ly to mention the name of your bootmaker for him to recommend an
Armenian at Biarritz who catered especially for fetishists, or to name a
house where you had stayed, for him to describe a palace he frequented in
Madrid. He was cruel, too, in the wanton, insect-maiming manner of the very
young and 'fearless, like a little boy, charging, head down, small fists
whirling, at the school prefects.
He asked me to dinner, and I was a little disconcerted to find that we
were to dine alone. "We are going to Thame," he said. "There is a delightful
hotel there, which luckily doesn't appeal to the Bullingdon. We will drink
Rhine wine and imagine ourselves . . . where? Not on a j-j-jaunt with
J-J-Jorrocks, anyway. But first we will have our aperitif."
At the George bar he ordered "Four Alexander cocktails, please," ranged
them before him with a loud "Yum-yum" which drew every eye, outraged, upon
him. "I expect you would prefer sherry, but, my dear Charles, you are not
going to have sherry. Isn't this a delicious concoction? You don't like it?
Then I will drink it for you. One, two, three, four, down the red lane they
go. How the students stare!" And he led me out to the waiting motor car.
"I hope we shall find no undergraduates there. I am a little out of
sympathy with them for the moment. You heard about their treatment of me on
Thursday? It was too naughty. Luckily I was wearing my oldest pyjamas and it
was an evening of oppressive heat, or I might have been seriously cross."
Anthony had a habit of putting his face near one when he spoke; the sweet
and creamy cocktail had tainted his breath. I leaned away from him in the
corner of the hired car.
"Picture me, my dear, alone and studious. I had just bought a rather
forbidding book called Antic Hay, which I knew I must read before going to
Garsington on Sunday, because everyone was bound to talk about it, and it's
so banal saying you have not read the book of the moment, if you haven't.
The solution I suppose is not to go to Garsington, but that didn't occur to
me until this moment. So, my dear, I had an omelet and a peach and a bottle
of Vichy water and put on my pyjamas and settled down to read. I must say my
thoughts wandered, but I kept turning the pages and watching the light fade,
which in Peckwater, my dear, is quite an experience -- as darkness falls the
stone seems positively to decay under one's eyes. I was reminded of some of
those leprous fa?ades in the vieux port at Marseille, until suddenly I was
disturbed by such a bawling and caterwauling as you never heard, and there,
down in the little piazza, I saw a mob of about twenty terrible young men,
and do you know what they were chanting 'We want Blanche. We want Blanche!'
in a kind of litany. Such a public declaration! Well, I saw it was all up
with Mr. Huxley for the evening, and I must say I had reached a point of
tedium when any interruption was welcome. I was stirred by the bellows, but,
do you know, the louder they shouted the shyer they seemed ? They kept
saying 'Where's Boy ?' 'He's Boy Mulcaster's friend,' 'Boy must bring him
down.' Now you may or may not know 'Boy' Mulcaster. Seen at a distance -- at
some considerable distance -- you might think him rather personable: a
lanky, old-fashioned young man, you might think; but look at him closer and
his face all falls to pieces in an idiot gape. People are rather free with
the word 'degenerate.' They have even used it of me. If you want to know
what a real degenerate is, look at Boy Mulcaster. He came to Le Touquet at
Easter and, in some extraordinary way, I seemed to have asked him to stay.
Well, my mother is used to me, but my poor stepfather found Mulcaster very
hard to understand. You see my stepfather is a d-d-dago and therefore has a
very high opinion of the English aristocracy. He couldn't quite fit
Mulcaster into his idea of a lord, and really I couldn't explain him; he
lost some infinitesimal sum at cards, and as a result expected me to pay for
all his treats -- well, Mulcaster was in this party; I could see his
ungainly form shuffling about below and hear him saying: 'It's no good. He's
out. Let's go back and have a drink?' So then I put my head out of the
window and called to him: 'Good evening, Mulcaster, old sponge and toady,
are you lurking among the hobbledehoys? Have you come to repay me the three
hundred francs I lent you for the poor drab you picked up in the Casino ? It
was a niggardly sum for her trouble, and what a trouble, Mulcaster. Come up
and pay me, poor hooligan!'
"That, my dear, seemed to put a little life into them, and up the
stairs they came, clattering. About six of them came into my room, the rest
stood mouthing outside. My dear, they looked too extraordinary. They had
been having one of their ridiculous club dinners, and they were all wearing
coloured tail-coats -- a sort of livery. 'My dears,' I said to them, 'you
look like a lot of most disorderly footmen.' Then one of them, rather a
juicy little piece, accused me of unnatural vices. 'My dear,' I said, 'I may
be inverted but I am not insatiable. Come back when you are alone' Then they
began to blaspheme in a very shocking manner, and suddenly I, too, began to
be annoyed. Really, I thought, when I think of all the hullabaloo there was
when I was seventeen, and the Due de Vincennes (old Armand, of course, not
Philippe) challenged me to a duel for an affair of the heart, and very much
more than the heart, I assure you, with the duchess (Stefanie, of course,
not old Poppy) -- now, to submit to impertinence from these pimply, tipsy
virgins . . . Well, I gave up the light, bantering tone and let myself be
just a little offensive.
"Then they began saying, 'Get hold of him. Put him in Mercury.' Now as
you know I have two sculptures by Brancusi and several pretty things and I
did not want them to start getting rough, so I said, pacifically, 'Dear
sweet clodhoppers, if you knew anything of sexual psychology you would know
that nothing could give me keener pleasure than to be manhandled by you
meaty boys. It w.ould be an ecstasy of the very naughtiest kind. I So if any
of you wishes to be my partner in joy come and seize me. If, on the other
hand, you simply wish to satisfy some obscure and less easily classified
libido and see me bathe, come with me quietly, dear louts, to the fountain.'
"Do you know, they all looked a little foolish at that? I walked down
with them and no one came within a yard of me. Then I got into the fountain
and, you know, it was really most refreshing, so I sported there a little
and struck some attitudes, until they turned about and walked sulkily home,
and I heard Boy Mul-caster saying, 'Anyway, we did put him in Mercury.' You
know, Charles, that is just what they'll be saying in thirty years' time.
When they're all married to scraggy little women like hens and have
cretinous, porcine sons like themselves, getting drunk at the same club
dinner in the same coloured coats, they'll still say, when my name is
mentioned, 'We put1 him in Mercury one night,' and their
barn-yard daughters will snigger and think their father was quite a dog in
his day, and what a pity he's grown so dull. Oh, la fatigue du Nord!"
It was not, I knew, the first time Anthony had been ducked, but the
incident seemed much on his mind, for he reverted to it again at dinner.
"Now you can't imagine an unpleasantness like that happening to
Sebastian, can you?"
"No," I said; I could not.
"No, Sebastian has charm." He held up his glass of hock to the
candle-light and repeated, "Such charm. Do you know, I went round to call on
Sebastian next day? I thought the tale of my evening's adventures might
amuse him. And what do you think I found -- besides, of course, his amusing
toy bear? Mulcaster and two of his cronies of the night before. They looked
very foolish and Sebastian, as composed as Mrs. P-p-ponsonby-de-Tomkyns in
P-p-punch, said, 'You know Lord Mulcaster, of course,' and the oafs said,
'Oh, we just came to see how Aloysius was,' for they find the toy bear just
as amusing as we do -- or, shall I hint, just a teeny bit more? So off they
went. And I said, 'S-s-sebastian, do you realize that those s-sycophantic
s-slugs insulted me last night, and but for the warmth of the weather might
have given me a s-s-severe cold?' and he said, 'Poor things. I expect they
were drunk.' He has a kind word for everyone you see; he has such charm.
"I can see he has completely captivated you, my dear Charles. Well, I'm
not surprised. Of course, you haven't known him as long as I have. I was at
school with him. You wouldn't believe it, but in those days people used to
say he was a little bitch; just a few unkind boys who knew him well.
Everyone in pop liked him, of course, and all the masters. I expect it was
really that they were jealous of him. He never seemed to get into trouble.
The rest of us were constantly being beaten in the most savage way, on the
most frivolous pretexts, but never Sebastian. He was the only boy in my
house who was never beaten at all. I can see him now, at the age of fifteen.
He never had spots you know; all the other boys were spotty. Boy Mulcaster
was positively scrofulous. But not Sebastian. Or did he have one, rather a
stubborn one at the back of his neck ? I think, now, that 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, because he never did anything wrong; never quite; at
least, he never got punished. Perhaps he was just being charming through the
grille. I left under what is called a 'cloud,' you know--I can't think why
it is called that; it seemed to me a glare of unwelcome light; the process
involved a series of harrowing interviews with my tutor. It was
disconcerting to find how observant that mild old man proved to be. The
things he knew about me, which I thought no one -- except possibly Sebastian
-- knew. It was a lesson never to trust mild old men -- or charming
schoolboys; which?
"Shall we have another bottle of this wine, or of something different?
Something different, some bloody, old Burgundy, eh? You see, Charles, I
understand all your tastes. You must come to France with me and drink the
wine. We will go at the vintage. I will take you to stay at the Vincennes'.
It is all made up with them now, and he has the finest wine in France; he
and the Prince de Portallon--I will take you there, too. I think they would
amuse you, and of course they would love you. I want to introduce you to a
lot of my friends. I have told Cocteau about you. He is all agog. You see,
my dear Charles, you are that very rare thing, An Artist. Oh yes, you must
not look bashful. Behind that cold, English, phlegmatic exterior you are An
Artist. I have seen those little drawings you keep hidden away in your room.
They are exquisite. And you, dear Charles, if you will understand me, are
not exquisite; but not at all. Artists are not exquisite. I am; Sebastian,
in a kind of way, is exquisite; but the Artist is an eternal type, solid,
purposeful, observant -- and, beneath it all, p-p-passionate, eh, Charles ?
"But who recognizes you? The other day I was speaking to Sebastian
about you, and I said, 'But you know Charles is an artist. He draws like a
young Ingres,' and do you know what Sebastian said? 'Yes, Aloysius draws
very prettily, too, but of course he's rather more modern.' So charming; so
amusing.
"Of course those that have charm don't really need brains. Stefanie de
Vincennes intoxicated me four years ago; but I was besotted with her,
crawling with love like lice. My dear, I even used the same coloured varnish
for my toe-nails. I used her words and lit my cigarette in the same way and
spoke with her tone on the telephone so that the duke used to carry on long
and intimate conversations with me, thinking that I was her. It was largely
that which put his mind on pistol and sabres in such an old-fashioned
manner. My stepfather thought it an excellent education for me. He thought
it would make me grow out of what he calls my 'English habits.' Poor man, he
is very South American. Well, I have kept my 'English habits,' but I think I
lost something else. At seventeen I might have been anything; an artist
even; it is not impossible; it is in the blood. At twenty-one I am what you
see me. To have squandered everything, so young, on a woman who, except that
I was more presentable, would as soon have had her chiropodist for her
lover. ... I never heard anyone speak an ill word of Stefanie, except the
duke; everyone loved her, whatever she did."
Anthony had lost his stammer in the deep waters of his old romance. It
came floating back to him, momentarily, with the coffee and liqueurs. "Real
G-g-green Chartreuse, made before the expulsion of the monks. There are five
distinct tastes as it trickles over the tongue. It is like swallowing a
sp-spectrum. Do you wish Sebastian was with us? Of course you do. Do I? I
wonder. How our thoughts do run on that little bundle of charm to be sure. I
think you must be mesmerizing me, Charles. I bring you here, at very
considerable expense, my dear, 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.
"I forget if you know his family. Now there, my dear, is1 a
subject for the poet -- for the poet of the future who must be also a
psychoanalyst -- and perhaps a diabolist, too. I don't suppose he'll ever
let you meet them. He's far too clever. They're all charming, of course, and
quite, quite gruesome. Do you ever feel is something a teeny bit gruesome
about Sebastian? No? Perhaps I imagine it; it's simply that he loofo so like
the rest of them, sometimes.
"There's Brideshead who's something archaic, out of a cave that's been
sealed for centuries. He has the face as though an Aztec sculptor had
attempted a portrait of Sebastian; he's a learned bigot, a ceremonious
barbarian, a snowbound lama. . . . Well, anything you like. But not Julia,
oh, not Lady Julia. She is one thing only, Renaissance tragedy. You know
what she looks like. Who could help it? Her photograph appears as regularly
in the illustrated papers as the advertisements for Beecham's Pills. A face
of flawless Florentine Quattrocento beauty; almost anyone else with those
looks would have been tempted to become artistic; not Lady Julia; she's as
smart as -- well, as smart as Stefanie. Nothing greenery-yallery about her.
So gay, so correct, so unaffected. Dogs and children love her, other girls
love her -- my dear, she's a fiend -- a passionless, acquisitive,
intriguing, ruthless filler. I wonder if she's incestuous. I doubt it; all
she wants is power. There ought to be an Inquisition especially set up to
burn her. There's another sister, too, I believe, in the schoolroom. Nothing
is known of her yet except that her governess went mad and drowned herself
not long ago. I'm sure she's abominable. So you see there was really very
little left for poor Sebastian to do except be sweet and charming.
"It's when one gets to the parents that a bottomless pit opens. My
dear, such a pair. How does Lady Marchmain manage it? It is one of the
questions of the age. You have seen her? Very, very beautiful; no artifice,
her hair just turning grey in elegant silvery streaks, no rouge, very pale,
huge-eyed -- it is extraordinary how large those eyes look and how the lids
are veined blue where anyone else would have touched them with a fingertip
of paint; pearls and a few great starlike jewels, heirlooms, in ancient
settings, a voice as quiet as a prayer, and as powerful. And Lord Marchmain,
well, a little fleshy perhaps, but very handsome, a magnified, a voluptuary,
Byronic, bored, infectiously slothful, not at all the sort of man you would
expect to see easily put down. And that Reinhardt nun, my dear, has
destroyed him --but utterly. He daren't show his great purple face anywhere.
He is the last, historic, authentic case of someone being hounded out of
society. Brideshead won't see him, the girls mayn't, Sebastian does, of
course, because he's so charming. No one else goes near him. Why, last
September Lady March-main was in Venice staying at the Palazzo Fogliere. To
tell you the truth she was just a teeny bit ridiculous in Venice. She never,
went near the Lido, of course, but she was always drifting about the canals
in a gondola with Sir Adrian Person -- such attitudes, my dear, like Madame
Recamier; once I passed them and I caught the eye of the Fogliere gondolier,
whom, of course, I knew, and, my dear, he gave me such a wink. She came to
all the parties in a sort of cocoon of gossamer, my dear, as though she were
part of some Celtic play or a heroine from Maeterlinck; and she would go to
church. Well, as you know, Venice is the one town in Italy where no one ever
has gone to church. Anyway, she was rather a figure of fun that year, and
then who should turn up, in the Maltons' yacht, but poor Lord Marchmain.
He'd taken a little palace there, but was he allowed in? Lord Malton put him
and his valet into a dinghy, my dear, and transhipped him there and then
into the steamer for Trieste. He hadn't even his mistress with him. It was
her yearly holiday. No one ever knew how they heard Lady Marchmain was
there. And, do you know, for a week Lord Malton slunk about as if he was in
disgrace? And he was in disgrace. The Principessa Fogliere gave a ball and
Lord Malton was not asked nor anyone from his yacht -- even the de Panoses.
How does Lady Marchmain do it? She has convinced the world that Lord
Marchmain is a monster. And what is the truth ? They were married for
fifteen years or so and then Lord Marchmain went to the war; he never came
back but formed a connection with a highly talented dancer. There are a
thousand such cases. She refuses to divorce him because she is so pious.
Well, there have been cases of that before. Usually, it arouses sympathy for
the adulterer; not for Lord Marchmain though. You would think that the old
reprobate had tortured her, stolen her patrimony, flung her out of doors,
roasted, stuffed and eaten his children, and gone frolicking about wreathed
in all the flowers of Sodom and Gomorrah; instead of what? Begetting four
splendid children by her, handing over to her Brideshead and Marchmain House
in St. James's and all the money she can possibly want to spend, while he
sits with a snowy shirt-front at Larue's with a personable, middle-aged lady
of the theatre, in the most conventional Edwardian style. And she meanwhile
keeps a small gang of enslaved and emaciated prisoners for her exclusive
enjoyment. She sucks their blood. You can see the tooth-marks all over
Adrian Porson's shoulders when he is bathing. And he, my dear, was the
greatest, the only, poet of our time. He's bled dry; there's nothing left of
him. There are five or six others of all ages and sexes, like wraiths
following her round. They never escape once she's had her teeth into them.
It is witchcraft. There's no other explanation.
"So you see we mustn't blame Sebastian if at times he seems a little
insipid -- but then you don't blame him, do you, Charles? With that very
murky background, what could he do except set up as being simple and
charming, particularly as he isn't very well endowed in the Top Storey. We
couldn't claim that for him, could we, much as we love him?
"Tell me candidly, have you ever heard Sebastian say anything you have
remembered for five minutes? You know, when I hear him talk, I am reminded
of that in some ways nauseating picture of 'Bubbles.' Conversation, as I
know it, is like juggling; up go the balls and the balloons and the plates,
up and over, in and out, spinning and leaping, good solid objects that
glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them. But when
dear Sebastian speaks it is like a little sphere of soapsuds drifting off
the end of an old clay pipe, anywhere, full of rainbow light for a second
and then--"phut!--vanished, with nothing left at all, nothing.
"Stefanie was like that: never dull; at least never really dull; at
least not for the first year; and then, my dear, when she had become a
habit, Boredom grew like a cancer in the breast, more and more; the
anguished suspense of watching the lips you hunger for, framing the words,
the death sentence, of sheer triteness! I felt the oxygen being pumped out
of the atmosphere all round me; I felt myself expiring in a vacuum while all
the while I could see through the bell-glass the loved executioner. And she
went on with the murder in a gentle, leisurely way, quite, quite unconscious
that she was doing any harm. It is not an experience I would recommend for
An Artist at the tenderest stage of his growth, to be strangled with charm."
And then Anthony spoke of the proper experiences of an artist, of the
appreciation and criticism and stimulus he should expect from his friends,
of the hazards he should take in the pursuit of emotion, of one thing and
another while I fell drowsy and let my mind wander a little. So we drove
home, but his words, as we swung over Magdalen Bridge, recalled the central
theme of our dinner. "Well, my dear, I've no doubt that first thing
to-morrow you'll trot round to Sebastian and tell him everything I've said
about him. And I will tell you two things: one, that it will not make the
slightest difference to Sebastian's feeling for me and, secondly, my dear --
and I beg you to remember this though I have plainly bored you into a
condition of coma -- that he will immediately start talking about that
amusing bear of his. Good night. Sleep innocently."
But I slept ill. Within an hour of tumbling drowsily to bed I was awake
again, thirsty, restless, hot and cold by turns and unnaturally excited. I
had drunk a lot, but neither the mixture of wines, nor the Chartreuse, nor
the Mavrodaphne Trifle, nor even the fact that I had sat immobile and almost
silent throughout the evening instead of clearing the fumes, as We normally
did, in J some light frenzy of drunken nonsense, explains the distress of
that hag-ridden night. No dream distorted the images of the evening into
horrific shapes. It seemed I heard St. Mary's strike each quarter till dawn.
The figures of nightmare were already racing through my brain as throughout
the wakeful hours I repeated to myself Anthony's words, catching his accent,
soundlessly, and the stress and cadence of his speech, while under the
closed lips I saw his pale, candle-lit face as it had fronted me across the
dinner table. Once during the hours of darkness I brought to light the
drawings in my sitting-room and sat at the open window, turning them over.
Everything was black and dead-still in the quadrangle; only at the
quarter-hours the bells awoke and sang over the gables. I drank soda water
and smoked and fretted, until light began to break and the rustle of a
rising breeze turned me back to my bed.
When I awoke Lunt was at the open door. "I let you lie," he said, "I
didn't think you'd be going to the Corporate Communion."
"You were quite right."
"Most of the freshmen went and quite a few second- and third-year men.
It's all on account of the new chaplain. There was never Corporate Communion
before -- just Holy Communion for those that wanted it and chapel and
evening chapel."
It was the last Sunday of term; the last of the year. As I went to my
bath the quad filled with gowned and surpliced undergraduates drifting from
chapel to hall. As I came back they were standing in groups, smoking; Jasper
had cycled in from his digs to be among them.
I walked down the empty Broad to breakfast, as I often did on Sundays,
at a teashop opposite Balliol. The air was full of bells from the
surrounding spires and the sun, casting long shadows across the open spaces,
dispelled the fears of night. The teashop was hushed as a library; a few
solitary men from Balliol and Trinity, in bedroom slippers, looked up as I
entered, then turned back to their Sunday newspapers. I ate my scrambled
eggs and bitter marmalade with the zest which in youth follows a restless
night. I lit a cigarette and sat on, while one by one the Balliol and
Trinity men paid their bills and shuffled away, slipslop, across the street
to their colleges. It was nearly eleven when I left, 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 church-goers seemed abroad that morning; undergraduates and
graduates and wives and tradespeople, walking with that unmistakable English
church-going pace which eschewed equally both haste and idle sauntering;
holding, bound in black lamb-skin and white celluloid, the liturgies of half
a dozen conflicting sects; on their way to St. Barnabas, St. Columba, St.
Aloysius, St. Mary's, Pusey House, Blackfriars and heaven knows where
besides; to restored Norman and revived Gothic, to travesties of Venice and
Athens; 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, in freshly laundered white flannels and neatly pressed blazers,
with snow-white turbans on their heads, and in their plump, brown hands
bright cushions, a picnic basket and the Unpleasant Plays of Bernard Shaw,
making for the river.
In the Cornmarket a party of tourists stood on the steps of the
Clarendon Hotel discussing a road map with their chauffeur, while opposite,
through the venerable arch of the Golden Cross, I greeted a group of
undergraduates from my college who had breakfasted there and now lingered
with their pipes in the creeper-hung courtyard. A troop of Boy Scouts,
church-bound too, bright with coloured ribbons and badges, loped past in
unmilitary array, and at Carfax I met the Mayor and corporation, in scarlet
gowns and gold chains, preceded by wand bearers and followed by no curious
glances, in procession to the preaching at the City Church. In St. Aldates I
passed a crocodile of choir-boys, in starched collars and peculiar caps, on
their way to Tom Gate and the Cathedral. So through a world of piety I made
my way to Sebastian.
He was out. I read the letters, none of them very revealing, that
littered his writing table, and scrutinized the invitation cards on his
chimney-piece -- there were no new additions. Then I read Lady into Fox
until he returned.
"I've been to mass at the Old Palace," he said. "I haven't been all
this term, and Monsignor Bell asked me to dinner twice last week, and I know
what that means. Mummy's been writing to him. So I sat bang in front where
he couldn't help seeing me and absolutely shouted the Hail Marys at the end;
so that's over. How was dinner with Antoine? What did you talk about?"
"Well, he did most of the talking. Tell me, did you know him at Eton?"
"He was sacked my first half. I remember seeing him about. He always
has been a noticeable figure."
"Did he go to church with you?"
"I don't think so, why?"
"Has he met any of your family?"
"Charles, how very peculiar you're being to-day. No. I don't suppose
so."
"Not your mother at Venice?"
"I believe she did say something about it. I forget what. I think she
was staying with some Italian cousins of ours, the Foglieres, and Anthony
turned up with his family at the hotel, and there was some party the
Foglieres gave that they weren't | asked to. I know Mummy said something
about it when I told her he was a friend of mine. I can't think why he
should want to go to a party at the Foglieres' -- the princess is so proud
of her English blood that she talks of nothing else. Anyway, no one objected
to Antoine -- much, I gather. It was his mother they thought difficult."
"And who is the Duchess de Vincennes?"
"Poppy?"
"Stefanie."
"You must ask Antoine that. He claims to have had an affair with her."
"Did he?"
"There was something --I forget what. I think he was stuck in a lift
with her once at Miami and the old duke made a scene."
"Not a grand passion?"
"Good God, no! Why all this interest?"
"I just wanted to find out how much truth there was in what Anthony
said last night."
"I shouldn't think-a word. That's his great charm."
"You may think it charming. I think it's devilish. Do you know he spent
the whole of yesterday evening trying to turn me against you, and almost
succeeded?"
"Did he? How silly. Aloysius wouldn't approve of that at all, would
you, you pompous old bear?"
Chapter Three
I returned home for the Long Vacation without plans and without money.
To cover end-of-term expenses I had sold my Omega screen to Collins for ten
pounds, of which I now kept four; my last cheque overdrew my account by a
few shillings, and I had been told that, without my father's authority, I
must draw no more. My next allowance was not due until October. I was thus
faced with a bleak prospect and, turning the matter over in my mind, I felt
something not far off remorse for the prodigality of the preceding weeks.
I had started the term with my battels paid and over a hundred pounds
in hand. All that had gone, and not a penny paid out where I could get
credit. There had been no reason for it, no great pleasure unattainable
else; it had gone in ducks and drakes. Sebastian often chid me with
extravagance, but I resented his censure for a large part of my money went
on and with him. His own finances were perpetually, vaguely distressed.
"It's all done by lawyers," he said helplessly, "and I suppose they embezzle
a lot. Anyway, I never seem to get much. Of course, Mummy would give me
anything I asked for."
"Then why don't you ask her for a proper allowance?"
"Oh, Mummy likes everything to be a present. She's so sweet," he said,
adding one more line to the picture I was forming of her.
Now Sebastian had disappeared into that other life of his where I was
not asked to follow, and I was left, instead, forlorn and regretful.
How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our
youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation,
Dresden figures of pastoral gaiety! Our wisdom, we prefer to think, is all
of our own gathering, while, if the truth be told, it is, most of it, the
last coin of a legacy that dwindles with time. There is no candour in a
story of early manhood which leaves out of account the home-sickness for
nursery morality, the regrets and resolutions of amendment, the black hours
which, like zero on the roulette table, turn up with roughly calculable
regularity.
Thus I spent the first afternoon at home, wandering from room to room,
looking from the plate-glass windows in turn on the garden and the street,
in a mood of vehement self-reproach.
My father, I knew, was in the house, but his library was inviolable,
and it was not until just before dinner that he appeared to greet me. He was
then in his late fifties, but it was his idiosyncrasy to seem much older
than his years; to see him one might have put him at seventy, to hear him
speak at nearly eighty. He came to me now, with the shuffling mandarin-tread
which he affected, and a shy smile of welcome. When he dined at home -- and
he seldom dined elsewhere•-- he wore a f rogged velvet smoking suit of
the kind which had been fashionable many years before and was to be so
again, but, at that time, was a deliberate archaism.
"My dear boy, they never told me you were here. Did you have a very
exhausting journey? They gave you tea? You are well? I have just made a
somewhat audacious purchase from Sonerschein's -- a terra-cotta bull of the
fifth century. I was examining it and forgot your arrival. Was the carriage
very full? You had a corner seat?" (He travelled so rarely himself that to
hear of others doing so always excited his solicitude.) "Hayter brought you
the evening paper ? There is no news, of course -- such a lot of nonsense."
Dinner was announced. My father from long habit took a book with him to
the table and then, remembering my presence, furtively dropped it under his
chair. "What do you like to drink? Hayter, what'have we for Mr. Charles to
drink?"
"There's some whiskey."
"There's whiskey. Perhaps you like something else? What else have we?"
"There isn't anything else in the house, sir."
"There's nothing else. You must tell Hayter what you would like and he
will get it in. I never keep any wine now. I am forbidden it and no one
comes to see me. But while you are here, you must have what you like. You
are here for long?"
"I'm not quite sure, Father."
"It's a very long vacation," he said wistfully. "In my day we used to
go on what were called 'reading parties,' always in mountainous areas. Why?
Why," he repeated petulantly, "should alpine scenery be thought conducive to
study?"
"I thought of putting in some time at an art school -- in the life
class."
"My dear boy, you'll find them all shut. The students go to Barbison or
such places and paint in the open air. There was an institution in my day
called a 'sketching club' -- mixed sexes" (snuffle), "bicycles" (snuffle),
"pepper-and-salt knickerbockers, holland umbrellas and, it was popularly
thought, free love." (Snuffle) "Such a lot of nonsense. I expect they still
go on. You might try that."
"One of the problems of the vacation is money, Father." "Oh, I
shouldn't worry about a thing like that at your age." "You see, I've run
rather short." "Yes?" said my father without any sound of interest. "In fact
I don't quite know how I'm going to get through the next two months."
"Well, I'm the worst person to come to for advice. I've never been
'short,' as you so painfully call it. And yet what else could you say? Hard
up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stony-broke?" (Snuffle) "On the
rocks? In Queer Street? Let us say you are in Queer Street and leave it at
that. Your grandfather once said to me, 'Live within your means, 'but if you
do get into difficulties, come to me. Don't go to the Jews.' Such a lot of
nonsense. You try. Go to those gentlemen in Jermyn Street who offer advances
on note of hand only. My dear boy, they won't give you a sovereign."
"Then what do you suggest my doing?"
"Your cousin Melchior was imprudent with his investments and got into a
very queer street. He went to Australia."
I had not seen my father so gleeful since he found two pages of
second-century papyrus between the leaves of a Lombardic breviary.
"Hayter, I've dropped my book."
It was recovered for him from under his feet and propped against the
epergne. For the rest of dinner he was silent save for an occasional snuffle
of merriment which could not, I thought, be provoked by the work he read.
Presently we left the table and sat in the garden-room; and there,
plainly, he put me out of his mind; his thoughts, I knew, were far away, in
those distant ages where he moved at ease, where time passed in centuries
and all the figures were defaced and the names of his companions were
corrupt readings of words , of quite other meaning. He sat in an attitude
which to anyone else would have been one of extreme discomfort, askew in his
upright armchair, with his book held high and obliquely to the light. Now
and then he took a gold pencil case from his watch-chain and made an entry
in the margin. The windows were open to the summer night; the ticking of the
clocks, the distant murmur of traffic on the Bayswater Road, and my father's
regular turning of the pages were the only sounds. I had thought it
impolitic to smoke a cigar while pleading poverty; now in desperation I went
to my room and fetched one. My father did not look up. I pierced it, lit it,
and with renewed confidence said, "Father, you surely don't want rne to
spend the whole vacation here with you?"
"Eh?"
"Won't you find it rather a bore having me at home for so long?"
"I trust I should not betray such an emotion even if I felt it," said
my father mildly and turned back to his book.
The evening passed. Eventually all over the room clocks of diverse
pattern musically chimed eleven. My father closed his book and removed his
spectacles. "You are very welcome, my dear boy," he said. "Stay as long as
you find it convenient." At the door he paused and turned back. "Your cousin
Melchior worked his passage to Australia before the mast" (Snuffle) "What, I
wonder, is 'before the mast'?"
During the sultry week that followed my relations with my father
deteriorated sharply. I saw little of 'him during the day; he spent hours on
end in the library; now and then he emerged and I would hear him calling
over the banisters: "Hayter. Call me a cab." Then he would be away,
sometimes for half an hour or less, sometimes for a whole day; his errands
were never explained. Often I saw trays going up to him at odd hours, laden
with meagre nursery snacks -- rusks, glasses of milk, bananas and so forth.
If we met in a passage or on the stairs he would look at me vacantly and say
"Ah-ha" or "Very warm," or "Splendid, splendid," but in the evening, when he
came to the garden-room in his velvet smoking suit, he always greeted me
formally.
The dinner table was our battlefield.
On the second evening I took my book with me to the dining-room. His
mild and wandering eye fastened on it with sudden attention, and as we
passed through the hall he surreptitiously left his own on a side table.
When we sat down he said plaintively: "I do think, Charles, you might talk
to me. I've had a very exhausting day. I was looking forward to a little
conversation."
"Of course, Father. What shall we talk about?"
"Cheer me up. Take me out of myself"; (petulantly) "tell me all about
the new plays."
"But I haven't been to any."
"You should, you know, you really should. It's not natural in a young
man to spend all his evenings at home."
"Well, Father, as I told you, I haven't much money to spare for
theatre-going."
"My dear boy, you must not let money become your master in this way.
Why, at your age, your cousin Melchior was part owner of a musical piece. It
was one of his few happy ventures. You should go to the play as part of your
education. If you read the lives of eminent men you will find that quite
half of them made their first acquaintance with drama from the gallery. I am
told there is no pleasure like it. It is there that you find the real
critics and devotees. It is called 'sitting with the gods.'
The expense is nugatory, and even while you wait for admission in the
street you are diverted by 'buskers.' We will sit with the gods together one
night. How do you find Mrs. Abel's cooking?"
"Rather insipid."
"It was insp