MY divorce case, or rather my wife’s, was due to be heard at about the same time as Brideshead was to be married. Julia’s would not come up till the following term; meanwhile the game of General Post - moving my property from the Old Rectory to my flat, my wife’s from my flat to the Old Rectory, Julia’s from Rex’s house and from Brideshead to my flat, Rex’s from Brideshead to his house, and Mrs Muspratt’s from Falmouth to Brideshead - was in full swing and we were all, in varying degrees, homeless, when a halt was called and Lord Marchmain, with a taste for the dramatically inopportune which was plainly the prototype of his elder son’s, declared his intention, in view of the international situation, of returning to England and passing his declining years, in his old home.
The only member of the family to whom this change promised any benefit was Cordelia, who had been sadly abandoned in the turmoil. Brideshead, indeed, had made a formal request to her to consider his house her home for as long as it suited her, but when she learned that her sister-in-law proposed to install her children there for the holidays immediately after the wedding, in the charge of a sister of hers and the sister’s friend, Cordelia had decided to move, too, and was talking of setting up alone in London. She now found herself, Cinderella-like, promoted chatelaine, while her brother and his wife who had till that moment expected to find themselves, within a matter of days, in absolute command, were without a roof; the deeds of conveyance, engrossed and ready for signing, were rolled up, tied, and put away in one of the black tin boxes in Lincoln’s Inn. It was bitter for Mrs Muspratt; she was not an ambitious woman; something very much less grand than Brideshead would have contented her heartily, but she did aspire to find some shelter for her children over Christmas. The house at Falmouth was stripped and up for sale; moreover, Mrs Muspratt had taken leave of the place with some justifiably rather large talk of her new establishment; they could not return there. She was obliged in a hurry to move her furniture from Lady Marchmain’s room to a disused coach-house and to take a furnished villa at Torquay. She was not, as I have said, a woman of high ambition, but, having had her expectations so much raised, it was disconcerting to be brought so low so suddenly. In the village the working party who had been preparing the decorations for the bridal entry, began unpacking the Bs on the bunting and substitutin Ms, obliterating the Earl’s points and stencilling balls and strawberry leaves on the painted, coronets, in preparation for Lord Marchmain’s return. News of his intentions came first to the solicitors, then to Cordelia, then to Julia and me, in a rapid succession of contradictory cables. Lord Marchmain would arrive in time for the wedding; he would arrive after the wedding, having seen Lord and Lady Brideshead on their way through Paris; he would see them in Rome. He was not well enough to travel at all; he was just starting; he had unhappy memories of winter at Brideshead and would not come until spring was well advanced and the heating apparatus overhauled; he was coming alone; he was bringing his Italian household; he wished his return to be unannounced and to lead a life of complete seclusion; he would give a ball. At last a date in January was chosen which proved to be the correct one. Plender preceded him by some days; there was a difficulty here. Plender was not an original member of the Brideshead household; he had been Lord Marchmain’s servant in the yeomanry, and had only once met Wilcox on the painful occasion of the removal of his master’s luggage when it was decided not to return from the war; then Plender had been valet, as, officially, he still was, but he had, in the past years introduced a kind of suffragan, a Swiss body-servant, to attend to the wardrobe and also, when occasion arose, lend a hand with less dignified tasks about the house, and had in effect become majordomo of that fluctuating and mobile household; sometimes he even referred to himself on the telephone as ‘the secretary’. There was an acre of thin ice between him and Wilcox.
Fortunately the two men took a liking to one another, and the thing was solved in a series of three-cornered discussions with Cordelia. Plender and Wilcox became joint grooms of the chambers, like ‘Blues’ and Life Guards with equal precedence, Plender having as his particular province his Lordship’s own apartments and Wilcox a sphere of influence in the public rooms; the senior footman was given a black coat and promoted butler, the non-descript Swiss, on arrival, was to have plain clothes and full valet’s status there was a general increase in wages to meet the new dignities, and all were content. Julia and I, who had left Brideshead a month before, thinking we should not return, moved back for the reception. When the day came, Cordelia went to the station and we remained to greet him at home. It was a bleak and gusty day. Cottages and lodges were decorated; plans for a bonfire that night and for the village silver band to play on the terrace, were put down, but the house flag, that had not flown for twenty-five years, was hoisted over the pediment, and flapped sharply against the leaden sky. Whatever harsh voices might be bawling into the microphones of central Europe, and whatever lathes spinning in the armament factories, the return of Lord Marchmain was a matter of first importance in his own neighbourhood.
He was due at three o’clock. Julia and I waited in the drawing-room until Wilcox, who had arranged with the stationmaster to be kept informed, announced ‘the train is signalled’, and a minute later, ‘the train is in; his Lordship is on the way.’ Then we went to the front portico and waited there with the upper servants. Soon the Rolls appeared at the turn in the drive, followed at some distance by the two vans. It drew up; first Cordelia got out, then Cara; there was a pause, a rug was handed to the chauffeur, a stick to the footman; then a leg was cautiously thrust forward. Plender was by now at the car door; another servant - the Swiss valet - had emerged from a van; together they lifted Lord Marchmain out and set him on his feet; he felt for his stick, grasped it, and stood for a minute collecting his strength for the few low steps which led to the front door.
Julia gave a little sigh of surprise and touched my hand. We had seen him nine months ago at Monte Carlo, when he had been an upright and stately figure, little changed from when I first met him in Venice. Now he was an old man. Plender had told us his master had been unwell lately: he had not prepared us for this. Lord Marchmain stood bowed and shrunken, weighed down by his great-coat, a white muffler fluttering untidily at his throat, a cloth cap pulled low on his forehead, his face white and lined, his nose coloured by the cold; the tears which gathered in his eyes came not from emotion but from the east wind; he breathed heavily. Cara tucked in the end of his muffler and whispered something to him. He raised a gloved hand - a schoolboy’s glove of grey wool - and made a small, weary gesture of greeting to the group at the door; then, very slowly, with his eyes on the ground before him, he made his way into the house.
They took off his coat and cap and muffler and the kind of leather jerkin which he wore under them; thus stripped he seemed more than ever wasted but more elegant; he had cast the shabbiness of extreme fatigue. Cara straightened his tie; he wiped his eyes with -a bandanna handkerchief and shuffled with his stick to the hall fire. There was a little heraldic chair by the chimney-piece, one of a set which stood against the walls, a little, inhospitable, flat-seated thing, a mere excuse for the elaborate armorial painting on its back, on which, perhaps, no one, not even a weary footman, had ever sat since it was made; there Lord Marchmain sat and wiped his eyes. ‘It’s the cold,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten how cold it is in England. Quite bowled me over.’
‘Can I get you anything, my lord?’
‘Nothing, thank you. Cara, where are those confounded pills?’
‘Alex, the doctor said not more than three times a day.’
‘Damn the doctor. I feel quite bowled over.’
Cara produced a blue bottle from her bag and Lord March main took a pill. Whatever was in it, seemed to revive him. He remained seated, his long legs stuck out before him, his cane between them, his chin on its ivory handle, but he began to take notice of us all, to greet us and to give orders.
‘I’m afraid I’m not at all the thing today; the joumey’s taken it out of me. Ought to have waited a night at Dover. Wilcox, what rooms have you prepared for me?’ ‘Your old ones, my Lord.’
‘Won’t do; not till I’m fit again. Too many stairs; must be on the ground floor. Plender, get a bed made up for me downstairs.’ Plender and Wilcox exchanged an anxious glance.
‘Very good, my Lord. Which room shall we put it in?’ Lord Marchmain thought for a moment. ‘The Chinese drawing-room; and, Wilcox, the “Queen’s bed”.’ ‘The Chinese drawing-room, my lord, the “Queen’s bed”?’
‘Yes, yes. I may be spending some time there in the next few weeks.’
The Chinese drawing-room was one I had never seen used; in fact one could not normally go further into it than a small roped area round the door, where sight-seers were corralled on the days the house was open to the public; it was a splendid, uninhabitable museum of Chippendale carving and porcelain’ and lacquer and painted hangings; the Queen’s bed too, was an exhibition piece, a vast velvet tent like the baldachino at St Peter’s. Had Lord Marchmain planned this lying-in-state for himself, I wondered, before he left the sunshine of Italy? Had he thought of it during the scudding rain of his long, fretful journey? Had it come to him at that moment, an awakened memory of childhood, a dream in the nursery - ‘When I’m grown up I’ll sleep in the Queen’s bed in the Chinese drawing-room’ - the apotheosis of adult grandeur? Few things, certainly, could have caused more stir in the house. What had been foreseen as a day of formality became one of fierce exertion; housemaids began making a fire, removing covers, unfolding linen- men in aprons, never normally seen, shifted furniture; the estate carpenters were collected to dismantle the bed. It came down the main staircase in pieces, at intervals during the afternoon; huge sections of Rococo, velvet-covered cornice; the twisted, gilt and velvet columns which formed its posts; beams of unpolished wood, made not to be seen, which performed invisible structural functions below the draperies; plumes of dyed feathers, which sprang from gold-mounted ostrich eggs and crowned the canopy; finally, the mattresses with four toiling men to each. Lord Marchmain seemed to derive comfort from the consequences of his whim; he sat by the fire watching the bustle, while we stood in a half circle - Cara, Cordelia, Julia, and I - and talked to him.
Colour came back to his checks and light to his eyes. ‘Brideshead and his wife dined with me in Rome,’ he said. ‘Since we are all members of the family’ - and his eye moved ironically from Cara to me - ‘I can speak without reserve. I found her deplorable. Her former consort, I understand, was a seafaring man and, presumably, the less exacting, but how my son, at the ripe age of thirty-eight, with, unless things have changed very much, a very free choice among the women of England, can have settled on - I suppose I must call her so - Beryl...’ He left the sentence eloquently unfinished. Lord Marchmain showed no inclination to move, so presently we drew up chairs - the little, heraldic chairs, for everything else in the hall was ponderous - and sat round him. ‘I daresay I shall not be really fit again until summer comes, he said. ‘I look to you four to amuse me.’ There seemed little we could do at the moment to lighten the rather sombre mood; he, indeed, was the most cheerful of us. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘the circumstances of Brideshead’s courtship.’
We told him what we knew.
‘Match-boxes,’ he said. ‘Match-boxes. I think she’s past childbearing.’
Tea was brought us at the hall fireplace.
‘In Italy,’ he said, ‘no one believes there will be a war. They think it will all be “arranged”. I suppose, Julia, you no longer have access to political information? Cara, here, is fortunately a British subject by marriage. It is not a thing she customarily mentions, but it may prove valuable. She is legally Mrs Hicks, are you not, my dear? We know little of Hicks, but we shall be grateful to him, none the less, if it comes to war. And you,’ he said, turning the attack to me, ‘you will no doubt become an official artist?’
‘No. As a matter of fact I am negotiating now for a commission in the Special Reserve.’
‘Oh, but you should be an artist. I had one with my squadron during the last war, for weeks - until we went up to the line.’ This waspishness was new. I had always been aware of a frame of malevolence under his urbanity; now it protruded like his own sharp bones through the sunken skin.
It was dark before the bed was finished; we went to see it, Lord Marchmain stepping quite briskly now through the intervening rooms.
‘I congratulate you. It really looks remarkably well. Wilcox, I seem to remember a silver basin and ewer - they stood in a room we called “the Cardinal’s dressing-room”, I think - suppose we had them here on the console. Then if you will send Plender and Gaston to me, the luggage can wait till tomorrow - simply the dressing case and what I need for the night. Plender will know. If you will leave me with Plender and Gaston, I will go to bed. We will meet later; you will dine here and keep me amused.’ We turned to go; as I was at the door he called me back.
‘It looks very well, does it not?’
‘Very well.’
‘You might paint it, eh - and call it the Death Bed?’
‘Yes,’ said Cara, ‘he has come home to die.’
‘But when he first arrived he was talking so confidently of recovery. ‘That was because he was so ill. When he is himself, he knows he is dying and accepts it. His sickness is up and down, one day, sometimes for several days on end, he is strong and lively and then he is ready for death, then he is down and afraid. I do not know how it will be when he is more and more down. That must come in good time. The doctors in Rome gave him less than a year. There is someone coming from London, I think tomorrow, who will tell us more.’
‘What is it?’
‘His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word.’ That evening Lord Marchmain was in good spirits; the room had a Hogarthian aspect, with the dinner-table set for the four of us by the grotesque, chinoiserie chimney-piece, and the old man propped among his pillows, sipping champagne, tasting, praising, and failing to eat, the succession of dishes which had been prepared for his homecoming. Wilcox had brought out for the occasion the gold plate, which I had not before seen in use; that, the gilt mirrors, and the lacquer and the drapery of the great bed and Julia’s mandarin coat gave the scene an air of pantomime, of Aladdin’s cave. Just at the end, when the time came for us to go, his spirits flagged. ‘I shall not sleep,’ he said. ‘Who is going to sit with me? Cara, carissima, you are fatigued. Cordelia, will you watch for an hour in this Gethsemane?’ Next morning I asked her how the night had passed.
‘He went to sleep almost at once. I came in to see him at two to make up the fire; the lights were on, but he was asleep again. He must have woken up and turned them on; he had to get out of bed to do that. I think perhaps he is afraid of the dark.’ It was natural, with her hospital experience, that Cordelia should take charge of her father. When the doctors came that day they gave their instructions to her, instinctively. ‘Until he gets worse,’ she said, ‘I and the valet can look after him. We don’t want nurses in the house before they are needed.’ At this stage the doctors had nothing to recommend except to keep him comfortable and administer certain drugs when his attacks came on.
‘How long will it be?’
‘Lady Cordelia, there are men walking about in hearty old age whom their doctors gave a week to live. I have learned one thing in medicine; never prophesy.’ These two men had made a long journey to tell her this; the local doctor was there to accept the same advice in technical phrases.
That night Lord Marchmain reverted to the topic of his new daughter-in-law; it had never been long out of his mind, finding expression in various sly hints throughout the day; now he lay back in his pillows and talked of her at length. ‘I have never been much moved by family piety until now,’ he said, ‘but I am frankly appalled at the prospect of - of Beryl taking what was once my mother’s place in this house. Why should that uncouth pair sit here childless while the place crumbles about their ears? I will not disguise from you that I have taken a dislike to Beryl.
‘Perhaps it was unfortunate that we met in Rome. Anywhere else might have been more sympathetic. And yet, if one comes to consider it, where could I have met her without repugnance? We dined at Ranieri’s; it is a quiet little restaurant I have frequented for years - no doubt you know it. Beryl seemed to fill the place. I, of course, was host, though to hear Beryl press my son with food you might have thought otherwise. Brideshead was always a greedy boy- a wife who has his best interests at heart should seek to restrain him. However, that is a matter of small importance. ‘She had no doubt heard of me as a man of irregular life. I can only describe her manner to me as roguish. A naughty old man, that’s what she thought I was. I suppose she had met naughty old admirals and knew how they should be humoured...I could not attempt to reproduce her conversation. I will give you one example. ‘They had been to an audience at the Vatican that morning; a blessing for their marriage - I did not follow attentively something of the kind had happened before, I gathered, some previous husband, some previous Pope. She described, rather vivaciously, how on this earlier occasion she had gone with a whole body - of newly married couples, mostly Italians of all ranks, some or the simpler girls in their wedding dresses, and how each had appraised the other, the bridegrooms looking the brides over, comparing their own with one another’s, and so forth. Then she said, “This time, of course, we were in private, -but do you know, Lord Marchmain, I felt as though it was I who was leading in the bride.”
‘It was said with great indelicacy. I have not yet quite fathomed her meaning. Was she making a play on my son’s name, or was she, do you think, referring to his undoubted virginity? I fancy the latter. Anyway, it was with pleasantries of that kind that we passed the evening.
‘I don’t think she would be quite in her proper element here, do you? Who shall I leave it to? The entail ended with me, you know. Sebastian, alas, is out of the question. Who wants it? Quis? Would you like it, Cara? No, of course you would not. Cordelia? I think I shall leave it to Julia and Charles.’
‘Of course not, papa, it’s Bridey’s.’
‘And...Beryl’s? I will have Gregson down one day soon and go over the matter. It is time I brought my will up to date; it is full of anomalies and anachronisms...I have rather a fancy for the idea of installing Julia here; so beautiful this evening, my dear; so beautiful always; much, much more suitable.’
Shortly after this he sent to London for his solicitor, but, on the day he came, Lord Marchmain was suffering from an attack and would not see him. ‘Plenty of time,’ he said, between painful gasps for breath, ‘another day, when I am stronger,’ but the choice of his heir was constantly in his mind, and he referred often to the time when Julia and I should be married and in possession.
‘Do you think he really means to leave it to us?’ I asked Julia.
‘Yes, I think he does.’
‘But it’s monstrous for Bridey.’
‘Is it? I don’t think he cares much for the place. I do, you know. He and Beryl would be much more content in some little house somewhere.’ ‘You mean to accept it?’
‘Certainly. It’s papa’s to leave as he likes. I think you and I could be very happy here.’
It opened a prospect; the prospect one gained at the turn of the avenue, as I had first seen it with Sebastian, of the secluded valley, the lakes falling away one below the other, the old house in the foreground, the rest of the world abandoned and forgotten; a world of its own of peace and love and beauty; a soldier’s dream in a foreign bivouac; such a prospect perhaps as a high pinnacle of the temple afforded after the hungry days in the desert and the jackal-haunted nights. Need I reproach myself if sometimes I was taken by the vision?
The weeks of illness wore on and the life of the house kept pace with the faltering strength of the sick man. There were days when Lord Marchmain was dressed, when he stood at the window or moved on his valet’s arm from fire to fire through the rooms of the ground floor, when visitors came and went neighbours and people from the estate, men of business from London - parcels of new books were opened and discussed, a piano was moved into the Chinese drawing-room; once at the end of February, on a single, unexpected day of brilliant sunshine, he called for a car and got as far as the hall, had on his fur coat, and reached the front door. Then suddenly he lost interest in the drive, said ‘Not now. Later. One day in the summer,’ took his man’s arm again and was led back to his chair. Once he had the humour of changing his room and gave detailed orders for a move to the Painted Parlour; the chinoiserie, he said, disturbed his rest - he kept the lights full on at night - but again lost heart, countermanded everything, and kept his room.
On other days the house was hushed as he sat high in bed, propped by his pillows, with labouring breath; even then he wanted to have us round him; night or day he could not bear to be alone; when he could not speak his eyes followed us, and if anyone left the room he would look distressed, and Cara, sitting often for hours at a time by his side against the pillows with an arm in his, would say, ‘It’s all right, Alex, she’s coming back.’
Brideshead and his wife returned from their honeymoon and stayed a few nights; it was one of the bad times, and Lord Marchmain refused to have them near him. It was Beryl’s first visit, and she would have been unnatural if she had shown no curiosity about what had nearly been, and now again promised soon to be, her home. Beryl was natural enough, and surveyed the place fairly thoroughly in the days she was there. In the strange disorder caused by Lord Marchmain’s illness, it must have seemed capable of much improvement; she referred once or twice to the way in which establishments of similar size had been managed at various Government Houses she had visited. Brideshead took her visiting among the tenants by day, and in the evenings, she talked to me of painting, or to Cordelia of hospitals, or to Julia of clothes, with cheerful assurance. The shadow of betrayal, the knowledge of how precarious were their just expectations, was all one-sided. I was not easy with them; but that was no new thing to Brideshead; in the little circle of shyness in which he was used to move, my guilt passed unseen.
Eventually it became clear that Lord Marchmain did not intend to see more of them.
Brideshead was admitted alone for a minute’s leave-taking; then they left.
‘There’s nothing we can do here,’ said Brideshead, ‘and it’s very distressing for Beryl.
We’ll come back if things get worse.’
The bad spells became longer and more frequent; a nurse was engaged. ‘I never saw such a room, ‘ she said, ‘nothing like it anywhere; ‘no conveniences of any sort.’ She tried to have her patient moved upstairs, where there was running water, a dressing-room for herself, a ‘sensible’ narrow bed she could ‘get round’ - what she was used to - but Lord Marchmain would not budge. Soon, as days and nights became indistinguishable to him, a second nurse was installed; the specialists came again from London; they recommended a new and rather daring treatment, but his body seemed weary of all drugs and did not respond. Presently there were no good spells, merely brief fluctuations in the speed of his decline.
Brideshead was called. It was the Easter holidays and Beryl was busy with her children. He came alone, and having stood silently for some minutes beside his father, who sat silently looking at him, he left the room and, joining the rest of us, who were in the library, said, ‘Papa must see a priest.’
It was not the first time the topic had come up. In the early days, when Lord Marchmain first arrived, the parish priest since the chapel was shut there was a new church and presbytery in Mel stead - had come to call as a matter of politeness. Cordelia had put him off with apologies and excuses, but when he was gone she said: ‘Not yet. Papa doesn’t want him yet.’
Julia, Cara, and I were there at the time; we each had something to say, began to speak, and thought better of it. It was never mentioned between the four of us, but Julia, alone with me, said, ‘Charles, I see great Church troubles ahead.’ ‘Can’t they even let him die in peace?’
‘They mean something so different by “peace”.’
‘It would be an outrage. No one could have made it clearer, all his life, what he thought of religion. They’ll come 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 a certain, respect for their Church up till now. If they do a thing like that I shall know that everything stupid people say about them is quite true - that it’s all superstition and trickery.’ Julia said nothing. ‘Don’t you agree?’ Still Julia said nothing. ‘Don’t you agree?’ ‘I don’t know, Charles. I simply don’t know.’
And, though none of us spoke of it, I felt the question ever present, growing through all the weeks of Lord Marchmain’s illness; I saw it when Cordelia drove off early in the mornings to mass; I saw it as Cara took to going with her; this little cloud, the size of a man’s hand, that was going to swell into a storm among us. Now Brideshead, in his heavy, ruthless way, planted the problem down before us.
‘Oh, Bridey, do you think he would?’ asked Cordelia.
‘I shall see that he does, ‘ said Brideshead. ‘I shall take Father Mackay in to him tomorrow.’
Still the clouds gathered and did not break; none of us spoke. Cara and Cordelia went back to the sick-room; Brideshead looked for a book, found one, and left us. ‘Julia,’ I said, ‘how can we stop this tomfoolery?’
She did not answer for some time; then: ‘Why should we.?’
‘You know as well as I do. It’s just -just an unseemly incident.’ ‘Who am I to object to unseemly incidents?’ she asked sadly. ‘Anyway, what harm can it do? Let’s ask the doctor.’
We asked the doctor, who said: ‘It’s hard to say. It might alarm him of course; on the other hand, I have known cases where it has had a wonderfully soothing effect on a patient; I’ve even known it act as a positive stimulant. It certainly is usually a great comfort to the relations. Really I think it’s a thing for Lord Brideshead to decide. Mind you, there is no need for immediate anxiety. Lord Marchmain is very weak today; tomorrow he may be quite strong again. Is it not usual to wait a little?’ ‘Well, he wasn’t much help,’ I said to Julia, when we left him. ‘Help? I really can’t quite see why you’ve taken it so much to heart that my father shall not have the last sacraments.’
‘It’s such a lot of witchcraft and hypocrisy.’
‘Is it? Anyway, it’s been going on for nearly two thousand years. I don’t know why you should suddenly get in a rage now.’ Her voice rose; she was swift to anger of late months. ‘For Christ’s sake, write to 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............