you keep in the church porch, and if you put in a pound
note with someone's name on it, they get sent to hell. I don't say there
mayn't be a good reason for all this,' he said, 'but you ought to tell me
about it and not let me find out for myself.'"
"What can the poor man have meant?" said Lady Marchmain.
"You see he's a long way from the Church yet," said Father Mowbray.
"But who can he have been talking to? Did he dream it all? Cordelia,
what's the matter?"
"What a chump! Oh, Mummy, what a glorious chump!"
"Cordelia, it was you."
"Oh, Mummy, who could have dreamed he'd swallow it? I told him such a
lot besides. About the sacred monkeys in the Vatican -- all kinds of
things."
"Well, you've very considerably increased my work," said Father
Mowbray.
"Poor Rex," said Lady Marchmain. "You know, I think it makes him rather
lovable. You must treat him like an idiot child, Father Mowbray."
So the instruction was continued, and Father Mowbray at length
consented to receive Rex a week before his wedding.
"You'd think they'd be all over themselves to have me in," Rex
complained. "I can be a lot of help to them one way and another; instead
they're like the chaps who issue cards for a casino. What's more," he added,
"Cordelia's got me so muddled I don't know what's in the catechism and what
she's invented."
Thus things stood three weeks before the wedding; the cards had gone
out, presents were coming in fast, the bridesmaids were delighted with their
dresses. Then came what Julia called "Bridey's bombshell."
With characteristic ruthlessness he tossed his load of explosive
without warning into what, till then, had been a happy family party. The
library at Marchmain House was being devoted to wedding presents; Lady
Marchmain, Julia, Cordelia and Rex were busy unpacking and listing them.
Brideshead came in and watched them for a moment.
"Chinky vases from Aunt Betty," said Cordelia. "Old stuff. I remember
them on the stairs at Buckborne."
"What's all this?" asked Brideshead.
"Mr., Mrs., and Miss Pendle-Garthwaite, one early-morning tea set.
Goode's, thirty shillings, jolly mean."
"You'd better pack all that stuff up again."
"Bridey, what do you mean?"
"Only that the wedding's off."
"Bridey."
"I thought I'd better make some enquiries about my prospective
brother-in-law, as no one else seemed interested," said Brideshead. "I got
the final answer to-night. He was married in Montreal hi 1915 to a Miss
Sarah Evangeline Cutler, who is still living there."
"Rex, is this true?"
Rex stood with a jade dragon in his hand looking at it critically; then
he set it carefully on its ebony stand and smiled openly and innocently at
them all.
"Sure it's true," he said. "What about it? What are you all looking so
hit-up about? She isn't a thing to me. She never meant any good. I was only
a kid, anyhow. The sort of mistake anyone might make. I got my divorce back
in 1919. I didn't even know where she was living till Bridey here told me.
What's all the rumpus?"
"You might have told me," said Julia.
"You never asked. Honest, I've not given her a thought in years."
His sincerity was so plain that they had to sit down and talk about it
calmly.
"Don't you realize, you poor sweet oaf," said Julia, "that you can't
get married as a Catholic when you've another wife alive?"
"But I haven't. Didn't I just tell you we were 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. Well, I don't want to be. I
can't remember all he told me -- sacred monkeys, plenary indulgences, four
last things -- if I remembered all he told" me I shouldn't have time for
anything else. Anyhow, what about your Italian cousin, Francesca? She
married twice."
"She had an annulment."
"All right then, I'll get an annulment. What does it cost? Who do I get
it from? Has Father Mowbray got one? I only want to do what's right. Nobody
told me."
It was a long time before Rex could be convinced of the existence of a
serious impediment to his marriage. The discussion took them to dinner, lay
dormant in the presence of the servants, started again as soon as they were
alone, and lasted long after midnight. Up, down and round the argument
circled and swooped like a gull, now out to sea, out of sight, cloud-bound,
among irrelevances and repetitions, now right on the patch where the offal
floated.'
"What d'you want me to do? Who should I see?" Rex kept asking. "Don't
tell me there isn't someone who can fix this."
"There's nothing to do, Rex," said Brideshead. "It simply means your
marriage can't take place. I'm sorry from everyone's point of view that it's
come so suddenly. You ought to have told us yourself."
"Look," said Rex. "Maybe what you say is right; maybe strictly by law I
shouldn't get married in your cathedral. But the cathedral is booked; no one
there is asking any questions; the Cardinal knows nothing about it; Father
Mowbray knows nothing about it. Nobody except us knows a thing. So why make
a lot of trouble? Just stay mum and let the thing go through, as if nothing
had happened. Who loses anything by that? Maybe I risk going to hell. Well,
I'll risk it. What's it got to do with anyone else?"
"Why not?" said Julia. "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. Anyway, that's our lookout. We're not asking you to risk
your souls. Just keep away."
"Julia, I hate you," said Cordelia, and left the room.
"We're all tired," said Lady Marchmain. "If there is anything to say,
I'd suggest our discussing it in the morning."
"But there's nothing to discuss," said Brideshead, "except what is 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; the
presents will have to go back. I don't know what is usual about the
bridesmaids' dresses."
"Just a moment," said Rex. "Just a moment. Maybe you can stop us
marrying in your cathedral. All right, to hell, we'll be married in a
Protestant church."
"I can stop that, too," said Lady Marchmain.
"But I don't think you will, Mummy," said Julia. "You see, I've been
Rex's mistress for some time now, and I shall go on being, married or not."
"Rex, is this true?"
"No, damn it, it's not," said Rex. "I wish it were."
"I see we shall have to discuss it all again in the morning," said Lady
Marchmain faintly. "I can't go on any more now."
And she needed her son's help up the stairs.
"What on earth made you tell your mother that?" I asked, when, years
later, Julia described the scene to me.
"That's exactly what Rex wanted to know. I suppose because I thought it
was true. Not literally -- though you must remember I was only twenty, and
no one really knows the 'facts of life' by being told them -- but, of
course, I didn't mean it was true literally. I didn't know how else to
express it. I meant I was much too deep with Rex just to be able to say 'the
marriage arranged will not now take place,' and leave it at that. I wanted
to be made an honest woman. I've been wanting it ever since -- come to think
of it."
"And then?"
"And then the talks went on and on. Poor Mummy. And priests came into
it and aunts came into it. There were all kinds of suggestions -- that Rex
should go to Canada, that Father Mowbray should go to Rome and see if there
were any possible grounds for an annulment; that I should go abroad for a
year. In the middle of it Rex just telegraphed to Papa: 'Julia and I prefer
wedding ceremony take place by Protestant rites. Have you any objection?' He
answered, 'Delighted,' and that settled the matter as far as Mummy stopping
us legally went. There was a lot of personal appeal after that. I was sent
to talk to priests and nuns and aunts. Rex just went on quietly -- or fairly
quietly -- with the plans.
"Oh, Charles, what a squalid wedding! The Savoy Chapel was the place
where divorced couples got married in those days--a poky little place 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 charwomen as witnesses, 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. Well, she more or less had to--the dress had been
planned round it. My own friends came, of course, and the curious
accomplices Rex called his friends; the rest bf the party were very oddly
assorted. None of Mummy's family came, of course; one or two of Papa's. All
the stuffy people stayed away--you know, the Anchorages and Chasms and
Vanbrughs -- and I thought, Thank God for that, they always look down their
noses at me, anyhow; but Rex was furious, Because it was just them he wanted
apparently.
"I hoped at one moment there'd be no party at all. Mummy said we
couldn't use Marchers, and Rex wanted to telegraph Papa and invade the place
with an army of caterers headed by the family solicitor. In the end it was
decided to have a party the evening before at home to see the presents --
apparently that was all right according to Father Mowbray. Well, no one can
ever resist going to see her own present, so that was quite a success, but
the reception Rex gave next day at the Savoy for the wedding guests was very
squalid.
"There was great awkwardness about the tenants. In the end Bridey went
down and gave them a dinner and bonfire there, which wasn't at all what they
expected in return for their silver
soup-tureen.
"Poor Cordelia took it hardest. She had looked forward so much to being
my bridesmaid -- it was a thing we used to talk about long before I came
out--and of course she was a very pious child, too. At first she wouldn't
speak to me. Then on the morning of the wedding --I'd moved to Aunt Fanny
Ross-common's the evening before; it was thought more suitable--she came
bursting in before I was up, straight from Farm Street, in floods of tears,
begged me not to marry, then hugged me, gave me a dear little brooch she'd
bought, and said she prayed I'd always be happy. Always happy, Charles!
"It was an awfully unpopular wedding, you know. Everyone took Mummy's
side, as everyone always did -- not that she got any benefit from it. All
through her life Mummy had all the sympathy of everyone except those she
loved. They all said I'd behaved abominably to her. In fact, poor Rex found
he'd married an outcast, which was exactly the opposite of all he'd wanted.
"So you see things never looked like going right. There was a hoodoo on
us from the start. But I was still nuts about Rex.
"Funny to think of, isn't it?
"You know Father Mowbray hit on 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. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally
developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive 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 the whole.
"Well, it's all over now."
It was ten years later that she said this to me in a storm in the
Atlantic.
Chapter Eight
I returned to London in the spring of 1926 for the General Strike.
It was the topic of Paris. The French, exultant as always at the
discomfiture of their former friends, 'and transposing into their own
precise terms our mistier notions from across the Channel, foretold
revolution and civil war. Every evening the kiosks displayed texts of doom,
and in the cafes acquaintances greeted one half-derisively with: "Ha, my
friend, you are better off here than at home, are you not?" until I, and
several friends in circumstances like my own, came seriously to believe that
our country was in danger and that our duty lay there. We were joined by a
Belgian Futurist, who lived under the, I think, assumed name of Jean de
Brissac la Motte, and claimed the right to bear arms in any battle anywhere
against the lower classes.
We crossed together, in a high-spirited, male party, expecting to find
unfolding before us at Dover the history so often repeated of late, with so
few variations, from all parts of Europe, that I, at any rate, had formed in
my mind a clear, composite picture of Revolution -- the red flag on the post
office, the overturned tram, the drunken N.C.O-'s, the gaol open and gangs
of released criminals prowling the streets, the train from the capital that
did not arrive. One had read it in the papers, seen it in the films, heard
it at cafe tables again and again for six or seven years now, till it had
become part of one's experience, at second hand, like the mud of Flanders
and the flies of Mesopotamia.
Then we landed and met the old routine of the customs sheds, the
punctual boat-train, the porters lining the platform at Victoria and
converging on the first-class carriages; the long line of waiting taxis.
"We'll separate," we said, "and see what's happening. We'll meet and
compare notes at dinner," but we knew already in our hearts that nothing was
happening; nothing, at any rate, which needed our presence.
"Oh dear," said my father, meeting me by chance on the stairs, "how
delightful to see you again so soon." (I had been abroad fifteen months.)
"You've come at a very awkward time, 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."
I thought of the evening I was forgoing, with the lights coming out
along the banks of the Seine, and the company I should have had there -- for
I was at the time concerned with two emancipated American girls who shared a
garconniere in Auteuil -- and wished I had not come.
We dined that night at the Cafe" Royal. There things were a little more
warlike, for the cafe" was full of undergraduates who had come down for
"National Service." One group, from Cambridge, had that afternoon signed on
to run messages for Transport House, and their table backed on another
group's, who were enrolled as special constables. Now and then one or other
party would shout provocatively over the shoulder, but it is hard to come
into serious conflict back to back, and the affair ended-with their giving
each other tall glasses of lager beer.
"You should have been in Budapest when Horthy marched in," said Jean.
"That was politics."
A party was being given that night in Regent's Park for the "Black
Birds," who had newly arrived in England. One of us had been asked and
thither we all went.
To us, who frequented Bricktop's and the Bal Negre in the Rue Blomet,
there was nothing particularly remarkable in the spectacle; I was scarcely
inside the door when I heard an unmistakable voice, an echo from what now
seemed a distant past.
"No" it said, "they are not animals in a zoo, Mulcaster, to be goggled
at. They are artists, my dear, very great artists, to be revered."
Anthony Blanche and Boy Mulcaster were at the table where the wine
stood.
"Thank God here's someone I know," said Mulcaster, as I joined them.
"Girl brought me. Can't see her anywhere."
"She's given you the slip, my dear, and do you know why? Because you
look ridiculously out of place, Mulcaster. It isn't your kind of party at
all; you ought not to be here; you ought to go away, you know, to the Old
Hundredth or some lugubrious dance in Belgrave Square."
"Just come from one," said Mulcaster. "Too early for the Old Hundredth.
I'll stay on a bit. Things may cheer up."
"I spit on you," said Anthony. "Let me talk to you, Charles."
We took a bottle and our glasses and found a corner in another room. At
our feet, five members of the "Black Birds" orchestra squatted on their
heels and threw dice.
"That one," said Anthony, "the rather pale one, my dear, konked Mrs.
Arnold Frickheimer the other morning on the nut, my dear, with a bottle of
milk."
Almost immediately, inevitably, we began to talk of Sebastian.
"My dear, he's such a sot. 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, sip, sip like a dowager all day long. And so sly. I was always missing
little things, my dear, things I rather liked; once I lost two suits that
had arrived from Lesley and Roberts that morning. Of course, I didn't know
it was Sebastian--there were some rather queer fish, my dear, in and out of
my little apartment. Who knows better than you my taste for queer fish?
Well, eventually, my dear, we found the pawnshop where Sebastian was
p-p-popping them and then he hadn't got the tickets; there was a market for
them, too, at the Bistro.
"I can see that puritanical, disapproving look in your eye, dear
Charles, as though you thought I had led the boy on. It's one of Sebastian's
less lovable qualities that he always gives the impression of being l-l-led
on -- like a little horse at a circus. But I assure you I did everything. I
said to him again and again, 'Why drink? If you want to be intoxicated there
are so many much
more delicious things.' I took him to quite the best man; well, you
know him as well as I do, Nada Alopov; and Jean Luxmore and everyone we know
has been to him for years -- he's always
in the Regina Bar -- and then we had trouble over that because
Sebastian gave him a bad cheque--a s-s-stumer, my dear-- and a whole lot of
very menacing men came round to the flat --thugs, my dear -- and Sebastian
was making no sense at the time and it was all most unpleasant."
Boy Mulcaster wandered towards us and sat down, without encouragement,
by my side.
"Drink running short in there," he said, helping himself from our
bottle and emptying it. "Not a soul in the place I ever set eyes on before
-- all black fellows."
Anthony ignored him and continued: "So then we left Marseilles and went
to Tangier, and there, my dear, Sebastian took up with his new friend. How
can I describe him? He is like the footman in 'Warning Shadows' -- a great
clod of a German who'd been in the Foreign Legion. He got put by shooting
off his great toe. It hadn't healed yet. Sebastian found him, starving as
tout to one of the houses in the Kasbah, and brought him to stay with us. It
was too macabre. So back I came, my dear, to good old England -- good old
England" he repeated, indicating in an ample gesture the Negroes gambling at
our feet, Mulcaster, staring blankly before him, and our hostess who, in
pyjamas, now introduced herself to us.
"Never seen you before," she said. "Never asked you. Who are all this
white trash, anyway? Seems to me I must be in the wrong house."
"A time of national emergency," said Mulcaster. "Anything may happen."
"Is the party going well?" she asked anxiously. "D'you think Florence
Mills would sing? We've met before," she added to Anthony.
"Often, my dear, but you never asked me to-night."
"Oh dear, perhaps I don't like you. I thought I liked everyone."
"Do you think," asked Mulcaster, when our hostess had left us, "that it
might be witty to give the fire alarm?"
"Yes, Boy, run away and ring it."
"Might cheer things up, I mean."
"Exactly."
So Mulcaster left us in search of the telephone.
"I think Sebastian and his lame chum went to French Morocco," continued
Anthony. "They were in trouble with the Tangier police when I left them. The
Marchioness has been a positive pest ever since I came to London, trying to
make me get into touch with them. What a time that poor woman's having! It
only shows there's some justice in life."
Presently Miss Mills began to sing and everyone, except the crap
players, crowded to the next room.
"That's my girl," said Mulcaster. "Over there with that black fellow.
That's the girl who brought me."
"She seems to have forgotten you now."
"Yes. I wish I hadn't come. Let's go on somewhere."
Two fire engines drove up as we left and a host of helmeted figures
joined the throng upstairs.
"That chap, Blanche," said Mulcaster, "not a good fellow. I put him in
Mercury once."
We went to a number of night clubs. In two years Mulcaster seemed to
have attained his simple ambition of being known and liked in such places.
At the last of them he and I were kindled by a great flame of patriotism.
"You and I," he said, "were too young to fight in the war. Other chaps
fought, millions of them dead. Not us. We'll show them. We'll show the dead
chaps we can fight, too."
"That's why I'm here," I said. "Come from overseas, rallying to old
country in hour of need."
"Like Australians."
"Like the poor dead Australians."
"What you in?"
"Nothing yet. War not ready."
"Only one thing to join -- Bill Meadows's show--Defence Corps. All good
chaps. Being fixed in Bratt's."
"Ill join."
"You member Bratt's?"
"No. I'll join that, too."
"That's right. All good chaps like the dead chaps."
So I joined Bill Meadows's show, which was a flying squad, protecting
food deliveries in the poorer parts of London. First I was enrolled in the
Defence Corps, took an oath of loyalty, and was given a helmet and
truncheon; then I was put up for Bratt's Club and, with a number of other
recruits, elected at a committee meeting specially called for the occasion.
For a week we sat under orders in Bratt's, and thrice a day we drove out in
a lorry at the head of a convoy of milk vans. We were jeered at and
sometimes pelted with muck, but only once did we go into action.
We were sitting round after luncheon that day when Bill Meadows came
back from the telephone in high spirits.
"Come on," he said. "There's a perfectly good battle in the Commercial
Road."
We drove at great speed and arrived to find a steel hawser stretched
between lamp-posts, an overturned truck and a policeman, alone on the
pavement, being kicked by half a dozen youths. On either side of this centre
of disturbance, and at a little distance from it, two opposing parties had
formed. Near us, as we disembarked, a second policeman was sitting on the
pavement, dazed, with his head in his hands and blood running through his
fingers; two or three sympathizers were standing over him; on the other side
of the hawser was a hostile knot of. young dockers. We charged in
cheerfully, relieved the policeman, and were just falling upon the main body
of the enemy when we came into collision with a party of local clergy and
town councillors who arrived simultaneously by another route, to try
persuasion. They were our only victims, for just as they went down there was
a cry of "Look out. The coppers," and a lorry load of police drew up in our
rear.
The crowd broke and disappeared. We picked up the peacemakers (only one
of whom was seriously hurt), patrolled some of the side streets looking for
trouble and finding none, and at length returned to Bratt's. Next day the
General Strike was called off and the country everywhere, except in the
coal-fields, returned to normal. It was as though a beast long fabled for
its ferocity had emerged for an hour, scented danger, and slunk back to its
lair. It had not been worth leaving Paris.
Jean, who joined another company, had a pot of ferns dropped on his
head by an elderly widow in Camden Town and was in hospital for a week.
It was through my membership of Bill Meadows's squad that Julia learned
I was in England. She telephoned to say her mother was anxious to see me.
"You'll find her terribly ill," she said.
I went to Marchmain House on the first morning of peace. Sir Adrian
Porson passed me in the hall, leaving, as I arrived; he held a bandanna
handkerchief to his face and felt blindly for his hat and stick; he was in
tears.
I was shown into the library and in less than a minute Julia joined me.
She shook hands with a gentleness and gravity that were unfamiliar; in the
gloom of that room she seemed a ghost.
"It's sweet of you to come. Mummy has kept asking for you, but I don't
know if she'll be able to see you now, after all. She's just said 'good-bye'
to Adrian Porson and it's tired her."
"Good-bye?"
"Yes. She's dying. She may live a week or two or she may go at any
minute. She's so weak. I'll go and ask nurse."
The stillness of death seemed in the house already. No one ever sat in
the library at Marchmain House. It was the one ungracious room in either of
their houses. The bookcases of Victorian oak held volumes of Hansard and
obsolete encyclopedias that were never opened; the bare mahogany table
seemed set for the meeting of a committee; the place had the air of being
both public and unfrequented; outside lay the forecourt, the railings, the
quiet cul-de-sac.
Presently Julia returned.
"No, I'm afraid you can't see her. She's asleep. She may lie like that
for hours; I can tell you what she wanted. Let's go somewhere else. I hate
this room."
We went across the hall to the small drawing-room where luncheon
parties used to assemble, and sat on either side of the fireplace. Julia
seemed to reflect the crimson and gold of the walls and lose some of her
wanness.
"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 understood and put it out of your mind
immediately, but it's the kind of thing Mummy can never forgive herself --
it's the kind of thing she so seldom did."
"Do tell her I understood completely."
"The other thing, of course, you have guessed -- Sebastian. She wants
him. I don't know if that's possible. Is it?"
"I hear he's in a very bad way."
"We heard that, too. We cabled 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 I think Sebastian would want it, too,
if he realized."
"I'll try."
"There's no one else we can ask. Rex is so busy."
"Yes. I heard reports of all he'd been doing organizing the gas works."
"Oh yes," Julia said with a touch of her old dryness. "He's made a lot
of kudos out of the strike."
Then we talked for a few minutes about the Bratt's squad. She told me
Brideshead had refused to take any public service because he was not
satisfied with the justice of the cause; Cordelia was in London, in bed now,
as she had been watching by her mother all night. I told her I had taken up
architectural painting and that I enjoyed it. All this talk was nothing; we
had said all we had to say in the first two minutes; I stayed for ten and
then left her.
Air France ran a service of a kind to Casablanca; there I took the bus
to Fez, starting at dawn and arriving in the new town at evening. I
telephoned from the hotel to the British Consul and dined with him that
evening, in his charming house by the walls of the old town. He was a kind,
serious man.
"I'm delighted someone has come to look after young Flyte at last," he
said. "He's been something of a thorn in our sides here. This is no place
for a remittance man. The French don't understand him at all. They think
everyone who's not engaged in trade is a spy. It's not as though he lived
like a milord. Things aren't easy here. There's war going on not thirty
miles from this house, though you might not think it. We had some young
fools on bicycles only last week who'd come to volunteer for Abdul Krim's
army.
"Then the Moors are a tricky lot; they don't hold with drink and our
young friend, as you may know, spends most of his day drinking. What does he
want to come here for? There's plenty of room for him at Rabat or Tangier,
where they cater for tourists. He's taken a house in the native town, you
know. I tried to stop him, but he got it from a Frenchman in the Department
of Arts. I don't say there's any harm in him but he's an anxiety. There's an
awful fellow sponging on him -- a German out of the Foreign Legion. A
thoroughly bad lot by all accounts. There's bound to be trouble.
"Mind you, I like Flyte. I don't see much of him. He used to come here
for baths until he got fixed up at his house. He was always perfectly
charming, and my wife took a great fancy to him. What he needs is
occupation."
I explained my errand.
"You'll probably find him at home now. Goodness knows there's nowhere
to go in the evenings in the old town. If you like I'll send the porter to
show you the way."
So I set out after dinner, with the consular porter going ahead,
lantern in hand. Morocco was a new and strange country to me. Driving that
day, mile after mile, up the smooth, strategic road, past the vineyards and
military posts and the new, white settlements and the early crops already
standing high in the vast, open fields, and the hoardings advertising the
staples of France -- Dubonnet, Michelin, Magasin du Louvre --I had thought
it all very suburban and up-to-date; now, under the stars, in the walled
city, whose streets were gentle, dusty stairways, and whose walls rose
windowless on either side, closed overhead, then opened again to the stars;
where the dust lay thick among the smooth paving stones and figures passed
silently, robed in white, on soft slippers or hard, bare soles; where the
air was scented with cloves and incense and wood smoke -- now I knew what
had drawn Sebastian here and held him so long.
The consular porter strode arrogantly ahead with his light swinging and
his tall cane banging; sometimes an open doorway revealed a silent group
seated in golden lamplight round a brazier.
"Very dirty peoples," the porter said scornfully, over his shoulder.
"No education. French leave them dirty. Not like' British peoples. My
peoples," he said, "always very British peoples."
For he was from the Sudan Police, and regarded this ancient centre of
his culture as a New Zealander might regard Rome.
At length we came to the last of many studded doors, and the porter
beat on it with his stick.
"British Lord's house," he said.
Lamplight and a dark face appeared at the grating. The consular porter
spoke peremptorily; bolts were withdrawn and we entered a small courtyard
with a well in its centre and a vine trained overhead.
"I wait here," said the porter. "You go with this native fellow."
I entered the house, down a step, and into the living-room. I found a
gramophone, an oil-stove and, between them, a young man. Later, when I
looked about me, I noticed other, more agreeable things -- the rugs on the
floor, the embroidered silk on the walls, the carved and painted beams of
the ceiling, the heavy, pierced lamp that hung from a chain and cast the
soft shadows of its own tracery about the room. But on first entering, these
three things -- the gramophone for its noise -- it was playing a French
record of a jazz band; the stove for its smell; and the young man for his
wolfish look -- struck my senses. He was lolling in a basket chair, with a
bandaged foot stuck forward on a box; he was dressed in a kind of thin,
mid-European imitation tweed with a tennis shirt open at the neck; the
unwounded foot wore a brown canvas shoe. There was a brass tray by his side
on wooden legs, and on it were two beer bottles, a dirty plate, and a saucer
full of cigarette ends; he held a glass of beer in his hand and a cigarette
lay on his lower lip and stuck there when he spoke. He had long fair hair
combed back without a parting and a face that was unnaturally lined for a
man of his obvious youth; one of his front teeth was missing, so that his
sibilants came sometimes with a lisp, sometimes with a disconcerting
whistle, which he covered with a giggle; the teeth he had were stained with
tobacco and set far apart.
This was plainly the "thoroughly bad lot" of the consul's description,
the film footman of Anthony's.
"I'm looking for Sebastian Flyte. This is his house, is it not?" I
spoke loudly to make myself heard above the dance music, but he answered
softly in English fluent enough to suggest that it was now habitual to him.
"Yeth. But he isn't here. There's no one but me."
"I've come from England to see him on important business; Can you tell
me where I can find him?"
The record came to its end. The German turned it over, wound up the
machine, and started it playing again before answering.
"Sebastian's sick. The brothers took him away to the infirmary. Maybe
they'll let you thee him, maybe not. I got to go there myself one day thoon
to have my foot dressed. I'll ask them then. When he's better they'll let
you thee him, maybe."
There was another chair and I sat down on it. Seeing that I meant to
stay, the German offered me some beer.
"You're not Thebastian's brother?" he said. "Cousin maybe? Maybe you
married hith thister?"
"I'm only a friend. We were at the University together."
"I had a friend at the University. We studied History. My friend was
cleverer than me; a little weak fellow -- I used to pick him up and shake
him when I was angry -- but tho clever. Then one day we said: 'What the
hell? There is no work in Germany. Germany is down the drain,' so we said
good-bye to our professors, and they said: 'Yes, Germany is down the drain.
There is nothing for a student to do here now,' and we went away anckj
walked and walked and at last we came here. Then we said, 'There is no army
in Germany now, but we must be tholdiers,' 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," I said. "That's very interesting. But my immediate concern is
with Sebastian. Perhaps you would tell me about him."
"He is a very good fellow, Sebastian. He is all right for me. Tangier
was a stinking place. He brought me here--nice house, nice food, nice
servant -- everything is all right for me here, I reckon. I like it all
right."
"His mother is very ill," I said. "I have come to tell him."
"She rich?"
"Yes."
"Why don't she give him more money? Then we could live at Casablanca,
maybe, in a nice flat.
You know her well? You could make her give him more money?"
"What's the matter with him?"
"I don't know. I reckon maybe he drink too much. The brothers will look
after him. It's all right for him there. The brothers are good fellows. Very
cheap there."
He clapped his hands and ordered more beer.
"You thee? A nice thervant to look after me. It is all right."
When I had got the name of the hospital I left.
"Tell Thebastian I am still here and all right. I reckon he's worrying
about me, maybe."
The hospital, where I went next morning, was a collection of bungalows
between the old and the new towns. It was kept by Franciscans. I made my way
through a crowd of diseased Moors to the doctor's room. He was a layman,
clean-shaven, dressed in white, starched overalls. We spoke in French, and
he told me Sebastian was in no danger, but quite unfit to travel. He had had
the grippe, with one lung slightly affected; he was very weak; he lacked
resistance; what could one expect? He was an alcoholic. The doctor spoke
dispassionately, almost brutally, with the relish men of scidnce sometimes
have for limiting themselves to inessentials, for pruning back their work to
th<? point of sterility; but the bearded, barefooted brother in whose
charge he put me, the man of no scientific pretensions who did the dirty
jobs of the ward, 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, who comes here for treatment. Lord Flyte found him starving in
Tangier
and took him in and gave him a home. A real Samaritan."
Poor simple monk, I thought, poor booby. God forgive me!
Sebastian was in the wing kept for Europeans, where the beds were
divided by low partitions into cubicles with some air of privacy. He was
lying with his hands on the quilt staring at the 1
wall, where the only ornament was a religious oleograph.
"Your friend," said the brother.
He looked round slowly.
"Oh, I thought he meant Kurt. What are you doing here, Charles?"
He was more than ever emaciated; drink, which made others fat and red,
seemed to wither Sebastian. The brother left us, and I sat by his bed and
talked about his illness.
"I was out of my mind for a day or two," he said. "I kept thinking I
was back in Oxford. You went to my house? Did you like it? Is Kurt still
there? I won't ask you if you liked Kurt; no one does. It's funny -- I
couldn't get on without him, you know."
Then I told him about his mother. He said nothing for some time, but
lay gazing at the oleograph of the Seven Dolours. Then: --
"Poor Mummy. She really was a femme fatale, wasn't she. She killed at a
touch."
I telegraphed to Julia that Sebastian was unable to travel, and stayed
a week at Fez, visiting the hospital daily until he was well' enough to
move. His first sign of returning strength, on the second day of my visit,
was to ask for brandy. By next day he had got some, somehow, and kept it
under the bedclothes.
The doctor said: "Your friend is drinking again. It is forbidden here.
What can I do? This is not a reformatory school. I cannot police the wards.
I am here to cure people, not to protect them from vicious habits, or teach
them self-control. Cognac will not hurt him now. It will make him weaker for
the next time he is ill, and then one day some little trouble will carry him
off, pouff. This is not a home for inebriates. He must go at the end of the
week."
The lay brother said: "Your friend is so much happier to-day, it is
like one transfigured."
Poor simple monk, I thought, poor booby; but he added, "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 than he gets another. He is so naughty. It is the
Arab boys who fetch it for him. But it is good to see him happy again when
he has been so sad."
On my last afternoon I said, "Sebastian, now your mother's dead" -- for
the news had reached us that morning -- "do you think of going back to
England?"
"It would be lovely, in some ways," he said, "but do you think