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

Chapter Three

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

I had started the term with my battels paid and over a hundred pounds
in hand. All that had gone, and not a penny paid out where I could get
credit. There had been no reason for it, no great pleasure unattainable
else; it had gone in ducks and drakes. Sebastian often chid me with
extravagance, but I resented his censure for a large part of my money went
on and with him. His own finances were perpetually, vaguely distressed.
"It's all done by lawyers," he said helplessly, "and I suppose they embezzle
a lot. Anyway, I never seem to get much. Of course, Mummy would give me
anything I asked for."

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

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

Now Sebastian had disappeared into that other life of his where I was
not asked to follow, and I was left, instead, forlorn and regretful.

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

Thus I spent the first afternoon at home, wandering from room to room,
looking from the plate-glass windows in turn on the garden and the street,
in a mood of vehement self-reproach.
My father, I knew, was in the house, but his library was inviolable,
and it was not until just before dinner that he appeared to greet me. He was
then in his late fifties, but it was his idiosyncrasy to seem much older
than his years; to see him one might have put him at seventy, to hear him
speak at nearly eighty. He came to me now, with the shuffling mandarin-tread
which he affected, and a shy smile of welcome. When he dined at home -- and
he seldom dined elsewhere•-- he wore a f rogged velvet smoking suit of
the kind which had been fashionable many years before and was to be so
again, but, at that time, was a deliberate archaism.

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

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

"There's some whiskey."

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

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

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

"I'm not quite sure, Father."

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

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

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

"One of the problems of the vacation is money, Father." "Oh, I
shouldn't worry about a thing like that at your age." "You see, I've run
rather short." "Yes?" said my father without any sound of interest. "In fact
I don't quite know how I'm going to get through the next two months."

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

"Then what do you suggest my doing?"

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

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

"Hayter, I've dropped my book."

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

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

"Eh?"

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

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

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


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

The dinner table was our battlefield.

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

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

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

"But I haven't been to any."

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

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

"My dear boy, you must not let money become your master in this way.
Why, at your age, your cousin Melchior was part owner of a musical piece. It
was one of his few happy ventures. You should go to the play as part of your
education. If you read the lives of eminent men you will find that quite
half of them made their first acquaintance with drama from the gallery. I am
told there is no pleasure like it. It is there that you find the real
critics and devotees. It is called 'sitting with the gods.'

The expense is nugatory, and even while you wait for admission in the
street you are diverted by 'buskers.' We will sit with the gods together one
night. How do you find Mrs. Abel's cooking?"

"Rather insipid."

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

Dinner that evening consisted of a white, tasteless soup, over-fried
fillets of sole with a pink sauce, lamb cutlets propped against a cone of
mashed potato, stewed pears in jelly standing on a kind of sponge cake.

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

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

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

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

It was largely by reason of my Aunt Philippa that I now found myself so
much a stranger in my father's house. After my mother's death she came to
live with my father and me, no doubt, as he said, with the idea of making
her home with us. I knew nothing, then, of the nightly agonies at the dinner
table. My aunt made herself my companion, and I accepted her without
question. That was for a year. The first change was that she re-opened her
house in Surrey which she had meant to sell, and lived there during my
school terms, coming to London only for a few days' shopping and
entertainment. In the summer we went to lodgings together at the sea-side.
Then in my last year at school she left England. "/ got her out in the end"
he said with derision and triumph of that kindly lady, and he knew that I
heard in the words a challenge to myself.

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

"No, sir."

"Do not do so."

"Very good, sir."

And when we reached our chairs in the garden-room he said: "I wonder
whedier Hayter had any intention of mentioning lobsters. I rather think not.
Do you know, I believe he thought I was joking?"


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My father was master of the situation. He had made a little fantasy for
himself, tha Jorkins should be an American, and throughout the evening he
played a delicate, one-sided parlour-game with him, explaining any
peculiarly English terms that occurred in the conversation, translating
pounds into dollars, and courteously deferring to him with such phrases as
"Of course, by your standards . . ."; "All this must seem very parochial to
Mr. Jorkins"; "In the vast spaces to which you are accustomed . . ." so that
my guest was left with the vague sense that there was a misconception
somewhere as to his identity, which he never got the chance of explaining.
Again and again during dinner he sought my father's eye, thinking to read
there the simple statement that this form of address was an elaborate joke,
but met instead a look of such mild benignity that he was left baffled.

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

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

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

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

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

"He's rather odd at times."

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

"Yes. I can't quite explain."

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


My father's counter-attack was delivered a few days later.

He sought me out and said, "Mr. Jorkins is still here?"

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

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

"Yes."

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

My presentiments of my father's plan were surpassed by the actuality.
As the guests assembled in the room which my father, without
self-consciousness, called "the Gallery," it was plain to me that they had
been carefully chosen for my discomfort. The "young people" were Miss Gloria
Orme-Herrick, a student of the cello; her fiance, a bald young man from the
British Museum; and a monoglot Munich publisher. I saw my father snuffling
at me from behind a case of ceramics as he stood with them. That evening he
wore, like a chivalric badge of battle, a small red rose in his button-hole.

Dinner was long and chosen, like the guests, in a spirit of careful
mockery. It was not of Aunt Philippa's choosing, but had been reconstructed
from a much earlier period, long before he was of an age to dine downstairs.
The dishes were ornamental in appearance and regularly alternated in colour
between red and white. They and the wine were equally tasteless. After
dinner my father led the German publisher to the piano and then, while he
played, left the dining-room to show Sir Cuthbert Orme-Herrick the Etruscan
bull in the gallery.

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

"No."

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

"No."

"That was my impression also. I doubt if any of our guests will count
this as one of their happiest evenings. That young foreigner played
atrociously, I thought. Where can I have met him? And Miss.Constantia
Smethwick -- where can I have met her? But the obligations of hospitality
must be observed. As long as you are here, you shall not be dull."

Strife was internecine during the next fortnight, but I suffered the
more, for my father had greater reserves to draw on and a wider territory
for manoeuvre, while I was pinned to my bridgehead between the uplands and
the sea. He never declared his war aims, and I do not to this day know
whether they were purely punitive -- whether he had really at the back of
his mind some geopolitical idea of getting me out of the country, as Aunt
Philippa had been driven to Bordighera and my cousin Melchior to Darwin, or
whether, as seems most likely, he fought for the sheer love of a battle, in
which indeed he shone.

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

brideshead castle
wiltshire

Dearest Charles,-

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

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

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

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

Love or what you will.
S.


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

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

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

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

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

"Yes?"

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

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

"Well," said my father. "I'm sorry you are upset. Reading this message
I should not say that the accident was as serious as you seem to think --
otherwise it would hardly be signed by the victim himself. Still, of course,
he may well be fully conscious but blind or paralysed with a broken back.
Why exactly is your presence so necessary? You have no medical knowledge.
You are not in holy orders. Do you hope for a legacy?"

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

"Well, Orme-Herrick is a great friend of mine, but I should not go
tearing off to his deathbed on a warm Sunday afternoon. I should doubt
whether Lady Orme-Herrick would welcome me. However, I see you have no such
doubts. I shall miss you, my dear boy, but do not hurry back on my account."

Paddington Station on that August Sunday evening, with the sun
streaming through the obscure panes of its roof, the bookstalls shut, and
the few passengers strolling unhurried beside their porters, would have
soothed a mind less agitated than mine. The train was nearly empty. I had my
suitcase put in the corner of a third-class carriage and took a seat in the
dining-car. "First dinner after Reading, sir; about seven o'clock. Can I get
you anything now?" I ordered gin and vermouth; it was brought to me as we
pulled out of the station. The knives and forks set up their regular jingle;
the bright landscape rolled past the windows. But I had no mind for these
smooth things; instead, fear worked like yeast in my thoughts, and the
fermentation brought to the surface, in great gobs of scum, the images of
disaster: a loaded gun held carelessly at a stile, a horse rearing and
rolling over, a shaded pool with a submerged stake, an elm bough falling
suddenly on a still morning, a car at a blind corner; all the catalogue of
threats to civilized life rose and haunted me; I even pictured a homicidal
maniac mouthing in the shadows swinging a length of lead pipe. The
cornfields and heavy woodland sped past, deep in the golden evening, and the
throb of the wheels repeated monotonously in my ears, "You've come too late.
You've come too late. He's dead. He's dead. He's dead."

I dined and changed trains to the local line, and in twilight came to
Melstead Carbury, which was my destination. "Brideshead, sir? Yes, Lady
Julia's in the yard." I recognized her at once; I could not have failed to.
She was sitting at the wheel of an open car.

"You're Mr. Ryder? Jump in." Her voice was Sebastian's and his her
w&y of speaking. "How is he?"

"Sebastian? Oh, he's fine. Have you had dinner? Well, I expect it was
beastly. There's some more at home. Sebastian and I are alone, so we thought
we'd wait for you." "What's happened to him?"
"Didn't he say? I expect he thought you wouldn't come if you knew. He's
cracked a bone in his ankle so small that it hasn't a name. But they X-rayed
it yesterday and told him to keep it up for'a month. It's a great bore to
him, putting out all his plans; he's been making the most enormous fuss. . .
. Everyone else has gone. He tried" to make me stay back with him. Well, I
expect you know how maddeningly pathetic he can be. I almost gave in, and
then I said: 'Surely there must be someone you can get hold of,' and he said
everybody was away or busy and, anyway, no one else would do. But at last he
agreed to try you, and I promised I'd stay if you failed him, so you can
imagine how popular you are with me. I must say it's noble of you to come
all this way at a moment's notice." But as she said it I heard, or thought I
heard, a tiny note of contempt in her voice that I should be so readily
available.

"How did he do it?"

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

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

"I'm terrified of driving at this time of the eve'ning," she said.
"There doesn't seem anyone left at home who can drive a car. Sebastian and I
are practically camping out here. I hope you haven't come expecting a
pompous party." She leaned forward to the locker for a box of cigarettes.

"No thanks."

"Light one for me, will you?"

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

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

"That was Sebastian."

"You seem to let him boss you about a good deal. You shouldn't. It's
very bad for him."
We had turned the corner of the drive now; the colour had died in the
woods and sky and the house seemed painted in grisaille, save for the
central golden square at the open, doors. A man was waiting to take my
luggage.

"Here we are."

She led me up the steps and into the hall, flung her coat on a marble
table, and stooped to fondle a dog which came to greet her. "I wouldn't put
it past Sebastian to have started dinner."

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

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

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

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

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

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

We dined in a room they called "the Painted Parlour." It was a spacious
octagon, later in design than the rest of the house; its walls were adorned
with wreathed medallions, and across its dome prim Pompeian figures stood in
pastoral groups. They and the satin-wood and ormolu furniture, the carpet,
the hanging bronze candelabrum, the mirrors and sconces, were all a single
composition, the design of one illustrious hand. "We usually eat here when
we're alone," said Sebastian, "it's so cosy."

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

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

"Where are you off to?"

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

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

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

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

"Do you? Is she?"

"In looks I mean and the way she talks. I wouldn't love anyone with a
character like mine."
When we had drunk our port I walked beside Sebastian's chair through
the pillared hall to the library, where we sat that night and nearly every
night of the ensuing month. It lay on the side of the house that overlooked
the lakes; the windows were open to the stars and the scented air, to the
indigo and silver, moonlit landscape of the valley and the sound of water
falling in the fountain.

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