"Here at the age of thirty-nine" "I began to be old." "As I lay in that dark hour" "I was aghast to realise that something within me long sickening had quietly died." "I felt as a husband might feel who in the fourth year of his marriage suddenly knew he had no longer any desire or tenderness or esteem for a once beloved wife." "the army and I from the first importunate courtship until now when nothing remained to us except the chill bonds of law and duty and custom." "We were leaving that day and I reflected that whatever scenes of desolation lay ahead of us" "I never feared one more brutal than this." "So on this morning of our move" "I was entirely indifferent to our destination." "I would go on with my drum but I could bring it to nothing more than acquiescence." "When we had marched into this camp in the winter of 1943" "I had brought with me a company of strong and pitiful men." "Word had gone round among them that we were at last in transit for the Middle East." "as the weeks passed and the snow began to clear" "I saw their disappointment change to resignation who by every precept should have put heart into them how could I help them who could so little help myself?" "sir." "Morning Sergeant Major." "sir." "Good." "Has Mr Hooper appeared yet?" "sir." "Has that been entered in the book?" "sir?" "That will do." "sir." "Sergeant Major." "sir." "Where the devil have you been?" "I told you to inspect the lines." "Am I late?" "Sorry." "Had a rush getting my gear together." "That's what you a servant for." "strictly speaking." "he had his own stuff to do." "The trouble with Desmond is that if I get on the wrong side of him he takes it out of me in other ways." "if you're so familiar with him." "Hooper!" "Yes." "all distinguishing marks to be removed." "And what are you wearing all that gear for anyway?" "You're not in the advance party." "I am." "Aren't I?" "Of course you're not." "The orders were changed." "Don't you ever read the company notice board?" "You don't mean they changed it all again?" "There you go." "Typical shambles." "Total inefficiency." "I can tell you." "do you mind inspecting D squad now?" "Righty oh." "And for Christ's sake don't say "Righty oh"." "Sorry." "I do try to remember." "It just slips out." "sir." "Thank you Sergeant Major." "sir." "everything squared up here?" "sir." "Think so?" "You ought to know." "Has that been entered in barrack damages?" "eh?" "I wonder when it would have been if I hadn't seen it." "Aha!" "Just look at that!" "Fine impression that gives to the regiment taking over from us." "Don't you know what sets the standard of a regiment?" "Ryder." "sir." "It's a disgrace." "See that everything here is burned before we leave." "will you send over to the carrier-platoon and tell Captain Brown that the C. O would very much like this ditch cleared up?" "sir." "what were you in civilian life?" "sir." "sir." "You shouldn't really." "sir but you know how it is." "If you get on the wrong side of senior officers they'll take it out of you other ways." "This is top security" "We must be ready to any order." "The important thing is where we go now." "It doesn't make sense." "That's the third time we've copped it this week." "They're picking on you old boy." "by the way?" "The children sound a bit difficult." "Jennifer says they always turn into monsters the minute my leave's over." "That young officer over there." "Isn't he one of yours?" "Yes sir." "sir." "His hair needs cutting." "He's in no shape to go to a new HQ." "sir." "that lets down the regiment." "sir." "I'll see that it's done." "My God!" "The officers they send us now!" "In my late regiment if a young officer was intending the other subalterns would bloody well have cut his hair for him." "Ryder." "I do not intend to have my professional reputation compromised by the slack appearance of a few temporary officers." "Corporal Deakin." "Get a pair of scissors!" "Lieutenant James!" "Sir?" "Cut that man's hair for him." "Sir?" "I said cut that man's hair for him!" "sir." "I don't quite understand." "sir?" "It is your commander officer's wish and that's the best kind of order I know." "Go on." "Getting tidied up!" "Mr Hooper." "sir." "Give them to lieutenant James." "Can't you understand an order?" "Get on with it!" "Go on." "Start cutting it." "Carry on." "Keep at it." "Cut it!" "Company!" "Company slope arms!" "Company will move to the left in threes." "Left turn!" "quick march!" "left!" "that's all right." "It's not the sort of thing that used to happen in this regiment." "no hard feelings." "I can take a bit of sport." "any idea where we're off to?" "None." "Do you think it's the real thing?" "No." "Just another flap?" "Yes." "Everyone's been saying we're for it." "I don't know what to think really it happens so often." "I wouldn't argue with that." "Three times in the last six months." "all this drill and training" "Hooper." "There'll be plenty for everyone in time." "just enough to say I've been in it." "What the hell is going on?" "We are being sprayed by liquid mustard gas." "can you see if the windows are shut?" "Check there are no casualties." "And write a short situation report." "sir." "Take the right fork." "You'll see the dump post off the road." "can I have a lift?" "It's not a bad camp apparently." "Big private house with two or three lakes." "Looks as if we might get some duck if we're lucky." "Excellent." "Hooper." "get it moving!" "Sergeant." "Does anyone know where we are?" "but I did hear someone mentions the name of the house." "It's a place called Brideshead." "You can see it from over there." "Huge great barrack of a place." "Sergeant." "Carry on." "at the double!" "Come on!" "It was as though someone had switched off the wireless and a voice that had been bawling in my ears incessantly had been suddenly cut short." "An immense silence followed." "Empty at first filled with a multitude and long forgotten sounds." "For he had spoken a name that was so familiar to me." "that at it's mere sound the phantoms of those haunted late years began to take flight." "Hooper?" "B company relieved us." "I've just sent the chaps off to get cleaned up." "Good." "Brigade HQ are coming here next week." "I've just had a snoop around the house." "Very ornate I'd call it." "there's a sort of RC church attached to it." "I looked in and there was a kind of service going on just a padre and one old man." "more in your line than mine." "out the back." "All rocks and carved old men with trumpets." "You never saw such a thing." "I did." "I've been here before." "you'll know all about it then." "Ryder." "I had been there before." "I knew all about it." "with Sebastian more than 20 years ago too" "I had come not knowing my destination." "was still a city of aquatint." "When the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas she exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth." "It was this cloistral hush that gave our laughter its resonance and carried it still joyously over the intervening clamor." "It was Eights Week." "Here discordantly came a rabble of womankind." "Echoes of the intruders penetrated every corner and my own college was no exception." "We were giving a ball." "Mr Ryder." "Thank you." "Gentlemen who haven't got ladies are asked to eat out as far as possible in the next few days." "Lunt." "they say." "Huh!" "What a chance!" "I've got to buy a pincushion for the ladies' cloakroom." "What do they want with dancing?" "I don't see the reason in it." "There has never been dancing before in Eights Week." "As if the teas and the river weren't enough!" "it's all on account of the war." "It couldn't have happened but for that." "wine in the evening or one or two gentlemen" "I can see the reasoning." "But not dancing." "It came in with them back from the war." "They were too old and they didn't know and they wouldn't learn." "Take my word." "And there's some that goes dancing with the town at the Masonic you see here's Lord Sebastian." "not with pincushions to get." "what in the world's happening at your college?" "Is there a circus?" "I've seen everything except elephants." "I must say the whole of Oxford is becoming very peculiar suddenly." "Last night it was pullulating with women." "out of danger." "a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Payraguey so don't pretend." "It's heaven with strawberries." "I shall go and get my things." "And bring some money in case we see anything we want to buy." "Yes." "Does anyone feel the same emotion for a butterfly or a flower as he feels for a cathedral or a picture?" "I do." "Ready?" "Yes." "It's over there." "Isn't it early?" "Yes!" "The women are still doing whatever the women do before they come downstairs." "Sloth has undone them." "We're away." "Where are we going?" "To see a friend." "Take care of Aloysius." "Make sure he isn't sick." "Where did you get the car?" "Property of a very gloomy man called Hardcastle." "Do please return the bits to him if I kill myself." "I'm not very good at driving." "God bless Hardcastle!" "Whoever he may be!" "He was supposed to be coming with us." "Well I did tell him ten o'clock and when he was still in bed at 8 I thought well he's not very eager." "Much kinder to go without him." "It's a pity neither of us can sing." "turned the car into a cart track and stopped." "We ate the strawberries and drank the wine." "they were delicious together." "The fumes of the sweet golden wine seemed to lift us a finger's breadth above the turf and hold us suspended." "Just the place to bury a crock of gold." "I should like to bury something precious in every place that I've been happy." "So that when I'm old and ugly and miserable" "I could come back and dig it up and remember." "This was my third term at University but I date my Oxford life from my first meeting with Sebastian which happened by chance in the middle of the term before." "We were in different colleges and came from different schools." "So I might well have spent my three or four years in the University and never have met him but for the chance of his getting drunk one evening in my college and of my having ground floor rooms in the front quadrangle." "I had been warned of the dangers of these rooms when I first came up thought me a subject for detailed guidance." "So what are you reading?" "History." "it's a perfectly respectable school." "The very worst is English Literature." "The next worst is Modern Greats." "You want either a first or a fourth." "There is no value in anything between." "Time spent on a good second is time thrown away." "You should go to the best lectures" "Arkwright on Demesthenes for instance irrespective of whether they are in your school or not." "Clothes." "Dress as you do in a country house." "Never wear a tweed jacket and flannel trousers always wear a suit." "you get better cut and longer credit." "sir." "Don't treat Dons like schoolmasters." "Treat them as you would the vicar at home." "Clubs." "Join the Carlton now and the Grid at the beginning of your second year." "If you want to run for the Union and it's not a bad idea make your reputation outside first at the Chatham or the Canning." "and keep clear of Boar's Hill." "Charles." "Good morning." "And friends do watch the people you make friends with." "You'll find you spend your second year getting rid of the undesirable ones you made in your first." "And beware of Anglo-Catholics." "They are all sodomites with unpleasant accents." "steer clear of all religious groups." "They do nothing but harm." "was this here when you arrived?" "it's mine." "I put it up." "It's Van Gogh." "Really" "This is very pretty." "I must be off." "I've got a JCR meeting one last point change your rooms." "But I was lucky to get them." "Ground floor rooms on the Front Quad." "Terribly dangerous." "I've seen men ruined." "People start dropping in." "They leave their gowns here and pick them up on their way to hall." "Then you'll start giving them sherry." "Before you know where you are you'll have opened a free bar to all the undesirables in the college." "I do not know that I ever consciously followed any of this advice." "I certainly never changed my rooms." "There were gilly flowers growing below the windows which on summer evenings filled them with fragrance." "Charles." "Can't you see?" "the whole argument of significant form stands or falls by volume?" "Precisely." "If you allow Cezanne to represent a third dimension in his two-dimensional canvas then you must allow Landseer his gleam of loyalty in the Spaniel's eye." "and an embryo don a man of solid reading and childlike humor and a small circle of college intellectuals who maintained a middle course of culture between the flamboyant aesthetes and the proletarian scholars." "It was by this circle that I found myself adopted during my first term." "They provided the kind of company" "I had enjoyed in the sixth form at school and for which the sixth form had prepared me." "But even in the earliest days when the whole business of living at Oxford with rooms of my own and my own cheque book was a source of excitement" "I felt at heart that this was not all which Oxford had to offer." "I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him." "That was unavoidable." "For from his first week he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty which was arresting and his eccentricities of behavior which seemed to know no bounds." "My first sight of him was in the door of Germer's and" "I was struck less by his looks than by the fact that he was carrying a large teddy-bear." "Sheer exhibitionism." "That was Lord Sebastian Flyte." "A most amusing young gentleman." "Apparently." "sir." "He's the Marquis of Marchmain's second boy." "went down last term." "quite like an old man." "What do you suppose Lord Sebastian wanted?" "A hair brush for his teddy-bear." "It had to have very stiff bristles." "Not Lord Sebastian said but to threaten him with a spanking when he was sulky." "He bought a very nice one with an ivory back and he's going to have Aloysius engraved on it." "That's the teddy-bear's name." "who in his time had had ample chance to tire of undergraduate fantasy was plainly captivated by him." "remained censorious." "And subsequent glimpses of him did not soften me who was reading Freud had a number of technical terms to cover everything." "Nor when at last we met were the circumstances propitious." "Once we reduce chance to a mathematical formula we may subject it to the rules of probability." "therefore if you see what I mean must seem a solution of quite impregnable logic." "Thank you very much." "There was a question?" "I wanted simply to ask if the laws of mathematics can be understood by reason." "I think I can anticipate your question." "the chances of exist then the workings of chance" "must be explained by rational processes." "If we believe that God created this rational world then it is perfectly possible to believe" "Who are those awful people?" "What are they doing in there?" "Looks like a bloody prayer meeting to me." "if God is ultimately responsible for formulating may He not fulfill his purpose by using the infinite instances which we call chance." "Shouldn't we say then that chance is the very basic principle of our life in this rational universe?" "old man." "I trust that you will forgive my friend." "The wines were too various." "It was neither the quality nor the quantity that was at fault." "It was the mixture." "Grasp that and you have the very root of the matter." "To understand all is to forgive all." "Yes." "A couple of jugs of mulled claret and this has to happen." "could you?" "Them that can't keep it down are better without it." "It wasn't one of my party." "It was someone from out of college." "whoever it was." "There's five shillings on the sideboard." "So I saw and thank you." "But I'd rather not have the money and not have the mess in the morning." "With the restoration of the Monarch the Age of Puritanism was finally vanquished" "I took my gown and left him to his task." "I still frequented the Lecture Room." "hitherto unknown appeared upon the English stage for the first time in the history of English drama." "There was an air of relaxation in the land again." "this novel feeling of unaccustomed freedom manifested itself in a remarkable outburst of artistic creativity." "Have you seen your room?" "sir." "He left that note for you." "I am very contrite." "Aloysius won't speak to me so please come to luncheon today." "Sebastian Flyte." "sir." "I am sure it's a pleasure to clean up after him." "sir?" "I told Mr Collins and they wanted to take their commons in here with you." "Lunt." "Lunching out." "if you'd care to." "thank you sir." "There is no Mrs. Lunt." "for it was foreign ground and there was a tiny priggish warning voice in my ear which in the tones of Collins told me it was seemly to hold back." "But I was in search of love in those days and I went full of curiosity at last" "I should find that low door in the wall others I knew which opened on an enclosed which was somewhere not overlooked by any window in the heart of that grey city." "I've just counted them." "There are five each and two over so I'm having the two." "I'm unaccountably hungry today." "I placed myself unreservedly in the hands of that obliging little chemist in the High and now I feel so drugged that I've almost begun to believe that the whole of yesterday evening was a dream." "Please don't wake me up." "Hello." "Hello." "Let's have some champagne." "Thank you for the flowers." "My room looks like a hot house." "My beastly scout has put Aloysius to bed which is probably just as well since there won't be any plovers' eggs for him." "Hobson hates Aloysius?" "I wish I had a scout like yours." "He was perfectly sweet to me this morning when some people might have been quite strict." "Only one piece last night." "There was the most frightful rumpus outside my staircase." "I assumed it must be you." "Nonsense." "We were quiet as mice." "Damn close thing though." "As each guest came into the room he made first for the plovers' eggs then noticed Sebastian and then myself with a polite lack of curiosity which seemed to say" "We should not dream of being so offensive as to suggest that you never met us before!" "plovers' eggs." "The first I've seen this year." "Where did you get them?" "Mummy sends them from Brideshead." "They always lay early for her." "We were eating the Lobster Thermidor when the last guest arrived." "I couldn't get away before." "I was lunching with my preposterous tutor." "He thought it very odd my leaving when I did." "I told him I had to change for footer." "Come and sit down." "I'm afraid I've already eaten your eggs." "you don't know Charles Ryder." "Hello." "No." "Anthony Blanche." "But I have the most delicious feeling I'm going to." "you know." "the news that you mislaid it." "You put my own grandes passions quite in the shade." "you appalling dago?" "If you're going to be horrid about my cosmopolitan upbringing" "I shall tell how you borrowed three hundred francs to spend a torrid night with that elderly drab in Le Touquet." "It was a niggardly sum to pay for her trouble." "And what a trouble." "don't look so serious." "You don't mean to say that you let Boy have a go at your Duchess?" "My affair with the Duchess of Vincennes was on an altogether higher plane than any of you hobbledehoys can conceive." "Do you know what it was that cemented our love?" "We used the same colored varnish for our toenails." "as he guesses." "she is bored and tired endeavors to engage her in caresses" "if undesired." "he assaults at once." "Exploring hands encounter no defense and makes a welcome of indifference." "And I Tiresias have foresuffered all enacted on this same divan or bed." "I who have sat by Thebes below the wall and walked among the lowest of the dead." "and gropes his way finding the stairs unlit." "How I've surprised them!" "All boatmen are Grace Darlings to me." "What a boy certainly." "Too much." "Something will have to be done about that damn nancy boy." "You can count me out." "I should like to stick you full of barbed arrows like a pin cushion." "I think it's perfectly brilliant of Sebastian to have discovered you." "Where do you lurk?" "I shall come down your burrow and chivvy you out like an old stoat." "Au revoir." "Well too." "Thank you very much." "Have some more Cointreau." "Then I must go to the Botanical Gardens." "Why?" "To see the ivy." "I've never been to the Botanical Gardens." "Charles." "What a lot you have to learn." "There are more kinds of ivy than I ever knew existed." "I don't know where I should be without the Botanical Gardens." "When at length I returned to my rooms" "I found them exactly as I had left them that morning but I detected a jejune air that had not irked me before." "Nothing except the golden daffodils seemed to be real." "I was never very fond of that myself." "I suppose you'll be wanting me to get rid of it next though where I'd have room for it is nobody's business." "That day was the beginning of my friendship with Sebastian." "it came about that morning in June that I was lying beside him in the shade of the high elms watching the smoke from his lips drift into the branches." "You still haven't told me where we're going." "Charles." "I told you." "To see a friend." "But who's the friend?" "Name of Hawkins." "But who is Hawkins?" "Wait and see." "Well?" "Well?" "What a place to live in." "It's where my family live." "Don't worry." "They're away." "You won't have to meet them." "But I should like to." "dancing." "Everything is shut up." "We'd better go in this way." "I want you to meet Nanny Hawkins." "That's what we've come for." "this is a surprise." "Who's this?" "I don't think I know him." "Nanny." "A friend of mine from Oxford." "Mrs. Hawkins?" "How do you do?" "You've come just the right time." "Julia's here for the day." "She was up with me nearly all the morning telling me about London." "Such a time they're all having." "You must have just missed her." "It's the Conservative women." "She won't be long she's leaving immediately after her speech before the tea." "Nanny." "dear;" "it'll be such a surprise to her seeing you though she ought to wait for the tea." "I told her it's what the Conservative women come for." "what's the news?" "Are you studying hard at your books?" "Nanny." "like your brother." "though." "Did you see that piece about Julia in the paper?" "She brought it down for me." "Not that it's nearly good enough of her but what it says is very nice." "The lovely daughter whom Lady Marchmain is bringing out this season witty as well as ornamental the most popular debutante." "though it was a shame to cut her hair." "Such a lovely head of hair she had just like her Ladyship's." "I said to Father Phipps it's not natural." "He said" "Sebastian and the old woman talked long." "It was a charming room." "a collection of small presents which had been brought to her at various times by her children." "The souvenirs of many holidays." "it was time for tea." "I'm afraid we can't stay for tea." "We really must get back." "Oh." "Julia will be upset when she hears." "It would have been such a surprise for her." "love." "Charles." "Goodbye." "Goodbye." "she does lead such a dull life." "I've a good mind to bring her to Oxford to live with me only she'd always be trying to send me to church." "We must go quickly before my sister gets back." "her or me?" "I'm ashamed of myself." "I'm not going to let you get mixed up with my family." "They're so madly charming All my life they've taking things away from me." "If they once got hold they'd make you their friend not mine and I won't let them." "All right." "I'm perfectly content." "But aren't we going to see some more of the house?" "It's all shut up." "We came to see Nanny." "On Queen Alexandra's day it's all open for a shilling." "Come and look if you want to." "it's all like this you see." "Nothing to see." "A few pretty things I'd like to show you some day." "Not now." "But there is the chapel." "You must see that." "This way." "Why do you do that?" "Just good manners." "you needn't on my account." "You wanted to do sight-seeing." "What do you think of this?" "Golly!" "Papa had it restored for Mama" "as a wedding present." "Julia." "We only just got away in time." "I'm sorry." "I'm afraid I wasn't very nice this afternoon." "Brideshead often has that effect on me." "But I had to take you to see Nanny." "I don't keep asking you questions about your family." "Neither do I about yours." "But you look so inquisitive." "Well you're so mysterious about them." "I hoped I was mysterious about everything." "I'm rather curious about people's families it's not a thing I know much about." "There's only my father and myself." "And aunt used to keep an eye on me but my father drove her abroad." "You don't know what you've been saved." "There are lots of us." "Look them up in Debrett." "I had lived a lonely childhood and a boyhood straightened by war and overshadowed by bereavement." "To the hard bachelordom of English adolescence the premature dignity and authority of the school system" "I had added a sad and grim strain of my own." "that summer term with Sebastian it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known a happy childhood." "And though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins there was something of a nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence." "Towards the end of that term I took my first exams." "It was necessary to pass if I was to remain at Oxford." "And pass I did after a week in which I forbad Sebastian my rooms and sat up to a late hour with iced black coffee and charcoal biscuits cramming myself with neglected texts." "I remember no syllable of them now but the other more ancient love which I acquired that term will be with me in one shape or another till my last hour." "was also the occasion of the last visit and grand remonstrance of my cousin Jasper." "I was just free of the schools having taken the last paper of History previous the day before." "Jasper's sub-fusc suit and white tie proclaimed him still in the thick of it." "air of one who fears he has failed to do himself full justice of Pindar's Orphisms." "Duty alone had brought him to my rooms to me." "I don't know what sort of allowance my uncle makes you but you must be spending double." "Is that paid for?" "Or these?" "Or this peculiarly noisome object?" "I had to pay cash for the skull." "And your clothes." "Your present get up seems an unhappy compromise between the correct wear for a theatrical garden party in Maidenhead and a glee singing competition in a garden suburb." "I'm sorry if it disturbs you." "And drink!" "No one minds a man getting tight once or twice a term." "on certain occasions." "my dear Charles are constantly seen drunk in the middle of the afternoon!" "Jasper." "I expected you to make mistakes we all do." "I got in with some thoroughly objectionable" "Christian Union men who ran a mission to hop-pickers my dear Charles hook line and sinker to the very worst set in the University." "So that's what's worrying you." "Anthony Blanche there's a man there's absolutely no excuse for." "I don't particularly like him myself." "he's certainly always hanging about here." "You realise the stiffer element in college don't like it?" "They won't stand for him at the House." "They threw him in Mercury last night." "I heard." "You may think that living in digs but I hear things." "I hear too much." "I find I've become a figure of mockery on your account at the Dining Club." "Then there's that chap Sebastian Flyte" "I don't know." "was a very sound fellow well he looks odd to me and gets himself talked about." "Jasper." "I know it must be embarrassing for you." "I happen to like this bad set." "I like getting drunk at luncheon." "And though I haven't quite spent double my allowance yet" "I undoubtedly shall by the end of term." "Will you join me?" "I usually have a glass of champagne about this time." "you might meet the despicable Mr Blanche." "I'm dining with him tonight." "thank you." "I have Greek History and Morals on Monday." "So my cousin Jasper despaired." "Looking back there is little I would have left undone or done otherwise." "Perhaps now I could match my cousin Jasper's game cock maturity with a sturdier fowl." "I could tell him that to know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom." "Two for you and two for me." "Yum-yum." "my dear Charles you are not going to have sherry." "You're going to try this delicious concoction instead." "What is it?" "Brandy Alexander." "You don't like it?" "Then I'll drink it for you." "One." "Two." "Three." "Four." "Down the little red lane they go." "How the students stare!" "Anthony." "I'm a little out of sympathy with the undergraduates for the moment." "That's why we're dining at Thame." "Who else is coming?" "No one." "I've got you to myself tonight." "luckily doesn't appeal to the hearties of the Bullingdon." "You heard what they did to me last night?" "I did It's too naughty." "the first time that Anthony had been ducked." "But the incident seemed much on his mind." "I didn't want them to start getting rough sweet clodhoppers if you knew anything of sexual psychology you would know hat nothing could give me keener pleasure than to be manhandled by you meaty boys ecstasy of the naughtiest kind." "If any of you then come and seize me." "you wish to satisfy some obscure and less easily classified libido then come with me quietly to the water." "you know it really was rather refreshing." "So I sported there and struck some attitudes." "la fatigue du Nord!" "Now you can't imagine an unpleasantness like can you?" "I can't." "No." "Sebastian has charm Such charm." "you haven't known him as long as I have." "Anthony?" "but in those days people used to say he was a little bitch." "The rest of us were constantly being beaten on the most frivolous pretexts." "But never Sebastian." "I can see him now you know." "but not Sebastian." "rather a stubborn one at the back of his neck?" "he did." "Narcissus with one pustule." "He and I were both Catholics so we used to go to mass together." "He used to spend such a time in the confessional" "I used to wonder what he had to say never quiet at least he never got punished." "Perhaps he was just being charming through the grills." "I told all about you." "He is absolutely agape." "you are that very rare thing." "An Artist." "But who recognizes you?" "The other day I told Sebastian that you drew like a young Ingres." "And do you know what he said?" "too." "but of course he's rather more modern." "so amusing." "Do you wish Sebastian was with us?" "No." "Of course you do." "And do I?" "I wonder." "How our thoughts do run on that little bundle of charm to be sure." "Charles." "at very considerable expense simply to talk about myself and I find" "I talk of no one except Sebastian." "It's odd because there's really no mystery about him except how he came to be born of such a very sinister family." "It's when one gets to the parents that a bottomless pit opens." "such a pair." "They were married for fifteen years or so." "And then Lord Marchmain went off to war." "but formed a connection with a highly talented dancer." "Why doesn't she divorce him?" "you would think that old reprobate had tortured her flung her out of doors stuffed and eaten her children and gone frolicking about wreathed in all the flowers my dear a blood sucker." "You can see the tooth marks on all her victims." "It's witchcraft." "There's no other explanation." "we mustn't altogether blame Sebastian." "For what?" "For seeming a little insipid." "you don't blame Sebastian do you Charles?" "except particularly as he isn't very well endowed in the top story." "could we Charles much as we love him?" "have you ever heard Sebastian say anything you have remembered for more than five minutes?" "when I hear him talk I am reminded of that nauseating picture "Bubbles"." "Conversation should be like juggling up go the balls and plates glittering in the footlights." "But when dear Sebastian speaks it is like a little sphere of soap sud drifting off the end of an old clay pipe and then" "vanished with nothing left at all." "Nothing." "Anthony?" "What's the time?" "It's after nine o'clock." "I let you lie in." "I didn't think you'd be going to corporate communion." "Lunt." "It was the last Sunday of term." "The last of the year." "and during my walk" "I heard the change ringing cease and all over the town give place to the single chime which warned the city that service was about to start." "None but churchgoers seemed abroad that morning" "St Aroysius all in the summer sunshine going to the temples of their race." "Four proud infidels alone proclaimed their dissent four Indians from the gates of Balliol making for the river." "through a world of piety" "I made my way to Sebastian." "Hello." "I've been to mass." "I knew Mummy'd been writing to Monseignor Bell." "He's asked me to dinner twice last week so I sat bang in the front and absolutely shouted the Hail Mary's." "I'm glad that's over." "How was dinner with Antoine?" "What did you talk about?" "he did most of the talking." "That's not unusual." "Did you know him at Eton?" "Hardly." "He was sacked in my first half." "Though I do remember seeing him about a bit." "Did he go to church with you?" "I don't think so." "Why?" "Has he met any of your family?" "how very peculiar you're being today." "No." "I don't suppose so." "So why all this interest?" "I was trying to find out how much truth there was in what he said last night." "Very little I should think." "That's his great charm." "you may think it charming." "I think it's devilish." "he spent most of last evening trying to turn me against you?" "And he almost succeeded." "Did he?" "How silly." "Aloysius wouldn't have approved of that at all." "you pompous old bear?" "The long vacation came and Sebastian disappeared into that other life of his where I was not asked to follow." "instead forlorn and regretful." "I returned to my father's house without plans and without money." "I faced a bleak prospect." "I was overdrawn at the Bank" "I could draw no more." "they never told me you were here." "father." "Did you have a very exhausting journey?" "They gave you tea?" "Yes." "Mrs. Abel brought me some." "You are well?" "I have just made a somewhat audacious purchase from Sonerachein's." "A terra-cotta bull of the 5th century." "I was examining it and forgot your arrival." "Was the carriage very full?" "No." "I managed to get a corner seat." "Good." "Hayter brought you the evening paper." "of course." "Such a lot of nonsense." "What do you like to drink?" "what have we for Mr Charles to drink?" "There's some whisky." "There's whisky." "Perhaps you like something else?" "What else have we?" "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." "father." "It's a very long vacation." "we used to go to what were called reading parties always in mountainous areas." "Why?" "Why should alpine scenery be thought conducive to study?" "I had thought of putting in some time at an art school." "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 "Sketching club"." "pepper-and-salt knickerbockers free love." "Such a lot of nonsense." "I expect they still go on." "You might try that." "father is money." "Oh." "I shouldn't worry about a thing like that at your age." "I've run rather short." "Yes?" "I don't know how I'm going to get through the next couple of months." "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?" "Stoney-broke?" "On the rocks?" "In Queer Street?" "let us just say you are in Queer Street and leave it at that." "but what do you suggest I should do?" "Your cousin Melchior was imprudent in his investments and got into a very queer street." "He went to Australia." "Hayter." "I've dropped my book." "During the sultry week that followed" "I saw little of my father during the day." "He spent hours on end in the study." "Now and again" "I would hear him go out sometimes for half an hour or less." "Sometimes for a whole day." "so there you are." "splendid." "very warm." "Yes." "His errands were never explained." "The dinner table was our battlefield." "you might talk to me." "I've had a very exhausting day." "I was looking forward to a little conversation." "father." "What shall we talk about?" "Cheer me up." "Take me out of myself." "Tell me about the new plays." "But I haven't been to any." "you really should." "It isn't natural in a young man to spend all his evenings at home." "I haven't much money to spare for theatregoing." "you must not allow money to become your master in this way." "your cousin Melchior was part-owner of a musical piece." "It was one of his few successful ventures." "You should go to the play as part of your education." "I received one letter from Sebastian." "and enveloped in heavy black-coroneted and black bordered." "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." "Seems I am off to Venice to stay with 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." "Strife was internecine during the next fortnight. for my father had greater reserves to draw on." "a weapon came to hand." "I met an old acquaintance of school days named Jorkins." "I never had much liking for Jorkins but I greeted him with enthusiasm and asked him to dinner." "My father was quick to retaliate." "He made a little fantasy for himself that Jorkins should be an American." "Mr Jorkins." "it isn't far." "Really only a matter of minutes." "Ah." "Science annihilates distance." "You are over here on business?" "I'm in business if that's what you mean." "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 a cropper." "You find his misfortune the subject for mirth?" "Or perhaps you were unfamiliar with the word I used." "You no doubt would say folded up." "I don't know that" "I mean" "I suppose with your standards you find our life here very parochial." "My father was master of the situation." "Throughout the evening he played one-sided parlour game with him explaining any peculiarly English terms translating pounds into dollars 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." "I mean if" "Only once I thought my father had gone too far." "I'm afraid living in London you must sadly miss your national game." "My national game?" "Cricket!" "Never mind." "I've decided to diversify Charles' evenings at home." "Tonight I have a surprise." "I've asked a few young friends over for a little music-making." "you know the Orme-Herricks?" "Did you know that Miss Orme-Herrick was a student of the cello?" "She's going to play for us tonight after dinner!" "Charles." "Charles." "I really have to go" "Please." "father." "He has to be up very early in the morning." "Mr Jorkins." "I hope that you will pay us another visit next time you cross the herring pond." "and thank you." "I'm so sorry I have to leave." "father." "Such a versatile young man." "soon." "Jorkins." "What very dull friends I have!" "without the spur of your presence" "I would never have roused myself to invite them." "I have been very neglectful about entertaining lately." "Now you are paying me a long visit" "I will have many such evenings." "You liked Miss 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 among their happiest evenings." "That young foreigner behaved atrociously I thought." "Where can I have met him?" "where can I have met her?" "But the obligations of hospitality must be observed." "you shall not be dull!" "a telegram arrived from Sebastian which threw me into a state of fevered anxiety." "Father" "You'll never guess where I've spent the day." "I've been to the zoo." "It was most agreeable." "The animals seem to like the sunshine so much." "I have to leave at once." "Yes?" "he's gravely injured." "I must go to him." "There's a train in about half an hour." "come at once." "Sebastian." "I'm sorry you are upset." "Reading this message" "I do not think that the accident can be quite so serious otherwise it would hardly be signed by the victim himself." "he may well be fully conscious but blind or paralyzed 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?" "he is a great friend." "but I should not go tearing off to his death bed on a warm Sunday afternoon." "I rather doubt whether Lady Orme-Herrick would welcome me." "I see you have no such doubts." "my dear boy." "But do not hurry back on my account." "Fear worked like yeast in my thoughts." "And the fermentation brought to the surface the images of disaster." "held carelessly at a stile a horse rearing and rolling over a shaded pool with a submerged stake 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." "sir." "sir?" "Yes." "Lady Julia's waiting in the yard." "Thank you." "You're Mr Ryder?" "Yes." "Jump in." "he's fine." "on the train." "I expect it was beastly." "There's some more at home." "Sebastian and I are alone so we thought we'd wait for you." "But what happened to him?" "Didn't he say?" "I expect he thought you wouldn't come if you knew." "He cracked a bone in his foot so tiny that it hasn't a name." "But they X-rayed it yesterday and told him to keep it up for a month." "putting out all his plans." "He's been making the most enormous fuss." "Everybody else has gone." "At first he tried to make me" "I expect you know how maddeningly pathetic he can be." "surely there must be someone you can get hold of?" "And he said everybody was away no one else would do." "But at last he agreed to try you so you can imagine how popular you are with me." "I must say I think it's noble of you to come all this way at a moment's notice." "How did he do it?" "playing croquet." "He lost his temper and tripped over a hoop." "Not a very honorable scar." "that sitting beside her" "I was confused by the double illusion of familiarity and strangeness." "I hate driving at this time of the day." "There doesn't seem anyone left at home who can drive a car." "Sebastian and I are practically camping out." "thanks." "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 around a good deal." "You shouldn't." "It's very bad for him." "Here we are." "I wouldn't have put it past Sebastian to have started dinner." "Thank you." "darling." "Wilcox." "I've collected your chum." "I thought you were dying." "I thought so too." "The pain was excruciating." "Wilcox would give us champagne tonight?" "I hate champagne and Mr Ryder has already had dinner." "Mister Ryder?" "Mister Ryder?" "Charles drinks champagne at all hours." "I can't get and that gives me a craving for champagne." "Which way?" "This way." "Dinner was served in the Red Dining Room." "I ate a peach and told them of the war with my father." "you must miss" "What national game?" "of course." "I really think he's sometimes quite mad." "He sounds a perfect poppet to me." "And now I'm going to leave you boys." "Where are you off to?" "The nursery." "I promised Nanny a last game of halma." "Dear Nanny Hawkins." "She lives entirely for pleasure." "Mr Ryder and goodbye." "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 tonight." "I don't think she cares for me." "I don't think she cares for anyone very much." "I love her." "She's so like me." "Do you?" "Is she?" "and the way she talks." "I wouldn't love anyone with a character like mine." "we're going to have a heavenly time alone." "I saw Julia drive from the forecourt and disappear" "I felt a sense of liberation and peace such as I was to know when after a night of unrest the sirens sounded the "All Clear"." "I believed myself very close to heaven during those languid days at Brideshead." "It is thus I like to remember Sebastian as he was that summer when we wandered alone through that enchanted palace." "Is the dome by Vanburgh?" "It looks later." "don't be such a tourist." "What does it matter when it was built if it's pretty?" "It's the sort of thing that interests me." "I thought I'd cured you of all that." "The terrible Mr Collins." "Sebastian in his wheelchair spinning down the box-edged walks of the kitchen gardens in search of alpine strawberries and warm figs." "Propelling himself through the succession of hot houses from scent to scent and climate to climate to choose orchids for our buttonholes." "It was an aesthetic education to live within those walls." "as a schoolboy" "I used to bicycle round the neighboring parishes rubbing brasses and photographing fonts" "I had nursed a love of architecture but my sentiments at heart were insular and medieval." "This was my conversion to the Baroque." "Why is this house called a castle?" "Because it used to be one until they moved it." "What do you mean?" "Just that." "down by the village." "Then when they took a fancy to the valley they pulled the castle down and carted it stone by stone up here and built a new house." "aren't you?" "I couldn't live anywhere else." "just at the moment it is but usually it's full of ravening beasts." "If only it could be like this always always summer" "The fruit always ripe And Aloysius always in a good temper." "Charles!" "Charles!" "Aloysius!" "Are you alright?" "How's the ankle?" "very funny." "Come on." "I suppose you'll be in bed for months now." "One day in a cupboard we found a box of oil paints." "Mummy bought these paints." "Someone told her that you couldn't appreciate the beauty of the world unless you tried to paint it." "Sebastian gave me the idea of decorating the Garden Room." "She couldn't draw at all." "The colours in the tubes were very bright but every time Mummy mixed them they came out a kind of khaki." "you're ahead of me anyway." "Charles!" "You do that every single time!" "It's the wrong one." "I knew little of oil painting and learned its ways as I worked." "and the happy mood of the moment the brush seemed to do what was wanted of it and in a week it was finished." "Charles." "will we?" "One day we went down to the cellars with Wilcox and saw the empty bays which had once held a vast store of wine." "A lot of the old wine just wants drinking up." "We should have laid down the 18's and 20's by now." "Her Ladyship says to ask Lord Brideshead and he says to ask his Lordship and his Lordship says to ask the lawyers." "That's how we get low." "I know there's enough to last ten years." "But what happens then?" "That's what I want to know." "Wilcox welcomed our interest." "We had bottles brought up from every bin and it was during those tranquil evenings with Sebastian that I first made a real acquaintance with wine." "first warm the glass gently at a candle flame." "Fill it a third high." "Chateau Lafitte 1899." "Swirl the wine gently round the glass." "I have burgundy in my hand." "Have you just poured this?" "I have claret in my hand." "This is burgundy." "This is burgundy!" "I know this is burgundy." "Yes." "This was claret." "A glass that inopportunely dropped out of my hand." "This legless glass." "This my glass." "have another biscuit." "No." "This is claret." "This is a king of clarets." "Definitely a brother" "Good man!" "Up to the light breathe it in." "It's like a flute by still water." "Ought we to be drunk every night?" "Yes" "I think we should." "I think we should too." "a neighboring priest called to say mass." "Sebastian's faith was an enigma to me at the time but not one that I felt particularly concerned to solve." "like his teddy bear." "Father Phipps." "He kept me back half an hour after Mass talking about cricket." "please." "It's so difficult being a Catholic." "Does it make much difference to you?" "Of course." "All the time." "I can't say that I've noticed it." "Are you struggling against temptation?" "You don't seem to me much more virtuous than me." "much wickeder." "Well then?" "make me good but not yet?" "'" "I should think." "I do" "All the time." "But it's not that." "another naughty scoutmaster." "I suppose they try and make you believe a lot of nonsense?" "Is it nonsense?" "I wish it were." "It sometimes seems particularly sensible to me." "you can't seriously believe it all." "Can't I?" "I mean about Christmas and the star and the ox and the ass and the three kings." "Oh yes." "I believe all that." "It's a lovely idea." "But you can't believe things because they're lovely ideas." "I do." "That's how I believe." "don't be a bore." "I'm trying to read about this woman in Hull who's been using an instrument." "You started the subject." "I was just getting interested." "I'll never mention it again." "when our peace was disturbed on the occasion of the annual Agricultural Fair." "which seemed to have slept awoke to a flurry of activity came down to preside." "my brother." "Now he's here I think we should stay out of the way." "He's in his element today." "He's a very big part of the Agricultural Show." "but he's not." "If you only knew." "only it never comes out at all." "He's all twisted inside." "He wanted to be a priest you know." "I didn't." "I think he still does." "He nearly became a Jesuit." "It was awful for Mummy." "She couldn't exactly try and stop him but of course it was the last thing she wanted." "imagine what people would have said "The eldest son!" "It's not even as if it were me." "And poor Papa." "The Church had been enough trouble to him without that happening." "I wonder if I'd have been like that if I'd gone to Stoneyhurst." "but Papa went abroad before" "I was old enough." "The first thing he insisted upon was my going to Eton." "Has your father given up religion?" "in a way." "He only took it up when he married Mummy." "When he went off he left it behind with a mistress." "You must meet him." "He's a very nice man." "Charles." "we're a mixed family religiously." "Brideshead and Cordelia are both fervent Catholics." "she's very happy." "Julia and I are both semi-heathens." "I am happy." "I rather think Julia isn't." "Mummy is popularly believed to be a saint and Papa is excommunicated." "I wouldn't know which of them were happy." "happiness doesn't seem to have much to do with it." "And that's all I want." "I wish I liked Catholics more." "They seem just like everyone else." "that's exactly what they're not where they're so few" "it's not just that they're a clique." "Everything they think is important is different from other people." "I mean they try and cover it up but it comes out all the time." "it's difficult for semi-heathens like Julia and me." "Sebastian!" "Sebastian!" "Cordelia." "Cover yourself up." "Where are you?" "Cordelia." "We're not decent." "you are." "did you?" "I came down with Bridey and I stopped off to see Francis Xavier." "He's my pig." "And then I had lunch with Colonel Fender and then onto the show." "Francis Xavier got a special mention." "But that beast Randal got first with a very mangy looking animal." "Darling Sebastian." "It is lovely to see you." "How's your poor foot?" "Say how do you do to Mr Ryder." "Oh sorry." "How do you do?" "I am sorry about your pig." "so I came away." "who's been painting the Garden Hall?" "I went in to get a shooting stick and saw it." "Be careful what you say." "It's Mr Ryder." "But it's lovely." "I say did you really?" "You are clever!" "Why don't you both come down?" "There's nobody about." "Bridey's bound to bring the judges in." "no he won't." "I heard him making arrangements not to." "He's very sour today." "He didn't want me to have dinner with you but I fixed that." "do come on!" "I'll be in the nursery when you're fit to be seen." "We were a somber little party that evening." "Brideshead was only three years older than Sebastian and I but he seemed of another generation." "I hope Sebastian is seeing the wine." "Wilcox is apt to be rather grudging when he's on his own." "He's treated us very liberally." "I'm delighted to hear it." "You're fond of wine?" "Very." "I wish I were." "It's such a bond with other men." "At Oxford I tried to get drunk once or twice." "But I didn't enjoy it." "Beer and whisky" "I find even less appetizing." "Events like today's show are in consequence a torment to me." "I like wine." "My sister Cordelia's last report not only the worst girl in the school but the worst that had ever been in the memory of the oldest nun." "That's because the Reverend Mother said that if I didn't keep my room tidy Our Lady would be very grieved and I told her that our Blessed Lady didn't give two hoots whether I put my gym shoes on the left" "or the right of my dancing shoes." "Reverend Mother was livid." "Our Lady cares about obedience." "don't be so pious." "We've an atheist in our midst." "Agnostic." "Really!" "What were the entries like this year?" "Were you pleased?" "the standard was remarkably low." "Not a decent animal to chose between." "If I'd had my way no prizes would have been awarded." "It would have served Randal right." "Cordelia!" "did I tell you I'd seen the Bishop of London?" "you didn't." "He wants to close the chapel." "He couldn't." "Do you think Mummy would let him?" "There are so few of us." "It isn't as though we're old Catholics with everyone on the estate coming to Mass." "Does that mean we're going to have to drive miles on winter mornings?" "We must have the Blessed Sacraments here." "so does Mummy." "So do I but it'll have to go sooner or later perhaps after Mummy's time." "No thank you" "The point is whether it wouldn't be a better to let it go now." "Ryder." "What do you think of it aesthetically?" "I think it's beautiful." "Is it good Art?" "I don't quite know what you mean." "stop being so Jesuitical." "I thought it was an interesting point." "if you'll excuse me." "I must take Sebastian away for half an hour." "There are some family matters to deal with." "Cordelia." "Must digest first." "I'm not used to gorging like this at night." "I'll talk to Charles." "child." "Send her to bed if she's a bore." "Are you really an agnostic?" "Do your family always talk about religion all the time?" "doesn't it?" "Does it?" "It never has with me before." "Then perhaps you are an agnostic." "I'll pray for you." "Thank you." "I'm sure it's more than I deserve." "I've got harder cases than you." "the Kaiser and Olive Banks." "Who's she?" "She got bunked last term from the convent." "The Reverend Mother found something she'd been writing." "I should ask you for five shillings to buy a black goddaughter." "Nothing will surprise me about your religion." "It's a new thing that a priest started last term." "You send five bob to some nuns in Africa and they christen a baby and name her after you." "I've got six black Cordelias." "Isn't that lovely?" "That night I began to realise how little I really knew of Sebastian and to understand why he had always sought to keep me apart from the rest of his life." "on the high seas now we had come to his home port." "Sorry I've been ignoring you." "Bridey's got all these papers he wants me to take to Papa." "I'd a nice talk with Cordelia." "She's going to pray for me." "She made a novena for her pig." "Now come on." "We must pack." "I've decided you'd better come to Venice with me." "I haven't got any money." "I've thought of that." "We live off Papa when we're there." "The lawyers pay my fare plus first class and sleeper." "We can both travel third for that." "You see." "It's fixed." "But I haven't got any clothes for Venice" "Charles" "And so Sebastian and I came to Venice." "We had traveled on the long cheap route on wooden seats in hot carriages filled with peasants and the smell of garlic as the sun mounted higher and the country began to glow with heat." "You've been here before?" "No." "from the sea." "This is the way to arrive." "Dove site stati sí" "my Lord." "thank you." "Mr Ryder." "sir?" "How do you do?" "We expected you on the morning express." "His Lordship thought you must have looked up the train wrong." "well." "We came third." "His Lordship said to tell you that he was at the Lido." "Did he?" "have you got the towels ready?" "yes." "The boys are bringing them." "si." "the one you had before." "thank you." "sir." "my Lords." "The luggage has arrived." "Scuse." "Mosquitoes." "Mostica not now." "Make hot wash." "If I may sir." "Sometimes the bath does not work but" "Signor Plender is very clever He will mend it." "my Lord." "It's not to be trusted." "I'll get some hot water." "Presto." "porti dell acqua calde per le camere dei signori." "It's a bit bleak." "Bleak?" "Come here." "Now look at that." "I don't think you could call it bleak." "There you are." "Some nice hot water for you to wash in after your journey." "Hot wash?" "Not so hot wash." "Il signor Marchese arrivato." "Il signor Marchese." "presto." "Better look respectable to meet Papa." "yes." "we needn't dress for dinner." "how young you're looking." "Papa." "Charles don't you think my father very handsome?" "sir?" "Whoever looked up your train made a betise." "There's no such one." "We came on it." "You can't have done." "There's only a slow train from Milan at that time." "I've just been to the Lido." "I've taken to playing tennis there with a professional in the early part of the evening." "It is the only time of day when it's not too hot." "Papa." "I hope you boys will be comfortable." "My room's wonderful." "This house was built for the comfort of one person only." "I am that person." "I have a room this size and a very splendid dressing room besides." "Cara has taken possession of the only other suitable room." "How is she?" "Cara?" "She's gone to visit some Americans at a villa on the Brenta canal." "She'll be back with us tomorrow." "Papa?" "though it's getting very filled up or would it be too dull to stay here?" "Cara is bound to want to go out tomorrow." "no." "That would be lovely." "we dine at eight." "We could go out and have a drink first." "I had been full of curiosity to meet Lord Marchmain." "When I did so I was first struck by his normality as I saw more of him" "I found to be studied." "It was as though he were conscious of a Byronic aura which he considered to be in bad taste and was at pains to suppress." "are Italians always supposed to be so good at sweet?" "We had an Italian pastry cook at Brideshead until my father's day." "Then we changed to an Austrian so much better." "there is a British matron with beefy forearms." "How do you two propose to spend your time here?" "Bathing or sightseeing?" "I should like to do some sightseeing." "Cara will love that." "You can't do both things." "Charles is very keen on painting." "Yes?" "Yes." "Any particular Venetian painter?" "which one?" "I didn't know there were two." "to be precise." "Painting then was very much a family business." "How was England when you left?" "It's been lovely this summer." "Was it?" "Was it?" "It's my tragedy that I abominate the English countryside." "I suppose it's very wrong to inherit great responsibilities and be entirely indifferent to them." "I am all that the socialists would have me be and a great stumbling block to my own party." "no doubt my elder son will change all that if they leave him anything to inherit." "isn't he?" "Don't worry." "He's really very sweet underneath." "He does frighten me a bit." "You'll soon get used to that." "or take a cab?" "I think a cab." "Okay?" "Where do you want to go?" "I don't know." "very special." "St Marks" "Lord Marchmain's mistress appeared the next day." "Cara." "Bon giorno." "I was completely ignorant of women and could not with any certainty recognize a prostitute in the streets." "I was not therefore indifferent to the fact of living under the same roof as an adulterous couple." "But I was old enough to hide my interest." "found me with a multitude of conflicting expectations about her disappointed by her appearance." "Sebastian." "You must be Charles." "How do you do." "My dear." "Vittorio Corombonna has asked us to her ball." "Shall we accept?" "I do not dance." "but for the boys it is a thing to be seen the Corombonna Palace all lit up for a ball and one does not know how many such balls there will be in the future." "but we must refuse." "And I have asked Mrs. Hacking Brunner to luncheon." "She has a charming daughter." "Sebastian and his friend will like her." "Sebastian and his friend are more interested in Bellini than heiresses." "but that's what I've always wished." "I have been here more times than I can count and Alex has never let me inside San Marco even." "Let's become tourists." "There's an extraordinary little man" "Daisy Guzzoli's uncle." "He knows everybody." "He'll make a marvelous guide." "Bellini" "So we became tourists." "All doors were open to Cara's little Venetian nobleman." "With him and a guide book she came with us but never giving up." "prosaic figure amid the immense splendors of the place." "As a child I had no religion." "I was taken to church weekly and at school attended to chapel daily." "as though in compensation from the time I went to my public school" "I was excused church on the holidays." "The view implicit in my education was that the basic narrative of Christianity had long been exposed as a myth." "And that opinion was now divided as to whether its ethical teaching was of present value." "A division in which the main weight went against it." "Religion was a hobby which some people professed and others did not." "it was slightly ornamental." "it was the province of complexes and inhibitions. hypocrisy and sheer stupidity attributed to it for centuries." "No one had ever suggested to me that these quaint observances expressed a coherent philosophical system." "and in transigents historical claims." "Nor had they done so would I have been much interested." "My father did not go to church and then with derision." "was devout." "It once seemed odd to me that she should have thought it her duty to leave my father and me and go off with an ambulance to Serbia to die of exhaustion in the snow in Bosnia." "But I later recognized some such spirit in myself." "I have come to accept claims which then in 1923" "I never troubled to examine and to accept the supernatural as the real." "But I was aware of no such needs that summer." "Some days life kept pace with the gondola as we nosed through the side canals and the boatman uttered his plaintive musical bird cry of warning." "bouncing over the lagoons the stream of sunlit fell on me." "Cara and I would leave the palace by the street door and wander through a maze of bridges and squares and alleys to Florien's for coffee." "And watched the grave crowds crossing and recrossing under the Campanile." "stingless." "The fortnight at Venice passed perhaps too sweetly. lapping on smooth stone of a night at the Corombonna Palace such as Byron might have known." "I remember most particularly one conversation towards the end of my visit. and Cara at last admitted to fatigue." "We sat in the late afternoon at the windows overlooking the Grand Canal." "It was the first time we had been alone together." "I think you're very fond of Sebastian." "Certainly." "I know of these romantic friendships of the English and the Germans." "They are not Latin." "I think they are very good if they don't go on too long." "It is a kind of love that comes to children before they know its meaning." "when you are almost men." "I think I like that." "I think it's better to have this first kind of love for a boy than for a girl." "his wife." "Do you think he loves me?" "you do ask the most embarrassing questions." "How should I know?" "I assume." "He does not." "But not the littlest piece." "But then why does he stay with you?" "Because I protect him from Lady Marchmain." "He hates her." "But you can have no conception how he hates her." "he is a volcano of hate." "He can't breathe the same air as she." "He won't set foot in England because it's her home." "He can scarcely be happy with Sebastian because he's her son." "too." "I think you're wrong there." "He may not admit it to you." "He may not admit it to himself." "They are full of hate." "Alex and his family." "And how has she deserved all this hate?" "She's done nothing except to be loved by someone who was not grown up." "When people hate with all that energy it's something in themselves they are hating." "Alex is hating all the illusions of boyhood." "Innocence." "God." "Hope." "Sebastian is in love with his own childhood." "That will make him very unhappy." "his Nanny and he is nineteen years old." "How good it is to sit in the shade and talk of love." "let's go and meet them." "Sebastian drinks too much." "I suppose we both do." "With you it doesn't matter." "I've watched you together." "With Sebastian it's different." "He'll become a drunkard if someone doesn't come to stop him." "I have known so many." "Alex was nearly a drunkard when I met him." "It's in the blood." "I see it in the way Sebastian drinks." "It's not your way." "Cara!" "English weather!" "it's driven the English away." "It is sad for the boys' last day." "We arrived back the day before third term began." "On the way from Charring Cross I dropped Sebastian his family's London home on the edge of Green Park." "Austin." "Well Marchers." "I won't ask you in because the place is probably full of my family." "See you in Oxford." "Have a good journey up tomorrow." "The taxi took me all alone to Bayswater." "Where my father greeted me with his usual air of mild regret." "Here today and gone tomorrow." "I seem to see very little of you." "Perhaps it's dull for you here." "How else could it be otherwise?" "Have you enjoyed yourself?" "Very much." "I went to Venice." "Yes." "Yes." "I suppose so." "father." "That friend you were so concerned about Did he die?" "No." "I went to Venice with him." "I'm very thankful." "You should have written to tell me." "I worried about him so much." "It is so typical of Oxford to start its new year in the autumn." "I feel positively one hundred years old. and now I've got to face Mr Samgrass of All Souls." "That will make the fourth in two days." "Who's Mr Samgrass of All Souls?" "Just someone of Mummy's." "They all say that I made such a bad start last year that I've been noticed and that if I do not mend my ways" "I shall have to be sent down." "what's happened to us since last term?" "I feel so old. which is infinitely worse." "I'm glad we had this little talk." "Your mother will be so pleased." "Would you care for a glass of sherry?" "I think I shall indulge in one myself." "Thank you." "Did your mother tell you that I am doing a little work for her?" "You know it was she who felt so keenly that we should meet." "didn't she?" "She may have done." "I really can't remember." "I must go." "She has entrusted me with the compilation of a memorial work on her brother Ned." "it gives me immense pleasure. quite my favorite house in England." "I'm glad you like it." "of course." "remember what I've said." "I am sure we shall enjoy our exploration together and you know that any success in the fields of academe would bring great pleasure to your mother." "Sebastian." "Mr Samgrass and his little talks were to play an increasingly large part in our lives." "Sebastian spoke less than the truth when he described him as someone of Mummy's." "He was someone of almost everyone who possessed something to attract him." "Charles." "how does one mend one's ways?" "Join the League of Nations union?" "Read "Isis" every week?" "Drink coffee every morning at the Cadena café?" "That would be a start." "You could smoke a great pipe and play hockey and go to tea on Boar's Hill." "yes and I could go to lectures at Keble." "I could buy one of those little bicycles with a tray of books on it." "I could drink cocoa every evening and discuss sex seriously." "Very seriously." "Anthony Blanche has gone down." "He wrote me a letter." "He said he's taken a flat in Munich and started a relationship with a policeman." "too in a way." "Anthony Blanche had taken something away with him when he went." "He had locked a door and hung the key on his chain." "among whom he had always been a stranger needed him now." "Sebastian and I kept very much to our own company that term each so much bound up in the other that we did not need to look elsewhere for friends." "My cousin Jasper had told me it was normal to spend one's second year shaking off the friends of one's first and it happened as he had said." "Most of my friends were those I had made through Sebastian and together we shed them and made no others." "I kept to tenuous connection with the History school wrote my two essays a week and attended the occasional lecture." "soberly dressed and happily employed" "I became a fairly respectable man in my college." "And that is how Lady Marchmain found us when early in that Michaelmas term she came for a week to Oxford." "asking for you." "Oakes." "Charles." "I may call you Charles?" "Of course." "I feel I know you so well from Sebastian." "I've just had luncheon with him and Mr Samgrass." "Do you know who I mean?" "You may have met." "He's a very clever History don at All Souls." "He's been taking a great interest in Sebastian." "I heard." "I hope Sebastian will appreciate his interest." "I was so sorry to have missed you when you were at Brideshead." "Everyone loves your paintings in the Garden Room." "it was very kind of you to let me stay so long." "I think it was Sebastian who was fortunate to have you with him all that time." "as Mr Samgrass tells me that you're my son's only friend this term?" "some people have gone down I suppose perhaps I am." "We do spend a lot of time together." "I'm glad of it." "I'm sure I have reason too." "Friendships like yours can be such a help." "She accepted me as Sebastian's friend and sought to make me hers also and in doing so unwittingly struck at the roots of our friendship." "That is the single reproach I have to set against her abundant kindness to me." "a week or two later driven by a man whom she introduce as Mr Mottram and addressed as Rex." "They both joined a small lunch party in my rooms." "One of the last of the old kind that I gave." "just a few guineas." "So the H.R.H. Ended up having to pay me" "He can't have been more than thirty at the time we met him but Rex seemed very old to us in Oxford." "He'd arrived from Canada after the war had become a Member of Parliament a gambler and a good fellow." "Lucky with money." "he's a Colonial darling?" "He's never been to any sort of university." "Lucky you." "it just means you start life about three years behind the other fellow." "And Rex has never stayed anywhere for three years darling?" "He's told me some very rich stories indeed." "I remember one about two undergraduates and a goose." "Rex knows everyone." "Damn!" "My cigarettes." "Rex?" "Don't worry." "I'll get them." "They are in the car." "gentlemen." "Julia treated him as she seemed to treat all the world but with an air of possession." "I'm helping to organize a ghastly charity ball in London next month." "You two absolutely must come." "Rex is having a dinner party first." "but you must." "The trouble with Rex is he doesn't know anybody young." "All his friends are leathery old sharks in the city and dreary MPs." "we'll see." "Come on Charles." "Sorry." "Lunt's been playing games with my cufflinks." "are you?" "delighted." "I suppose I shall have to go in the back." "I suppose you realise that this going to be the most stupefyingly boring ball of the season?" "I don't know." "I haven't been to many balls this season." "anything would make a change." "Sebastian and I so we went there to dress and while we dressed drank a bottle of champagne." "three." "I can't do it!" "Try." "But you're holding me you can't haul me around like that!" "Julia." "You're not even changed." "I know." "I'm going to be horribly late." "You'd better go on to Rex's without me." "You're very tedious." "It's heavenly of you to come." "We're all going to be hideously bored." "don't be too long." "Keep them happy." "I say where on earth is Julia?" "How should I know?" "Probably gone to have dinner somewhere else." "Gosh!" "It's her dance." "But how will she get there without us?" "She'll be all right." "that absurd Jeroboam." "Why must you have everything so big?" "Won't be too big for us." "let's chuck this ghastly dance and go to Ma Mayfield's." "Who's Ma Mayfield?" "You know Ma Mayfield." "Everyone knows Ma Mayfield the best club in town." "a sweet little thing named Effie." "There'd be the devil to pay if she heard I'd been to London and hadn't been to see her." "So come and meet Effie at Ma Mayfield's." "let's go and see Effie at Ma Mayfield's." "We'll need another bottle of pop off the good Mottram cut the bloody ball and then go straight to Ma Mayfield's." "Look who's here." "At last!" "Sorry." "Brenda." "I'm so glad you didn't let him hold dinner up for me." "It's his Canadian courtesy." "thank God you're here." "At last we can go." "but are you sure you know where this place is?" "100 Sink Street." "It's just off Leicester Square." "We'll take the car." "Aren't we going to look in at the ball?" "Oh Charles!" "If you've seen one ball you've seen them all." "But I want to dance You can dance at" "Ma Mayfield's." "Not the same sort of dancing." "You had better not drive." "I'll drive" "I know the way like the back of my hand." "Jump in." "Ready?" "Yes." "How do you turn the bally lights off?" "Ask Hardcastle." "Good evening." "Are you members?" "You want to keep out of there." "You'll be poisoned and given a dose." "and given a dose." "You members?" "You members?" "My name is Mulcaster." "Viscount Mulcaster." "I'm an old friend of his mum." "All right." "Try inside." "You'll be robbed and poisoned and infected and robbed." "are you dearie?" "that really is the limit!" "I'm extremely well known here." "You ought to know me by now." "dearie." "Ten bob each." "That's absolutely ridiculous." "I've never had to pay to get in here before." "You're lucky dearie." "We're full up." "Anyone who comes in after you is going to have to pay a quid." "I insist." "Let me speak to Mrs. Mayfield at once." "dearie." "I am Mrs. Mayfield." "Ma." "I really am It's so dark in here" "I didn't recognize you in your finery." "don't you?" "Boy Mulcaster!" "duckie." "Just give us your ten bob each!" "Alright chaps." "I'll do it." "Is Effie here this evening?" "Who's Effie?" "one of the girls who's always here." "some of them's fair." "Some you might call pretty." "I haven't got the time to notice." "Thirty bob." "I say that's a bit steep." "I'm going to try and find Effie." "Cigarette?" "Thanks." "we're wasting our time." "They're only fairies." "Look you fellows" "I've found her." "This is Effie." "Charles Ryder." "Effie" "Can you give some toast?" "Thank you." "That's another six bob!" "It's the first bite I've had all evening you know." "The only decent thing about this place is the breakfast." "You get fair peckish hanging about." "I seen you here before often haven't I?" "I'm afraid not." "Then it must be you I seen before." "I should rather hope so." "You haven't forgotten have you?" "darling." "You were the boy in the Guards wasn't you?" "Effie!" "Oh Lord" "I know!" "You were with Bunty that time we were raided and we all hid behind the dustbins." "Effie loves pulling my leg." "She's cross with me" "Effie?" "I know I've seen you somewhere before." "stop teasing." "Please." "I wasn't meaning to." "Do you want to dance?" "Not just at the moment." "Thank God for that!" "My shoes are pinching me something terrible tonight." "sir." "Thank you very much." "That's thirty bob." "sir." "Cheers." "Cheers." "We're under attack." "Oh Lord." "Death's Head and the Sickly Child." "Tell them to go away." "dear ladies." "Would you care to dance with my friend and I?" "Well if you really want to do we?" "didn't we?" "Yeah those two are fairies well that's what we said." "Well that's what you looked like." "That was because of our extreme youth." "And our extraordinary physical beauty." "I think you're very sweet really." "I think you're very sweet too." "How about a little party?" "Jus the six of us over at my place?" "Certainly." "Boy!" "We're off to a party just the six of us." "This very charming young lady says she's got somewhere to go." "I must go and tell Mrs. Mayfield we're going out." "Effie." "It was still early." "Not long after midnight when we regained the street." "The commissioner had tried to persuade us to take a taxi but we pile into Hardcastle's car and there laid our mistake." "Let me out of this." "officer but the young lady insisted upon my stopping so that she could get out." "She would take no denial." "As you will have observed she was pressed for time." "A matter of nerves." "Let me talk to him." "no one's seen anything but you." "The boys don't mean no harm." "I'll get them into a taxi and see them home alright." "my good man there's no need for you to notice anything." "We've all been to Ma Mayfield's." "I reckon Ma Mayfield pays you a pretty good retainer to keep your eyes shut." "you can keep your eyes shut on us as well and you won't be the loser by it." "you'll pay for this!" "Do you know who I am?" "I am the Viscount Mulcaster!" "My father's the ninth Earl!" "Open this door!" "I insist on seeing a doctor!" "Telephone the Home Secretary." "Send for my solicitor." "are you there?" "Yes." "I am here." "This is a hell of a business." "Rex Mottram." "He'd be in his element here." "we had to do our duty." "Sergeant." "This is an outrage." "I demand my legal rights." "Sergeant." "sir." "Cigar?" "sir." "Sergeant do you think we could keep this incident between ourselves?" "sir." "I'm afraid it's too late for that." "The report's already gone upstairs and we've taken the young ladies' names as witnesses." "I see." "I intend to sue for wrongful arrest." "Tell him!" "Mulcaster." "Leave all the talking to me." "Sergeant?" "sir." "If you'd like to complete the formalities sign for the sureties." "And if you gentlemen would like to sign for your possessions." "sir." "Sergeant." "Thank you Sergeant Good night." "It had better be all there!" "We had all slept that night at Rex's flat." "Thank you." "the display was impressive." "He called a man on Thrompos to shave us while his valet collected our clothes from Marchmain House." "Rex joined us after breakfast." "gentlemen." "I trust you are feeling a little better." "This is Mr Selwyn who will be representing you." "Lord Sebastian Flyte." "How do you do?" "Good morning." "Mr Charles Ryder." "How do you do?" "How do you do?" "Lord Mulcaster." "How do you do?" "Hello." "Selwyn." "Thank you." "Sebastian's in a jam." "He's liable for anything up to six month's imprisonment for being drunk in charge of a car." "you'll come up before Grigg." "He takes a grim view of cases of this sort." "all that will happen this morning is that we shall ask to have" "Sebastian's case held over for a week to prepare his defense." "But you two will plead guilty say you're sorry and pay your five bob fine." "I'll see what can be done about squaring things with the evening papers." "Though "The Star' could be difficult." "this is important" "Remember to keep out all mention of the Old Hundredth." "luckily the tarts were sober and so they're not being charged but they've taken their names." "If we try and break down the police evidence they'll be called and used as witnesses." "Mulcaster?" "Good." "We have to swallow the police story whole and appeal to the magistrates' better nature not to wreck a young man's career for the sake of a single boyish indiscretion." "It'll all work out alright." "we shall need a don to give evidence of good character." "Julia tells me you have a tame one called Samgrass." "He'll do." "you story is simply that you came up from Oxford for a perfectly respectable dance were not used to wine had too much and then lost the way driving home." "let's take care of this and then see about fixing things with the authorities up in Oxford." "Everything happened at Court as Rex had predicted." "we stood outside" "Bow Street Magistrates' Court." "Mulcaster and I had paid our fines and were free men." "Sebastian was bound over to appear in a week's time." "Five bob is monstrous." "They should have cleared us." "They put themselves totally in the wrong when they refused to call my solicitor." "I don't see why they should get away with it." "I'm off to the City." "My Great Uncle's just snuffed it." "Taxi!" "I suppose Mummy's got to hear about it." "Damn!" "Damn!" "Damn!" "It's cold." "Why don't we just go back to Oxford and wait for them to bother us?" "Why don't we telephone Julia?" "I think I'll go abroad." "all you're going to be is fined a couple of quid and given a stiff talking-to." "but it's all the bother" "Mummy and Bridey and the family and the dons." "I think I'd rather go to prison." "can they?" "they can." "That's what people do when they're being chased by the police." "I know Mummy's going to make it seem she has to bear the whole brunt of the business." "arrange to meet and talk it over with her?" "you are a pair of pickles." "Julia." "I must say you look remarkably well on it." "The only time I got tight I was paralyzed all the next day." "I do think you might have taken me with you." "The ball was positively lethal and I've always longed to go to the Old Hundredth." "No one will ever take me." "Is it heaven?" "You know about that too?" "Rex telephoned me this morning and told me everything." "don't be prurient." "mine was like a skull." "Mine was like a consumptive." "Goodness." "Does Mummy know?" "Not about your skulls and consumptives." "She knows you were in the clink." "of course." "It's Mummy's being divine about everything that worries me the most." "I can't think why you went and stayed with Mr Mottram." "You might have come and told me about it first." "Mama." "I am sorry if" "How am I going to explain this to the family?" "They will be so surprised to find that they're more upset about it than I am." "Fanny Roscommon?" "She has always thought I brought my children up badly." "Now I'm beginning to think she must be right." "Mr Samgrass do you think it would be any use if I spoke to the Chancellor?" "I've already spoken to Msgr Bell and persuaded him to call on the Dean" "She's been perfectly charming." "I don't see what you were so worried about." "I can't explain." "how long have you known" "Lord Sebastian Flyte?" "Since he first came up to Oxford." "Lady Marchmain." "What impression have you formed of his character?" "sir as a model student." "My deep regret is that a brilliant university career may now be at stake." "Is this type of incident would you say?" "I would say it was entirely out of character." "Lord Sebastian has always conducted his life at the House with the most studious application." "The evidence is that the defendant came up to London to attend organized by his sister." "sir." "It was a highly respectable affair sir is simply unused to wine." "The law of England is the same for an Oxford undergraduate as it is for any young hooligan." "Indeed the more outrageous the offence." "It is purely by good chance that you do not bear the responsibility for a serious accident." "I would feel disposed to give you an exemplary prison sentence." "I have accepted that you are unused to wine." "There will be a fine of ten pounds." "The usher will show you where to pay." "We were both gated for the rest of the term but the most lasting penalty we suffered was our intimacy with Rex Mottram and Mr Samgrass." "But since Rex's life was in London in a world of politics and high finance and Mr Samgrass's nearer to our own at Oxford it was from him we suffered more." "For the rest of that term he haunted us." "11 minutes and 15 seconds." "A marked improvement." "If they want to treat us like a pair of criminals we can behave like criminals." "Charles!" "I don't think we've been spotted." "How delightful." "Did I tell you I've been invited to Brideshead for Christmas?" "Your mother wrote me the most charming letter." "how good to see you." "You find me in solitary possession." "How are you?" "Very well." "I gather Sebastian's gone out hunting." "Yes." "We've had a lawn meet of the Marchmain hounds a deliciously archaic spectacle all our young friends are in pursuit of the fox." "I've been spending a cozy afternoon by the fire." "you will not be surprised to hear looked remarkably elegant in his pink coat." "Would you like some tea?" "Your arrival emboldens me to ring for some." "Is Lady Marchmain in?" "No." "She's driven off with her cousins to visit a neighbour." "She'll be back in time for dinner." "How can I prepare you for the party?" "it breaks up tomorrow." "Lady Julia departs to celebrate the New Year elsewhere and takes the beau-monde with her." "I shall miss the pretty creatures about the house" "Celia." "She's the sister of our old companion in adversity and wonderfully unlike him." "I find her most engaging." "I shall miss her for I do not go tomorrow." "How long are you staying?" "Charles?" "I don't know." "Tomorrow I start in earnest on our hostess's book." "Thank you is a treasure house of period gems." "the intrepid hunter returns." "Hello." "When did you get here?" "About an hour ago." "Had a good day?" "Sebastian?" "I got fed up so I hacked back." "will you?" "Mr Samgrass." "We went to chapel three times on Christmas Day." "Mummy found some eunuchs to sing High Mass." "It sounded very peculiar." "we had the village choir bawling at us from the Minstrels' Gallery" "and Cousin Jasper dragooned us into playing endless games of Bridge." "Will I know anybody who's here?" "No." "I shouldn't think so." "They're all people of Mummy's and Julia's." "They'll all be there at tea." "Sebastian." "See what I mean?" "An absolute zoo." "Charles!" "You've arrived!" "Cordelia." "Did you have a good Christmas?" "Quiet." "I'm going to ask Mummy if I can stay up specially late tonight in honour of your arrival." "that'll be fun." "I got bored." "you missed the best part again." "We had the most tremendous gallop across Spring Fields six jumps to Platts Wood and I only just managed to stay on." "we all know how brave you are." "I'm braver than you and I've only go Mr Beelzebub." "good to see you." "Hello." "Quite a good day's sport." "I think the hounds got on much better form after we dragged Thaxton Wood." "probably why we made the kill." "how are you?" "thanks." "When did you get here?" "what happened to you after you left the home woods?" "I came back early." "I looked all over the place for you." "Excuse me." "Our hostess has just returned." "She was asking if you had arrived yet." "You'll find her in her sitting room." "thank you." "I'm just going along to say hello to you mother." "Why?" "You'll see her this evening." "you know." "I'll see you later." "I'm delighted Charles has joined the party." "this reunion of ours in your mother's house." "I look forward to our time together." "yes." "I did." "Thank you." "I hope you've both managed to settle down after the 'incident'." "I mean." "I gather your penance hasn't been too harsh." "but" "I expect you realise that we've Mr Samgrass to thank for that I mean that the pair of you weren't more severely dealt with." "on our behalf." "the Vice-Chancellor." "He got Monsignor Bell" "I know." "isn't it?" "I must make a short visit to the chapel before dinner." "I don't suppose I can persuade you to come." "Charles." "Religion predominated in the house the daily mass and Rosary morning and evening in the chapel but in all its intercourse." "Who's coming to Chapel for the Rosary?" "I think I'd better look after Charles." "Mummy." "I'm filthy." "I'll come." "I can change later." "Lady Marchmain if you don't mind?" "Of course not." "Lady Marchmain." "What did Mummy say?" "she spent most of the time singing Samgrass's praises and reminding me of our obligation to him." "How he saw the Vice Chancellor" "I've had all that too." "I do wish Samgrass would go." "I'm sick of being grateful to him." "Yes." "at least Julia's lot are going tomorrow." "Charles." "A Happy New Year!" "I forgot your present that's alright" "goodbye Bobby." "See you later." "See you all at Polly's" "Happy New Year." "Tom!" "Come on Charles." "We remained at Brideshead leading our own life." "I had no mind then for anything except Sebastian." "And I saw him already as being threatened though I did not yet know how black was the threat." "despairing prayer was to be let alone." "And since he counted among the intruders his own conscience and all claims of human affection his days in Arcadia were numbered." "but he lost the joy of it for I was no longer part of his solitude." "As my intimacy with the family grew" "I became part of the world he sought to escape." "I became one of the bonds which held him." "That was the part for which his mother was seeking to fit me." "You have so many beautiful things." "we were comparatively poor but still much richer than most of the world" "and when I married I became very rich." "It used to worry me." "I thought it wrong to have so many beautiful things when others had nothing." "Now I realise that it's possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor." "Can you see that?" "Perhaps." "The poor have always been the favourites but I believe that it's one of the special achievements of grace to sanctify the whole of life." "Riches included." "Wealth in Pagan Rome was necessarily something cruel." "It's not anymore." "But I thought that it was supposed to be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." "It's very unexpected for a camel to go through the eye of a needle the Gospel is simply a catalogue of unexpected things." "It's not to be expected that an ox and an ass should worship at the crib." "Animals are always doing the oddest things in the lives of the Saints." "It's all part of the poetry the Alice-in-Wonderland side of religion." "Ready!" "Pull!" "Ready!" "Pull!" "Hello." "Where have you been all morning?" "With your mother." "Oh God." "Another of her little talks." "I can't help it if she thinks I'm ripe for conversion." "Ready!" "Pull!" "You shouldn't encourage her." "She can be very determined." "And I can be very stubborn." "You needn't worry about me." "Ready!" "Pull!" "look at him." "I don't think I can take another day of this." "Why don't we go away somewhere?" "Where?" "I don't know." "New York" "Bayswater?" "I think I'd settle for Bayswater." "Do you think your father will have us?" "I don't think he'd even notice us." "After tea then?" "After tea." "Come on Sammy." "Ready!" "Pull!" "Charles." "I've just been telling Sebastian" "I've made the most interesting discovery." "Really?" "Pull?" "sorry." "That term at Oxford we took up again that life that seemed to be shrinking in the cool air." "that had been strong in Sebastian the term before even towards me." "He was sick at heart somewhere." "I did not know how unable to help." "it was usually because he was drunk." "he developed an obsession for mocking Mr Samgrass." "green arse" "Mr Samgrass took in good part." "As though each outrage in some way strengthen his hold in Sebastian." "It was during this term that I began to realise that Sebastian was a drunkard in quite a different sense to myself." "it's me." "Are you there?" "are you alright?" "What's the matter?" "Can I help?" "I got drunk often." "But through an access of high spirit and the love of the moment and the wish to belong and enhance it." "Sebastian drank to escape." "Nothing's the matter." "he more." "a succession of disasters came upon him so swiftly" "There's nothing to be done." "And with such unexpected violence that it is hard to say when exactly" "I realised my friend was in deep trouble." "But I knew it well enough in the Easter vacation at Brideshead." "go away." "There's a good fellow." "I returned to Brideshead in the spring of 1924." "The Easter party was a bitter time culminating in a small but unforgetable painful incident." "Hadn't you better go up and change?" "Five more minutes Charles." "Look." "That's a chow." "Sebastian had been drinking very hard for a week." "Only I knew how hard." "quite unlike his old habit." "Most of the guests knew him too slightly to notice the change in him." "While his own family were occupied in for their particular friends." "when the main party had left that he had to face his family." "Haven't they brought the cocktails yet?" "Where have you been?" "Up with Nanny." "I don't believe it." "You've been drinking." "I've been reading in my room." "My cold's much worse today." "Just a minute." "Sebastian!" "Sebastian." "Let me in!" "What's the matter?" "Sebastian's drunk." "He can't be." "He's been drinking in his room all afternoon." "How very peculiar." "What a bore he is!" "Will he be alright for dinner?" "No." "Well you'll have to deal with it." "It's no business of mine." "Does he do this often?" "yes." "I suppose it must be something chemical in him." "How very boring." "Hello." "Are you feeling any better?" "Charles" "What you said was quite true." "Not with Nanny." "Been drinking whisky up here." "Feeling rather drunk." "Go to bed." "I'll say your cold's worse." "Yes." "Much worse." "I should get into bed." "No." "In a minute." "You put that down!" "Sebastian." "You've had quite enough." "What the devil's it got to do with you?" "You're only a guest here." "My guest!" "I shall drink what I want to in my own house." "All right." "keep it out of sight." "Why don't you mind your own business?" "You came here as my friend!" "I know." "you can get out of here and you can tell her from me that I'll choose my friends and she her spies in future." "thank you." "What's become of Sebastian?" "He's gone to bed." "His cold's rather worse." "Oh dear." "I hope he isn't getting 'flu." "I thought he looked a little feverish lately." "Is there anything he wants?" "he particularly asked not to be disturbed." "I think he needs a glass of hot whisky." "I'll go and have a look at him." "Mummy." "I'll go." "if he's not well." "I've only just been in to him." "His cold really has come on rather badly." "He says there's nothing that he wants." "I think he just needs to get some sleep." "I'll just have a look at him." "He's probably feeling awful." "Cordelia!" "I promise I won't disturb him if he's sleeping." "he doesn't want anything." "How was he?" "but I think he's very drunk." "Cordelia!" "Marquis' son unused to wine." "Model student's career at stake." "Cordelia!" "is this true?" "Yes." "my Lady." "Wilcox." "I don't think Sebastian's been very well for some time." "I first noticed it when we came home from the retreat." "quite the reverse effect from what one would have expected." "Benedictus Benedicata Per Jerum Christum Domimum Nostrum." "Amen." "As we sat down to dinner that night the subject was not mentioned." "I had no stomach for the food and silently mourned my friend upstairs." "When Brideshead and I were left alone over the port he brought up the subject again." "Did you say Sebastian was drunk?" "Yes." "Extraordinary time to choose." "Couldn't you stop him?" "No." "No." "I don't suppose you could." "in this room." "I can't have been more than ten at the time." "You can't stop people if they want to get drunk." "you know." "I shall ask my mother to read to us tonight." "putting his hands behind him." "that thief and a vagabond should repent when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous and without fruit for God or man?" "you trespass a little upon my province." "If you doubt the penitence as a practical fact there are your knives and forks." "You are the Twelve True Fishers and there are all your silver fish." "But He has made me a fisher of men." "frowning." "Father Brown looked him full in his frowning face." "and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread." "There was a long silence." "All the other men present drifted" "All the other men present drifted away to carry the recovered silver or to consult the proprietor about the queer condition of affairs." "But the grim-faced colonel still sat sideways on the counter swinging his long lank legs and biting his dark moustache." "He must have been a clever fellow but I think I know a cleverer." "but I am not quite sure" "Come to I've come to apologize." "go back to bed." "We can talk about this in the morning." "Not to you." "Come to apologize to Charles." "I was bloody to him and he's my guest." "He's my guest he's my only friend and I was bloody to him." "Sebastian." "Bridey." "Come on." "with a short laugh." "I don't want to get the fellowjailed." "Make yourself easy about that." "But I'd give a good many silver forks to know exactly how you fell into this affair and how you got the stuff out of him." "I reckon you are the most up-to-date devil of the present company." "Father Brown seemed to like the saturnine candour of the soldier." "I must not tell you anything but there is no particular reason why I shouldn't tell you of the more outside facts which I found out for myself." "It's time you were in bed." "Why do you spy on me?" "Why do you take their side against me?" "I knew it would happen if I let you meet them." "Sebastian." "Sebastian." "You'll be better when No." "I think I'd like to go to chapel now" "Bridey." "Cordelia Will you come with me?" "Mama." "What's the time?" "Seven." "Well?" "How do you feel?" "Rather odd." "I think perhaps I'm still a little drunk." "I've been down the stables seeing if we can get a car but everything is locked." "We're off." "Where?" "I don't know." "London I suppose." "Can I come and stay with you?" "Of course." "get dressed and we can get them to send our luggage on by train." "We can't just go like that." "We can't stay." "There's some smoke coming from some of the chimneys." "The stables must be open by now." "Come on." "I can't go." "I must say goodbye to your mother." "Sweet Bulldog." "I don't happen to like running away." "And I couldn't care less." "And I'm going to go on running as far and as fast as I can." "You can hatch out any plot you like with my mother." "I shan't come back." "That's how you were talking last night." "I'm sorry." "I told you I was still drunk." "I absolutely detest myself." "It's no comfort at all." "It should be a little." "I should have thought." "give my love to Nanny." "Are you really going?" "Of course." "I'm coming to stay with you." "I wish I had not seen him." "That was cruel." "I do not mind the idea of his being drunk." "It is a thing all men do when they are young." "I am used to the idea of it." "My brothers were wild at his age." "What hurt last night was that there was nothing happy about him." "I know." "I've never seen him like that before." "And last night of all nights when there were only ourselves here." "I think of you very much as one of ourselves." "Sebastian loves you." "When there was no need for him to make an effort to be happy and he wasn't happy." "and all the time I kept coming back to that one thing:" "How unhappy he was." "It was horrible." "But please don't think that's his usual way." "Mr Samgrass tells me he was drinking too much all last term." "but not like that." "Never before." "why now?" "Here?" "With us?" "All night I have been thinking and praying and wondering he isn't here at all." "leaving without a word." "I don't want him to be ashamed." "It's being ashamed that makes it so wrong of him." "But he's ashamed of being unhappy." "Mr Samgrass tells me he is noisy and high spirited." "I believe you and he tease Mr Samgrass rather." "It's very naughty of you." "I'm very fond of Mr Samgrass." "after all he's done for you." "I might be just a little inclined to tease Mr Samgrass myself." "but last night and this morning were something quite different." "You see it's all happened before." "I can only say I've seen him drunk often and and last night was quite new to me." "I don't mean with Sebastian." "I mean years ago." "I've been through it all before with someone else whom I loved." "with his father." "He used to get drunk in just that way." "Someone told me he is not like that anymore." "I pray God it's true and I thank God for it with all my heart if it is." "you know." "he was ashamed of being unhappy." "ashamed and running away." "It's too pityful." "The men I grew up with were not like that." "I simply don't understand it." "Charles?" "Only very little." "And yet Sebastian is fonder of you than any of us you know." "You've got to help him." "I can't." "if I'm going to catch my train have you read my brother's book?" "It's just come out." "I glanced through it in Sebastian's room." "I should like you to have a copy." "May I give you one?" "They were three splendid men." "Ned was the best of them." "He was the last to be killed and when the telegram came" "I said to myself" "Now it's my son's turn to do what Ned can never do now." "I was alone then." "He was just going to Eton." "If you read Ned's book you'll understand." "She had a copy lying ready on her bureau." "she planned this parting before ever I came in." "Had she rehearsed all the interview?" "would she have put the book back in the drawer?" "Thank you." "in the night." "you'll miss your train." "I was no fool." "I was old enough to know that an attempt had been made to suborn me and young enough to have found the experience agreeable." "Will you be seeing Sebastian?" "of course." "Please will you give him my special love?" "Will you remember?" "My special love." "I won't forget." "Bye Charles." "Bye." "he went out early." "where is he?" "Charles!" "How are you?" "I've been waiting for you for hours." "What kept you?" "I'm so glad you're here." "Are you being looked after?" "Uh huh." "Is everything all right?" "Blissful." "Hayter?" "Cordelia sends her special love." "Did you have your little talk with Mummy?" "Yes." "Have you gone over to her side?" "No." "I'm with you." "Sebastian contra mundum"." "Good." "Then you find me a drink." "I don't know whether I am going to be able to" "But the shadows were closing round Sebastian." "We retuned to Oxford and once again the gilly flowers bloomed under my college windows and the chestnut lit the streets and the warm stones strewed their flakes upon the cobbles." "But it was not as it had been." "There was mid-winter in Sebastian's heart." "The weeks went by and we looked for lodgings for the coming term and found them in Merton Street expensive little house near the tennis court." "Charles." "How nice to see you." "How are you?" "Mr Samgrass." "I haven't seen you for long time." "How's Sebastian?" "He's very well." "We've just found some rooms together in Merton Street." "You're sharing digs with Sebastian?" "So he is coming up next term?" "I don't see why not." "perhaps he wasn't." "I'm always wrong about things like that." "I like Merton Street." "Charles?" "No." "but I wouldn't make any definite arrangement in Merton Street until you're sure." "It's just conceivable his mother may have different ideas." "there's a plot on." "Mummy wants me to live with Monsignor Bell." "Why didn't you tell me before?" "Because I'm not going to live with Monsignor Bell." "But I still think you might have told me." "When did it start?" "it's been going on." "you know." "She saw she'd failed with you." "I expect it was the letter you wrote after reading uncle Ned's book." "But I hardly said a thing." "you have said a lot." "you know." "Mr Ryder." "Yes?" "Goodbye." "Bye." "sir." "I shall be passing through Oxford on Tuesday and hope to see you and Sebastian." "I would like to see you alone for five minutes before I see him." "Is that too much to ask?" "I will come to your rooms at about 12:00"." "These ground floor rooms are really most attractive." "were here you know." "Ned had rooms on the garden front." "but my husband was at Christchurch it was he who took charge of Sebastian's education." "Charles." "Thank you." "Everyone loves your paintings in the garden room." "We would never forgive you if you didn't finish them." "I hope" "I expect you've guessed already what I've come to ask." "Quite simply." "Is Sebastian drinking too much this term?" "If he was I shouldn't answer." "I can say no." "thank God." "Is that the time?" "Sebastian's expecting us at one." "Sebastian had his third disaster." "sir." "Mr Ryder." "What on earth is it?" "Oakes Oakes?" "What's the time?" "sir." "Where is he?" "He's in the back quad." "Had a bit of a nasty fall." "The 'Bulldogs' have got 'im too." "But I only left him an hour ago." "He can't have." "take it quietly please." "I'm sorry." "Oh Christ I just wanted" "I don't seem to be entirely myself." "I seem to have hurt my leg" "There's blood all over my hand." "I don't think it's very serious." "Charles!" "I've had a bit of a fall bleeding a lot but feel all right." "I'm alright it's bleeding a lot but I'm alright." "I just wanted to see you sir he's a friend of mine." "I'll take care of him." "I told you I told you I wanted to see you" "Have you been doing that a lot?" "Drinking by yourself after I've gone." "About twice." "maybe four times." "It's only when they start bothering me." "I'd be all right if only they'd leave me alone." "They won't now." "I know." "if you are going to embark on a solitary bout of drinking every time you see a member of your family it's hopeless!" "what do you propose to do?" "Nothing." "I shan't do a thing." "They'll do it all." "You must believe that when I told you he was not drinking" "I was telling you the truth as I knew it." "I know you wish to be a good friend to him." "That's not what I mean." "I believed it to be true." "I still believe it to some extent." "no more." "all you can mean is that you have not as much influence or knowledge of him as I thought." "It is no good either of us trying to believe him." "I've known drunkards before." "One of the most terrible things about them is their deceit." "Love of truth is the first thing that goes." "he was so sweet to me." "and I agreed to all he wanted." "You know I had doubts about his sharing rooms with you." "I know you'll understand me when I say that." "You know how fond we all are of you apart from your being Sebastian's friend." "We would miss you so much if you ever stopped coming to stay with us." "not just one." "Monsignor Bell tells me he never mixes with the other Catholics rarely goes to Church even." "Heaven forbid he should know only Catholics but he should know some." "It takes a very strong faith to stand entirely alone and Sebastian isn't strong." "But I was so happy at luncheon that I gave up all my objections" "I went round with him to see the rooms you had chosen." "They are charming." "We decided on some furniture you could have sent from London to make them nicer." "on the very night after I had seen him it is not in the Logic of the Thing." "have you a remedy?" "The college are being extraordinarily kind." "They say they will not send him down provided he goes to live with Monsignor Bell." "It's not something I could have suggested myself." "It was the Monsignor's own idea." "can't you see that if you want to turn him into a drunkard that's the way to do it?" "Any idea of his being watched would be fatal." "it's no use." "Protestants always think" "Catholic priests are spies." "That's not what I mean." "He must feel free." "up till now and look at the result." "I'm going to cable Papa." "He won't let them force me into that priest's house." "What if they make it a condition of your coming up?" "I shan't come up." "Can you imagine me serving at Mass twice a week?" "Helping at tea parties for shy Catholic freshmen dining with a visiting lecturer with Monsignor Bell's eye on me just to make sure I don't get too much port?" "Being explained away as the rather embarrassing local inebriate who's been taken in because his mother is so charming?" "I told her it wouldn't do." "Charles Let's get really drunk tonight." "It's the one time it could do no conceivable harm." "Promise me you haven't gone over to their side?" "Contra mundum"." "Contra Mundum"." "Charles." "There are not many evenings left to us." "Those priests sleep" "Damn Monsignor" "Ding Dong I'm not interested" "That's not what" "Lady Marchmain left Oxford taking Sebastian with her." "Brideshead and I went to his rooms to sort out what he would have sent on and what to leave behind." "It's a pity Sebastian doesn't know Monsignor Bell better." "He'd find him a charming man to live with." "I was there myself in my last term." "My mother believes Sebastian is a confirmed drunkard." "Is he?" "He's in danger of becoming one." "I believe God prefers drunkards to a lot of respectable people." "For God's sake!" "Why do you have to bring God into everything?" "I forgot." "But you know that's an extremely funny question." "not to you." "No." "Not to me." "It seems to me that without your religion Sebastian might have had a chance to be a happy and a healthy man." "I suppose." "Do you think Sebastian will need this elephant's foot again?" "I haven't seen you all term." "Why have you deserted the smart set?" "I'm the loneliest man in Oxford." "Sebastian Flyte's been sent down." "Have you got digs for next term?" "I'm sharing with Tyngate." "There's one room we still haven't let." "Barker was coming in but now he's standing for President of the Union he feels he ought to be nearer." "Where are you going?" "I was going to Merton Street with" "Sebastian but that's no good now." "I'd better go and do my packing." "I hope you find someone for Iffley Road." "I hope you find someone for Merton Street." "is he not with you?" "No." "I'm sorry." "I liked him." "do you particularly want me to take my degree?" "why should I want such a thing?" "as far as I've seen." "That's exactly what I was thinking." "I thought perhaps it was rather a waste of time going back to Oxford." "my brother warned me of this." "what's all the talk about?" "Everyone stays up at least three years." "I knew one man who took seven to get a pass degree in theology." "I only thought that if I wasn't going to take up one of the professions where a degree is necessary." "It might be better to start now on what I intend doing." "I intend being a painter." "You'll need a studio." "Yes." "there's no studio here." "I'm not going to have you painting in the gallery." "I never meant to." "Nor will I have undraped models all over the house or critics with their horrible jargon." "And I don't like the smell of turpentine." "I presume you intend to do the thing properly and paint with oils?" "I probably shouldn't paint much in the first year." "I should be at a school." "Abroad?" "I believe." "Well abroad or here." "I should have to look round first." "Look round abroad." "Anyhow you agree to my leaving Oxford?" "you're twenty-two." "father." "Twenty-one in October." "Is that all you are?" "It seems much longer." "I did not see Sebastian again that year." "Towards the end of the summer I took up a place in a small art school in Paris and found rooms in the Ille St Louis." "A letter from Lady Marchmain completes this chapter." "Sebastian's stay here has not been happy." "Mr Samgrass has kindly consented to take charge of him where Mr Samgrass has long been anxious to investigate a number of orthodox monasteries." "I hope your arrangements for next term have not been too much upset and that everything will go well with you." "I went to the garden room this morning and was so very sorry." "I returned to England." "Lady Marchmain had written to me in Paris to tell me that Sebastian would complete his tour with Mr Samgrass in time to spend Christmas with his family." "She invited me to Brideshead." "was an engagement I could not break." "So it was two days later that I traveled across country expecting to find Sebastian already established." "thank you." "And those two over there if you would be so kind those two over there." "Thank you." "or should I say Happy New Year?" "Mr Samgrass." "what are you doing on the train?" "I thought you were going to be home for Christmas." "There was a delay." "It was the luggage." "Mr Atkinson at Cooks promised it would arrive by the 24th but unfortunately" "How was Egypt?" "I'll tell you later." "This one is when we reached the top of the pass." "We heard the galloping horses behind and two soldiers came to the head of the caravan and turned us back." "There they are on the right." "They reached us only just in time." "There was a band not a mile ahead." "A band?" "Goodness!" "A jazz band?" "no." "I suppose the sort of folk-music you get in those parts is very monotonous." "a band of brigands." "The mountains are full of them." "Stragglers from Kemal's army" "Greeks who got cut off in the retreat." "I assure you." "Charles." "Do pinch me." "So you never got to wherever it was." "Sebastian?" "I don't think I was there that day." "Was I Sammy?" "That was the day you were ill." "that was the day I was ill so I shouldn't have got to wherever it was." "Sammy?" "Sorry." "was our Turkish cook that's him on the left." "That's me at Damascus." "That's me with a rather tiresome Turkish." "I think no Jerusalem." "All ruins and mules and you." "Where's Sebastian?" "he He held the camera." "He became quite an expert as soon as he learned" "Sebastian?" "taken by a street photographer in Beirut." "There's Sebastian." "isn't that Anthony Blanche?" "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." "at Krak-des-Chevaliers." "There's Anthony again!" "he came with us all the way to Beirut." "I'm afraid." "Mr Samgrass." "It must have been a wonderful tour for you both." "mother." "It must have been an extraordinary trip?" "Yes." "Did you ride a camel?" "I don't know." "Probably." "Charles?" "it's not very exciting in comparison but it's going very well." "When are you going to come and stay Sebastian?" "You'll like it." "I suppose they all think you're wonderful over there?" "it's amazing but I don't seem to have put a foot wrong." "The teachers are very good." "I'm not sure about the students." "They never go near the Louvre." "Half of them are only interested in making a popular splash like Picabia and the other half just want to do advertisements for Vogue and decorate night clubs." "Charles isn't it?" "Cordelia." "I am glad." "why don't you run away and leave us in peace?" "Aren't you at all pleased to be home?" "of course I'm pleased." "you might show it." "I've been looking forward to it so much." "How extraordinary you running into Anthony Blanche." "wasn't it?" "Dear old Antoine." "Quite like old times." "my lord." "where's the cocktail tray?" "Isn't it time they brought it in?" "It's still a bit early." "my Lord." "never mind." "Bring it in yourself." "my Lord." "send him in the moment he comes down." "my Lord." "extraordinary meeting Anthony like that." "He's very changed." "You wouldn't have recognized him." "He had grown a great beard in Istanbul." "Where the hell is Wilcox?" "Very unbecoming and I made him shave it off." "anyway." "I'll go up and see Nanny and then I'll have my bath." "Charles." "Can you give me a moment?" "There's something I've got to explain." "Of course." "Mother's given orders that no drinks are to be left in any of the rooms." "You'll understand why." "ring and ask Wilcox only best wait until you're on your own." "I'm sorry but there it is." "Is that really necessary?" "I gather very necessary." "You may or may not have heard" "Sebastian had another outbreak when he got back to England." "He was lost over Christmas." "Mr Samgrass only found him yesterday evening." "I guessed something of the sort must have happened." "Are you sure this is the best way of dealing with it?" "It's my mother's way." "do have a drink yourself if you want now he's gone upstairs." "It would choke me." "Hello Nanny." "I was looking for Sebastian." "I thought he might be here." "I told him he was looking peaky." "All that foreign food I don't suppose it agreed with him." "too" "I suppose." "And his shirt wanted darning." "I told him to bring it here to me before it goes to the wash." "Nanny." "it's you." "You gave me a fright." "So you got a drink." "I don't know what you mean." "you don't have to pretend with me." "You might offer me one." "It's just a little something I had in my flask." "It's empty now." "What's going on?" "Nothing." "A lot." "I'll tell you sometime." "I'd better go and get changed." "about the Levantine cuisine it can have the most alarming aspects for the uninitiated." "When we were dining with the Patriarch at Trebizond we were offered that most special delicacy the eye of the sheep in a bed of cous cous." "How very disgusting." "I was struggling to find my demotic Greek for" "I like sheep's eye but sheep's eye doesn't like me" "Mr Samgrass." "Yes." "Who's hunting tomorrow?" "I am." "if you don't mind." "Just to show him to the hounds." "That's all right I think Rex is arriving sometime tomorrow." "I suppose I'd better stay and see him." "Sorry." "Bit late." "I've promised an outing on Mr Beelzebub tomorrow." "what an unfortunate name for a pony." "Mummy." "Sister Bridget said that if you can ride the devil you can ride anything." "Where is this meat?" "Is it here?" "it is." "I'd like to hunt please." "That's if there's something for me." "Of course." "Be delighted." "but you always used to complain of being made to go out." "then." "she's been going very nicely this season." "thank you." "please." "Sebastian a day out will be so good for you." "Mr Samgrass was telling me how you both stood up to the hardships of your journey together." "I'd no idea you had to endure such discomfort." "Has he?" "I was explaining about the time we were held at the Turkish border and had to share the guards' supper." "Don't you remember?" "of course the guards' supper." "Mummy?" "no." "I don't think so." "I think an early night will do us all good." "Someone remind me to write out a note for the stables." "Sebastian." "promise?" "You will try and look smart?" "Of course." "I rather wish I was coming out with you tomorrow." "You wouldn't see much sport." "I can tell you exactly what I'm going to do." "I shall leave Bridey at the first cover hack across to the nearest pub" "and spend the entire day quietly soaking in the bar parlour." "they can bloody well have a dipsomaniac." "anyway." "I can't stop you." "as a matter of fact." "By not giving me any money." "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 tomorrow for my day's expenses." "I won't." "You know perfectly well I can't." "Charles?" "I daresay I shall manage on my own somehow." "managing on my own." "I've had to." "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." "And you?" "I suppose I may as well tell you since he unfortunately seems to have been very indiscreet about my happy Christmas." "I gave Sammy the slip." "I had begun to guess." "I got lucky at cards in Constantinople and I was just enjoying a very happy hour in a bar but Anthony Blanche and a very pretty little Jew boy." "Anthony lent me a tenner to help me escape" "just before Sammy came panting in to recapture me." "After that he wouldn't let me out of his sight." "But in Athens it was easy." "We stayed in the Legation." "One day after lunch I simply walked out cashed the money at Cooks found a sailor who spoke American lay up with him until his ship sailed and popped back to Constantinople and that was that." "Didn't Sammy mind?" "He was a bit anxious at first." "I didn't want him to get so I cabled him saying that I am quite well and please send half our money to the Ottoman Bank and keep the rest for yourself." "Poor old Sammy." "Poor old Sammy." "I almost feel sorry for him." "In the end I think he quite enjoyed himself in his own ghastly little way." "So here I am." "After Christmas." "Yes." "I was determined to have a happy Christmas." "Did you?" "I think so." "isn't it?" "Sebastian!" "Sebastian?" "You can't go dressed like that." "Do go and change." "You look so lovely in your hunting clothes." "They're all locked away somewhere." "Gibbs couldn't find them." "That's a fib." "I helped get them out myself before you were called." "You promised me." "There are all sorts of bits missing." "it just encourages the Strickland Venables." "They've been behaving rottenly." "They've even taken their grooms out of top hats." "You see." "They won't even trust me that far." "not me." "Good morning." "Now you can't refuse me money." "More!" "Sebastian!" "Lunch!" "Sebastian." "Sebastian is in pursuit of the fox and our little problem is shelved for an hour or two." "last night." "I rather supposed you might have." "I did not harrow our hostess with all that." "it turned out far better than anyone had any right to expect." "that some explanation was due to her for 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 tonight." "Yesterday was not an evening that any of us would wish to have repeated." "I'm not sure that tonight is quite the time to start the relaxation." "Sebastian can come to no mischief today." "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." "Don't you get bored with the subject?" "Why must everyone make such a thing about it?" "Because we're fond of him." "I'm fond of him too" "I suppose." "Only I wish he'd behave like anyone else." "you know Poppa." "Not to be talked of in front of the servants not to be talked of in front of us when we were children." "If Mummy is going to start making a skeleton out of Sebastian it's too much." "why doesn't he go off to Kenya where it doesn't matter?" "Why does it matter less being unhappy in Kenya than anywhere else?" "Charles." "You understand perfectly." "You mean there won't be so many embarrassing situations for you?" "Charles?" "In about a month." "I think I'm beginning to miss it." "Now I have got a new studio on the Ile St Louis." "It's up about six flights of stairs but there's a wonderful view." "The light's quite different in Paris." "the river and Notre Dame." "You must be happy there." "I'm hoping Sebastian will come and stay with me when I go back." "Charles." "I hope he will be coming to stay with me in London." "You know that's impossible." "London is the worst place." "Even Mr Samgrass couldn't find him there." "We have no secrets in this house." "all through Christmas." "Mr Samgrass only found him because he couldn't pay so they had to telephone our house." "It's too horrible." "London is impossible." "If he can't behave himself here with us" "we shall have to keep him healthy and happy here for a while and then send him abroad again with Mr Samgrass." "I've been through all this before." "I hope he's having a good day." "well understood by both of us." "he ran away." "because they both hate you." "with Julia and Lady Marchmain" "I reached deadlock." "Not because we failed to understand one another but because we understood too well." "The subject was everywhere in the house like a fire deep in the hold of a ship." "And you think you can find a reference?" "I do." "do look at Rex's Christmas present." "Rex." "Samgrass." "Dear me" "I wonder if it eats the same kinds of things as an ordinary tortoise?" "What will you do when it's dead?" "Can you have another tortoise fitted into the shell?" "This slightly obscene object 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 or a certain smell which recall one to a tragedy." "I hope it's dipsomania." "That's simply a great misfortune 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 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 worry him with keepers and cures he'll be a physical wreck in a few years." "you know?" "There's no moral obligation to become" "Master of Foxhounds or Postmaster General or to live to walk ten miles at eighty." "moral obligation Now you're back on religion." "I never left it." "Bridey?" "If ever I thought about becoming a Catholic" "I'd only have to talk to you for five minutes to be cured." "You manage to reduce what seem quite sensible propositions into stark nonsense." "It's odd you should say that." "I've heard it before from other people." "It's one of the reasons why I don't think I should have made a good priest." "I suppose." "Send him to Borethus in Zurich." "Borethus is the man." "He performs miracles every day at that Sanatorium of his." "You know how Charlie Kilcartney used to drink" "I'm afraid I don't know how Charlie Kilcartney drank." "Two wives despaired of him." "she made it a condition that he go to Zurich and take the cure." "And it worked." "He came back three months later a different man." "even though Sylvia walked out on him." "Why did she do that?" "Well" "Charlie got to be a bit of a bore when he stopped drinking." "But that's not the point of the story." "really it's meant to be an encouraging story." "you know." "what very peculiar friends poor Sebastian will make in Zurich." "He's booked up for months ahead but I think he might find room if I asked him." "I could telephone him from here tonight." "I'll think about it." "Fine." "Hello." "Cordelia." "what's that?" "How beastly." "It's my Christmas present from Rex." "I'm sorry." "I'm always putting my foot in it." "But how cruel." "It must hurt frightfully." "They can't feel." "How do you know?" "I bet they can." "I've already had one tea at Mrs. Barney's but I'm still hungry." "It was a spiffing day." "You should have seen Jean Strickland-Venables when she fell off in the mud." "Where's Sebastian?" "He's in disgrace." "Coming out in that beastly rat-catcher's coat and that mean little tie like something from Captain Morvin's Riding Academy." "I just didn't recognize him in the meet and I hope nobody else did." "Why?" "Isn't he back yet?" "I expect he got lost." "Poor little thing" "and that horrid tortoise." "Lady?" "Wilcox?" "my Lady." "He's just arrived." "He rang up from South Twining to be collected." "He must have stopped for tea with someone." "South Twining?" "Who lives there?" "my Lady." "he did get lost!" "Wilcox." "how nice to see you looking so well again." "Your day in the open has done you good." "do help yourself." "I will." "There was nothing unusual in her speech but the fact of her saying it." "Six months ago it would not have been said." "Bridey" "It's no damned use" "Couldn't get it over a molehill" "How do you expect me to keep up with the rests of the field even if I wanted to?" "Bridey." "thank you." "you saw it." "You saw how pathetic it was" "you saw it." "falling on a bruise 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." "Sebastian." "Have some port first." "Have some port if you want it." "But don't come into the drawing room." "Too bloody drunk!" "Like golden times." "Gentlemen always too drunk join ladies in olden times." "April 26." "Got some more red enamel paint being the best colour and the backs of our Shakespeare the binding of which had almost worn out." "Sebastian's gone to bed." "I think we should go too." "Cordelia?" "Julia?" "Mummy." "I'm staying up for a little." "Come up and see me before you go to bed." "I shan't be asleep." "Rex." "Goodnight Lady Marchmain." "Goodnight Mother." "Goodnight." "thank you for reading so delightfully." "Mr Samgrass." "Goodnight Charles." "Goodnight Lady Marchmain." "Goodnight Charles." "Goodnight Cordelia." "are you coming?" "indeed." "I'm more than ready." "Goodnight." "Goodnight." "Goodnight." "Goodnight." "Charles." "What's happening?" "I'm going." "Tell me honestly do you?" "Charles." "I don't believe I do." "am I?" "No help." "I'd better go and say goodbye to your mother." "The problem is I've got a tremendous amount of work to get done before I go back to Paris." "I'm sorry I'm not able to stay as long as I'd hoped" "And I hope you'll forgive me rushing off like this" "Charles." "Lady Marchmain and thank you very much for having me to stay." "there's something I must ask you." "Did you give Sebastian money yesterday?" "Yes." "Knowing how he was likely to spend it?" "Yes." "I don't understand it." "I simply don't understand how anyone could do something so callously wicked." "I'm not going to reproach you." "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 could have been so nice in so many ways and then do something so wantonly cruel." "I don't understand how we all liked you so much." "Did you hate us all the time?" "I don't understand how we deserved it." "Goodbye." "I remained 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 as I drove away" "I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind" "I should feel the lack of it and search for it hopelessly" "as ghosts are said to do." "I said to myself." "A door had shut." "The low door in the wall I had sought and found at Oxford." "Open it now and I should find no enchanted garden." "I had come to the surface into the light of common day after a long captivity in the sunless coral palaces and waving forests of the ocean bed." "I said to myself:" "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." "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." "Monsieur Ryder." "I returned to Paris to the friends I had found there and the habits I had formed." "I thought I should hear no more of Brideshead but life has few separations as sharp as that." "Rex!" "Charles?" "I came by this morning." "They told me where you usually lunched but I couldn't find you." "Have you got him?" "has he?" "We got here last night and were going to go onto Zurich today." "as he said he was tired and went round to the Travelers for a game." "And when you came back you found he was gone?" "Not at all." "I wish I had." "he was waiting up for me." "I had a run of luck at the Travelers." "I 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." "blast him!" "So now he may be anywhere?" "Anywhere." "by any chance?" "My dealings with that family are over." "I think mine are just beginning." "I've got a lot to talk to you about but I promised this chap" "I'd give him his revenge back at the Travelers." "Will you dine with me?" "Yes." "Where?" "I usually go to Cingaro's." "Why not Paillards?" "you know." "I know you are." "I'll order the dinner." "I see." "What's the name of that place again?" "I'll write it down for you." "It was not expensive to live in France then." "that I had an opportunity and if I had to spend an evening with Rex it should at any rate be in my own way." "Did you stay long at Brideshead after I left?" "Was my name mentioned much?" "old boy." "The Marchioness got what she called a bad conscience about you." "at your last meeting." "Callously wicked wantonly cruel" "Ouch!" "Hard words." "It doesn't matter what people call you as long as they don't call you pigeon pie and eat you up." "What?" "It's a saying." "Ah." "I like a bit of onion with my caviar." "Chap who knew said it brought out the flavor." "Try it without first." "And tell me more news of myself." "or whatever he was called The snooty Don" "Samgrass." "He came a cropper." "That was well received by all." "after you left." "He was always being pushed down our throats." "So in the end Julia couldn't bear it anymore and gave him away." "That was the end of Samgrass." "Charles that Ma Marchmain hasn't let on to anyone." "She's a very sick woman." "Might peg out at any minute." "George Anstruthers saw her in the autumn and put it at two years." "What is this soup?" "It's sorrel." "I thought you'd find it interesting after the caviar." "Is that true?" "How do you know?" "It's the kind of thing I hear." "I wouldn't give her a year." "I know just the man for her in Vienna but she wont do anything about it." "I suppose it has something to do with that crack brained religion of hers not to take the body seriously." "You know the food here isn't half bad." "Someone ought to take this place up and make something out of it." "I'll tell you another thing." "They're in for a jolt financially if they don't look out." "But I thought they were enormously rich." "They're rich in the way people are who just let their money sit quiet." "Everyone of that sort's a lot poorer than they were in 1914 and the Flyte's don't seem to realise it." "Look at the way they live." "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 acquisitive world which Rex inhabited." "Those were the kind of things he dealt with debt and greed." "Julia's just rising 20." "I don't want to wait till she's of age." "But I don't want to marry her without doing the thing properly nothing hole in the corner." "His theme was plain." "He wanted a woman he wanted the best on the market and he wanted her cheap." "I've got to the time when notoriety has done you know." "St Margaret's Westminster or whatever the Catholics have." "the Prime Minister being photographed going into the church." "as the Marchioness won't play ball" "I'm off to see the old man and square things with him." "I gather he's likely to agree to anything that will upset her." "He's at Monte Carlo at the moment." "I'd planned to go on there after dropping Sebastian off in Zurich." "That's why it's such a bloody bore having lost him." "Now brandy is one of the things I do know a bit about." "Now this colour is too pale and I can't taste it in this thimble." "Waiter!" "Garcon!" "Are you sure you won't join me?" "No thanks." "I'm quite happy with this." "it's a crime to drink it if you don't really appreciate it." "The wedding was at the beginning of June." "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." "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." "till now has played an intermittent and somewhat enigmatic part in Sebastian's drama." "It was thus she appeared to me at this time." "And I to her." "But as Sebastian in his sharp decline so much more did" "Julia stand out clear and firm." "When I first met her when she met me in the station yard and drove me home through the twilight that high summer of 1923 she was just eighteen and fresh from her first London season." "Some said it was the most brilliant season since the war and that things were getting into their stride again." "Through those halcyon weeks she darted and shone part of the sunshine between the trees part of the candle light in the mirror's spectrum." "She outshone by far all the girls of her age but she knew there were grave disabilities from which she suffered." "There was the scandal of her father that slight inherited stain upon her brightness that seemed deepened by something in her own way of life." "a less disciplined habit than most of her contemporaries." "There was also her religion." "it seemed to stand between her and her natural goal." "But having been brought up a Catholic she would go to hell while Protestant girls of her acquaintance could marry eldest sons live at peace with the world and get to heaven before her." "There could be no eldest son for Julia." "Perhaps in a family of three or four boys a Catholic might get the youngest but younger sons were indelicate things not to be much spoken of." "There were of course Catholics themselves but these came seldom into the little world" "Julia had made for herself." "What was there left?" "That was Julia's problem after her weeks of triumph in London." "I was not her man." "She told me as much without a word when she accepted the cigarette from my lips." "When Julia left Sebastian and me alone for that first summer at Brideshead" "Lady Roscommon in her villa at Cap Ferrat." "There she pondered her problem." "She knew it was not insurmountable." "be a number of people outside her own world who were well qualified to be drawn into it." "The shame was that she must seek them." "Rex Mottram and Brenda Champion were staying taken that year by a newspaper magnate and frequented by politicians." "They would not normally have come within Lady Roscommon's ambit the parties mingled and at once Rex began warily to pay his court." "Rex's age was greatly in his favour young men were held to be gauche and pimply." "His seniors thought him a pushful young cad but Julia recognized the unmistakable chic the flavor of the Prince of Wales the Big Table in the Sporting Club the second magnum and the fourth cigar of the chauffeur kept waiting hour after hour without compunction" "which her friends would envy." "even of crime about it." "People said Rex went about armed and certainly the fact of his being Brenda Champion's property sharpened Julia's appetite." "All that summer he had been feeling restless." "Mrs. Champion had proved a dead end." "It had all been intensely exciting at first but now the bonds began to chafe." "Rex demanded a wider horizon." "He wanted to consolidate his gains." "It was time he married." "There was little Rex could do at Cap Ferrat except establish a friendship which could be widened later." "He was never entirely alone with Julia but he saw to it that she was included in most things they did." "And that was enough to make Lady Roscommon write to Lady Marchmain and Mrs. Champion move him sooner than they had planned to Antibes." "But in the comparative freedom of London" "Rex became abject to Julia." "He planned his life about hers going where he would meet her ingratiating himself with those who could report well of him to her." "He was always ready in his Hispano Suiza to drive her wherever she wanted to go." "And all the time he never once made love to her." "between Christmas and Easter he had become indispensable." "she found herself in love." "This disturbing and unsought revelation when Rex had told her he would be busy in the Commons." "Driving by chance down Charles Street she saw him leaving what she knew to be" "Brenda Champion's house." "my lady?" "I'm starving." "Will you bring me some bread and milk?" "my lady?" "Yes." "Wilcox when Mr Mottram telephones in the morning say I'm not to be disturbed." "my lady." "I'm shopping with her ladyship this afternoon so will you tell Lady Roscommon" "I won't be there till teatime." "tell Wilcox I'm motoring to the Chasms on Friday so I'll need the car." "Did Mr Mottram ring up by any chance?" "my lady." "Four times." "Shall I put him through when he rings up again?" "Yes." "No." "Tell him I'm out." "my lady." "I've shown him into the library." "I cant be bothered with him." "Do tell him to go away." "Thank you Wilcox." "Julia." "I've often said he's not my favorite among your friends but I have grown quite used to him almost to like him." "You really cannot take people up and drop them just like that." "Particularly people like Mr Mottram." "must I see him?" "There'll be a terrible scene if I do." "you twist that poor man round your finger." "Have you been waiting long?" "I had to have lunch with mummy." "She wanted me to go shopping with her." "How was the House last night?" "Best described as dull." "Did you sit late?" "I was home by half past one." "Why didn't you answer my calls?" "What time did you get there?" "About eight o'clock." "Maybe a bit later." "I had somewhere to go first." "Oh" "And where was that?" "Julia" "It's finished." "What is?" "You know very well." "She wanted me to tell her face to face." "I don't give a damn about Brenda Champion and I don't give a damn if you see her." "You can do just what you like." "Can I?" "Can I?" "I'll never see her again if that's what you want." "So Julia came out of the library an hour later engaged to be married." "I warned you this would happen if I went in there." "You did nothing of the kind." "You merely said there might be a scene." "I never conceived of a scene of this kind." "Mummy you said so." "He has been very nice in a number of ways" "I consider him entirely unsuitable as your husband." "So will everyone." "Damn everyone." "the whole thing is impossible." "I can't see how you can have been so foolish." "what right have I got otherwise to be angry with him if he goes with that horrible old woman?" "You make a great thing about rescuing fallen women." "I'm rescuing a fallen man for a change." "I'm saving Rex from mortal sin." "Julia." "isn't it a mortal sin to sleep with Brenda Champion?" "Or indecent." "He's promised never to see her again." "I couldn't ask him to do that could I?" "are not my business." "Your happiness is." "I think Mr Mottram but I wouldn't trust him an inch and I'm sure he'll have very unpleasant children." "They always revert." "I've no doubt you'll regret the whole business in a few days." "Meanwhile nothing is to be done." "No one must be told anything or even allowed to suspect." "You must stop lunching with him." "but nowhere in public." "You had better send him to me and I will have a little talk to him about it." "Thus began a year's secret engagement for Julia for Rex made love to her not as it had happened to her once or twice before with sentimental and uncertain boys but with a passion that disclosed the corner of something like it in her." "Their passion frightened her and she came back from the confessional one day determined to put an end to it." "When I went to Confession at school" "I used to make up stories about my sins because they seemed so dull." "Once I was in there for an hour and a quarter." "The rest of the class were kneeling outside waiting their turn." "Sister Goddard was furious." "We all missed going swimming." "But she couldn't ask me what I had said." "you see." "Today it only took five minutes." "What did they give you?" "Three Hail Mary's." "And a clean slate?" "That sounds very attractive to me." "though." "To be forgiven you have to have a good intention" "Julia." "You always have the best intentions." "Rex." "It can't go on like this." "Otherwise I must stop seeing you." "I have no desire to make you unhappy." "I know that." "I don't want to be unhappy." "I can't help it." "Neither can I." "sir." "thank you sir." "For six weeks they remained at arm's length kissing when they met and parted talking of what they would do and where they would live and of Rex's chances of an under-secretaryship." "living in the future." "just before the end of the session she learned that Rex had been staying the weekend with a stockbroker in Sunningdale and that Mrs. Champion had been there too." "How was the constituency?" "How do you mean?" "The weekend." "You said you had a meeting at your constituency." "plans were changed." "I got trapped into a weekend with Teddy Behrens down in Sunningdale." "Julia." "Not your style." "You'd have hated it." "How was your weekend?" "I missed you a lot." "Did Brenda Champion hate her weekend too?" "I don't know." "I barely spoke with her." "It was quite a crowd." "Teddy had a house full." "I see." "What an extraordinary coincidence." "You must have been pleasantly surprised." "No." "I was surprised to find her there." "I had no idea that she knew Teddy that well." "please don't lie to me." "Julia" "Sometimes I find you very hard to understand." "What the hell do you expect?" "Don't you ever try to see it my way?" "what right have you to ask so much when you give so little?" "I'll telephone you later." "it can't be wrong to commit a small sin myself in order to keep him from a far worse one?" "that you would have committed not a small one." "A mortal sin and that the behavior of the gentleman in other circumstances would in no way alter or lessen your degree of sin." "I would like to be able to say what you would like to hear but I cannot." "It is my duty to tell you the Church's view." "And to remind you that Our Lord understands your tribulations and loves you all the more for striving against them." "Now I think it's time to hear your confession." "thank you." "I don't think I want to today." "Father." "she shut her mind against her religion." "That Christmas Julia had refused to take Holy Communion and Lady Marchmain found herself betrayed then by Mr Samgrass in the first grey days of 1925." "She decided to act." "She forbade all talk of an engagement she forbade Julia and Rex ever to meet." "It was characteristic that even in this crisis she did not think it unreasonable to put Sebastian in Rex's charge on the journey to Dr. Borethus." "having failed her in that matter went on to Lord Marchmain in Monte Carlo where he completed her rout." "You say my brother's lost?" "Do you mean literally?" "How very odd." "That's right." "Vanished into thin air along with three hundred quid that he took to help him on his way." "of course." "Bridey." "Are you sure you can't find him again?" "I understood you knew how to go about this sort of thing?" "This time it may be difficult." "Alcoholics develop great cunning." "Yes I can see that." "This will come as a very great worry for my mother." "It's a bad time for her." "You know she intends to take Julia abroad with her almost immediately." "Bridey." "I don't understand you." "My mother plans to take Julia away for most of the winter." "afraid she feels that it's time that your associations with Julia came to an end." "Julia and I are getting married." "I don't think that's possible." "It's hardly likely that my mother will change her views." "I've talked with your father." "I saw him in Monte Carlo." "And I have his written consent." "You know he seemed delighted with the whole idea." "Rex gave himself to the preparations with gusto." "He bought her a ring from a tray at Cartier but in a back room in Hatton Garden from a man who brought the stones out of the safe in little bags and displayed them on a writing desk." "She was daily surprised by the things Rex knew at the time added to his attraction." "There was trouble about the marriage settlement with which Julia refused to interest herself." "I'm not settling up my capital." "And what the hell do I want with trustee stock?" "I don't know darling." "The lawyers were in despair." "Rex absolutely refused to settle any capital." "I make money work for me." "I expect fifteen or twenty per cent and I get it." "It's pure waste tying up capital at three and a half." "darling." "these fellows act as though I were trying to rob you." "They're the ones who do all the robbing." "They want to rob you of two thirds of the income I can make you." "haven't we?" "There's another thing your damn fool brother can't get into his head." "I want a decent wedding." "I went to the Bourbon-Parma wedding in Madrid." "That's the sort of thing I want for you." "put on a good show." "You never saw anything to equal those Cardinals." "How many do you have here in England?" "darling." "One?" "Can we hire some others from abroad?" "a mixed marriage is usually conducted very quietly no splash." "How do you mean mixed?" "I'm not a nigger or anything." "between a Catholic and a Protestant." "it's soon unmixed." "I'll become a Catholic." "please." "Lady Marchmain was dismayed and perplexed by this new development." "It brought back memories of her own courtship and another conversion." "Rex" "I wonder if you realise how big a thing you are taking on in the Faith." "It would be a very wicked step to take without believing sincerely." "Lady Marchmain" "I don't pretend to be a very devout man and I am not much of a theologian but I do know it's a bad plan to have two religions in one house." "And a man does need a religion." "If you church is good enough for Julia then it's good enough for me." "Very well." "I will see about having you instructed." "I haven't time." "Instruction will be wasted on me." "Just give me the form and I'll sign on the dotted line." "It usually takes some months often a lifetime." "try me." "So Rex was sent to Farm Street." "renowned for his triumphs with obdurate catechumens." "you will know in a general way what is meant by prayer and the power of prayer." "Now I'd like you to tell me what you yourself mean by prayer." "I don't mean anything." "You tell me." "Well every man be he the most humble or the most exalted is able to feel some sort of communion with God the Father to ask His forgiveness and to beg for his mercy." "Right." "so much for prayer." "What's the next thing?" "would you say Our Lord has more than one nature?" "Father." "Let me try another question." "Supposing" "Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud and said It's going to rain Would that be bound to happen?" "Father." "But supposing it didn't?" "Supposing there was no rain?" "I suppose it would be sort of raining spiritually." "Only we were too sinful to see it." "He's the most difficult convert I've ever met." "I thought he was going to make it so easy." "I can't get anywhere near him." "He doesn't seem to have the least intellectual curiosity or natural piety." "he doesn't even correspond to any degree of paganism known to the missionaries." "Julia" "Are you sure Rex isn't doing this thing purely with the idea of pleasing us?" "I don't think it enters his head." "He's really sincere in his conversion?" "Mummy." "hallowed by Thy Name on earth as it is in Heaven" "Give us this day our daily bread" "As we forgive them" "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." "Amen." "full of grace the Lord is with thee." "Blessed art thou amongst women" "Jesus." "Mother of God" "Pray for us" "Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death." "Amen." "who it is who merits heaven?" "that is whosoever loves and serves God faithfully and dies in his Grace." "Good." "who serve not God and die in mortal sin deserve?" "The wicked who serve not God and die in mortal sin that's really quite encouraging." "We'll continue next time." "Mr Mottram" "Is there anything particular troubling you?" "Look Father." "I don't think you're being straight with me." "I want to join your Church and I'm going to join your Church but you're holding too much back." "What do you mean "holding too much back"?" "I've had a long talk with a Catholic and I've learned a thing or two." "you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that's the direction of Heaven so if you die in the night you can walk there." "Now I'll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia but do you expect a grown man to believe about walking to Heaven?" "And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a Cardinal?" "And what about the box you have in the church porch where if you put in a pound note they get sent to hell." "Mr Mottram" "I'm not saying there may not be a good reason for all this but you ought to tell me about it and not let me go and find out for myself." "But who can he have been talking to?" "Did he dream it all?" "what's the matter?" "What a chump!" "What a glorious chump!" "Cordelia It was you." "who would have believed that he would swallow it." "I told him such a lot besides." "About sacred monkeys in the Vatican and all kinds of things." "you've very considerably increased my work." "I think it makes him rather loveable." "You must treat him like an idiot child Father Mowbray." "but this looks good." "one afternoon tea set." "sorry." "thirty bob I should think." "Jolly mean." "Another tea set from the Chasms." "please don't mix the cards up." "We're trying to make a list." "I was only looking." "It's going to be enough agony thanking people as it is." "Rex's instruction was continued and Father Mowbray consented to receive him into the Church just before his wedding." "Thus things stood." "The cards had gone out and presents were coming in fast." "Then came what Julia called Bridey's bombshell" "Chinky vases from Aunt Betty." "my lady." "Aren't they hideous?" "They were on the stairs at Buckbourne." "I'm sure Rex will like them." "You'd better pack all this stuff up again." "Bridey." "What do you mean?" "Only that the wedding's off." "Bridey!" "I thought I'd better make some investigations as no-one else seemed interested." "I've just got the answer." "He was married in Montreal in 1915 who is still living there." "Rex" "Is this true?" "Sure it's true." "What about it?" "you say?" "Have you taken leave of your senses?" "Are you quite mad?" "Bridey." "Rex." "I don't know why you're all looking so het up." "She isn't a thing to me." "I was just a kid." "It's the sort of mistake anyone could make." "do you?" "We got our divorce back in 1919." "what's all the rumpus?" "You might have told me." "You never asked." "I haven't given her a thought in years." "But don't you realise you poor sweet oaf you can't be married as a Catholic when you've got a wife still living?" "But I haven't." "Didn't I just tell you?" "I was divorced six years ago." "But you can't be divorced as a Catholic." "I wasn't a Catholic and I was divorced." "I've got the papers somewhere." "But didn't Father Mowbray explain to you about marriage?" "He said I wasn't to be divorced from you." "I don't want to be." "I can't remember all Father Mowbray told me." "and plenary indulgences and the four last things If I remember all he told me" "I shouldn't have time for anything else." "Francesca?" "She married twice." "She had an annulment." "I'll get an annulment." "What does it cost?" "And who do I get it from?" "Does Father Mowbray have one?" "I only want to do what's right." "Nobody told me." "What do you want me to do?" "Don't tell me there isn't someone who can fix this?" "Rex." "It simply means your marriage cannot now take place." "I'm sorry from everyone's point of view that this has come so suddenly." "You should have told us yourself." "maybe what you say is right." "I shouldn't be married in your Cathedral." "But the Cathedral is booked and no one there is asking any questions." "The Cardinal and Father Mowbray don't know about it." "Nobody except us knows a thing." "Why make trouble?" "I wanna just stay mum and let the thing go through." "Who loses anything by that?" "Maybe I risk going to hell." "I'll risk it." "What's it got to do with anyone else?" "Why not?" "I don't believe these priests know everything." "I don't believe in Hell for things like that." "I don't know that I believe in it for anything." "that's our look out." "We're not asking you to risk your souls." "Just keep away." "I hate you." "I think we're all very tired." "We should talk." "I suggest we discuss it later." "There's nothing to discuss except what's the least offensive way we can close the whole incident." "Mother and I will decide that." "We must put a notice in The Times and The Morning Post." "Presents will have to go back." "I don't know what is usual about the bridesmaid's dresses" "Bridey." "just a moment." "Maybe what you say is right." "Maybe you can stop us all right." "we'll be married in a Protestant church." "I can stop that too." "Mummy." "I've been Rex's mistress for some time now being married or not." "Is this true?" "it's not." "But I wish it were." "I see." "I can't go on any longer just now." "We must discuss this later." "What on earth you tell your mother that?" "That's exactly what Rex wanted to know." "I meant I was much too deep with Rex just to be able to say and leave it at that." "I wanted to be made an honest woman." "come to think of it." "So the talks went on and on." "Poor mummy." "In the middle of it Rex just telegraphed to papa:" "Julia and I prefer wedding ceremony take place by Protestant rites." "Delighted" "what a squalid wedding!" "The Savoy chapel was the place where divorced couples got married in those days." "not at all what Rex had intended." "I wanted just to slip into a registry office one morning and get the thing over with a couple of char women but nothing else would do but Rex had to have bridesmaids and orange blossoms and the Wedding March." "It was gruesome." "Poor mummy behaved like a martyr and insisted on my having her lace in spite of everything." "she more or less had to." "The dress had been planned round it." "of course and the curious accomplices Rex called his friends." "The rest of the party were very oddly assorted." "of course one or two of papa's." "All the stuffy people stayed away the Anchorages and Chasms and Vanbrughs." "And I thought anyhow" "But Rex was furious because it was just them he wanted apparently." "Poor Cordelia took it hardest." "At first she wouldn't speak to me." "Then on the morning of the wedding she came bursting in straight from Farm Street" "in floods of tears." "Begged me not to marry gave me a dear little brooch she'd bought and said she prayed I'd always be happy." "Charles." "things never looked like going right." "There was a hoodoo on us from the start." "But I was still nuts about Rex." "isn't it?" "Father Mowbray saw the truth about Rex at once that it took me a year of marriage to see." "He simply wasn't all there." "He wasn't a complete human being at all." "unnaturally developed." "an organ kept in a laboratory." "I thought he was a sort of primitive savage but he was something absolutely modern and up to date that only this ghastly age could produce." "A tiny bit of a man pretending he was whole." "it's all over now." "It was ten years later that she said this to me." "In a storm in the Atlantic." "I returned to London in the Spring of 1926 for the General Strike." "It had been the topic of Paris." "The French exultant as always at the discomfiture of their former friends foretold revolution and Civil War until I and several friends in circumstances like mine came seriously to believe that our country was in danger and our duty lay there." "We were joined by a Belgian futurist who lived under the assumed name of Jean de Brissac la Motte and claimed the right to bear arms in any battle anywhere against the lower classes." "father." "Oh dear." "Well its delightful to see you back so soon." "How long have you been away?" "father." "Really?" "you know." "They're having another of those strikes in two days." "Such a lot of nonsense and I don't know when you'll be able to get away." "father." "I don't think you understand the strike." "I see" "I know you've been living abroad." "Have you now become a revolutionary?" "father." "I was thinking of delivering food to places where they might need it that sort of thing." "Well." "Mrs. Able has reported no shortage in Bayswater." "Are you quite suited to this operation?" "You have no military training you have no experience of mass provisioning you seem to be bent on a most headstrong course." "That's it gents." "sir?" "please and report inside." "My deputy's just round the door taking particulars." "gents no more needed today." "Thank you very much." "Is there absolutely nothing else?" "I've come all the way from France?" "You could try Clapham and Southwark and I did hear yesterday they were short down at Rotherhithe." "We're choc-a-block here." "You can come back tomorrow." "Come back tomorrow." "Thank you very much." "Thank you." "Mulcaster!" "excellent that did them!" "Hello Boy." "Charles!" "Charles Ryder!" "Good Lord." "What are you doing here?" "Did you see that?" "Damn close shave out there." "Bloody Reds!" "Charles?" "yet." "Can't get in." "They're full up here." "Oh rubbish!" "Join our lot." "Bill Meadows show." "Damn fine crowd." "They're all in the Defence Corps." "We do the milk run." "Can I join?" "Of course you can." "absolutely delighted." "Come and get kitted out." "Come to the office." "So I was enrolled in the Defence Corps." "I took my oath of loyalty and was given a truncheon." "I'll come up again this afternoon and sit with her." "I don't mind staying with her right through." "I'd like to." "Why don't you have a break?" "we'll see." "I'll look in anyway." "How's she been?" "She's slept for an hour and a half." "She's had another injection." "Did she seem in much pain?" "Yes." "But I think she'd rather be conscious." "Have you heard from Charles?" "He's definitely back in England." "He was out." "I left a message." "Good." "I'll see you later." "Albert." "I can't stay." "We're off to the Gas Depot." "How is she?" "Can I go up and see her for a minute?" "Rex." "I'm sorry." "I don't know when I'm going to get the chance to call in again." "Things are getting a bit rough." "I'm on call all night." "If there's any change in your mother's condition telephone me at the Home Office." "What about Sebastian?" "I've got someone at the Foreign Office and they've begun to make enquiries." "And ?" "darling." "It's a busy time." "Give it a day or two." "They'll find him." "Say hello to your mother." "Bye." "my dear." "Thank you." "Charles." "love." "you'd take my advice and avoid the Commercial Road." "From all reports they're having a bit of a fracas down there." "chaps?" "They're having a bit of a fracas down the Commercial Road." "Come on all aboard." "What are you doing tonight?" "why?" "My sister says" "Nancy Tallboy's giving a bloody great party." "Good for her." "Are you going?" "Rather." "Everyone says it'll be an absolute riot." "Aren't they divine?" "Aren't they the most sensational thing you've ever seen?" "Antoine!" "Good God!" "my dear playing the piano is having a raving affair with Mrs." "Arnold Frinkheimer." "He conked her on the nut with a bottle of milk only the other morning." "It's wonderful to see you again." "It's been a long time." "Charles." "the lonely old artist man hidden away from us in your" "Parisian garret." "look do you see the bovine spectre that I see?" "No" "Mulcaster to be goggled at." "my dear." "to be revered." "Charles!" "there's somebody here I know." "A girl brought me but I've lost her looked everywhere." "my dear and do you know why?" "Mulcaster." "This isn't your kind of party at all you ought not to be here you know to the Old Hundredth or some lugubrious dance in Belgrave Square." "I've just come from one." "And it's too early for the Old Hundredth." "I think" "I'll stick around for a bit." "you know." "I spit on you." "Charles." "You ridiculous!" "what pugilists!" "Anthony." "I thought you'd still be wandering in the Middle East." "I seem to remember some gruesome photos of you and Sebastian in Constantinople." "Ah!" "Sebastian." "Inevitably we will talk of Sebastian." "Someone's been sick." "Clear it up!" "you'll be perfectly safe." "I want a drink." "But there's plenty to drink at my house." "Yes sure but I want a drink here." "No I haven't heard anything of Sebastian for over a year." "Do you see him?" "Oh my dear." "He's such a sot." "You know he came to live with me in Marseilles last year when you threw him over?" "And really it was as much as I could stand." "sip like a dowager all day long." "And so sly." "my dear including two very pretty suits." "Of course" "I didn't know it was Sebastian at first there were my dear in and out of my little apartment but who knows better than you my taste for queer fish." "eventually I found out that Sebastian had been popping them at the pawnshop and then my dear that he had sold the tickets at the bistro." "It's never much of a success when Sebastian stays with you." "Anthony?" "Now Charles" "I know that puritanical disapproving look in your eye." "You think I lead the poor don't you?" "by all accounts." "That's one of Sebastian's less lovable qualities." "He always gives the impression of being led on like a little horse at the circus." "So there's still no stopping him?" "I did everything I could." "I said to him again and again 'Why drink?" "'" "If you want to be intoxicated there are so many much more delicious things to do." "Never seen you before." "Never asked you." "Who are all these white trash anyway?" "Seems to me I must have come to the wrong house." "my dear." "Anything may happen." "I think Africa must be deserted." "Never mind." "Charles had a good innings today defending the old country." "you know" "You and I" "Too young to fight in the war." "Other chaps fought." "Millions of them dead." "Not us." "though." "We showed those dead chaps too." "And you came all the way from Paris." "Damn good damn good." "Came from overseas." "Rallying round the country in her hour of need." "Like the Australians." "Like the poor dead Australians." "Is going well?" "Do you think would sing again?" "I know you." "We've met before my dear." "But you never asked tonight." "Perhaps I don't like you." "I thought I like everyone." "Do you think it might be witty to give the fire alarm?" "Boy do run away and ring it." "Might cheer things up." "Exactly." "You are a very naughty girl and you are going to be smacked." "So then we left Marseilles and went to Tangier." "my dear" "Sebastian took up with his new friend." "Who's that?" "Well" "How can I describe him?" "He's like the footman in 'Warning Shadows'." "A great clod of a German who'd been in the Foreign Legion." "He got out by shooting off his big toe." "It still hadn't healed." "Where did they meet?" "Sebastian found him starving touting for one of the houses in the Kasbah and brought him back to stay with us." "It was too macabre." "back I came my dear." "So where's Sebastian now?" "I think he and his lame chum went to French Morocco." "They were in trouble with the Tangier police when I left." "Lady Marchmain has been a positive pest ever since I got back to London trying to make me get in touch with them." "What a time that poor woman's going through." "Well" "It only shows there's some justice in life." "I've done it." "You see that girl with that black fellow." "That's the girl who brought me." "She seems to have forgotten you now." "Charles." "I've had enough of all this." "sir." "I'll tell Lady Julia you've arrived." "Wilcox." "I went to Marchmain House on the first morning of peace." "Julia had telephoned to say that her mother was anxious to see me." "I waited for her in the library overlooking Green Park." "Charles." "It's sweet of you to come." "Mummy kept asking for you but I'm afraid she won't be able to see you now." "She's just said goodbye to Sir Adrian Porson and this tired her." "Goodbye?" "she's dying." "She may live for a week or two or she may go at any minute." "She's very frail." "I can tell you what she wanted." "Let's go somewhere else." "I hate this room." "First" "I know Mummy wanted to say how sorry she is she was so beastly to you last time you met." "She's spoken of it often." "She knows now she was wrong about you." "I'm quite sure you put it out of your mind immediately but it's the sort of thing Mummy can never forgive herself." "It's the sort of thing she so seldom did." "Please tell her I do understand." "you've guessed" "Sebastian." "She wants him." "I don't know if that's possible." "Is it?" "I hear he's in a pretty bad way." "We heard that too." "We sent a cable to the last address we had but there was no answer." "There still may be time for him to see her." "I thought of you as the only hope as soon as I heard you were in England." "Will you try and get him?" "It's an awful lot to ask but if he knew." "I'll try." "I'll certainly try." "There's no one else we could ask." "Rex is so busy." "Yes." "I heard reports of all he's been doing organizing the gas works." "Oh yes he's made a lot of kudos out of the strike." "Needless to say" "Bridey has stayed very aloof from it all." "can't you?" "He says he's not satisfied with the justice of the cause." "Thank you." "I'm very sorry to have missed Cordelia." "I sent her up to bed." "She was up all night with Mummy." "Will you give her my love." "Goodbye Charles." "Goodbye Julia." "And thank you." "I'll telegraph if I have any news." "Air France ran a service of a kind to Casablanca." "starting at dawn" "I had taken the bus to Fez." "I had telephoned to the British Consul and arranged to have lunch on my arrival." "There's a war going on not thirty miles from this house though you might not think it." "but it's hard to believe sitting here." "We had some young fools on bicycles only last week who'd come to volunteer or Abdul's army." "It sounds as if you've got a pretty tricky situation." "The Moors are a tricky lot." "They don't hold with drink and our young friend spends most of his day drinking." "will you?" "Of course." "What does he want to come here for?" "There's plenty of room for him at Rabat or Tangier where they cater for tourists." "you know." "I tried to stop him but he got it from a Frenchman in the Department of Arts." "but he's an anxiety." "The French don't understand him at all." "They think that everyone who's not engaged in trade is a spy." "It's not as though he lives like a Milord." "Did you know there is someone living with him?" "Someone sponging on him?" "I had heard about someone whether it is the same person" "This is an awful fellow a German out of the Foreign Legion." "A thoroughly bad lot by all accounts." "Bound to be trouble." "Mind you" "I like Flyte." "I don't see much of him." "He used to come here for baths twice a week before he got fixed up at his house." "He was always perfectly charming." "My wife took a great fancy to him." "What he needs is an occupation." "Well if I can persuade him to come back to England" "I will get him off your hands." "In fact sir" "I think I should really be getting along now of course." "You'll probably find him at home now." "Goodness knows no one goes out much in the siesta." "if you like" "I'll send the porter to show you the way." "Morocco was a new and strange country to me." "where the dust lay thick among the smooth paving stones where the air was scented with cloves and incense and wood smoke" "I knew what had drawn Sebastian here and held him so long." "My guide was from the Sudan Police and regarded this ancient centre of his culture as a New Zealander might regard Rome." "Very dirty people." "No education." "French leave them dirty." "Not like British people." "My people British people." "Me in Sudan Police." "House the British Lord." "Sha hai rida." "You go with this native fellow." "Thank you very much." "Excuse me" "I'm looking for Sebastian Flyte." "is it not?" "Yeth." "But he's not here." "There's no one but me." "I've come from England to see him on rather important business." "could you tell me when he'll be back?" "Sebastian's sick." "The brothers took him away to the Infirmary." "Maybe they'll let you see him maybe not." "I got to go there myself one day soon to get my foot dressed." "I'll ask them." "When he's better maybe they'll let you see him." "Beer?" "Thank you." "You're not Sebastian's brother?" "His cousin maybe?" "I think maybe you married his sister." "No." "We're just friends." "We were at University together." "I had a friend at the University." "He studied History." "My friends was cleverer than I." "A little weak fellow." "I would pick him up and shake him when I was angry but so clever." "Then one day we said" "What the hell!"." "There's no work in Germany"." "Germany is down the drain"." "We must be soldiers"." "So we joined the Legion." "My friend died of dysentery last year campaigning in the Atlas." "When he was dead" "I said" "What the hell!" "So I shot my foot!" "It is now full of pus though I have done it one year." "Yes." "That's very interesting." "But my immediate concern is with Sebastian." "I wonder if you could tell me something about him?" "Sebastian." "He is all right for me." "Tangier was a stinking place." "He brought me here." "Nice house nice servant" "Everything is all right for me here" "I reckon." "I like it all right." "Sebastian" "His mother's very ill." "That's what I've come to tell him." "She rich?" "She is." "Why don't she give him more money?" "in a nice flat." "You know her well?" "You could make her give him more money?" "What exactly's the matter with Sebastian?" "I don't know." "I reckon maybe he drinks too much." "The brothers will look after him." "It's all right for him there." "The brothers are good fellows." "The brothers are good fellows." "Very cheap there." "Very cheap there." "Encore de biere!" "You see?" "A nice servant to look after me." "It is all right." "I think I'd better see Sebastian straight away." "Could you tell me where I can find him?" "Which hospital is he at?" "It's the little one between the old and new town." "It's called "St. Sulpiece"." "Tell Sebastian" "I am still here and all right." "maybe." "Good evening." "Bonsoir." "Your friend" "Lord Flyte is much better." "Je parle francais un peu" "Votre ami n'est pas en danger mais il n'est absolument pas en etat de voyager." "He spoke in French." "And to tell me that Sebastian was in no danger but quite unfit to travel." "He had the "grippe"." "With one lung slightly effective." "He was very weak." "He lacked resistance." "What could one expect?" "He was an alcoholic." "Doctor?" "C'est un alcoolique." "Je vais vous trouver quelqu'un pour vous amener pres de lui." "The doctor spoke dispassionately." "Almost brutally." "With the relish men of science sometimes have of limiting themselves to unessentials." "For pruning back their work to the point of sterility." "doctor." "barefooted brother in whose charge I was put the man of no scientific attention who bit the dirty drops of the work had a different story." "He's so patient." "Not like a young man at all." "He lies there and never complains and there is much to complain of." "we have no facilities." "The government give us what they can spare from the soldiers." "And he is so kind." "There is a poor German boy with a foot that will not heal and secondary syphilis." "He comes for treatment." "Lord Flyte found him starving in Tangier and took him in and gave him a home." "A true samaritan." "I thought." "God forgive me." "Your friend." "Thank you." "I thought he meant Kurt." "Charles?" "I've come to find you." "Well" "I'll leave you to talk." "I'll come back in a little while." "I saw the doctor." "I must say you're not looking as bad as I thought you might." "Over the worst" "I was out of my mind for a day or so." "Pneumonia." "So they say." "I kept thinking I was back in Oxford which is strange don't you think?" "Since I couldn't really be further away" "Charles?" "You've been to the house?" "Yes." "Like it?" "Yes." "I've liked everything I've seen." "I do understand what keeps you here." "Was Kurt still there?" "I won't ask you if you like Kurt." "Nobody does." "It's funny." "you know." "I'm afraid your mother is not very well." "In fact that's the main reason that I'm here." "I think she'd like to see you." "Poor mummy." "She really was a femme fatale wasn't she?" "She killed at a touch." "What do you want to do?" "I don't know." "Let me think about it." "I obviously can't travel at the moment." "No." "Charles do you think you could do something for me?" "Of course." "if you're going to come and see me again do you think you could smuggle in a bottle of brandy?" "I telegraphed to Julia that Sebastian was unable to travel visiting the hospital daily." "Thank you." "On my third day a telegram arrived from Julia." "Lady Marchmain was dead." "in case Sebastian wanted help getting back to England for his mother's funeral." "Monsieur Ryder!" "Monsieur Ryder" "S'il vous plait" "Es ce que je peux vous parler?" "Your friend is drinking again." "An ounce of cognac will not hurt him too much maybe it will make him weaker the next time he is ill then one day some little thing will carry him away." "This is not a home for inebriates." "He must go home at the end of the week." "If you're going to discharge him" "I'll try and stay a few more days." "He'll need someone to see him home." "Your friend is much happier today." "It is like one transfigured." "You know why?" "He has a bottle of cognac in bed with him." "It is the second I have found." "No sooner do I take one away from him he gets another." "He is so naughty." "It is the Arab boys who fetch it for him." "Still" "It is good to see him happy when he was so sad." "Hello!" "How are you feeling?" "Better feeling much better." "Good." "May I?" "Sebastian now your mother's dead do you think of going back to England?" "It would be lovely!" "Do you think Kurt would like it?" "For God's sake do you?" "He means to spend it with me." "maybe." "I've been to the bank for you and straighten things out a little." "The bank manager was very helpful." "He says that if I can arrange with your lawyers for a quarterly allowance to be sent out from England you can draw weekly pocket money." "Now in an emergency you can draw" "Charles it's really a very pleasant change when all your life you've been looked after by people to have someone to look after yourself." "it does have to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me." "in an emergency you can draw reserves from the larger funds." "Now" "You've got to convince him it is an emergency." "And you've got to collect the money personally." "good!" "Otherwise Kurt will have me sign for a cheque for a whole amount when I'm tight." "And then he'll go off and get into all sorts of trouble." "Sebastian?" "Shall I unpack it for you?" "no the boy will do it." "It was time you came back." "I need you." "Kurt?" "Yes" "I reckon so." "It's not so good being alone when you're sick." "That boy's a lazy fellow always slipping off when I want him." "Once he stayed out all night and there was no one to make my coffee when I woke up." "It's no good having a foot full of pus." "Times" "I can't sleep good." "Maybe another time" "I shall slip off too and go somewhere" "I can be looked after." "You see?" "What do you want?" "Cigarettes." "There are some in the bag under my bed." "I'll get them for you." "No!" "It's my job." "Yeth." "I think that's Sebastian's job." "So I left him." "With his friend." "In the little enclosed house at the end of the alley." "There was nothing more" "I could do for Sebastian." "His mother was buried that same afternoon at Brideshead." "When I left Sebastian in Morocco" "I had intended to return directly to Paris but the business of his allowance meant that I had to travel to London to see Bridey." "We met in the library of Marchmain House." "Do you consider there is anything vicious about my brother's connection with this German?" "No." "I'm sure not." "It's simply a case of two waifs coming together." "You say he's a criminal?" "A 'criminal type'." "He's been in a military prison and he was dishonourably discharged." "And the doctor says Sebastian is killing himself with drink." "Weakening himself." "He hasn't D.T.'s or cirosis." "He's not insane?" "Certainly not." "He's found a companion he happens to like and a place that he happens to like living in." "Then he must have his allowance as you suggest." "The thing is quite clear." "Would you like to paint this house?" "My father wants it done for a record to be kept at Brideshead." "One picture of the front one of the back from the park" "one of the staircase and one of the large drawing room." "Four small oils." "I don't know any painters." "Julia said you specialist in architecture." "Yes." "I should like to very much." "You know they're pulling it down?" "My father's selling it." "They're going to put up a block of flats here." "They're keeping the name." "apparently." "What a very sad thing." "of course I'm sorry." "But do you think it good architecturally?" "One of the most beautiful houses I know." "I can't see it." "I've always thought it rather ugly." "Perhaps your pictures will make me see it differently." "I began in the long drawing room for they were anxious to shift the furniture which had stood there since it was built." "I set out the perspective in pencil but held back from the painting like a diver on the water's edge." "I found myself buoyed and exhilarated." "I was normally a slow and deliberate painter." "and the day after" "I worked fast." "I could do nothing wrong." "afraid to start the next fearing like a gambler that luck must turn and the pile be lost." "minute by minute the thing came into being." "There were no difficulties." "The intricate multiplicity of light and colour became a whole as soon as it was complete seemed to have been there always." "May I stay here and watch?" "Yes so long as you don't talk." "This was my first commission." "for the contractors were only waiting for the final signature to start their work of destruction." "for it is my vice to spend never content to leave well alone." "Those four paintings of Marchmain House are particular favourites of mine" "and it was their success both with myself and others that confirmed me in what has since been my career." "It must be lovely to be able to do that." "It is." "I'm tired." "I bet you are." "Is it finished?" "Practically." "I shall have to go over it again in the morning." "Do you know it's almost dinner time?" "There's no one here to cook anything now." "I only came up today." "I didn't realise how far the decay had gone." "would you?" "All right." "Thank you." "I'll go and get changed." "We left by the side door and walked to the restaurant." "I have." "He won't come home even now." "I didn't realise you understood so much." "I love him more than anyone." "isn't it?" "Very sad." "Do you know they're going to build a block of flats?" "And that Rex wants to take what he called a 'penthouse' at the top?" "Isn't that like him?" "that was too much for her." "He couldn't understand at all." "He thought she'd like to keep up with the old home." "haven't they?" "Papa has been terribly in debt for a long time and selling Marchers has put him straight again." "But what's going to happen to you?" "What indeed?" "There are all kinds of suggestions." "Aunt Fanny Roscommon wants me to live with her and then Rex and Julia talk of taking over half of Brideshead and living there." "But won't your father come back?" "We thought he might but no." "They closed the chapel at Brideshead." "Did they?" "Bridey and the Bishop." "Mummy's Requiem was the last mass said there." "the priest came in" "I was there alone." "I don't think he saw me." "He took up the altar stone and put it in his bag then he burnt the wads of wool with the holy oil on them" "and threw the ash outside." "He emptied the Holy water stoup blew out the lamp in the sanctuary" "and left the tabernacle open and empty as though from now on it was always to be Good Friday." "Charles." "Poor agnostic." "I stayed there till he was gone." "there wasn't any chapel there any more." "Just an oddly decorated room." "I can't tell you what it felt like." "I suppose?" "No." "if you had you would know how the Jews feel about that Temple." "Quomodo sedet sola civitas"." "It's a beautiful chant." "just to hear it." "Cordelia?" "too." "Do you know what papa said when he became a Catholic?" "Mummy told me once." "He said "You have brought back my family to the faith of their ancestors." "you know." "It takes people in different ways." "the family haven't been have they?" "There's him gone" "Sebastian gone" "Julia gone." "But God won't let them go for long you know." "I wonder if you remember the story that Mummy read us the evening Sebastian first got drunk that bad evening." "Father Brown?" "Yes." "He said something like with an unseen hook which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still bring him back with a twitch upon the thread." "First time I've ever been taken out to dinner alone at a restaurant." "Do you know what Julia said when she heard about Marchmain being sold?" "She said" "Poor Cordelia won't have her coming out ball here after all." "like me being her bridesmaid." "That didn't come off either." "When Julia had her ball" "I was allowed down for an hour to sit in the corner with Aunt Fanny" "and she said to me you'll have all this!" "I hope I've got a vocation." "I don't know what that means." "It means you can be a nun." "If you haven't a vocation it's no good and if you have a vocation however much you hate it." "Bridey thinks he has a vocation and hasn't." "I used to think Sebastian had and hated it but I don't know now." "Everything has changed so much suddenly." "You'll fall in love." "I pray not." "do you think I could have another one of those scrumptious meringues?" "My theme is memory that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war time." "These memories which are my life except the past were always with me." "For nearly ten dead years after that evening with Cordelia" "I was borne along a road outwardly full of change and incident except sometimes in my painting did I come alive as I had been during the time of my friendship with Sebastian." "I became an architectural painter." "But as the years passed" "I began to mourn the loss of something" "I had known in the drawing room of Marchmain House." "The intensity and singleness and the belief that it was not all done by hand." "the inspiration." "I went abroad travelling by slow but not easy stages through Mexico and Central America." "sickness" "I made the first drawings for Ryder's Latin America." "I was in no great pains to keep in touch with England." "I followed local advice for my itinerary and had no settled route so that much of my mail never reached me and the rest accumulated until there was more than could be read at one sitting." "But despite this isolation and this long sojourn" "I remained unchanged still a small part of myself pretending to be whole." "I discarded the experiences of those two years with my tropical kit as I had set out." "Ritchie!" "I have a suite booked." "sir." "Has my wife arrived yet?" "646 and 7." "Mr. And Mrs. Charles Ryder." "sir." "please?" "sir." "She said to say she'd be back after lunch." "Thank you." "sir." "Thank you." "sir." "Goodnight." "Goodnight." "I don't believe you read my letters." "some of them went astray." "I remember distinctly your telling me that the daffodils in the orchard were a dream" "and that the new nursery maid was a jewel but frankly I cannot remember you telling that your new baby was called Caroline." "Why did you call it that?" "of course." "I made Bertha Van Halt godmother." "I thought she was safe for a good present." "What do you think she gave?" "Bertha Van Halt's a well known trap." "What?" "A fifteen shilling book token." "Now that John-John has a companion" "Who?" "too?" "Why do you call him that?" "It's the name he invented for himself." "Don't you think it's sweet?" "I think we'd better don't you?" "Just as you like." "John-John talks about you such a lot." "He prays every night for your safe return." "I hope you admire my self-restraint." "Restraint?" "I'm not asking any awkward questions." "I may say I've been tormented by visions of voluptuous half-casts ever since you went away." "But I'm determined not to ask" "and I haven't." "That suits me." "Shall I put my face to bed?" "not just yet." "Charles." "I'm afraid not." "Do you want to change?" "It's the only evidence of life." "But you might change so that you didn't love me anymore." "There is that risk." "Charles?" "You haven't stopped loving me?" "You said yourself I hadn't changed." "I'm beginning to think you have." "I haven't." "No." "I can see that." "Were you at all frightened at meeting me today?" "Not the least." "You didn't wonder if I should have fallen in love with someone else in the meantime?" "No." "Have you?" "You know I haven't." "Have you?" "No" "I'm not in love." "bloody central heating!" "Lights out?" "The garden's come on a lot." "The box-hedges you planted grew five inches last year." "I can see your new pictures are perfectly brilliant and really rather beautiful in a sinister way" "I don't feel they're quite you." "We've got a first-class cook at the moment we're really impressed." "Just like old times." "Charles." "Good." "I was so terribly afraid that two years might have made a difference." "Now I know we can start again exactly where we left off." "When?" "What?" "When we left off what?" "of course." "a little time before?" "that's old history." "It was nothing." "It was never." "It's all over and forgotten." "I just wanted to know." "is that it?" "So we started that day exactly where we left off two years before" "with my wife in tears." "Hello?" "Hello?" "please." "Charles!" "I'm just arranging our little party this evening." "Julia!" "Celia Ryder." "it's lovely to find you on board." "What have you been up to?" "Come and have a cocktail this evening and tell me all about it" "Good." "See you then." "Julia who?" "Mottram." "I haven't seen her for years." "Hello?" "Operator" "I'd not seen Julia since the private view of my first exhibition lent by Bridey had hung together attracting much attention." "Those pictures were my last contact with the Flytes." "so close for a year or two had drawn apart." "was still abroad." "were unhappy together." "Rex was not prospering quite as well as had been expected." "peeping from the Tatler but they and I had fallen apart into separate worlds." "sir?" "no ice." "sir." "All the soda's iced." "sir." "That will do." "Charles." "Hello." "I heard you were here." "Celia telephoned to me." "It's delightful." "Will you join me for a drink?" "Thank you." "What are you doing?" "Waiting my maid's unpacking." "She's been so disagreeable ever since we left England." "She's complaining now about the cabin." "I can't think why." "It seems the lap of luxury to me." "He brought two jugs." "the other of boiling water." "I mixed them to the right temperature." "sir." "Thank you." "madam?" "madam." "I never see you now." "I never see anyone I like." "I can't think why." "What have you been doing in America?" "Don't you know?" "I'll tell you about it sometime." "I've been a mug." "I thought I was in love with someone but it didn't quite work out that way." "Charles?" "What have you been up to?" "I've just been painting trying different styles." "I'm just back from a trip." "Where have you been?" "Central America quite a way from anywhere." "I felt I needed a change of scene." "I was getting stale." "It sounds thrilling." "I'm longing to see the pictures." "Celia wanted me to unpack them and stick them around the cabin for her cocktail party but I couldn't do that." "No" "Is Celia as pretty as ever?" "I always thought she had the most delicious looks of any girl in our year." "She hasn't changed." "Charles." "So lean and grim not at all the pretty boy Sebastian brought home with him." "too." "And you're softer." "I think so." "And more patient now." "too." "much sadder." "please." "My wife was in exuberant spirits two hours later" "I returned to the cabin." "There you are." "I've had to do everything." "How does it look?" "You must go and get dressed." "Where've you been all this time?" "Talking to Julia Mottram." "Do you know her?" "you were a friend of the dipso brother." "Goodness her glamour!" "too." "She used to be a girlfriend of Boy's." "Surely not?" "He always said so." "Have you considered how your guests are going to eat this caviar?" "I have." "It's insoluble." "But I suppose there's always this." "people always find ways of eating things at parties." "Do you remember how we once ate potted shrimps with a paper knife?" "Did we?" "Darling." "It was the night you popped the question in." "you popped." "the night we got engaged." "you haven't said what you think of the arrangements." "It's a cinema actor's dream." "Cinema actors!" "That's what I want to talk about." "I've been thinking." "I do believe you're absolutely cut out to be a set designer for the cinema." "real Hollywood magnates." "Do promise you'll be sensible and talk to them." "here is Father Christmas." "Dear Lady Celia madam?" "We were just in raptures over your swan." "If you'll put on your warmest clothes and come on an expedition with me to the cold storage" "I can show you a whole Noah's Ark full of such objects." "The toast for the caviar will be along shortly." "They're keeping it hot." "Charles?" "Toast!" "I do believe you've taken against my swan." "We were just Now don't be beastly about it in front of the purser." "I think it was sweet of him to think of it." "if Charles had read about it in a description of a 16th century he would have said 'those were the days to live"." "it would have been a somewhat different shape." "how are you?" "I'm so glad you could come." "what a beautiful swan!" "Isn't it heavenly?" "but it looks like we're in for a storm." "How can you be so beastly?" "do they?" "it might hold us back a bit." "But it won't make us sick?" "That depends on how good a sailor you are." "ever since I was a boy." "he's simply being sadistic." "I must show you the photographs of the children." "Do you know Charles hasn't even seen Caroline yet?" "Isn't it thrilling for him?" "How old is she now?" "I'm Gloria Stuyvesant Oglander." "I feel I know you through and through" "Celia's told me so much about you." "There were no friends of mine here but I knew about a third of the party and talked a way civilly enough." "But all the time I thought only of when Julia would come." "Been waiting to do that for a long time." "Bet you don't know how many drops to the minute." "I do." "I've counted." "guess." "a tenner if you get it wrong and half a dollar if you get it right." "That's fair isn't it?" "Three." "Coo aren't you?" "haven't you?" "how do you work this one out?" "I'm an Englishman born and bred this is my first time on the Atlantic." "You flew out?" "No." "You came round the world the other way and across the Pacific." "You are a sharp chap and no mistake." "I've made quite a bit out of arguing on that topic." "Well" "I better skedaddle." "Toodle loo." "Julia didn't come." "And the noise of twenty people in that tiny room was the noise of a multitude." "this is Mr. Kramm of International Films." "So you are Mr. Charles Ryder." "well." "Our purser says we're in for some pretty dirty weather." "What do you know about that?" "Rather less than the purser." "Mr. Ryder." "I don't quite get you?" "I mean I know less about that than the purser." "Is that so?" "knowing that we should meet again in half an hour" "I've enjoyed our talk." "I hope it'll be the first of many." "You must promise to bring that distinguished looking husband we'd love to." "how did if feel meeting Celia after two years?" "I know that I should feel indecently bridal." "But then Celia has never quite got the has she?" "Julia never came?" "she telephoned." "there was so much noise going on." "Something about a dress." "there wasn't room for a cat." "wasn't it?" "Did you hate it very much?" "You behaved beautifully and you looked so distinguished." "Who was your red haired chum?" "No chum of mine?" "How very peculiar." "Did you say anything to Mr. Kramm about working in Hollywood?" "Of course not." "Oh Charles." "You are such a worry to me." "It's no good just standing around looking distinguished and being a martyr for Art." "Come on." "Let's go to dinner." "We're at the Captain's table." "I don't suppose he'll dine down tonight but it's polite to be fairly punctual." "I just hope I can find the dining room." "This place is an absolute maze." "We were a gruesome circle at dinner." "Even my wife's high social spirit faltered." "you'll find she knows all the significant people." "I'm miserable about the party." "My beastly maid totally disappeared with every frock I have." "She only turned up half an hour ago." "I have made it my aim to reconcile the so-called Anarchist and the so-called Communists." "There is no fundamental diversity in their ideologies." "Mr. Ryder and what personalities have put asunder personalities may unite." "Of course." "But I understood you to say" "Lady Celia that you were unacquainted with him." "I meant that he was like Captain Foulenough." "I begin to comprehend." "He impersonates this friend of yours in order to come to your party." "no." "Captain Foulenough is simply a comic character in an English paper." "like your "Popeye"." "To recapitulate an imposter came to your party and you admitted him because of a fancied resemblance to a fictitious character in a cartoon." "really." "Mr. Ryder?" "Yes yes." "What are words?" "What indeed." "My mind reeled." "this was too much." "I felt like Lear on the heath like the Duchess of Malfi bayed by madmen." "as if by conjury the call was immediately answered." "Either I am a little drunk or it's getting rough." "This is where I say goodnight to you all." "Like King Lear." "Only each of us is all three of them." "What can you mean?" "Fool." "it's like that agonizing Foulenough conversation over again." "Don't try and explain." "I'm not sure that I could." "we've set a fine example of British phlegm." "But I think I've taken all I can." "anyway." "I'm going to bed." "Julia?" "Yes." "sir?" "thank you." "But if somebody could bring me some more brandy?" "sir." "I'll get a steward for you." "Charles?" "Is that you?" "Yes." "I feel terrible." "I didn't know a ship of this size could pitch like this." "Can't you do something?" "Can't you get something from the doctor?" "I'll call the steward." "He'll have something." "why don't I sleep next door?" "Then I won't disturb you." "but these have come for you and her Ladyship." "sir?" "put them over there." "What news of the storm?" "but it's still blowing quite hard and there's a heavy swell." "Nothing like a heavy swell for the enjoyment of the passengers." "There weren't many breakfasts wanted this morning." "Steward." "Would you have these delivered to Lady Mottram's cabin?" "sir." "And Steward" "Would you ask the barber to call?" "sir." "Thank you." "Hello?" "Charles!" "What a deplorable thing to do." "How unlike you!" "Don't you like them?" "What can I do with roses on a day like this?" "Smell them." "They've got absolutely no smell at all." "What have you had for breakfast?" "Muscat grapes and cantaloupe." "When am I going to see you?" "Before lunch?" "I'm busy till then with a masseuse." "A masseuse?" "Yes." "Isn't it peculiar?" "when I hurt my shoulder hunting." "What is it about being on a boat that makes everyone behave like a film star?" "I don't." "How about these very embarrassing roses?" "I'll see you on the deck about twelve thirty." "Marvelous." "You might not recognize me." "What do you mean?" "I'm having my beard removed." "How dreadful." "It sounds like an operation." "Can I come in?" "I thought these might cheer you up." "How sweet people are." "I take it you're not going to get up." "Oh no" "Mrs. Clark is being so sweet." "Don't bother." "Come in and tell me what's going on sometimes." "my dear." "The less we are disturbed today the better." "Charles your beard." "I know." "What a pity." "I thought it looked so distinguished." "and I'm still limp anyway." "Let's go in." "Bravo." "Bravo." "I confess I came round the other way." "I was not sure about that door somehow." "They have been working on it all morning you know." "Well" "Bravo!" "Do you know your birthday is nineteen?" "I'm very lucky." "we're the lucky ones!" "Cheers!" "I think." "Thank you." "And for the lady?" "Might I suggest a nip of champagne?" "the awful thing is I would like champagne very much." "I'll have some champagne too." "sir." "What a life of pleasure!" "half and hour with a female pugilist and now champagne!" "I wish you wouldn't keep going on about the roses." "It wasn't my idea in the first place." "Someone sent them Celia." "that's quite different." "That lets you out completely." "But it makes my massage worse." "I did have the barber shave me in my room this morning." "they were a shock." "They made me think we were starting the day on the wrong foot." "All the next day Julia and I spent together sometimes scarcely moving held by the swell of the sea." "the last hardy passengers went to rest and we were alone" "as though the place had been cleared for us as though tact on a titanic scale had sent everyone tiptoeing out to leave us to one another." "We thought papa might come back to England after mummy died." "Or that he might marry again." "But he lives just as he did." "Rex and I often go and see him now." "I've grown very fond of him." "And Sebastian?" "He's disappeared completely." "Cordelia's in Spain with an ambulance." "Bridey leads his own extraordinary life." "He wanted to shut Brideshead after mummy died but papa wouldn't hear of it for some reason so Rex and I live there now." "And Bridey too?" "He has two rooms next to Nanny Hawkins part of the old nurseries." "One meets him sometimes coming out of the library or on the stairs." "I never know when he's at home and now and then he suddenly comes in to dinner quite unexpectedly." "He's like a character from Chekov." "Rex has never been unkind to me intentionally." "It's just that he isn't a real person at all." "He's a few faculties of a man highly developed." "The rest simply isn't there." "He couldn't imagine why it hurt me to find out two months after we came back to London from our honeymoon that he was still keeping up with Brenda Champion." "I was glad when I found Celia was unfaithful." "I felt it made it all right for me to dislike her." "Is she?" "Do you?" "I'm glad." "I don't like her either." "Why did you marry her?" "Physical attraction." "she's the perfect wife for a painter." "Loneliness" "Missing Sebastian didn't you?" "Oh yes." "He was the forerunner." "as though fondly turning the pages of her childhood." "And I lived long sunny days with her in the meadows with Nanny Hawkins on her camp stool and Cordelia asleep in the pram." "She told me of her life with Rex disastrous escapade that had taken her to New York." "had had her dead years." "At first" "I used to stay away with Rex in his friends' houses." "He doesn't make me anymore." "He was ashamed of me when he found" "I didn't cut the kind of figure he wanted ashamed of himself for having been taken in." "I wasn't at all the article he bargained for." "He can't see the point of me" "but whenever he's made up his mind there isn't a point and he's begun to feel comfortable he gets a surprise he respects takes a fancy to me and he suddenly sees that there's a whole world of things" "we understand and he doesn't." "He was upset when I went away." "He'll be delighted to have me back." "I was faithful to him until this last thing came along." "before dinner she went to get ready" "I came with her uninvited unopposed expected." "I recalled the courtships of the past ten dead years." "knotting my tie before setting out putting the gardenia in my buttonhole" "I would plan an evening of seduction and think at such and such a time at such and such an opportunity" "I shall cross the start line and open my attack for better or worse." "I would think a decision must be reached"." "With Julia there were no phases." "No start line." "No tactic at all." "I'll see you at dinner." "There's nothing like a good upbringing." "when I thought" "I'd decided to have it brought up a Catholic." "I hadn't thought about religion before" "I haven't since when I was waiting for the birth" "I thought 'that's the one thing I can give her'"." "It doesn't seem to have done me much good but my child shall have it'." "It was odd wanting to give something one had lost oneself." "I couldn't even give her that." "I couldn't even give her life." "I never saw her." "I was too ill to know what was going on for a long time until now" "I didn't want to speak about her." "She was a daughter so Rex didn't mind so much about her being dead." "We'd argued endlessly about whether I should have a child in the first place." "I wanted one." "After a year or so I discovered that I'd have to have an operation to make it possible." "By that time Rex and I were out of love." "But he still wanted an heir." "It's late." "Perhaps we'd better go to bed." "I have been punished a little for marrying Rex." "quite." "Hell" "Nanny Hawkins and the catechism." "It becomes part of oneself if they give it to one early enough." "And yet I wanted my child to have it." "Now I suppose I shall be punished for what I've just done." "Perhaps this is why you and I are here together like this." "Part of a plan." "Charles." "Not yet." "Perhaps never." "I don't know." "I don't know if I want love." "Love?" "I'm not asking for love." "Charles" "You are." "are you there?" "Yes." "I'll come in." "I've been asleep such a long while." "What time is it?" "Half past three." "is it?" "It's worse." "though." "Do you think they'd bring me some tea or something if I rang the bell?" "I expect so." "Did you have an amusing evening?" "Everyone's sick." "Poor Charles." "too." "It may be better tomorrow." "Perhaps." "Next day the wind had dropped and again we were wallowing in the swell." "That day because we had talked so much the day before and because what we had to say needed few words we spoke little." "we spoke at all our thoughts we found had kept pace together side by side." "you're standing guard over your sadness." "It's all I've earned." "You said so yesterday." "My wages" "An IOU from life." "A promise to pay on demand." "The end of our day." "Let's go on deck." "now." "where can we hide orphans of the storm?" "sir." "Charles!" "Charles!" "Good morning." "I feel so well." "What do you think I'm having for breakfast?" "Good Lord!" "I've fixed up a visit to go to the hairdresser." "Do you know they couldn't take me till four o'clock this afternoon they're so busy suddenly?" "So I shan't appear till this evening but all sorts of people are coming this morning to see us." "I've been a worthless wife to you these last few days." "What have you been up to?" "Have you been behaving yourself?" "You haven't been picking up sirens?" "There was scarcely a woman about." "I have been talking to Julia." "Oh good." "I always wanted to get you two together." "She's one of my friends I knew you'd like." "You must have been a godsend to her." "She's been through a rather gloomy time lately." "I don't expect she mentioned it but she got into trouble with an awful man." "I hear you've been looking after my husband for me." "we've become very matey." "do let's go and see what's going on." "We'll catch you up." "What are your plans?" "London for a bit." "Celia's going straight down to the country." "She wants to see the children." "You too?" "No." "In London then." "Foulenough." "Did you see?" "Two plain clothes police came and took him off." "I missed it." "There was such a crowd on that side of the ship." "I found out about trains and sent a telegram." "We shall be home by dinner." "The children will be asleep." "just this once." "You go down." "I really have to stay in London." "you must come." "You haven't seen Caroline." "Will she change much in a week or two?" "she changes every day." "Then where's the point of seeing her now?" "my dear but I must get the pictures unpacked so I can see how they've traveled." "I must get the exhibition fixed up." "Must you?" "It's very disappointing." "Besides I don't know if Andrew and Cynthia will be out of the flat." "They took it to the end of the month." "I can go to a hotel." "But that's so grim." "I can't bear you to be alone your first night home." "I'll stay and go down tomorrow." "you mustn't disappoint the children." "No." "Will you come down at the weekend?" "If I can." "All British passport holders to the smoking room." "I've arranged for that sweet" "Foreign Office man at our table to get us off early." "Good." "Hello?" "Cavendish Hotel?" "please." "Charles!" "Are you off to the gallery?" "I'm sick of the pictures already and never want to see them again but I suppose I better put in an appearance." "Do you want me to come?" "I'd much rather you didn't." "Celia sent a card with "Bring everyone." "written across it in green ink." "When do we meet?" "In the train." "You could pick up my luggage." "If you'll have it packed soon I'll pick you up too and drop you at the gallery." "I've a fitting next door at twelve." "Lovely." "See you in about an hour then." "Bye." "sir." "How's it going?" "be nice to the critics." "No one's come yet." "I've been here since ten and it's been very dull." "Who's car was that you came in?" "Julia's." "Julia's?" "Why didn't you bring her in?" "Oddly enough I've just been talking about Brideshead to a funny little man who seemed to know us well." "He said he was called Mr. Samgrass." "Apparently he's one of the Lord Copper's middle aged young men on the Daily Beast." "I tried to feed him some paragraphs but he seemed to know more about you than I do." "He said he'd met me years ago at Brideshead." "we could have asked her about him." "Well darling." "Thank you." "I remember him." "He's a crook." "Yes that stuck out a mile." "He's been talking about what he calls 'the Brideshead Set'." "Rex Mottram has turned the place into a next of party mutiny." "Did you know?" "What would Teresa Marchmain have thought?" "I'm going up there tonight." "Charles." "You can't go tonight." "You're expected at home." "as soon as the exhibition was ready you'd come home." "John-John and Nanny have made a banner with 'Welcome" on it." "And you haven't seen Caroline yet." "it's all settled." "Besides" "Daddy will think it so odd." "And Boy is home for Sunday." "And you haven't seen the new studio." "you can't go tonight." "Did they ask me?" "Of course but I knew you wouldn't be able to come." "I can't now." "if you'd let me know earlier" "I should adore to see 'The Brideshead Set' at home." "I do think you're perfectly beastly but there is no time for a family rumpus." "The Clarences said they'd look in before luncheon." "They may be here any minute." "Good." "Daily Mail." "Oh yes?" "I wondered if I might have a word" "Lovely to see you again." "What a very charming hat!" "you are sweet." "Interesting this trip down the Amazon." "One of my brothers has just got back." "Got pretty bitten." "Looking forward to seeing the pictures." "sir." "Very good to see you." "Ma'am." "Would you care for some champagne?" "thank you." "Pretty hot out there I should think." "sir." "Was it terribly uncomfortable?" "ma'am there were one or two sticky moments." "Awfully clever the way you've hit off the impression of heat." "Makes me feel quite uncomfortable in my great coat." "lovely." "Can you see the picture?" "That's alright." "I'm not interested in the picture." "That's fine." "A tiny bit closer" "Lovely." "please." "sir John." "I'm delighted to hear it." "Charles." "Sir John has been saying the most marvelous things about you." "Good." "I'm glad." "I think it's safe to say we can look forward to another Ryder at the Tate." "I'd like to mark down the following ones for further consideration." "Number seven." "Charles lives for one thing beauty." "I think he got bored with finding it ready made in England he had to go and create it for himself." "He wanted new worlds to conquer." "he has said the last word hasn't he?" "Not that I mean that he's given up that altogether." "I'm sure he'll always do one or two more for friends." "From fashionable and unfashionable lips alike" "I heard fragments of praise." "They all thought they had found something new." "It had not been thus at my last exhibition in these same rooms shortly before going abroad." "Then there had been an unmistakable note of weariness." "Then the talk had been less of me anecdotes of their owners." "for another reason." "It was the week I had detected my wife in adultery." "she was a tireless hostess." "Whenever I see anything lovely nowadays a building that's by Charles." "Throughout our married life again and again" "I had felt my bowels shrivel within me at the things she said." "But today in this gallery" "I heard her unmoved and suddenly realized that she was powerless to hurt me anymore." "I was a free man." "sly lapse of hers." "My cuckold's horns made me" "Lord of the Forest." "I must go." "hasn't it?" "I'll think of something to tell them at home but I wish it hadn't had to happen quite like this." "Good afternoon." "I have not brought a card of invitation." "I do not even know whether I received one." "I have not come to a social function." "I do not seek to scrape acquaintances with Lady Celia." "I do not want my photograph in the Tatler." "I have not come to exhibit myself." "I've come to see the pictures." "Perhaps you are unaware that there are any pictures here." "I happen to have a personal interest in the artist if that word has any meaning to you." "Antoine!" "Come in!" "My dear there's a gorgon here who thinks I'm gate crashing." "Dear Charles." "How are you?" "I only arrived in London yesterday and I heard quite by chance at luncheon that you were having an exhibition so of course I dashed impetuously to the shrine to pay homage." "Have I changed?" "Would you recognize me?" "Where are the pictures?" "Let me explain them to you." "my dear Charles did you find this sumptuous greenery?" "In the corner of some hot house at Trent of Tring?" "What gorgeous usurer nurtured these fronds for your pleasure?" "I've been to South America for two years haven't you heard?" "I know all about that." "my dear that you are happy in love is it not?" "Or nearly everything." "Are they as bad as that?" "My dear let us not expose your little imposture before these good plain people." "Let us not spoil their innocent pleasure." "that this is all terrible tripe." "before we offend the connoisseurs." "I know of a louche little bar quite near here." "Let's go there and talk of your other conquests." "sir." "Thank you for ever." "my dear" "I assure you." "you have been in your milieu all day." "I was given the address by a dirty old man in the" "Boeuf sur le Toit." "I'm most grateful to him." "I've been out of England so long and really sympathetic little joints like this change so fast." "I presented myself here for the first time yesterday evening and already I feel quite at home." "Cyril." "back again?" "my dear." "dear?" "Charles?" "please." "Two of those please." "Tony." "Good evening." "thank you." "the artist?" "Pleased to meet you." "How do you do?" "Thank you." "We'll take our drinks and sit down." "that here you are just as conspicuous and may I say abnormal as I should be in" "Bratt's Club." "Would your friend care to rhumba?" "Tom he would not and I'm not going to give you a drink" "anyway." "That's a very impudent boy a regular my dear." "Antoine" "What have you been up to all these years?" "it's what you've been up to that we're here to talk about." "my dear." "old body and I've kept my eye on you." "my dear." "I found it charming." "There was an interior of Marchmain House but quite delicious." "Charles has done something" I said not all he can do but something"." "I wondered a little." "It seemed to me there was something a little gentlemanly about your painting." "that I am not English." "I cannot understand this keen zest to be well-bred." "English snobbery is even more macabre to me even than English morals." ""Charles has done something delicious." "What will he do next?" "Imagine then my excitement at your luncheon today." "Everyone was talking about you." "How you had broken away my dear a Rimbaud." "You can imagine how my old heart lept." "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 and just as she was going back to Rex"." "I said 'tell me about them"." "they said 'they're most peculiar"." "Not at all what he usually does'." "Very quite barbaric"." "I call them down-right unhealthy said Mrs. Stuyvesant Oglander." "I could hardly keep still in my chair." "I wanted to dash out of the house and leap in a taxi and say 'take me to Charles' unhealthy pictures'." "I went and what did I find?" "I found a very naughty and successful practical joke." "It reminded me of dear Sebastian when he like so much to dress up in false whiskers." "my dear." "Simple" "English charm playing tigers." "You're quite right." "my dear." "I was right years ago" "I am happy to say than either of us shows when I warned 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 my dear Charles that it has killed you." "Anthony." "I've got to go." "I've got a train to catch." "Dommage." "I so enjoy our little talks together." "Charles." "Toni." "Buy me a drink." "Alright." "This way m'lady." "Thank you." "Charles darling." "I'll just go and make sure the luggage is safely stowed." "Thank you." "I thought you'd missed the train." "It seems days since I saw you." "Six hours." "And we were together all yesterday." "You look worn out." "It's been a nightmare of a day." "critics and the Clarence's ending up with half an hours well reasoned abuse about my pictures in a pansy bar." "I think Celia knows about us." "She had to know sometime." "madam?" "please." "sir." "Everyone seems to know." "My pansy friend had only been in London twenty four hours before he'd found out." "Damn everybody." "but what about Rex?" "Rex isn't anybody at all." "He just doesn't exist." "Julia." "Charles." "What we want is a showdown." "Wouldn't work with Baldwin." "Baldwin's too canny." "Baldwin's too clever and Baldwin can rig it." "A chap just came from Fort Belvedere and what he said was very interesting." "absolutely true." "Chap I know in the Foreign Office swears it's a fact that Franco's a German agent." "Rogers." "sir." "Charles!" "Excuse me." "Good to see you." "Grizel's here somewhere." "She saw your show this morning." "Very impressed impressed with what she calls your new style." "Help yourself." "Charles the murals look as handsome as ever." "That was a long time ago." "You seem to have a pretty good set up here." "It's a very happy arrangement." "it suits me down to the ground." "The old boy keeps up the house and Bridey takes care of the feudal stuff with the tenants." "I have the run of the house rent free." "All it costs me is the food and wages for the indoor servants." "could it?" "Rex!" "Come and support me." "Come and stop Ronnie losing a bet." "He's put his shirt on Baldwin winning." "Do you know Henry and Ronnie Nash?" "Come on over and say hello." "I'll join you in a minute." "is that now he can marry her and make her Queen tomorrow." "Would you mind awfully not doing that?" "Why not?" "I don't much enjoy it." "anyway?" "A few old maids?" "Good evening." "Charles!" "Hello Grizel." "You were pretty nippy getting up here." "That exhibition of yours this morning was divine." "You enjoyed it?" "I adored it." "And how's that lovely Celia?" "She's well." "Julia you've lost weight." "And it suits you." "Goodness you look more stunning than ever." "I could spit." "Hello everybody." "Do carry on." "I'm sorry I wasn't here to greet you." "I hope Rex is taking care of you all." "Good evening Henry darling." "You look lovely." "Thank you." "My dear you look simply marvelous." "Thank you so much." "Good evening." "Hello." "Hello." "I guess you've been gambling tonight." "How was it?" "000." "Hello." "I wonder which is the more horrible" "Celia's Art and Fashion or Rex's Politics and Money." "Why worry about them?" "my darling why is it that love makes me hate the world?" "It's supposed to have quite the opposite effect." "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 completely." "Not now." "Not tonight." "Not for how many nights?" "Do you remember the storm?" "The bronze doors banging." "The roses in cellophane." "The man who threw 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 today?" "So much to remember." "How many days have there been since then when we haven't seen each other" "A hundred." "Not so many." "Two Christmases to keep up appearances for the sake of the children." "And the three days of good taste before I followed you to Capri." "Our first summer." "Do you remember how I hung about in Naples and then followed." "How we met by arrangement on the hill path and how flat it felt." "I went back to the villa and said Papa" "Who do you think has arrived at the hotel?" "I suppose." "And I said Whatever made you think of him?" "And he said He seems to have a penchant for my children." "There was a time when you had jaundice and wouldn't let me see you." "And when I had flu you were afraid to come." "A hundred days." "Out of two years and a bit." "Not a day's coldness or mistrust or disappointment." "Never that." "Let's go and change." "How many more do you think?" "Another hundred?" "A lifetime." "Charles." "why now?" "sometime soon." "I want a year or two with you of real peace." "Isn't this peace?" "What do you mean by peace if not this?" "So much more." "Marriage isn't a thing we can take when the mood strikes us." "There must be a divorce two divorces." "We must make plans." "war" "On an evening like this." "Sometimes I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side there doesn't seem room for the present at all." "Wilcox?" "my Lady." "He says not to wait dinner for him please" "Wilcox." "It seem months since he was last here." "Yes" "What does he do in London?" "It was often a matter for speculation between us" "Giving birth to many fantasies for Bridey was a mystery." "The talk of his going into the army and into parliament and into a monastery had all come to nothing." "All that he was known with certainty to have done and 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." "Hello Bridey." "we're almost finished." "only you two." "I hoped to find Rex here." "How are you?" "What's the news?" "As a matter of fact I do have some news but it can wait." "Tell us now." "How's the painting Charles?" "Which painting?" "Whatever you have on the stocks." "I've begun a picture of Julia but the light was difficult all day today." "Julia?" "Haven't you done her before?" "I suppose it's a change from architecture and much more difficult." "The world is full of different subjects." "Bridey." "If I were a painter" "I should choose a different subject every time." "Really?" "What sort of subjects?" "Oh I don't know really subjects with plenty of action in them like perhaps." "I've been meaning to ask you" "What happened to mother's jewels?" "Cordelia and I had most of her things." "This was hers." "And this." "The rest went to the bank." "Aren't there some rather famous rubies someone was telling me?" "a necklace." "Mummy often used to wear it don't you remember?" "anyway?" "I just thought I'd like to take a look at them some day." "is he?" "He's not in debt again?" "no nothing like that." "don't be so mysterious." "Out with it." "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're pleased." "Bridey!" "How very exciting!" "Who to?" "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's a big woman." "Fat?" "big." "She's called Mrs. Muspratt." "Her Christian name is Beryl." "I've known her for quite a long time" "But until last year she had a husband now she's a widow." "Why do you laugh?" "I'm sorry." "It's not in the least funny." "It's just so unexpected." "Is she" "Is she about your own age?" "I believe." "She has three children the eldest boy has just gone to Ampleforth." "She is not at all well off." "Where did you find her?" "Admiral Muspratt collected matchboxes." "You're not marrying her for her matchboxes?" "the whole collection went to the Falmouth Town Library." "I have great affection for her." "In spite of all her difficulties she's a very cheerful woman very fond of acting." "She is a member of the Catholic Player's Guild." "Does Papa know?" "I had a letter from him this morning giving me his approval." "He's been urging me for some time to marry." "Well" "Bridey." "Yes." "Congratulations." "Thank you." "Thank you." "I think I'm very fortunate." "when are we going to meet her?" "I do think you might have brought her down with you." "Bridey smug old brute why didn't you bring her here?" "you know." "Why couldn't you?" "I'm dying to meet her." "Let's ring her up and ask her." "She'll think us most peculiar leaving her alone at a time like this." "She has the children." "Besides aren't you?" "What can you mean?" "as things are." "It wouldn't be suitable." "I'm only a lodger here." "so 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." "Of course" "Rex and I want her to come." "I don't doubt that." "But the difficulty is quite otherwise." "You must understand that Beryl is a woman" "Of strict Catholic principles fortified by the prejudices of the middle classes." "I couldn't possibly bring her here." "It's a matter of indifference whether you choose to live in sin" "With Rex or Charles or both" "I have always avoided inquiry into the details of your ménage in no case would Beryl consent to be your guest." "Why you pompous ass?" "I may have given the impression that this was a marriage of convenience." "I cannot speak for Beryl." "No doubt the security of my position has some influence on her." "she has said as much." "let me emphasis" "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." "Aren't you cold?" "what is it?" "Why do you mind?" "What does it matter what the old booby says?" "I don't." "It doesn't." "It's just the shock." "Don't laugh at me." "How dare he speak to you like that?" "The cold-blooded old humbug" "it's not that." "He's quite right." "Bridey and his widow." "They bought it for a penny at the church door." "You can get anything there for a penny in black and white and nobody to see you pay." "Just take your tract." "There you've got it." "too deadly word that covers a lifetime." "Living in sin as I did when I went to America knowing it is wrong forgetting it." "That's not what they mean." "That's not Bridey's pennyworth." "He means just what it says." "every hour year in year out." "Always the same." "carefully nursed guarded from the world." "'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." "mad sin." "All those years when I was trying to be a good wife in the cigar smoke." "When I was trying" "To bear his child" "Torn in pieces by something already dead finding you the past two years with you" "All the future with you or without you" "War coming" "World ending" "sin." "It's a word from so long ago." "From Nanny Hawkins stitching by the hearth and the nightlight burning before the Sacred Heart." "in Mummy's room on Sundays." "Mummy carrying my sin with her to church." "Bowed under it." "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." "High among the crowds and the soldiers." "No comfort except a sponge of vinegar and the kind words of a thief" "hanging forever over the bed in the night nursery." "There's no way back." "The gate's barred." "All the saints and angels posted along the wall." "rotting down." "Nameless and dead." "Like the baby they wrapped up and took away before I had a chance to see her." "isn't he?" "Considering that I've just recovered from a fit of hysteria" "I don't call that at all bad." "Most hysterical women look as if they've got a bad cold." "Come on." "We're not going down again?" "Of course." "We can't leave Bridey alone on his engagement night." "Can't we?" "Charles." "I can't explain it." "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." "Barton Street is much too small for us and the three children." "Beryl likes the country." "In his letter" "Papa proposed making over the whole estate right away." "I'm sure he'll be sorry to leave." "don't worry." "Rex'll find another bargain somewhere." "Trust him." "Beryl has some furniture of her own she's very attached to." "I don't think it would go very well here." "oak dressers and coffin stools and things." "I thought you could put it in Mother's room." "that would be the place for it of course nobody has used that room for years." "So brother and sister sat and talked about the arrangement of the house until bed-time." "I thought 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 school room for their own." "I was all at sea." "I won't believe that great spout of tears came just from a few words of Bridey's." "You must have been thinking about it before." "Hardly at all." "Now and then." "lately with the Last Trump so near." "it's a thing psychologists could explain." "A pre-conditioning from childhood feelings of guilt from the nonsense you were taught in the nursery." "You do know in your heart don't you?" "How I wish it was." "Sebastian once said almost the same thing to me." "you know." "he's never left it as definitely as I did." "I've gone too far." "There's no turning back." "if that's what you mean by thinking it all bosh." "Let's go out again." "It's like the setting for a comedy." "Scene:" "A baroque fountain in a nobleman's grounds." "sunset." "moonlight." "towards dawn." "The characters keep assembling at the fountain for no very clear reason." "Comedy." "Drama farce" "What you will." "This is the reconciliation scene." "Was there a quarrel?" "Misunderstanding and estrangement in Act Two." "Don't talk in that damned bounderish way." "Why must you see everything second hand?" "Why must this be a play?" "It's a way I have." "I hate it." "Now do you see how I hate it?" "Did that hurt?" "Yes." "Did it?" "Did I?" "Cat on the rooftop." "Beast!" "Cat in the moonlight." "Your poor face." "Will there be a mark tomorrow?" "I expect so." "am I going crazy?" "What's happened here tonight?" "I'm so tired." "So tired" "Tired and crazy and good for nothing." "All I can hope to do is put my life in some sort of order." "That's why I want to marry you." "I should like to have a child." "That's one thing I can do" "So you're being divorced." "Isn't that rather unnecessary after being happy together all these years?" "you know." "Weren't you?" "Were you not?" "I distinctly remember last Christmas seeing you together and thinking and wondering why." "starting off again." "thirty four?" "That's no time to be starting." "You ought to be settling down." "Have you made any plans?" "Yes." "I intend to get married again as soon as the divorce is through." "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 another immediately is beyond all reason." "I've seen quite a few divorces in my time." "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 as soon as they get down to detail." "I don't mind saying that there have been times" "In the last couple of years when I thought you were a bit rough on Celia." "Course it's different when it's one's own sister." "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." "I must admit." "You're a good picker." "I've always had a soft spot for Julia." "I suppose if Julia insists on a divorce she must have one." "she couldn't have chosen a worse time." "Things had not gone as smoothly for Rex as he had planned." "Only war could put his fortunes right and carry him into power." "A divorce would do him no great harm but he was like a gambler with a big bank running" "He could not look up from the table." "Tell her to there's a good fellow." "I met the widow at luncheon." "Did you?" "Do you know what she said to me?" "So you're divorcing one divorced man and marrying another." "It sounds rather complicated she called me my dear about twenty times" "I've usually found that every Catholic family and it's often the nicest." "What's she like?" "Majestic." "And voluptuous." "of course." "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." "Was she friendly?" "yes" "In a condescending way." "I think it put her rather at ease to have me there as the black sheep." "said rather pointedly she hoped to see me often in London." "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." "anyway." "The widow is madly tough." "Does she boss him?" "much." "poor beast and doesn't 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 stand in her way." "from Lady Cordelia." "Lady Cordelia?" "How marvelous." "Where is she?" "my Lady." "how lovely." "Is she coming home?" "Just starting for the station." "She'll be here after dinner." "Thank you." "I haven't seen her since I took her to dinner at the Ritz and she talked about becoming a nun." "It must be twelve years!" "She was an enchanting child." "She's had an odd life." "First the convent the war in Spain." "Then staying on when the war was over and helping in the camps." "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 at 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." "I thought differently dispersed" "Julia and her." "It's wonderful to be home." "My job's over in Spain." "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." "Rex seems pretty certain." "He's made up his mind there's going to be a war." "I wonder what Papa will do?" "Where is Rex?" "Is he coming down?" "No." "The lawyers insisted on a formal separation so he's moved back to London." "I'm only staying until" "Bridey is installed with the widow and her children." "He wrote to me and said if I was homeless" "I could stay here after they've moved in." "I don't know though" "Mrs. Muspratt and the three boys." "Maybe I'll get myself a flat in London." "Hello Nanny." "I knew you'd be up." "Mr. Wilcox sent to tell me you were coming." "I brought you some lace." "dear." "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'll be very welcome I'm sure." "May we turn the wireless off Nanny?" "Why of course." "I didn't notice it was on in the pleasure of seeing you." "Isn't it splendid about Julia and Charles getting married?" "Well I hope it's all for the best." "Brideshead has certainly taken long enough to make up his mind." "I've hunted all through Debrett and I couldn't find any mention of Mrs. Muspratt's connections." "I daresay." "What have you done to your hair?" "it's terrible." "I must get all that put right now I'm back." "Darling nanny." "I saw Sebastian last month." "What a time he's been gone." "Was he quite well?" "Not very." "That's why I went." "from Spain to Tunis." "He's with the monks there." "well I hope they look after him properly." "I expect they find him a regular handful." "He always sends to me at Christmas." "Though it's not the same as having him home." "He's got a beard now and he's very religious." "not even if I see it." "He was always a little heathen." "not Sebastian." "And a beard!" "Only fancy fair skin as he had though he'd not been near water all day." "While Brideshead there was no doing anything with." "Cordelia!" "What?" "Come and tell me about Sebastian." "Charles." "It's a long story." "Tomorrow." "Goodnight." "Goodnight." "I had not forgotten Sebastian." "He was with me daily in Julia or perhaps it was Julia I had known in him in those distant Arcadian days." "Every stone of the house had a memory of him" "And hearing him spoken of by Cordelia" "As someone she had seen a month ago my lost friend filled my thoughts." "I heard he was dying." "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" "Has been found starving" "And taken in to a monastery near Carthage." "That was how the story reached me." "I knew it couldn't quite be true however little we did for Sebastian he at least got his money sent to him." "But I started off at once." "It was quite easy to find him." "I just went to the consulate." "Apparently he'd turned up in Tunis one day and 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 again." "He lived in a little 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" "Smelling of hot oil and garlic and stale wine." "He stayed there a month drinking Greek absinthe." "They loved him there." "He's still loved you see." "whatever condition he's in." "It's a thing about him he'll never lose." "They thought very ill of his family for leaving him like that." "they said." "And I daresay they're right." "that was later." "After the consulate" "I went straight to the monastery and I saw the Superior." "He told me his part of the story." "So I sent him away." "He kept coming back two or three times a week always drunk until I gave orders to the porter to keep him out." "He must have been a terrible nuisance to you." "I don't know what I can do to help him except pray." "we found him unconscious outside the main gate he had fallen down and had lain there all night." "At first we thought that he was merely drunk again then we realised that he was very ill so we took him to the Infirmary." "He's been there ever since." "They'd given him a room to himself just off the cloisters." "He looked terrible." "Any age." "At first he couldn't talk much" "But I stayed a fortnight with him until he was over the worst of his illness." "Then he told me what had been happening to him." "his German friend." "so you know all about that." "Sounds gruesome." "He said they went to Greece" "And Kurt had got arrested after some brawl and sent back to Germany." "It was a time when they were rounding up all their nationals to make them into Nazis." "Sebastian followed." "For a year he couldn't find any trace of him." "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 spouting all that official jargon about the rebirth of his country." "But it was only skin deep with him." "Six years of Sebastian had taught him more than a year of Hitler." "Eventually Kurt chucked it and admitted he hated Germany and wanted to get out." "I don't know how much it was simple the call of the easy life sponging on Sebastian." "He said it wasn't entirely that but Kurt had just begun to grow up." "Maybe he's right." "it didn't work." "Kurt always got into trouble whatever he did." "Finally they caught him and they put him in a concentration camp." "Sebastian couldn't get near him." "He didn't even know what camp he was in." "So he hung about in Germany for another year" "Drinking again." "Until one day in his cups" "He took up with a man who'd just been out of the camp" "Where Kurt had been" "And learned that he had hanged himself in his hut in the first week." "So that was the end of Europe for Sebastian." "He went back to North Africa where he had been happy." "I once had a governess who jumped off this bridge and drowned herself." "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 really loved him as we do." "Poor old Sebastian." "It's quite pitiful." "How will it end?" "Charles." "I've seen others like him." "And I believe they are very near and dear to God." "They'll let him stay there living half in and half out of the community." "He'll be a great favorite with the old fathers and something of a joke with the novices." "There's usually a few odd hangers on in a religious house." "You know" "People who don't quite fit in to either the world or the monastic rule." "I suppose I'm something of that sort myself but as I don't happen to drink I'm more employable." "He'll disappear for two or three days every month" "Or so and they'll all nod and smile and say" "Old Sebastian on a spree again." "after one of his drinking bouts he'll be picked up at the gate dying" "and show by the mere flicker of his eyelids that he is conscious when they give him the last sacraments." "Not such a bad way of getting through one's life." "It's not what one would have foretold." "I suppose he doesn't suffer?" "I think he does." "One has no idea what the suffering may be to be as maimed as he is." "No dignity." "No power of will." "No one is truly holy without suffering." "Holy?" "Yes." "That's what you've got to understand about Sebastian." "you know a bell tower" "Rows of green vegetables and a monk watering them when the sun is low." "You knew I wouldn't understand." "You and Julia." "Tell me Charles" "When you first met me last night such an engaging child full of good works?" "Did you think thwarted?" "I did." "But now I'm not so sure." "It's funny you know" "That's exactly the word that I thought for you and Julia when I saw you up in the nursery with Nanny." "Thwarted passion' I thought." "My divorce case or rather my wife's was due to be heard at about the same time as Bridey was married." "But he was to have no triumphal return." "Lord Marchmain with a taste for the dramatically inopportune declared his intention in view of the international situation of returning to England and passing his declining years in his old home." "In the winter of 1939" "Lord Marchmain in view of the international situation declared his intention of returning to England and passing his declining years in his old home." "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 took presence in his own neighborhood." "who had left Brideshead a month before thinking we should not return" "moved back for the reception." "It's the cold." "I'd forgotten how cold it is in England." "Quite bowled me over." "thank you." "where are those confounded pills?" "The doctor said not more than three times a day." "Damn the doctor!" "I feel quite bowled over." "A glass of water." "Sure." "I don't feel at all the thing today." "The journey took it out of me." "Ought to have waited a night at Dover." "which rooms have you prepared for me?" "my Lord." "Not till I'm fit again." "Too many stairs" "It has to be on the ground floor." "get a bed made up for me downstairs." "my Lord." "my Lord?" "The Chinese drawing room." "my Lord." "Wilcox" "The Queen's Bed." "my Lord and the Queen's bed." "yes." "Few things could have caused more stir in the house." "The Chinese Drawing Room was one I'd never seen used." "The Queen's Bed was an exhibition piece like the baldachino at St Peter's." "So what had been foreseen as a day of formality became one of fierce exertion." "The Estate carpenters were collected to dismantle the bed and it came down the main staircase at intervals during the afternoon." "Lord Marchmain seemed to derive comfort from the consequences of his whim and as he showed no inclination to move tea was brought to us in the hall." "I daresay I shan't really be fit again until the summer comes." "I look to you four to amuse me." "Tell me the circumstances of Brideshead's courtship." "It seems he met her late husband first." "They shared the same hobby." "What was that?" "Matchboxes." "Admiral Muspratt apparently had one on the finest collections in the country." "Matchboxes." "Matchboxes." "I think she's past child-bearing." "In Italy no one believes there's going to be a war." "they think it will all be arranged." "you no longer have access to political information is fortunately a British citizen by marriage." "It is not a thing she customarily mentions but it may prove valuable." "She's legally Mrs. Hicks my dear?" "We know little of Hicks but we shall be grateful to him if it comes to war." "And you you will I suppose be an official artist?" "No" "As a matter of fact" "I am negotiating now for a commission in the Special Reserve." "You should be an artist." "for weeks till we went up the line." "Oh!" "It really looks remarkably well." "I do congratulate you." "indeed." "Wilcox I seem to remember a silver basin and ewer it stood in what we used to call 'The Irish Dressing Room'." "Suppose we put it here on the console." "Send Plender and Gaston to me." "Tell them not to worry about the luggage." "Just my dressing case and things for the night." "Plender will know." "Now if you'll all leave me" "I'll go to bed." "We'll meet later." "You'll all come and dine with me here and keep me amused." "papa." "Charles." "It really looks very well." "Doesn't it?" "Very well." "eh?" "Call it 'The Death Bed'." "Did he mean that?" "Yes." "He has come home to die." "But this afternoon he was speaking so confidently of recovery." "That's because he was so ill." "he knows he is dying and accepts it." "His sickness is up and down." "sometimes several days he is strong and lively and then ready for death." "Other days he is down and afraid." "I do not know how it will be when is more and more down." "That will come in good time." "The doctors in Rome gave him less than a year." "who will tell us more." "What is it?" "His heart." "Some long word at the heart." "He is dying of a long word." "I've not been much moved by family piety until now but I am frankly appalled at the prospect of Beryl taking what was once my mother's place in this house." "Why should that uncouth couple sit here childless while the house crumbles about their ears?" "I will not disguise from you that I have taken a dislike to Beryl." "Perhaps it was unfortunate that we should meet in Rome." "Almost any other place would have been more sympathetic." "when one considers it where could I have met her without repugnance?" "We dined at Raineri's." "A quite little restaurant which I have frequented for years no doubt you know it." "Beryl seemed to fill the place." "I of course was host but to hear Beryl press my son with food you would have thought otherwise." "Brideshead was always a greedy boy." "A wife with his best interests at heart would rather have tried to restrain him." "But that's a matter of small importance." "No doubt she had heard of me as a man of irregular life." "I can only describe her manner to me as roguish." "that's what I was." "I suppose she's met naughty old Admirals and knew how they were to be humored." "I will not attempt to describe her conversation." "I will give you one example." "They had been to an audience at the Vatican that morning a blessing on their marriage." "And do you know what she said to me?" "she said" "'I felt as though it was I who was leading the bride'." "It was said with great indelicacy" "I can't yet quite fathom what she meant." "Was she making a play on my son's name referring to his undoubted virginity?" "I fancy the latter." "do you?" "Who shall I leave it to?" "you know." "is out of the question." "Who wants it?" "A quiz!" "Cara?" "of course you wouldn't." "Cordelia?" "I think I shall leave it to Julia and Charles." "papa." "It's Bridey's." "And Beryl's?" "I should have Gregson down one day soon and go over the matter." "It's time I brought my will up to date." "It's full of anomalies and anachronisms" "I have taken a fancy to the idea of installing Julia here." "my dear." "So beautiful always." "Much more suitable." "Do you think he really means to leave it to us?" "I think he does." "But it's monstrous for Bridey." "Is it?" "I don't think he cares much for the place." "you know." "He and Beryl will be much more content in some little house somewhere." "So you mean to accept?" "Certainly." "It's Papa's to leave as he likes." "I think you and I could be very happy here." "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." "Mr Chamberlain opened his speech in Birmingham by saying that tomorrow he would attain his seventieth birthday" "and that as he felt still sound in mind and limb he hoped he might have a few more years before him in which to give what service he could to the State"." "'this remark was greeted with cheers'." "Shall I go on?" "if it's not boring you." "No." "Chamberlain" "I knew him" "A mediocre fellow." "I'm sorry." "He's terribly tired." "He can't see anyone else today." "Oh dear." "How very disappointing." "Are you quite sure?" "He's very exhausted." "I do see." "Perhaps tomorrow he'll be brighter." "Well I'm afraid Beryl simply can't wait any longer." "She has to get back to the children." "this is very distressing for her." "She was most anxious to see him." "She formed an instant liking for him in Rome." "the parish priest from Melstead came to call as a matter of politeness." "Don't bother." "I'll be alright." "Good morning." "Cordelia put him off with apologies and excuses she said 'Not yet'" "Papa doesn't want him yet." "I see great Church trouble ahead." "Can't they even let him die in peace?" "They mean something so different by 'peace'." "It would be an outrage." "No one could have made it plainer in his life what he thought of religion." "They come to him now when his mind's wandering and he hasn't the strength to resist and claim him as a death bed penitent." "I've had some respect for their religion up to now but if they do that then I'll know that what stupid people say is true" "that its all superstition and trickery." "Don't you agree?" "Charles." "I simply don't know." "The weeks of illness wore on and the life of the house kept pace with the faltering strength of the sick man." "it's too good." "I don't believe it." "did you?" "Papa." "Wilcox says the Painted Parlour's ready." "Do you really want to do this?" "Julia?" "Apparently Papa told Wilcox this morning he wants to move to the Painted Parlour." "I've changed my mind." "Why should you move?" "You're comfortable here." "Where's she going?" "Where's she going?" "Alex." "She's coming back." "Do you want me to read to you?" "No." "I'll get my revenge first." "I suppose you want the whites to win this one." "at the end of February he called for a car and got as far as the north front steps." "Then suddenly he lost interest in the drive." "not now." "Later." "Sometime in the summer." "The bad spells became longer and more frequent." "Days and nights became indistinguishable to him." "A nurse was engaged." "Lady Cordelia." "I've never seen such a room nothing like it anywhere in all my experience." "How can I possibly nurse his Lordship in conditions like this?" "I must insist that my patient's moved where there's running hot water a small narrow bed that I can get round and a dressing room for myself." "It's only what I'm used to." "we have tried but it's hopeless." "He won't be moved." "Then I can't answer for the consequences." "Presently there were no good spells merely brief fluctuations in the speed of his decline." "Bridey was called back." "It was the Easter holidays and Beryl was busy with her children." "He came alone." "Papa must see a priest." "do you think he would?" "I shall see that he does." "I've just asked Father MacKay to come tomorrow." "I'll take him in myself." "Although none of us had spoken of it" "I felt the question ever present through the weeks of Lord Marchmain's illness." "I saw it when Cordelia drove off early in the mornings for Mass." "I saw it as Cara took to going with her." "in his own way had planted the problem down before us." "do you think the poor soul would be ready to see me?" "Father." "Nurse said he had a good night." "Would you care to come with me?" "This is all so serious." "Listen" "'April events on the Riviera. '" "'There will be a fete on Monte Carlo and Mrs. Reginald Fellows has organized a charity gala. '" "Indefatigable old bag!" "Papa." "Who?" "Papa." "Father MacKay." "I'm afraid you've been brought here under a misapprehension." "I am not in extremis and I have not been a practicing member of your Church for twenty-five years." "Brideshead" "I think you should see Father MacKay out don't you?" "darling." "The Russian ballet season will open under the direction of Monsieur Massine and the Battle of Flowers will take place at Nice." "I can only apologize" "Poor soul." "it was seeing a strange face." "You may depend on it." "That's what it was the unexpected stranger." "Indeed I can understand it well myself." "Father." "It's wretched to have brought you all this way." "Lady Cordelia." "I've had bottles thrown at me in the Gorbals." "Give him time." "I've know worse cases make beautiful deaths." "I'll pay a visit to Mrs. Hawkins." "I'll call again." "Pray for him." "Father?" "Indeed I do." "Do I gather the visit was not a success?" "It was not." "will you drive Father MacKay home when he comes down from Nanny's." "I'm going to telephone Beryl to see if she needs me at home." "Bridey" "It was horrible." "What are we going to do?" "We've done all we can for the moment." "Damn Bridey!" "I knew it wouldn't work." "I felt triumphant." "I had been right." "Everyone else had been wrong." "Truth had prevailed." "The threat I had felt hanging over Julia and me at the fountain had been averted perhaps dispelled forever." "Mumbo-jumbo's off." "The witch doctor's gone." "Poor papa." "It's great sucks to Bridey." "I can't quite see why you've taken it so to heart that my father shall not have the last sacraments." "isn't it?" "Is it?" "It's been going on for nearly two thousand years." "I really don't know why you should suddenly get so excited about it now." "For Christ's sake write a letter to 'The Times' get up and make a speech in Hyde Park start a 'No Popery' riot but don't bore me about it." "What's it got to do with you or me whether my father sees his parish priest?" "There was also" "I can now confess it inexpressible little victory that I was furtively celebrating." "I guessed that the morning's business had put Brideshead some considerable way further from his rightful inheritance." "In that I was correct." "A man was sent for from the solicitors in London that afternoon." "It soon became known throughout the house that Lord Marchmain had made a new will." "I was wrong in thinking that the religious controversy was quashed." "after dinner." "What Papa said was 'I am not in extremis." "I have not been a practicing member of the church for twenty-five years'." "'your church'." "I don't see the difference." "There's every difference." "it's perfectly plain what he meant." "I presume he meant what he said." "He meant he was not accustomed regularly to receive the sacrament and since he was not at that moment dying he did not intend to change his ways yet." "That's simply a quibble." "Why do people always think that one is quibbling when one tries to be precise?" "His plain meaning was that he did not wish to see a priest that day but that he would when he was in 'extremis'." "I wonder if there's any more coffee." "I wish somebody would explain to me what the significance of these sacraments is." "Do you mean that if he dies without a priest that he goes to Hell?" "And that if a priest is there and puts oil on him... it's not the oil that heals him." "whatever it is he does that then he goes to Heaven?" "Now is that what you believe?" "or someone did anyway that if the priest got there before the body was cold isn't it?" "Cara." "It isn't." "Certainly not." "You've got it all wrong." "Do any of you Catholics know exactly what good you think this priest will do?" "Do you simply want to arrange it so that your father can have a Christian burial?" "Or do you want to keep him out of hell?" "I only want to be told." "They're the same thing." "as you put it he must make an act of the will." "He has to be contrite and wish to be reconciled." "Only God knows whether he has really made that act of will." "You mean sometimes the priest doesn't know?" "Not necessarily." "it's quite possible that the will may still be working when a man is too weak to make any outward sign of it?" "He may be lying as though dead." "and willing all the time to be reconciled." "and so does the Church so she is able to give him the last sacraments." "I never heard that before." "and he makes the act of will alone that's as good as if there was a priest." "Is that right?" "More or less." "for heaven's sake what's the priest for?" "All that I know is that I shall take very good care to have a priest." "Bless you." "I believe that's the best answer." "I wish you wouldn't start these religious arguments." "I didn't start it." "You don't convince anyone else and you don't really convince yourself." "I only want to know what these people believe." "They say it's all based on logic." "he would have made it all quite logical." "There were four of you." "Cara didn't know the first thing it was about and may or may not have believed it." "You knew a bit and didn't believe a word." "Cordelia knew about as much and believed it madly. and I thought he made a pretty poor show when it came to explaining." "And people go about saying." "At least Catholics know what they believe." "we had a fair cross section there tonight." "don't rant." "I shall begin to think you're getting doubts." "The weeks passed and still Lord Marchmain lived on." "my divorce was made absolute." "Julia would be free in September." "The nearer our marriage got the more wistfully I noticed Julia spoke of it." "War was now growing nearer too." "But Lord Marchmain's mind was far from world affairs." "It was there on the spot turned in on himself." "He had no strength for any other war than his own solitary struggle to keep alive." "Better today." "Better today." "I can see now where the geese are flying over the lilies." "where yesterday I was confused and took the lilies for swans." "Soon I shall see where the geese are headed when they gather to fly over the looking glass." "Better tomorrow." "We live long in our family and marry late." "Seventy three" "No great age." "my father's aunt lived to be eighty-eight." "Born and died here." "Never married." "Saw the fire on Beacon Hill for the battle of Trafalgar." "Always called it 'The New House'." "That was their name for it in the nursery and in the fields when unlettered men had long memories." "You can see where the old house stood near the village church." "They called the field 'Castle Hill'." "Horlick's field where the ground's uneven and most of it waste" "and brier in hollows too deep for ploughing." "Those were our roots in the waste hollows of Castle Hill." "We were knights then barons since Agincourt." "The larger honors came the last and they'll go the first." "The barony goes on." "When Brideshead's buried" "Julia's son will be called by the name his fathers bore before the fat days." "The days of wool shearing and the wide corn lands the days of growth and building when the marshes were drained and the waste land brought under the plough." "When one built the house his son added the dome his son spread the wings and dammed the river." "He's got a wonderful will to live hasn't he?" "Would you put it like that?" "I'd say a great fear of death." "Is there a difference?" "yes." "He doesn't derive any strength from his fear." "It's wearing him out." "Mr. Ryder." "I'll call in tomorrow morning." "Better stay." "I've lived carefully protected myself from the cold winds" "eaten moderately what was in season drunk fine claret" "slept in my own sheets" "I shall live long." "When I was fifty they dismounted us and sent us up the line." "the orders said." "Old venerables." "My commanding.... my he said." "'You are as fit as the youngest'...." "So I was." "So I am now if only I could breathe." "When summer comes" "I shall leave my bed and sit in the open air and breathe more freely." "When the wind comes down the valley and a man can turn to meet it" "and fill himself with air like a beast at water." "why have they dug this hole for me?" "Must a man stifle to death in his own cellar?" "open the windows." "The windows are all wide open my Lord." "there's nothing comes out." "it's quite full you can tell from this dial here it's at full pressure." "can't you hear it hiss?" "Lord Marchmain then you get the benefit." "There" "Free as air." "That's what they say." "'Free as air'." "Now they bring me my air in an iron barrel." "I was free once." "I committed a crime in the name of freedom." "Cordelia" "What became of the chapel?" "Papa when Mummy died." "It was hers." "I built it for her." "There was a chaplain here until the war." "Do you remember him?" "I was too young." "Then I went away." "I left her praying in the chapel." "It was hers." "It was the place for her." "I never came back to disturb her prayers." "They said we were fighting for freedom" "I had my victory." "Was that a crime?" "I think it was Papa." "child?" "Thus Lord Marchmain lay dying wearing himself down in the struggle to live." "Since there was no reason to expect an immediate change" "Cordelia went to London to see her women's organization about the coming emergency." "That day when Julia and I were alone with Cara he became suddenly worse." "Is he dying?" "It's difficult to say." "When he does die it will probably be like this." "He may recover from the present attack." "The only thing is not to disturb him." "The least shock will be fatal." "I'm going to telephone Father MacKay." "we must stop this nonsense." "My business is with the body." "It's not my business to argue whether people are better alive or dead or what happens to them after death." "I only try to keep them alive." "And you said just now that the least shock would kill him." "as he does than to have a priest brought to him?" "A priest he turned out when he had the strength?" "I think it may kill him." "Then will you forbid it?" "I've no authority to forbid anything." "I can only given an opinion." "Doctor!" "Excuse me." "what do you think?" "I don't want him made unhappy." "that he'll die without knowing it." "But I should like the priest there all the same." "Will you try and persuade Julia to keep him away until the end?" "Then he can do no harm." "I will ask her to leave Alex happy." "Yes." "I've telegraphed Bridey and Cordelia." "I hope you agree that nothing should be done until they arrive." "I wish they were here now." "You can't take the responsibility alone." "Everyone else is against you." "Doctor Grant tell her what you told me just now." "I said the shock of seeing a priest might well kill him without that he may survive this attack." "As his medical man I must protest against anything being done to disturb him." "Cara?" "Julia but you see" "Alex was not a religious man." "He scoffed always." "now he's weak to comfort our own consciences." "If Father Mackay comes to him when he is unconscious then he can be buried in the proper way" "Father?" "I'll go and see how he is." "Do you remember how Lord Marchmain greeted you last time?" "Do you think it possible he can have changed now?" "it is possible." "Perhaps you could go in while he is sleeping say the words of absolution over him he would never know." "I've seen so many men and women die" "I never knew them sorry to have me there at the end." "but they were Catholics." "Lord Marchmain has never been one except in name at any rate not for years." "He was a scoffer." "Cara said so." "There's no change." "how could I be a shock to anyone?" "Do you know what I'm going to do?" "there's no show about it." "you know." "I go just as I am." "He knows the look of me now." "It's nothing alarming." "Julia." "What are we to say?" "Let me speak to him." "Father." "I really think we not to refuse me then I want to give him God's pardon." "Alex?" "You remember the priest from Melstead?" "Father MacKay" "You were very naughty with him when he came to see you." "You hurt his feelings very much." "Now he's here again." "I want you to see him just for my sake" "to make friends." "Though it's not essential I wanted to anoint him." "a little oil from this little box nothing to hurt him." "I don't think he heard me." "I thought I knew how to put it to him but he didn't answer me." "If he's unconscious it couldn't make him unhappy to see the priest doctor?" "doctor." "I take full responsibility for whatever happens." "will you please come and see my father now?" "You won't disturb him now." "Do you mean?" "no." "But he is past noticing anything." "Pax huic domui et omnibu habtautibus in ea." "I know that you are sorry for all the sins of your life aren't you?" "if you can." "aren't you?" "Try and remember your sins." "Tell God that you are sorry." "I am going to give you absolution." "While I'm giving it tell God that you are sorry that you have offended him." "Ego te absolvo ad ómnibus censuria et peccatis" "I recognized the words of absolution and saw the priest make the sign of the cross." "Then I knelt too and prayed." "if there is a God forgive him his sins." "If there is such a thing as sin." "Per istam sanctan unctionem et suma piissimam misericoriam indulgeat tibi" "Dominus quidquid deliquisti." "Amen." "I suddenly felt the longing for a sign if only of courtesy" "if only for the sake of the woman I loved who knelt in front of me praying for a sign" "It seemed so small a thing that was asked the bare acknowledgement of a present a nod in the crowd." "I prayed more simply." "forgive him his sins and please make him accept your forgiveness." "So small a thing to ask." "facultate mihi ab Apostolica Sede tributa" "Indulgentiam plenarium et remissionem omnium pessatorum tibi concedo." "Et benedico te in nominee Patris et Fillii et Spiritus Sancti." "Amen." "Then I knew that the sign that I had asked for was not a little thing not a passing nod of recognition" "and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom." "Will you see Father MacKay out?" "I'm staying here for a little." "That was a beautiful thing to see." "I've seen it happen that way again and again." "The devil resists to the last moment and then the Grace of God is too much for him." "Mr. Ryder but you'll be glad for the ladies to have the comfort of it." "Father" "We should give you something for your trouble." "Mr. Ryder." "It was a pleasure." "But anything you care to give is useful in a parish like mine." "Is this alright?" "Mr. Ryder." "God bless you." "but" "I don't think the poor soul has long for this world." "Goodbye." "Julia remained in the Chinese drawing room her father died" "proving both sides right in the dispute priest and doctor." "sir." "It was very peaceful." "sir." "Julia" "I" "Not now." "I'm taking Cara to her room." "Later." "Thus" "I come to the broken sentences which were the last words spoken between Julia and me." "The last memories." "While she was still upstairs" "Brideshead and Cordelia arrived from London." "When at last we met alone it was by stealth" "like young lovers." "a minute to say goodbye." "So long to say so little." "You knew?" "Since this morning." "all this year." "I didn't know till today." "if you could only understand or bear it better." "if I believed in broken hearts." "Charles." "I can't be with you ever again." "I know." "But how can you know?" "What will you do?" "Just go on." "Alone." "How can I tell what I shall do?" "You know the whole of me." "You know I'm not one for a life of mourning." "I've always been bad." "Probably I shall be bad again punished again." "But the worse I am the more I need God." "I can't shut myself out from his mercy." "starting a life with you without him." "One can only see one step ahead." "But I saw today there was one thing unforgivable" "so bad they are unpunishable that only Mummy could deal with" "the bad thing that I was on the point of doing that I'm not quite bad enough to do" "to set up a rival good to God's." "Cordelia" "Perhaps Bridey and Mrs. Muspratt keeping my name in their prayers" "or it may be a private bargain between me and God that if I give up this one thing I want so much" "he won't quite despair of me in the end." "Now we shall both be alone" "and I shall have no way of making you understand." "I don't want to make it easier for you." "I hope your heart may break" "but I do understand." "The worst place we've struck yet." "no amenities and Brigade Headquarters arriving next week sitting right on top of us." "is ten miles away and damn-all when you get there." "It will therefore be the first concern of company officers to organize recreation for their men." "I want you to take a look at the lakes to see if they're fit for bathing." "sir." "Brigade expects us to clean up the house for them." "I should have thought some of those half-shaven scrim-shankers" "I see lounging around Headquarters might have saved us the trouble however" "Ryder you will find a fatigue party and report to the Quartering Commandant at the house of 10.45 hours." "He'll show you what we're taking over." "sir." "Anyone happen to know this district?" "then." "Get cracking." "sir." "Morning." "Fatigue party reporting for duty." "Well done." "Wonderful old place in it's way." "Pity to knock it about too much." "Come in." "I'll show you over." "sir." "It's a vast warren but we've only requisitioned the ground floor and half a dozen bedrooms." "So everything else upstairs is private property." "Caretaker and a couple of old servants live at the top." "They won't be any trouble to you." "in bounds to the troops and a surprising number use it." "as she calls herself now." "the Minister for whatever-it-is." "She's abroad in some women's service." "I try to keep an eye on things for her." "Surprising the old Marquis leaving everything to her" "Bit rough on the boys." "Thank you." "This is the signals room plenty of space anyway." "The last lot made absolute hay of the place." "Rather a shame." "Pity we didn't have these paintings covered up." "quite the prettiest in the place." "Somebody's made rather a beast of himself there." "Destructive beggars soldiers are." "See the fountain out there!" "Rather a tender spot for our landlady." "The young officers used to lark about in it on guest nights and it was all looking a bit the worse for wear so I boarded it up and turned the water off." "isn't it?" "They put the clerks in here." "gets bloody cold in the winter." "We tried these oil heaters but it didn't do much good." "Now keep an eye on the busts." "Some bright spark managed to knock the head off one of them playing indoor hockey if you please." "it won't be charged to your lot." "I'd advise you to give this room to the Brigadier for his office." "The last one took it." "Next door's no good." "There's a bloody great bed in it and a load of Chinese furniture." "Always reminds me of one of the costlier knocking shops you know" "'La Maison Japanaise'." "I'm only here to clear up." "Someone from Brigade will allot the rooms." "haven't you?" "I'll push off." "Good-day to you." "sir." "Hooper" "is there any chance I can safely leave you in charge of the working party for half an hour?" "I was just wondering if we could scrounge some tea." "you've only just started." "They're awfully browned off." "Keep them at it." "Righty oh." "Go and get the last four crates out of the truck will you." "isn't it Mr. Ryder?" "It is." "I was wondering when I'd meet somebody I knew." "Mrs. Hawkins is still in her old room." "I was just going to take her some tea." "I'll take it for you." "Very good sir." "Nanny" "Hello." "It's me" "Charles Ryder." "Nanny." "I've brought your tea." "Charles Ryder!" "Lady Julia's not here only myself here and the two girls and poor Father Membling not a roof to his head not a stick of furniture till Julia took him in with the kind heart she's got and his nerves something shocking." "Did you listen to Mr. Mottram last night?" "he was." "the girl who does for me and if he understands English he'll feel very small." "Have you heard from Julia?" "only last week." "as they have been all the time and Julia sent me love at the bottom of the page." "but they couldn't say where reading between the lines it was Palestine which is where Bridey's yeomanry is so that's all very nice for them." "Cordelia said they were all looking forward to coming home after the war though whether I live to see it is another story." "Hooper?" "They had to go off to draw the bed straw." "I didn't know anything about it till Sergeant Block told me." "I don't know whether they'll be coming back." "Don't know?" "What orders did you give?" "I told Sergeant Block to bring them back if he thought if there'll be time between now and dinner." "Hooper." "That straw was to be drawn till six this evening." "Ryder." "Sergeant Block it was my fault for going away" "bring them back here and keep them here till the job's done." "Rightyoh." "Thanks." "I say did you say you know this place before?" "very well." "It belongs to friends of mine." "It doesn't make any sense one family in a place this size." "What's the use of it?" "I suppose Brigade find it useful." "though is it?" "No." "It's not what it was built for." "Maybe that's one of the pleasures of building having a son wondering how he'll grow up." "I've never built anything and I forfeited the right to watch my son grow up." "I'm homeless childless" "Hooper." "Now go on back to camp and keep out of the C.O.'s way if he's back from his recce." "Ryder." "And Hooper don't let on to anyone that we've made a nonsense of this morning." "The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect." "The paint was as fresh and as bright as ever the lamp burned once more before the altar." "I knelt and said a prayer an ancient newly-learned form of words." "I thought the builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend." "They made a new house with the stones of the old castle the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness in sudden frost came the age of Hooper." "The place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing." "Quomodo sedet sola civitas." "Vanity of vanities all is vanity." "I thought" "That is not the last word it is not even an apt word it is a dead word from ten years back." "Something quite remote from anything the builders intended had come out of their work and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played." "Something none of us thought about at the time a beaten copper lamp of deplorable design re-lit before the beaten copper doors of a tabernacle." "This flame which the old knights saw from their tombs which they saw put out the flame burns again for other soldiers farther in heart than Acre or Jerusalem." "It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians and there I found it that morning burning anew among the old stones." "Morning Ryder." "You're looking remarkably cheerful today."