Mr. Samgrass? Charles, do you notice
anything at all fishy about that man?"

"Very fishy. Do you think your mother saw it?"

"Mummy only sees what suits her. She can't have the whole I household
under surveillance. I'm causing anxiety, too, you know."

"I didn't know," I said, adding humbly, "I've only just come from
Paris," so as to avoid giving the impression that any trouble she might be
in was not widely notorious.

It was an evening of peculiar gloom. We dined in the Painted Parlour.
Sebastian was late, and so painfully excited were we, that I think it was in
all our minds that he would make some sort of low-comedy entrance, reeling
and hiccuping. When he came it was, of course, with perfect propriety; he
apologized, sat in the empty place and allowed Mr. Samgrass to resume his
monologue, uninterrupted and, it seemed, unheard. Druses, patriarchs, icons,
bed-bugs, romanesque remains, curious dishes of goat and sheep s' eyes,
French and Turkish officials--all the catalogue of Near Eastern travel was
provided for our amusement.

I watched the champagne go round the table. When it came to Sebastian
he said: "I'll have whiskey, please," and I saw Wilcox glance over his head
to Lady Marchmain and saw her give a tiny, hardly perceptible nod. At
Brideshead they used small individual spirit decanters which held about a
quarter 6 a bottle, and were always placed, full, before anyone who asked
for it; the decanter which Wilcox put before Sebastian was half empty.
Sebastian raised it very deliberately, tilted it, looked at it, and then in
silence poured the liquor into his glass, where it covered two fingers. We
all began talking at once, all except Sebastian, so that for a moment Mr.
Samgrass found himself talking to no one, telling the candlesticks about the
Maronites; but soon we fell silent again, and he had the table until Lady
Marchmain and Julia left the room.

"Don't be long, Bridey," she said, at the door, as she always said, and
that evening we had no inclination to delay. Our glasses were filled with
port and the decanter at once taken from the room. We drank quickly and went
to the drawing-room, where Brideshead asked his mother to read, and she read
The Diary of a Nobody with great spirit until ten o'clock, when she closed
the book and said she was unaccountably tired, so tired that she would not
visit the chapel that night.

"Who's hunting to-morrow?" she asked.

"Cordelia," said Brideshead. "I'm taking that young horse of Julia's,
just to show him the hounds; I shan't keep him out more than a couple of
hours."

"Rex is arriving sometime," said Julia. "I'd better stay in to greet
him."

"Where's the meet?" said Sebastian suddenly.

"Just here at Flyte St. Mary."

"Then I'd like to hunt, please, if there's anything for me."

"Of course. That's delightful. I'd have asked you, only you used always
to complain so of being made to go out. You can have Tinkerbell. She's been
going very nicely this season."

Everyone was suddenly pleased that Sebastian wanted to hunt; it seemed
to undo some of the mischief of the evening. Brides-head rang the bell for
whiskey.

"Anyone else want any?"

"Bring me some, too," said Sebastian, and, though it was a footman this
time and not Wilcox, I saw the same exchange of glance and nod between the
servant and Lady Marchmain. Everyone had been warned. The two drinks were
brought in, poured out already in the glasses, like "doubles" at a bar, and
all our eyes followed the tray, as though we were dogs in a dining-room
smelling game.

The good humour engendered by Sebastian's wish to hunt persisted,
however; Brideshead wrote out a note for the stables, and we all went up to
bed quite cheerfully.

Sebastian got straight to bed; I sat by his fire and smoked a pipe. I
said: "I rather wish I was coming out with you tomorrow."

"Well," he said, "you wouldn't see much sport. I can tell you exactly
what I'm going to do. I shall leave Bridey at the first covert, hack over to
the nearest good pub and spend the entire day quietly soaking in the bar
parlour. If they treat me like a dipsomaniac, they can bloody well have a
dipsomaniac. I hate hunting, anyway."

"Well, I can't stop you."

"You can, as a matter of fact--by not giving me any money. They stopped
my banking account, you know, in the summer. It's been one of my chief
difficulties. I pawned my watch and cigarette case to ensure a happy
Christmas, so I shall have to come to you to-morrow for my day's expenses."

"I won't. You know perfectly well I can't."

"Won't you, Charles? Well, I daresay I shall manage on my own somehow.
I've got rather clever at that lately -- managing on my own. I've had to."

"Sebastian, what have you and Mr. Samgrass been up to?"

"He told you at dinner -- ruins and guides and mules, that's what
Sammy's been up to. We decided to go our own ways, that's all. Poor Sammy's
really behaved rather well so far. I hoped he would keep it up, but he seems
to have been very indiscreet about my happy Christmas. I suppose he thought
if he gave too good an account of me, he might lose his job as keeper.

"He makes quite a good thing out of it, you know. I don't mean that he
steals. I should think he's fairly honest about money. He certainly keeps an
embarrassing little note-book in which he puts down all the travellers'
cheques he cashes and what he spends it on, for Mummy and the lawyer to see.
But he wanted to go to all these places, and it's very convenient for him to
have me to take him in comfort, instead of going as dons usually do. The
only disadvantage was having to put up with my company, and we soon solved
that for him.

"We began very much on a Grand Tour, you know, with letters to all the
chief people everywhere, and stayed with the Military Governor at Rhodes and
the Ambassador at Constantinople. That was what Sammy had signed on for in
the first place. Of course, he had his work cut out keeping his eye on me,
but he warned all our hosts beforehand that I was not responsible."

"Sebastian."

"Not quite responsible--and as I had no money to spend I couldn't get
away very much. He even did the tipping for me, put the note into the man's
hand and jotted the amount down then and there in his note-book. My lucky
time was at Constantinople. I managed to make some money at cards one
evening when Sammy wasn't looking. Next day I gave him the slip and was
having a very happy hour in the bar at the Tokatlian when who should come in
but Anthony Blanche with a beard and a Jew boy. Anthony lent me a tenner
just before Sammy came panting in and recaptured me. After that I didn't get
a minute out of sight; the Embassy staff put us in the boat to Piraeus and
watched us sail away. But in Athens it was easy. I simply walked out of the
Legation one day after lunch, changed my money at Cook's, and asked about
sailings to Alexandria just to fox Sammy, then went down to the port in a
bus, found a sailor who spoke American, lay up with him till his ship
sailed, and popped back to Constantinople, and that was that.

"Anthony and the Jew boy shared a very nice, tumble-down house near the
bazaars. I stayed there till it got too cold, then Anthony and I drifted
South till we met Sammy by appointment in Syria three weeks ago."

"Didn't Sammy mind?"

"Oh, I think he quite enjoyed himself in his own ghastly way -- only of
course there was no more high life for him. I think he was a bit anxious at
first. I didn't want him to get the whole Mediterranean Fleet out, so I
cabled him from Constantinople that I was quite well and would he send money
to the Ottoman Bank. He came hopping over as soon as he got my cable. Of
course he was in a difficult position, because I'm o age and not certified
yet, so he couldn't have me arrested. He couldn't leave me to starve while
he was living on my money, and he couldn't tell Mummy without looking pretty
silly. I had him all ways, poor Sammy. My original idea had been to leave
him flat, but Anthony was very helpful about that, and said it was far
better to arrange things amicably; and he did arrange things very amicably.
So here I am."

"After Christmas."

"Yes, I was determined to have a happy Christmas."

"Did you?"

"I think so. I don't remember it much, and that's always a good sign,
isn't it?"

Next morning at breakfast Brideshead wore scarlet; Cordelia, very smart
herself, with her chin held high over her white stock, wailed when Sebastian
appeared in a tweed coat: "Oh, Sebastian, you can't come out like that. Do
go and change. You look so lovely in hunting clothes."

"Locked away somewhere. Gibbs couldn't find them."

"That's a fib. I helped get them out myself before you were called."

"Half the things are missing."

"It's so bad for local prestige. If you only knew how unsmart the
Strickland-Venableses are this year. They've even taken their grooms out of
top-hats."

It was quarter to eleven before the horses were brought round, but no
one else appeared downstairs; it was as though they were in hiding,
listening for Sebastian's retreating hooves before showing themselves.

Just as he was about to start, when the others were already mounted,
Sebastian beckoned me into the hall. On the table beside his hat, gloves,
whip and sandwiches, lay the flask he had put out to be filled. He picked it
up and shook it; it was empty.

"You see," he said, "I can't even be trusted that far. It's they who
are mad, not me. Now you can't refuse me money."

I gave him a pound.

"More," he said.

I gave him another and watched him mount and trot after his brother and
sister.

Then, as though it were his cue on the stage, Mr. Samgrass came to my
elbow, put an arm in mine, and led me back to the fire. He warmed his neat
little hands and then turned to warm his seat.

"So Sebastian is in pursuit of the fox," he said, "and our little
problem is shelved for an hour or two?"

I was not going to stand this from Mr. Samgrass.

"I heard all about your Grand Tour, last night," I said.

"Ah, I rather supposed you might have." Mr. Samgrass was undismayed,
relieved, it seemed, to have someone else in the know. "I did not harrow our
hostess with all that. After all, it turned out far better than one had any
right to expect. I did feel, however, that some explanation was due to her
of Sebastian's Christmas festivities. You may have observed last night that
there were certain precautions."

"I did."

"You thought them excessive? I am with you, particularly , as they tend
to compromise the comfort of our own little visit. I have seen Lady
Marchmain this morning. You must not suppose I am just out of bed. I have
had a little talk upstairs with our hostess. I think we may hope for some
relaxation to-night. Yesterday was not an evening that'any of us would wish
to have repeated. I earned less gratitude than I deserved, I think, for my
efforts to distract you."

It was repugnant to me to talk about Sebastian to Mr. Sam-grass, but I
was compelled to say: "I'm not sure that to-night would be the best time to
start the relaxation."

"But surely ? Why not to-night, after a day in the field under
Brideshead's inquisitorial eye? Could one choose better?"

"Oh, I suppose it's none of my business really."

"Nor mine strictly, now that he is safely home. Lady March-main did me
the honour of consulting me. But it is less Sebastian's welfare than our own
I have at heart at the moment. I need my third glass of port; I need that
hospitable tray in the library. And yet you specifically advise against it
to-night. I wonder why. Sebastian can come to no mischief to-day. For one
thing, he has no money. I happen to know. I saw to it. I even have his watch
and cigarette case upstairs. He will be quite harmless . . . as long as no
one is so wicked as to give him any . . . Ah, Lady Julia, good morning to
you, good morning. And how is the Peke this hunting morning?"

"Oh, the Peke's all right. Listen. I've got Rex Mottram coming here
to-day. We simply can't have another evening like last night. Someone must
speak to Mummy."

"Someone has. I spoke. I think it will be all right."

"Thank God for that. Are you painting to-day, Charles?"

It had been the custom that on every visit to Brideshead I painted a
medallion on the walls of the garden-room. The custom suited me well, for it
gave me a good reason to detach myself from the rest of the party; when the
house was full the garden-room became a rival to the nursery, where from
time to time people took refuge to complain about the others; thus without
effort I kept in touch with the gossip of the place. There were three
finished medallions now, each rather pretty in its way, but unhappily each
in a different way, for my tastes had changed and I had become more
dexterous in the eighteen months since the series was begun. As a decorative
scheme, they were a failure. That morning was typical of the many mornings
when I had found the garden-room a sanctuary. There I went and was soon at
work. Julia came with me to see me started and we talked, inevitably, of
Sebastian.

"Don't you get bored with the subject?" she asked. "Why must everyone
make such a Thing about it?"

"Just because we're fond of him."

"Well, I'm fond of him too, in a way, I suppose, only I wish he'd
behave like anybody else. I've grown up with one family skeleton, you know
-- Papa. Not to be talked of before the servants, not to be talked of before
us when we were children. If Mummy is going to start making a skeleton out
of Sebastian, it's too much. If he wants to be always tight, why doesn't he
go to Kenya or somewhere where it doesn't matter?"

"Why does it matter less being unhappy in Kenya than anywhere else?"

"Don't pretend to be stupid, Charles. You understand perfectly."

"You mean there won't be so many embarrassing situations for you? Well,
all I was trying to say was that I'm afraid there may be an embarrassing
situation to-night if Sebastian gets the chance. He's in a bad mood."

"Oh, a day's hunting will put that all right."

It was touching to see the faith which everybody put in the value of a
day's hunting. Lady Marchmain, who looked in on me during the morning,
mocked herself for it with that delicate irony for which she was famous.

"I've always detested hunting," she said, "because it seems to produce
a particularly gross kind of caddishness in the nicest people. I don't know
what it is, but the moment they dress np and get on a horse they become like
a lot of Prussians. And so boastful after it. The evenings I've sat at
dinner appalled at seeing the men and women I know, transformed into
half-awake, self-opinionated, monomaniac louts! . . . And yet, you know --
it must be something derived from centuries ago -- my heart is quite light
to-day to think of Sebastian out with them. 'There's nothing wrong with him
really,' I say, "he's gone hunting' -- as though it were an answer to
prayer."

She asked me about my life in Paris. I told her of my rooms with their
view of the river and the towers of Notre Dame. "I'm hoping Sebastian will
come and stay with me when I go back."

"It would have been lovely," said Lady Marchmain, sighing as though for
the unattainable.

"I hope he's coming to stay with me in London."

"Charles, you know it isn't possible. London's the worst place.

Even Mr. Samgrass couldn't hold him there. We have no secrets in this
house. He was lost, you know, all through Christmas. Mr. Samgrass only found
him because he couldn't pay his bill in the place where he was, so they
telephoned our house. It's too horrible. No, London is impossible; if he
can't behave himself here, with us ... We must keep him happy and healthy
here for a bit, hunting, and then send him abroad again with Mr. Samgrass. .
. . You see, I've been through all this before."

The retort was there, unspoken, well-understood by both of us--You
couldn't keep him; he ran away. So will Sebastian. Because they both hate
you.

A horn and the huntsman's cry sounded in the valley below us.

"There they go now, drawing the home woods. I hope he's having a good
day."

Thus with Julia and Lady Marchmain I reached deadlock, not because we
failed to understand one another, but because we understood too well. With
Brideshead, who came home to luncheon and talked to me on the subject--for
the subject was everywhere in the house like a fire deep in the hold of a
ship, below the water-line, black and red in the darkness, coming to light
Hi acrid wisps of smoke that curled up the ladders, crept between decks,
oozed under hatches, hung in wreaths on the flats, billowed suddenly from
the scuttles and air pipes--with Brideshead, I was in a strange world, a
dead world to me, in a moon-landscape of barren lava, on a plateau where the
air struck chill, a high place of unnaturally clear eyes and of toiling
lungs.

He said: "I hope it is dipsomania. That is simply a great misfortune
that we must all help him bear. What I used to fear was that he just got
drunk deliberately when he liked and because he liked."

"That's exactly what he did--what we both did. It's what he does with
me now. I can keep him to that, if only your mother would trust me. If you
wqrry him with keepers and cures he'll be a physical wreck in a few years."

"There's nothing wrong in being a physical wreck, you know. There's no
moral obligation to be Postmaster-General or Master of Foxhounds or to live
to walk ten miles at eighty."

"Wrong" I said. "Moral obligation -- now you're back on religion
again."

"I never left it," said Brideshead.

"D'you know, Bridey, if I ever felt for a moment like becoming a
Catholic, 1 should only have to talk to you for five minutes to be cured.
You manage to reduce what seem quite sensible propositions to stark
nonsense."

"It's odd you should say that. I've heard it before from other people.
It's one of the many reasons why I don't think I should make a good priest.
It's something in the way my mind works I suppose. I have to turn a thing
round and round, like a piece of ivory in a Chinese puzzle, until -- click!
--it fits into place -- but by that time it's upside down to everyone else.
But it's the same bit of ivory, you know."

At luncheon Julia had no thoughts except for her guest who was coming
that day. She drove to the station to meet him and brought him home to tea.

"Mummy, do look at Rex's Christmas present."

It was a small tortoise with Julia's initials set in diamonds in the
living shell, and this slightly obscene object, now slipping impotently on
the polished boards, now striding across the card-table, now lumbering over
a rug, now withdrawn at a touch, now stretching its neck and swaying its
withered, antediluvian head, became a memorable part of the evening, one of
those needle-hooks of experience which catch the attention when larger
matters are at stake, and remain in the mind when they are forgotten, so
that years later it is a bit of gilding, or a certain smell, or the tone of
a clock's striking which recalls one to a tragedy.

"Dear me," said Lady Marchmain. "I wonder if it eats the same sort of
things as an ordinary tortoise."

"What will you do when it's dead?" asked Mr. Samgrass. "Can you have
another tortoise fitted into the shell?"

Rex had been told about the problem of Sebastian--he could scarcely
have endured in that atmosphere without -- and had a solution pat. He
propounded it cheerfully and openly at tea, and after a day of whispering it
was a relief to hear the thing discussed. "Send him to Borethus at Zurich.
Borethus is the man. He works miracles every day at that sanatorium of his.
You know how Charlie Kilcartney used to drink."

"No," said Lady Marchmain, with that sweet irony of hers. "No, I'm
afraid I don't know how Charlie Kilcartney drank."

Julia, hearing her lover mocked, frowned at the tortoise, but Rex
Mottram was impervious to such delicate mischief.

"Two wives despaired of him," he said. "When he got engaged to Sylvia,
she made it a condition that he should take the cure at Zurich. And it
worked. He came back in three months a different man. And he hasn't touched
a drop since, even though Sylvia walked out on him."

"Why did she do that?"

"Well, poor Charlie got rather a bore when he stopped drinking. But
that's not really the point of the story."

"No, I suppose not. In fact, I suppose, really, it's meant to be an
encouraging story."

Julia scowled at her jewelled tortoise.

"He takes sex cases, too, you know."

"Oh dear, what very peculiar friends poor Sebastian will make in
Zurich."

"He's booked up for months ahead, but I think he'd find room if I asked
him. I could telephone him from here to-night."

(In his kindest moments Rex displayed a kind of hectoring zeal as if he
were thrusting a vacuum cleaner on an unwilling housewife.).

"We'll think about it."

And we were thinking about it when Cordelia returned from hunting.

"Oh, Julia, what's that? How beastly"

"It's Rex's Christmas present."

"Oh, sorry. I'm always putting my foot in it. But how cruel! It must
have hurt frightfully."

"They can't feel."

"How d'you know? Bet they can."

She kissed her mother, whom she had not seen that day, shook hands with
Rex, and rang for eggs.

"I had one tea at Mrs. Barney's, where I telephoned for the car, but
I'm still hungry. It was a spiffing day. Jean Strickland-Venables fell in
the mud. We ran from Bengers to Upper Eastrey without a check. I reckon
that's five miles, don't you, Bridey?"

"Three."

"Not as he ran. . . ." Between mouthfuls of scrambled egg she told us
about the hunt. . . . "You should have seen Jean when she came out of the
mud."

"Where's Sebastian?"

"He's in disgrace." The words, in that clear, child's voice, had the
ring of a bell tolling, but she went on: "Coming out in that beastly
rat-catcher coat and mean little tie like something from Captain Morvin's
Riding Academy. I just didn't recognize him at the meet, and I hope nobody
else did. Isn't he back? I expect he got lost."

When Wilcox came to clear the tea, Lady Marchmain asked: "No sign of
Lord Sebastian?"

"No, my lady."

"He must have stopped for tea with someone. How very unlike him."

Half an hour later, when Wilcox brought in the cocktail tray, he said:
"Lord Sebastian has just rung up to be fetched from South Twining."

"South Twining? Who lives there?"

"He was speaking from the hotel, my lady."

"South Twining?" said Cordelia. "Goodness, he did get lost!"

When he arrived he was flushed and his eyes were feverishly bright; I
saw that he was two-thirds drunk.

"Dear boy," said Lady Marchmain. "How nice to see you looking so well
again. Your day in the open has done you good. The drinks are on the table;
do help yourself."

There was nothing unusual in her speech but the fact of her saying it.
Six months ago it would not have been said.

"Thanks," said Sebastian. "I will."


A blow, expected, repeated, falling on a bruise, with no smart or shock
of surprise, only a dull and sickening pain and the doubt whether another
like it could be borne -- that was how it felt, sitting opposite Sebastian
at dinner that night, seeing his clouded eye and groping movements, hearing
his thickened voice breaking in, ineptly, after long brutish silences. When
at length Lady Marchmain and Julia and the servants left us, Brideshead
said: "You'd best go to bed, Sebastian."

"Have some port first."

"Yes, have some port if you want it. But don't come into the
drawing-room."

"Too bloody drunk," said Sebastian nodding heavily. "Like olden times.
Gentlemen always too drunk join ladies in olden times."

("And yet, you know, it wasn't" said Mr. Samgrass, trying to be chatty
with me about it afterwards, "it wasn't at all like olden times. I wonder
where the difference lies. The lack of good humour? The lack of
companionship? You know I think he must have been drinking by himself
to-day. Where did he get the money?")

"Sebastian's gone up," said Brideshead when we reached the
drawing-room.

"Yes? Shall I read?"

Julia and Rex played bezique; the tortoise, teased by the Pekinese,
withdrew into his shell; Lady Marchmain read The Diary of a Nobody aloud
until, quite early, she said it was time for bed.

"Can't I stay up and play a little longer, Mummy? Just three games?"

"Very well, darling. Come in and see me before you go to bed. I shan't
be asleep."

It was plain to Mr. Samgrass and me that Julia and Rex wanted to be
left alone, so we went, too; it was not plain to Brideshead, who settled
down to read The Times, which he had not yet seen that day. Then, going to
our side of the house, Mr. Samgrass said: "It wasn't at all like olden
times."

Next morning I said to Sebastian: "Tell me honestly, do you want me to
stay on here?"

"No, Charles, I don't believe I do."

"I'm no help?"

"No help."

So I went to make my excuses to his mother.

"There's something I must ask you, Charles. Did you give Sebastian
money yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Knowing how he was likely to spend it?"

"Yes."

"I don't understand it," she said. "I simply don't understand how
anyone can be so callously wicked."

She paused, but I do not think she expected any answer; there was
nothing I could say unless I were to start all over again on that familiar,
endless argument.

"I'm not going to reproach you," she said. "God knows it's not for me
to reproach anyone. Any failure in my children is my failure. But I don't
understand it. I don't understand how you can have been so nice in so many
ways, and then do something so wantonly cruel. I don't understand how we all
liked you somuch. Did you hate us all the time? I don't understand how we
deserved it."

I was unmoved; there was no part of me remotely touched by her
distress. It was as I had often imagined being expelled from school. I
almost expected to hear her say: "I have already written to inform your
unhappy father." But as I drove away and turned back in the car to take what
promised to be my last view of the house, I felt that I was leaving part of
myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of
it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the
spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay
their way to the nether world.

"I shall never go back," I said to myself.

A door had shut, the low door in the wall I had sought and found in
Oxford; open it now and I should find no enchanted garden.

I had come to the surface, into the light of common day and the fresh
sea-air, after long captivity in the sunless coral palaces and waving
forests of the ocean bed.

I had left behind me -- what ? Youth ? Adolescence ? Romance ? The
conjuring stuff of these things, "the Young Magician's Compendium," that
neat cabinet where the ebony wand had its place beside the delusive billiard
balls, the penny that folded double and the feather flowers that could be
drawn into a hollow candle.
,
"I have left behind illusion," I said to myself. "Henceforth I live in
a world of three dimensions -- with the aid of my five senses."

I have since learned that there is no such world; but then, as the car
turned out of sight of the house, I thought it took no finding, but lay all
about me at the end of the avenue.


Thus I returned to Paris, and to the friends I had found there and the
habits I had formed. I thought I should hear no mote of Brideshead, but life
has few separations as sharp as that. It was not three weeks before I
received a letter in Cordelia's Frenchified convent hand: --

Darling Charles [she'said],

I was so very miserable when you went. You might have come and said
good-bye I
I heard all about your disgrace, and I am writing to say that I am in
disgrace, too. I sneaked Wilcox's keys and got whiskey for Sebastian and got
caught. He did seem to want it so. And there was (and is) an awful row.

Mr. Samgrass has gone (good!), and I think he is a bit in disgrace,
too, but I don't know why.

Mr. Mottram is very popular with Julia (bad!) and is taking Sebastian
away (bad! bad!) to a German doctor.

Julia's tortoise disappeared. We think it buried itself, as they do, so
there goes a packet (expression of Mr. Mottram's).

I am very well.

With love from,

cordelia


It must have been about a week after receiving this letter that I
returned to my rooms one afternoon to find Rex waiting for me.

It was about four, for the light began to fail early in the studio at
that time of year. I could see by the expression on the concierge's face,
when she told me I had a visitor waiting that there was something impressive
upstairs; she had a vivid gift of expressing differences of age or
attraction; this was the expression which meant someone of the first
consequence, and Rex indeed seemed to justify it, as I found him in his big
travelling coat, filling the window that looked over the river.

"Well," I said. "Well."

"I came this morning. They told me where you usually lunched but I
couldn't see you there. Have you got him?"

I did not need to ask whom. "So he's given you the slip, too?"

"We got here last night and were going on to Zurich to-day. I left him
at the Lotti after dinner, as he said he was tired, and went round to the
Travellers' for a game."

I noticed how, even with me, he was making excuses, as though
rehearsing his story for re-telling elsewhere. "As he said he was tired" was
good. I could not well imagine Rex letting a half-tipsy boy interfere with
his cards. "So you came back and found him gone ?" "Not at all. I wish I
had. I found him sitting up for me. I had a run of luck at the Travellers'
and cleaned up a packet. Sebastian pinched the lot while I was asleep. All
he left me was two first-class tickets to Zurich stuck in the edge of the
looking-glass. I had. nearly three hundred quid, blast him!"

"And now he may be almost anywhere."

"Anywhere. You're not hiding him by any chance?"

"No. My dealings with that family are over."

"I think mine are just beginning," said Rex. "I say, I've got a lot to
talk about, and I promised a chap at the Travellers' I'd give him his
revenge this afternoon. Won't you dine with me?"

"Yes. Where?"

"I usually go to Ciro's."

"Why not Paillard's?"

"Never heard of it. I'm paying you know."

"I know you are. Let me order dinner."

"Well, all right. What's the place again?" I wrote it down for him. "Is
it the sort of place you see native life?"

"Yes, you might call it that."

"Well, it'll be an experience. Order something good."

"That's my intention."

I was there twenty minutes before Rex. If I had to spend an evening
with him, it should, at any rate, be in my own way. I remember the dinner
well -- soup of oseille, a sole quite simply cooked in a white wine sauce, a
caneton la presse, a lemon souffle. At the last minute, fearing that the
whole thing was too simple for Rex, I added caviare aux blinis. And for wine
I let him give me a bottle of 1906 Montrachet, then at its prime, and, with
the duck, a Clos de Bre of 1904.

Living was easy in France then; with the exchange as it was, my
allowance went a long way and I did not live frugally. It was very seldom,
however, that I had a dinner like this, and I felt well disposed to Rex,
when at last he arrived and gave up his hat and coat with the air of not
expecting to see them again. He looked round the sombre little place with
suspicion, as though hoping to see apaches or a drinking party of students.
All he saw was four senators with napkins tucked under their beards eating
in absolute silence. I could imagine him telling his commercial friends
later: "... interesting fellow I know; an art student living in Paris. Took
me to a funny little restaurant -- sort of place you'd pass without looking
at -- where there was some of the best food I ever ate. There were half a
dozen senators there, too, which shows you it was the right place. Wasn't at
all cheap either."

"Any sign of Sebastian?" he asked.

"There won't be," I said, "until he needs money."

"It's a bit thick, going off like that. I was rather hoping that if I
made a good job of him, it might do me a bit of good in another direction."

He plainly wished to talk of his own affairs; they could wait, I
thought, for the hour of tolerance and repletion, for the cognac; they could
wait until the attention was blunted and one could listen with half the mind
only; now in the keen moment when the maitre d'hotel was turning the blinis
over in the pan, and, in the background, two humbler men were preparing the
press, we would talk of myself.

"Did you stay long at Brideshead? Was my name mentioned after I left?"

"Was it mentioned? I got sick of the sound of it, old boy. The
Marchioness got what she called a 'bad conscience' about you. She piled it
on pretty thick, I gather, at your last meeting."

" 'Callously wicked', 'wantonly cruel.'"

"Hard words."

" 'It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon
pie and eat you up.'"

"Eh?"

"A saying."

"Ah." The cream and hot butter mingled and overflowed separating each
glaucose bead of caviar from its fellows, capping it in white and gold.

"I like a bit of chopped onion with mine," said Rex. "Chap-who-knew
told me it brought out the flavour."

"Try it without first," I said. "And tell me more news of myself."

"Well, of course, Greenacre, or whatever he was called -- the snooty
don -- he came a cropper. That was well received by all.; He was the
blue-eyed boy for a day or two after you left. Shouldn't wonder if he hadn't
put the old girl up to pitching you out. He was always being pushed down our
throats, so in the end Julia couldn't bear it any more and gave him
away."

"Julia did?"

"Well, he'd begun to stick his nose into our affairs you see. Julia
spotted he was a fake, and one afternoon when Sebastian was tight--he was
tight most of the time -- she got the whole story of the Grand Tour out of
him. And that was the end of Mr. Samgrass. After that the Marchioness began
to think she might have been a bit rough with you."

"And what about the row with Cordelia?"

"That eclipsed everything. That kid's a walking marvel -- she'd been
feeding Sebastian whiskey right under our noses for a week. We couldn't
think where he was getting it. That's when the
Marchioness finally crumbled."

The soup was delicious after the rich blinis--hot, thin, bitter,
frothy.

"I'll tell you a thing, Charles, that Ma Marchmain hasn't let on to
anyone. She's a very sick woman. Might peg out any minute. George Anstruther
saw her in the autumn and put it at two years."

"How on earth do you know?"

"It's the kind of thing I hear. With the way her family are going on at
the moment, I wouldn't give her a year. I know just the man for her in
Vienna. He put Sonia Bamfshire on her feet when everyone including
Anstruther had despaired of her. But Ma Marchmain won't do anything about
it. I suppose it's something to do with her crack-brain religion, not to
take care of the body."

The sole was so simple and unobtrusive that Rex failed to notice it. We
ate to the music of the press--the crunch of the bones, the drip of blood
and marrow, the tap of the spoon basting the thin slices of breast. There
was a pause here of a quarter of an hour, while I drank the first glass of
the Clos de Bere and Rex smoked his first cigarette. He leaned back, blew a
cloud of smoke across the table and remarked, "You know, the food here isn't
half bad; someone ought to take this place up and make something of it."

Presently he began again on the Marchmains: --

"I'll tell you another thing, too -- they'll get a jolt financially
soon if they don't look out."

"I thought they were enormously rich."

"Well, they are rich in the way people are who just let their money sit
quiet. Everyone of that sort is poorer than they were in 1914, and the
Flytes don't seem to realize it. I reckon those lawyers who manage their
affairs find it convenient to give them all the cash they want and no
questions asked. Look at the way they live--Brideshead and Marchmain House
both going full blast, pack of foxhounds, no rents raised, nobody sacked,
dozens of old servants doing damn all, being waited on by other servants,
and then besides all that there's the old boy setting up a separate
establishment -- and setting it up on no humble scale either. D'you
know how much they're overdrawn?"

"Of course I don't."

"Jolly near a hundred thousand in London. I don't know what they owe
elsewhere. Well, that'siquite a packet, you know, for people who aren't
using their money. Ninety-eight thousand last November. It's the kind of
thing I hear."

Those were the kind of things he heard, mortal illness and debt, I
thought.

I rejoiced in the Burgundy. How can I describe it? The Pathetic Fallacy
resounds in all our praise of wine. For centuries every language has been
strained to define its beauty, and has produced only wild conceits or the
stock epithets of the trade. This Burgundy seemed to me, then, serene and
triumphant, a reminder that the world was an older and better place than Rex
knew, that mankind in its long passion had learned another wisdom than his.
By chance I met this same wine again, lunching with my wine merchant in St.
James's Street, in the first autumn of the war; it had softened and faded in
the intervening years, but it still spoke in the pure, authentic accent of
its prime and, that day, as at Paillard's with Rex Mottram years before, it
whispered faintly, but in the same lapidary phrase, the same words of hope.

"I don't mean that they'll be paupers; the old boy will always be good
for an odd thirty thousand a year, but there'll be a shake-up coming soon,
and when the upper classes get the wind up, their first idea is usually to
cut down on the girls. I'd like to get the little matter of a marriage
settlement through, before it comes."

We had by no means reached the cognac, but here we were on the subject
of himself. In twenty minutes I should have been ready for all he had to
tell. I closed my mind to him as best I could and gave myself to the food
before me, but sentences came breaking in on my happiness, recalling me to
the harsh, acquisitive world which Rex inhabited. He wanted a woman; he
"wanted the best on the market, and he wanted her cheap; that was what it
amounted to.

"... Ma Marchmain doesn't like me. Well, I'm not asking her to. It's
not her I want to marry. She hasn't the guts to say openly: 'You're not a
gentleman. You're an adventurer from the Colonies.' She says we live in
different atmospheres. That's all right, but Julia happens to fancy my
atmosphere. . . . Then she brings up religion. I've nothing against her
Church; we don't take much account of Catholics in Canada, but that's
different; in Europe you've got some very posh Catholics. All right, Julia
can go to church whenever she wants to. I shan't try and stop her. It
doesn't mean two pins to her, as a matter of fact, but I like a girl to have
religion. What's more, she can bring the children up Catholic. I'll make all
the 'promises' they want. . . . Then there's my past. 'We know so little
about you.' She knows a sight too much. You may know I've been tied up with
someone else for a year or two."

I knew; everyone who had ever met Rex knew of his affair with Brenda
Champion; knew also that it was from this affair that he derived everything
which distinguished him from every other stock-jobber: his golf with the
Prince of Wales, his membership of Bratt's, even his smoking-room
comradeship at the House of Commons; for, when he first appeared there, his
party chiefs did not say of him, "Look, there is the promising young member
for North Gridley who spoke so well on Rent Restrictions." They said:
"There's Brenda Champion's latest"; it had done him a great deal of good
with men; women he could usually charm.

"Well, that's all washed up. Ma Marchmain was too delicate to mention
the subject; all she said was that I had 'notoriety.' Well, what does she
expect as a son-in-law--a sort of half-baked monk like Brideshead? Julia
knows all about the other thing; if she doesn't care, I don't see it's
anyone else's business."

After the duck came a salad of watercress and chicory in a faint mist
of chives. I tried to think only of the salad. I succeeded for a time in
thinking only of the souffle. Then came the cognac and the proper hour for
these confidences.

"... Julia's just rising twenty. I don't want to wait till she's of
age. Anyway, I don't want to marry without doing the thing properly . . .
nothing hole-in-corner. ... I have to see she isn't jockeyed out of her
proper settlement. I've got to the time now when 'notoriety,' as Ma
Marchmain calls it, has done its bit. I need setting up solidly. You know --
St. Margaret's, Westminster, or Whatever Catholics have, royalty and the
Prime Minister photographed going in ... and, afterwards 'the beautiful Lady
Julia Mottram, leading young political hostess' . . . nothing
hole-in-corner. So as the Marchioness won't play ball I'm off to see the old
man and square him. I gather he's likely to agree to anything he knows will
upset her. He's at Monte Carlo at the moment. I'd planned to go on there
after dropping Sebastian off at Zurich. That's why it's such a bloody bore
having lost him."

The cognac was not to Rex's taste. It was clear and pale and it came to
us in a bottle free from grime and Napoleonic cyphers. It was only a year or
two older than Rex and lately bottled. They gave it to us in very thin
tulip-shaped glasses of modest size.

"Brandy's one of the things I do know a bit about," said Rex. "This is
a bad colour. What's more, I can't taste it in this thimble."

They brought him a balloon the size of his head. He made them warm it
over the spirit lamp.

Then he rolled the splendid spirit round, buried his face in the fumes,
and pronounced it the sort of stuff he put soda in at home.

So, shamefacedly, they wheeled out of its hiding place the vast and
mouldy bottle they kept for people of Rex's sort.

"That's the stuff," he said, tilting the treacly concoction till it
left dark rings round the sides of his glass. "They've always got some
tucked away, but they won't bring it out unless you
make a fuss. Have some."

"I'm quite happy with this."

"Well, it's a crime to drink it, if you don't really appreciate it." He
lit his cigar and sat back at peace with the world; I, too, was at peace in
another world than his. We both were happy.

He talked of Julia and I heard his voice, unintelligible at a great
distance, like a dog's barking miles away on a still night.


At the beginning of May the engagement was announced. I saw the notice
in the Continental Daily Mail and assumed that Rex had "squared the old
man." But things did not go as expected. The next news I had of them was in
the middle of June, when I read that they had been married very quietly at
the Savoy Chapel. No royalty was present; nor was the Prime Minister; nor
were any of Julia's family. It sounded like a "hole-in-the-corner" affair,
but it was not for several years that I heard the full story.