Brideshead Revisited(43)
‘It was horrible,’ I said. ‘But please don’t think that’s his usual way.’
‘Mr Samgrass told me he was drinking too much all last term.’
‘Yes, but not like that — never before.’
‘Then why now? here? with us? All night I have been thinking and praying and wondering what I was to say to him, and now, this morning, he isn’t here at all. That was cruel of him, leaving without a word. I don’t want him to be ashamed — it’s being ashamed that makes it all so wrong of him.’
‘He’s ashamed of being unhappy,’ I said.
‘Mr Samgrass says he is noisy and high-spirited. I believe,’ she said, with a faint light of humour streaking the clouds, ‘I believe you and he tease Mr Samgrass rather. It’s naughty of you. I’m very fond of Mr Samgrass, and you should be too, after all he’s done for you. But I think perhaps if I were your age and a man I might be just a little inclined to tease Mr Samgrass myself. No, I don’t mind that, but last night and this morning are something quite different. You see, it’s all happened before.’
‘I can only say I’ve seen him drunk often and I’ve been drunk with him often, but last night was quite new to me.’
‘Oh, I don’t mean with Sebastian. I mean years ago. I’ve been through it all before with someone else whom I loved. Well, you must know what I mean — with his father. He used to be drunk in just that way. Someone told me he is not like that now. I pray God it’s true and thank God for it with all my heart, if it is. But the running away — he ran away, too, you know. It was as you said just now, he was ashamed of being unhappy. Both of them unhappy, ashamed, and running away. It’s too pitiful. The men I grew up with’ — and her great eyes moved from the embroidery to the three miniatures in the folding leathercase on the chimney-piece — ‘were not like that. I simply don’t understand it. Do you, Charles?’
‘Only very little.’
‘And yet Sebastian is fonder of you than of any of us, you know. You’ve got to help him. I can’t.’
I have here compressed into a few sentences what, there, required many. Lady Marchmain was not diffuse, but she took hold of her subject in a feminine, flirtatious way, circling, approaching, retreating, feinting; she hovered over it like a butterfly; she played ‘grandmother’s steps’ with it, getting nearer the real point imperceptibly while one’s back was turned, standing rooted when she was observed. The unhappiness, the running away — these made up her sorrow, and in her own way she exposed the whole of it, before she was done. It was an hour before she had said all she meant to say. Then, as I rose to leave her, she added as though in an afterthought: ‘I wonder have you seen my brothers’ book? It has just come out.’
I told her I had looked through it in Sebastian’s room.
‘I should like you to have a copy. May I give you one? They were three splendid men; Ned was the best of them. He was the last to be killed, and when the telegram came, as I knew it would come, I thought: “Now it’s my son’s turn to do what Ned can never do now.” I was alone then. He was just going to Eton. If you read Ned’s book you’ll understand.’
She had a copy lying ready on her bureau. I thought at the time, ‘She planned this parting before ever I came in. Had she rehearsed all the interview? If things had gone differently would she have put the book back in the drawer?’
She wrote her name and mine on the fly leaf, the date and place.
‘I prayed for you, too, in the night,’ she said.
I closed the door behind me, shutting out the bondieuserie, the low ceiling, the chintz, the lambskin bindings, the views of Florence, the bowls of hyacinth and potpourri, the petit-point, the intimate feminine, modern world, and was back under the coved and coffered roof, the columns and entablature of the central hall, in the august, masculine atmosphere of a better age.
I was no fool; I was old enough to know that an attempt had been made to suborn me and young enough to have found the experience agreeable.
I did not see Julia that morning, but just as I was leaving Cordelia ran to the door of the car and said: ‘Will you be seeing Sebastian? Please give him my special love. Will you remember — my special love?’
In the train to London I read the book Lady Marchmain had given me. The frontispiece reproduced the photograph of a young man in Grenadier uniform, and I saw plainly revealed there the origin of that grim mask which, in Brideshead, overlaid the gracious features of his father’s family; this was a man of the woods and caves, a hunter, a judge of the tribal council, the repository of the harsh traditions of a people at war with their environment. There were other illustrations in the book, snapshots of the three brothers on holiday, and in each I traced the same archaic lines; and remembering Lady Marchmain, starry and delicate, I could find no likeness to her in these sombre men.
She appeared seldom in the book; she was older than the eldest of them by nine years and had married and left home while they were schoolboys; between her and them stood two other sisters; after the birth of the third daughter there had been pilgrimages and pious benedictions in request for a son, for theirs was a wide property and an ancient name; male heirs had come late and, when they came, in a profusion which at the time seemed to promise continuity to the line which, in the tragic event, ended abruptly with them.