Brideshead Revisited

by Evelyn Waugh

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

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

  I laughed. ‘You knew I wouldn’t understand?’

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

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

  ‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘that’s exactly the word I thought of for you and Julia. When we were up in the nursery with nanny. “Thwarted passion,” I thought.’

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER 5

  Lord Marchmain at home — death in the Chinese drawing-room — the purpose revealed

  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 châtelaine, 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 substituting 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. Cott
ages 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 journey’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.’