《Brideshead Revisited》——故园风雨后（中英文对照）完结_派派后花园

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[Novel] 《Brideshead Revisited》——故园风雨后（中英文对照）完结

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Waugh tells the story of the Marchmain family. Aristocratic, beautiful and charming, the Marchmains are indeed a symbol of England and her decline in this novel of the upper class of the 1920s and the abdication of responsibility in the 1930s.

THIS novel, which is here re-issued with many small additions and some substantial cuts, lost me such esteem as I once enjoyed among my contemporaries and led me into an unfamiliar world of fan-mail and press photographers. Its theme - the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters - was perhaps presumptuously large, but I make no apology for it. I am less happy about its form, whose more glaring defects may be blamed on the circumstances in which it was written.

In December 1943 1 had the good fortune when parachuting to incur a minor injury which afforded me a rest from military service. This was extended by a sympathetic commanding officer, who let me remain unemployed until June 1944 when the book was finished. I wrote with a zest that was quite strange to me and also with impatience to get back to the war. It was a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster - the period of soya beans and Basic English - and in consequence the, book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language, which now with a full stomach I find distasteful. I have modified the grosser passages but have not obliterated them because they are an essential part of the book.

I have been in two minds as to the treatment of Julia’s outburst about mortal sin and Lord Marchmain’s dying soliloquy. These passages were never of course, intended to report words actually spoken. They belong to a different way of writing from, say, the early scenes between Charles and his father. I would not now introduce them into a novel which elsewhere aims at verisimilitude. But I have retained them here in something near their original form because, like the Burgundy (misprinted in many editions) and the moonlight they were essentially of the mood of writing; also because many readers liked them, though that is not a consideration of first importance.  It was impossible to foresee, in the spring of 1944, the present cult of the English country house. It seemed then that the ancestral seats which were our chief national artistic achievement were doomed to decay and spoliation like the monasteries in the sixteenth century. So I piled it on rather, with passionate sincerity. Brideshead today would be open to trippers, its treasures rearranged by expert hands and the fabric better maintained than it was by Lord Marchmain. And the English aristocracy has maintained its identity to a degree that then seemed impossible. The advance of Hooper has been held up at several points. Much of this book therefore is a panegyric preached over an empty coffin. But it would be impossible to bring it up to date without totally destroying it. It is offered to a younger generation of readers as a souvenir of the Second War rather than of the twenties or of the thirties, with which it ostensibly deals.  Combe Florey 1959 E.W.

故事以主人公查尔斯的视角展开，描写了伦敦近郊布赖兹赫德庄园一个天主教家庭的生活和命运。这个家族老一代的马奇梅因侯爵在第一次世界大战期间去国外参加战争，战后没有回国，长期和他的意大利情妇在威尼斯同居。他的妻子马奇梅因夫人住在伦敦，夫妻不睦，按照天主教规定，夫妻不能离婚，事实上他们长期分居。他们的长子布赖兹赫德是未来爵位和庄园的继承人（与庄园同名），却生性怪僻。而次子塞巴斯蒂安和故事叙述人查尔斯是牛津大学的同窗好友，一生经历坎坷，流落异国。大女儿朱莉娅和小女儿科迪莉娅的一生也跌宕起伏。小说通过这一家人的故事，反映了战后的英国状况，也可以说是西方一般知识分子的思想与遭遇......

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Chapter 1
‘I HAVE been here before,’ I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest.

That day, too, I had come not knowing my destination. It was Eights Week. Oxford - submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse, so quickly have the waters come flooding -in - Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman’s day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, -over the intervening clamour. Here, discordantly, in Eights Week, came a rabble of womankind, some hundreds strong, twittering and fluttering over the cobbles and up the steps, sight-seeing and pleasure-seeking, drinking claret cup, eating cucumber sandwiches; pushed in punts about the river, herded in droves to the college barges; greeted in the Isis and in the Union by a sudden display of peculiar, facetious, wholly distressing Gilbert-and-Sullivan badinage, and by peculiar choral effects in the College chapels. Echoes of the intruders penetrated every corner, and in my own College was no echo, but an original fount of the grossest disturbance. We were giving a ball. The front quad, where I lived, was floored and tented; palms and azaleas were banked round the porter’s lodge; worst of all, the don who lived above me, a mouse of a man connected with the Natural Sciences, had lent his rooms for a Ladies’ Cloakroom, and a printed notice proclaiming this outrage hung not six inches from my oak.

No one felt more strongly about it than my scout.

‘Gentlemen who haven’t got ladies are asked as far as possible to take their meals out in the next few days,’ he announced despondently. ‘Will you be lunching in?’ ‘No, Lunt.’

‘So as to give the servants a chance, they say. What a chance! I’ve got to buy a pin-cushion for the Ladies’ Cloakroom. What do they want with dancing? I don’t see the reason in it. There never was dancing before in Eights Week. Commem. now is another matter being in the vacation, but not in Eights Week, as if teas and the river wasn’t enough. If you ask me, sir, it’s all on account of the war. It couldn’t have happened but for that.’ For this was 1923 and for Lunt, as for thousands of others, things could never be the same as they had been in 1914. ‘Now wine in the evening, he continued, as was his habit half in and half out of the door’ Cor one or two gentlemen to luncheon, there’s reason in. But not dancing. It all came in with the men back from the war. They were too old and they didn’t know and they wouldn’t learn. That’s the truth. And there’s some even goes dancing with the town at the Masonic - but the proctors will get them, you see . . . Well, here’s Lord Sebastian. I mustn’t stand here talking when there’s pin-cushions to get.’

Sebastian entered - dove-grey flannel, white crepe de Chine, a Charvet tie, my tie as it happened, a pattern of postage stamps ‘Charles - what in the world’s happening at your college? Is there a circus? I’ve seen everything except elephants. I must say the whole of Oxford has become most peculiar suddenly. Last night it was pullulating with women.  You’re to come away at once, out of danger. I’ve got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Peyraguey - which isn’t a wine you’ve ever tasted, so don’t pretend. It’s heaven with strawberries.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To see a friend.’

‘Who?’

‘Name of Hawkins. Bring some money in case we see anything we want to buy. The motor-car is the property of a man called Hardcastle. Return the bits to him if I kill myself; I’m not very good at driving.

Beyond the gate, beyond the winter garden that was once the lodge, stood an open two-seater Morris-Cowley. Sebastian’s teddy bear sat at the wheel. We put him, between us - ‘Take care he’s not sick’ -and drove off. The bells of St Mary’s were chiming nine; we escaped collision with a clergyman, blackstraw-hatted, white-bearded) pedalling quietly down the wrong side of the High Street, crossed Carfax, passed the station, and were soon in open country on the Botley Road; open country was easily reached in those days.

(‘Isn’t it early?’ said Sebastian. ‘The women are still doing whatever women do to themselves before they come downstairs. Sloth has undone them. We’re away. God bless Hardcastle.’

‘Whoever he may be.’

‘He thought he was coming with us. Sloth, undid him too. Well, I did tell him ten.  He’s a very gloomy man in my college. He leads a double life. At least I assume he does. He couldn’t go on being Hardcastle, day and night, always, could he? - or he’d die of it. He says he knows my father, which is impossible.’ ‘Why?’

‘No one knows papa. He’s a social leper. Hadn’t you heard?’

‘It’s a pity neither of us can sing,’ I said.



At Swindon we turned off the main road and, as the sun mounted high, we were among dry-stone walls and ashlar houses. It was about eleven when Sebastian, without warning, turned the car into a cart track and stopped. It was hot enough now to make us seek the shade. On a sheep-cropped knoll under a clump of elms we ate the strawberries and drank the wine - as Sebastian promised, they were delicious together - and we lit fat, Turkish cigarettes and lay on our backs, Sebastian’s eyes on the leaves above him, mine on his profile, while the blue-grey smoke rose, untroubled by any wind, to the blue-green shadows of foliage’, and the sweet scent of the tobacco, merged with the sweet summer scents around us and the fumes of the sweet golden wine seemed to lift us a finger’s breadth above the turf and hold us suspended.  ‘Just the place to bury a crock of gold, ‘ said Sebastian. ‘I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then when I was old and ugly and miserable, -I could come back and dig it up and remember.’

This was my third term since matriculation, but I date my Oxford life from my first meeting with Sebastian, which had happened, by chance, in the middle of the term before. We were in different colleges and came from different schools; I might well have spent my three or four years in the University and never have met him, but for the chance of his getting drunk one evening in my college and of my having ground-floor rooms in .the front quadrangle.

I had been warned against the dangers of these rooms by my cousin Jasper, who alone, when I first came up, thought me a suitable subject for detailed guidance. My father offered me none. Then, as always, he eschewed serious conversation with me. It was not until I was within a fortnight of going up that he mentioned the subject at all; then he said, shyly and rather slyly: ‘I’ve been- talking about you. I met -your future Warden at the Athenaeum. I wanted to talk about Etruscan notions of immortality; he wanted to talk about extension lectures for the working-class; so we compromised and talked about you. I asked him what your allowance should be. He said, “Three hundred a year; on no account give him more; that’s all most men have.” I thought that a deplorable answer. I had more than most men when I was up, and my recollection is that nowhere else in the world and at no other time, do a few hundred pounds, one way or the other, makee so much difference to one’s importance, and popularity. I toyed with the idea of giving you six hundred,’ said my father, snuffling a little, as he did when he was amused, ‘but I reflected that, should the Warden come to hear of it, it might sound deliberately impolite. So I shall e you five hundred and fifty.’ I thanked him.

Yes, it’s indulgent of me, but it all comes out of capital, you know. I suppose this is the time I should give you advice. I never had any myself except once from your cousin Alfred. Do you know, in the summer before I was going up, your cousin Alfred rode over to Boughton especially to give me a piece of advice? And do you know what the advice was? “Ned,” he said, “there’s one thing I must beg of you. Always wear a tall hat on Sundays during term. It is by that, more than anything, that a man is judged.” And do you know,’ continued my father, snuffling deeply, ‘I always did? Some men did, some didn’t. I never saw any difference between them or heard it commented on, but I always wore mine. It only shows what effect judicious advice can have, properly delivered at the right moment. I wish I had some for you, but I haven’t.’

My cousin Jasper made good the loss; he was the son of my father’s elder brother, to whom he referred more than once, only half facetiously, as ‘the Head of the Family’; he was in his fourth year and, the term before, had come within appreciable distance of getting his rowing blue; he was secretary of the Canning and president of the J.C.R.; a considerable person in college. He called on me formally during my first week and stayed to tea; he ate a very heavy meal of honey-buns, anchovy toast, and Fuller’s walnut cake, then he lit his pipe and, lying back in the basketchair, laid down the rules of conduct which I should follow; he covered most subjects; even today I could repeat much of what he said, word for, word. ‘...You’re reading History? A perfectly respectable school. The very worst is English literature and the next worst is Modern Greats. You want either a first or a fourth. There is no value in anything between. Time spent on a good second is time thrown away. You should go to the best lectures Arkwright on Demosthenes for instance - irrespective of whether they are in your school or not...Clothes. Dress as you do in a country house. Never wear a tweed coat and flannel trousers - always a suit. And go to a London tailor; you get better cut and longer credit...Clubs. Join the Carlton now and the Grid at the beginning of your second year. If you want to run for the Union - and it’s not a bad thing to do - make your reputation outside first, at the Canning or the Chatham, and begin by speaking on the paper...Keep clear of Boar’s Hill...’ The sky over the opposing gables glowed and then darkened; I put more coal on the fire and turned on the light, revealing in their respectability his London-made plus-fours and his Leander tie...’Don’t treat dons like schoolmasters; treat them as you would the vicar at home...You’ll find you spend half your second year shaking off the undesirable friends you made in your first...Beware of the Anglo-Catholics - they’re all sodomites with unpleasant accents. In fact, steer clear of all the religious groups; they do nothing but harm...’ Finally, just as he was going, he said, ‘One last point. Change your rooms’ - They were large, with deeply recessed windows and painted, eighteenth-century panelling; I was lucky as a freshman to get them. ‘I’ve seen many a man ruined through having ground-floor rooms in the front quad,’ said my cousin with deep gravity. ‘People start dropping in. They leave their, gowns here and come and collect them before hall; you start giving them a sherry. Before you know where you are, you’ve opened a free bar for all the undesirables of the college.’

I do not know that I ever, consciously, followed any of this advice. I certainly never changed my rooms - there were gillyflowers growing below the windows which on summer evenings filled them with fragrance.

It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one’s youth with a false precocity or a false innocence; to tamper with the dates marking one’s stature on the edge of the door. I should like to think - indeed I sometimes do think - that I decorated those rooms with Morris stuffs and Arundel prints and that my shelves we’re filled with seventeenth-century folios and French novels of the second empire in Russia-leather and watered silk. But this was not the truth. On my first afternoon I proudly hung a reproduction of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers over the fire and set up a screen, painted by Roger Fry with a Provencal landscape, which I had bought inexpensively when the Omega workshops were sold up. I displayed also a poster by McKnight Kauffer and Rhyme Sheets from the Poetry Bookshop, and, most painful to recall, a porcelain figure of Polly Peachum which stood between black tapers on the chimney-piece. My books were meagre and commonplace - Roger Fry’s Vision and Design, the Medici Press edition of A Shropshire Lad, Eminent Victorians, some volumes of Georgian Poetry, Sinister Street, and South Wind - and my earliest friends fitted well into this background; they were Collins, a Wykehamist, an embryo don, a man of solid reading and childlike humour, and a small circle of college intellectuals, who maintained a middle course of culture between the flamboyant ‘aesthetes’ and the roletarian scholars who scrambled fiercely for facts in the lodging houses of the Iffley Road and Wellington Square. It was by this circle that I found myself adopted during my first term; they provided the kind of company I had enjoyed in the sixth form at school, for which the sixth form had prepared me; but even in the earliest days, when the whole business of living at Oxford, with rooms of my own and my own cheque book, was a source of excitement, I felt at heart that this was not all which Oxford had to offer.

At Sebastian’s approach these grey figures seemed quietly to fade into the landscape and vanish, like highland sheep in the misty heather. Collins had exposed the fallacy of modern aesthetics to me: ‘...the whole argument from Significant Form stands or falls by volume. If you allow C’ezanne to represent a third dimension on his two-dimensional canvas, then you must allow Landseer his gleam of loyalty in the spaniel’s eye’...but it was not until Sebastian, idly turning the page of Clive Bell’s Art, read: “’Does anyone feel the same kind of emotion for a butterfly or a flower that he feels for a cathedral or a picture?” Yes. I do,’ that my eyes were opened.

I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him. That was unavoidable for, from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities of behaviour, which seemed to know no bounds.  My first sight of him was in the door of Germer’s, and, on that occasion, I was struck less by his looks than by the fact that he was carrying a large teddy-bear.  ‘That,’ said the barber, as I took his chair, ‘was Lord Sebastian Flyte. A most amusing young gentleman.’

‘Apparently,’ I said coldly.

‘The Marquis of Marchmain’s second boy. His brother, the Earl of Brideshead, went down last term. Now he was very different, a very quiet gentleman’, quite like an old man. What do you suppose Lord Sebastian wanted? A hair brush for his teddybear; it had to have very stiff bristies, not, Lord Sebastian said, to brush him with, but to threaten him with a spanking when he was sulky. He bought a very nice one with an ivory back and he’s having “Aloysius” engraved on it’ - that’s the bear’s name.’ The man, who, in his time, had had ample chance to tire of undergraduate fantasy, was plainly-captivated. I, however, remained censorious, and subsequent glimpses of him, driving in a hansom cab and dining at the George in false whiskers, did not soften me, although Collins, who was reading Freud, had a number of technical terms to cover everything.  Nor, when at last we met, were the circumstances propitious. It was shortly before midnight in early March; I had been entertaining the college intellectuals to mulled claret; the fire was roaring, the air of my room heavy with smoke and spice, and my mind weary with metaphysics. I threw open my windows and from the quad outside came the not uncommon sound of bibulous laughter and unsteady steps. A voice said:

‘Hold up’; another, ‘Come on’; another, ‘Plenty of time...House...till Tom stops ringing’; and another, clearer than the rest, ‘D’you know I feel most unaccountably unwell. I must leave you a minute,’ and there appeared at my window the face I knew to be Sebastian’s, but not, as I had formerly seen it, alive and alight with gaiety; he looked at me for a moment with unfocused eyes and then, leaning forward well into the room, he was sick.  It was not unusual for dinner parties to end in that way; there was in fact a recognized tariff for the scout on such occasions; we were all learning, by trial and error, to carry our wine. There was also a kind of insane and endearing orderliness about Sebastian’s choice, in his extremity, of an open window. But, when all is said, it remained an unpropitious meeting.

His friends bore him to the gate and, in a few minutes, his host, an amiable Etonian of my year, returned to apologize. He, too, was tipsy and his explanations were repetitive and, towards the end, tearful. ‘The wines were too various,’ he said: ‘it was neither the quality nor the quantity that was at fault. It was the mixture. Grasp that and you have the root of the matter. To understand all is to forgive all.’



‘Yes,’ I said, but it was with a sense of grievance that I faced Lunt’s reproaches next morning.

‘A couple of jugs of mulled claret between the five of you,’ Lunt said, ‘and this had to happen. Couldn’t even get to the window. Those that can’t keep it down are better without it.’

‘It wasn’t one of my party. It was someone from out of college.’

‘Well, it’s just as nasty clearing it up, whoever it was.’

‘There’s five shillings on the sideboard.’

‘So I saw and thank you, but I’d rather not have the money and not have the mess, any morning.’

I took my gown and left him to his task. I still frequented the lecture-room in those days, and it was after eleven when I returned to college. I found my room full of flowers; what looked like, and, in fact, was, the entire day’s stock of a market-stall stood in every conceivable vessel in every part of the room. Lunt was secreting the last of them in brown paper preparatory to taking them home.  ‘Lunt, what is all this?’

‘The gentleman from last night, sir, he left a note for you.’ The note was written in conté crayon on a whole sheet of my choice Whatman H.P.  drawing paper: I am very contrite. Aloysius won’t speak to me until he sees I am forgiven, so please come to luncheon today. Sebastian Flyte. It was typical of him, I reflected, to assume I knew where he lived; but, then, I did know.  ‘A most amusing gentleman, I’m sure it’s quite a pleasure to clean up after him. I take it you’re lunching out, sir. I told Mr Collins and Mr Partridge so - they wanted to have their commons in here with you.’

‘Yes, Lunt, lunching out.’

That luncheon party - for party it proved to be - was the beginning o f a new epoch in my life.

I went there uncertainly, for it was foreign ground and there was a tiny, priggish, warning voice in my ear which in the tones of Collins told me it was seemly to hold back. But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.

Sebastian lived at Christ Church, high in Meadow Buildings. He was alone when I came, peeling a plover’s egg taken from the large nest of moss in the centre of his table.  ‘I’ve just counted them,’ he said. ‘There were five each and two over, so I’m having the two. I’m unaccountably hungry today. I put myself unreservedly in the hands of Dolbear and Goodall, and feel so drugged that I’ve begun to believe that the whole of yesterday evening was a dream. Please don’t wake me up.

He was entrancing, with that epicene beauty which in extreme youth sings aloud for love and withers at the first cold wind.

His room was filled with a. strange jumble of objects - a harmonium in a gothic case, an elephant’s-foot waste-paper basket, a dome of wax fruit, two disproportionately large Sèvres vases, framed drawings by Daumier - made all the more incongruous by the austere college furniture and the large luncheon table. His chimney-piece was covered in cards of invitation from London hostesses.

‘That beast Hobson has put Aloysius next door,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it’s as well, as there

wouldn’t have been any plovers’ eggs for him. D’you know, Hobson hates Aloysius. I wish I had a scout like yours. He was sweet to me this morning where some people might have been quite strict.’

The party assembled. There were three Etonian freshmen, mild, elegant, detached young men who had all been to a dance in London the night before, and spoke of it as though it had been the funeral of a near but unloved kinsman. Each as he came into the room made first for the plovers’ eggs, then noticed Sebastian and then myself with a polite lack of curiosity which seemed to say: ‘We should not dream of being so offensive as to suggest that you never met us before.’

‘The first this year,’ they said. ‘Where do you get them?’

‘Mummy sends them from Brideshead. They always lay early for her.’ When the eggs were gone and we were eating the lobster Newburg, the last guest arrived.

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t get away before. I was lunching with my p-p-preposterous tutor. He thought it ‘was very odd my leaving when I did. I told him I had to change for F-f-footer.’

He was tall, slim, rather swarthy, with large saucy eyes. The rest of us wore rough tweeds and brogues. He had on a smooth chocolate-brown suit with loud white stripes, suède shoes, a large bow-tie and he drew off yellow, wash-leather gloves as he came into the room; part Gallic, part Yankee, part, perhaps Jew; wholly exotic.  This, I did not need telling, was Anthony Blanche, the ‘aesthete’ par excellence, a byword of iniquity from Cherwell Edge to Somerville. He had been pointed out to me often in the streets, as he pranced along with his high peacock tread; I had heard his voice in the George challenging the conventions; and now meeting him, under the spell of Sebastian, I found myself enjoying him voraciously.  After luncheon he stood on, the balcony with a megaphone which had appeared surprisingly among the bric-a-brac of Sebastian’s room, and in languishing tones recited passages from The Waste Land to the sweatered and muffled throng that was on its way to the river.

‘I, Tiresias, have foresuffered all,’ he sobbed to them from the Venetian arches;

‘Enacted on this same d-divan or b-bed,

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall

And walked among the 1-1-lowest of the dead...’



And then, stepping lightly into the room, ‘How I have surprised them! All b-boatmen are Grace Darlings to me. ‘

We sat on sipping Cointreau while the mildest and most detached of the Etonians sang: ‘Home they brought her warrior dead’ to his own accompaniment on the harmonium.

It was four o’clock before we broke up.

Anthony Blanche was the first to go. He took formal and complimentary leave of each of us in turn. To Sebastian he said: ‘My dear, I should like to stick you full of barbed arrows like a p-p-pin-cushion,’ and to me: ‘I think it’s perfectly brilliant of Sebastian to have discovered you. Where do you lurk? I shall come down your burrow and ch-chivvy you out like an old st-t-toat.’

The others left soon after him. I rose to go with them, but Sebastian said: ‘Have some more Cointreau,’ so I stayed and later he said, ‘I must go to the Botanical Gardens.’ ‘Why? ‘

‘To see the ivy.’

It seemed a good enough reason and I went with him. He took my arm as we walked under the walls of Merton.

‘I’ve never been to the Botanical Gardens,’ I said.

‘Oh, Charles, what a lot you have to learn! There’s a beautiful arch there and more different kinds of ivy than I knew existed. I don’t know where I should be without the Botanical Gardens.’

When at length I returned to my rooms and found them exactly as I had left them that morning, I detected a jejune air that had not irked me before. What was wrong? Nothing except the golden daffodils seemed to be real. Was it the screen? I turned it face to the wall. That was better.

It was the end of the screen. Lunt never liked it, and after a few days he took it away, to an obscure refuge he had under the stairs, full of mops and buckets.  That day was the beginning of my friendship with Sebastian, and thus it came about, that morning in June, that I was lying beside him in the shade of the high elms watching the smoke from his lips drift up into the branches.

Presently we drove on and in another hour were hungry. We stopped at an inn, which was half farm also, and ate eggs and bacon, pickled walnuts and cheese, and drank our beer in a sunless parlour where an old clock ticked. in the shadows and a cat slept by the empty grate.

We drove on and in the early afternoon came to our destination: wrought-iron gates and Twin, classical lodges on a village green, an avenue, more gates, open park-land, a turn in the drive and suddenly a new and secret landscape opened before us. We were at the head of a valley and below us, half a mile distant, grey and gold amid a screen of boskage, shone the dome and columns of an old house.  ‘Well?’ said Sebastian, stopping the car. Beyond the dome lay receding steps of water and round it, guarding and hiding it, stood the soft hills.  ‘Well?’

‘What a place to live in!’ I said.

‘You must see the garden front and the fountain.’ He leaned forward and put the car into gear. ‘It’s where my family live’; and even then, rapt in the vision, I felt, momentarily, an ominous chill at the words he used - not, ‘that is my house’, but ‘it’s where my family live’.

‘Don’t worry,’ he continued, ‘they’re all away. You won’t have to meet them.’

‘But I should like to.’

‘Well, you can’t. They’re in London.’

We drove round the front into a side court - ‘Everything’s shut up. We’d better go in this way’ - and entered through the fortress-like, stone-flagged, stone-vaulted passages of the servants’ quarters - ‘I want you to meet Nanny Hawkins. That’s what we’ve come for’ - and climbed uncarpeted, scrubbed elm stairs, followed more passages of wide boards covered in the centre by a thin strip of drugget, through passages covered by linoleum, passing the wells of many minor staircases and many rows of crimson and gold fire buckets, up a final staircase, gated at the head. The dome was false, designed to be seen from below like the cupolas of Chambord. Its drum was merely an additional storey full of segmental rooms. Here were the nurseries.  Sebastian’s nanny was seated at the open window; the fountain lay before her, the lakes, the temple, and, far away on the last spur, a glittering obelisk; her hands lay open in her lap and loosely between them, a rosary; she was fast asleep. Long hours of work in her youth, authority in middle life, repose and security in her age, had set their stamp on her lined and serene face’.



‘Well, ‘ she said, waking; ‘this is a surprise.’

Sebastian kissed her.

‘Who’s this?’ she said, looking at me. ‘I don’ t think I know him.’

Sebastian introduced us.

‘You’ve come just the right time. Julia’s here for the day. Such a time they’re all having. It’s dull without them. Just Mrs Chandler and two of the girls and old Bert. And then they’re all going on holidays and the boiler’s being done out in August and you going to see his Lordship in Italy, and the rest on visits, it’ll be October before we’re settled down again. Still, I suppose Julia must have her enjoyment the same as other young ladies, though what they always want to go to London for in the best of the summer and the gardens all out, I never have understood. Father Phipps was here on Thursday and I said exactly the same to him,’ she added as though she had thus acquired sacerdotal authority for her opinion.

‘D’you say Julia’s here?’

‘Yes, dear, you must have just missed her. It’s the Conservative Women. Her Ladyship was to have done them, but she’s poorly. Julia won’t be long; she’s leaving immediately after her speech, before the tea.’

‘I’m afraid we may miss her again.’

‘Don’t do that, dear, it’ll be such a surprise to her seeing you, though she ought to wait for the tea, I told her, it’s what the Conservative Women come for. Now what’s the news? Are you studying hard at your books?’

‘Not very, I’m afraid, nanny,’

‘Ah, cricketing all day long, I expect, like your brother. He found time to study, too, though. He’s not been here since Christmas, but he’ll be here for the Agricultural, I expect. Did you see this piece about Julia in the paper? She brought it down for me. Not that it’s nearly good enough of her, but what it says is very nice. “The lovely daughter whom Lady Marchmain is bringing out this season...witty as well as ornamental...the most popular débutante”, well that’s no more than the truth, though it was a shame to cut her hair; such a lovely head of hair she had, just like her Ladyship’s. I said to Father Phipps it’s not natural. He said: “Nuns do it,” and I said, “Well, surely, father, you aren’t going to make a nun out of Lady Julia? The very idea!”’ Sebastian and the old woman talked on. It was a charming room, oddly shaped to conform with the curve of the dome. The walls were papered in a pattern of ribbon and roses. There was a rocking horse in the corner and an oleograph of the Sacred Heart over the mantelpiece; the empty grate was hidden by a bunch of pampas grass and bulrushes; laid out on the top of the chest of drawers and carefully dusted, were the collection of small presents which had been brought home to her at various times by her children, carved shell and lava, stamped leather, painted wood, china, bog-oak, damascened silver, blue-john, alabaster, coral, the souvenirs of many holidays.  Presently nanny said: ‘Ring the bell, dear, and we’ll have some tea. I usually go down to Mrs Chandler, but we’ll have it up here today. My usual girl has gone to London with the others. The new one is just up from the village. She didn’t know anything at first, but she’s coming along nicely. Ring the bell.’

But Sebastian said we had to go.

‘And miss Julia? She will be upset when she hears. It would have been such a surprise for her.’

‘Poor nanny,’ said Sebastian when we left the nursery. ‘She does have such a dull life.  I’ve a good mind to bring her to Oxford to live with me, only she’d always be trying to send me to church. We must go quickly before my sister gets back.’ ‘Which are you ashamed of, her or me?’



‘I’m ashamed of myself,’ said Sebastian gravely. ‘I’m not going to have you get mixed up with my family. They’re so madly charming. All my life they’ve been taking things away from me. If they once got hold of you with their charm, they’d make you their friend not mine, and I won’t let them.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m perfectly content. But am I not going to be allowed to see any more of the house?’

‘It’s all shut up. We came to see nanny. On Queen Alexandra’s day it’s all open for a shilling. Well, come and look if you want to...’

He led me through a baize door into a dark corridor; I could dimly see a gilt-cornice and vaulted plaster above; then, opening a heavy, smooth-swinging, mahogany door, he led me into a darkened hall. Light streamed through the cracks in the shutters. Sebastian unbarred one, and folded it back; the mellow afternoon sun flooded in, over the bare floor, the vast, twin fireplaces of sculptured marble, the coved ceiling frescoed with classic deities and heroes, the gilt mirrors and scagliola pilasters, the islands of sheeted furniture. It was a glimpse only, such as might be had from the top of an omnibus into a lighted ballroom; then Sebastian quickly shut out the sun. ‘You see,’ he said; ‘it’s like this.’

His mood had changed since we had drunk our wine under the elm trees, since we had turned the comer of the drive and he had said: ‘Well?’ ‘You see, there’s nothing to see. A few pretty things I’d like to show, you one day - not now. But there’s the chapel. You must see that. It’s a monument of art nouveau.’ The last architect to work at Brideshead had added a colonnade and flanking pavilions. One of these was the chapel. We entered it by the public porch (another door led direct to the house); Sebastian dipped his fingers in the water stoup, crossed himself, and genuflected; I copied him. ‘Why do you do that?’ he asked crossly.  ‘Just good manners.’

‘Well, you needn’t on my account. You wanted to do sight-seeing; how about this?’ The whole interior had been gutted, elaborately refurnished and redecorated in the arts-and-crafts style of the last decade of the nineteenth century. Angels in printed cotton smocks, rambler-roses, flower-spangled meadows, frisking lambs, texts in Celtic script, saints in armour, covered the walls in an intricate pattern of clear, bright colours.  There was a triptych of pale oak, carved so as to give it the peculiar property of seeming to have been moulded in Plasticine. The sanctuary lamp and all the metal furniture were of bronze, hand-beaten to the patina of a pock-marked skin; the altar steps had a carpet of grass-green, strewn with white and gold daisies.

‘Golly,’ I said.

‘It was papa’s wedding present to mama. Now, if you’ve seen enough, we’ll go.’ On the drive we passed a closed Rolls-Royce driven by a chauffeur; in the back was a vague, girlish figure who looked round at us through the window.  ‘Julia,’ said Sebastian. ‘We only just got away in time.’ We stopped to speak to a man with a bicycle - ‘That was old Bat,’ said Sebastian - and then were away, past the wrought iron,gates, past the lodges, and out on the road heading back to Oxford.

‘I’m sorry said Sebastian after a time. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t very nice this afternoon.

Brideshead often has that effect on me. But I had to take you to see nanny.’ Why? I wondered; but said nothing - Sebastian’s life was governed by a code of such imperatives. ‘I must have pillar-box red pyjamas,’ ‘I have to stay in bed until the sun works round to the windows,’ ‘I’ve absolutely got to drink champagne tonight!’ - except, ‘It had quite the reverse effect on me.’

After a long pause he said petulantly, ‘I don’t keep asking you questions about your family.’

‘Neither do I about yours.’

‘But you look inquisitive.’

‘Well, you’re so mysterious about them.’

‘I hoped I was mysterious about ‘everything.’

‘Perhaps I am rather curious about people’s families - you see, it’s not a thing I know about. There is only my father and myself. An aunt kept an eye on me for a time but my father drove her abroad. My mother was killed in the war.’ ‘Oh...how very unusual.’

‘She went to Serbia with the Red Cross. My father has been rather odd in the head ever since. He just lives alone in London with no friends and footles about collecting things.’

Sebastian said, ‘You don’t know what you’ve been saved. There are lots of us. Look them up in Debrett.’

His mood was lightening, now. The further we drove from Brideshead, the more he seemed to cast off his uneasiness - the almost furtive restlessness and irritability that had possessed him. The sun was behind us as we drove, so that we seemed to be in pursuit of our own shadows.

‘It’s half past five. We’ll get to Godstow in time for dinner, drink at the Trout, leave Hardcastle’s motor-car, and walk back by the river. Wouldn’t that be best?’ That is the full account of my first brief visit to Brideshead; could I have known then that it, would one day be remembered with tears by a middle-aged captain of infantry?

“我到过这儿，”我说。我以前到过那儿；二十多年前，在六月一个晴朗无云的日子里我第一次和塞巴斯蒂安一道去那儿，那时沟里长满淡黄色的绒线菊，空气里充满了夏天的芳香，那是特别晴朗的一天；虽然我常常去那儿，每次的心情都不一样，但是，在我这最后一次旧地重游时，心里回想起的却是我第一次的访问。

那一天，我也是漫无目的地来到这里的。那时在划船比赛周。牛津——像莱恩尼斯那块地方一样现在已经沉没，被人遗忘、不能复原了；海水很快把它淹没了——牛津，那时还是一座精雕细刻的城市。在她空阔、安静的街上，人们像在纽曼时代那样走路和说话；她秋天的雾，灰色的春天，她那难得的夏天的光辉——像那天那样——这时栗树开花，钟声清晰地高高飘过山墙和圆屋顶，散发出几个世纪的青春的柔和气息。是这种寂静使我们朗朗的笑声发出回响，使回声静静地、欢乐地在喧闹声中飘扬。在划船比赛周，一群妇女闹哄哄地来到这里，人数多达几百，她们嘁嘁喳喳，花枝招展地走在卵石路上，登上许多级台阶，游览观光，寻欢作乐，喝一杯杯红葡萄酒，吃面包夹腌黄瓜；撑着方头平底船在河上到处转，成堆地拥上大学游艇；她们出现在牛津泰晤士河上和大学生俱乐部里，爆发出一阵阵十分滑稽，叫人难受的吉尔伯特和沙利文式的逗笑的对话，她们在大学教室里的合唱特别引人注意。闯进来的这批人的喧闹声响遍了每个角落，在我们学院里，这闹声不是一般的喧闹，而是引起最粗俗骚乱的源泉。我们当时正在开舞会。在我居住的四方院子的前排楼房下已经铺起地板，支起帐篷，在门房周围摆满了棕榈和杜鹃花；最糟的是，那个住在我上面的胆小如鼠的管理自然科学学生的学监，把住房借给了外来人作女衣帽间，一张印好、宣布这桩侮辱性行为的招贴就挂在离我的橡木大门不到六英寸的地方。

对这件事情反应最强烈的是我的校工。

“凡是没有女朋友的先生们，请最近几天尽可能在外面用餐，”他沮丧地宣布。“您在学校吃午饭吗？”

“不在，伦特。”

“据说，为的是给下人们一个跳舞的机会。多么难得的机会！我得给女衣帽间买一个针插儿。他们跳舞干什么？我看毫无道理。以前在划船周从来没有跳过舞。庆祝舞会，那是另外一回事，那是假期中，不是在划船周举行的，仿佛喝茶还不够、泰晤士河还不够宽敞似的。先生，若是你问我原因的话，这全是因为战争。要不是战争，就不会发生这样的事情了。”因为这是在一九二三年，对伦特说来，就像对成千上万其他的人一样，世道再也不会和一九一四年一个样儿。“现在，晚上喝点酒，”他接下去说，照他的老习惯，半个身子在门里，半个身子在门外，“或者请一两位先生来吃午饭，这是有道理的。但是，不要跳舞。跳舞都是打仗回来的人带来的。他们年龄大了，他们没有学问，有不愿学习。真是这样，甚至有些人去城里共济会那儿同市民跳舞——学监会抓住他们的，你知道……哦，塞巴斯蒂安少爷来了，我不能站着闲聊，还得去买针插儿。”

塞巴斯蒂安进来——他穿条浅灰色法兰绒裤子，白绸上衣，打了一条时髦领带，上面印着邮票图案，恰巧像我那条。“查尔斯，你们学院究竟发生了什么事？来了马戏团吗？除了大象，我什么都看到了。我得说整个牛津一下子变得非常特别了。昨天晚上，女人的数目猛增起来。你得马上走，避开危险。我弄到了一辆摩托车，一筐草莓和一瓶法国佩拉基别墅的葡萄酒——这是你没有喝过的酒，别装蒜了。这种酒就草莓可美极了。”

“咱们上哪儿去？”

“去看一个朋友。”

“谁？”

“一个名叫霍金斯的。身上带点钱，万一看到什么东西好买。这辆摩托是一个名叫哈德尔斯卡的财产。如果我摔死了，替我把破车还给他；我摩托开得不太好。”

在大门外，在过去做过传达室的冬季花园外面，停了一辆敞篷双座摩托车。塞巴斯蒂安的玩具熊放在车辆上。我们把玩具熊放在我们两人中间——“当心别让他生病”——然后开车走了。圣玛丽教堂的大钟敲了九点；我们险些撞上一个牧师，那人戴着黑草帽，留着白胡须，骑着自行车，在大街上沿着逆行线自由自在前进。摩托车横过卡尔法克斯，开过车站，不久就到了波特莱路的田野上。在那时侯，很容易到达田野。

“天不是还早吗？”塞巴斯蒂安说，“女人们还在干她们下楼以前独自干的事情。懒散的习惯毁了她们。我们走了。上帝保佑车主人哈德卡斯尔。”

“哈德卡斯尔究竟是谁？”

“他本来打算和我们一道来。也是懒散的习惯毁了他。嗯，我跟他说过十点见。他在我们学院是个很阴郁的人。他过着一种双重人格的生活。至少，我认为他是这样。他不能够白天黑夜总是哈德卡斯尔，他能这样吗？——否则他就会腻味死了。他说他认识我父亲，这是不可能的。”

“为什么？”

“谁也不认识我爸爸。社会上人人都避开他。你没有听说过吗？”

“可惜咱们俩都不会唱歌。”我说。

在斯温敦我们离开大路，太阳高高升起时，我们已经到达不用灰泥砌的石墙和细方石砌的房屋中间了。大约十一点钟，塞巴斯蒂安没打招呼就把车开到一条大车道上停了下来。这时天气已经热得使我们得找个阴凉地方休息。我们在榆树下草尖被羊啃掉的小丘上吃草莓、喝酒——像塞巴斯蒂安许诺的那样，这两种东西一块吃味道很美——我们点上了土耳其大雪茄，仰卧在草地上，塞巴斯蒂安望着他上面的树叶，我望着他的侧影，灰蓝色的烟没有一丝风干扰，一直飘到深绿色树叶的阴影里，烟草的甜香和周围夏天的甜香混合在一起，再加上芬芳的金色葡萄酒，仿佛把我们托举起来，离草地一指高，使我们悬在空中。

“这正是埋一罐金子的好地方，”塞巴斯蒂安说，“我想在我幸福生活过的每一处地方埋一件宝贵的东西，等到我变得又老又丑和不幸的时候，我就可以回去把它挖出来，回忆往事。”

这是我进牛津后的第三个学期，但是，我把我和塞巴斯蒂安的结识看成我的牛津生活的开始，我是在上个学期中偶然遇到他的。我们不在同一个学院，来自不同的中学，如果不是一个偶然的机会，一天晚上他在我的学院喝醉了，而我住的又是四方院子前排底层的房间，我很可能上三四年大学也遇不到他。

我的堂兄贾斯珀警告过我住底层的房间是危险的。我刚到学校，只有他认为我是适合他细心指导的对象。我的父亲没有给我任何指导。当时，像往常一样，我父亲避免和我谈任何严肃的问题。直到上学前差不多两周时，他才提起学校这个题目，他迟迟疑疑、躲躲闪闪地说：“我正谈到你呢。我在科学俱乐部遇到你将来的院长。我想谈谈伊特拉斯坎人对永生问题的看法；他要谈给工人阶级增设讲座的问题；所以，我们互相让步，就谈起你来了。我问他将来给你多少补助。他说：‘三百镑一年；决不会再多给。大多数人都是这个数目。’我认为这是个可怜的数目。我上学时得的津贴比大多数人都多。我回想起来，在世界上任何地方，任何时候，想方设法多几百镑数目的差别都没有一个人的重要性和名声影响那么大。我考虑给你六百镑，”我父亲一边说，一边抽抽鼻子，每逢他感到有趣时就抽一下鼻子，“可是我想，假如院长听到了这事，他可能认为我存心对他不客气，所以，我还是给你五百五十镑。”

我谢了他。

“嗯，这是我娇惯你，但是，你知道，这全都是由存款里提出的……我想，到了我该忠告你的时候了。我自己从来没有得到过人家的指教，除了咱们的远房亲戚艾尔弗雷德特地骑着马到鲍通来指教我。你知道他忠告的内容吗？‘内德，’他说，‘有一件事我一定要求你做到。在校期间，每逢星期天都要戴礼帽，判断一个人，不靠别的，就靠他的礼帽。’你知道吗？”我的父亲一边接下去说，一边深深地抽一下鼻子，“我总是戴着礼帽的。有些人戴，有些人不戴。我从没有看到这两种人有什么不同，也没有听见有人议论过这一点。但我总是戴着礼帽。这样做，不过是表明，凡是切合时宜的、非常有见识的忠告能够产生什么样的影响。我希望我能给你提出些忠告，可是我没有。”

我的堂兄贾斯珀弥补了这种损失。他是我伯父的大儿子，我父亲不止一次半开玩笑地称他为“家长”。他读到四年级，估计这个学期结束以前就会获得穿上牛津大学划船队员蓝色衣着的荣誉；他是坎宁俱乐部的秘书和大学三年级公共休息室的总管；他是那个学院相当重要的人物。我上大学的第一周，他就来正式拜访我，留下来喝茶；他吃了很难消化的一顿：蜂蜜小圆面包，油浸鳀鱼烤面包片，富勒氏胡桃蛋糕，然后他点上烟斗，躺在柳条椅子上，定下我应当遵守的行动准则；他谈到很多题目，甚至今天我还能逐字逐句地背下他所说的许多话：“……你是学历史的吗？一门相当不错的学科。最坏的是‘英国文学’这一科。其次要数‘现代伟人传’。你或是争取第一名或是第四名。任何中间的名次都没有价值。为了获得一个名次好的第二名，你花在上面的时间等于白白丢掉了。你得去听最好的讲演——比如说，听阿克赖特论述德摩斯梯尼讲演——不管这些讲演是不是你的学院主办的——衣服嘛，就像你在乡间那样的穿着。千万不要穿花呢上衣配法兰绒裤——永远要穿成套的衣服。到伦敦裁缝店去做，那里剪裁好，赊欠的期限也长……俱乐部吗，现在参加卡尔顿俱乐部，二年级一开始，就参加格里德俱乐部。如果你要参加大学生俱乐部的竞选——这也不是件坏事情——首先在坎宁或查塔姆俱乐部把你的名声扬出去，然后在报纸上发表文章……不要去野猎山酒店……”对面山墙的上空映出霞光，然后就昏黑了；我往火炉里添一些煤，开了灯，看到他那条伦敦做的肥肥大大的运动裤和利安德牌领带很有气派。“不要像对待中学教师那样对待大学教师，应当像在家里对待教区牧师那样对待他们……你会发现，到二年级时你得花上半年时间去甩掉你在一年级结识的那些不中意的朋友……当心英国天主教徒——他们都是些口音很难听、搞鸡奸的人。事实上，你得机灵地避开一切宗教团体，它们只会招来祸害……”

他临走时说：“最后一点。调换一下房间。”我住的房间很宽敞，有向里凹陷的窗户，油漆过的十八世纪的镶花地板；我真走运，作为大一的学生就搞到这种房间。“我见过许多人，由于住在四方院子前排底层而毁掉了。”我堂兄严肃认真地说，“人们开始顺道进来。他们把外衣丢在你的房里，然后在吃饭前来取；你开始给他们喝雪利酒，你还不知道是怎么回事，你就给学院一切不良分子开了一个免费酒吧。”

我不知道我是否有意识地听从了他的忠告。我当然没有换房间；这房间窗下种了紫罗兰，在夏天的夜晚，我的房间充满了花香。

一个人回忆往事时，容易把伪造的早熟现象或装出来的天真神气赋予他的青春时代，就仿佛改变画在门边记录身高的日期一样。我很愿意想象——我有时的确那样想象——自己用莫里斯的作品和阿伦德尔的画片装饰这间房子，想象自己的书架上摆满十七世纪对开本的大书和用俄罗斯皮革和波纹绸做书皮的第二帝国时期的法国小说。但是这并不是事实。在我住进去的第一天下午，我就骄傲地把一副凡·高的《向日葵》复制品挂在壁炉上面，竖起一扇屏风，上面画着罗杰·弗赖画的普罗旺斯风景画，这扇屏风我是在欧米加工艺厂为还债而举行拍卖时廉价买来的。我还贴起了一张从诗歌书店弄来的麦克奈特·考弗和赖姆·希茨画的招贴画，而且，回忆起来最令我伤心的是，摆在壁炉架上两支细长黑蜡烛之间的一个波莉·皮奇恩的瓷像。我的书数量少而且很平常——罗杰·弗赖的《梦幻与设计》、美第奇出版社出版的《一个施拉普郡的少年》、《维多利亚时代名人传》、几本《乔治王朝诗选》、《罪恶的街》和《南风》——我早年的朋友在这个背景里显得很合适；这些朋友是科林斯，一个温彻斯特学院的成员，他是未来牛津大学的教师，一个学识广博、孩子脾气的人；还有一小群大学知识分子，这些人在浮夸的“唯美主义”和在伊弗莱路和惠灵顿广场的公寓里拼命收集事实的无产阶级学者两方之间保持着一种中间路线的文化。在我第一学期，我发现自己被这种知识界接纳了；他们给我提供了我在中学六年级所喜欢的朋友，而中学六年级又培养了我的这种性格。即使在我初进牛津的时候，牛津生活的全部内容有自己的房子和支票簿，虽然它是使我兴奋的源泉，但是我还是感到这并不是牛津非得提供给我的一切。

和塞巴斯蒂安一接近，这些灰色人物似乎静静地在背景里消失了，并变得无影无踪，他们像高原上的羊群没入雾霭笼罩的灌木丛中。科林斯曾经向我揭示过现代美学的谬误：“有意义的形式存在与否的全部论据决定于体积，如果你允许塞尚在他的两度空间的画布上表现出第三度空间，那么你就必须允许兰西尔在长耳狗的眼光里表现它的忠诚……”直到塞巴斯蒂安懒洋洋地翻着克莱夫·贝尔的《艺术》才念道：“‘谁对一只蝴蝶或一朵花的感情会像对一个大教堂或一幅画一样呢？’是的，我就感到，”直到他念到这地方，我才睁开了眼。

在我遇见塞巴斯蒂安之前，我就认得他的模样了。这是不可避免的，因为，由于他的引人注目的漂亮，怪僻的行为，在进校的第一周，他就是这一年新生中最惹人注目的人物了。我第一次见他是在杰默理发店里，那一次令我吃惊的不是因为他的外貌，而是因为他带了一只大的玩具熊。

“那位是，”理发师在我坐到椅子上时说，“塞巴斯蒂安·弗莱特少爷。一位非常有趣的青年绅士。”

“显然是的。”我冷冷地说。

“马奇梅因侯爵的二少爷。他的哥哥布赖兹赫德伯爵上学期离校了。那位可是大不一样，是一位安静的绅士，很像个老头儿。你猜塞巴斯蒂安来干什么？来给他的玩具熊要一把发刷，鬃毛要很硬的，不是用来梳熊毛，而是在他生气时用发刷打熊的屁股以吓唬它。塞巴斯蒂安买的是一只很漂亮的玩具熊，熊背是象牙做的，他让人在它的背上刻上‘阿洛伊修斯’的字样——这是熊的名字。”一个人在他那个年龄，可能已经厌倦了大学生的幻想，但是他显然给这头熊迷住了。可是，我对塞巴斯蒂安一直抱着吹毛求疵的态度，以后还见过他几次，一次他坐在双轮轻便马车上，一次他戴着假胡子在乔治餐厅用餐，虽然科林斯还在读弗洛伊德，能用许多专门名词解释一切，但是我对塞巴斯蒂安的印象仍然没有变好。

终于，我们见面了。这一次情况也是不吉利的。那是三月初一个晚上快到午夜时分，我正在请大学一些知识界朋友喝香甜的热葡萄酒；炉火熊熊，房间里充满烟味和香味，由于净谈抽象理论，我心里感到非常厌倦。我打开窗户，外面院子传来不平常的醉汉的笑声和不稳的脚步声。一个声音说：“停下”；另一个声音说：“来吧”；又一个说：“有的是时间……房屋……等到汤姆打完了电话再说”；另一个比其他的更清亮的声音说：“你知道，我感到非常难受。我得出去一会儿。”然后，一个面孔出现在我的窗口，我认出来这是塞巴斯蒂安，但是，那面容不像我以前看到的那样活泼和喜气洋洋；他用茫然的眼睛看了我一会儿，然后，弯着腰走进屋里，他病了。

宴会这样结束是件普通的事；事实上，遇到这种宴会，总要给校工一笔小费；我们大家都反复摸索着调制混合葡萄酒。塞巴斯蒂安在无路可走的时候选择了一扇开着的窗户，这样做带有一种疯狂和可爱的有条不紊的风度。但是，这毕竟是个不吉利的见面。

塞巴斯蒂安的朋友们把他背到大门口，几分钟后，他的东道主回来道歉，那是一个和我同年龄的、和蔼的、伊顿公学来的学生。他自己也喝醉了，他反复地解释，临到末了，眼泪汪汪的。“酒跟酒太不一样了，”他说，“问题不在数量上，也不在质量上。问题在于混合。理解这一点，你们就了解事情的真相了。了解一切就是原谅一切。”

“是的，”我说。可是第二天早晨受到伦特的责备时我就感到牢骚满腹了。


“你们五个人喝两大壶热葡萄酒，”伦特说，“这事非得发生不可。连窗口都去不了啦。那些喝不了的人就不要喝吧。”

“那不是我们请的客人。那个人是别的学院的。”

“不管是谁，收拾起来就够叫人恶心的了。”

“碗柜上有五先令。”

“我瞧见了。谢谢您。随便哪个早晨，我宁可不要这份钱，也不要收拾这些脏东西。”

我取了大衣走出去，让校工在那里收拾。那时侯，我还常常到教室去听讲，十一点后我才回到学院。我发现我房间里满是鲜花，那些花看起来实在够市场上一个花摊卖一整天的，凡是可以利用的瓶子都插上了花，我房间的每个地方都放上了花，我还看到伦特正在把最后的一些鲜花用牛皮纸包好，打算偷偷拿回家去。

“伦特，这么些花是哪儿来的？”

“先生，昨儿晚上来的那位先生放的，他给你留了个条子。”

下面的话是用彩色铅笔写在我的一大张我喜爱的上等图画纸上的：“我很后悔。阿洛伊修斯要到看见我被你饶恕了才会理我。因此，今天请你吃午饭。塞巴斯蒂安·弗莱特。”后来我回忆起，他毫无根据地认为我知道他住的地方，这是他的特点，其实，当时我并不知道。

“一位很有趣的先生，我相信，给他打扫是件十分快乐的事。先生，我想你要出去吃午饭吧。我这样告诉了科林斯先生和帕特里奇先生——他们本来要和你在食堂里吃饭的。”

“对的，伦特，我出去吃午餐。”

这次午餐——事实证明是个午餐会——是我生活中一个新时期的开始。

我去那里，心里却没有把握能否找到他的住处，因为那是个陌生的地方。我耳边响起一种微弱的、一本正经的、像科林斯的调子那样的声音，警告我最好不要去。可是那些日子我在寻求感情的安慰，我还是充满好奇心和怀着一种轻微的、不想承认的忧虑去了，感到终于会找到那扇矮门的，我知道在我以前别人已经找到了。这扇门通向一座用墙围起的、迷人的花园，这个花园位于这个阴沉的城市的中心，由哪扇窗子都望不见。

塞巴斯蒂安住在“基督教堂”，高踞在“草地大楼”中间。我到的时候只有他一个人，他从放在桌子中间的长了青苔的大鸟巢中取出一个鸟蛋，正在剥皮。

“我刚刚数了一下，”他说，“每人五个蛋，还多两个，因此我正在吃多出的两个。今天我饿极了。昨晚我拼命喝着两种名牌酒，酩酊大醉，醉得使我觉得昨晚的一切仿佛是个梦。请别弄醒我。”

他是迷人的，带着女性美，这是一种极端年轻的美，高唱着情歌，遇到头一阵寒风就凋谢了。

他的房间塞满了一堆乱七八糟的东西——一架装在中世纪式样盒子里的小风琴，一个像大象脚的废纸篓，一堆蜡制水果，两只大得和房间不相称的塞夫勒产的细瓷花瓶，几幅镶在框子里的杜米埃的画——由于朴素的大学家具和一张大餐桌，使这一切愈发显得不调和。他的壁炉架上摆满了伦敦女主人送来的请贴。

“霍布森这恶棍把阿洛伊修斯安置到隔壁房间去了。”他说，“也许这样也好，因为这里没有鸟蛋给他吃了。你知道吗，霍布森讨厌阿洛伊修斯。我希望我也有一个像你的校工那样的用人。今儿早晨他对我很和蔼，换了别人，可能对我很严厉。”

宴会的客人来齐了。其中有三位伊顿公学来的一年级学生，他们是温和、高雅、落落寡合的年青人，昨天晚上他们一道在伦敦参加了一个舞会，可是他们说起这件事来，仿佛是参加了一个对死者毫无感情的近亲的葬礼。每个人一进来就奔向鸟蛋，然后看看塞巴斯蒂安，又看看我，表现出客客气气的淡漠神气，仿佛说，“我们做梦也不敢冒昧地提醒你们，我们是初次见面。”

“今年头一次吃鸟蛋，”他们说。“你是打哪儿搞来的？”

“妈妈从布赖兹赫德庄园给我送来的。鸟儿总是早早地给她下蛋。”

吃完了鸟蛋，接着吃纽堡龙虾的时候，最后一个客人到了。

“亲爱的，”他说，“我一直走不开。我正在和我的古——古——古怪的导师共进午餐。我走的时候，他奇怪我为什么要离开他。我告诉他，我得回去换衣服踢——踢——踢足球。”

来人瘦高个儿，皮肤微黑，有一双漂亮的眼睛。我们这些人穿着粗花呢衣服和乡下人穿的结实皮鞋，而他穿了一套黑褐色带过分花哨的白条纹的衣服，一双小山羊皮鞋，打一个蝴蝶领结，一进房门就脱下黄软皮手套。他有点像法国人，又有点像美国佬，也许，还有点儿犹太人的味儿；完全是异国情调。

这人不用我说，是安东尼·布兰奇，一个“杰出的唯美主义者”，这个恶毒的绰号从切尔韦尔河畔一直叫到萨莫维尔城。当他神气活现、趾高气扬地走在大街上时，人们曾多次指给我看。在乔治教堂，我听到他旁若无人地大声嚷嚷向陈规旧习挑战，这会儿遇见他，受到塞巴斯蒂安的强烈影响，我发现自己也非常喜欢安东尼·布兰奇了。

吃完午饭，布兰奇拿了个意外出现在塞巴斯蒂安房间的古董中间的喇叭筒，站在阳台上，用喇叭筒冲着那群正要去泰晤士河边的、穿着厚运动衫、闷声不响的人，用疲惫的声音朗诵了《荒原》中的几段。

“我，帖瑞西斯，早就受尽了苦难，”他站在威尼斯式拱门那儿向那些人哭泣道：

“我在这张沙——沙发或床上扮演过，

我曾在底比斯城墙下坐过，

又曾在最卑——卑贱的死人中走过……”

然后，他轻捷地走进房里，“我把他们吓得够戗！对我说来，所有的划——划船手都是讨人喜欢的宝贝。”

我们坐下来喝橘味白酒，这时伊顿公学来的最温和、最落落寡合的客人奏起风琴给自己伴唱：“他们把她的阵亡战士带回家。”

四点我们才散。

安东尼·布兰奇头一个走。他轮流向我们每个人客气地告别。他对塞巴斯蒂安说：“亲爱的，我想在你身上插满有倒刺的箭，像插在个针——针——针插上一样。”又对我说，“我认为塞巴斯蒂安发现了你是件十分聪明的事。你藏在哪儿呢？我要钻进你的地洞里去，像赶鼬鼠一般把你赶——赶——赶出来。”

布兰奇走后，其他的人不久都走了。我站起来要和他们一块走，但是塞巴斯蒂安说：“还有点橘子酒呢。”因此，我就留下来，一会儿他说，“我得去植物园。”

“为什么？”

“去观赏那里的长春藤。”

听起来是个很好的理由，于是我同他一块儿去了。我们在默顿学院墙下走动时，他挽着我的胳臂。

“我从来没有去过植物园。”我说。

“哦，查尔斯，有多少东西你应该学习呵！那儿有一个美丽的拱门，有很多我没见过的品种繁多的长春藤。如果没有植物园，我真不知道我会去哪儿。”

最后，我回到自己的房间，发现那几个房间还是我那天早晨离开时的样子时，我感到一种沉闷的空气，这种感觉是从前从来没有的。出了什么毛病？除了金黄色的水仙花，似乎什么都不是真的。是那扇屏风吗？我把它翻转过来，让它面冲着墙。那样就好些了。

这就是那扇屏风的结局。伦特从来就不喜欢它，几天后，他把屏风搬到他贮藏东西的楼梯间里，那里放满了墩布和水桶。

那天是我和塞巴斯蒂安友谊的开始，于是就发生了这件事，六月的一个早晨，在高大的榆树阴下，我躺在他身旁，看着他嘴里吐出来的烟一直飘上枝叶间。


不久，我们开车前进，过了一点钟，我们饿了。我们在一家小旅馆前停下，那里本是个农场，我们吃鸡蛋、火腿、腌胡桃仁和干酪，在一间阴凉的客厅里喝啤酒，一架古老的挂钟在暗处滴滴答答地响，一只猫睡在空壁炉里。

我们继续开车前进，在下午较早的时候到达了目的地：两扇熟铁大门，乡间草地上两所古典式林间小屋，一条小路，两边种着树，又是一扇扇大门，开阔的停车场，汽车道拐弯的地方，眼前突然出现一片新的、幽静的风景。我们来到一个山谷顶上，我们看到下面半英里远的地方，绿树丛中闪现出一所古老宅子的圆顶和圆柱。

“怎么样？”塞巴斯蒂安停下车来问。在圆屋顶那一边出现一条河水逐渐远去，变得模糊，一片坡度很小的山峦卫护着、掩映着它。

“怎么样？”

“一个多么好的住处啊！”我说。

“你得看一看房前的花园和喷泉。”他俯身向前开动了摩托车。“这是我家住的地方。”那时我沉浸在如醉如痴的幻想中，听到他用的字眼我感到一种不祥的寒战——他用的不是“这是我的家”，而用的是“这是我家住的地方”。

“别担心，”他接着说，“他们全都走了，你不必会见他们了。”

“但是我愿意碰到他们。”

“哦，你见不到了。他们在伦敦。”

我们绕过了屋前，开进了一个侧院。“一切都锁上了。我们最好这边走。”我们的车从仆人住处的过道开过去，那里像个地堡，石板铺路，石头作顶。“我要带你去见见霍金斯保姆。这是我们来这里的目的。”我们登上没有铺地毯的、擦干净的榆木楼梯，沿着中间铺了一条窄粗呢地毯的宽木板路，经过铺着油布的过道，走过有许多小楼梯和几排深红色和金黄色救火水桶的楼梯井口，走上最后一道楼梯，尽头是一扇门。房屋的圆顶是假的，设计得从下面看上去像法国香波尔村屋顶的钟形小阁。那个圆顶不过是外加的一层楼，隔成了许多房间。这里是育婴室。

塞巴斯蒂安的保姆坐在敞开的窗口，她前面展现出喷泉，湖泊，小庙，远处，在最后一个山峦上闪烁着一个方尖塔；她的双手摊开放在膝上，一串念珠松松地拿在手间；她睡熟了。她年轻时代长时间的工作，中年时的权威，晚年的悠闲和保障都在她那布满皱纹、安详的脸上打下了烙印。

“哎呀，”她醒来说，“这真是料不到。”

塞巴斯蒂安吻她。

“这位是谁？”她看着我说，“我想，我没见过他。”

塞巴斯蒂安给我们介绍了一下。

“你来的正是时候。朱丽娅恰好在这里待一天。他们玩得多高兴啊。没有他们，这儿真够闷的，只有钱德勒太太、两个女孩和老伯特。以后，他们就都去度假了，八月份，锅炉工也要打发走了，你要去意大利看老爷和在那儿度假的朋友们，得到十月我们才会又安定下来。我还是认为朱丽娅一定要像别的年轻姑娘们一样享乐，虽然我一直不明白她们为什么总是在夏天最好的时候把花园丢下去伦敦。星期四菲普斯神父来这里，我跟他说的也是这番话。”她添上这样一句话，仿佛这样她的意见就得到了神权的保证。

“你说朱丽娅在这里吗？”

“在这里，亲爱的，你刚才一定是没有看见她。都怪那些保守党的妇女。小姐得照应她们，可是她身体不好，朱丽娅在家待不久，她一讲完话，不等喝茶，马上就走。”

“我担心我们又要见不着她了。”

“亲爱的，别那样，她看见你会又惊又喜的，虽然我告诉过她，她应该喝了茶再来，那些保守党的妇女就是为了喝茶才来的。好吧，告诉我有什么消息？你在用功读书吗？”

“奶妈，恐怕不很用功。”

“啊，我猜你整天在打板球，像你哥哥那样。可是，他还有时间读书。自从过了圣诞节，他就没有回过家，但是，我想，他会回家看农业展览的。你看到报纸上那篇关于朱丽娅的文章吗？她带来给我看了。倒不是这篇文章把朱丽娅说得太好了，而是文章里的话很好听。‘马奇梅因夫人的漂亮女儿在社交旺季由她母亲带出来……不但穿着华丽，而且聪明机智……成了最受欢迎的初进社交界的姑娘。’对，这话并不过分，可是，她把头发剪了，真不应该；她有一头多么好看的头发，就像太太的一样。我对菲普斯神父说这是不自然的。他说：‘修女们都这样做。’我就接下去说：‘哎呀，神父，你当然不会使朱丽娅小姐变成修女吧？这个主意可不行！’”

塞巴斯蒂安和老太太谈下去。这是一间可爱的房间，为了适合圆屋顶的形状，房间造得很特别。墙上糊着带条纹和玫瑰花图案的壁纸。屋角有一个能前后摆动的木马，壁炉架上有一张圣心的石印油画；空壁炉被一束南美洲大草原上的绿蒲苇和宽叶香蒲遮住，衣柜擦得很干净，顶上摆着孩子们在不同时期回家来带给她的一堆小礼物：雕刻的贝壳和熔岩，印花皮革，彩色木制品，瓷器，地下挖掘出来的橡木，有波形花纹的银器，萤石，雪花石膏制品，珊瑚，许多假日的纪念品。

过了不久，保姆说：“亲爱的，摇铃吧，我们喝茶。我往常下楼去和钱德勒太太一道喝茶，可是今天我们让人把茶送到这里来。我平常用的那个女孩和别人去伦敦了。新的是刚从村子里来的。起先她什么也不懂，可是她很有进步。摇铃吧。”

但是塞巴斯蒂安说我们得走了。

“不见朱丽娅小姐吗？她听到一定会难受的。你回家来会叫她又惊又喜。”

“可怜的奶妈，”塞巴斯蒂安在我们离开育婴室的时候说，“她的生活太沉闷了。我很想把她带到牛津和我一道生活，不过我怕她总叫我去做礼拜。趁着我妹妹还没有回来我们得赶快走。”

“你为谁害臊，为我还是为她？”

“为我自己。”塞巴斯蒂安严肃地说，“我不愿意你和我的家人在一起。我们家里的人漂亮得叫人神魂颠倒，在我的一生中，我家的人把我的东西都拿走了。一旦他们的迷人力量抓住了你，他们就会把你变成他们的朋友，不再是我的朋友了，我不允许他们这样做。”

“好吧，”我说，“你的话叫我很满意。可是，难道你不允许我在这儿再多看几处地方吗？”

“都关闭了。我们是来看保姆的。在亚历山大皇后忌辰到处都开放，只要花一先令就可以参观。好，如果你要看，那时来看吧……”

他领我通过一扇挂着厚羊毛毡的门，走进一条黑暗的走廊；我模模糊糊地看见上面的镀金檐板和拱形灰泥；然后，打开一扇沉重但开关灵活的桃花心木门，他领我走进一个漆黑的大厅里。光线从百叶窗的缝隙射进来。塞巴斯蒂安打开一扇百叶窗，把窗扇折起来；一片柔和的、金黄色的午后阳光倾泻进来，照在光秃秃的地板上，照在大理石雕的一对大壁炉上，照在画着古典神衹和英雄像的拱形天花板上，照在镀金的镜子和人造大理石壁柱上，照在用布遮起来的一堆堆家具上。这一切都是匆匆一瞥，好像从公共汽车的顶层瞥见一个灯火通明的舞厅，一闪而过，塞巴斯蒂安匆匆关上了窗户。“瞧，”他说，“就像这个样子。”

自从我们在榆树下喝了葡萄酒，自从我们的摩托车在车道上拐了弯，他说了句“怎么样？”——从这以后，他的心情显然起了变化。

“你明白了，没有什么好看的。我倒希望有一天给你看一些好看的东西——不是现在。可是，有一个小礼拜堂，你得去看看。那是一个‘新艺术’的纪念物。”

到布赖兹赫德工作的最后一位建筑师增添了一个柱廊和几个楼阁式的厢房。其中一个是小礼拜堂。我们从一扇公共门廊走进小教堂（另一扇门直通正屋）；塞巴斯蒂安把手指在圣水钵里蘸了一下，自己画个十字，然后跪下来；我也照他的样子做了。“你干吗这样做？”他不高兴地问。

“这不过是出于礼貌。”

“哦，你不必为了我这样做。你想观光，你看这儿怎么样？”

整个内部曾经被抢劫一空，现在又按照十九世纪最后十年的工艺重新陈设和装饰起来。许多穿着印花布罩衣的天使，攀缘蔷薇，花朵盛开的草地，轻轻摇晃的灯，凯尔特字体写的经文，穿甲胄的圣者：这一切以一片清晰的、色彩鲜明的复杂图案布满在墙上。有一个浅灰色的三联橡木雕刻，很像是从一个粘土模子中刻印出来的。圣灯和一切金属器物都是青铜制品，这些物件的外面是用手工敲打出来的密密的细点；圣坛的台阶上铺着草绿色地毯，上面点缀着白色和金黄色的雏菊。

“哎呀，”我惊叫了一声。

“这是爸爸送给妈妈的结婚礼物。好，如果你看够了，咱们就走吧。”

在汽车道上我们碰到一辆由司机开的紧关着的汽车，后面坐着一个女孩子模样的人，回头从窗子望着我们。

“这是朱丽娅，”塞巴斯蒂安说，“我们走的正是时候。”

我们停下来和一个骑自行车的人说话——“这是仆人老伯特，”塞巴斯蒂安告诉我——接着我们又开车走了，经过熟铁大门、仆人住房，开到大路上，直奔牛津。

“很抱歉，”过了一会儿塞巴斯蒂安对我说，“恐怕今天下午我的脾气不太好。布赖兹赫德这个地方总使我心情不痛快。可是，我不得不带你去看看保姆。”

这是为什么？我感到很惊奇；但是我什么都没有说——塞巴斯蒂安的生活总是按照那样的命令方式进行：“我必须买件宽大的红睡衣，”“我必须等到太阳照到窗户上才起床，”“今儿晚上，我绝对必须喝香槟酒！”——除了他认为“香槟酒对我有不好的效果”外，这句话他才不用命令式。

沉默了很久，他生气地说，“我并没有不断地打听你家庭的事。”

“我也不打听你的。”

“可是你看起来是要刨根问底。”

“嗯，你对家里的事太神秘了。”

“我希望我样样事情都很神秘。”

“也许我对人们的家庭存在着好奇心——你知道，这是我不懂得的事情。家里只有我和我父亲两个。一个姑妈照顾了我一个时期，可是我的父亲把她赶到国外去了。我母亲在大战中牺牲了。”

“哦……很不平常。”

“她跟红十字会到塞尔维亚去了。从此以后，我父亲的头脑就变得古怪了。他就一个人住在伦敦，没有朋友，净干收集古玩这种蠢事。”

塞巴斯蒂安说：“你不知道你省了多少事。我们家里人口多，可以查查《德布列特贵族年鉴》。”

塞巴斯蒂安现在心情变得轻松了。我们的车开得离布赖兹赫德愈远，他的不安也好像丢得愈远了——那是一种一直纠缠着他的隐秘的不安和烦恼。我们开着车，太阳已经落在身后了，这样一来，我们好像在追赶自己的影子似的。

“现在是五点半。我们还来得及到哈得斯托吃晚饭，在‘鳟鱼’酒店喝酒，把哈德卡斯尔的摩托车留下，沿着河边散步回去。这不太好了吗？”

这就是我头一次在布赖兹赫德短暂逗留的详情，那时我怎能想到，有一天，一个中年的步兵上尉会含着眼泪回忆起这块旧地来呢？


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爱就像蓝天白云，晴空万里，突然暴风雨！
举报 只看该作者 板凳   发表于: 2013-11-19 0

Chapter 2
TOWARDS the end of that summer term I received the last visit and Grand Remonstrance of my cousin Jasper. I was just free of the schools, having taken the last paper of History Previous on the afternoon before; Jasper’s subfuse suit and white tie proclaimed him still in the thick of it; he had, too, the exhausted but resentful air of one who fears he has failed to do himself full justice on the subject of Pindar’s Orphism.  Duty alone had brought him to my rooms, that afternoon at great inconvenience to himself and, as it happened, to me, who, when he caught me in the door, was on my way to make final arrangements about a dinner I was giving that evening. It was one of several parties designed to comfort Hardcastle - one of the tasks that had lately fallen to Sebastian and me since, by leaving his car out, we had got him into grave trouble with the proctors.

Jasper would not sit down; this was to be no cosy chat; he stood with his back to the fireplace and, in his own phrase, talked to me ‘like an uncle’.  ‘...I’ve tried to get in touch with you several times in the last week or two. In fact, I have the impression you are avoiding me. If that is so, Charles, I can’t say I’m surprised.  ‘You may think it none of my business, but I feel a sense of responsibility. You know as well as I do that since your - well, since the war, your father has not been really in touch with things lives in his own world. I don’t want to sit back and see you making mistakes which a word in season might save you from.

‘I expected you to make mistakes your first year. We all do. I got in with some thoroughly objectionable O.S.C.U. men who ran a mission to hop-pickers during the long vac. But you, my dear Charles, whether you realize it or not, have gone straight, hook line and sinker, into the very worst set in the University. You may think that, living in digs, I don’t know what goes on in college; but I hear things. In fact, I hear all too much. I find that I’ve become a figure of mockery on your account at the Dining Club. There’s that chap Sebastian Flyte you seem inseparable from. He may be all right, I don’t know. His brother Brideshead was a very sound fellow. But this friend of yours looks odd to me and he gets himself talked about. Of course, they’re an odd family. The Marchmains have lived apart since the war, you know. An extraordinary thing; everyone thought they were a devoted couple. Then he went off to France with his Yeomanry and just never came, back. It was as if he’d been killed. She’s a Roman Catholic, so she can’t get a divorce - or won’t, I expect. You can do anything at Rome with money, and they’re enormously rich. Flyte, may be all right, but Anthony Blanche - now there’s a man there’s absolutely no excuse for.’

‘I don’t, particularly like him myself,’ I said.

‘Well, he’s always hanging round here, and the stiffer element in college don’t like it.  They can’t stand him at the House. He was in Mercury again last night. None of these people you go about with pull any weight in their own colleges, and that’s the real test.  They think because they’ve got a lot of money to throw about, they can do anything.  ‘And that’s another thing. I don’t know what allowance my uncle makes you, but I don’t mind betting you’re spending double. All this,’ he said, including in a wide sweep of his hand the evidence of profligacy about him. It was true; my room had cast its austere winter garments, and, by not very slow stages, assumed a richer wardrobe. ‘Is that paid for?’ (the box of a hundred cabinet Partagas on the sideboard) ‘or those?’ (a dozen frivolous, new books on the table) ‘or those?’ (a Lalique decanter and glasses) ‘or that peculiarly noisome object?’ (a human skull lately purchased from the School of Medicine, which, resting in a bowl of roses, formed, at the moment, the chief decoration of my table. It bore the motto ‘Et in Arcadia ego’ inscribed on its forehead.) ‘Yes,’ I said, glad to be clear of one charge. ‘I had to pay cash for the skull.’ ‘You can’t be doing any work. Not that that matters, particularly if you’re making something of your career elsewhere - but are you? Have you spoken at the Union or at any of the clubs? Are you connected with any of the magazines? Are you even making a position in the O.U.D.S.? And your clothes!’ continued my cousin. ‘When you came up I remember advising you to dress as you would in a country house. Your present get-up seems an unhappy compromise between the correct wear for a theatrical party at Maidenhead and a glee-singing competition in a garden suburb.  ‘And drink - no one minds a man getting tight once or twice a term. In fact, he ought to, on certain occasions. But I hear you’re constantly seen drunk in the middle of the afternoon.’

He paused, his duty discharged. Already the perplexities of the examination school were beginning to reassert themselves in his mind.

‘I’m sorry, Jasper,’ I said. ‘I know it must be embarrassing for you, but I happen to like this bad set. I like getting drunk at luncheon, and though I haven’t yet spent quite double my allowance, I undoubtedly shall before the end of term. I usually have a glass of champagne about this time. Will you join me?’

So my cousin Jasper despaired and, I learned later, wrote to his father on the subject of my excesses who, in his turn, wrote to my father, who took no action or particular thought in the matter, partly because he had disliked my uncle for nearly sixty years and partly because, as Jasper had said, he lived in his own world now, since my mother’s death.

Thus, in broad outline, Jasper sketched the more prominent features of my first year; some detail may be added on the same scale.

I had committed myself earlier to spend the Easter vacation with Collins and, though I would have broken my word without compunction and left my former friend friendless, had Sebastian made a sign, no sign was made; accordingly Collins and I spent several economical and instructive weeks together in Ravenna. A bleak wind blew from the Adriatic among those mighty tombs. In an hotel bedroom designed for a warmer season, I wrote long letters to Sebastian and called daily at the post: office for his answers. There were two, each from a different address, neither giving any plain news of himself, for he wrote in a style of remote fantasy - ...’Mummy and two attendant poets have three bad colds in the head, so I have come here. It is the feast of S.  Nichodemus of Thyatira, who was martyred by having goatskin nailed to his pate, and is accordingly the patron of bald heads. Tell Collins, who I am sure will be bald before us. There are too many people here, but one, praise heaven! Has an ear trumpet, and that keeps me in good humour. And now I must try to catch a fish. It is too far to send it to you so I will keep the backbone...’ - which left me fretful. Collins made notes for a little thesis pointing out the inferiority of the original mosaics to their photographs. Here was planted the seed of what became his life’s harvest. When, many years later, there appeared the first massive volume of his still unfinished work on Byzantine Art, I was touched to find among two pages of polite, preliminary acknowledgements of debt, my own name: ‘...to Charles Ryder, with the aid of whose all-seeing yes I first saw the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia and San Vitale...’

I sometimes wonder whether, had it not been for Sebastian, I might have trodden the same path as Collins round the cultural water-wheel. My father in his youth sat for All Souls and, in a year of hot competition, failed; other successes and honours came his way later, but that early failure impressed itself on him, and through him on me, so that I came up with an ill-considered sense that there lay the proper and natural goal of the life of reason. I, too, should doubtless have failed, but, having failed, I might perhaps have slipped into a less august academic life elsewhere. It is conceivable, but not, I believe, likely, for the hot spring of anarchy rose from the depths where was no solid earth, and burst into the sunlight - a rainbow in its cooling vapours - with a power the rocks could not repress.

In the event, that Easter vacation formed a short stretch of level road in the precipitous descent of which Jasper warned me. Descent or ascent? It seems to me that I grew younger daily with each adult habit that I acquired. I had lived a lonely childhood and a boyhood, straitened by war and overshadowed by bereavement; to the hard bachelordom of English adolescence, the premature dignity and authority of the school system, I had added, a sad and grim strain of my own. Now, that summer term with Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence. At the end of the term I took my first schools; it was necessary to pass, if I was to remain at Oxford and pass I did, after a week in which I forbade Sebastian my rooms and sat up to a late hour, with iced black, coffee and charcoal biscuits, cramming myself with the neglected texts. I remember no syllable of them now, but the other, more ancient lore which I acquired that term will be with me in one shape or another to my last hour.  ‘I like this bad set and I like getting drunk at luncheon’; that was enough then. Is more needed now?

Looking back, now, after twenty years, there is little I would have left undone or done otherwise. I could match my cousin Jasper’s game-cock maturity with a sturdier fowl. I could tell him that all the wickedness of that time was like the spirit they mix with the pure grape of the Douro, heady stuff full of dark ingredients; it at once enriched and retarded the whole process of adolescence as the spirit checks the fermentation of the wine, renders it undrinkable, so, that it must lie in the dark year in, year out, until it is brought up at last fit for the table.

I could tell him, too, that to know and love one other, human being is the root of all wisdom. But I felt no need for these sophistries as I sat before my cousin, saw him, freed from his inconclusive struggle with Pindar, in his dark grey suit, his white tie, his scholar’s gown; heard his grave tones and, all the time, savoured the gillyflowers in full bloom under my windows. I had my secret and sure defence, like a talisman worn in the bosom, felt for in the moment of danger, found and firmly grasped. So I told him what was not in fact the truth, that I usually had a glass of champagne about that time, and asked him to join me.

On the day after Jasper’s Grand Remonstrance I received another, in different terms and from an unexpected source.

All the term I had been seeing rather more of Anthony Blanche than my liking for him warranted. I lived now among his friends, but our frequent meetings were more of his choosing than mine, for I held him in considerable awe.  In years, he was barely my senior, but he seemed then to be burdened with the experience of the Wandering Jew. He was indeed a nomad of no nationality.  An attempt had been made in his childhood to make an Englishman of him; he was two years at Eton; then in the middle of the war he had defied the submarines, rejoined his mother in the Argentine, and a clever and audacious schoolboy was added to the valet, the maid, the two chauffeurs, the pekinese, and the second husband. Criss-cross about the world he travelled with them, waxing in wickedness like a Hogarthian page boy. When peace came they returned to Europe, to hotels and furnished villas spas, casinos, and bathing beaches. At this age of fifteen, for a wager; he was disguised as a girl and taken to play at the big table in the Jockey Club at Buenos Aires; he dined with Proust and Gide and was on closer terms with Cocteau and Diaghilev; Firbank sent him novels with fervent inscriptions; he had aroused three irreconcilable feuds in Capri; by his own account he had practised black art in Cefalù and had been cured of drug-taking in California and of an Oedipus complex in Vienna.

At times we all seemed like children beside him - at most times, but not always, for there was a bluster and zest in Anthony which the rest of us had shed somewhere in our more leisured adolescence, on the playing field or in the school-room; his vices flourished less in the pursuit of pleasure than in the wish to shock, and in the midst of his polished exhibitions I was often reminded of an urchin I had once seen in Naples, capering derisively with obscene, unambiguous gestures, before a party of English tourists; as he told the tale of his evening at the gaming table, one could see in the roll of his eye just how he had glanced, covertly, over the dwindling pile of chips at his stepfather’s party; while we had been rolling one another in the mud at football and gorging ourselves with crumpets, Anthony had helped oil fading beauties on sub-tropical sands and had sipped his apéritif in smart little bars, so that the savage we had tamed was still rampant in him. 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 apéritif.’

At the George bar he ordered ‘Four Alexandra 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 motorcar.

‘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 comer 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?ade’s in the vieux port at Marseille, until suddenly I was disturbed by such a bawling and cater-wauling as you never heard, and there, down in the little piazza, I saw a mob of about twenty terrible young men, and do 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.” Of course you’ve met Boy? He’s always popping in and out of dear Sebastian’s rooms. He’s everything we dagos expect of an English lord. A great parti I can assure you. All the young ladies in London are after him. He’s very hoity-toity with them I’m told. My dear, he’s scared stiff. A great oaf - that’s Mulcaster - and what’s more, my dear, a cad. He came to le Touquet at Easter and, in some extraordinary way, I seemed to have asked him to stay.  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 Duc 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 would be art ecstasy of the very naughtiest kind. 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 Mulcaster 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 put him in Mercury one night,” and their barnyard 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 m’ 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 school boys; 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 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 I 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 really tickled me four years ago. 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 step-father 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...I never heard anyone speak an ill word of Stefanie, except-the Duke: and she, my dear, is positively cretinous.’ 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. I don’t suppose he’ll ever let you meet them. He’s far too clever. They’re quite, quite gruesome. Do you ever feel there is something a teeny bit gruesome about Sebastian? No? Perhaps I imagine it; it’s simply that he looks 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 snow-bound lama...Well, anything you like. And Julia, 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. 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 finger-tip 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 magnifico, 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 Marchmain 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 Porson - such attitudes, my dear, like Madame Récamier; 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 Pa?oses. 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 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 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 is others of all ages and sexes, like wraiths following her around. They never escape once she’s had her teeth into them. It is withcraft. 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 should be like juggling; up go the balls and the plates, up and over, in and out, 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 soapsud 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.’ 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 tomorrow 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 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 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 puppyish romps and tumbles, explains the distress of that hagridden night. No dream distorted the images of the evening into horrific shapes. I lay awake and clear-headed. I repeated to myself Anthony’s words, catching his accent, soundlessly, and the stress and cadence of his speech, while under my closed lids 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 standing in groups, smoking; Jasper had bicycled in from his digs to be among them.

I walked down the empty Broad to breakfast as I often did on Sundays at a tea-shop 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 tea-shop was hushed as a library, a few solitary men in bedroom slippers from Balliol and Trinity 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, slip-slop, 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 churchgoers 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 liturgics 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 Plays Unpleasant 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 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 today. 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 Duchesse of Vincennes?’

‘Poppy?’

‘Stefanie.’

‘You must ask Antoine that. He claims to have had an affair with her.’

‘Did he?’

‘I dare say. I think it’s more or less compulsory at Cannes. 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?’

And then Boy Mulcaster came into the room.

将近夏季学期末尾，我接受了我的堂兄贾斯珀最后一次访问和重要的规劝。我刚好没有课，前天下午已经考完史学学位的初试；贾斯珀的黑衣服和白领带表明他还处在紧张的时刻；他神色疲惫，满腹怨气，就像一个人担心在考试品达的神秘音乐这门学科中没有充分发挥自己的才能的样子。那天下午仅仅是出于责任心才促使他到我房里来，这对他、对我都是很不方便的事。他在门口碰到我的时候，我偏巧要出去安排当天晚上请客的事。这是计划用来安慰哈德卡斯尔的几次宴会中的一次——落到我和塞巴斯蒂安身上的一项任务，因为，我们把哈德卡斯尔的摩托车丢在外面，使他遭到学监的严厉指责。

贾斯珀不愿意坐下；这可不是一场情投意合的谈话，他背朝壁炉站着，用他自己的话说，“像个伯伯”一样对我讲话。

“最近一两个星期我几次设法跟你接触，实际上，我觉得你在躲避我。查尔斯，如果真是这样的话，我倒并不感到意外。

“你也许认为这不关我的事，但是我感到有责任管。你像我一样清楚，自从你的——嗯，自从战争开始，你父亲事实上已经不问世事——生活在自己的世界里。我不愿意不闻不问，看着你犯错误，本来只消及时说一句话，就可以使你避免犯错误。

“我预料你第一学期会犯错误。我们都犯下错误。我认识了一群十分讨厌的牛津学生教会联合会会员，他们给摘啤酒花的工人办了个暑期传教团。可是你呢？亲爱的查尔斯，不管你自己是否认识到，你完完全全同这个大学最坏的一伙人混到一起了。你也许认为，我住在宿舍里，大学里的事我一点都不知道，可是，我听得见。事实上，我听到的太多了。我发现，因为你的缘故，我在饭厅俱乐部里成了人家讥笑的对象。有个叫塞巴斯蒂安·弗莱特的家伙，你好像跟他混得难分难舍。他也许不坏，这个我不知道，他的哥哥布赖兹赫德是个正常的人。但是，我看你那位朋友却很古怪，他引起了人们的议论。当然，他们的家庭很古怪。你知道，自从战争开始以来，马奇梅因夫妇就分居了。真是一件怪事；人人都认为那是一对恩爱夫妻。后来，他带着仆人去法国，再也不回英国了。他仿佛被人杀死了。她是一个罗马天主教徒，她不能离婚——或者不愿离婚，我想。在罗马，有钱就能办到一切，而他们是大阔佬。弗莱特可能不坏，可是安东尼·布兰奇呀——这是个绝对不能原谅的人。”

“我自己并不特别喜欢他，”我说。

“哦，他老在这里转悠，学校里的强硬分子不喜欢这件事。他们一看见他在宿舍出现就受不了。昨天晚上他又被扔在水星池里。你带着到处转悠的那些人在他们自己的学院里都不好好地工作，这才是真正能说明问题的事。他们认为，因为他们的钱多得可以到处撒，所以他们什么事都可以干。

“那是另外一回事。我不知道我叔叔给你多少钱。我敢打赌，你会花两倍于此的数目。这一切东西，“他一边说，一边挥挥手把他所指的挥霍浪费的证据都包括进去。的确，我的房间已经换掉了它朴素的冬装，相当迅速地成了一个丰富多彩的藏衣室。“这个付了钱吗？”（那是放在餐具橱上的装有一百个小格的盒子。）“还有这些呢？”（那是书桌上十几本毫无价值的新书。）“还有那个特别讨厌的东西？”（最近从医学院买来的死人头盖骨，放在一盆玫瑰花中，当时这是我书桌上的主要摆设。头盖骨前额上刻有拉丁文题词：“我也曾有过田园牧歌的生活”）

“付了，”我说，因为消除这条罪状，我感到十分高兴。“买这个头盖骨我得付现钱。”

“你不可能在干任何事情，这倒还不要紧，特别是如果你在其他方面做出一番事业来——你在做吗？你在大学俱乐部或任何俱乐部里讲演过吗？你和哪种杂志有联系？你在牛津大学剧社有没有一个位置？可是瞧你这身打扮！”我的堂兄接着说，“我记得，你刚上学时，我劝过你要穿得像在乡间一样。你现在的装束好像是把参加梅登海德的剧团活动的服装和参加郊区花园合唱比赛的服装不伦不类地混合起来了。

“谈到喝酒——如果一个人一个学期里喝醉一两次，谁也不会注意。事实上，在某种情况下，他应该喝。我听说，人家看到你常常下午喝得醉醺醺的。”

他停住了，他尽了责任。担心考试的心情又开始在他心里顽强地出现了。

“贾斯珀，很抱歉。”我说，“我知道这一定使你烦恼，可是，我恰恰就喜欢这批坏人。我喜欢午饭时喝醉酒。虽然我的花费不到爸爸给我津贴的两倍。我相信，不到学期结束我就会花到两倍的。我通常到这时候要喝一杯香槟酒。你跟我一道喝一杯好吗？”

这样一来，我的堂兄贾斯珀感到没有办法了，我后来听说，他给他父亲写信说我挥霍无度，他父亲又把这话写信告诉了我父亲，可是我父亲对这件事并没有采取什么行动，也没有特别在意，一个原因是他六十年来一直不喜欢我伯伯，另一个原因是，我父亲自从我母亲一死，就过着与世隔绝的生活。

就这样，贾斯珀把我大学第一年生活的显著特点粗略地描画出来了；有一些细节还得同样粗略地添上去。

我早些时候答应过科林斯和他一道过复活节假期，如果塞巴斯蒂安表示要和我在一起，我就会毫无内疚地食言，把科林斯撇在一边，但是塞巴斯蒂安并没有什么表示；因此，科林斯同我在腊万纳过了几周节俭的、有益的生活。亚得里亚海的一阵冷风吹到这里巨大的坟墓间。在设计得适合于暖和气候居住的旅馆房间里，我给塞巴斯蒂安写了几封长信，我天天去邮局等他的回信。收到他两封信，每封信都寄自不同的地点，没有一封信把他自己的近况明白地告诉我，因为他用的是一种抽象的、幻想式的文体——“妈妈和两个陪同的诗人都患了三次厉害的伤风头痛，所以我到这儿来了。这是圣·尼古登墨斯·泰亚第亚的节日，这个圣者因为头顶被钉上块羊皮而殉教，所以，他是一切秃顶人的保护神。告诉科林斯，我相信他会比我们早秃顶。这里的人太多了，但是，感谢上帝，有一个人戴了个喇叭形的助听器，这使得我很开心。现在我得去捉一条鱼。咱们离得太远了，我不能把鱼送给你，因此，我要把鱼的脊骨留下来……”——这种信看了叫我心烦。科林斯写了一篇小论文，指出镶嵌细工的原件不如照片那么好看。在这里种下了他一生有成就的种子。多年以后，他出版了尚未完成的论拜占廷艺术的第一卷巨著，我深为感动，发现在该书前言两页内容客气的感谢辞中有我的名字：“感谢查尔斯·赖德，借助他洞察一切的眼光，我第一次看到普拉西底亚和圣维太尔的陵墓……”

有时我不知道，如果不是塞巴斯蒂安，我会不会走上这条同科林斯一样的研究文化的艰苦道路。我父亲年轻时曾参加过牛津大学万灵学院的考试，但是经过一年激烈的竞争后，他失败了；后来，他有机会得到别的成功和光荣，但是他早年的失败深深影响了他，又通过他影响了我，因此，我产生了一种不明智的想法，以为这就是理智生活固有的、当然的目标。无疑我将来也会失败，但是失败以后，我可能在别处滑到不太严格的学术生活方面去。控制不住的温泉从大地深处迸出，以岩石无法压制的力量喷射到阳光中——在它的逐渐冷却的水汽中出现一条彩虹：这样的事情是可以想象的，但是我认为是不可能的。

结果，那个复活节假期在贾斯珀警告我要避免的极陡峭的斜坡上形成一段短短的平路。下降还是上升？我觉得随着我获得的每一种成年人的习惯，我一天天地变得更年轻了。我度过了寂寞的童年，度过了备受战争苦难和由于丧母而变得黯淡无光的少年时代；除了英国人在青春时期感受到的单身的艰苦，除了早熟的自尊心和学校制度的压制，我还添上了自己所独有的悲哀而冷酷的性格。在和塞巴斯蒂安一块儿度过的那个夏季学期中，我仿佛获得了我前所未有的一段幸福童年，虽然这个时期的享受不过是绸衬衣、甜酒和雪茄烟；这时的淘气，在严重罪恶分类中也属于一种轻罪，但我们身上有一种婴儿似的清新，不乏天真之乐。到了这学期末，为了要继续留在牛津大学，我参加了第一次大学学位考试，经过一个星期禁止塞巴斯蒂安到我房间里来，学习到深夜，喝冰镇咖啡，吃炭饼干，把荒疏了的功课填满脑袋以后，我通过了考试。如今，那些东西我一个字也记不得了，但是那学期中获得的另一些古代的学问，则将以这样或那样的形式陪伴我到生命的最后一刻。

“我喜欢这一群坏人，我喜欢午饭时喝酒，那就够了。现在我还需要什么呢？”

现在过了二十年，我回顾往事，很少事没有干过，或者不那样干的。我可以像斗鸡一样，用一只更强壮的种鸡斗败我堂兄的公鸡，斗败他的世故老成。我可以告诉他，那时的邪恶行为就像人们把酒精掺进杜罗河区的纯葡萄汁里，那是一种满是黑色混合物的、醉人的东西。那种邪恶既丰富了青春的历程，又放慢了青春的速度，就像那种酒一样，控制了葡萄的发酵，使之不能饮用，必须年复一年藏在黑暗的地窖里，直到最后酿造得适于摆在桌上供人饮用。

我还可以告诉他，一切知识的来源在于了解并爱人类中另一个成员。但是，当我坐在我堂兄面前，看到他不再与品达进行无结果的斗争，穿着深灰色衣服，打着白领带，罩上学士长袍，听他的严肃的声调，一直闻着盛开在窗下的紫罗兰花香气，这时我感到我的诡辩毫无必要了。我在感到危险的时刻就摸摸我的秘密的可靠避邪物，像佩在胸前的护身符一样。我找到这东西，紧紧抓住它。因此我对他说的并不是真话，说什么我通常在这时要喝一杯香槟，并邀请他和我一道喝。


在贾斯珀的庄严训诫之后第二天，我接受了另一次训诫，这次用语不同，来源也不同。

整个学期，倒不是我喜欢，我见到安东尼·布兰奇的次数相当多。我现在生活在他的朋友当中。但是我们频繁见面，与其说是出于我自己的意愿，倒不如说是出于他的意愿，因为我对他是有点敬而远之的。

就年龄而论，他只比我大一点，但是那时候，他似乎有着流浪的犹太人的经历。他的确是个无国籍的游民。

他幼年时，家里曾打算把他培养成为一个英国人；他在伊顿公学上过两年学；后来，在战争中，他不顾遇上潜艇的危险，横渡大西洋去阿根廷和母亲团聚，这个聪明大胆的中学生加入到男女仆人、两个司机、一头小狮子狗和她母亲的第二个丈夫的行列中。布兰奇和他们一起周游世界，变得邪恶得像画家霍格斯笔下的小侍僮。大战结束，他们回到欧洲，住豪华旅馆、疗养胜地，逛游乐场所，去海滨浴场。十五岁时，作为赌注，他被打扮成个女孩，带到布宜诺斯艾利斯赛马总会的大台上表演；他同普鲁斯特和纪德一道进餐，同加图和第雅基烈夫往来亲密；费班克送他好几部长篇小说，上面写着热烈的题词，他在卡普里岛引起了三场不可和解的冤仇；他自己说在切法卢曾干过魔术的营生，在加利富尼亚治好了吸毒瘾，在维也纳治好了恋母情结。

有些时候，与他比起来我们都像孩子——大部分时间是这样，但并不总是这样，因为安东尼身上有一种疯狂和热情，这种狂热会在我们闲暇时的青春时期某些地方表现出来，比如在运动场上，或者在教室里；安东尼的恶劣行为，与其说是为了寻欢作乐，还不如说是为了要别人吃惊，他的精心表演常常令我回想起在那不勒斯遇到的一个顽童。这个顽童在一群英国旅游客人面前用明显下流的动作可笑的蹦蹦跳跳着。当安东尼谈到他晚上在赌桌上的情形时，我们从他的乱转的眼珠里看出他怎样贪婪地盯着他继父的逐渐减少的筹码；当我们在泥泞里翻滚着踢足球，狼吞虎咽吃松脆的圆饼的时候，安东尼已经在亚热带沙漠中帮助漂亮的妇女们做减肥治疗，在漂亮的小酒吧间小口小口的吸饮饭前的开胃酒，因此，我们身上已经驯服了的野性在他身上却仍然难以控制。安东尼也一样残酷，任性得就像爱随意残害小昆虫的孩子，他还像一个大胆的小学生一样，低下头对班长挥舞着小拳头。

他邀我去吃饭，我发现自己单独和他一起吃，心里颇感不安。“我们到泰姆去，”他说，“那儿有一家可心的饭店，幸好这家没有引起布林敦学院的人们的注意。我们要喝莱茵酒，想象我们自己在……在什么地方？不会是和约——约——约罗克兄弟一块儿出去游览。但是，我们首先喝一点饭前酒，帮助消化。”

在乔治酒吧间，他命令说：“请来四杯亚历山大鸡尾酒，”他把酒放在自己面前，同时发出品尝美味时响亮的“啧啧”声，引得人人都愤怒地瞪着他。“我想你比较喜欢雪利酒，但是，亲爱的查尔斯，不许你喝雪利酒。这不是一种很可口的混合酒吗？你不喜欢这酒吗？那么，我替你干杯。一、二、三、四——四杯下了肚。瞧，那些学生怎样盯着我！”然后他领我出去坐上等着的汽车。

“希望我们不会在那里遇到大学生。目前我对他们毫无好感。你听到星期四他们怎么对待我的吗？太不像话了。幸亏那晚上我穿的是最旧的睡衣裤，而且那晚上天气很闷热，否则我真要发脾气了。”安东尼有个习惯，说话时爱把脸贴近对方；甜甜的、发出奶油味的鸡尾酒味沾染了他的气息。我侧过身子躲着他，坐在出租汽车的角落里。

“亲爱的，你想象一下我的情形吧，单身一个，勤奋用功。我刚刚买到一本相当可怕的书名叫《滑稽的圆舞》，我知道我必须在星期天去加辛顿之前读完，因为每个人都得谈谈对这本书的看法，要说没有读过这部当代作品，就显得太没有修养了。我想解决的办法就是不去加辛顿，但是我现在才想出这个办法。所以，亲爱的，我就带了一个煎蛋饼，一个桃子和一瓶维希矿泉水，穿上睡衣，安下心来看书。我得承认我思想不集中，但是我一页一页地翻下去，一边看白昼的光渐渐暗淡，亲爱的，这种光景在佩格泉这地方是很值得体验的——随着夜幕降临，周围的石头好像在眼前渐渐变得模糊了。这光景让我回忆起马赛旧港一些建筑物正面的鳞状石块，直到突然间一阵你从未听到过的怪叫声惊醒了我，我看见游廊上来了一群乱嘈嘈的二十来个可怕的青年人。你知道他们在唱什么吗？他们用连祷文式的语言吟唱：‘我们大家都要布兰奇，我们大家都要布兰奇’这样公开宣布！得，我看今晚上赫胥黎的小说算是吹了。我得说，我腻烦透了的时候，什么打搅我都欢迎。这样的高声歌唱搅乱了我，可是你知道吗？他们唱的声音越响，他们就表现得越胆小，他们不停地问：‘博伊在哪儿？布兰奇是博伊·马尔卡斯特的朋友。’‘博伊一定把他带来了。’你当然见过博伊？他总是在亲爱的塞巴斯蒂安房间里进进出出。他完全是我们南欧人心目中的英国贵族。我敢保证，他是一个理想的对象。伦敦的小姐都追求他。人家说，他对小姐们很傲慢。亲爱的，他吓呆了。一个大笨蛋——马尔卡斯特就是这样一个人——而且，亲爱的，他还是一个无赖。复活节那天，他来到图居艾饭店，我破例请了他留下来。他玩牌输了一点钱——结果，他要我付他请客的钱——好呀！马尔卡斯特参加了他们一伙；我看见他笨拙的身子在楼下慢吞吞地走着，听到他说：‘不行。他出门了。我们回去喝杯酒吧？’这样，我把头伸到窗户外对他说，‘老寄生虫马尔卡斯特，你这马屁精晚上好吗？你躲在这群小伙子中间吗？为了你在娱乐场勾搭上的娼妇，我借给你三百法郎，你是来还我钱的吗？这点钱也解救不了她的困难，她的困难可大啦，马尔卡斯特。来还给我钱，你这流氓！’

“亲爱的，这话好像给了他们一点生气，他们吵吵嚷嚷地上了楼。大约有六个人进了我的房子，其他的人站在外边大声嚷嚷。亲爱的，他们看起来太古怪了，他们已经吃了俱乐部的可笑晚餐，他们都穿着带色的燕尾服——一种制服！‘亲爱的，’我对他们说，‘你们像一群无法无天的用人。’这时其中一个有趣的小伙子，骂我搞同性恋爱。‘亲爱的，’我说，‘我也许搞同性恋爱，可是我不是没个够的。等你一个人的时候再来吧。’接着他们开始说一些不堪入耳的下流话，我突然也恼怒起来。‘真的，’我想，‘这时我想起我十七岁时遇到的所有麻烦事，文森尼公爵（是老阿曼德，并非年轻的菲利普）为了我和公爵夫人（当然是年轻的斯蒂芬妮，而不是老太婆波比）的爱情关系、而且比爱情关系还严重的关系，要和我决斗，我——现在决不能忍受这群长着脓包、喝醉了的小兔崽子们的无礼举动……’嗯，我放弃了轻松的开玩笑的口吻，采取了一点点攻势。

“这时，他们开始说，‘抓住他，把他扔到水星池里。’瞧，你是知道的，我有两座布兰库西的雕塑，还有几件漂亮东西我不愿意他们撒野给破坏了，我就安静地对他们说，‘亲爱的漂亮的乡下佬，如果你们懂得一点性心理学的话，你们就会知道，我最大的快乐莫过于让你们这些肉乎乎的孩子们粗暴对待了。那将是一种最下流的狂欢。因此，如果你们当中谁想当我的伴儿，就来抓住我吧。如果，相反地，你只想满足某种模糊的、不容易归类的性欲，要看我洗澡，好小丑们，就安静地跟我去水池边吧。’

“你知道，听了我的话，这些人都变傻了。我和他们一起下楼去，没有人敢近在咫尺。然后，我跳进了水池，你知道，池水的确非常凉爽，因此我就在那里游了一会儿，玩了几个花样，直到他们转身恼怒地走了。我听到博伊·马尔卡斯特说：‘我们毕竟把他扔到水星池里去了。’查尔斯，你知道，这就是他们会说上三十年的话。当他们都跟瘦得像皮包骨的母鸡一样的女人结了婚，生下一群像他们自己一样痴呆的小猪似的儿子的时候，当他们穿着同样颜色的上衣在同一个俱乐部吃晚饭时喝醉了酒，当人们提到我的名字时，他们还会说，‘有天晚上，我们曾把他扔进水星池里，’而他们的在谷仓前空地上游玩的女儿们会窃笑不已，说她们父亲年轻时简直是个无赖，可惜老了时变得那么迟钝。啊，劳累的北方人！”

我知道，这并不是安东尼第一次被人撵进水里，可是这件事好像老挂在他心上，他在晚餐时又提起来。

“你不能想象塞巴斯蒂安会遇到这样倒霉的事情，是不是？”

“是的，”我说，“我不能想象。”

“是的，塞巴斯蒂安有魅力，”他对着烛光举起盛着德国葡萄酒的玻璃杯，重复说，“很有魅力。你知道吗？我第二天顺便去看望塞巴斯蒂安。我想，他可能对我那天晚上碰到的事情感兴趣。你猜，除了他那只有趣的玩具熊以外——我还看到了什么？我看到马尔卡斯特和昨天晚上他的两个好朋友。他们的样子显得很愚蠢——而塞巴斯蒂安像《苯——苯——笨拙》周刊上的旁——旁——旁松比——德——汤姆金斯太太一样镇静自若。他说：‘当然啰，你认识马尔卡斯特勋爵。’于是那几个白痴说：‘我们只是来看看玩具熊阿洛伊修斯怎么样了。’因为他们像我们一样发现玩具熊很有趣——或者，我可否这样说，比我们更感到有趣？于是他们走了。我说：‘塞——塞——塞巴斯蒂安，你是否了解那批拍——拍——拍马屁的鼻涕虫昨晚侮辱了我，如果不是天气还暖和，我很可能得了重——重——重感冒。’他说：‘可怜的家伙们。我想他们喝醉了。’你看，他替谁都说好话；这就是他的魅力。

“我看他把你完全迷住了，亲爱的查尔斯。嗯，我并不觉得奇怪。当然，你认识他没有我认识他的时间长。我在中学和他同学。你可能不相信，那几年人们常说他是个小坏蛋；只有几个野孩子跟他好。当然，在通俗音乐会里人人都喜欢他，当然，所有的教员都喜欢他。我猜想，他们的确羡慕他。他好像从来没有遇到过麻烦。我们其他人常常为了很小的事情狠狠地挨一顿揍，塞巴斯蒂安可从来没有挨过打。他是我们寄宿舍里唯一没有挨过打的孩子。我现在还记得他十五岁时的样子。你举不出他的缺点来；其他所有的孩子都有缺点。博伊·马尔卡斯特的确是道德败坏。但是塞巴斯蒂安可不是。或者他有一点缺点，是不是他的脖子后面有一种顽疾？现在，我想起来，他有。美少年那喀索斯就有一个小疙瘩。他和我两人都是天主教徒，所以我们过去常常一块儿去望弥撒。他经常在忏悔室里待很长时间，我常常纳闷他有什么可忏悔的，因为他从来没有做过什么错事，从来没有犯过什么大错误；至少，他从来没有受过处罚。也许，这么在忏悔室里全盘地倒一倒，他就会显得很迷人。你知道，我心里老有一团疑云——我不知道为什么称之为疑云；我觉得那是一道不受欢迎的光；这团疑云包括和我的导师的一系列折磨人的会见。令人惊奇的是，事实证明那位温和的老先生多么明察秋毫。他所了解的我的事情——我想，除了塞巴斯蒂安谁也不可能知道的。这是一个教训：决不要轻信温和的老先生——或者是漂亮的学生；到底信哪一个呢？

“我们再来一瓶这样的葡萄酒，或者一瓶别的什么酒？别的酒么，厉害的、老陈勃艮第葡萄酒，好吗？查尔斯，你知道，你的爱好我全懂。你必须跟我去法国喝葡萄酒。我们要在葡萄收获期去。我带你去文森尼家住。他们的葡萄已经收获完了，他有法国最好的葡萄酒；他和波塔伦亲王的葡萄酒是最好的——我还要把你带到亲王那儿去。我想他们会使你喜欢，当然他们也会喜爱你。我要把我的很多朋友介绍给你。我对科克多谈了你的情况。他非常希望见到你。亲爱的查尔斯，我知道你是个很难得的人，一个艺术家。哦，你一定不要不好意思。在你冷淡的、英国式的恬静的外表下，你是个艺术家。我看到你藏在屋里的那些小画儿。那些画儿很精致。而你，亲爱的查尔斯，如果你懂得我的意思，你不是很精致的；一点也不精致。艺术家都不是精致的人。我是精致的，塞巴斯蒂安在某方面是精致的，但是艺术家是那种不朽的类型，坚强，目的明确，观察敏锐——而且，在这一切表面下面，是热——热——热情，查尔斯，是吗？

“可是，谁承认你呢？前几天我对塞巴斯蒂安谈起你来，我说，‘不过你知道，查尔斯是个艺术家，他画得像年轻的安格尔一样。’——你知道塞巴斯蒂安怎么说来着？他说：‘是的，玩具熊阿洛伊修斯画得也很漂亮，不过他当然比较时新。’多有魅力，多有意思。

“当然，有魅力的人未必真的需要头脑。四年前斯苔芬妮·德·文森尼真使我心头痒痒的。亲爱的，我甚至用和她用的同样颜色的指甲油涂我的脚趾甲。我和她说同样的话，照她的派头点纸烟，我在电话里用她的声调和公爵谈话，使得公爵误认为对方就是她，而和我进行了长时间的、亲密的对话。这是因为公爵的心思照老习惯都放在手熗和军刀上。我的继父认为这对我是最好的教育。他认为这样做会使我逐渐摆脱他所谓的我的‘英国习惯’，可怜的人，他是个地道的南美洲人。除了那位公爵我从来没有听见任何人说斯苔芬妮一句坏话，而她呢，亲爱的，她肯定患了呆小病。”

安东尼谈他的过去的浪漫史，说到得意处就一点儿也不口吃了。由于喝了咖啡和甜酒，他暂时回忆起往事来。“真正的绿——绿——绿色修道院窖酒，在驱逐僧侣以前酿造的。当那种酒慢慢地从舌头上流过去时，会尝到五种不同的味道。你仿佛吞下了一道光——光——光谱。你希望塞巴斯蒂安和我们在一起吗？你当然愿意啰。我愿意吗？我不知道。我们的思想自然会逗留在那种小小的魅力上。查尔斯，我想你一定在对我施催眠术啦。我带你到这儿来，不惜花一大笔钱，亲爱的，只为了谈谈我自己，而我发现，我除了谈到塞巴斯蒂安什么人都没有谈到。奇怪的是，塞巴斯蒂安怎么会出生在那样一个非常邪恶的家庭里，除此之外，他真的没有什么神秘的了。

“我忘了你是否知道他的家庭。我想，他不会让你遇到他的家庭成员的。他太聪明了。他家里的人是非常、非常令人厌恶的。你感觉到塞巴斯蒂安身上有一点儿令人厌恶的神气？没有？也许这是我的想象；不过有时他看起来和他家庭其他成员像极了。

“这里是布赖兹赫德，他这人有点古板，好像是埋葬了好几个世纪刚从洞窟里挖出来的。他的脸，好像墨西哥印第安人（阿兹台克人）的雕刻家试着刻出来的塞巴斯蒂安的雕像；他是一个有学问的顽固分子，一个讲礼貌的野蛮人，一个被雪困住的喇嘛……嗯，你说是什么都行。而朱丽娅呢，你知道她长的什么样儿。有什么办法呢？她的照片像比奇门药丸的广告一样，经常出现在画报上。她的脸有着佛罗伦萨文艺复兴时期那种无暇的美。任何一个这样美貌的人都会对艺术感兴趣；朱丽娅小姐可不是这样；她像——嗯，像斯苔芬妮一样漂亮。她的脸色一点也不带青黄色。她非常快乐、端正、自然。我不知道她是否有乱伦行为。我怀疑这一点，她需要的只是权力。应当特别建立一个宗教法庭去判她火刑。我想，她还有一个妹妹在上学。还不了解她的任何情况，只知道她的家庭女教师发了疯，不久前投水自杀了。我相信她很坏。所以，你知道，可怜的塞巴斯蒂安除了表现得温柔和迷人以外，就没有别的办法了。

“当人们谈起父母时，那就深不可测啰，亲爱的，这样一对夫妇。马奇梅因夫人是怎么办到的？这是个时代问题。你见过她吗？非常、非常美的；不打扮，她的头发刚刚出现几缕高雅的银丝，不涂胭脂，脸色苍白，大眼睛——让人惊奇的是那双眼睛，显得非常大，两个眼睑上布满了蓝色微血管，这在别人得用指尖沾上油彩才能涂成这种蓝色；戴着几颗珍珠和闪闪发光的大宝石，一些古代镶嵌的传家宝。她的声音像祷告一样轻，一样有力。而马奇梅因勋爵呢，嗯，他也许稍微胖了一点，但是很漂亮，一个威尼斯式贵族，一个酒色之徒，一个拜伦式的人物，厌倦、富有感染力的懒散姿态，但决不是那种你看一眼就忘掉的人。亲爱的，那个莱茵哈特的修女毁了他——把他完全毁了。他的紫色大脸膛不敢在任何地方露面。他的确是被社会丢弃的最后一个历史性人物。布赖兹赫德不愿意见他，女孩子们不可以见他，当然塞巴斯蒂安见他，因为他是个讨人喜欢的人。再没有别人走近马奇梅因勋爵了。呃，去年九月，马奇梅因夫人在威尼斯，住在福格利埃府邸。老实告诉你，她在威尼斯实在有点荒唐可笑。当然，她从来没有走近利多海滨浴场，但是她总是和艾德里安·波森爵士一起坐着平底小船在运河上游荡——亲爱的，就像勒加米埃夫人；有一次我路过他们身边，我看到福格利埃家的船夫，这个人，你知道，亲爱的，我是认识的，他朝着我使了个眼色。她像蜘蛛牵丝似的，参加一切社交集会，亲爱的，仿佛她是凯尔特戏剧中的一个角色，或是梅特林克戏剧中的女主人公；而且她常常到教堂去。嗯，你知道，威尼斯是意大利唯一没有人上教堂的城市。无论如何，她是那一年中颇为可笑的人物，那时能乘坐马尔登家的游艇露面的人，除了可怜的马奇梅因勋爵还有谁呢？他在那儿买下一幢邸宅，可是，允许他上游艇吗？马尔登勋爵把他和仆人放在橡皮救生艇上，亲爱的，当时就把他送到开往里雅斯特的汽船上。他连他的情妇也没有带。谁也不知道他们怎么会听说马奇梅因夫人在那儿。你可知道，整整一个星期，马尔登勋爵见人就悄悄溜走，仿佛丢了脸似的？他的确丢了脸。福格利埃亲王夫人开了个舞会，她没有邀请马尔登勋爵和那艘游艇上的任何人参加——甚至没有请德·帕诺塞斯。这一点马奇梅因夫人是怎样办到的呢？她使社会人士相信马奇梅因勋爵是一个坏人。事实的真相是怎样的呢？那时，他们结婚大约已经十五年了，后来，马奇梅因勋爵打仗去了；他一去不返却和一个很有才能的舞蹈家发生了关系。这种事情何止成千上万？她拒绝和他离婚，因为她笃信宗教。嗯，这种纠纷也有不少先例，通常人们总是同情奸夫；但是，人们对马奇梅因勋爵可不同情。你可能以为这个老恶棍折磨了她，偷盗了她的家产，把她丢出门外，把她的孩子们烧烤了，填上作料，吃掉了，自己却颈上挂着罪恶的所多玛城和蛾摩拉城的种种花环到处去寻欢作乐；除此之外，还会有什么别的呢？她给他生了四个漂亮的儿女，她把自己要用的全部金钱都交给了布赖兹赫德庄园和在圣·詹姆士教堂那儿的马奇梅因府邸，可是他却穿着雪白的衬衫，按照最合乎爱德华七世时代传统的样式，带着个漂亮的中年女戏子坐在海鸥戏院里。与此同时，她养了一群奴性十足的、消瘦的囚犯供她独自享受。她吸他们的血。艾德里安·波森洗澡的时候，你可以看到他肩膀上被她咬的牙印。而他，亲爱的，他是当代唯一的最伟大的诗人。他精竭血枯；什么都没有留下。还有另外五六个不同年龄和性别的人，像幽灵似的围着她转。一旦她的牙齿咬住了他们，他们就永远也逃不掉。这是妖术。除此之外，不可能有别的解释。

“所以，你要明白，如果塞巴斯蒂安有时好像缺乏一点生气，我们千万不要骂他——查尔斯，你不骂他吧，是不是？有着这样阴暗的背景，他别无他法，只有装出单纯和讨人喜欢的神气，特别因为他生来没有头脑。我们不能要求他这点，尽管我们很爱他，我们能这么要求吗？

“坦白告诉我，你听见塞巴斯蒂安说过任何能让你记得五分钟的话吗？你知道，我听他说话时，就不由得想起令人厌恶的‘吹泡泡’的绘画来。谈话应当像杂技表演，把球儿和盘子扔上去，一个比一个高，一个上去，一个下来，结实的好东西，给舞台脚灯的灯光照得亮晃晃的，如果一失手就会砰的一声摔下来。可是，亲爱的塞巴斯蒂安说起话来就像从古老的陶制吹管吹出来的一片肥皂泡，瞬时间到处都是五光十色的虹彩，接着——噗的一声消失了，什么都没有留下，什么都没有。”

接着，安东尼又谈到艺术家特有的经验，谈到艺术欣赏，谈到他希望来自朋友们的欣赏、批评和鼓舞，谈到追求情感时会冒的风险，谈这谈那，这时我变得昏昏欲睡，思绪迷离恍惚了一阵。于是我们开车回去，但是当我们的车摇摇晃晃开过毛德琳桥时，他的话令我回忆起我们晚餐时谈话的主题，“嗯，亲爱的，我相信，明儿早晨你头一件事就是风急火燎地去塞巴斯蒂安那里，把我议论到他的一切情况都告诉他。我愿意告诉你两点：一是，这丝毫也不影响塞巴斯蒂安对我的感情；二是，亲爱的——虽然我显然使你厌烦得昏昏欲睡起来，我请求你记住这一点——这就是，他会马上谈他的有趣的玩具熊。再见，愿你好好睡一觉。”


可是我睡得并不好。昏昏沉沉地倒在床上不到一小时我就醒来了，又渴又不安，一阵冷一阵热，异常激动。我喝了很多酒，但是无论是混合酒，修道院的老窖酒，还是马弗罗·达伏尼甜酒，还是因为我整晚一动不动，一言不发地坐着，没有像惯常那样出去跑跑颠颠，透透气，都说明不了我这一夜痛苦得仿佛受到女巫折磨的原因。我没有做噩梦把晚间所见的形象歪曲成可怕的样子。我清醒地躺着。我暗自念叨着安东尼的话，默默地学他的语调，学他说话的抑扬顿挫，同时我合着眼，还能看到他坐在餐桌对面。看到他被烛光照着的苍白面孔。在黑夜中，我一度去起居室把画册带到灯光前，坐在窗户前随意翻看，在四方院子里，一切都是漆黑的，死一般的寂静；只有钟声每隔一刻钟响一次，在山墙上鸣响着。我喝汽水，抽烟，烦躁不安，直到天蒙蒙亮，瑟瑟的微风把我送上床。


我醒来时，伦特站在开着的房门口。“我让你多睡会儿，”他说，“我想，你不会去参加全体圣餐仪式的。”

“一点儿也不错。”


“一年级学生大部分都去了，还有相当多的二三年级学生。都因为新来的教堂牧师。以前从来不举行全体圣餐仪式——只让需要的人领圣餐，还有规定了次数的礼拜和晚礼拜。”

这是这个学期最后的礼拜日，也是一年最后的礼拜日。当我去洗澡时，四方院子里大批穿着学士服的大学生从礼拜堂走进饭厅。我洗完澡回来，他们正成群地站着抽烟；贾斯珀骑着自行车，从他的宿舍出来加入那群人中间。

我照星期天的惯例，走过阒无一人的一片空地，到伯利约学院对面的茶食店去吃早饭。空气中充满了周围教堂传来的钟声，太阳把长长的影子投在空旷的地上，驱散了我昨晚的恐怖。茶食店像图书馆一样寂静，几个从伯利约学院和三一学院来的孤独的人，穿着寝室的拖鞋，我进来时他们抬头看了我一眼，然后又回头去看星期日报纸。我带着一夜没睡的青年人的好胃口吃着炒鸡蛋和苦味的柠檬酱。我点燃一支烟，继续坐着，这时伯利约学院和三一学院的学生一个个付了账，懒洋洋地拖着脚步走过大街，回各自的学院去了。我离开时将近十一点钟，我一边走，一边听到全市变调的钟声停止了，换成一种单一的钟声，告诉全市，礼拜就要开始了。

那天上午出来的好像只是些去教堂做礼拜的人；大学的在校学生和毕业生，家庭妇女和生意人，用那种准确无误的英国人上教堂时的步子走着，这种步子既不匆忙，又不懒散；手上拿着黑羔皮和白赛璐珞封面的五六种不同教派的祷告书；分别走向圣·巴纳巴斯教堂，圣·哥伦巴教堂，圣·阿洛伊丝教堂，圣·玛丽教堂，蒲塞会堂，黑衣僧会堂，还有些天知道叫什么名字的教堂，走向重建的诺尔曼式和翻新的哥特式教堂，走向滑稽可笑模仿威尼斯和雅典式样的教堂；人们都在夏天的阳光下走向本民族的庙宇。四个骄傲的不信教的人单独宣告他们不信教，四个印度人从伯利约学院出来，穿着新洗的法兰绒衣服和熨过的颜色鲜艳的运动衣，头上缠住雪白的头巾，他们棕色的胖手上拿着鲜艳的垫子，一个野餐的饮食篮子和肖伯纳的《不快意的戏剧》，向河边走去。

在谷物市场，一群游客站在克拉伦敦旅馆台阶上，同他们的司机讨论一张交通图，这时候，我通过一个名叫金十字架建筑的古老拱门，向对面我们学院的一群大学生打招呼，他们已经吃完早餐，现在拿着烟斗，在爬满常春藤的庭院中散步。也要去教堂的一队童子军，带着颜色鲜艳的缎带和徽章，队列不整齐，慢慢跑过去。在卡尔法克斯，我遇到了市长和市政府的人，他们穿着红色长袍，挂着金链，前面是仪仗队，在行人冷淡的眼光下，排队去市教堂里听传道。在圣·阿尔得兹大街，我遇到一队唱诗班的孩子，他们戴着浆硬的衣领和特别的帽子，正向汤姆门和大教堂走去。就这样，我穿过虔诚的世界去找塞巴斯蒂安。

他不在家。我读了散放在他书桌上的一些信，找不到头绪，仔细看了看他放在壁炉台上的请帖——没有什么新的。于是，我读着《女人变狐狸》一直等到他回来。

“我在旧王宫教堂望弥撒。”他说，“这个学期我一次也没有去过，管理员贝尔上星期两次请我去吃饭，我知道他是什么用意。妈妈曾给他写过信。所以，我一屁股坐在前面他不会看不到我的地方，在礼拜快结束时高呼‘福哉马利亚’。你跟安东尼晚饭吃得怎么样？你们谈些什么？”

“大部分时间都是他在讲。告诉我，你在伊顿公学认识他吗？”

“在我上第一个学期时他被开除了。我记得他常在我周围转悠。他一向是一个惹人注目的人物。”

“他和你一块儿上过教堂吗？”

“我想没有去过。问这些干什么？”

“他见过你家里什么人吗？”

“查尔斯，你今天为什么这么古怪？没有见过，我想没有。”

“也没有在威尼斯见过你母亲？”

“我想，关于这点她曾谈起过。我记不起说的是什么了。我记得她和我们的几个意大利表兄妹待在一起，福格利埃一家人，安东尼和他家的人来到那个旅馆，但是福格利埃家举办的某次宴会没有邀请安东尼一家子。我记得，在我告诉妈妈安东尼是我的朋友时，她才说起这件事来。我不知道他为什么希望参加福格利埃家的宴会——那个亲王夫人，她为她的英国血统感到自豪，她只谈这一件事，别的什么也不谈。不管怎样，没有人对安东尼抱着反感——我想人们对他没有抱着强烈的反感。人家认为难以相处的是他母亲。”

“文森尼公爵夫人是谁呢？”

“是波比吗？”

“斯苔芬妮。”

“这你就得问安东尼了。他自己说和她有一段罗曼史。”

“真的？”

“我相信是真的。我想，在戛纳时，这件事多少有些勉强。你为什么那么感兴趣？”

“我只想知道安东尼昨天晚上说的有多少是真话。”

“我想一句真话也没有。这就是他最大的妙处。”

“你可能认为这是妙处。我却认为这是可怕的。你知道不知道，他昨天整晚都在竭力使我反对你，而且差不多成功了。”

“真的吗？真蠢。阿洛伊修斯根本不会相信的，你，你这头相当自负的老熊，还会相信他吗？”

这时，博伊·马尔卡斯特进房里来了。


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爱就像蓝天白云，晴空万里，突然暴风雨！
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Chapter 3
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 my 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 used to tease me - ‘You spend money, like a bookie’ - but all of it 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. 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 frogged 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, I 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 I purchase from Sonerscheins - 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 whisky.’

‘There’s whisky. 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 Barbizon 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? Stonybroke?’ (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 épergne. 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 I 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 watchchain 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 me 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, get me a cab.’ Then he would be away, sometimes for half an hour or less, sometimes 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 mind 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 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.?’

‘Unchanged.’

‘It was inspired by your Aunt Philippa. She gave Mrs Abel ten menus, and they have never been varied. When I am alone I do not notice what I eat, but now that you are here, we must have a change. What would you like? What is in season? Are you fond of lobsters? Hayter, tell Mrs Abel to give us lobsters tomorrow night.’ Dinner that. evening consisted of a white, tasteless soup, overfried fillets of sole with a pink sauce, lamb cutlets propped against a cone of mashed potato, stewed pears in jelly standing on a kind of sponge cake.

‘It is purely out of respect for your Aunt Philippa that I dine at this length. She laid it down that a three-course dinner was middle-class. “If you once let the servants get their way,” she said, “you will find yourself dining nightly off a single chop.” There is nothing I should like more. In fact, that is exactly what I do when I go to my club on Mrs Abel’s evening out. But your aunt ordained that at home I must have soup and three courses; some nights it is fish, meat, and savoury, on others it is meat, sweet, savoury - there are a number of possible permutations.

It is remarkable how some people are able to put their opinions in lapidary form; your aunt had that gift.

‘It is odd to think that she and I once dined together nightly just as you and I do, my boy. Now she made unremitting efforts to take me out of myself. She used to tell me about her reading. It was in her mind to make a home with me, you know. She thought I should get into funny ways if I was left on my own. Perhaps I have got into funny ways.  Have I? But it didn’t do. I got her out in the end.’

There was an unmistakable note of menace in his voice as he said this.  It was largely by reason of my Aunt Philippa that I now found myself so much a stranger in my father’s house. After my mother’s death she came to live with my father and me, no doubt, as he said, with the idea of making her home with us. I knew nothing, then, of the nightly agonies at the dinner table. My aunt made herself my companion, and I accepted her without question. That was for a year. The first change was that she reopened her house in Surrey which she had meant to sell, and lived there during my school terms, coming to London only for a few days’ shopping and entertainment. In the summer we went to lodgings together at the seaside. Then in my last year at school she left England. ‘I got her out in the end,’ he said with derision and triumph of that kindly lady, and he knew that I heard in the words a challenge to myself.  As we left the dining-room my father said, ‘Hayter, have you yet said anything to Mrs Abel about the lobsters I ordered for tomorrow?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Do not do so.’



‘Very good, sir.’

And when we reached our chairs in the garden-room he said: ‘I wonder whether Hayter had any intention of mentioning, lobsters, I rather think not. Do you know, I believe he thought I was joking? ‘

Next day by chance, a weapon came to hand. I met an old acquaintance of school-days, a contemporary of mine named Jorkins. I never had much liking for Jorkins.  Once, in my Aunt Philippa’s day, he had come to tea, and she had condemned him as being probably charming at heart, but unattractive at first sight. Now I greeted him with enthusiasm and asked him to dinner. He came and showed little alteration. My father must have been warned by Hayter that there was a guest, for instead of his velvet suit he wore a tail coat; this, with a black waistcoat, very high collar, and very narrow white tie, was his evening dress; he wore it with an air of melancholy as though it were court mourning, which he had assumed in early youth and, finding the style sympathetic, had retained. He never possessed a dinner jacket.

‘Good evening, good evening. So nice of you to come all this way.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t far, said Jorkins, who lived in Sussex Square.  ‘Science annihilates distance,’ said my father disconcertingly. ‘You are over here on business?’

‘Well, I’m in business, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I had a cousin who was in business - you wouldn’t know him; it was before your time. I was telling Charles about him only the other night. He has been much in my mind. He came,’ my father paused to give full weight to the bizarre word - ‘a cropper.’ Jorkins giggled nervously. My father fixed him with a look of reproach.  ‘You find his misfortune the subject of mirth? Or perhaps the word I used was unfamiliar; you no doubt would say that he “folded up”.’ My father was master of the situation. He had made a little fantasy for himself, that Jorkins should I be an American and throughout the evening he played a delicate one-sided parlour-game with him, explaining any peculiarly English terms that occurred in the conversation, translating pounds into dollars and courteously deferring to him with such phrases as ‘Of course, by your standards...’; ‘All this must seem very parochial to Mr Jorkins’; ‘In the vast spaces to which you are accustomed...’ so that my guest was left with the vague sense that there was a misconception somewhere as to his identity, which he never got the chance of explaining. Again and again during dinner he sought my father’s eye, thinking to read there the simple statement that this form of address was an elaborate joke, but met instead a look of such mild benignity that he was left baffled.  Once I thought my father had gone too far, when he said: ‘I am afraid that, living in London, you must sadly miss your national game.’

‘My national game?’ asked Jorkins, slow in the uptake, but scenting that here, at last, was the opportunity for clearing the matter up.

My father glanced from him to me and his expression changed from kindness to malice then back to kindness again as he turned once more to Jorkins. It was the look of a gambler who lays down fours against a full house. ‘Your national game,’ he said gently, ‘cricket,’ and he snuffled uncontrollably, shaking all over and wiping his eyes with his napkin. ‘Surely, working in the City, you find your time on the cricket-field, greatly curtailed?’

At the door of the dining-room he left us. ‘Good night, Mr Jorkins,’ he said. ‘I hope you will pay us another visit when you next “cross the herring pond”.’ ‘I say, what did.your governor mean by that?’ He seemed almost to think I was, American.’

‘He’s rather odd at times.’



‘I mean all that about advising me to visit Westminster Abbey. It seemed rum.’

‘Yes. I can’t quite explain.’

‘I almost thought he was pulling my leg,’ said Jorkins in puzzled tones.

My father’s counter-attack was delivered a few days later. He sought me out and said, ‘Mr Jorkins is still here?’

‘No, father, of course not. He only came to dinner.’

‘Oh, I hoped he was staying with us. Such a versatile young man. But you will be dining in?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am giving a little dinner party to diversify the rather monotonous series of your evenings at home. You think Mrs Abel is up to it? No. But our guests are not exacting.  Sir Cuthbert and Lady Orme-Herrick are what might be called the nucleus. I hope for a little music afterwards. I have included in the invitations some young people for you.’ My presentiments of my father’s plan were surpassed by the actuality. As the guests assembled in the room which my father, without self-consciousness, called ‘the Gallery’, it was plain to me that they had been carefully chosen for my discomfort. The ‘young people’ were Miss Gloria Orme-Herrick a student of the cello; her fiancé, a bald young man .from the British Museum; and a monoglot Munich publisher. I saw my father snuffling at me from behind a case of ceramics as he stood with them. That evening he wore, like a chivalric badge of battle, a small red rose in his button-hole.  Dinner was long and chosen, like the guests, in a spirit of careful mockery. It was not of Aunt Philippa’s choosing, but had been reconstructed from a much earlier period, long before he was of an age to dine downstairs. The dishes were ornamental in appearance and regularly alternated in colour between red and white. They and the wine were equally tasteless. After dinner my father led the German publisher to the piano and then, while he played, left the drawing-room to show Sir Cuthbert Orme-Herrick the Etruscan bull in the gallery.

It was a gruesome evening, and I was astonished to find, when at last the party broke up, that it was only a few minutes after eleven. My father helped himself to a glass of barley-water and said: ‘What very dull friends I have! You know, without the spur of your presence I should never have roused myself to invite them. I have been very negligent about entertaining lately. Now that you are paying me such a long visit, I will have many such evenings. You liked Miss Gloria Orme-Herrick?’ ‘No.’

‘No? Was it her little moustache you objected to or her very large feet? Do you think she enjoyed herself.’

‘No.’

‘That was my impression also. I doubt if any of our guests will count this as one of their happiest evenings. That young foreigner played atrociously, I thought. Where can I have met him? And Miss Constantia Smethwick - where can I have met her? But the obligations of hospitality must be observed. As long as you are here, you shall not be dull.’

Strife was internecine during the next fortnight, but I suffered the more, for my father had greater reserves to draw on and a wider territory for manoeuvre, while I was pinned to my bridgehead between. the uplands and the sea. He never declared his war aims, and I do not to this day know whether they, were purely punitive - whether he had really at the back of his mind some geopolitical idea of getting me out of the country, as my Aunt Philippa had been driven to Bordighera and cousin Melchior to Darwin, or whether, as seems most likely, he fought for the sheer love of a battle in which indeed he shone.

I received one letter from Sebastian, a conspicuous object which was brought to me in my father’s presence one day when he was lunching at home; I saw him look curiously at it and bore it away to read in solitude. It was written on, and enveloped in, heavy late-Victorian mourning paper, black-coroneted and black-bordered. I read it eagerly:

Brideshead Castle,

Wiltshire

I wonder what the date is Dearest Charles,

I found a box of this paper at the back of a bureau so I must write to you as I am mourning for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors despaired of it from the start.

Soon I am off to Venice to stay with my papa in his palace of sin. I wish you were coming. I wish you were here.

I am never quite alone. Members of my family keep turning up and collecting luggage and going away again but the white raspberries are ripe.  I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don’t want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.

Love or what you will.

S.

I knew his letters of old; I had had them at Ravenna; I should not have been disappointed; but that day as I tore the stiff sheet across and let it fall into the basket, and gazed resentfully across the grimy gardens and irregular backs of Bayswater, at the jumble of soil-pipes and fire-escapes and protuberant little conservatories, I saw, in my mind’s eye, the pale face of Anthony Blanche, peering through the straggling leaves as it had peered through the candle flames at Thame, and heard, above the murmur of traffic, his clear tones...’You mustn’t blame Sebastian if at times he seems a little insipid...When I hear him talk I am reminded of that in some ways nauseating picture of “Bubbles”.’ For days after that I thought I hated Sebastian; then one Sunday afternoon a telegram came from him, which dispelled that shadow, adding a new and darker one of its own.  My father was out and returned to find me in a condition of feverish anxiety. He stood in the hall with his panama hat still on his head and beamed at me.  ‘You’ll never guess how I have spent the day; I have been to the Zoo. It was most agreeable; the animals seem to enjoy the sunshine so much.’ ‘Father, I’ve got to leave at once.’

‘Yes?’

‘A, great friend of mine - he’s had a terrible accident. I must go to him at once.

Hayter’s packing for me, now. There’s a train in half an hour.’ I showed him the telegram, which read simply: ‘Gravely injured come at once Sebastian.’

‘Well,’ said my father. ‘I’m sorry you are upset. Reading this message I should not say that the accident was as serious as you seem to think - otherwise it would hardly be signed by the victim himself. Still, of course, he may well be fully conscious but blind or paralysed with a broken back. Why exactly is your presence so necessary? You have no medical knowledge. You are not in holy orders. Do you hope for a legacy?’ ‘I told you, he is a great friend.’

‘Well, Orme-Herrick is a great friend of mine, but I should not go tearing off to his deathbed on a warm Sunday afternoon. I should doubt whether Lady Orme-Herrick would welcome me. However, I see you have no such doubts. I shall miss you, my dear boy, but do not hurry back on my account.’

Paddington Station on that August Sunday evening, with the sun streaming through the obscure panes of its roof, the bookstalls shut, and the few passengers strolling unhurried beside their porters, would have soothed a mind less agitated than mine. The train was nearly empty. I had my suitcase put in the corner of a third-class carriage and took a seat in the dining-car. ‘First dinner after Reading, sir; about seven o’clock. Can I get you anything now?’ I ordered gin and vermouth; it was brought to me as we pulled out of the station. The knives and forks set up their regular jingle; the bright landscape rolled past the windows. But I had no mind for these smooth things; instead, fear worked like yeast in my thoughts, and the fermentation brought to the surface, in great gobs of scum, the images of disaster; a loaded gun held carelessly at a stile, a horse rearing and rolling over, a shaded pool with a submerged, stake, an elm bough falling suddenly on a still morning, a car at a blind corner; all the catalogue of threats to civilized life rose and haunted me; I even pictured a homicidal maniac mouthing in the shadows, swinging a length of lead pipe. The cornfields and heavy woodland sped past, deep in the golden evening, and the throb of the wheels repeated monotonously in my ears. ‘You’ve come too late. You’ve come too late. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.’ I dined and changed trains to the local line, and in twilight came to Melstead Carbury, which was my destination.

‘Brideshead, sir? Yes, Lady Julia’s in the yard.’

She was sitting at the wheel of an open car. I recognized her at once; I could not have failed to do so.

‘You’re Mr Ryder? Jump in.’ Her voice was Sebastian’s and his her, way of speaking.

‘How is he?’

‘Sebastian? Oh, he’s fine. Have you had dinner? Well, I expect it was beastly. There’s some more at home. Sebastian and I are alone, so we thought we’d wait for you.’ ‘What’s happened to him?’

‘Didn’t he say? I expect he thought you wouldn’t come if you knew. He’s cracked a bone in his ankle so small that it hasn’t a name. But they X-rayed it yesterday, and told him to keep it up for a month. It’s a great bore to him, putting out all his plans; he’s been making the most enormous fuss...Everyone else has gone. He tried to make me stay back with him. Well, I expect you know how maddeningly pathetic he can be. I almost gave in, and then I said: “Surely there must be someone you can get hold of,” and he said everybody was away or busy and, anyway, no one else would do. But at last he agreed to try you, and I promised I’d stay if you failed him, so you can imagine how popular you are with me. I must say it’s noble of you to come all this way at a moment’s notice.’ But as she said it, I heard, or thought I heard, a tiny note of contempt in her voice that I should be so readily available.

‘How did he do it?’

‘Believe it or not, playing croquet. He lost his temper and tripped over a hoop. Not a very honourable scar.’

She so much resembled Sebastian that, sitting beside her in the gathering dusk, I was confused by the double illusion of familiarity and strangeness. Thus, looking through strong lenses, one may watch a man approaching from afar, study every detail of his face and clothes, believe one has only to put out a hand to touch him marvel that he does not hear one and look up as one moves, and then, seeing him with the naked eye, suddenly remember that one is to him a distant speck, doubtfully human. I knew her and she did not know me. Her dark hair was scarcely longer than Sebastian’s, and it blew back from her forehead as his did; her eyes on the darkling road were his, but larger; her painted mouth was less friendly to the world. She wore a bangle of charms on her wrist and in her ears little gold rings. Her light coat revealed an inch or two of flowered silk; skirts were short in those days, and her legs, stretched forward to the controls of the car, were spindly, as was also the fashion. Because her sex was the palpable difference between the familiar and the strange it seemed to fill the space between us, so that I felt her to be especially female, as I had felt of no woman before.  ‘I’m terrified of driving at this time of the evening,’ she said. ‘There doesn’t seem anyone left at home who can drive a car. Sebastian and I are practically camping out here. I hope you haven’t come expecting a pompous party.’ She leaned forward to the locker for a box of cigarettes.

‘No thanks.’

‘Light one for me, will you?’

It was, the first time in my life that anyone had asked this of me, and as I took the cigarette from my lips and put it in hers, I caught a thin bat’s squeak of sexuality, inaudible to any but me.

‘Thanks. You’ve been here before. Nanny reported it. We both thought it very odd of you not to stay to tea with me.’

‘That was Sebastian.’

‘You seem to let him boss you about a good deal. You shouldn’t. It’s very bad for him.’

We had turned the comer of the drive now; the colour had died in the woods, and sky,.and the house seemed painted in grisaille, save for the central golden square at the open doors. A man was waiting to take my luggage.

‘Here we are.’

She led me up the steps and into the hall, flung her coat on a marble table, and stooped to fondle a dog which came to greet her. ‘I wouldn’t put it past Sebastian to have started dinner.’

At that moment he appeared between the pillars at the further end, propelling himself in a wheel-chair. He was in pyjamas and dressing-gown, with one foot heavily bandaged.

‘Well, darling, I have collected your chum,’ she said, again with a barely perceptible note of contempt.

‘I thought you were dying,’ I said, conscious then, as I had been ever since I arrived, of the predominating emotion of vexation, rather than of relief, that I had been bilked of my expectations of a grand tragedy.

‘I thought I was, too. The pain was excruciating. Julia, do you think, if you asked him, Wilcox would give us champagne tonight?’

‘I hate champagne and Mr Ryder has had dinner.’

‘Mister Ryder? Mister Ryder? Charles drinks champagne at all hours. Do you know, seeing this great swaddled foot of mine, I can’t get it out of my mind that I have gout, and that gives me a craving for champagne.’

We dined in a room they called ‘the Painted Parlour’. It was a spacious octagon, later in design than the rest of the house its walls, were adorned with wreathed medallions and across its dome prim Pompeian figures stood pastoral groups. They and the satinwood and ormolu furniture, the carpet, the hanging bronze candelabrum, the mirrors and sconces, were all a single composition, the design of one illustrious hand. ‘We usually eat here when we’re alone,’ said Sebastian, ‘it’s so cosy.’ While they dined I ate a peach and told them of the war with my father.

‘He sounds a perfect poppet,’ said Julia. ‘And now I’m going to leave you boys.’

‘Where are you off to?’

‘The nursery. I promised nanny a last game of halma.’ She kissed the top of Sebastian’s head. I opened the door for her. ‘Good Night, Mr Ryder, and good-bye. I don’t suppose we’ll meet tomorrow. I’m leaving early. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for relieving me at the sick-bed.’

‘My sister is very pompous tonight,’ said Sebastian, when she was gone.

‘I don’t think she cares for me,’ I said.

‘I don’t think she cares for anyone much. I love her. She’s so like me.’

‘Do you? Is she?’

‘In looks I mean and the way she talks. I wouldn’t love anyone with a character like mine.’

When we had drunk our port, I walked beside Sebastian’s chair through the pillared hall to the library, where we sat that night and nearly every night of the ensuing month.  It lay on the side of the house that overlooked the lakes; the windows were open to the stars and the scented air, to the indigo and silver, moonlit landscape of the valley and the sound of water falling in the fountain.

‘We’ll have a heavenly time alone,’ said Sebastian and when next morning, while I was shaving, I saw from my bathroom window Julia, with luggage at her back, drive from the forecourt and disappear at the hill’s crest, without a backward glance, I felt a sense of liberation and peace such as I was, to know years later when, after a night of unrest, the sirens sounded the ‘All Clear’.

我回家过暑假，既无计划，又没钱。为了付期末的费用，我已经把欧米加牌的屏风以十镑代价卖给了科林斯，这笔钱现在只剩下四镑；我最后的一张支票在我的账上已经透支了几先令，银行通知我，不得到我父亲许可，我不能再支钱了。要到十月，我的下一笔津贴才能到手。这样，我就面临着黯淡的前景，我左思右想，对前几个星期的挥霍浪费不免有点懊悔。

我在学期开始时付清了大学的膳费和杂费，手头还有一百多镑钱。现在这笔钱花光了，我在商店的欠款还分文未还。那些花费其实没有必要，丝毫乐趣也没有得到；那些钱都白白浪费掉。塞巴斯蒂安常常取笑我——“你像个赛马的赌徒一样浪费银钱”——可是那些钱全是花在他身上，或者是和他一块儿花的。他自己好像永远很困难。“都给律师们算计光了，”他一筹莫展地说，“我想，他们贪污了不少。无论如何，我得到的好像从来不多。当然，只要我要，妈妈就会给。”

“那么，你为什么不向她要一笔固定的津贴呢？”

“啊，妈妈喜欢样样都当作礼物给人，她可好极啦。”他这样说，在我勾画的她的形象上又添上一笔。

现在塞巴斯蒂安隐没到另一种生活里，那种生活是他不让我和他一起过的，所以丢下我非常孤单和懊恼。

当我们到了晚年，回顾在漫长的夏日里过的放荡生活时，如果否认我们年轻时代的道德感，我们就显得多么胸襟狭隘。一个人在谈他早年的生活经历中，如果略去不谈怀念幼年美德之情，略去不谈改正错误时怀着的懊恼和决心，略去不谈像轮盘上不时出现的零字一样隔不多时就准会出现的忧郁时刻，如果略去这一切，那么这种传记也就谈不上是坦率的了。

就这样，我从一间房子走到另一间房子，隔着厚玻璃窗轮流看着花园和大街，怀着强烈谴责自己的心情——我回家的头一天下午就这样度过。

我知道，我父亲在家里，但是他的图书室是个不可侵犯的地方。他到快吃饭时才出来招呼我。他已经五十六七岁了，他的特点是看起来比实际年龄苍老很多；人们看见他会以为他七十岁了，听他说话，会以为他年近八十。他向我走来，拖着脚，迈着方步，露出欢迎我的羞怯微笑。当他在家吃晚饭时——他很少在别处吃晚饭——他穿一件天鹅绒盘花纽扣的罩衣，这罩衣在他吸烟时才穿，这种衣服几年前很时兴，以后也许还会很时兴，可是现在肯定已经过时了。

“亲爱的孩子，他们没有告诉我你在这儿。你旅行累了吗？他们给你端茶点了吗？你身体好吗？我刚刚从索纳差因古玩店里大胆买了一件东西——一件公元五世纪制的赤陶牛。我正在鉴赏，忘记了你到达了。车厢里很挤吗？你坐在车厢的角落里吗？（他自己很少旅行，所以听到别人旅行就会引起他的关切。）海特把晚报给你拿来了吗？当然，没有什么新闻——全是废话。”

仆人通知开晚饭了。我父亲由于多年的习惯带本书放在餐桌上，后来想起我在，便偷偷把书丢在椅子上，“你爱喝什么酒？海特，你给查尔斯什么酒喝？”

“还有点威士忌。”

“有威士忌，也许你喜欢喝别的酒吧？我们还有别的吗？”

“老爷，家里没有别的酒了。”

“没有别的酒了。你得告诉海特你爱喝什么酒，他会给你买来。现在家里我什么酒也不存了。医生禁止我喝酒，也没有人来看望我，但是你在家时你喜欢什么就可以要什么。你要在家里待很久吗？”

“还不一定，爸爸。”

“这是一个很长的假期，”他沉思着说。“在我年轻时，遇上这种假期总是去办读书会，总是住在山区。为什么呢？为什么，”他性急地说，“大家认为高山风景有益于读书呢？”

“我想花些时间去上艺术学校——上肖像画班。”

“亲爱的孩子，你会发现学校都关门了。学生们去巴比松或这类地方的野外写生去了。我年轻时有个机构名叫‘素描俱乐部’——男女在一起”（抽鼻子），“自行车”（抽鼻子），“椒盐色短裤，荷兰雨伞，而且一般都认为是，自由恋爱”（抽鼻子），“一大堆这样的废话。我希望他们还在办这样的俱乐部。你可以去那里试试。”

“这个假期的一个问题就是钱，爸爸。”

“啊，我在你这个年纪，可不为这样的事犯愁。”

“你知道，我很缺钱。”

“真的吗？”我父亲丝毫不关心地问。

“事实上，下两个月我都不知道怎样度过哩。”

“嗯，我是最不适合给你出主意的人。我从来没有像你那样痛苦地说‘缺钱’。你还能用别的词说吗？比如说：手头紧？贫困？苦恼？处境尴尬？破产？”（抽鼻子。）“遇难？负了债？就说你负了债，就这么说好了。有一次你爷爷对我说，‘量入为出，你有了困难就来找我。别去找犹太人。’那么多废话。你试试看。去找杰尔明街的先生们，他们只凭手写的字据就借钱给我。亲爱的孩子，他们连一个子儿也不会借给你。”

“那么你让我怎么办？”

“你表兄梅尔基奥投资太不小心，负了很多债。他去澳洲了。”

自从父亲在《伦巴底每日祈祷书》中间发现两张公元二世纪的古埃及文稿，显得惊喜若狂以来，我从来没有见过他这样高兴过。

“海特，我把书掉到地上了。”

仆人把书从父亲脚边捡起来，把书靠在餐桌中间摆花的架子上。父亲在晚餐的其余时间一直沉默着，除了偶尔发出几声快乐的抽鼻子声音，这种声音我想不会是由他看的书引起的。

不久，我们离开餐桌，坐到花园中的房间里；在那儿，他显然把我忘掉了；我知道，他的思想已经回到久远的年代去了，那时，他动作轻快，那时，好像是几世纪以前，所有人的形象都模糊了，他朋友们的名字的读音都错了，意思也完全不一样。他以别人会感到很不舒服的姿势坐着，斜着坐在直背椅子上，高高地举着一本书，就着光线斜着看。他不时从他的表链上取下一个金铅笔盒，在书边上做个记号。窗户开着，外面是夏天的傍晚；只听得见时钟的滴答声，从白水路传来的遥远的轰隆轰隆的车马声，父亲有规则地翻动书页的声音。我以前想，一面闹穷，一面又抽雪茄是失礼的。现在，希望落空，我就回到自己房里取了一根雪茄。父亲没有抬头看。我撅开雪茄头儿，点燃了，又重新获得了信心，我说，“爸爸，你一定不愿意我整个假期都跟你过吧？”

“呃？”

“让我在家里待这么长一个假期你不觉得心烦吗？”

“我相信即使我感到心烦，也不会表现出来的，”父亲温和地说，又看起书来。

晚间过去了。最后，房里各式各样的钟都悦耳地敲了十一点钟。父亲合上书，取下老花眼镜。“亲爱的孩子，非常欢迎你，”他说，“你愿意待多久就待多久。”他在门口停了一下，然后转身说，“你表兄梅尔基奥当一名普通水手上澳洲去了。”（抽鼻子。）“我不知道，什么叫‘普通水手’？”


在随之而来的闷热的一周里，我和父亲的关系急剧恶化。白天我很少看到他；他在图书室里一待就是好几个钟点；他不时地出来，我总是听到他在楼梯栏杆上边喊：“海特，准备车。”然后他就出门去了，有时半小时左右就回来，有时整天在外，他从不说明干什么去了。我常常看到仆人偶尔把盘子端到楼上他房间里，上面有少量育婴室用的食品——脆饼干，几杯牛奶，香蕉，等等。如果我们在楼梯上碰到，他总是茫然地看看我，说“啊——啊，”或者“天气真暖和，”或者“天气好极了，好极了，”可是在晚上，当他穿着天鹅绒吸烟上衣来到花园的房间时，他总是正式问我好。

晚饭的餐桌就是我们的战场。

第二天晚上，我带着书去了餐厅。他突然注意到了这本书，那双温和而又显得恍惚的眼睛盯住不放，当我们经过走廊时，他偷偷摸摸地把自己的那本书扔在靠边的一张桌上了。我们坐下的时候，他悲哀地说：“我想，查尔斯，你会跟我说些什么吧？这一天我简直筋疲力尽了。我盼望和你一道聊聊。”

“当然啰，爸爸。我们聊什么呢？”

“聊一些能让我高兴的事。给我散散心，”他耍着性子说，“就跟我说说新上演的戏吧。”

“可是我什么戏也没有看过啊。”

“你该去看看，你知道，你真的该去看看。一个青年人，整晚都泡在家里，很不正常哩。”

“呃，爸爸，以前我就跟你说过，我哪有那么多闲钱看戏呀。”

“亲爱的孩子，你决不能让金钱把你这样限制住了。嗯，在你这个年纪，你表兄梅尔基奥就和别人合伙写了一支乐曲喽。这是他闯荡天下的一件快事。戏还是该去看看的，当作你的教育的一部分。如果你读过那些杰出人物的生平，那你就会发现，那一些人中足足有一半是从剧场的顶层楼座了解话剧的。有人跟我说，像那种地方根本没有乐趣可言。可是正是在那种地方，你可以发现真正的戏剧评论家和爱好者。这就是所谓的‘和众神坐在一起’嘛。花费微乎其微，而且甚至在大街上等候入场的时候，那些‘街头艺人’也会使你很开心。哪天晚上我们也去和‘诸神们’一起坐坐，你觉得艾贝尔太太的烹调手艺有没有进步？”

“老一套呗。”

“这还是受了你菲利帕姑妈的启发呢。她给了艾贝尔太太十份菜单，这十份菜单从来没有变动过。我一个人吃饭的时候，我倒并不在乎饭菜怎么样，可是既然你在家，我们就得变变花样啦。你喜欢吃什么呢？现在的时令菜是什么？喜欢龙虾吗？海特，告诉艾贝尔太太明天晚上我们要吃龙虾。”

这天晚上的菜是一盆淡而无味的汤，浇着粉红色调味汁的炸糊了的蝾鱼片，配着摆成锥形的土豆泥的羊肉片，还有摆在蛋糕上的煮梨冻。

“我吃得这么考究，纯粹出于对你菲利帕姑妈的尊敬。她规定，一顿饭有三道菜才算得上中产阶级。‘如果一旦让仆人随便做，’她说，‘你就会发现每天晚上你只吃一块排骨。’其实我最爱吃的就数排骨了。事实上，艾贝尔太太不在的晚上，我去俱乐部吃的也无非是一块排骨。可是你姑妈已经规定，我在家里吃饭必须是三菜一汤；这几个晚上是鱼、肉、开胃的菜肴，那几个晚上是肉、甜食、开胃的菜肴——这几种菜可能配出很多种花样哩。

“有些人能够把自己的见解很得体地表达出来，这实在够惊人的；你姑妈就有这种本事。

“如果以为过去我和她天天晚上在一起吃饭——像我和你现在的情形一样，那就太可笑了，孩子。她一个劲儿让我开心。她常常跟我讲她读过的书。她心里想把这儿当作她的家，你知道。她认为如果让我自个儿过活的话，我就会变得怪僻了。或许我已经有了怪僻，有没有？可是把这儿当她家——不行。最后我还是把她甩掉了。”

他说这话时，语气里显然含着一种威胁的意味。

多半是由于我姑妈菲利帕的原故，我现在觉得自己在父亲家里竟成了一个生人。我母亲过世后，姑妈就来同我父亲和我住在一起了，毫无疑问，正如父亲说的，她想把这儿当作她的家。当时，每天晚上饭桌上的种种痛苦我是根本不知道的。姑妈要亲自陪着我，我毫无疑问地领受了她的情意。这种情形持续了一年光景。最初的变化是她重新启用她原先打算卖掉的萨里那所房子，我上学期间她就住在那里，她到伦敦来住几天只是为了买东西，玩一玩。到了夏天，我们就一起去海滨。后来，我在学校最后一年的时候，她离开了英国。“最后我还是把她甩掉了，”谈到那位慈祥的夫人时他用这种嘲笑和得意的口吻说话，他知道我听出来话里向我挑战的意思。

我们离开餐室时我父亲问：“海特，你跟艾贝尔太太说了明天要给我定龙虾吗？”

“还没有呢，先生。”

“那就不用说了。”

“好的，先生。”

我们在花园房间里一坐下来，他就说：“我不知道海特是不是真的打算提龙虾的事，我认为他并不打算提的。你知道吗，我相信他认为我在开玩笑。”

到了第二天，一件武器凑巧落在手里。那天我遇见了一个中学时代的老朋友，名叫乔金斯的同年同学。我一向不大喜欢这位乔金斯。有一次，那还是菲利帕姑妈在家里的时候，他来吃茶，她就曾经对这个人作出这样的宣判：即他的内心可能美，可是头一眼看上去可不那么吸引人。这一回我热情地向他问好，并请他来吃晚饭。他来了，不过并没有显出有什么变化。父亲事先肯定得到海特的提醒，说有一位客人要来吃饭，所以他没有穿他那身丝绒衣服，而穿了一件燕尾服。这身燕尾服，再加上黑背心，极高的硬领，特窄的白领带，就算是他的晚礼服了。他穿着这身衣服，显出一种忧伤的神气，好像穿的是朝廷的丧服，这种神情是他很年轻的时候就有的，由于发现这种神情招人喜欢，所以一直就保持下来了。他连一件吃饭穿的短上衣都没有。

“晚上好，晚上好。你太难得了，大老远地来这里。”

“哦，并不远，”乔金斯回答说，他住在苏塞克斯广场。

“科学消灭距离嘛，”父亲狼狈地说，“你来这儿是出差吧？”

“噢，我在经商，如果你是这个意思的话。”

“我也有一个亲戚是做生意的——你不会认识他的；他比你要早喽。那天晚上我还跟查尔斯谈到他哩。我常常想到他。他成了，”他顿了顿，以便充分强调下面的古怪说法，“他成了个‘惨败的人’。”

乔金斯神经质地咯咯笑起来。父亲带着责备的神色盯住他。

“难道你觉得他这么倒霉倒值得高兴吗？也许是我用的词不常听说吧；你想必会说他‘破产’了吧。”

父亲控制着局面。他自己有了一个古怪的想法，故意认定乔金斯是个美国人，所以一晚上他都在和他玩一场微妙的、别出心裁的客厅游戏，凡是谈话中出现的一切专门的英国用语他都要解释一番，把英镑折合成美元，还必恭必敬倾听他的谈话，并且连连说道“当然啰，以你们的标准而言……”；“对乔金斯先生来说，这一切显得太狭隘了”；“你们习惯在辽阔的空间……”等等。听他这么说，因此使我的客人隐约觉得他的身分大概有什么问题，而他又根本得不到机会把自己的身分解释清楚。他一边吃饭，一边不住地琢磨我父亲的眼神，想要在他的眼神里看出他以这个方式讲话不过是一次精心安排的玩笑罢了，可是他看到他的神色竟如此温和、宽厚，使他感到困惑莫解。

有一次连我都觉得父亲说得太过分了，当时他说：“你在伦敦居住，恐怕相当难过，玩不成你们国家的游戏了吧？”

“我们国家的游戏？”乔金斯问道，他领悟得很慢，不过终于领悟到这是弄清问题的好机会。

父亲看看他，又看看我，他的表情也同时从和蔼可亲变成满腔怨恨；当他再朝乔金斯看去的时候，表情又变得和蔼可亲了。这种神气就像一个赌徒向全室的人认输那样。“说到你们国家的游戏，”他从容地说道，“那就是说板球嘛，”说着他就控制不住抽起了鼻子，全身都抖动起来，他还用手帕擦擦眼睛。“在城里工作，你肯定发现用在板球场上的时间大大缩短了吧？”

他走到餐室门口撇下了我们，“晚安，乔金斯先生，”他说，“你下次‘横渡大西洋’的时候，希望你再来我们这儿作客。”

“喂，你爸爸这话到底是什么意思？他几乎认为我是美国人啦。”

“他有时相当古怪。”

“我把这番话理解成建议我去看看威斯敏斯特大教堂啦。这太怪了。”

“不错，可是我没法解释啊。”

“我差不多认为他在拿我开心呢，”乔金斯困惑地说。


几天以后我父亲做出了反击。他找到我，对我说道：“乔金斯先生还在这儿吗？”

“不在了，爸爸，当然不在啦。他只是来吃饭的。”

“呃，我原来希望他和我们一起住几天。这么一个多才多艺的年轻人。不过你在家吃晚饭吗？”

“在家吃。”

“我搞了一个小小的宴会，你在家里连续过了许多单调的夜晚，以便换换花样。你以为艾贝尔太太胜任得了吗？不行的。不过我们的客人并不苛求。卡思伯特爵士和奥姆—赫里克太太，正是所谓的核心人物。我希望饭后听听音乐。我还为你请了几个青年人。”

现实的情况超过了我对父亲的计划所怀着的不祥预感。客人们聚集在我父亲不自觉地称之为“楼座”的房间里，这时我才明白，明摆着这些客人都是为了让我不痛快而仔细挑选来的。而青年人则是格洛里亚·奥姆—赫里克小姐，一位学大提琴的学生；她的未婚夫，一位不列颠博物馆的秃顶年轻人；还有一位只懂得一种语言的慕尼黑出版商。我看到，我父亲和那些人站在一起，在瓷器架后面冲我直抽鼻子。这天晚上，他在纽扣眼里别上一枝小小的红玫瑰花，好像骑士在战争中佩戴的徽章。

晚餐时间很长，菜肴跟那些客人一样是精心挑选的，也有一种存心嘲弄的意思。菜肴并不是菲利帕姑妈挑选的那些，而是从早就确定下来的几份菜单中拼凑起来的，那些菜单是他还能在楼下吃饭时使用的。盘子的花饰考究，上菜时，盘子照红、白相间的颜色轮流出现。菜肴和葡萄酒一样没有味道。晚餐过后，我父亲把那位德国出版商领到钢琴边，出版商弹起钢琴，他就离开客厅，领着卡思伯特·奥姆—赫里克爵士到“楼座”里去看那个伊特拉斯坎的公牛。

这是个令人十分厌烦的夜晚，宴会终于散了的时候，我惊奇地发现十一点才过几分钟。父亲自己喝了一大杯大麦茶，说道：“找来的这些朋友多不带劲儿呀！你知道，如果没有你在家这个推动力，我永远也鼓不起勇气邀请他们的。我近来对应酬没有什么兴趣了。既然你要在我这儿住很久，我也就会过许多这样的夜晚了。你喜欢格洛里亚·奥姆—赫里克小姐吗？”

“不喜欢。”

“不喜欢？是你对她的毛茸茸的唇髭有反感呢，还是对她的大脚有反感呢？你觉得她今晚过得愉快吗？”

“不愉快。”

“我也有这样的印象。我很怀疑这些客人中谁会认为这是他们最愉快的一个晚上。那个年轻的外国人钢琴弹得糟透了，我想。我在哪遇见过他呢？还有康斯坦蒂亚·斯梅斯威克小姐——她又是我在哪遇见的呢？不过殷勤待客这一条还是要遵守的。只要你在这儿，你就不会觉得无聊的。”

在以后两个星期的冲突中我们两败俱伤，不过我却失败得更惨，因为父亲有更多的储备可以利用，也有更大的回旋余地，我却被挤在一片高地和大海之间的桥头堡里。他从不宣布他的战斗目标，而我至今还不明白他的目标是否纯粹是惩罚性的——是否他的思想深处存有某种地理政治学的思想，要把我从这个国家赶出去，如同菲利帕姑妈被赶到博迪盖拉，表兄梅尔基奥被赶到达尔文一样；或者，似乎是最可能的，他之所以战斗，是否只是由于热爱使他才华毕露的战斗。

有一天我收到塞巴斯蒂安寄来的一封信，这件引人注目的东西是我当着我父亲的面收到的，当时他正在家里吃午饭；看见他好奇地盯住这封信，于是我把信带走私下里读起来。信是写在维多利亚王朝后期办丧事用的厚信纸上的，信纸信封头上印着黑色花冠，周围镶着黑边。我急切地读起来：


                                                             布赖兹赫德城堡
                                                                   威尔特郡
                                                       我不知道今天几月几日

最最亲爱的查尔斯，

我在写字台后面发现了一盒这样的纸，当我为自己失去纯真而哀伤的时候，我非给你写信不可了。纯真看来不像是个活东西。医生们从一开头就对它表示绝望。

我马上就要动身去威尼斯和我父亲一起住在他那个罪恶之宫里。我希望你来我这儿。我希望你在这儿。

我从来不是一个人呆着。家里的人们不断回来，不断整理行李，又离开了，而白色的山莓已经熟了。

我很想不带阿洛伊修斯去威尼斯。我不想让它遇到一大帮子讨厌的意大利熊而染上坏习惯。

爱你，或者随你的意思。


                                                       塞


我很早就熟悉他写的信了；我在拉文纳的时候收到过他的信；我本来不该感到失望的；可是那一天，我把这张硬邦邦的信纸撕成两半，随手扔进字纸篓里，满腔怨恨地朝着肮脏的花园和贝斯河边高低不平的地面望去，凝视着那边乱七八糟的污水管、太平梯和引人注目的小温室，我在心里看到安东尼·布兰奇苍白的面孔从纷乱的树叶中显现出来，正如曾经在泰姆饭店的烛光中朦朦胧胧出现那样，在过往车辆的嘈杂声中，我听到他清晰的声音……“你千万不要骂塞巴斯蒂安，即使他常常显得有些缺乏生气……每当我听到他的谈话，就使我想起了那幅某些方面令人厌恶的绘画《吹泡泡》来。”

以后好多天，我一直觉得自己很讨厌塞巴斯蒂安。后来在一个星期日下午，他拍来了一封电报，把那个阴影驱散了，可是这封电报本身却增加了另一个更深的阴影。

父亲出去了，回来时发现我焦躁不安，团团乱转。他站在走廊里，头上还戴着巴拿马草帽，冲着我微笑。

“你决猜不出我这一天是怎么过的；我到动物园去啦。真是太愉快了；看来那些动物非常喜欢晒太阳。”

“爸爸，我得马上走了。”

“是吗？”

“我的一个好朋友——他出了严重的事情啦。我得马上到他那儿去。海特现在正给我收拾东西。过半个小时有一趟火车。”

我把电报拿给他看，电报写得很简单：“伤势严重速来塞巴斯蒂安。”

“嗯，”父亲说，“我很难过你这么慌乱。看电报，很难说事情像你想的那样严重——否则，根本不可能由受伤者本人签名。还有，当然啰，他也可能神智完全清醒，只不过眼睛看不见了，脊梁骨摔断成了瘫痪。你究竟有什么必要去那儿呢？你也不懂医道嘛。再说你又没有担任什么神职。你是不是希望得到什么遗物呢？”

“我跟你说过了，他是我的特别要好的朋友。”

“呃，奥姆—赫里克也是我的特别要好的朋友，可我就不会在一个暖和的星期天下午手忙脚乱跑到他的灵床前去。我还怀疑奥姆—赫里克太太是不是欢迎我去。不过我看你并没有这样的顾虑。我会惦记你的，亲爱的孩子，不过不要因为我急着回来。”

八月一个星期日薄暮时分的帕丁顿火车站。阳光从屋顶上毛玻璃窗户透进来，书摊已经关门了，几个不慌不忙的旅客在搬运工人旁边溜溜达达——这一切足以安慰一个心绪比我稍为安宁的人。火车几乎是空的。我把小提箱放到一节三等车厢的角落里，然后在餐车里占了一个坐位。“过了雷丁站开第一次正餐，先生，大约在七点钟。您现在要来点什么？”我要了杜松子酒和苦艾酒。火车一出站酒就送上来了。刀叉发出常有的丁当声；明丽的景色在窗前倏忽闪过。可是我对那柔媚的景致没有兴趣；相反，脑子里的恐怖就像酵母一样在发酵，大片的泡沫泛起来，呈现出种种灾祸的情景；篱边入口有人随便举起一支上了膛的熗，一匹马的后腿直立起来，在地上翻滚，一片阴沉沉的水塘，水下埋了个桩子，一棵榆树的枝干突然在一个宁静的早晨倒下来，一辆汽车冲进一个死角；文明生活的各种各样的威胁都从脑子里冒出来，紧紧缠住我。我甚至想象出一个患杀人狂的疯子在阴暗的地方作怪脸，挥舞着一段铅管。麦田和大片林地飞速闪过，溶进金黄色的夕照里，车轮的颤动声，单调地在我耳中反复震荡着：“你来得太晚了，你来得太晚了。他死了，他死了，他死了。”

我吃了饭，换乘开往该地的火车，黄昏时候到了我的目的地梅尔斯蒂德—卡布里站。

“是去布赖兹赫德的吗？先生，是的，朱丽娅小姐正在车场等您呢。”

她坐在一辆敞篷汽车的车轮边。我立刻认出她来；我不可能认不出她来的。

“你是赖德先生吧？跳进来吧。”她的声音和说话的神气都同塞巴斯蒂安的一样。

“他怎么样了？”

“塞巴斯蒂安吗？噢，他很好。你吃过饭了吗？吃了，我想那种饭一定坏透了。家里还有一些。家里只有我和塞巴斯蒂安，所以我们还是等你来了一道吃。”

“他出什么事了？”

“他没说吗？我估计，他认为如果你知道是怎么回事就不会来了。他踝骨上的一根骨头裂了，那骨头太小，连个名称都没有。不过昨天他们已经给他照了X光，要他再忍耐一个月。这可让他烦得要命，他所有的计划都给取消了；他一个劲地唠叨着……别的人都走了。他要我留下来跟他一块儿待着。嘿，我想你是知道他能忧郁得发疯的。我几乎屈服了，后来我说：‘你肯定能抓住什么人的，’他说大家不是出去了，就是都很忙。总而言之谁也不会来陪他的。不过他最后同意试着去找你，我也答应了要是你不来的话，我就留下来，因此你可以想象得出对我说来你多么受欢迎。我得说，你一接到通知就远道赶来，真是太高尚啦。”但是，当她说这话的时候，我却听出了，或者认为听出在她的口气里含着一点轻蔑的味道，好像我竟会这样乐意地听他调遣。

“他怎么弄成这样了？”

“信不信由你，玩槌球弄的。他发了脾气，被小铁门绊了一跤，这伤疤可不很光彩。”

她同塞巴斯蒂安简直太相象了，以致我在愈来愈浓的暮色里坐在她的身边，竟被她既是亲切又是生疏的双重幻觉弄得糊涂了。因而就像有人用一个高倍望远镜瞭望，看到一个人从远方走来，细看那人脸上和衣服上的每一细部，相信自己一伸手就摸得着这个人，可是他很奇怪，当自己走动时这个人竟没有听见他的声音，也没有抬头望一下，后来他用肉眼观看这个人，突然想起，那个人不过是很远的一个斑点而已，很难说是不是个人。我了解她，而她并不了解我。她那乌黑的头发几乎比塞巴斯蒂安的长不了多少，也像塞巴斯蒂安那样，头发从前额梳到后面；她那双注视着发暗的公路的眼睛也像他的，只不过是更大些；她那涂了口红的嘴唇对人们显得不大友好。她手腕上戴着小饰物做的手镯，耳朵上垂着小小的金耳环。在轻便外套下露出来一角印花绸衣服；裙子是当时流行的短裙。那双伸向汽车操纵器的腿是修长的，正合当时的风尚。因为她的性别表现出熟人和生人之间的明显差别，而性的差别似乎在我们之间无处不在，所以我特别感到她是个女性，而她的这种女性感，我以前在别的女人身上还从来没有感受过。

“在晚上这种时候开车可是提心吊胆的。”她说，“我们家里会开车的人一个也不在了。我和塞巴斯蒂安实际上是临时住在这里。所以我希望你不要指望会有热闹的聚会。”她向面前的贮藏箱探过身去拿出盒香烟。

“我不吸烟，谢谢。”

“给我点上一支，好吗？”

我长这么大这还是第一次有人向我提出这样的要求，当我把烟卷从嘴唇上取下来又塞到她嘴里的时候，我听到蝙蝠交尾时吱吱的轻微叫声，除了我谁也听不见。

“谢谢。你以前来过这儿的。保姆说过这件事。我们俩都觉得你不留下来和我们一起喝茶是很奇怪的。”

“那是塞巴斯蒂安的主意。”

“你好像太听任他指挥了。你不该这样。这对他也很不好。”

这时我们已经在车道上拐了弯，树林和天空的颜色已经暗淡了，这所房子看上去似乎涂上了一片灰蒙蒙的颜色，只有两扇敞开的大门中间露出一片金黄。一个男仆等着搬我的行李。

“到啦。”

她领我上台阶，走进前厅，把外套扔在一个大理石桌上，随后又弯下身子抚弄那只跑来迎接她的狗。“我想塞巴斯蒂安可能吃了饭呢。”

话音还没有落，塞巴斯蒂安就在那边柱子中间出现了，他摇着轮椅过来。他穿着睡衣睡裤，一只脚绑着厚厚的绷带。

“噢，亲爱的，我把你的好朋友带回来了，”她说，又一次带着几乎难以察觉出来的轻蔑口吻。

“我还以为你快死了。”我说，但感觉到，正如我一到就已经感觉到的，一种突出的恼火心情，不是因为避免了一场大悲剧而觉得轻松，而是感到受了蒙骗。

“我也以为我快死了呢。那个疼劲真叫人受不了。朱丽娅，你觉得今天晚上如果你问威尔科克斯要香槟酒，他会给我们吗？”

“我不喜欢香槟酒，而且赖德先生已经吃过午饭了。”

“赖德先生？赖德先生？查尔斯任何时间都喝香槟酒。你知道吗？一看到我这只包扎起来的脚，我就不由得想到得了痛风病，所以我就特别想喝香槟酒。”

我们在一间他们称作“彩绘客厅”的房间里用餐。这是一间宽大的八角形房间，图案的风格比其他房间的要近代一些，四壁装饰着花环状的圆雕饰。圆屋顶穹隆状的天花板上是几组描写牧羊人的古庞贝式整齐的画像。这些画像，和那些椴木的镀金家具，毯子，悬挂着的青铜烛架，镜子和墙壁上的烛台，所有这些东西都是一种构图，全是由一个非凡的巧匠设计出来的。“只有我们俩的时候，我们就常常在这儿吃饭，”塞巴斯蒂安说，“这儿很舒服。”

他们吃饭，我吃了一只桃子，并且把我和父亲的冲突讲给他们听。

“听起来他还是个挺不错的‘宝贝’啊。”朱丽娅说，“现在我要走了，孩子们。”

“你要到哪儿去？”

“到育婴室去。我已经答应保姆跟她玩最后一盘跳棋。”她吻了一下塞巴斯蒂安的头顶。我给她打开门。“晚安，赖德先生，再见啦。我想明天我们就见不着了。我一大早就走。你把我从病床边解放出来，我真说不出有多感激你。”

“我妹妹今天晚上很神气。”塞巴斯蒂安等她一走就说。

“我想她并不喜欢我。”我说。

“我想她任何人都不太喜欢。我很爱她。她太像我了。”

“你爱她吗？她像你吗？”

“我是说在外貌上和讲话的态度上。如果任何人在性格上像我，那我是不会爱他的。”

喝完了葡萄酒，我就陪着坐在轮椅上的塞巴斯蒂安穿过那间有圆柱的走廊去图书室，这一晚上我们就坐在那间图书室里，在以后的一个月里，我们差不多每天晚上都坐在那儿。图书室在宅院的侧面，俯瞰着湖水，窗户都敞开着，星光照进来，温馨的空气飘进来，满窗都是幽蓝色的和银色的山间月夜景色，可以听到喷泉滴水的声音。

“我们俩可要美美地过一阵了。”塞巴斯蒂安说。第二天早晨，当我正在刮脸的时候，我从洗澡间的窗户看见朱丽娅，她正把车从前院开出去，身后是她的行李，随后就消失在小山头后面了，连回头看一眼都没有。我感到自由和平安，就像多年以后，过了不安的一夜，听到响起了“解除警报”的汽笛声时一样。


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爱就像蓝天白云，晴空万里，突然暴风雨！
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Chapter 4
THE languor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this - come and go with us through life. These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.  Perhaps in the mansions of Limbo the heroes enjoy some such compensation for their loss of the Beatific Vision; perhaps the Beatific Vision itself has some remote kinship with this lowly experience; I, at any rate, believed myself very near heaven, during those languid days at Brideshead.

‘Why is this house called a “Castle”?’

‘It used to be one until they moved it.’

‘What can you mean?’

‘Just that. We had a castle a mile away, down by the village. Then we took a fancy to the valley and. pulled the castle down, carted the stones up here, and built a new house.  I’m glad they did, aren’t you?’

‘If it was mine I’d never live anywhere else.’

‘But you sec. Charles, it isn’t mine. Just at the moment it is, but usually it’s full of ravening beasts. If it could only be like this always - always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe, and Aloysius in a good temper...’

It is thus I like to remember Sebastian, as he was that summer, when we wandered alone together through that enchanted palace; Sebastian in his wheel chair spinning down the box-edged walks of the kitchen gardens in search of alpine strawberries and warm figs, propelling himself through the succession of hothouses, from scent to scent and climate to climate, to cut the muscat grapes and choose orchids for our button-holes; Sebastian hobbling with a pantomime of difficulty to the old nurseries, sitting beside me on the threadbare, flowered carpet with the toy-cupboard empty about us and Nanny Hawkins stitching complacently in the comer, saying, ‘You’re one as bad as the other; a pair of children the two of you. Is that what they teach you at College?’ Sebastian supine on the sunny seat in the colonnade, as he was now, and I in a hard chair beside him, trying to draw the fountain.

‘Is the dome by Inigo Jones, too? It looks later.’

‘Oh, Charles, don’t be such a tourist. What does it matter when it was built if it’s pretty?’

‘It’s the sort of thing I like to know.’

‘Oh dear, I thought I’d cured you of all that - the terrible Mr Collins.’ It was an aesthetic education to live within those walls, to wander from room to room, from the Soanesque library to the Chinese drawing, adazzle with gilt pagodas and nodding mandarins, painted paper and Chippendale fretwork, from the Pompeian parlour to the great tapestry-hung hall which stood unchanged, as it had been designed two hundred and fifty years before; to sit, hour after hour, in the shade looking out on the terrace.

This terrace was the final consummation of the house’s plan; it stood on massive stone ramparts above the lakes, so that from the hall steps it seemed to overhang them, as though, standing by the balustrade, one could have dropped a pebble into the first of them immediately below one’s feet. It was embraced by the two arms of the colonnade; beyond the pavilions groves of lime led to the wooded hillsides. Part of the terrace was paved, part planted with flower-beds and arabesques of dwarf box; taller box grew in a dense hedge, making a wide oval, cut into niches and interspersed with statuary, and, in the centre, dominating the, whole splendid space rose the fountain; such a fountain as one might expect to find in a piazza of southern Italy; such a fountain as was, indeed, found there a century ago by one of Sebasian’s ancestors; found, purchased, imported, and re-erected in an alien but welcoming climate.

Sebastian set me to draw it. It was an ambitious subject for an amateur - an oval basin with an island of sculptured rocks at its centre; on the rocks grew, in stone, formal tropical vegetation, and wild English fem in its natural fronds; through them ran a dozen streams that counterfeited springs, and round them sported fantastic tropical animals, camels and camelopards and an ebullient lion, all vomiting water; on the rocks, to the height of the pediment, stood an Egyptian obelisk of red sandstone - but, by some odd chance, for the thing was far beyond me, I brought it off and, by judicious omissions and some stylish tricks, produced a very passable echo of Piranesi. ‘Shall I give it to your mother?’ I asked.

‘Why? You don’t know her.’

‘It seems polite. I’m staying in her house.’

‘Give it to nanny,’ said Sebastian.

I did so, and she put it among the collection on the top of her chest of drawers, remarking that it had quite a look of the thing, which she had often heard admired but could never see the beauty of, herself.

For me the beauty was new-found.

Since the days when, as a schoolboy, I used to bicycle round the neighbouring parishes, rubbing brasses and photographing fonts, I had nursed a love of architecture, but, though in opinion I had made that easy leap, characteristic of my generation, from the puritanism of Ruskin to the puritanism of Roger Fry, my sentiments at heart were insular and medieval.

This was my conversion to the Baroque. Here under that high and insolent dome, under those coffered ceilings; here, as I passed through those arches and broken pediments to the pillared shade beyond and sat, hour by hour, before the fountain, probing its shadows, tracing its lingering echoes, rejoicing in all its clustered feats of daring and invention, I felt a whole new system of nerves alive within me, as though the water that spurted and bubbled among its stones, was indeed a life-giving spring.

One day in a cupboard we found a large japanned-tin box of oil-paints still in workable condition.

‘Mummy bought them a year or two ago. Someone told her that you could only appreciate the beauty of the world by trying to paint it. We laughed at her a great deal about it. She couldn’t draw at all, and however bright, the colour were in the tubes, by the time mummy had mixed them up, they came out a kind of khaki. Various dry, muddy smears on the palette confirmed this statement. ‘Cordelia was- always made to wash the brushes. In the end we all protested and made mummy stop.’ The paints gave us the idea of decorating the office; this was a small room opening on the colonnade; it had once been used for estate business, but was now derelict, holding only some garden games and a tub of dead aloes; it had plainly been designed for a softer use, perhaps as a tea-room or study, for the plaster walls were decorated with delicate Rococo panels and the roof was prettily groined. Here, in one of the smaller oval frames, I sketched a romantic landscape, and in the days that followed filled it out in colour, and, by luck and the happy mood of the moment, made a success of it. The brush seemed somehow to do what was wanted of it. It was a landscape without figures, a summer scene of white cloud and blue distances, with an ivy-clad ruin in the foreground, rocks and a waterfall affording a rugged introduction to the receding parkland behind. I knew little of oil-painting and learned its ways as I worked.  When, in a week, it was finished, Sebastian was eager for me to start on one of the larger panels. I made some sketches. He called for a fête champêtre with a ribboned swing and a Negro page and a shepherd playing the pipes, but the thing languished. I knew it was good chance that had made my landscape, and that this elaborate pastiche was too much for me.

One day we went down to the cellars with Wilcox and saw the empty bays which had once held a vast store of wine; one transept only was used now; there the bins were well stocked, some of with vintages fifty years old.

‘There’s been nothing added since his Lordship went abroad,’ said Wilcox. ‘A lot of the old wine wants drinking up. We ought to have laid down the eighteens and twenties.  I’ve had several letters about it from the wine merchants, but her Ladyship says to ask Lord Brideshead, and he says to ask his Lordship, and his Lordship says to ask the lawyers. That’s how we get low. There’s enough here for ten years at the rate it’s going, but how shall we be then?’

Wilcox welcomed our interest; we had bottles brought up from every bin, and it was during those tranquil evenings with Sebastian that I first made a serious acquaintance with wine and sowed the seed of that rich harvest which was to be my stay in many barren years. We would sit, he and I, in the Painted Parlour with three bottles open on the table and three glasses before each of us; Sebastian had found a book on winetasting, and we followed its instructions in detail. We warmed the glass slightly at a candle, filled it a third high, swirled the wine round, nursed it in our hands, held it to the light, breathed it, sipped it, filled our mouths with it, and rolled it over the tongue, ringing it on the palate like a coin on a counter, tilted our heads back and let it trickle down the throat. Then we talked of it and nibbled Bath Oliver biscuits, and passed on to another wine; then back to the first, then on to another, until all three were in circulation and the order of glasses got confused, and we fell out over which was which, and we passed the glasses to and fro between us until there were six glasses, some of them with mixed wines in them which we had filled from the wrong bottle, till we were obliged to start again with three clean glasses each, and the bottles were empty and our praise of them wilder and more exotic.

‘...It is a little shy wine like a gazelle.’

‘Like a leprechaun.’

‘Dappled, in a tapestry meadow.’

‘Like flute by still water.’

‘...And this is a wise old wine.’

‘A prophet in a cave.’

‘...And this is a necklace of pearls on a white neck.’

‘Like a swan.’

‘Like the last unicorn.’

And we would leave the golden candlelight of the dining-room for the starlight outside and sit on the edge of the fountain, cooling our hands in the water and listening drunkenly to its splash and gurgle over the rocks.

‘Ought we to be drunk every night?, Sebastian asked one morning.

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘I think so too.’

We saw few strangers. There was the agent, a lean and pouchy colonel, who crossed our path occasionally and once came to tea. Usually we managed to hide from him. On Sundays a monk was fetched from a neighbouring monastery to say mass and breakfast with us. He was the first priest I ever met; I noticed how unlike he was to a parson, but Brideshead was a place of such enchantment to me that I expected everything and everyone to be unique; Father Phipps was in fact a bland, bun-faced man with, an interest in county cricket which he obstinately believed us to share.  ‘You, know, father, Charles and I simply don’t know about cricket.’ ‘I wish I’d seen Tennyson make that fifty-eight last Thursday. That must have been an innings. The account in The Times was excellent. Did you see him against the South Africans?’

‘I’ve never seen him.’

‘Neither have I. I haven’t seen a first-class match for years not since Father Graves took me when we were passing through Leeds, after we’d been to the induction of the Abbot at Ampleforth. Father Graves managed to look up a train which gave us three hours to wait on the afternoon of the match against Lancashire. That was an afternoon. I remember every ball of it. Since then I’ve had to go by the papers. You seldom go to see cricket?’

‘Never,’ I said, and he looked at me with the expression I have seen since in the religious, of innocent wonder that those who expose themselves to the dangers of the world should avail themselves so little of its varied solace.

Sebastian always heard his mass, which was ill-attended. Brideshead was not an old-established centre of Catholicism. Lady Marchmain had introduced a few Catholic servants, but the majority of them, and all the cottages, prayed, if anywhere, among the Flyte tombs in the little grey church at the gates.

Sebastian’s faith was an enigma to me at that time, but not one which I felt particularly concerned to solve. I had no religion. I was taken to church weekly as a child, and at school attended chapel daily, but, as though in compensation, from the time I went to my public school I was excused church in the holidays. The masters who taught me Divinity told me that biblical texts were highly untrustworthy. They never suggested I should try to pray. My father did not go to church except on family occasions and then with derision. My mother, I think, was devout. It once seemed odd to me that she should have thought it her duty to leave my father and me and go off with an ambulance, to Serbia, to die of exhaustion in the snow in Bosnia. But later I recognized some such spirit in myself. Later, too, I have come to accept claims which then, in 1923, I never troubled to examine, and to accept the supernatural as the real. I was aware of no such needs that summer at Brideshead.  Often, almost daily, since I had known Sebastian, some chance word in his conversation had reminded me that he was a Catholic, but I took it as a foible, like his teddy-bear. We never discussed the matter until on the second Sunday at Brideshead, when Father Phipps had left us and we sat in the colonnade with the papers, he surprised me by saying: ‘Oh dear, it’s very difficult being a Catholic.’ ‘Does it make much difference to you?’

‘Of course. All the time.’

‘Well, I can’t say I’ve noticed it. Are you struggling against temptation? You don’t seem much more virtuous than me.’

‘I’m very, very much wickeder,’ said Sebastian indignantly.

‘Well then?’

‘Who was it used to pray, “O God, make me good, but not yet”?’

‘I don’t know. You, I should think.’

‘Why, yes, I do, every day. But it isn’t that.’ He turned back to the pages of the News of the World and said, ‘Another naughty scout-master.’ ‘I suppose they try and make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?’

‘Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me.’

‘But my dear Sebastian, you can’t seriously believe it all.’

‘Can’t I?’

‘I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.’

‘Oh yes, I believe that. It’s a lovely idea.’

‘But you can’t believe things because they’re a lovely idea.’

‘But I do. That’s how I believe.’

‘And in prayers? Do you think you can kneel down in front of a statue and say a few words, not even out loud, just in your mind, and change the weather; or that some saints are more influential than others, and you must get hold of the right one to help you on the right problem?’

‘Oh yes. Don’t you remember last term when I took Aloysius and left him behind I didn’t know where. I prayed like mad to St Anthony of Padua that morning, and immediately after lunch there was Mr Nichols at Canterbury Gate with Aloysius in his arms, saying I’d left him in his cab.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you can believe all that and you don’t want to be good, where’s the difficulty about your religion?’

‘If you can’t see, you can’t.’

‘Well, where?’

‘Oh, don’t be a bore, Charles. I want to read about a woman in Hull who’s been using an instrument.’

‘You started the subject. I was just getting interested.’ ‘I’ll never mention it again...thirty-eight other cases were taken into consideration in sentencing her to six months - golly!’ But he did mention it again, some ten days later, as we were lying on the roof of the house, sunbathing and watching through a telescope the Agricultural Show which was in progress in the park below us. It was a modest two-day show serving the neighbouring parishes, and surviving more as a fair and social gathering than as a centre of serious competition. A ring was marked out in flags, and round it had been pitched half a dozen tents of varying size; there was a judges’ box and some pens for livestock; the largest marquee was for refreshments, and there the farmers congregated in numbers. Preparations had been going on for a week. ‘We shall have to hide,’ said Sebastian as the day approached. ‘My brother will be here. He’s a big part of the Agricultural Show.’ So we lay on the roof under the balustrade.  Brideshead came down by train in the morning and lunched with Colonel Fender, the agent. I met him for five minutes on his arrival. Anthony Blanche’s description was peculiarly apt; he had the Flyte face, carved by an Aztec. We could see him now, through the telescope, moving awkwardly among the tenants, stopping to greet the judges in their box, leaning over a pen gazing seriously at the cattle.  ‘Queer fellow, my brother,’ said Sebastian.

‘He looks normal enough.’

‘Oh, but he’s not. If you only knew, he’s much the craziest of us, only it doesn’t come out at all. He’s all twisted inside. He wanted to be a priest, you know.’ ‘I didn’t.’

‘I think he still does. He nearly became a Jesuit, straight from Stonyhurst. It was awful for mummy. She couldn’t exactly try and stop him, but of course it was the last thing she wanted. Think what people would have said - the eldest son; it’s not as if it had been me. And poor papa. The Church has been enough trouble to him without that happening. There was a frightful to do - monks and monsignori running round the house like mice, and Brideshead just sitting glum and talking about the will of God. He was the most upset, you see, when papa went abroad - much more than mummy really.  Finally they persuaded him to go to Oxford and think it over for three years. Now he’s trying to make up his mind. He talks of going into the Guards and into the House of Commons and of marrying. He doesn’t know what he wants. I wonder if I should have been like that, if I’d gone to Stonyhurst. I should have gone, only papa went abroad before I was old enough, and the first thing he insisted on was my going to Eton.  ‘Has your father given up religion?’

‘Well, he’s had to in a way; he only took to it when he married mummy. When he went off, he left that behind with the rest of us. You must meet him. He’s a very nice man.’

Sebastian had never spoken seriously of his father before.

I said: ‘It must have upset you all when your father went a way.’ ‘All but Cordelia. She was too young. It upset me at the time. Mummy tried to explain it to the three eldest of us so that we wouldn’t hate papa. I was the only one who didn’t. I believe she wishes I did. I was always his favourite. I should be staying with him now, if it wasn’t for this foot. I’m the only one who goes. Why don’t you come too? You’d like him.’

A man with a megaphone was shouting the results of the last event in the field below; his voice came faintly to us.

‘So you see we’re a mixed family religiously. Brideshead and Cordelia are both fervent, Catholics; he’s miserable, she’s bird-happy; Julia and I are half-heathen; I am happy, I rather think Julia isn’t; mummy is popularly believed to be a saint and papa is excommunicated - and I wouldn’t know which of them was happy. Anyway, however you look at it, happiness doesn’t seem to have much to do with it, and that’s all I want I wish I liked Catholics more.’

‘They seem just like other people.’

‘My dear Charles, that’s exactly what they’re not particularly in this country, where they’re so few. It’s not just that they’re a clique - as a matter of fact, they’re at least four cliques all blackguarding each other half the time - but they’ve got an entirely different outlook on life; everything they think important is different from other people. They try and hide it as much as they can, but it comes out all the time. It’s quite natural, really, that they should. But you see it’s dffficult for semi-heathens like Julia and me.’ We were interrupted in this unusually grave conversation by loud, childish cries from beyond the chimneystacks, ‘Sebastian, Sebastian.’

‘Good heavens!’ said Sebastian, reaching for a blanket. ‘That sounds like my sister Cordelia. Cover yourself up.’

‘Where are you?’

There came into view a robust child of ten or eleven; she had the unmistakable family characteristics, but had them ill-arranged in a frank and chubby plainness; two thick old fashioned pigtails hung down her back.

‘Go away, Cordelia. We’ve got no clothes on.’

‘Why? You’re quite decent. I guessed you were here. You didn’t know I was about, did you? I came down with Bridey and stopped to see Francis Xavier.’ (To me) ‘He’s my pig. Then we had lunch with Colonel Fender and then the show. Francis Xavier got a special mention. That beast Randal got first with a mangy animal. Darling Sebastian, I am pleased to see you again. How’s your poor foot?’

‘Say how-d’you-do to Mr Ryder.

‘0h, sorry. How d’you do?’ All the family charm was in her smile. ‘They’re all getting pretty boozy down there, so I came away. I say, who’s been painting the office? I went in to look for a shooting-sick and saw it.’

‘Be careful what you say. It’s Mr Ryder.’

‘But it’s lovely. I say, did you really? You are clever. Why don’t you both dress and come down? There’s no one, about.’

‘Bridey’s sure to bring the judges in.

‘But he won’t. I heard making plans not to. He’s very sour today. He didn’t want me to have dinner with you, but I fixed that. Come on. I’ll be in the nursery when you’re fit to be seen.’

We were a sombre little party that evening. Only Cordelia was perfectly at ease, rejoicing in the food, the lateness of the hour, and her brothers’ company. Brideshead was three years older than Sebastian and I, but he seemed of another generation. He had the physical tricks of his family, and his smile, when it rarely came, was as lovely as theirs; he spoke, in their voice, with a gravity and restraint which in my cousin jasper would have sounded pompous and false, but in him was plainly unassumed and unconscious.

‘I am so sorry to miss so much of your visit,’ he said to me. ‘You are being looked after properly? I hope Sebastian is seeing to the wine. Wilcox is apt to be rather grudging when he is on his own.’

‘He’s treated us very liberally.’

‘I am delighted to hear it. You are fond of wine?’



‘Very.’

‘I wish I were. It is such a bond with other men. At Magdalen I tried to get drunk more than once, but I did not enjoy it. Beer and whisky I find even less appetizing.  Events like this afternoon’s are a torment to me in consequence.’

‘I like wine,’ said Cordelia.

‘My sister Cordelia’s last report said that she was not only the worst girl in the school, but the worst there had ever been in the memory of the oldest nun.’ ‘That’s because I refused to be an Enfant de Marie. Reverend Mother said that if I didn’t keep my room tidier I couldn’t be one one, so I said, well, I won’t be one, and I don’t believe our Blessed Lasy cares two hoots whether I put my gym shoes on the left or the right of my dancing shoes. Reverend Mother was livid.  ‘Our Lady cares about obedience.’

‘Bridey, you mustn’t be pious,’ said Sebastian. ‘We’ve got an atheist with us.’

‘Agnostic,’ I said.

‘Really? Is there much of that at your college? There was a certain amount at Magdalen.’

‘I really don’t know. I was one long before I went to Oxford.’

‘It’s everywhere,’ said Brideshead.

Religion seemed an inevitable topic that day. For some time we talked about the Agricultural Show. Then Brideshead said, ‘I saw the Bishop in London last week. You know, he wants to close our chapel.’

‘Oh, he couldn’t,’ said Cordelia.

‘I don’t think mummy will let him, ‘ said Sebastian.

‘It’s too far away,’ said Brideshead. ‘There are a dozen families round Melstead who can’t get here. He wants to open a mass centre there.’

‘But what about us?’ said Sebastian. ‘Do we have to drive out on winter mornings?’ ‘We must have the Blessed Sacrament here,’ said Cordelia. ‘I like popping in at odd times; so does mummy.’

‘So do I, “ said Brideshead, ‘but there are so few of us. It’s not as though we were old Catholics with everyone on the estate coming to mass. It’ll have to go sooner or later, perhaps after mummy’s time. The point is whether it wouldn’t be better to let it go now.  You are an artist, Ryder, what do you think of it aesthetically?’

‘I think it’s beautiful,’ said Cordelia with tears in her eyes.

‘Is it Good Art?’

‘Well, I don’t quite know what you mean,’ I said warily. ‘I think it’s a remarkable example of its period. Probably in eighty years it will be greatly admired.’ ‘But surely it can’t be good twenty years ago and good in eighty years, and not good now?’

‘Well, it may be good now. All I mean is that I don’t happen to like it much.’

‘But is there a difference between liking a thing and thinking it good?’ ‘Bridey, don’t be so Jesuitical,’ said Sebastian, but I knew that this disagreement was not a matter of words only, but expressed a deep and impassable division between us; neither had any understanding of the other, nor ever could.  ‘Isn’t that just the distinction you made about wine?’

‘No. I like and think good the end to which wine is sometimes the means - the promotion of sympathy between man and man. But in my own case it does not achieve that end, so I neither like it nor think it good for me.’

‘Bridey, do stop.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I thought it rather an interesting point.’

‘Thank God I went to Eton,’ said Sebastian.



After dinner Brideshead said: ‘I’m afraid I must take Sebastian away for half an hour.  I shall be busy all day tomorrow, and I’m off immediately after the show. I’ve a lot of papers for father to sign. Sebastian must take them out and explain them to him. It’s time you were in bed, Cordelia.’

‘Must digest first,’ she said. ‘I’m not used to gorging like this at night. I’ll talk to Charles.’

‘”Charles”?’ said Sebastian. ‘”Charles”?’ “Mr Ryder” to you, child.’

‘Come on Charles.’

When we were alone: she said: ‘Are you really an agnostic?’

‘Does your family always talk about religion all the time?’

‘Not all the time. It’s a subject that just comes up naturally, doesn’t-it?’

‘Does it? It never has with me before.’

‘Then perhaps you are an agnostic. I’ll pray for you.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘I can’t spare you a whole rosary you know. Just a decade. I’ve got such a long list of people. I take them in order and they get a decade about once a week.’ ‘I’m sure it’s more than I deserve.’

‘Oh, I’ve got some harder cases than you. Lloyd George and the Kaiser and Olive Banks.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She was bunked from the convent last term. I don’t quite know what for. Reverend Mother found something she’d been writing. D’you know, if you weren’t an agnostic, I should ask you for five shillings to buy a black god-daughter.’ ‘Nothing will surprise me about your religion.’

‘It’s a new thing a missionary priest started last term. You send five bob to some nuns in Africa and they christen a baby and name her after you. I’ve got six black Cordelias already. Isn’t it lovely?’

When Brideshead and Sebastian returned, Cordelia was sent to bed. Brideshead began again on our discussion.

‘Of course, you are right really,’ he said. ‘You take art as a means not as an end. That is strict theology, but it’s unusual to find an agnostic believing it.’ ‘Cordelia has promised to pray for me,’ I said.

‘She made a novena I for her pig’ said Sebastian.

‘You know all this is very puzzling to me,’ I said.

‘I think we’re causing scandal, said Brideshead.

That night I began to realize how little I really knew of Sebastian, and to understand why he had always sought to keep me apart from the rest of his life. He was like a friend made on board ship, on the high seas; now we had come to his home port.

Brideshead and Cordelia went away; the tents were struck on the show ground, the flags uprooted; the trampled grass began to regain its colour; the month that had started in leisurely fashion came swiftly to its end. Sebastian walked without a stick now and had forgotten his injury.

‘I think you’d better come with me to Venice,’ he said.

‘No money.’

‘I thought of that. We live on papa when we get there. The lawyers pay my fare - first class and sleeper. We can both travel third for that.’

And so we went; first by the long, cheap sea-crossing to Dunkirk, sitting all night on deck under a clear sky, watching the grey dawn break over the sand dunes; then to Paris, on wooden seats, where we drove to the Lotti, had baths and shaved, lunched at Foyot’s, which was hot and half-empty, loitered sleepily among the shops, and sat long in a café waiting till the time of our train; then in the warm, dusty evening to the Gare de Lyon, to the slow train south, again the wooden seats, a carriage full of the poor, visiting their families - travelling, as the poor do in Northern countries, with a multitude of small bundles and an air of patient submission to authority - and sailors returning from leave.  We slept fitfully, jolting and stopping, changed once in the night, slept again and awoke in an empty carriage, with pine woods passing the windows and the distant view of mountain peaks. New uniforms at the frontier, coffee and bread at the station buffet, people round us of Southern grace and gaiety; on again into the plains, conifers changing to vine and olive, a change of trains at Milan; garlic sausage, bread, and a flask of Orvieto bought from a trolley (we had spent all our money save for a few francs, in Paris); the sun mounted high and the country glowed with heat; the carriage filled with peasants, ebbing and flowing at each station, the smell of garlic was overwhelming in the hot carriage. At last in the evening we arrived at Venice.  A sombre figure was there to meet us. ‘Papa’s valet, Plender.’ ‘I met the express,’ said Plender. ‘His Lordship thought you must have looked up the train wrong. This seemed only to come from Milan.’

‘We travelled third.’

Plender tittered politely. ‘I have the gondola here’. I shall follow with the luggage in the vaporetto. His Lordship had gone to the Lido. He was not sure he would be home before you - that was when we expected you on the Express. He should be there by now.’

He led us to the waiting boat. The gondoliers wore green and white livery and silver plaques on their chests; they smiled and bowed.

‘Palazzo. Pronto.’

‘Si, signore Plender.’

And we floated away.

‘You’ve been here before?’

‘No.’

‘I came once before - from the sea. This is the way to arrive.’

‘Ecco ci siamo, signori.’

The palace was a little less than it sounded, a narrow Palladian facade, mossy steps, a dark archway of rusticated stone. One boatman leapt ashore, made fast to the post, rang the bell; the other stood on the prow keeping the craft in to the steps. The doors opened; a man in rather raffish summer livery of striped linen led us up the stairs from shadow into light; the piano nobile was in full sunshine, ablaze with frescoes of the school of Tintoretto.

Our rooms were on the floor above, reached by a precipitous marble staircase; they were shuttered against the afternoon sun; the butler threw them open and we looked out on the grand canal; the beds had mosquito nets.

‘Mostica not now.’

There was a little bulbous press in each room, a misty, gilt-framed mirror, and no other furniture. The floor was of bare marble slabs.

‘A bit bleak?’ asked Sebastian.

‘Bleak? Look at that.’ I led him again to the window and the incomparable pageant below and about us.

‘No’, you couldn’t call it bleak.’

A tremendous explosion drew us next door. We found a bathroom which seemed to have been built in a chimney. There was no ceiling; instead the walls ran straight through the floor above to the open sky. The butler was almost invisible in the steam of an antiquated geyser. There was an overpowering smell of gas and a tiny trickle of cold water.

‘No good.’

‘Si, Si, subito signori.’

The butler ran to the top of the staircase and began to shout down it; a female voice, more strident than his answered. Sebastian and I returned to the spectacle below our windows. Presently the argument came to an, end and a woman and child appeared, who smiled at us, scowled at the butler, and put on Sebastian’s press I a silver basin and ewer of boiling water. The butler meanwhile unpacked and folded our clothes and, lapsing into Italian, told us of the unrecognized merits of the geyser, until suddenly cocking his head sideways he became alert, said ‘II marchese,’ and darted downstairs.  ‘We’d better look respectable before meeting papa,’ said Sebastian. ‘We needn’t dress.

I gather he’s alone at the moment.’

I was full of curiosity to meet Lord Marchmain. When I did so I was first struck by his normality, which, as I saw more of him, I found to be studied. It was as though he were conscious of a Byronic aura, which he considered to be in bad taste and was at pains to suppress. He was standing on the balcony of the saloon and, as he turned to greet us, his face was in deep shadow. I was aware only of a tall and upright figure.  ‘Darling papa,’ said Sebastian, ‘how young you are looking!’ He kissed Lord Marchmain on the cheek and I, who had not kissed my father since I left the nursery, stood shyly behind him.

‘This is Charles. Don’t you think my father very handsome, Charles?’

Lord Marchmain shook my hand.

‘Whoever looked up your train, ‘ he said - and his voice also was Sebastian’s - ‘made a bêtise. There’s no such one.’

‘We came on it.’

‘You can’t have. There was only a slow train from Milan at that time. I was at the Lido. I have taken to playing tennis there with the professional in the early evening. It is the only time of day when it is not too hot. I hope you boys will be fairly comfortable upstairs. This house seems to have been designed for the comfort of only one person, and I am that one. I have a room the size of this and a very decent dressing-room. Cara has taken possession of the other sizeable room.’

I was fascinated to hear him speak of his mistress so simply and casually; later I suspected that it was done for effect, for me.

‘How is she?’

‘Cara? Well, I hope. She will be back with us tomorrow. She is visiting some American friends at a villa on the Brenta canal. Where shall we dine? We might go to the Luna, but it is filling up with English now. Would you be too dull at home? Cara is sure to want to go out tomorrow, and the cook here is really quite excellent.’ He had moved away from the window and now stood in the full evening sunlight, with the red damask of the walls behind him. It was a noble face, a controlled one, just, it seemed, as he planned it to be; slightly weary, slightly sardonic, slightly voluptuous.  He seemed in the prime of life- it was odd to think that he was only a few years younger than my father.

We dined at a marble table in the windows; everything was either of marble, or velvet, or dull, gilt gesso, in this house. Lord Marchmain said, ‘And how do you plan your time here? Bathing or sight-seeing?’

‘Some sight-seeing, anyway,’ I said.

‘Cara will like that - she, as Sebastian will have told you, is your hostess here. You can’t do both, you know. Once you go to the Lido there is no escaping - you play backgammon, you get caught at the bar, you get stupefied by the sun. Stick to the churches.’

‘Charles is very keen on painting,.’ said Sebastian.

‘Yes?’ I noticed the hint of deep boredom which I knew so well in my own father.

‘Yes? Any particular Venetian painter?’

‘Bellini,’ I answered rather wildly.

‘Yes? Which?’

‘I’m afraid that I didn’t know there were two of them.’ ‘Three to be precise. You will find that in the great ages painting was very much a family business. How did you leave England?’

‘It has been lovely,’ said Sebastian.

‘Was it? Was it? It has been my tragedy that I abominate the English countryside. I suppose it is a disgraceful thing to inherit great responsibilities and to be entirely indifferent to them. I am all the Socialists would have me be, and a great stumbling-block to my own party. Well, my elder son will change all that, I’ve no doubt, if they leave him anything to inherit...Why, I wonder, are Italian sweets always thought to be so good? There was always an Italian pastry-cook at Brideshead until my father’s day.  He had an Austrian, so much better. And now I suppose there is some British matron with beefy forearms.’

After dinner we left the palace by the street door and walked through a maze of.bridges and squares and alleys, to Florian’s for coffee, and watched the grave crowds crossing and recrossing under the campanile. ‘There is nothing quite like a Venetian crowd,’ said Lord Marchmain. ‘The city is crawling with Anarchists, - but an American woman tried to sit here the other night with bare shoulders and they drove her away by coming to stare at her, quite silently; they were like circling gulls coming back and back to her, until she left. Our countrymen are much less dignified when they attempt to express moral disapproval.’

An English party had just then come from the waterfront, made for a table near us, and then suddenly moved to the other side, where they looked askance at us and talked with their heads close together. ‘That is a man and his wife I used to know when I was in politics. A prominent member of your church, Sebastian.’ As we went up to bed that night Sebastian said: ‘He’s rather a poppet, isn’t he?’

Lord Marchmain’s mistress arrived next day. I was nineteen years old and completely ignorant of women. I could not with any certainty recognize a prostitute in the streets. I was therefore not indifferent to the fact of living under the roof of an adulterous couple, but I was old enough to hide my interest. Lord Marchmain’s mistress, therefore, found me with a multitude of conflicting expectations about her all of which were, for the moment, disappointed by her appearance. She was not a voluptuous, Toulouse-Lautrec odalisque; she was not a ‘little bit of fluff’; she was a middle-aged, well-preserved, well-dressed, well-mannered woman such as I had seen in countless public places and occasionally met. Nor did she seem marked by any social stigma. On the day of her arrival we lunched at the Lido, where she was greeted at almost every table.  ‘Vittoria Corombona has asked us all to her ball on Saturday.’

‘It is very kind of her. You know I do not dance,’ said Lord Marchmain.

‘But for the boys? It is a thing to be seen - the Corombona palace lit up for the ball.

One does not know how many such balls there will be in the future.’

‘The boys can do as they like. We must refuse.’

‘And I have asked Mrs Hacking Brunner to luncheon. She has a charming daughter.

Sebastian and his friend will like her.’



‘Sebastian and his friend are more interested in Bellini than heiresses.’ ‘But that is what I have always wished,’ said Cara, changing her point of attack adroitly. ‘I have been here more times than I can count and Alex has not once let me inside San Marco, even. We will become tourists, yes?’ We became tourists; Cara enlisted as guide a midget Venetian nobleman to whom all doors were open and with him at her side and a guide book in her hand, she came with us, flagging sometimes but never giving up, a neat, prosaic figure amid the immense splendours of the place.

The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly - perhaps too sweetly; I was drowning in honey, stingless. On some days life kept pace with the gondola, as we nosed through the sidecanals and the boatman uttered his plaintive musical bird-cry of warning; on other days with the speed-boat bouncing over the lagoon in a stream of sun-lit foam; it left a confused memory of fierce sunlight on the sands and cool, marble interiors; of water everywhere, lapping on smooth stone, reflected in a dapple of light on painted ceilings; of a night at the Corombona palace such as Byron might have known, and another Byronic night fishing for scampi in the shallows of Chioggia, the phosphorescent wake of the little ship, the lantern swinging in the prow, and the net coming up full of weed and sand and floundering fishes; of melon and prosciutto on the balcony in the cool of the morning; of hot cheese sandwiches and champagne cocktails at Harry’s bar.

I remember Sebastian looking up at the Colleoni statue and saying, ‘It’s rather sad to think that whatever happens you and I can never possibly get involved in a war.’ I remember most particularly one conversation towards the end of my visit.

Sebastian had gone to play tennis with his father and Cara at last admitted to fatigue.  We sat in the late afternoon at the windows overlooking the Grand Canal, she on the sofa with a piece of needlework, I in an armchair, idle. It was the first time we had been alone together.

‘I think you are very -fond of Sebastian,’ she said.

‘Why, certainly.’

‘I know of these romantic friendships of the English and the Germans. They are not Latin. I think they are very good if they do not go on too long.’ She was so composed and matter-of-fact that I could not take her amiss, but I failed to find an answer. She seemed not to expect one but continued stitching, pausing sometimes to match the silk from a work-bag at her side.  ‘It is a kind of love that comes to children before they know its meaning. In England it comes when you are almost men; I think I like that. It is better to have that kind of love for another boy than for a girl. Alex you see had it for a girl, for his wife. Do you think he loves me?’

‘Really, Cara, you ask the most embarrassing questions. How should I know? I assume...’

‘He does not. But not the littlest piece. Then why does he stay with me? I will tell you; because I protect him from Lady Marchmain. He hates her; but you can have no conception how he hates her. You would think him so calm and English - the milord, rather blasé, all passion dead, wishing to be comfortable and not to be worried, following the sun, with me to look after that one thing that no man can do for himself.  My friend, he is a volcano of hate. He cannot breathe the same air as she. He will not set foot in England because it is her home; he can scarcely be happy with Sebastian because he is her son. But Sebastian hates her too.’

‘I’m sure you’re wrong there.’

‘He may not admit it to you. He may not admit it to himself; they are full of hate - hate of themselves. Alex and his family...Why do you think he will never go into Society?’

‘I always thought people had turned against him.’

‘My dear boy, you are very young. People turn against a handsome, clever, wealthy man like Alex? Never in your life. It is he who has driven them away. Even now they come back again and again to be snubbed and laughed at. And all for Lady Marchmain.  He will not touch a hand which may have touched hers. When we have guests I see him thinking, “Have they perhaps just come from Brideshead? Are they on their way to Marchmain House? Will they speak of me to my wife? Are they a link between me and her whom I hate?” But, seriously, with my heart, that is how he thinks. He is mad. And how has she deserved all this hate? She has done nothing except to be loved by someone who was not grown up. I have never met Lady Marchmain; I have seen her once only; but if you live with a man you come to know the other woman he has loved.  I know Lady Marchmain very well. She is a good and simple woman who has been loved in the wrong way.

‘When people hate with all that energy, it is something in themselves they are hating.  Alex is hating all the illusions of boyhood - innocence, God, hope. Poor Lady Marchmain has to bear all that. A woman has not all these ways of loving.  ‘Now Alex is very fond of me and I protect him from his own innocence. We are comfortable.

‘Sebastian is in love with his own childhood. That will make him very unhappy. His teddy-bear, his nanny and he is nineteen years old... ‘

She stirred on her sofa, shifting her weight so that she could look down at the passing boats, and said in fond, mocking tones: ‘How good it is to sit in the shade and talk of love,’ and then added with a sudden swoop to earth, ‘Sebastian drinks too much.’ ‘I suppose we both do.’

‘With you it does not matter. I have watched you together. With Sebastian it is different. He will be a drunkard if someone does not come to stop him. I have known so many. Alex was nearly a drunkard when he met me; it is in the blood. I see it in the way Sebastian drinks. It is not your way.’

We arrived in London on the day before term began. On the way from Charing Cross I dropped Sebastian in the forecourt of his mother’s house; ‘Here is “Marchers”,’ he said with a sigh which meant the end of a holiday. ‘I won’t ask you in, the place is probably full of my family. We’ll meet at Oxford’; I drove across the park to my home.  My father greeted me with, his usual air of mild regret.  ‘Here today,’ he said; ‘gone tomorrow. I seem to see very little of you. Perhaps it is dull for you here. How could it be otherwise? You have enjoyed yourself.’ ‘Very much. I went to Venice.’

‘Yes. Yes. I suppose so. The weather was fine?’ When he went to bed after an evening of silent study, he paused to ask: ‘The friend you were so much concerned about, did he die?’

‘No.’

‘I am very thankful. You should have written to tell me. I worried about him so much.’

青春的柔情啊——它是何等的非凡，何等的完美！又何其迅速，不可挽回地失去了它！而热情、慷慨、幻想、绝望，所有这些青春的传统品性——除了青春的柔情以外的所有品性——都是与我们生命同生同灭的。这些感情就是生命的一个组成部分。可是青春的柔情呢——那种精力充沛的懒散，那种孤芳自赏的情怀——这些只属于青春，并且与青春一起消逝。也许，在悬狱的殿堂里，为了补偿英雄们失去的至福幻象，他们正享受着青春柔情；或许至福幻象本身就同这种平凡的体验有着某种淡薄的血缘关系；总而言之，我相信，在布赖兹赫德度过的充满青春柔情的日子就像在天堂一样。


“为什么管这所房子叫做‘城堡’呢？”

“拆迁以前这是座城堡。”

“你这话是什么意思？”

“就是这意思。在一英里以外，就在下边村子旁边，有一座城堡。我们喜欢这座山谷，就把那个城堡拆了，把城堡的石块运到这儿，盖了一所新住宅。我很喜欢他们这种做法，你不喜欢吗？”

“如果这所房子是我的，我就哪儿也不去了。”

“可是你知道，查尔斯，这儿并不是我的。只是眼下算是我的，可是这里经常住满了狼吞虎咽的野兽。假如这儿能够总像现在这样——总是夏天，总是一个人，果子总是熟的，而阿洛伊修斯脾气总是很好……”

因此，我爱回忆那个夏天，当我们一起在那座迷人的宫殿里漫步时塞巴斯蒂安的样子。塞巴斯蒂安坐在轮椅里，沿着果园两边长着黄杨的道路上疾驰，寻找高山草莓和新鲜的无花果；他转动轮椅穿过一间间气味不同、气候迥异的温室，剪下麝香葡萄，挑选兰花插在我们衣服的扣眼上；塞巴斯蒂安手舞足蹈，一瘸一拐地到育婴室去，我们并排坐在育婴室里一块磨旧了的绣花地毯上，除了一个玩具柜，四周空空的，保姆霍金斯在一个角落里怡然自得地缝缀着东西，她唠叨着：“你们和别人一样坏；你们这一对坏孩子哟。这就是学校教你们的吗？”在柱廊里，塞巴斯蒂安就像现在这样仰卧在洒满阳光的位子上，我坐在他旁边一把硬椅子上，试着把喷泉画下来。

“这个圆顶也是伊内果·琼斯设计的吗？它的建筑年代看起来要晚些。”

“得啦，查尔斯，别像个旅行家似的。只要它好看就行了，管它什么时候造的呢！”

“像这种事我就喜欢知道。”

“嗨，亲爱的，我还以为我已经把你这些毛病都矫正好了呢——糟糕的科林斯先生啊。”

住在这样的房子里，从这个房间转悠到那个房间，从索恩式的图书室到中国式的客厅，那些镀金的宝塔和点头哈腰的中国清朝官员，彩色壁纸和奇彭代尔的精工细雕的木器家具，真是令人眼花缭乱，还可以从庞贝式的客厅转悠到挂着壁毯的大走廊，这个大走廊依然保持着当年的风貌，与二百五十年前设计时一样；还可以一连几小时坐在阴凉的地方眺望外面的平台，欣赏这一切，真是一番美学教育。

这个平台是这所房子设计中最完美的杰作；它坐落在巨石的壁垒上，俯瞰着湖水。因此走廊通往湖边的台阶非常陡峭，好像悬在湖面上，凭栏俯视仿佛可以把块卵石垂直投入脚下第一个湖泊里。平台由两排柱廊环抱，在亭子外，欧椴树林一直伸到林木繁茂的山坡上。平台有一部分铺了地面，另一部分辟为花坛和用矮小的黄杨拼成的阿拉伯图案；稍高些的黄杨长成密密的树篱，围成一个很宽的椭圆形，中间还插进一些壁龛，并且散置着一些雕像，椭圆形的中央喷出一股泉水，它耸立在这片壮观的园地上；像这样的喷泉装置可能在意大利南部城市的广场上找到；而这座喷泉装置是一个世纪以前由塞巴斯蒂安的祖先发现的，发现后就买下来运进来，它便在异域的、然而适宜的气候中重新竖立起来了。

塞巴斯蒂安让我把喷泉画下来。对于一个业余画家来说，画下这个喷泉是一个雄心勃勃之举——一个椭圆形的水池，水池中央是经过斧凿的岩石岛，岛上布置有整齐的石雕热带植物以及英国野生蕨类植物的逼真的叶子；十几道溪流在岩石间流过，仿如泉水，珍奇的石雕热带动物在泉水旁边奔逐嬉戏，有骆驼，长颈鹿，还有张牙舞爪的狮子等等，全都在喷水。岩石堆上，人形山头的顶部，矗立着一个红沙岩的埃及方尖塔——这件东西远非我的能力所能画好的，但是靠了某种很奇怪的运气，我竟把它画了出来，并且以审慎的精炼和漂亮的手法产生了一种很不错的皮拉内西的效果。“我把这张画送给你母亲好吗？”我问。

“为什么？你并不认识她。”

“这样显得有礼貌。我现在住在她家里。”

“把这张画给保姆吧。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

我这样做了，她把它摆在五斗柜上她的收藏品中间，并说它画得很像。她常常听人称赞那喷泉，不过她自己从来也看不出它的美。

对我来说，这是新发现的美。

自从我是中学生的时候，我就常常骑着脚踏车去附近的教堂周围转悠，摸摸各种铜器，拍几张圣水盆的照片。从那时起，我就养成了热爱建筑物的习惯，虽然在观点上我和我这一代人一样，轻易地完成了这样一步飞跃，即从罗斯金的清教主义到罗杰·弗赖的清教主义，但是我内心的感情却是保守的，倾向于中世纪的。

我就这样转移到巴罗克的建筑上来。这里，在高高的傲视一切的穹顶下，镶板天花板下面；这里，当我穿过一道道拱门和残缺的古希腊式的山墙，来到用圆柱支撑着的阴蔽地方，我一连几个小时坐在喷泉前面，观察喷泉的种种阴影，追寻萦回不散的回声，尽情享受所有这些勇敢和创造的丰硕功绩时，我就感到精神焕发，仿佛那在石雕中汩汩喷流的水真是生命之泉。


一天， 我们在一只小橱里发现了一个还能使用的、涂着日本亮漆的铁皮油彩盒。

“这还是妈妈一两年前买的。有人跟她说，只有试着画画油画，才能够欣赏世界的美，为了这盒油彩，我们可把妈妈大大地嘲笑了一番。她根本不会画画儿，不管油彩在颜料管里有多么鲜亮，可是妈妈一把它们调和起来，就变成了土黄色了。”调色板上乱七八糟干了的污痕证实了这句话。“妈妈总是吩咐科迪莉娅去洗画笔。结果，我们都表示抗议，这才使妈妈歇手不干了。”
    
这盒颜料使我们起了把办事处装饰起来的念头；这是通柱廊的一间小屋子；它曾经用来办理地产事务，现在闲置起来，只存放了一些花园游戏用具和一桶干芦荟。这间屋子显然是为了住得舒服一些而设计的，也许是做一间茶室，或者是做一间书房；因为四壁的灰泥墙都装饰着雅致的洛可可式镶板，而屋顶也精致地做成圆拱形。就在这间屋子里，我在一个较小的椭圆形框子里勾出一幅富于浪漫情调的风景画，以后几天再涂上色彩，而且靠运气，也由于当时心情愉快，我居然把它画得很成功。不知怎的，好像要那支画笔怎么画它就怎么画。这是一幅没有人物的风景画，画的是白云蓝天的夏日风景，前景是一座爬满了常春藤的废墟，岩石和瀑布掩映着后面那片渐渐远去的园林。我不大懂油画技术，我一边画，一边学。一个星期后，画完了，这时塞巴斯蒂安急于要我在一块大的镶板上再画一幅。我就又画了一些草稿。他叫人取来一幅名叫“游园会”的画，上面画着一架用飘扬的丝带装饰着的秋千，一个黑人听差，还有一个吹风笛的牧羊人，但是画着画着我就没有兴趣了。我知道那幅风景画的成功是凭了好运气，而要画出这样精致的一幅模仿作品，却是我力所不能及的。

一天，我们和威尔科克斯一起下到地窖里，在那里看到一个贮存着大批葡萄酒的空空落落的壁洞；现在只有一个十字甬道还在使用着；甬道里的箱子装满了东西，有些箱子装着已经贮存了五十年的葡萄佳酿。

“自从爵爷出国后，就再也没有增添什么酒了，”威尔科克斯说。“有大量的陈葡萄酒该喝掉。本来贮藏个十八年或二十年也就够了。我收到酒商寄来的几封谈到这些酒的信，可是爵爷夫人却让我去问布赖兹赫德勋爵，而布赖兹赫德勋爵又让我去问爵爷，而爵爷又让我去问律师。事情就这样拖下来。照现在这样的速度来喝酒，存的酒够用十年了。可是到那时我们又会成什么样子了呢？”

威尔科克斯尽情款待我们；我们吩咐从每个箱子里分别取出一瓶酒来。在同塞巴斯蒂安一起度过的那些宁静夜晚，我和葡萄酒初次真的结交了，并且播下了丰收的种子，这样的丰收在以后许多百无聊赖的年月里成了我的精神支柱。他和我经常坐在“彩绘客厅”里，桌上摆着三瓶打开的葡萄酒，每人面前摆上三只玻璃杯。塞巴斯蒂安找到了一本论品尝葡萄酒的书，我们就按照详细指导来品尝葡萄酒。我们先把酒杯放在蜡烛火焰上温一下，然后把酒杯斟上三分之一的酒，接着把酒旋转起来，小心地捧在手里，随后把酒举到灯亮前照一照，嗅一嗅，呷一小口，再喝一大口，让酒在舌头上滚动，就像在柜台上滚动一个硬币那样，让酒在上腭上滚动，然后向后仰起脑袋，让酒一滴一滴流进喉咙。然后，我们就谈谈这种酒；咬一点巴斯·奥利弗牌饼干，接着再品尝另外一种葡萄酒；这种酒品尝完了，再回过来品尝最初的那种，然后再品尝一种新的，到后来这三种酒轮流着品尝过了，酒杯的顺序全乱了，哪个酒杯里到底盛的是哪种酒我们争论不休，酒杯在我们俩之间传过来递过去，直到这六个酒杯中有的已经掺进了我们从不一样的酒瓶里倒进来的混合酒，直到我们不得不每人用三只干净酒杯重新开始，酒瓶空了，而我们对酒的赞扬也更加放肆更加出奇了。

“……这酒稍微有一点羞涩，像一头大眼睛的羚羊。”

“像一个矮妖精。”

“有花纹的妖精出现在织锦般的草地上。”

“就像寂静水边的一枝长笛。”

“……这是增长智慧的陈酒。”

“是山洞里一位先知。”

“……这是戴在雪白脖颈上的一串珍珠项链。”

“像一只天鹅。”

“像最后一匹独角兽。”

这时我们常常离开餐室里金黄色的烛光，到外面星光下，坐在喷泉边上，在水里冰一冰手，醉昏昏地谛听岩石上泉水的泼溅声和汩汩声。

“我们应该天天晚上都喝醉吗？”一天早晨塞巴斯蒂安这样问。

“不错，我想是这样。”

“我也是这么想的。”


我们很少见到生人。有一个是代理商，一个身材瘦长的上校，他有时在路上遇到我们，到我们这儿喝过一次茶。通常我们总是设法躲着他。每逢星期日都从附近一个修道院请来一位修道士做弥撒，并且让他和我们一起吃早饭。他是我平生遇到的第一位教士；我注意到他不像一位教区牧师，但是布赖兹赫德是一个使我着魔的地方，所以我希望那里的一切事情，一切的人都要不同凡响。实际上菲普斯神父是一个温和的、长着小圆面包脸孔的人，他对当地板球戏很感兴趣，而且顽固地认为我们也跟他一样喜欢板球。

“你知道，神父，查尔斯和我根本不懂得板球是怎么回事。”

“我真希望我能看到坦尼森上星期四是怎么赢五十八分的。那一定是很精彩的一局。《泰晤士报》的评论好极了，你们看过他同南非人对打吗？”

“我根本没有见过他。”

“我也没有见过他。我好多年没有看过一场第一流的比赛了——那年格雷夫斯神父带我去参加安普福尔斯的修道院院长就职仪式后，路过利兹，他带我去看了一次，以后就再也没有看过了。神父设法查出了一趟合适的火车班次，让我们有三个小时的时间，等着看下午迎战兰开夏的那场比赛。比赛是在下午。那一场的每个球我都记得。从那以后，我就只好靠报纸和看球赛了。你们很少去看板球吧？”

“从来不看，”我说，他看着我，表情又天真又惊讶，这种表情以后我常常在教徒的脸上看到，他奇怪像我们这些面对尘世种种危险的人们，竟然很少利用尘世间这些五花八门的东西来安慰自己。

塞巴斯蒂安常常去望弥撒，去望弥撒的人很少，布赖兹赫德并不是一个历史悠久的天主教中心。马奇梅因夫人领进来几个信天主教的仆人，可是大多数仆人和所有的村民，倘若要在什么地方祈祷的话，那就是在庄园门边那个灰色小教堂里面弗莱特家族的坟地中间。

塞巴斯蒂安的信仰当时在我看来是个迷。但是我并不特别想解开这个迷团。我没有宗教信仰。我小的时候，每星期都被人带去做一次礼拜，上学时天天都去学校小教堂做礼拜，可是仿佛作为一种补偿，自从上了公立学校，假日的礼拜就免掉了。给我讲神学课的教师们告诉过我，《圣经》的经文完全不可信。他们也从来没有建议过我去作祈祷。我父亲不做礼拜，除非遇上家庭有什么事，即使去，也是带着些嘲弄的意味。我母亲呢，我认为她是笃信宗教的。我以前觉得很奇怪，她竟会认为她有责任抛下我和爸爸，跟着一个战地救护队去塞尔维亚，筋疲力尽，死在波斯尼亚的冰天雪地里。可是后来，我意识到我身上也有这样的精神。也是后来在一九二三年我接受了要我信教的要求，从来没有费心思去考虑这些要求，并且把超自然的现象当作真实的接受下来。在布赖兹赫德那个夏天，我意识到没有这样做的必要。

自从认识了塞巴斯蒂安以后，常常地，几乎是每天，他的某些偶然说出的话会使我想起他是个天主教徒，但是我把这种情形看成是一种小小的弱点，就像他爱那只玩具熊一样。一直到在布赖兹赫德的第二个星期日，我们才谈起这件事来，这时菲普斯神父已经走了，我们坐在柱廊中间看报，他说了这么一句话，使我吃了一惊：

“哎呀，当一个天主教徒真不容易。”

“这和你有很大关系吗？”

“当然有关系。一直如此。”

“嗯，我得承认我可从来没有注意到这点。难道你正在抗拒什么诱惑吗？看来你的德行未必比我的高多少啊！”

“我比你坏得多。”塞巴斯蒂安激愤地说。

“那又怎么样呢？”

“是谁常常祈祷，‘啊，上帝，让我变好吧，可至今没有变’？”

“我不知道。我想，那是你吧。”

“嗨，不错，我祈祷，天天都祈祷。可是问题并不在这里。”他又埋头看起《世界新闻》报来，一边说，“又是一个很坏的童子军领队。”

“我想他们千方百计要你相信一大堆胡说八道，你相信吗？”

“胡说八道？要是倒好了。在我听来，有时还很有道理呢。”

“可是亲爱的塞巴斯蒂安，你可不能真地相信它呀。”

“不能够吗？”

“我是说不能相信什么圣诞节啦，东方的星啦，三个王啦，牛啦，驴啦。”

“哎呀呀，我可相信这些。多美的想法呀！”

“可是你不能因为有些想法美就相信。”

“可是我相信。我就是这样相信的。”

“也信祈祷文吗？难道你认为，你在一个塑像前跪下，念叨几句话，甚至连声也不出，只是在你心里说，就可以改变天气了吗？或者说，某些圣徒比别的圣徒更有影响，难道你必须找到某个合适的圣徒，帮助你解决某个问题吗？”

“嘿，不错。你记不记得上个学期，我带着阿洛伊修斯，可是后来不知道把他丢在什么地方了。那天早晨我发疯似的向帕多瓦的圣安东尼祈祷，刚吃过午饭，尼科尔斯先生就在坎特伯雷教堂门前，怀里抱着阿洛伊修斯，说是我把他丢在他的马车里了。”

“嘿，”我说，“如果你只相信这些，并不想变好，那么你信教还有什么困难呢？”

“如果你看不出来，那就是看不出来。”

“得啦，困难在什么地方呢？”

“咳，别让人这么厌烦，查尔斯。我还要读读这条消息呢，赫尔的一个妇女一直在使用一种工具。”

“这个问题是你提出来的，我刚刚对它感兴趣。”

“我决不再提它了……在判她六个月徒刑时，曾参照了其他三十八个案例——天啊！”

可是大约十天以后，他又提起了这个话题，当时我们正躺在房顶上，一边晒太阳，一边用一架望远镜观察下面公园里正在举办的农业展览会。这是为附近几个教区举办的一个简朴的两天展览会，它勉勉强强办下来了，与其说是激烈竞争的中心，倒不如说更像一个市集和公共集会。用一些旗子圈成一块场地，这个场地的周围搭起了五六个大大小小的帐篷；那儿有几个牲畜鉴定站和几个牲畜圈。最大的帐篷是用来供应茶点便餐的，一大堆农场主聚集在那儿。准备工作也已经进行了一个星期了。“我们得躲起来，”快到那天的时候，塞巴斯蒂安说，“我哥哥会到这儿来的。他可是这个农业展览会的重要角色呢！”于是我们就躺在屋顶的栏杆下面。

布赖兹赫德搭上午的火车到达，并且和那位代理商人芬德上校一道吃了午饭。他到达的时候我同他面谈了五分钟。安东尼·布兰奇的描述真是贴切极了；他有着弗莱特家族的那种脸型，仿佛是阿兹台克人雕刻出来的。这时我们用望远镜可以看见他，他正在五六个佃户中间笨手笨脚地走着，有时站住向鉴定站里的鉴定员打招呼，有时又靠在一个牲畜圈的栏杆上，仔细地看着里面的牛群。

“我哥哥是个怪人。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

“他看上去可挺正常的。”

“啊，可是他不正常。你知道，我们家里数他最古怪了，只不过没有完全显露出来。他内心受了伤，变了样儿。他原来想当神父，你知道吧。”

“我不知道。”

“我觉得他现在还想当神父呢。从斯托尼赫斯特学校一出来，他差点成了个耶稣会的教士了。对妈妈说来，这太可怕了。他根本没法阻止他，不过当然啰，这是她最不愿意的事情了。想想别人会怎么说吧——这是她的长子；如果是我，人们好像就不会说什么了。还有可怜的爸爸。即使没有这件事，教会给他的苦恼也已经够多的了。真麻烦透顶了——修道士和修道院长就像一群耗子在家里窜来窜去，而布赖兹赫德闷闷不乐地坐着，谈论上帝的旨意。你知道，爸爸去国外的时候他难过极了——实际上他比妈妈还难过。最后，他们劝他去上了牛津大学，把当修道士的问题好好考虑三年。现在，他正在努力下决心呢。他说要当皇家禁卫军啦，进下议院啦，还有结婚啦。他自己也不知道要干什么。我知道，如果我也上了斯托尼赫斯特学校是否也会变成他现在这个样子。我本来也要上那个学校，只是我还没有长大，爸爸就去了国外，他坚持要我上伊顿公学。”

“你父亲不信教了吗？”

“噢，有点儿不信了；他和妈妈结婚的时候才开始信教。他一出国，就把宗教和我们都丢开了。你应该见见他。他是个极好的人。”

塞巴斯蒂安以前从来没有正经谈过他的父亲。

我说：“你父亲走掉以后，你们肯定很难过吧？”

“所有的人都很难过，除了科迪莉娅。那时她太小了。当时使我很难过。妈妈努力向我们三个大孩子解释，好让我们不恨爸爸。不恨我爸爸的只有我一人。我认为她希望我恨他。我一向是他的宠儿。要不是这只脚坏了，我就和他住在一起了。只有我一个人去他那里。你为什么不一块儿去呢？你一定会喜欢他的。”

下面那块场地里，有一个男人正在用喇叭筒大声喊着拍板成交的结果。他的声音微弱地传到我们这儿。

“所以你知道，我们家的人在宗教信仰上并不一致。布赖兹赫德和科迪莉娅是狂热的天主教徒；他很不幸，而她像小鸟一样快乐；朱丽娅和我则是半个异教徒；我很快乐，我的确觉得朱丽娅并不快乐；一般人认为妈妈是一个圣徒，爸爸是一个被逐出教门的人——我也不知道他们哪一个是幸福的。无论如何，不管你怎么看待宗教，幸福好像和宗教没有很大关系，而这就是我要求的一切……我希望我自己更喜欢天主教徒。”

“他们看起来就像其他的人一样。”

“亲爱的查尔斯，恰恰不是这样——尤其是在这个国家，他们人数那么少。倒不是因为他们是一个教派——实际上，至少有四个教派，有一半时间他们都在互相谩骂——可是他们对人生的看法和别人完全不一样；凡是他们认为重要的，都和别人想的不一样。他们总是力图不让别人知道自己的人生观，可是他们的人生观却随时流露出来。他们要把自己的人生观隐藏起来原是很自然的。不过你知道，对于像我和朱丽娅这样的半异教徒说来，要隐藏可就困难了。”

这时从高烟囱那边传来儿童的喊叫：“塞巴斯蒂安，塞巴斯蒂安。”于是这次异常严肃的谈话就中断了。

“天哪！”塞巴斯蒂安一边说着，一边伸手去拿毯子。“像是我妹妹科迪莉娅的声音。你快把身子盖上。”

“你在哪儿呀？”

说着就出现了一个十一二岁胖乎乎的孩子；她身上有着那种明显的家族特征，不过在她真诚而胖乎乎的圆脸上，这些特征都走了样；她的脑后垂着两条粗大的旧式辫子。

“走开，科迪莉娅，我们还没有穿衣服啊。”

“什么？你也太不像话了。我猜你就在这儿。你不知道我也来了吧？我和布赖德一块儿来的，留下来看了看弗朗西斯·泽维尔。”（转向我，）“弗朗西斯·泽维尔是我的猪。后来我们和芬德上校一起吃了饭，然后就去展览会了。弗朗西斯·泽维尔可招人注意呢。兰德尔那个恶棍用一头癞皮牲口就得了第一。亲爱的塞巴斯蒂安，又看到你我真高兴。你可怜的脚怎么了？”

“向赖德先生问好。”

“噢，对不起。你好。”那个家族的全部魅力都在她的微笑中。“他们在下边喝得相当醉了，所以我就来了。喂，谁在办事间里画画呢？我去那儿找一个凳子手杖，就看到了。”

“说话留点神。那是赖德先生画的。”

“太好看了，真是你画的吗？你很聪明。你们俩干吗不穿好衣服下来呢？附近没有人。”

“布赖德肯定会把交易会的鉴定员们带来的。”

“不会，我听见他说不打算带他们来。他今天脾气可坏啦。他原来不想让我和你们一起吃饭，可是我已经决定了。来吧。你们的样子见得人的时候，我就去育婴室。”

晚餐桌上大家很沉闷。只有科迪莉娅一个人自由自在，她吃得津津有味，很高兴地吃到夜阑人静，高兴有她的哥哥们陪着她。布赖兹赫德比我和塞巴斯蒂安只大三岁，可他却显得是另一代的人了。他有他家族的特点，在他难得一笑时，他和家里人的笑容一样动人；他说起话来，也是他们那种嗓音，还带着一种庄重而拘谨的味儿，而这种味儿照我堂兄贾斯珀的话说，听起来就显得装腔作势，言不由衷，但布赖兹赫德的话听起来却显得平易近人，自然流露。

“十分抱歉这才知道你到我们家来了。”他对我说，“他们对你照顾得好吗？我希望塞巴斯蒂安请你喝葡萄酒。如果威尔科克斯自己做主，他就会相当吝啬的。”

“他待我们非常慷慨大方。”

“听你这么说我就高兴了。你喜欢葡萄酒吗？”

“很喜欢。”

“我要是喜欢喝就好了。别的男人和酒结了不解之缘。在毛德琳学院时，我不止一次想把自己灌醉，可是我不喜欢葡萄酒。我甚至觉得啤酒和威士忌都不大开胃口。像今天下午那样的事情，对我来说，结果是一场苦难。”

“我可喜欢喝葡萄酒。”科迪莉娅说。

“我妹妹科迪莉娅的最近的成绩报告单上说，她不仅是学校中最坏的女学生，而且她在最老的修女的记忆里也是最坏的。”

“这是因为我拒绝做圣母会修女。女修道院长说，如果我不把宿舍弄整齐些，就不能当圣母会的修女，所以我就说好嘞，我还不愿当，再说我也不相信圣母会管我是不是左脚穿了体操鞋，右脚穿了跳舞鞋。气得女修道院长脸色铁青。”

“圣母可是喜欢顺从的呀。”

“布赖德，你别这么虔诚了，”塞巴斯蒂安说，“我们这儿可有一位无神论者。”

“是不可知论者，”我说。

“真的吗？这种人在你们学院里很多吗？在毛德琳学院可有一些。”

“我实在不知道。在进牛津大学以前我早就是不可知论者。”

“无神论者到处都有。”布赖兹赫德说。

宗教信仰似乎是这天非谈不可的话题。我们谈了一会儿农业展览会。后来布赖兹赫德说：“上个星期我在伦敦见到主教。你们知道，他想关闭我们这儿的小教堂。”

“得嘞，他关不了。”科迪莉娅说。

“我想妈妈不会让他关掉。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

“小教堂离得太远了，”布赖兹赫德说，“梅尔斯蒂德周围十几户人家没法到这儿来。所以他想在梅尔斯蒂德开一个弥撒中心。”

“那我们怎么办？”塞巴斯蒂安说，“难道我们在大冬天一早就得开车去那儿吗？”

“我们必须让圣餐礼在这儿举行，”科迪莉娅说，“我喜欢偶尔去参加一下；妈妈也喜欢。”

“我也爱去，”布赖兹赫德说，“可是我们人太少了。好像我们并不是全庄园人人都去作弥撒的老天主教徒。小教堂迟早总会取消的，也许等妈妈过世后。问题是，如果现在就取消是不是合适。你是个艺术家，赖德，从美学角度来看，你认为小教堂怎么样？”

“我认为很美。”科迪莉娅噙着眼泪说。

“它是件真正的艺术品吗？”

“呃，我还不大明白你是什么意思，”我小心地说，“我认为这个小教堂是它那个时代的一个出色的代表作。可能再过八十年，它就会受到极大的赞美了。”

“这教堂二十年前不算美，八十年后很美，而现在就不美，这肯定是不可能的。”

“好啦，现在也许是好的。我的意思无非是说，我恰好不十分喜欢它。”

“可是，喜欢一件东西和认为它好有没有区别呢？”

“布赖德，别像耶稣会教士那样狡猾。”塞巴斯蒂安说。可是我知道这样的争执不只是个文字问题，而且还表现出我们之间的深刻而又无法消除的分歧；双方都不理解，而且也不能够理解对方。

“难道你也是这样来区分葡萄酒的吗？”

“不。葡萄酒是达到一种目的的手段，我喜欢那目的，而且认为那目的是好的——那目的就是促进人与人之间的同情。可是就我的情况来说，葡萄酒并没有达到这个目的。所以，我既不喜欢葡萄酒，也不认为它对我有什么好处。”

“布赖德，别说啦。”

“对不起，”他说，“我还认为这个问题让人们感兴趣哩。”

“谢天谢地，我上的是伊顿公学。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

吃完了晚饭，布赖兹赫德说：“恐怕我得把塞巴斯蒂安带走半个小时。明天我要忙一整天，展览会完了我得马上动身回去。我有一大堆文件要请父亲签字。塞巴斯蒂安得把这些文件取出来，解释给父亲听。科迪莉娅，你该去睡觉了。”

“得先消化一下才行，”他说，“晚上我还没有这么大吃过呢。我还要跟查尔斯说说话呢。”

“‘查尔斯’？”塞巴斯蒂安说，“什么‘查尔斯’？你应当叫赖德先生，孩子。”

“查尔斯，来吧。”

就剩我们两个人的时候，她说：“你真是个不可知论者吗？”

“你们家随时都谈论宗教问题吗？”

“不是随时谈。这个问题是自然而然提出来的，不是吗？”

“是吗？我从来没有遇到过宗教问题。”

“那么，也许一是个不可知论者。我要为你祷告。”

“你可太好啦。”

“要知道，我不能给你一串念珠的时间，只能为你祈祷十个念珠的时间。我要为他们祈祷的人有一大串呢。我把他们按顺序排好，每周一次，我给每人祈祷十个念珠的时间。”

“我相信这已经超过了我该得到的了。”

“噢，我碰到的一些事情比你还要难办呢。比如说劳埃德·乔治，凯泽和奥利夫·班克斯。”

“她是谁？”

“她上个学期从女修道院逃跑了。我也不知道究竟是什么原因。女修道院长发现了她正在写什么东西。知道吧，如果你不是不可知论者，我就会向你要五先令，好买一个黑人教女。”

“你的宗教我丝毫也不感到吃惊。”

“这是上学期一位神父发起的新鲜事儿。如果你给非洲的某些修女寄去五先令，她们就会在给某人婴儿洗礼时用你的名字做婴儿的教名。我已经有了六个黑科迪莉娅啦。这挺好玩的吧。”

布赖兹赫德和塞巴斯蒂安一回来，就叫科迪莉娅去睡觉了。布赖兹赫德又继续谈起我们谈论的那场话题。

“当然，你确实说得有理，”他说，“你把艺术当作手段而不把它当作目的。这是严谨的神学啊，可是不寻常的是，我竟然发现一位不可知论者居然也相信神学。”

“科迪莉娅已经答应为我祷告了。”我说。

“她为她的猪连续作过九天祷告。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

“你知道，这一切让我莫名其妙。”我说。

“我觉得我们会引起人们的反感的。”布赖兹赫德说。

这晚上我才开始认识到，实际上我过去对塞巴斯蒂安多么不了解，我这才开始明白他为什么总是想方设法不让我接触到他生活的其他方面。他就像在公海客轮上结识的一位朋友；此时，我们已经在他家乡的港口靠岸了。


布赖兹赫德和科迪莉娅走了；展览会场上的帐篷拆掉了，旗子也拔掉了；被践踏的草地又开始恢复了绿色；以从容闲散开始的这个月，倏忽到了月底。现在塞巴斯蒂安走路已经用不着拐杖了，也忘记了他的脚伤。

“我想你最好和我一起去威尼斯。”他说。

“没钱呀。”

“我想到这一点。我们到了威尼斯就可以靠我爸爸过活。而旅费，律师们会给我的——给我买头等车卧铺票。用这笔钱我们俩坐三等车去就够了。”

我们就这样动身了；先是搭了便宜的长途海轮横渡海峡去敦刻尔克，我们在清朗的夜空下在甲板上坐了一夜，看着沙丘那边破晓的鱼肚色的曙光；接着又坐硬席去巴黎，到达巴黎就驱车去洛蒂旅馆，洗了澡，刮了脸，又在富瓦蒂餐馆吃了午餐，餐馆里很热，有一半坐位空着，随后又昏昏欲睡地逛了商店，后来就一直坐在一家咖啡馆里等到我们火车开车的时间；火车在温暖的、尘土弥漫的傍晚到达里昂车站，然后又换乘南开的慢车，又是硬座，车厢里挤满了回家的穷人——他们像北欧国家的穷人那样，旅行时带着许多包袱，对权威还流露出恭顺谦卑的神情——这里还有假满回去的水手们。我们时睡时醒，火车颠簸着，还经常停下来，夜里换了一次车，一上车又睡着了，醒来时车厢已经空了，车窗外闪过松林和远处群山的峰顶。边境上是穿崭新军服的士兵，在车站便餐室吃咖啡和面包，我们周围都是带着宽厚而快乐表情的南方人；火车又开到平原上，针叶松变成葡萄藤和橄榄，在米兰换车；从手推车上买了蒜肠、面包、一瓶葡萄酒（我们在巴黎把钱花光了，只剩了几个法郎）；太阳高照，大地热烘烘的；车厢里坐满了农民，每到一个车站就拥上拥下，闷热的车厢弥漫着大蒜气味。薄暮时分，我们终于到达了威尼斯。

一个脸色阴沉的人在那儿迎接我们。“爸爸的仆人，普伦德。”

“我先接了那趟快车，”普伦德说，“爵爷想你们一定看错了火车时间表。这趟车好像才从米兰开来的。”

“我们是坐三等车来的。”

普伦德有礼貌地嗤嗤笑着。“我开来了一条冈朵拉。我坐汽轮把行李带去。爵爷到利多去了。他不一定能在你到家前回来——那是我们预计你坐快车来算计的。现在，他可能回家了。”

他领我们上了等待我们的小船。船夫们穿着白绿两色的制服，胸前别着银质徽章；他们微笑着鞠躬。

“回大厦，普朗陀。”

“是的，普伦德先生。”

于是我们的船顺流漂去。

“你以前来过这儿吗？”

“没来过。”

“我以前来过一次——那是从海路来的。走这条路就到了。”

“瞧，我们到了，先生们。”

那大厦比传闻的小些，门面很狭窄，石阶上长满苔藓，阴暗的拱廊用粗琢的石头建成。一个船夫跳到岸上，把船系在柱子上，然后去拉门铃；另一个船夫站在船头，使船紧靠着石阶。门打开了；一个穿着俗气的条纹亚麻布夏季制服的仆人引我们走了台阶，我们就从昏暗的地方走到亮处；华贵的钢琴上洒满了阳光，丁托列托学派的壁画使这个府第显得光辉灿烂。

我们的住房在上面一层，要上一段陡峭的大理石楼梯，为了不让午后的阳光照进来，房间的百叶窗都关上了；仆人把百叶窗推开，我们眺望外面的大运河；床上挂着蚊帐。

“现在没有蚊子。”

每间屋子里的家具都只有一个不大的鳞茎面的衣橱，一面镶着镀金框的、模糊不清的镜子。地板是大理石板，没有铺地毯。

“这光景有点凄凉吧？”塞巴斯蒂安问。

“怎么凄凉？看看这些吧。”我又把他带到窗户前，下面和周围是一片辉煌华丽的风光。

“不，你怎么能不说凄凉呢。”

这时隔壁一声巨大的爆裂声把我们吸引过去。我们发现一间洗澡间，看上去仿佛是修建在烟囱里似的。上面没有天花板，墙壁直通上去，经过上面那层楼通到露天。在这座古老的热水锅炉产生的水蒸汽中隐隐约约可以看到那个男仆的影子。有一种冲鼻的煤气味道，一小股冷水汩汩地淌着。

“没法用了。”

“是，是，真是意外，先生。”

男仆跑到楼梯顶上，朝下面大声叫喊；一个女人的声音答应着，比他的声音更刺耳。我和塞巴斯蒂安又回到我们的房间观看窗下壮丽的景色。过了一会儿，那场争吵结束了，这时一个女人和一个小孩进了我们的房间，朝我们笑笑，又对那个男仆瞪瞪眼睛，把一只镀银脸盆和一只盛了热水的水罐放到塞巴斯蒂安的衣橱上。这时男仆打开我们的衣服，又把它叠好，他不知不觉说起意大利语来，跟我们讲那座热水锅炉被埋没了的优点，说着说着，他突然把头向旁边一扬，警觉起来，说了一声“侯爵来了”，拨腿就跑到楼下去了。

“我们穿的像个样子再去见爸爸，”塞巴斯蒂安说，“我们倒不用穿礼服。我估计现在他那里没有客人。”

我心里充满了要见马奇梅因勋爵的好奇心。当我见到他时，我首先为他的正常状态所打动，随着我越来越多看到他时，我觉得这种正常状态值得仔细研究。他似乎意识到自己身上有一种拜伦的气派，他认为这种气派不够得体，所以拼命克制住。他站在客厅的阳台上，当他转过身来欢迎我们的时候，他的脸上笼罩着一层浓重的阴影。我只感到面前是一个魁伟笔挺的身影。

“亲爱的爸爸，”塞巴斯蒂安说，“你显得多年轻啊！”

他亲吻了马奇梅因勋爵的脸颊，我自从离开育婴室就再也没有吻过父亲，这时我便不好意思地站在他身后。

“这是查尔斯。你不觉得我父亲很漂亮吗，查尔斯？”

马奇梅因勋爵握握我的手。

“不管是谁给你们看的火车时刻表，”他说——他的嗓音也是塞巴斯蒂安那样的——“反正他是干了一件蠢事。没有这样一趟车的。”

“我们就是坐这趟车来的。”

“不可能。那个时间只有从米兰开来的一趟慢车。当时我正在利多。下午早些时候我去那儿和职业网球家打网球。一天中只有那个时候还不太热。我希望你们两个在楼上住得很舒服。这所房子似乎只是为了一个人的舒适而设计的，这个人就是我啰。我有一间像这么大的房间，还有一间挺像样的化妆室。卡拉占了另一间相当大的房间。”

听到他如此直率而又如此漫不经心地提到他的情妇，我不禁呆住了。后来我猜想他这样说是为了面子，是为了我。

“她好吗？”

“卡拉吗？很好。我希望是这样。明天她就回到我们这儿来。她正在布伦塔运河边一个别墅里看望几个美国朋友。我们在什么地方吃饭呢？倒是可以去‘月神’餐厅，不过现在那里全是英国人。你们在家里吃饭觉得太闷了吧？卡拉明天一定要出去的，这儿的厨师真是出色极了。”

他已经离开窗口，这时他全身沐浴到夕阳的光辉里，他身后是红锦缎般的墙壁。那是一张高贵的脸，充满了自我克制，正如他企图表现出来的那个样子；稍微有些疲倦，稍微带点讥讽，还有点贪图酒色的痕迹。看起来他正当盛年。想起来真奇怪，其实他只比我父亲小几岁。

我们坐在一间四面都是玻璃的房间里，在大理石桌子上吃晚饭。房间里的一切东西，不是大理石的，就是丝绒的，或者是单一的、金色石膏粉制品。马奇梅因勋爵说：“你们在这里打算怎么过呢？是洗海水浴呢，还是观光游览？”

“不管怎么样，多少要参观一下。”我说。

“卡拉会喜欢这样的——她嘛，塞巴斯蒂安想必告诉过你了，她是你们的女主人。海水浴和游览不可兼得，你知道。一旦你们到了利多浴场，你们可就走不了的——你们玩十五子棋啦，泡酒吧间啦，太阳把你们晒得晕晕糊糊。可要坚持去教堂啊。”

“查尔斯热爱画油画。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

“是吗？”我听出了一种十分厌烦的口气，这种口气我在父亲的话里是听惯了的。“是吗？是某一个威尼斯画家？”

“是贝里尼。”我回答得有些粗野。

“贝里尼吗？哪一个贝里尼？”

“恐怕我不知道有两个贝里尼。”

“准确地说有三个。你会发现，在伟大的时代，把绘画当作家庭事业是十分常见的。你们怎么离开英国的？”

“英国很美。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

“它美吗？它过去美吗？我不喜欢英格兰农村，这一直是我的不幸。继承了一些重大责任，可是对这些责任又漠不关心，我以为这是很丢脸的事情。我现在这个样子完全符合社会主义者对我的希望，我对我自己的那个党已经是一块大绊脚石了。嗯，我的大儿子会改变这一切，我毫不怀疑，倘若他们让他继承什么东西的话……呃，我很纳闷，为什么人们认为意大利的甜食总是很好的呢？在我父亲管家以前，布赖兹赫德总请一位意大利糕点师傅。我父亲用了一位奥地利厨师，好得多了。我想，那里现在大概有一位胳膊粗壮的女管家了吧。”

饭后我们离开了府第，出了街门，我们走过弯弯曲曲迷宫似的石桥、广场和胡同，去弗洛里安咖啡店喝咖啡，边喝边看钟楼下熙熙攘攘的人群。“什么也比不上威尼斯这样的城市。”马奇梅因勋爵说，“这个城市到处都有游游逛逛的无政府主义者，有天晚上，一位袒胸露臂的美国女人想在这里坐坐，他们就跑过来盯着她，一言不发，把她赶走了，那些人就像跟着海船盘旋的海鸥一样追着她不放，直到她走开。而我们的同胞，当他们打算在道德问题上表示不同意见时，比起美国人来却是不够高尚的。”

这时一伙英国人正从水边走过来，向我们旁边的一张桌子走去，接着他们又突然走到另一头，坐在那边斜着眼看我们，把脑袋凑在一起嘀咕。“过去我在政界时，我认识那边那个男人和他的老婆。男的名叫塞巴斯蒂安，他是你们那个教派的一位著名人物呢。”

这天晚上我们要去睡觉时，塞巴斯蒂安说，“他真是个好‘宝贝’，不是吗？”


第二天，马奇梅因勋爵的情妇来到。我虽说已经十九岁了，可是对女人还是一无所知的。在大街上我都没有把握辨认出一个妓女来。因此我现在和一对通奸的男女住在这幢房子里，我对于这件事就并不是无动于衷的，可是我的年龄已经大到能够掩饰起我的好奇心，因此，马奇梅因勋爵的情妇看出来我对她抱着很多矛盾的期望。而这一切期望，一时由于她的外貌而破灭了。她的样子不像土鲁斯—劳德累克笔下的土耳其后宫里引起色欲的婢妾；也不是“年轻的女郎”。她已到中年，保养得很好，穿着考究，风度优雅，像这样的女人我在许多公共场合都见到过或偶尔遇到过。但是在她身上也没有留下任何社会恶习的痕迹。就在她到达这天，我们在利多的餐厅吃午饭，餐厅里几乎所有吃饭的人都招呼她。

“维多利亚·科隆波娜已经邀请了我们大家参加她星期六的舞会。”

“她太好了。可是你知道我是不跳舞的。”马奇梅因勋爵说。

“可是为了孩子们，去吧。那地方很值得去看看——科隆波娜的府第开起舞会来灯火辉煌啊。很难说以后还会举行多少这样的舞会了。”

“孩子们可以随他们便。我们可是必须谢绝。”

“还有，我已经请了哈金·布伦纳太太吃午饭。她的女儿很漂亮。塞巴斯蒂安和他的朋友会喜欢她的。”

“塞巴斯蒂安和他的朋友对贝里尼的兴趣比对女继承人的兴趣要大得多哩。”

“不过，我一向希望的也正是这个嘛。”卡拉说，她灵活地改变了她的攻击点，“我到这儿来的次数真是数也数不清，亚力克斯连一次也没有让我进圣马可里面去看看呢。我们要当旅游者了，是不是？”

我们的确成了旅游者了；卡拉找到一位到处很熟悉的矮个子威尼斯贵族作向导，她把他带在身边，自己拿着一本旅游指南，她和我们一起参观，她有时疲倦，但从不放弃，在威尼斯豪华、壮丽的环境中，她是一个身材匀称的普通人。

在威尼斯的半个月过得很快，很惬意——或者过分惬意了；我沉浸在甜蜜的幸福中，无忧无虑。有几天，日子就消磨在那条冈朵拉上，我们缓缓地驶过大运河的支流，船夫发出哀怨的、鸟叫般的警告声。另外几天，我们坐着快艇腾越在通海的泻湖上，航行在闪烁于阳光下的滚滚而来的泡沫浪花上；如今留下的混乱回忆是沙滩上的灼热的阳光和大理石建筑里的阴凉，到处是水拍打着平滑的石块，在彩绘的天花板上反映出斑斓的光点，是像拜伦可能度过的科隆波娜的贵族府第的夜晚，还有另一个拜伦式的夜晚——在基奥贾的浅滩上捕大鳌虾，小船后面泛起闪着粼光的尾波，船头上摇曳着的船灯，捞上来满网的水草、沙石和欢腾乱跳的鱼儿；还记得在清凉的早晨，在阳台上吃甜瓜和熏火腿；还记得在哈里酒吧吃热奶酪三明治和香槟鸡尾酒。

我记得塞巴斯蒂安仰望着那座科莱奥尼铜像，说到：“不管发生什么事情，你和我都决不会卷进一场战争中去，想到这一点，也真够让人沮丧的了。”

我还特别奇怪地记住了访问结束时的一场谈话。

当时塞巴斯蒂安和他父亲打网球去了，而卡拉终于承认她自己累了。已近黄昏，我们坐在俯瞰大运河的窗户边，她坐在沙发上，做着针线活，我坐在扶手椅里，闲着没事。这还是我们头一次单独在一起。

“我想你很喜欢塞巴斯蒂安。”她说。

“嗯，当然啰。”

“我懂得英国人和德国人那种浪漫的友谊。他们不是拉丁民族，如果这种友谊持续的时间不太长，我想是很好的。”

她说话时态度安详，平淡，因此我不能责怪她，但是找不出话来回答。她好象并不期望我回答，只是继续做着针线活，间或停下来，从她身边的针线袋里拿出一块绸子来比一比花色。

“这种友谊是一种爱，在孩子们还不懂得它的意义的时候，他们身上就产生了这种感情。在英国，这种爱在你快长大成人时出现；我觉得我是喜欢这种爱的。对另一个男孩子怀有这种爱要比对一个女孩子怀有这种爱好一些。你知道，亚力克斯对一个女孩，对他的妻子就曾经有过这种爱。你认为他爱我吗？”

“真的，卡拉，你问的真是个最叫人难以回答的问题。我怎么会知道呢？我想……”

“他不爱我。一点都不爱。那么他为什么要和我住在一起呢？告诉你吧；因为我和他在一起可以免得他和马奇梅因夫人在一起；他恨她；可是你可能不知道他多么恨她。你会认为他很平静，英国派头十足——这位英国绅士，有点玩腻了，一切热情都已消失，贪图的是安逸，不要受干扰，打发日子，让我为他做一件别人做不到的事。我的朋友，他是一座仇恨的火山啊。他不能同她呼吸同一个地方的空气。他也不会踏上英国的土地，因为那儿是她的家；他和塞巴斯蒂安在一起是很难高兴得起来的，因为他是她的儿子。但是塞巴斯蒂安也恨她。”

“这一点你肯定说得不对。”

“他也许对你不会承认这一点。他也许自己也不承认；他们都充满了仇恨——仇恨他们自己。亚力克斯和他的家庭都这样……你想他为什么永远也不进社交界呢？”

“我一向认为那是因为大家都反对他。”

“亲爱的孩子，你太年轻啦。难道人们会反对像亚力克斯这样一个仪表堂堂、聪明健康的人吗？这是根本不可能的。其实，是他把人家都撵走了。即使是现在，他们还屡次三番地跑到他这儿来，受到冷落和嘲笑。这一切都因为马奇梅因夫人的原故。凡是可能和她有过接触的人，他都不愿打交道。只要一来客人，我就看出他在琢磨‘也许他们是从布赖兹赫德庄园来的吧？他们是不是去马奇梅因公馆路过这儿呢？他们会不会跟我的妻子说起我呢？他们是不是在我和我憎恨的她之间搭桥？’不过，我心里真的认为他就是这么想的。他疯了。她为什么应该受到这样的仇恨呢？她除了曾被某个没有成年的人爱过以外，并没有做什么啊。我和马奇梅因夫人素昧平生，只见过她一次；但是，若是你和一个男人同居，你就会了解他曾经爱过的另外一个女人的情况。我和了解马奇梅因夫人。她是一个善良而又单纯的女人，就是曾经被人错误地爱过。

“当人们那样强烈地仇恨时，他们仇恨的正是他们自己身上的东西。亚力克斯仇恨他幼年时期的一切幻想——天真、上帝、希望。可怜的马奇梅因夫人不得不忍受这一切。一个女人不能爱对她怀着如此深仇大恨的人啊！

“亚力克斯现在很喜欢我，而我则保护他，使他自己的天真不受伤害。我们过得很舒服。

“塞巴斯蒂安热爱上自己的幼年时代。这会使他非常不幸。什么玩具熊啦，什么保姆啦……而他已经十九岁了……”

她在沙发上动了动，换了一下位置，好让自己能够看到窗下来来往往的游船，接着她又用一种故作多情的、嘲弄的语调说：“坐在阴凉里谈论爱情真是很美的啊。”接着，她忽然急转直下，出其不意地说，“塞巴斯蒂安喝得太多了。”

“大概我们俩都喝得很多。”

“你喝得多关系不大。你们在一起喝酒的时候我留神观察了。塞巴斯蒂安的情形就不一样了。如果没人出来阻止他，他会喝成一个酒鬼。这种事情我见得多了。亚力克斯，在我遇到他时差不多是一个酒鬼了；酒鬼是有遗传性的。我从塞巴斯蒂安喝酒的方式看出来了。你就不是那种喝法。”


我们在开学前一天到达伦敦。在从伦敦繁华的市中心区查林——克罗斯来的路上，我让塞巴斯蒂安在他母亲住宅的前院下车。“‘马奇家’到了，”他说，还叹了口气，表示假期已经结束，“我不请你进来啦，里面大约全是我家的人，我们在牛津再见面吧。”我坐着车穿过公园回到家中。

父亲带着他平素那种温和遗憾态度招呼我。

“今天到家，”他说，“你明天就走了。我好像和你见面太少了。也许你在家里觉得没意思。还能有别的原因吗？你玩得高兴吗？”

“高兴极了。我去威尼斯了。”

“好，好。我估计会这样的。那儿天气好吗？”

他一晚上都在不声不响地研究着什么，快去睡觉的时候，他停了一下问道：“你十分关心的那位朋友，他死了吗？”

“没死。”

“我非常高兴。你应该写信告诉我嘛。我非常为他担心哩。”

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Chapter 5
‘IT is typical of Oxford,’ I said, ‘to start the new year in autumn.’

Everywhere, on cobble and gravel and lawn, the leaves were falling and in the college gardens the smoke of the bonfires joined the wet river mist, drifting across the grey walls; the flags were oily underfoot and as, one by one, the lamps were lit in the windows round the quad, the golden lights were diffuse and remote, new figures in new gowns wandered through the twilight under the arches and the familiar bells now spoke of a year’s memories.

The autumnal mood possessed us both as though the riotous exuberance of June had died with the gillyflowers whose scent at my windows now yielded to the damp leaves, smouldering in a corner of the quad.

It was the first Sunday evening of term.

‘I feel precisely one hundred years old,’ said Sebastian.  He had come up the night before, a day earlier than I, and this was our first meeting since we parted in the taxi.

‘I’ve had a talking to from Mgr Bell this afternoon. That makes the fourth since I came up - my tutor, the junior dean, Mr Samgrass of All Souls, and now Mgr Bell.’ ‘Who is Mr Samgrass of All Souls?’

‘Just someone of mummy’s. They all say that I made a very bad start last year, that I have been noticed, and that if I don’t mend my ways I shall get sent down. How does one mend one’s ways? I suppose one joins the League of Nations Union, and reads the Isis every week, and drinks coffee in the morning at the Cadena café, and smokes a great pipe and plays hockey and goes out to tea on Boar’s Hill and to lectures at Keble, and rides a bicycle with a little tray full of notebooks and drinks cocoa in the evening and discusses sex seriously. Oh, Charles, what has happened since last term? I feel so old.’

‘I feel middle-aged. That is infinitely worse. I believe we have had all the fun we can expect here.’

We sat silent in the firelight as darkness fell.

‘Anthony Blanche has gone down.’

‘Why?’

‘He wrote to me. Apparently he’s taken a flat in Munich - he has formed an

attachment to a policeman there.’

‘I shall miss him.’

‘I suppose I shall, too, in a way.’

We fell silent again and sat so still in the firelight that a man who came in to see me, stood for a moment in the door and then went away thinking the room empty.  ‘This is no way to start a new year,’ said Sebastian; but this sombre October evening seemed to breathe its chill, moist air over the succeeding-weeks. All that term and all that year Sebastian and I lived more and more in the shadows and, like a fetish, hidden first from the missionary and at length forgotten, the toy bear, Aloysius, sat unregarded on the chest-of-drawers in Sebastian’s bedroom.

There was a change in both of us. We had lost the sense of discovery which had infused the anarchy of our first year. I began to settle down.

Unexpectedly, I missed my cousin Jasper, who had got his first in Greats and was now cumbrously setting about a life of public mischief in London; I needed him to shock; without that massive presence the college seemed to lack solidity; it no longer provoked and gave point to outrage as it had done in the summer. Moreover, I had come back glutted and a little chastened; with the resolve to go slow. Never again would I expose myself to my father’s humour; his whimsical persecution had convinced me, as no rebuke could have done, of the folly of living beyond my means. I had had no talking-to this term; my success in History Previous and a beta minus in one of my Collections papers had put me on easy terms with my tutor which I managed to maintain without undue effort.

I kept a tenuous connection with the History School, wrote my two essays a week, and attended an occasional lecture. Besides this I started my second year by joining the Ruskin School of Art; two or three mornings a week we melt, about a dozen of us - half, at least, the daughters of north Oxford among the casts from the antique at the Ashmolean Museum; twice a week we drew from the nude in a small room over a teashop; some pains were taken by the authorities to exclude any hint of lubricity on these evenings, and the young woman who sat to us was brought from London for the day and not allowed to reside in the University city; one flank, that nearer the oil stove, I remember, was always rosy and the other mottled and puckered as though it had been plucked. There, in the smell of the oil lamp, we sat astride the donkey stools and evoked a barely visible wraith of Trilby. My drawings were worthless; in my own rooms I designed elaborate little pastiches, some of which, preserved by friends of the period, come to light occasionally to embarrass me.

We were instructed by a man of about my age, who treated us with defensive hostility; he wore very dark blue shirts, a lemon-yellow tie, and horn-rimmed glasses, and it was largely by reason of this warning that I modified my own style of dress until it approximated to what my cousin jasper would have thought suitable for country-house visiting. Thus soberly dressed and happily employed I became a fairly respectable member of my college.

With Sebastian it was different. His year of anarchy had filled a deep, interior need of his, the escape from reality, and as he found himself increasingly hemmed in, where he once felt himself free, he became at times listless and morose, even with me.

We kept very much to our own company that term, each so much bound up in the other that we did not look elsewhere for friends. My cousin Jasper had told me that it was normal to spend one’s second year shaking off the friends of one’s first, and it happened as he said. Most of my friends were those I had made through Sebastian; together we shed them and made no others. There was no renunciation. At first we seemed to see them as often as ever; we went to parties but gave few of our own. I was not concerned to impress the new freshmen who, like their London sisters were here being launched in Society; there were strange faces now at every party and I, who a few months back had been voracious of new acquaintances, now felt surfeited; even our small circle of intimates, so lively in the summer sunshine, seemed dimmed and muted now in the pervading fog, the river-borne twilight that softened and obscured all that year for me. Anthony Blanche had taken something away with him when he went; he had locked a door and hung the key on his chain; and all his friends, among whom he had always been a stranger, needed him now.

The Charity matinée was over, I felt; the impresario had buttoned his astrakhan coat and taken his fee and the disconsolate ladies of the company were without a leader.

Without him they forgot their cues and garbled their lines; they needed him to ring the curtain up at the right moment; they needed him to direct the lime-lights they needed his whisper in the wings, and his imperious eye on the leader of the band; without him there were no photographers from the weekly press, no prearranged goodwill and expectation of pleasure. No stronger bond held them together than common service; now the gold lace and velvet were packed away and returned to the costumier and the drab uniform of the day put on in its stead. For a few happy hours of rehearsal, for a few ecstatic minutes of performance, they had played splendid parts, their own great ancestors, the famous paintings they were thought to resemble; now it was over and in the bleak light of day they must go back to their homes; to the husband who came to London too often, to the lover who lost at cards, and to the child who grew too fast.  Anthony Blanche’s set broke up and became a bare dozen lethargic, adolescent Englishmen. Sometimes in later life they would say: ‘Do you remember that extraordinary fellow we used all to know at Oxford - Anthony Blanche? I wonder what became of him.’ They lumbered back into the herd from which they had been so capriciously chosen and grew less and less individually recognizable. The change was not so apparent to them as to us, and they still congregated on occasions in our rooms; but we gave up seeking them. Instead we formed the taste for lower company and spent our evenings, as often as not, in Hogarthian little inns in St Ebb’s and St Clement’s and the streets between the old market and the canal, where we managed to be gay and were, I believe, well liked by the company. The Gardener’s Arms and the Nag’s Head, the Druid’s Head near the theatre, and the Turf in Hell Passage knew us well; but in the last of these we were liable to meet other undergraduates pub-crawling hearties from BNC - and Sebastian became possessed by a kind of phobia, like that which sometimes comes over men in uniform against their own service, so that many an evening was spoilt by their intrusion, and he would leave his glass half empty and turn sulkily back to college.

It was thus that Lady Marchmain found us when, early in that Michaelmas term, she came for a week to Oxford. She found Sebastian subdued, with all his host of friends reduced to one, myself. She accepted me as Sebastian’s friend and sought to make me hers also, and in doing so, unwittingly struck at the roots of our friendship. That is the single reproach I have to set against her abundant kindness to me.  Her business in Oxford was with Mr Samgrass of All Souls, who now began to play an increasingly large part in our lives. Lady Marchmain was engaged in making a memorial book for circulation among her friends, about her brother, Ned, the eldest of three legendary heroes all killed between Mons and Passchendaele; he had left a, quantity of papers - poems, letters, speeches, articles; to edit them, even for a restricted circle, needed tact and countless decisions in which the judgement of an adoring sister was liable to err. Acknowledging this, she had sought outside advice, and Mr Samgrass had been found to help her.

He was a young history don, a short, plump man, dapper in dress, with sparse hair brushed flat on an over-large head, neat hands, small feet, and the general appearance of being too often bathed. His manner was genial and his speech idiosyncratic. We came to know him well.

It was Mr Samgrass’s particular aptitude to help others with their work, but he was himself the author of several stylish little books. He was a great delver in muniment-rooms and had a sharp nose for the picturesque. Sebastian spoke less than the truth when he described him as ‘someone of mummy’s’; he was someone of almost everyone’s who possessed anything to attract him.

Mr Samgrass was a genealogist and a legitimist; he loved dispossessed royalty and knew the exact validity of the rival claims of the pretenders to many thrones; he was not a man of religious habit, but he knew more than most Catholics about their Church; he had friends in the Vatican and could talk at length of policy and appointments, saying which contemporary ecclesiastics were in good favour, which in bad, what recent theological hypothesis was suspect, and how this or that Jesuit or Dominican had skated on thin ice or sailed near the wind in his Lenten discourses; he had everything except the Faith, and later liked to attend benediction in the chapel of Brideshead and see the ladies of the family with their necks arched in devotion under their black lace mantillas; he loved forgotten scandals in high life and was an expert in putative parentage; he claimed to love the past, but I always felt that he thought all the splendid company, living or dead, with whom he associated slightly absurd; it was Mr Samgrass who was real, the rest were an insubstantial pageant. He was the Victorian tourist, solid and patronizing, for whose amusement these foreign things were paraded. And there was something a little too brisk about his literary manners; I suspected the existence of a dictaphone somewhere in his panelled rooms.

He was with Lady Marchmain when I first met them, and I thought then that she could not have found a greater contrast to herself than this intellectual-on-the-make, nor a better foil to her own charm. It was not her way to make a conspicuous entry into anyone’s life, but towards the end of that week Sebastian said rather sourly: ‘You and mummy seem very thick,’ and I realized that in fact I was being drawn into intimacy by swift, imperceptible stages, for she was impatient of any human relationship that fell short of it. By the time that she left I had promised to spend all next vacation, except Christmas itself, at Brideshead.

One Monday morning a week or two later I was in Sebastian’s room waiting for him to return from a tutorial, when Julia walked in, followed by a large man whom she introduced as ‘Mr Mottram’ and addressed as ‘Rex’. They were motoring up from a house where they had spent the week-end, they explained. Rex Mottram was warm and confident in a check ulster; Julia cold and rather shy in furs; she made straight for the fire and crouched over it shivering.

‘We hoped Sebastian might give us luncheon,’ she said. ‘Failing him we can always try Boy Mulcaster, but I somehow thought we should eat better with Sebastian, and we’re very hungry. We’ve been literally starved all the week-end at the Chasms.’ ‘He and Sebastian are both lunching with me. Come too.’ So, without demur, they joined the party in my rooms, one of the last of the old kind that I gave. Rex Mottram exerted himself to make an impression. He was a handsome fellow with dark hair growing low on his forehead and heavy black eyebrows. He spoke with an engaging Canadian accent. One quickly learned all that he wished one to know about him, that he was a lucky man with money, a member of parliament, a gambler, a good fellow; that he played golf regularly with the Prince of Wales and was on easy terms with ‘Max’ and ‘F.E.’ and ‘Gertie’ Lawrence and Augustus John and Carpentier - with anyone, it seemed, who happened to be mentioned. Of the University he said: ‘No, I was never here. It just means you start life three years behind the other fellow.’ His life, so far as he made it known, began in the war, where he had got a good M.C.  serving with the Canadians and had ended as A.D.C. to a popular general.  He cannot have been more than thirty at the time we met him, but he seemed very old to us in Oxford. Julia treated him, as she seemed to treat all the world, with mild disdain, but with an air of possession. During luncheon she sent him to the car for her cigarettes, and once or twice when he was talking very big, she apologized for him, saying: ‘Remember he’s a colonial,’ to which he replied with boisterous laughter.  When he had gone I asked who he was.

‘Oh, just someone of Julia’s,’ said Sebastian.

We were slightly surprised a week later to get a telegram from him asking us and Boy Mulcaster to dinner in London on the following night for ‘a party of Julia’s’.  ‘I don’t think he knows anyone young,’ said Sebastian; ‘all his friends are leathery old sharks in the City and the House of Commons. Shall we go?’ We discussed it, and because our life at Oxford was now so much in the shadows, we decided that we would.

‘Why does he want Boy?’

‘Julia and I have known him all our lives. I suppose, finding him at lunch with you, he thought he was a chum.’



We had no great liking for Mulcaster, but the three of us were in high spirits when, having got leave for the night from our colleges, we drove off on the London road in Hardcastle’s car.

We were to spend the night at Marchmain House. We went there to dress and, while we dressed, drank a bottle of champagne, going in and out of one another’s rooms which were together three floors up and rather shabby compared with the splendours below.  As we came downstairs Julia passed us going up to her room still in her day clothes.  ‘I’m going to be late,’ she said; ‘you boys had better go on to Rex’s. It’s heavenly of you to come.’

‘What is this party?’

‘A ghastly charity ball I’m involved with. Rex insisted on giving a dinner party for it.

See you there.’

Rex Mottram lived within walking distance of Marchmain House.

‘Julia’s going to be late,’ we said, ‘she’s only just gone up to dress.’ ‘That means an hour. We’d better have some wine.’ A woman who was introduced as ‘Mrs Champion’ said: ‘I’m sure she’d sooner we started, Rex.’ ‘Well, let’s have some wine first anyway.’

‘Why a Jeroboam, Rex?’ she said peevishly. ‘You always want to have everything too big.’

‘Won’t be too big for us,’ he said, taking the bottle in his own hands and easing the cork.

There were two girls there, contemporaries of Julia’s; they all seemed involved in the management of the ball. Mulcaster knew them of old and they, without much relish I thought, knew him. Mrs Champion talked to Rex. Sebastian and I found ourselves drinking alone together as we always did.

At length Julia arrived, unhurried, exquisite, unrepentant. ‘You shouldn’t have let him wait,’ she said. ‘It’s his Canadian courtesy.’

Rex Mottram was a liberal host, and by the end of dinner the three of us who had come from Oxford were rather drunk. While we were standing in the hall waiting for the girls to come down and Rex and Mrs Champion had drawn away from us, talking, acrimoniously, in low voices, Mulcaster said, ‘I say, let’s slip away from this ghastly dance and go to Ma Mayfield’s.’

‘Who is Ma Mayfield?’

‘You know Ma Mayfield. Everyone knows Ma Mayfield of the Old Hundredth. I’ve got a regular there - a sweet little thing called Effie. There’d be the devil to pay if Effie heard I’d been to London and hadn’t been in to see her. Come and meet Effie at Ma Mayfield’s.’

‘All right,’ said Sebastian, ‘let’s meet Effie at Ma Mayfield’s.’ ‘We’ll take another bottle of pop off the good Mottram and then leave the bloody dance and go to the Old Hundredth. How about that?’

It was not a difficult matter to leave the ball; the girls whom Rex Mottram had collected had many friends there and, after we had danced together once or twice, our table began to fill up; Rex Mottram ordered more and more wine; presently the three of us were together on the pavement.

‘D’you know where this place is?’

‘Of course I do. A hundred Sink Street.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Just off Leicester Square. Better take the car.’

‘Why?’

‘Always better to have one’s own car on an occasion like this.’ We did not question this reasoning, and there lay our mistake. The car was in the forecourt of Marchmain House within a hundred yards of the hotel where we had been dancing. Mulcaster drove and, after some wandering, brought us safely to Sink Street. A commissionaire at one side of a dark doorway and a middle-aged man in evening dress on the other side of it, standing with his face to the wall cooling his forehead on the bricks, indicated our destination.

‘Keep out, you’ll be poisoned,’ said the middle-aged man.

‘Members?’ said the commissionaire.

‘The name is Mulcaster, ‘ said Mulcaster. ‘Viscount Mulcaster.’

‘Well, try inside,’ said the commissionaire.

‘You’ll be robbed, poisoned and infected and robbed,’ said the middle-aged man.

Inside the dark doorway was a bright hatch.

‘Members?’ asked a stout woman, in evening dress.

‘I like that,’ said Mulcaster. ‘You ought to know me by now.’

‘Yes, dearie,’ said the woman without interest. ‘Ten bob each.’

‘Oh, look here, I’ve never paid before.’

‘Daresay not, dearie. We’re full up tonight so it’s ten bob. Anyone who comes after you will have to pay a quid. You’re lucky.’

‘Let me speak to Mrs Mayfield.’

‘I’m Mrs Mayfield. Ten bob each.’

‘Why, Ma, I didn’t recognize you in your finery. You know Me, don’t you? Boy Mulcaster.’

‘Yes, duckie. Ten bob each.’

We paid, and the man who had been standing between us and the inner door now made way for us. Inside it was hot and crowded, for the Old Hundredth was then at the height of its success. We found a table and ordered a bottle; the waiter took payment before he opened it.

‘Where’s Effie tonight?’ asked Mulcaster.

‘Effie ‘oo?’

‘Effie, one of the girls who’s always here. The pretty dark one.’ ‘There’s lots of girls works here. Some of them’s dark and some of them’s fair. You might call some of them pretty. I haven’t the time to know them by name.’ ‘I’ll go and look for her,’ said Mulcaster.

While he was away two girls stopped near our table and looked at us curiously.

‘Come on,’ said one to the other, we’re wasting our time. They’re only fairies.’ Presently Mulcaster returned in triumph with Effie to whom, without its being ordered, the waiter immediately brought a plate of eggs and bacon.  ‘First bite I’ve had all the evening,’ she said. ‘Only thing that’s any good here is the breakfast; makes you fair peckish hanging about.’

‘That’s another six bob,’ said the waiter.

When her hunger was appeased, Effie dabbed her mouth and looked at us.

‘I’ve seen you here before, often, haven’t I?’ she said to me.

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘But I’ve seen you?’ to Mulcaster.

‘Well, I should rather hope so. You haven’t forgotten our little evening in September?’ ‘No, darling, of course not. You were the boy in the Guards who cut your toe, weren’t you?’

‘Now, Effie, don’t be a tease.’

‘No, that was another night, wasn’t it? I know - you were with Bunty the time the police were in and we all hid in the place they keep the dust-bins.’ ‘Effie loves pulling my leg, don’t you, Effie? She’s annoyed with me for staying away so long, aren’t you?’

‘Whatever you say, I know I have seen you before somewhere.’

‘Stop teasing.’

‘I wasn’t meaning to tease. Honest. Want to dance?’

‘Not at the minute.’

‘Thank the Lord. My shoes pinch something terrible tonight.’ Soon she and Mulcaster were deep in conversation. Sebastian leaned back and said to me: ‘I’m going to ask that pair to join us.’

The two unattached women who had considered us earlier, were again circling towards us. Sebastian smiled and rose to greet them: soon they, too, were eating heartily. One had the face of a skull, the other of a sickly child. The Death’s Head seemed destined for me. ‘How about a little party,’ she said, ‘just the six of us over at my place?’

‘Certainly,’ said Sebastian.

‘We thought you were fairies when you came in.’

‘That was our extreme youth.’

Death’s Head giggled. ‘You’re a good sport,’ she said. ‘You’re very sweet really,’ said the Sickly Child. ‘I must just tell Mrs Mayfield we’re going out.’ It was still early, not long after midnight, when we regained the street. The commissionaire tried to persuade us to take a taxi. ‘I’ll look after your car, sir, I wouldn’t drive yourself, sir, really I wouldn’t.’

But Sebastian took the wheel and the two women sat one on the other beside him, to show him the way. Effie and Mulcaster and I sat in the back. I think we cheered a little as we drove off.

We did not drive far. We turned into Shaftesbury Avenue and were making for Piccadilly when we narrowly escaped a head-on collision with a taxi-cab.  ‘For Christ’s sake, ‘ said Effie, ‘look where you’re going. D’you want to murder us all?’

‘Careless fellow that,’ said Sebastian.

‘It isn’t safe the way you’re driving,’ said Death’s Head. ‘Besides, we ought to be on the other side of the road.’

‘So we should,’ said Sebastian, swinging abruptly across.

‘Here, stop. I’d sooner walk.’

‘Stop? Certainly.’

He put on the brakes and we came abruptly to a halt broadside across the road. Two policemen quickened their stride and approached us.

‘Let me out of this,’ said Effie, and made her escape with a leap and a scamper.

The rest of us were caught.

‘I’m sorry if I am impeding the traffic, officer,’ said Sebastian with care, ‘but the lady insisted on my stopping for her to get out. She would take no denial. As you will have observed, she was pressed for time. A matter of nerves you know.’ ‘Let me talk to him, ‘ said Death’s Head. ‘Be a sport, handsome; no one’s seen anything but you. The boys don’t mean any harm. I’ll get them into a taxi and see them home quiet.’

The policemen looked us over, deliberately, forming their own judgement. Even then everything might have been well had not Mulcaster joined in. ‘Look here, my good man,’ he said. ‘There’s no need for you to notice anything. We’ve just come from Ma Mayfield’s. I reckon she pays you a nice retainer to keep your eyes shut. Well, you can keep ‘em shut on us too, and you won’t be the losers by it.’ That resolved any doubts which the policemen may have felt. In a short time we were in the cells.

I remember little of the journey there or the process of admission. Mulcaster, I think, protested vigorously and, when we were made to empty our pockets, accused his gaolers of theft. Then we were locked in, and my first clear memory is of tiled walls with a lamp set high up under thick glass, a bunk, and a door which had no handle on my side. Somewhere to the left of me Sebastian and Mulcaster were raising Cain.  Sebastian had been steady on his legs and fairly composed on the way to the station; now, shut in, he seemed in a frenzy and was pounding the door, and. shouting: ‘Damn you, I’m not drunk. Open this door. I insist on seeing the doctor. I tell you I’m not drunk,’ while Mulcaster, beyond, cried: ‘My God, you’ll pay for this! You’re making a great mistake, I can ‘tell you. Telephone the Home Secretary. Send for my solicitors. I will have habeas corpus.’ Groans of protest rose from the other cells where various tramps and pickpockets were trying to get some sleep: ‘Aw, pipe down!’ ‘Give a man some peace, can’t yer?’...’Is this a blinking lock-up or a looney-house?’ - and the sergeant, going his rounds, admonished them through the grille. ‘You’ll be here all night if you don’t sober up.’

. I sat on the bunk in low spirits and dozed a little. Presently the racket subsided and Sebastian called: ‘I say, Charles, are you there?’

‘Here I am.’

‘This is the hell of a business.’

‘Can’t we get bail or something?’

Mulcaster seemed to have fallen asleep.

‘I tell you the man - Rex Mottram. He’d be in his element here.’ We had some difficulty in getting in touch with him; it was half an hour before the policeman in charge answered my bell. At last he consented, rather sceptically, to send a telephone message to the hotel where the ball was being held. There was another long delay and then our prison doors were opened.

Seeping through the squalid air of the police station, the sour smell of dirt and disinfectant, came the sweet, rich smoke of a Havana cigar - of two Havana cigars, for the sergeant in charge was smoking also.

Rex stood in the charge-room looking the embodiment indeed, the burlesque - of power and prosperity; he wore a fur-lined overcoat with broad astrakhan lapels and a silk hat. The police were deferential and eager to help.  ‘We had to do our duty,’ they said. ‘Took the young gentlemen into custody for their own protection.’

Mulcaster looked crapulous and began a confused complaint that he had been denied legal representation and civil rights. Rex said: ‘Better leave all the talking to me.’ I was clear-headed now and watched and listened with fascination while Rex settled our business. He examined the charge sheets, spoke affably to the men who had made the arrest; with the slightest perceptible nuance he opened the way for bribery and quickly covered it when he saw that things had now lasted too long and the knowledge had been too widely shared; he undertook to deliver us at the magistrate’s court at ten next morning, and then led us away. His car was outside.  ‘It’s no use discussing things tonight. Where are you sleeping.?’

‘Marchers, ‘ said Sebastian.

‘You’d better come to me. I can fix you up for tonight. Leave everything to me.’

It was plain that he rejoiced in his efficiency.



Next morning the display was even more impressive. I awoke with the startled and puzzled sense of being in a strange room, and in the first seconds of consciousness the memory of the evening before returned, first as though of a nightmare, then of reality.  Rex’s valet was unpacking a suitcase. On seeing me move he went to the wash-hand stand and poured something from a bottle. ‘I think I have everything from Marchmain House,’ he said. ‘Mr Mottram sent round to Heppell’s for this.’ I took the draught and felt better.

A man was there from Trumper’s to shave us.

Rex joined us at breakfast. ‘It’s important to make a good appearance at the court,’ he said. ‘Luckily none of you look much the worse for wear.’ After breakfast the barrister arrived and Rex delivered a summary of the case.  ‘Sebastian’s in a jam,’ he said. ‘He’s liable to anything up to six months’ imprisonment for being drunk in charge of a car. You’ll come up before Grigg unfortunately. He takes rather a grim view of cases of this sort. All that will happen this morning is that we shall ask to have Sebastian held over for a week to prepare the defence. You two will plead guilty, say you’re sorry, and pay your five bob fine. I’ll see what can be done about squaring the evening papers. The Star may be dffficult.  ‘Remember, the important thing is to keep out all mention of the Old Hundredth.  Luckily the tarts were sober and aren’t being charged, but their names have been taken as witnesses. If we try and break down the police evidence, they’ll be called. We’ve got to avoid that at all costs, so we shall have to swallow the police story whole and appeal to the magistrate’s good nature not to wreck a young man’s career for a single boyish indiscretion. It’ll work all right. We shall need a don to give evidence of good character.  Julia tells me you have a tame one called Samgrass. He’ll do. Meanwhile your story is simply that you came up from Oxford for a perfectly respectable dance, weren’t used to wine, had too much, and lost the way driving home.

‘After that we shall have to see about fixing things with your authorities at Oxford.’ ‘I told them to call my solicitors,’ said Mulcaster, ‘and they refused. They’ve put themselves hopelessly in the wrong, and I don’t see why they should get away with it.’ ‘For heaven’s sake don’t start any kind of argument. Just plead guilty and pay up.

Understand?’

Mulcaster grumbled but submitted.

Everything happened at court as Rex had predicted. At half past ten we stood in Bow Street, Mulcaster and I free men, Sebastian bound over to appear in a week’s time.  Mulcaster had kept silent about his grievance; he and I were admonished and fined five shillings each and fifteen shillings costs. Mulcaster was becoming rather irksome to us, and it was with relief that we heard his plea of other business in London. The barrister bustled off and Sebastian and I were left alone and disconsolate.  ‘I suppose mummy’s got to hear about it,’ he said. ‘Damn, damn, damn! It’s cold. I won’t go home. I’ve nowhere to go. Let’s just slip back to Oxford and wait for them to bother us’ The raffish habitués of the police court came and went, up and down the steps; still we stood on the windy comer, undecided.

‘Why not get hold of Julia?’

‘I might go abroad.’

‘My dear Sebastian, you’ll only be given a talking-to and fined a few pounds.’ ‘Yes, but it’s all the bother - mummy and Bridey and all the family and the dons. I’d sooner go to prison. If I just slip away abroad they can’t get me back, can they? That’s what people do when the police are after them. I know mummy will make it seem she has to bear the whole brunt of the business.’



‘Let’s telephone Julia and get her to meet us somewhere and talk it over.’ We met at Gunter’s in Berkeley Square. Julia, like most women then, wore a green hat pulled down to her eyes with a diamond arrow in it; she had a small dog under her arm, three-quarters buried in the fur of her coat. She greeted us with an unusual show of interest.

‘Well, you are a pair of pickles; I must say you look remarkably well on it. The only time I got tight I was paralysed all the next day. I do think you might have taken me with you. The ball was positively lethal, and I’ve always longed to go to the Old Hundredth. No one will ever take me. Is it heaven?’

‘So you know all about that, too?’

‘Rex telephoned me this morning and told me everything. What were your girl friends like?’

‘Don’t be prurient,’ said Sebastian.

‘Mine was like a skull.’

‘Mine was like a consumptive.’

‘Goodness.’ It had clearly raised us in Julia’s estimation that we had been out with women; to her they were the point of interest.

‘Does mummy know?’

‘Not about your skulls and consumptives. She knows you were in the clink. I told her.  She was divine about it, of course. You know anything Uncle Ned did was always perfect, and he got locked up once for taking a bear into one of Lloyd George’s meetings, so she really feels quite human about the whole thing. She wants you both to lunch with her.’

‘Oh God!’

‘The only trouble is the papers and the family. Have you got an awful family, Charles?’

‘Only a father. He’ll never hear about it.’

‘Ours are awful. Poor mummy is in for a ghastly time with them. They’ll be writing letters and paying visits of sympathy, and all the time at the back of their minds one half will be saying, “That’s what comes of bringing the boy up a Catholic,” and the other half will say, “That’s what comes of sending him to Eton instead of Stonyhurst.” Poor mummy can’t get it right.

We lunched with Lady Marchmain. She accepted the whole thing with humorous resignation. Her only reproach was: ‘I can’t think why you went off and stayed with Mr Mottram. You might have come and told me about it first.’ ‘How am I going to explain it to all the family?’ she asked. ‘They will be so shocked to find that they’re more upset about it than I am. Do you know my sister-in-law, Fanny Rosscommon? She has always thought I brought the children up badly. Now I am beginning to think she must be right.’

When we left I said: ‘She couldn’t have been more charming. What were you so worried about?’

‘I can’t explain,’ said Sebastian miserably.

A week later when Sebastian came up for trial he was fined ten pounds. The newspapers reported it with painful prominence, one of them under the ironic headline:

‘Marquis’s son unused to wine’. The magistrate said that it was only through the prompt action of the police that he was not up on a grave charge.

‘It is purely by good fortune that you do not bear the responsibility of a serious

accident...’ Mr Samgrass gave evidence that Sebastian bore an irreproachable character

and that a brilliant future at the University was in jeopardy. The papers took hold of this



too - ‘Model Student’s Career at Stake. But for Mr Samgrass’s evidence, said the magistrate, he would have been disposed to give an exemplary sentence; the law was the same for an Oxford undergraduate as for any young hooligan; indeed the better the home the more shameful the offence...

It was not only at Bow Street that Mr Samgrass was of value. At Oxford he showed all the zeal and acumen which were Rex Mottram’s in London. He interviewed the college authorities, the proctors, the Vice-Chancellor; he induced Mgr Bell to call on the Dean of Christ Church; he arranged for Lady Marchmain to talk to the Chancellor himself; and, as a result of all this, the three of us were gated for the rest of the term.  Hardcastle, for no clear reason, was again deprived of the use of his car, and the affair blew over. The most lasting penalty we suffered was our intimacy with Rex Mottram and Mr Samgrass, but since Rex’s life was in London in a world of politics and high finance and Mr Samgrass’s nearer to our own at Oxford, it was from him we suffered the more.

For the rest of that term he haunted us. Now that we were ‘gated’ we could not spend our evenings together, and from nine 0’clock onwards were alone and at Mr Samgrass’s mercy. Hardly an evening seemed to paw but he called on one o r the other of us. He spoke of ‘our little escapade’ as though he, too, had been in the cells, and had that bond with us...Once I climbed out of college and Mr Samgrass found me in Sebastian’s rooms after the gate was shut and that, too, he made into a bond. It did not surprise me, therefore, when I arrived at Brideshead, after Christmas, to find Mr Samgrass, as though in wait for me, sitting alone before the fire in the room they called the ‘Tapestry Hall’.  ‘You find me in solitary possession,’ he said, and indeed he seemed to possess the hall and the sombre scenes of venery that hung round it, to possess the caryatids on either side of the fireplace, to possess me, as he rose to take my hand and greet me like a host:

‘This morning,’ he continued, ‘we had a lawn meet of the Marchmain Hounds - a deliciously archaic spectacle and all our young friends are fox-hunting, even Sebastian who, you will not be surprised to hear, looked remarkably elegant in his pink coat.  Brideshead was impressive rather than elegant; he is joint-master with a local figure of fun named Sir Walter Strickland-Venables. I wish the two of them could be included in these rather humdrum tapestries - they would give a note of fantasy.  ‘Our hostess remained at home; also a convalescent Dominican who has read too much Maritain and too little Hegel; Sir Adrian Porson, of course, and two rather forbidding Magyar cousins - I have tried them in German and in French, but in neither tongue are they diverting. All these have now driven off to visit a neighbour. I have been spending a cosy afternoon before the fire with the incomparable Charlus. Your arrival emboldens me to ring for some tea. How can I prepare you for the party? Alas, it breaks up tomorrow. Lady Julia departs to celebrate the New Year elsewhere, and takes the beau-monde with her. I shall miss the pretty creatures about the house - particularly one Celia; she is the sister of our old companion in adversity, Boy Mulcaster, and wonderfully unlike, him. She has a bird-like style of conversation, pecking away at the subject in a way I find most engaging, and a school-monitor style of dress which I can only call “saucy”. I shall miss her, for I do not go tomorrow. Tomorrow I start work in earnest on our hostess’s book - which, believe me, is a treasure-house of period gems; pure authentic I9I4.’

Tea was brought and, soon after it, Sebastian returned; he had lost the hunt early, he said, and hacked home; the others were not long after him, having been fetched by car at the end of the day; Brideshead was absent; he had business at the kennels and Cordelia had gone with him. The rest filled the hall and were soon eating scrambled eggs and crumpets; and Mr Samgrass, who had lunched at home and dozed all the afternoon before the fire, ate eggs and crumpets with them. Presently Lady Marchmain’s party returned, and when, before we went upstairs to dress for dinner, she said ‘Who’s coming to chapel for the Rosary?’ and Sebastian and Julia said they must have their baths at once, Mr Samgrass went with her and the friar.

‘I wish Mr Samgrass would go,’ said Sebastian, in his bath; ‘I’m sick of being grateful to him.’

In the course of the next fortnight distaste for Mr Samgrass came to be a little unspoken secret throughout the house; in his presence Sir Adrian Porson’s fine old eyes seemed to search a distant horizon and his lips set in classic pessimism. Only the Hungarian cousins who, mistaking the status of tutor, took him for an unusually privileged upper servant, were unaffected by his presence.

Mr Samgrass, Sir Adrian Porson, the Hungarians, the friar, Brideshead, Sebastian, Cordelia were all who remained of the Christmas party.  Religion predominated in-the house; not only in its practices - the daily mass and Rosary, morning and evening in the chapel - but in all its intercourse. ‘We must make a Catholic of Charles,’ Lady Marchmain said, and we had many little talks together during my visits when she delicately steered the subject into a holy quarter. After the first of these Sebastian said: ‘Has mummy been having one of her “little talks” with you? She’s always doing it. I wish to hell she wouldn’t.’

One was never summoned for a little talk, or consciously led to it; it merely happened, when she wished to speak intimately, that one found oneself alone with her, if it was summer, in a secluded walk by the lakes or in a corner of the walled rose-gardens; if it was winter, in her sitting-room on the first floor.  This room was all her own; she had taken it for herself and changed it so that, entering, one seemed to be in another house. She had lowered the ceiling and the elaborate cornice which, in one form or another, graced every room was lost to view; the walls, one panelled in brocade, were stripped and washed blue and spotted with innumerable little water-colours of fond association; the air was sweet with the fresh scent of flowers and musty potpourri; her library in soft leather covers, well-read works of poetry and piety, filled a small rosewood bookcase; the chimney-piece was covered with small personal treasures - an ivory Madonna, a plaster St Joseph, posthumous miniatures of her three soldier brothers. When Sebastian and I lived alone at Brideshead during that brilliant August we had kept out of his mother’s room.  Scraps of conversation come back to me with the memory of her room. I remember her saying: ‘When I was a girl we were comparatively poor, but still richer than most of the world, and when I married I became very rich. It used to worry me, and I thought it wrong to have so many beautiful things when others had nothing. Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. The poor have always been the favourites of God and his saints, but I believe that it is one of the special achievements of Grace to sanctify the whole of life, riches included. Wealth in pagan Rome was necessarily something cruel; it’s not any more.’ I said something about a camel and the eye of a needle and she rose happily to the point.

‘But of course,’ she said, ‘it’s very unexpected for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, but the gospel is simply a catalogue of unexpected things. It’s not to be expected that an ox and an ass should worship at the crib. Animals are always doing the oddest things in the lives of the saints. It’s all part of the poetry, the Alice-in-Wonderland side, of religion.’

But I was as untouched by her faith as I was by her charm: or, rather, I was touched by both alike. I had no mind then for anything except Sebastian, and I saw him already as being threatened, though I did not yet know how black was the threat. His constant, despairing prayer was to be let alone. By the blue waters and rustling palms of his own mind he was happy and harmless as a Polynesian; only when the big ship dropped anchor beyond the coral reef, and the cutter beached in the lagoon, and, up the slope that had never known the print of a boot, there trod the grim invasion of trader, administrator, missionary, and tourist - only then was it time to disinter the archaic weapons of the tribe and -sound the drums in the hills; or, more easily, to turn from the sunlit door and lie alone in the darkness, , where the impotent, painted deities paraded the walls in vain and cough his heart out among the rum bottles.  And, since Sebastian counted among the intruders his own conscience and all claims of human affection, his days in Arcadia were numbered. For in this, to me, tranquil time Sebastian took fright. I knew him well in that mood of alertness and suspicion, like a deer suddenly lifting his head at the far notes of the hunt; I had seen him grow wary at the thought of his family or his religion, now I found I, too, was suspect. He did not fail in love, but he lost his joy of it, for I was no longer part of his solitude. As my intimacy with his family grew, I became part of the world which he sought to escape; I became one of the bonds which held him. That was the part for which his mother, in all our little talks, was seeking to fit me. Everything was left unsaid. It was only dimly and at rare moments that I suspected what was afoot.

Outwardly Mr Samgrass was the only enemy. For a fortnight Sebastian and I remained at Brideshead, leading our own life. His brother was engaged in sport and estate management; Mr Samgrass was at work in the library on Lady Marchmain’s book; Sir Adrian Porson demanded most of Lady Marchmain’s time. We saw little of them except in the evenings; there was room under that wide roof for a wide variety of independent lives.

After a fortnight Sebastian said: ‘I can’t stand Mr Samgrass any more. Let’s go to London,’ so he came to stay with me and now began to use my home in preference to ‘Marchers’. My father liked him. ‘I think your friend very amusing,’ he said. ‘Ask him often.’

Then, back at Oxford, we took up again the life that seemed to be shrinking in the cold air. The sadness that had been strong in Sebastian the term before gave place to kind of sullenness, even towards me. He was sick at heart somewhere, I did not know how, and I grieved for him, unable to help.

When he was gay now it was usually because he was drunk, and when drunk he developed an obsession of ‘mocking Mr Samgrass’. He composed a ditty of which the refrain was, ‘Green arse, Samgrass - Samgrass green arse’, sung to the tune of St Mary’s chime, and he would thus serenade him, perhaps once a week, under his windows. Mr Samgrass was distinguished as being the first don to have a private telephone installed in his rooms. Sebastian in his cups used to ring him up and sing him this simple song.  And all this Mr Samgrass took in good part, as it is called, smiling obsequiously when we met, but with growing confidence, as though each outrage in some way strengthened his hold on Sebastian.

It was during this term that I began to realize that Sebastian was a drunkard in quite a different sense to myself I got drunk often, but through an excess of high spirits, in the love of the moment, and the wish to prolong and enhance it; Sebastian drank to escape.

As we together grew older and more serious I drank less, he more. I found that

sometimes after I had gone back to my college, he sat up late and alone, soaking. A



succession of disasters came on him so swiftly and with such unexpected violence that it is hard to say when exactly I recognized that my friend was in deep trouble. I knew it well enough in the Easter vacation.

Julia used to say, ‘Poor Sebastian. It’s something chemical in him.’ That was the cant phrase of the time, derived from heaven knows what misconception of popular science. ‘There’s something chemical between them’ was used to explain the over-mastering hate or love of any two people. It was the old concept in a new form. I do not believe there was anything chemical in my friend.  The Easter party at Brideshead was a bitter time, culminating in a small but unforgettably painful incident. Sebastian got very drunk before dinner in his mother’s house, and thus marked the beginning of a new epoch in his melancholy record, another stride in the flight from his family which brought him to ruin.  It was at the end of the day when the large Easter party left Brideshead. It was called the Easter party, though in fact it began on the Tuesday of Easter Week, for the Flytes all went into retreat at the guest-house of a monastery from Maundy Thursday until Easter. This year Sebastian had said he would not go, but at the last moment had yielded, and came home in a state of acute depression from which I totally failed to raise him.

He had been drinking very hard for a week - only I knew how hard - and drinking in a nervous, surreptitious way, totally unlike his old habit. During the party there was always a grog tray in the library, and Sebastian took to slipping in there at odd moments during the day without saying anything even to me. The house was largely deserted during the day. I was at work painting another panel in the little garden-room in the colonnade. Sebastian complained of a cold, stayed in, and during all that time was never quite sober; he escaped attention by being silent. Now and then I noticed him attract curious glances, but most of the party knew him too slightly to see the change in him, while his own family were occupied, each with their particular guests.  When I remonstrated he said, ‘I can’t stand all these people about,” but it was when they finally left and he had to face his family at close quarters that he broke down.  The normal practice was for a cocktail tray to be brought into the drawing-room at six; we mixed our own drinks and the bottles were removed when we went to dress; later, just before dinner, cocktails appeared again, this time handed round by the footmen.

Sebastian disappeared after tea; the light had gone and I spent the next hour playing mah-jongg with Cordelia. At six I was alone in the drawing-room, when he returned; he was frowning in a way I knew all too well, and when he spoke I recognized the drunken thickening in his voice.

‘Haven’t they brought the cocktails yet?’ He pulled clumsily on the bell-rope.

I said, ‘Where have you been?’

‘Up with nanny.’

‘I don’t believe it. You’ve been drinking somewhere.’

‘I’ve been reading in my room. My cold’s worse today.’ When the tray arrived he slopped gin and vermouth into a tumbler and carried it out of the room with him. I followed him upstairs, where he shut his bedroom door in my face and turned the key.  I returned to the drawing-room full of dismay and foreboding.

The family assembled. Lady Marchmain said: ‘What’s become of Sebastian?’

‘He’s gone to lie down. His cold is worse.’

‘Oh dear, I hope he isn’t getting flu. I thought he had a feverish look once or twice lately. Is there anything he wants?’

‘No, he particularly asked not to be disturbed.’



I wondered whether I ought to speak to Brideshead, but that grim, rock-crystal mask forbade all confidence. Instead, on the way upstairs to dress, I told Julia.  ‘Sebastian’s drunk.’

‘He can’t be. He didn’t even come for a cocktail.’

‘He’s been drinking in. his room all the afternoon.’

‘How very peculiar! What a bore he is! Will he be all right for dinner?’

‘No.’

‘Well, you must deal with him. It’s no business of mine. Does he often do this?’

‘He has lately.’

‘How very boring.’

I tried Sebastian’s door, found it locked, and hoped he was sleeping, but, when I came back from my bath, I found him sitting in the chair before my fire; he was dressed for dinner, all but his shoes, but his tie was awry and his hair on end; he was very red in the face and squinting slightly. He spoke indistinctly.

‘Charles, what you said was quite true. Not with nanny. Been drinking whisky up here. None in the library now party’s gone. Now party’s gone and only mummy. Feeling rather drunk. Think I’d better have something-on-a-tray up here. Not dinner with mummy.’

‘Go to bed,’ I told him. ‘I’ll say your cold’s worse.’

‘Much worse.’

I took him to his room which was next to mine and tried to get him to bed, but he sat in front of his dressing table squinnying at himself in the glass, trying to remake his bow-tie. On the writing table by the fire was a half-empty decanter of whisky. I took it up, thinking he would not see, but he spun round from the mirror and said: ‘You put that down.’

‘Don’t be an ass, Sebastian. You’ve had enough.’

‘What the devil’s it got to do with you? You’re only a guest here - my guest. I drink what I want to in my own house.’ He would have fought me for it at that moment.  ‘Very well,’ I said, putting the decanter back, ‘Only for God’s sake keep out of sight.’ ‘Oh, mind your own business. You came here as my friend; now you’re spying on me for my mother, I know. Well, you can get out and tell her from me that I’ll choose my friends and she her spies in future.’

So I left him and went down to dinner.

‘I’ve been in to Sebastian,’ I said. ‘His cold has come on rather badly. He’s gone to bed and says he doesn’t want anything.’

‘Poor Sebastian,’ said Lady Marchmain. ‘He’d better have a glass of hot whisky. I’ll go and have a look at him.’

‘Don’t mummy, I’ll go,’ said Julia rising.

‘I’ll go,’ said Cordelia, who was dining down that night, for a treat to celebrate the departure of the guests. She was at the door and through it before anyone could stop her.  Julia caught my eye and gave a tiny, sad shrug.

In a few minutes Cordelia was back, looking grave. ‘No, he doesn’t seem to want anything,’ she said.

‘How was he?’

‘Well, I don’t know, but I think he’s very drunk’ she said.

‘Cordelia.’

Suddenly the child began to giggle. ‘”Marquis’s Son Unused to Wine”,’ she quoted.

“’Model Student’s Career Threatened”.’

‘Charles, is this true?’ asked Lady Marchmain.

‘Yes.’



Then dinner was announced, and we went to the dining-room where the subject was not mentioned.

When, Brideshead and I were left alone he said: ‘Did you say Sebastian was drunk?’

‘Yes.’

‘Extraordinary time to choose. Couldn’t you stop him?’

‘No.’

‘No,’ said Brideshead, ‘I don’t suppose you could. I once saw my father drunk, in this room. I wasn’t more than about ten at the time. You can’t stop people if they want to get drunk. My mother couldn’t stop my father, you know.’ He spoke in his odd, impersonal way. The more I saw of this family, I reflected, the more singular I found them. ‘I shall ask my mother to read to us tonight.’ It was the custom, I learned later, always to ask Lady Marchmain to read aloud on evenings of family tension. She had a beautiful voice and great humour of expression.  That night she read part of The Wisdom of Father Brown. Julia sat with a stool covered with manicure things and carefully revarnished her nails; Cordelia nursed Julia’s Pekinese; Brideshead played patience; I sat unoccupied studying the pretty group they made, and mourning my friend upstairs.

But the horrors of that evening were not yet over.

It was sometimes Lady Marchmain’s practice, when the family were alone, to visit the chapel before going to bed. She had just closed her book and proposed going there when the door opened and Sebastian appeared. He was dressed as I had last seen him, but now instead of being flushed he was deathly pale.

‘Come to apologize,’ he said.

‘Sebastian, dear, do go back to your room,’ said Lady Marchmain. ‘We can talk about it in the morning.’

‘Not to you. Come to apologize to Charles. I was bloody to him and he’s my guest.

He’s my guest and my only friend and I was bloody to him.’ A chill spread over us. I led him back to his room; his family went to their prayers. I noticed when we got upstairs that the decanter was now empty. ‘It’s time you were in bed,’ I said.

Sebastian began to weep. ‘Why do you take their side against me? I knew you would if I let you meet them. Why do you spy on me?’

He said more than 1 can bear to remember, even at twenty years’ distance. At last I got him to sleep and very sadly went to bed myself.

Next morning, he came to my room very early, while the house still slept; he drew the curtains and the sound of it woke me, to find him there fully dressed, smoking, with his back to me, looking out of the windows to where the long dawn-shadows lay across the dew and the first birds were chattering in the budding tree-tops. When I spoke he turned a face which showed no ravages of the evening before, but was fresh and sullen as a disappointed child’s.

.’Well,’ I said. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Rather odd. I think perhaps I’m still a little drunk. I’ve just been down to the stables trying to get a car but everything was locked. We’re off.’ He drank from the water-bottle by my pillow, threw his cigarette from the window, and lit another with hands which trembled like an old man’s.  ‘Where are you going?’

‘I don’t know. London, I suppose. Can I come and stay with you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, get dressed. They can send our luggage on by train.’

‘We can’t just go like this.’



‘We can’t stay.’

He sat on the window seat looking away from me, out of the window. Presently he said: ‘There’s smoke coming from some of the chimneys. They must have opened the stables now. Come on.’

I can’t go,’ I said. ‘I must say good-bye to your mother.’

‘Sweet bulldog.’

‘Well, I don’t happen to like running away.’

‘And I couldn’t care less. And I shall go on running away, as far and as fast as I can.

You can hatch up any plot you like with my mother; I shan’t come back.’

‘That’s how you talked last night.’

‘I know. I’m sorry, Charles. I told you I was still drunk. If it’s any comfort to you, I absolutely detest myself.’

‘It’s no comfort at all.’

‘It must be a little, I should have thought. Well, if you won’t come, give my love to nanny.’

‘You’re really going?’

‘Of course.’

‘Shall I see you in London?’

‘Yes, I’m coming to stay with you.’

He left me but I did not sleep again; nearly two hours later a footman came with tea and bread and butter and set my clothes out for a new day.

Later that morning I sought Lady Marchmain; the wind had freshened and we stayed indoors; I sat near her before the fire in her room, while she bent over her needlework and the budding creeper rattled on the window panes.

‘I wish I had not seen him, she said. ‘That was cruel. I do not mind the idea of his being drunk. It is a thing all men do when they are young. I am used to the idea of it.  My brothers were wild at. his age. What hurt last night was that there was nothing happy about him.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen him like that before.’

And last night of all nights...when everyone had gone and there were only ourselves here - you see, Charles, I look on you very much as one of ourselves. Sebastian loves you - when there was no need for him to make an effort to be gay. And he wasn’t gay. I slept very little last night, and all the time I kept coming back to that one thing; he was so unhappy.’

It was impossible for me to explain to her what I only half understood myself; even then I felt, ‘She will learn it soon enough. Perhaps she knows it now.’ ‘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.’

第五章


“这是牛津大学的特点，”我说，“新学年在秋季开始。”

在鹅卵石路上，在碎石路上，在草坪上，到处落叶飘零，学院花园里营火晚会的烟雾同河上潮湿的雾气聚合在一起，飘过灰色的围墙；脚下的石板路滑溜溜的，四方院子里的窗户一个接一个地亮了，接着金黄色的光线弥漫开来，变得模糊了，穿着簇新长袍的新生穿过拱门在微明的暮色中徘徊，而熟悉的钟声唤起了一年的回忆。

我们两个人都有着秋天似的心境，六月里的狂欢和窗前紫罗兰花好象一起凋谢了，那盈窗的花香此时已变成了堆积在院子一角里闷烧的潮湿落叶的熏烟。

这是新学期的第一个星期日晚上。

“我觉得自己恰好有一百岁了。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

他是前一天晚上到的，比我早到一天。我们自从在出租车里分手后，这还是第一次见面。

“今天下午我挨了管理员贝尔的一顿训。从我上学以来这已经是第四次了——先是我的导师训了一次，接着是副院长，再就是万灵会的桑格拉斯先生，这回是管理员贝尔。”

“万灵会的桑格拉斯先生是谁啊？”

“就是妈妈的什么人呗。他们都说去年开学时我表现得很差，还说我已经受到了注意，如果还不检点的话，就会勒令我停学。怎么才叫检点呢？我估摸那就得加入国家联盟协会，每周要读读《爱色斯》，早晨得在卡德纳咖啡馆喝咖啡，抽烟要抽大号的烟斗，还要玩曲棍球，出去到‘野猪山’喝喝茶，到克普尔厅听讲座，骑自行车的时候车上带着装满笔记本的文件筐子，到晚上喝可可，严肃地讨论讨论性的问题。嗨，查尔斯，从上个学期以来到底是怎么回事啊？我觉得自己老多啦。”

“我觉得自己到了中年。这可真是太不好了。我相信我们在这儿就别指望有什么好玩的了。”

夜幕降临，在火光照耀下我们默默地坐着。

“安东尼·布兰奇已经离开学校了。”

“为什么？”

“他给我写过信。显然，他在慕尼黑租到了一套房间——他和那儿的一位警察结上了不解之缘。”

“我会想念他的。”

“我想我也会的，在某种意义上说。”

我们又沉默了，在炉火的映照下那么静悄悄地坐着，以致有个人进来找我，在门口张望了一下，以为屋子里没人就走开了。

“真不该这样开始一个新学年。”塞巴斯蒂安说。但是这个阴沉的十月的黄昏仿佛把阴冷潮湿的空气吹到随后接连的几个星期。整个一学期，乃至整整一年，我和塞巴斯蒂安隐居起来了，起初是躲开传教士，终于被他们忘却了。而玩具熊阿洛伊修斯就搁在塞巴斯蒂安的五屉柜里，已经没有人理它了。

我们两人都有了变化。我们失去了探求的乐趣，它曾让我们一年级时纷纷乱乱的生活过得很充实。现在我开始安下心来了。

出乎意料，我没有碰到堂兄贾斯珀，他在牛津大学文学院学位考试中得了第一名，以后他在伦敦开始笨手笨脚地过一种扰乱社会的生活；我是需要他给我些冲击的，没有这种强大的影响，学院里的生活显得不实在了；它也不再像夏天那样刺激我，使我有心思去干些捣乱的事情了。再说，我回来时已经感到很腻烦，下决心缓和一些。我也决不愿使自己再受到父亲的讥讽嘲笑了。他那种古怪的迫害使我相信不量入为出地过日子是荒唐的，任何斥责都不曾使我认识到这一点。这个学期我没有再挨过训斥。历史课初试的好成绩和学期考试中一项略低于二等的成绩使我没费什么力就和导师的关系相处得不错。

我和历史学院保持着若即若离的联系，一周写两篇论文，听听临时讲座。除此之外，我在这学年开始时参加了罗斯金艺术学院；我们一周有两三个上午聚在一起，大约有十多个人——至少有一半是牛津北校的女生——聚会的地点是阿什莫利恩博物馆里古代作品的仿制品周围。我们一周有两次在一家茶食店楼上的一间小房子对着裸体模特儿画像。学校当局煞费苦心地排除在那些夜晚与淫荡有关的蛛丝马迹。白天从伦敦请来给我们当模特儿的年轻女郎是不允许留在大学城过夜的；我还记得小房间里靠近煤油炉的那一面墙上是玫瑰色的，而另一面墙则是杂色斑斓，高低不平，就好像被抓过似的。在那儿，在煤油灯的气味中，我们骑在板凳上，召唤一个依稀可见的模特儿特丽比的幽灵。我的绘画是不值一提的；我在自己的寓所里绘制了一些小巧精致的临摹画，其中有些被当时的一些朋友保存着，当它们偶尔显露出来时，我就很难为情。

指导我们的是一位和我岁数相仿的男人，对我们含有一种戒备的敌意；他穿着非常深的蓝色衬衫，系一条柠檬黄的领带，戴着一副角质框架的眼镜，因此，在很大程度上由于这种形式的告诫，我极力地修饰自己的衣着，直到接近堂兄贾斯帕认为已经适合于到乡间别墅作客的程度。我的穿着如此端庄，而又快乐地致力于绘画，不久就成为学院里一位相当体面的人物了。

就塞巴斯蒂安说来，情形就很不同了。他那一年的胡闹填补了他深刻的内在需要，即逃避现实，当他发觉自己在曾经一度感到非常自由自在的地方却越来越受到限制，这时候他就愈加无精打采，脾气乖张，即使和我在一起也是一样。


这个学期，我们俩仍然过从甚密，形影不离，所以我们也不去别处再交什么朋友了。堂兄贾斯帕曾经跟我说过，到了二年级就要甩掉一年级交的朋友，这是正常的，事情果然如他说的。我的朋友，绝大多数都是通过塞巴斯蒂安结识的。我们把他们全都甩了，而且也不再交新的了。事先没有任何声明。起初看起来，我们好像还像以前一样经常去看望他们；我们参加聚会，但是我们自己却很少筹办聚会。我并不想给那些一年级新生造成什么印象，他们也像他们的伦敦姊妹们一样，在社交界中正受到热情的欢迎。这时每个聚会里都有许多陌生的面孔，要是在几个月以前，我就会热衷于结识几个新知，现在却感到腻味了；甚至我们那个小小的密友圈子，过去在夏天阳光照耀下是那样活跃，如今在弥漫的雾气和河上的暮色里却显得黯然失色，哑然无声，那种雾气和暮色使那一年中我的一切都变得非常柔弱，模糊不清。安东尼·布兰奇一走，有些东西就随他而去了；他锁上房门后把钥匙悬挂在自己的钥匙链上；他在所有的朋友中，本来被视为路人，现在他们却都感到需要他了。

我感觉到一场义演已经收场了；乐团经理扣好了羔皮外套，拿到了他的报酬，那些郁郁不乐的乐团女演员们就群龙无首了。一旦没有了他，她们就忘掉了她们的结束语，或者弄错了台词；她们需要他及时打铃拉开幕布；她们需要他恰合时宜地指挥打开舞台灯光；她们需要他在舞台两旁悄悄地说一两句话，需要他盯着乐队指挥那双专横的眼睛；没有了他，周刊就不会派来摄影师，没有酝酿好亲善气氛和快乐的希望。再也没有比共同的事业更能把她们紧密地联系在一起的纽带了；而现在那些金色花边和丝绒服装都打了捆，送到服装商那里，如今已经穿上了黄褐色的制服。经过几个小时愉快的排练，通过几分钟欣喜若狂的演出，她们演出了光彩夺目的角色，演出了她们自己的伟大的前辈，在舞台上再现了著名绘画中的人物；现在这一切都完结了，她们必须在惨淡的阳光里回到各自的家里去；回到频繁来到伦敦的丈夫身边；回到输掉了牌局的情人那里；回到长得太快的孩子们那儿。

安东尼·布兰奇那一伙人散了，成为寥寥十来个十分冷漠的处在青春期的英国人。他们在以后的生活中有时会这样说，“你还记得过去在牛津大学大家很熟悉的那位非凡人物——安东尼·布兰奇吗？不知道他后来怎么样了？”他们原来是从一群群人中给任意挑选出来的，现在他们都心情沉重地回到了原来的那群人中间，他们的个性也越来越无法辨认出来了。这种变化对他们并不像对我们一样明显，他们偶尔还到我们的住处聚会；可是我们却再也不会请他们来了。相反，我们对较低一等的伙伴却感到兴趣，而且晚上往往是在圣埃博大街和圣克莱蒙大街或者在旧市场和运河之间那片街区的霍加斯式的小酒店里度过的。我们在那些地方寻欢作乐，我相信我们也博得了大家的欢心。剧院近旁的“花匠胳膊酒店”，“碎嘴婆子脑袋酒店”，“巫师头颅酒店”以及地狱走廊大街的“泥炭酒店”已经很熟悉我们了；可是在“泥炭酒店”里，很容易碰上一些还没有毕业的大学生们——他们是牛津大学布雷斯诺兹学院的沿着几家小酒馆逐家喝酒的大学运动员们——这时塞巴斯蒂安心里就怀有一种憎恶的感情，这种感情就像身上的军服与兵种不一致时所感到的一样，结果是好多夜晚都被那些人的闯入破坏了，每逢这时他就扔下还剩了一半的酒杯，愠怒地回到学院。

马奇梅因夫人就是在这种情形下看到我们的，当时她来牛津逗留一个星期，正赶在米迦勒节一开始。她发现塞巴斯蒂安萎靡不振，他那成群结队的朋友只剩下了我一个人。她把我当做是塞巴斯蒂安的朋友，还设法让我也成为她的朋友，可是当她这样做的时候，却无意中伤害了我和塞巴斯蒂安之间的友谊。这样说，也只是对她给我的厚爱所作的唯一的一次指责而已。

她来牛津，是找那位万灵会的桑格拉斯先生办事，这位先生此时在我们的生活中开始发挥越来越大的作用。马奇梅因夫人正在写一本只供朋友们传阅的纪念性的书，写的是她弟弟内德。在蒙斯和帕斯尚德勒遇难的三位传奇式的英雄中，他是最年长的一位；他遗留下了一大批文件——有诗歌、信件、讲演稿、文章等；要把这些文字编纂起来，即使是为了在一个非常有限的圈子里传阅，也是需要熟练地处理不计其数的问题的，而这由一位满怀敬仰的姐姐处理起来很容易失误。对这一点她早已承认，所以她一直在找外人帮助，而桑格拉斯先生正是找来协助她工作的。

他是一位年轻的历史学教师，矮小圆胖，穿着干净利落，稀疏的头发平平展展地贴在他那硕大的脑袋上，手很灵活，脚很小，给人一个过分爱洗刷的印象。他的态度很和蔼，讲起话来有独特的风格。我们很熟悉他。

帮助别人工作是桑格拉斯先生的特殊嗜好，不过他自己也是几本时髦小册子的作者哩。他很善于挖掘、钻研档案，对生动的东西嗅觉很灵敏。塞巴斯蒂安把桑格拉斯先生说成是“妈妈的什么人”。塞巴斯蒂安说的不太符合实际情况；事实上，差不多凡是使他感兴趣的人，他就是这个人的什么人了。

桑格拉斯先生是一位家谱学家，也是一位正统王朝的拥护者；他爱戴被剥夺了王位的皇族，而且很懂得觊觎王位者们对许多王位提出的敌对的要求中，哪一个有准确的法律效力；他并没有宗教习惯，可是他对天主教会的了解，比多数天主教徒还要多。他在梵蒂冈也有朋友，他可以仔细地讲解梵蒂冈的政策和各项任命，说出当前哪个传教士走红运，哪个倒霉，最近哪个神学假设是可疑的，再不就是某某耶稣会教士或某某多明我教派的修道士处境困难，或者是在他们四旬斋的演说中差点儿捅出娄子来，等等等等。他身上除了正统的宗教，可以说什么都有，后来他还喜欢参加在布赖兹赫德的小教堂举行的祈福仪式，想看看这个家族中头披黑色花边纱巾虔诚地拱着脖子的夫人小姐们；他喜欢名门望族的被遗忘了的丑闻，而且是一位判定家系的专家；他声称爱好过去，可是我总觉得他认为那些和他有着松松垮垮联系的声名显赫的同伴们，不管是活着的或者是死了的，总多少有些荒谬；只有他桑格拉斯先生是实在的，其余的人都不过是华而不实的过眼烟云罢了。他是维多利亚时代的旅游者，稳健而又傲慢，一切的异域风光都展现在他眼前，供他欣赏。在他那种学究气的态度中，倒是还有一点轻松活泼；我还疑心说不定在他装有镶板的什么地方，还会藏着一部留声机哩。

当我第一次遇见他们时，他是和马奇梅因夫人在一起的。当时我想，和这位好学不倦的人物在一起，她再也无法找到和她更具有鲜明对比的人了，也无法为她自己找到更合适的陪衬角色了。她一向并不是大张旗鼓打进别人生活里去的。但是接近周末的时候，塞巴斯蒂安颇为恼怒地说道：“你和妈妈好像很亲密了。”这时我意识到，她正在用一些迅速而有难以察觉的步骤，实际上把我拖进了亲密的关系里，因为她不能忍受任何一种缺乏亲密的人与人的关系。当她离开时，我答应她下次假期，除了圣诞节那天外，我都到布赖兹赫德度过。

一两个星期后的星期一上午，我正在塞巴斯蒂安的房间里等他下导师的指导课，这时朱丽娅走了进来，后面还跟着一位大块头家伙，她介绍他是“莫特拉姆先生，”并且叫他“雷克斯”。他们说，他们是开着汽车从他们度周末的人家来的。雷克斯·莫特拉姆穿一件方格长外套，热情，自信；朱丽娅穿着皮大衣，冷淡，羞怯，她径直走向火炉边，蜷在那儿打寒战。

“我们希望塞巴斯蒂安请我们吃一顿午餐。”她说。“如果不行的话，我们总还可以找博伊·马尔卡斯特试试，可是我总觉得在塞巴斯蒂安这儿，我们会吃得好些，我们饿极了。我们在凯茨姆夫妇家里度周末，简直一直在饿着肚子。”

“他和塞巴斯蒂安两个人正要和我一起吃午饭。你们也来吧。”

就这样，他们没有推辞就到我的屋里一起吃午餐了，这是我举行的往日形式的最后一次聚会了。雷克斯·莫特拉姆拼命表现自己。他长得很漂亮，一头黑发留得很长，压在前额上，眉毛又浓又黑。他说话时带着一种很动听的加拿大口音。人们很快就明白他希望别人知道他，知道他在钱财上走运，是一位下院议员，一位赌徒，一位好伙伴；经常和威尔士亲王打高尔夫球，和“马克斯”，和“弗·伊”和“格尔蒂”·劳伦斯，和奥古斯塔斯·约翰以及和卡彭特也很有交情——总之和一切的人都有交情，似乎跟人们提到的一切人都不错。谈起牛津大学，他说：“不，我可从来没去那儿呆过。上牛津大学就意味着你比别人晚三年才开始生活。”

根据他自己的话，他的生活是在战争中开始的，在战争中他和加拿大人一起服役，得到了一个很不错的典礼官职位，离开军队时，已经是一位知名将军的侍从武官了。

我们见到他时，无论如何他不会超过三十岁，可是在我们牛津人看来，他显得很老。朱丽娅对待他有些轻蔑，好像她待人接物都是这个样子，但是也带着点占有的神气。还吃着午饭，她就打发他去汽车里给她取香烟来，有那么一两次他吹起牛来，她就为他辩解说：“别忘了他是从殖民地来的人。”听到这种说法他则报以一阵大笑。

他走以后我便问这人是谁。

“嗨，就是朱丽娅的什么人呗。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

我们颇感惊奇的是，一个星期后我们收到他的一封来电，邀请我们和博伊·马尔卡斯特于第二天晚上参加朱丽娅的一个聚会，在伦敦一起吃晚餐。

“我觉得他认识的人都不会年轻，”塞巴斯蒂安说，“他的朋友都似乎伦敦商界和下院的浑身厚皮的老鲨鱼。我们去不去呢？”

我们商量了一会儿，因为这个时期我们在牛津的生活很阴郁，我们决定还是去。

“为什么他也要博伊去呢？”

“朱丽娅和我从小就认识他。我猜，因为他发现博伊也和你一道吃饭，所以就以为他是你的好朋友。”

我们并不大喜欢马尔卡斯特，不过当我们请准了外宿假，坐着哈德卡斯尔的汽车开上去伦敦的大路时，我们三人都兴高采烈。

这一夜我们要住在马奇梅因公馆里。所以我们先到那儿去换夜礼服，同时还喝了瓶香槟酒，而且还串了串彼此的房间，它们全在三楼上，和下边那些富丽堂皇的房间比起来，显得有些寒酸。当我们来到楼下的时候，朱丽娅从我们身边经过去她楼上的房间，她还穿着日常的衣服。

“我要晚会儿才能到，”她说，“你们男孩子最好是去雷克斯那儿。你们来了可太好啦。”

“这次聚会是怎么回事啊？”

“我被扯进了一个糟糕的慈善性质舞会。雷克斯一定要为这个舞会举行一次聚餐会。在那儿见你们吧！”

雷克斯·莫特拉姆住在里马奇梅因公馆几步远的地方。

“朱丽娅要晚会儿才能到，”我们说，“她刚上楼去换衣服。”

“这就是说还要一个小时，我们最好先喝些葡萄酒吧。”

一位介绍时被叫做“钱皮恩太太”的女人说：“雷克斯，我肯定朱丽娅愿意我们先开始。”

“好啦，不管怎么说，让我们先喝些葡萄酒吧。”

“为什么来这么一大瓶葡萄酒，雷克斯？”她很不痛快地说。“无论什么东西，你一向总是要大的。”

“这一瓶对我们来说不算大。”他一边说，一边把酒瓶拿在手里，旋开软木塞。

在座的还有两位姑娘，是朱丽娅的同龄人；她们好像也被扯进了舞会的筹办工作。马尔卡斯特以前就认识她们，而她们呢，我想，大概对他没有多大兴趣。钱皮恩太太跟雷克斯说着话。而塞巴斯蒂安和我就像往常那样，两个人在一起闷头喝着酒。

朱丽娅终于来了，雍容大度，仪态万方，而且毫无歉意。“你们不应该让他等嘛，”她说，“这就是他的加拿大式的礼节。”

雷克斯·莫特拉姆是一位慷慨的主人，饭吃完时，我们三个牛津学生差不多都醉了。当我们站在前厅等着那些姑娘们下来，而雷克斯和钱皮恩太太用低低的声音尖刻地谈着话走开时，马尔卡斯特说道，“喂，我们还是逃开这个糟糕的舞会，去梅菲尔德妈妈那儿吧。”

“梅菲尔德妈妈是谁？”

“你知道梅菲尔德妈妈的。老一百号的梅菲尔德妈妈谁人不知呀。我认识常住那儿的一个叫埃菲的很甜的小妞。如果埃菲听说我到了伦敦，路过也不去看她，那可就麻烦啦。走吧，到梅菲尔德妈妈那儿去见见埃菲。”

“好嘞，”塞巴斯蒂安说，“就让咱们去梅菲尔德那儿见见埃菲吧。”

“我们先从好心的莫特拉姆这儿拿走一瓶酒，躲开那个该死的舞会，随后就去老一百号，怎么样？”

离开舞会并不难；雷克斯·莫特拉姆找来的姑娘们在那儿有很多朋友，我们在一起跳了一两次以后，我们那张桌子已经堆满了酒；雷克斯·莫特拉姆要了越来越多的葡萄酒；过了一会儿，我们三个就在外面的人行道上集合了。

“你知道那地方在哪儿吗？”

“我当然知道啦。在百条阴沟大街。”

“那是什么地方？”

“就在莱斯特广场那边。最好还是弄一部车子。”

“为什么？”

“逢到这种场合，有自己的汽车总要好些。”

我们没有深究其中的道理，错也就错在这地方。那辆车子停在马奇梅因公馆的前院，距离我们刚才跳舞的旅馆不到一百码。马尔卡斯特开着车子，转悠了一会儿，就把我们平安地带到了阴沟大街。在一个黑洞洞的大门口，一边站着一个穿制服的守门人，另一边站着一个穿夜礼服的中年男子，他正冲着墙把前额贴在砖上冰冰凉，看来这就是我们的目的地。

“可别进去，你们会受到毒害的。”

“是会员吗？”那个守门人问道。

“名字是马尔卡斯特，”马尔卡斯特说，“马尔卡斯特子爵。”

“好吧，去里边试试看吧。”守门人说。

“你们会遭抢的，会中毒，受影响和遭抢劫。”中年人说。

走进黑糊糊的大门里面，是一扇灯光明亮的小门。

“是会员吗？”一个粗壮的女人问，她穿着夜礼服。

“真有意思呀，”马尔卡斯特说，“现在你总该认识我了吧。”

“不错，亲爱的，”那个女人漠不关心地说，“每位十个先令。”

“噢，听我说，以前我是从未付过钱的。”

“大概没有付过，亲爱的。今晚上我们这儿客满了，所以要收十先令。凡是在你们以后来的，都得付一镑啦。这还算你们运气呢。”

“请让我和梅菲尔德妈妈讲话。”

“我就是梅菲尔德妈妈。每位交十先令。”

“哟，原来是妈妈呀，你穿得这么阔气，我都认不出你来了。你不认识我吗？我是博伊·马尔卡斯特。”

“不错，小家伙们。每位十个先令。”

我们把钱付了，于是那个一直挡在我们和里面的门之间的男人这时给我们让开了路。门里面热气腾腾，挤满了人，这时老一百号正生意兴隆。我们找到了一张桌子，要了一瓶酒；侍者先把钱收了才把酒瓶盖打开。

“今晚上埃菲在什么地方？”马尔卡斯特问。

“哪个埃菲？”

“埃菲，就是常在这儿的那个女孩。黑皮肤的漂亮姑娘。”

“在这儿干活的姑娘很多。有的黑，有的白。有些你可以说她们很漂亮。我可没时间记她们的名字。”

“我要去找她。”马尔卡斯特说。

他刚刚走开，就有两个姑娘在我们桌子旁边停下来，好奇地打量着我们。“走吧，”其中一个姑娘对另一个说，“咱们白耽误时间。他们都是女人气的男人。”

不大一会儿，马尔卡斯特洋洋得意带着埃菲回来了，那个侍者没有等她要东西，就马上给她端来了一盘鸡蛋熏猪肉。

“整个晚上我这才开始吃一口。”她说，“在这儿，像样点的就只有那顿早餐；来回转悠真把你的肚子饿瘪了。”

“还得加六个先令。”那个侍者说道。

埃菲饱餐一顿后，擦擦嘴巴，然后打量起我们来。

“我以前在这儿看到过你，还经常看到，是吧？”她对我说道。

“恐怕不会的。”

“可是我见过你吧？”她转向马尔卡斯特说。

“呃，我可希望那样呢。难道你忘了我们九月的那个短暂的夜晚吗？”

“没有忘，亲爱的，当然不会忘。你就是那个在皇家禁卫军把自己脚趾砍伤了的小伙子吧？”

“喂，埃菲，别开玩笑啦。”

“不开玩笑。那是另外一个晚上吧？我知道啦——那天晚上当警察进来的时候，你正和邦蒂在一起的吧，当时我们大家都藏在放垃圾箱的地方。”

“埃菲喜欢拿我开心，是不是，埃菲？我这么久没有来她生气啦，是不是？”

“随便你怎么说，反正我以前在什么地方见到过你。”

“别开玩笑。”

“我可没有开玩笑的意思。真的。想跳舞吗？”

“这会儿不想。”

“谢天谢地。今天晚上我的鞋太紧，把脚挤得很紧。”

不久，她就和马尔卡斯特谈得热乎起来了。塞巴斯蒂安向后靠靠，对我说：“我去叫那两个过来。”

那两个起先曾打量过我们的还没有找到客人的女人，这时又围着我们转悠。塞巴斯蒂安微笑着站起来招呼她们，不久她们也开怀大嚼起来。一个姑娘有一张骷髅似的面孔，另一个有一张病恹恹的孩儿脸。那个骷髅头似乎注定是我的。“咱们几个人一道玩玩好不好？”她说道，“我们六个人到我那儿去吧？”

“当然可以。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

“你们刚进来时我们还觉得你们女里女气的呢。”

“这是因为我们特别年轻。”

骷髅头咯咯地笑起来。“你真是个讨人喜欢的人。”她说。

“你们真挺可爱的，”那个病孩儿脸说，“我得跟梅菲尔德妈妈说一声我们要出去。”

我们又来到街上，这时天还早，刚过午夜不久。那个守门人想劝我们搭一辆出租汽车。“我会照看你们的车子的，先生，我可不会开车送你们呀，先生，我真的不会啊。”

可是塞巴斯蒂安抓住了方向盘，两个女人一个坐在另一个身上，就坐在他身旁给他指路。埃菲、马尔卡斯特和我坐在后排。当车子一开动的时候我想我们大概都欢呼了一声。

车子并没有开多远。我们拐进了沙夫茨伯里大街，以后又开往皮卡迪利大街，正在这时，我们险些和迎头开来的一辆出租汽车撞上。

“看在基督的份上，”埃菲说，“瞧着点路啊。你不想谋害我们吧？”

“粗心大意的家伙才那么干呢。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

“你这样开车可真不保险。”骷髅头说，“再说，我们也该靠那路那边开嘛。”

“我们是该靠那边开。”塞巴斯蒂安说着猛地把车甩到马路另一边。

“喂，停车。我宁可走着去。”

“停车吗？当然可以。”

他一踏刹车，车子猛地停住，横在马路当中。两个警察加快脚步朝我们走来。

“让我出去。”埃菲说道，说罢她连蹦带跳地逃掉了。

其余的人全都被抓住了。

“如果我妨碍了交通的话，那我很抱歉，警察。”塞巴斯蒂安小心翼翼地说。“不过那位女士非要我停下车让她下去不可。这一点她不会否认的。正如你们已经注意到的她的时间来不及了。你们知道，神经方面出了点毛病。”

“让我跟他说说。”骷髅头说，“多乖的漂亮小伙子。这儿除了你们没有别人看见。这些孩子们并没有坏意思。我会给他们叫辆出租汽车，安安静静地送他们回家。”

两个警察慎重地察看着我们，在心里对我们做出判断。如果马尔卡斯特不插话，当时什么事情都可以过去的。“喂，喂，我说好心人，”他说，“没有必要盯住不放啊。我们是刚刚从梅菲尔德妈妈那儿来的。我估计她给了你们一大笔钱，使你们睁一只眼闭一只眼的吧。好啦，你们也可以闭眼不看我们，你们绝不会因此而吃亏的。”

这番话使警察可能感觉到的所有疑问都消除了。没多大工夫我们就进了单人牢房。

我不大记得怎么到的那儿，也不大记得怎么进去的。我想是马尔卡斯特激烈地表示了抗议，当我们的口袋都被掏空的时候，他又指控监狱看守进行盗窃。随后我们就被关起来，我最初的清晰记忆就是贴了瓷砖的墙壁，一盏灯放在很高的地方，它上面是一块厚的玻璃板，有一个床铺，还有一扇靠我这面的没有把手的门。在我左边什么地方，塞巴斯蒂安和马尔卡斯特正在乱叫乱闹。起初被送到警察所的路上，塞巴斯蒂安还走得很稳，相当镇静；而这时被关在牢房里，他就好像变得狂乱起来，他正在乒乒乓乓地敲门，还一边大声叫喊：“该死的，我没有醉。给我开门。我一定要请医生来检查。我告诉你们，我没有醉。”与此同时，马尔卡斯特在那一边的牢房里叫嚷道：“上帝啊，总要跟你们算账的！我可以告诉你们，你们犯了大错误。给内务大臣打电话去。把我的私人律师找来。我享有人身保护权。”

别的牢房里引起了一阵嘈杂的抗议声，住在里面的流浪汉和扒手们还是要睡会儿觉的：“嘿！嘿！安静点儿吧！”“让别人安静点，行不行？”……“这是倒霉的拘留所呢，还是疯人院啊？”那位警官来回巡视着，通过铁栅栏门向他们警告说：“如果米们不放明白点儿的话，可就得在这儿蹲一夜了。”

我心情沮丧地坐在床铺上，打了一会儿盹。过了一会儿吵闹声平息下去了，塞巴斯蒂安喊道：“喂，查尔斯，你在那边吗？”

“我在这儿。”

“这事可真糟透了。”

“我们能得到保释什么的吗？”

马尔卡斯特好像已经睡着了。

“我告诉你，就看那个人的了——就是雷克斯·莫特拉姆。他在这儿办法可多啦。”

我们跟他取得联系还遇到了一些困难；我打铃叫人，过了半个小时，那个值班的警察才应声而来。最后他终于同意给那家正在举行舞会的旅馆打个电话，不过颇为怀疑。又耽误了很长时间，我们牢房的门打开了。

渗透警察所污浊的空气，就是那种污垢和消毒水剂混合的酸味，飘来一支哈瓦那雪茄的甜丝丝的浓烟香味，这香味飘过来——是两支哈瓦那雪茄的香味，那个值班的警官也在吸着一支。

雷克斯站在值班室里，俨然是权力和幸运的化身——其实是一幅讽刺画；他穿着一件阿斯特拉罕产的宽大、翻领、皮衬里的羔皮大衣，戴一顶丝绒帽子。警官们必恭必敬，显出愿意效劳的样子。

“我们不得不执行任务。”他们说，“把这些年轻的先生们拘留起来，是为了保护他们。”

马尔卡斯特看来已经酩酊大醉了，语无伦次地控诉说他被剥夺了合法的陈述权和公民权等等。雷克斯说：“最好还是把这些话留着跟我说吧。”

这时我的脑子清醒了，我兴趣盎然地看着和听着雷克斯解决我们的问题。他检查了案件记录，然后和蔼地跟那两位拘捕我们的警察谈起话来；他以最不易察觉的手段试图进行贿赂，但他看出这件事拖的时间太长了，消息传得也很广，于是他就赶快掩饰过去；他担保第二天上午十点把我们送到地方法院，然后就把我们带走了。他的汽车就停在外面。

“今天晚上谈论什么也没有用。你们睡在什么地方呢？”

“在马奇家。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

“你们还是到我这儿来吧。今天晚上我可以安顿你们。把一切事情交给我办吧。”

很显然他对自己的办事效率是很得意的。

第二天早晨这番炫耀给人的印象就更加深刻。我醒来时，慌乱而惶惑地意识到自己是睡在一间陌生的房间里的，恢复意识的最初瞬间，想起了前一天夜里的事情，起先就仿佛是一场恶梦，继而它就变成了现实。这时雷克斯的仆人正打开一个衣箱，他看到我动了动，就走到洗脸架前把什么东西从一个瓶子倒在杯子里。“我想我把所有的东西都从马奇梅因公馆拿来了，”他说，“是莫特拉姆先生派人去赫佩尔药店把这个买回来的。”

我把药吃了，觉得好多了。

屋里还有特朗泊理发店的一个人给我们刮了脸。

雷克斯和我们一起吃了早饭。“在法庭上要紧的是把衣着弄得像个样子，”他说，“幸好你们的衣着都不显得破旧不堪。”

一吃过早饭，那位律师就来了，雷克斯把这个案子扼要地跟他讲了讲。

“塞巴斯蒂安陷入困境，”他说，“就因为醉后开车，很可能判罪，一直判到六个月徒刑。倒霉的是，你们的事要交给格里格审理。他对这类案子一向是相当严厉的。所以，今天上午能够做到的，就是请求给塞巴斯蒂安一个星期的期限，以便做好辩护准备。你们两个可以表示服罪，就说自己做的不对，然后付五先令的罚款就算完事。买通晚报的事，我还得看看怎么办才好。《晨报》可能不太好办。

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爱就像蓝天白云，晴空万里，突然暴风雨！
举报 只看该作者 6楼  发表于: 2013-11-19 0

“要记住，关键是绝口不提老一百号的事。幸亏那几个骚货当时还算清醒，没受到控告，可是作为见证人，她们的名字已经记录在案了。如果我们企图否认警察的证词的话，她们就会给传到法庭的。这种情况，我们无论如何也要避免，所以我们硬着头皮承认警察说的全部情节，然后请求地方法院发善心，不要因为一件幼稚的轻率举动就断送青年人的前程。这样说会起很好的作用的。我们还需要找一位牛津大学的教师证明你们品行端正。朱丽娅告诉我说，你们有一位叫桑格拉斯的老师好说话。他可以给你们作证。同时，你们要简短地说明：你们从牛津来，是参加一个十分体面的舞会的，很不习惯喝葡萄酒，由于喝得太多了，所以开车回家时迷了路。

“这件事办完了以后，我们还得想办法和你们牛津大学校方把这件事通融通融。”

“我原来要他们把我的律师找来的，”马尔卡斯特说，“可是他们就是不肯。他们这不是无可挽回地犯了错误吗？我看他们是逃不了责任的啦。”

“看在上帝的分上，千万不要挑起什么争端。只是表示服罪，缴纳罚款。懂了吧？”

马尔卡斯特咕哝着，不过还是服从了。

法庭上的情形果然不出雷克斯所料。到了十点半钟的时候，我们已经站在鲍夫大街上，我和马尔卡斯特已经是自由人了，却令塞巴斯蒂安具结保证过一个星期还得出庭。马尔卡斯特对他自己的冤屈一直沉默。我和他受到了警告，每人罚款五先令，还有十五先令的诉讼费。马尔卡斯特越来越使我们讨厌了，所以当我们听到他借口说要去伦敦办事，我们真是如释重负。那位律师也匆匆忙忙走掉了，就剩下我和塞巴斯蒂安孤零零的，闷闷不乐。

“我估计妈妈已经听说这件事了。”他说，“浑蛋，浑蛋，真浑蛋！天气真冷。我不愿回家去。可也没地方可去啊。我们溜回牛津去吧，等他们来找我们的麻烦。”

一些在违警罪法庭名声狼藉的常客们走进走出，从台阶上走上走下；而我们还站在当风的街角那儿，拿不定主意。

“为什么不去找朱丽娅呢？”

“我也许要出门去。”

“亲爱的塞巴斯蒂安，你只会挨一顿训，罚几英镑罢了。”

“是啊，可是一切事都够烦人的——妈妈，布赖德，家里所有的人，还有那些学监和教师。我宁愿进监狱哩。如果我溜到国外去，他们就没法把我弄回来，是不是？人们受到警察追究时，不就是这么干的吗？我知道妈妈会搞得让人们觉得我们的事情完全落在她身上了。”

“还是给朱丽娅打个电话，让她在什么地方跟咱们碰碰头，商量一下这件事吧。”

我们在伯克利街区的冈特餐厅见面了。朱丽娅和当时的大多数女人一样，戴着一顶绿色女帽，压到眉毛上，帽子上还有一枚镶宝石的箭头；她腋下还夹着一只小狗，有四分之三的部分藏在她皮大衣里。她跟我们招呼，表现非常感兴趣的样子。

“嘿，你们真是一对捣蛋鬼。我得说，你们在干这种事情上似乎很在行。要是我一喝醉，第二天就完全瘫了。我认为当时你们可能带我一块去的。那个舞会也实在是要命，而且我一直盼着能去老一百号玩玩呢。永远不会有人带我去的。那开心极了吧？”

“这么说，事情你也全知道啦？”

“今天早晨雷克斯给我打了电话，什么都告诉我了。你们那些女朋友长得怎么样？”

“别那么色迷迷的。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

“我那位就像一个骷髅头。”

“我那位就像一个痨病鬼。”

“天啊。”我们带女人出去玩过，这件事显然提高了我们在朱丽娅心目中的地位；她的兴趣完全是在那些女人身上。

“妈妈知道了吗？”

“还不知道你们的骷髅头和痨病鬼。她知道你们进了监狱了。我告诉了她。当然，就这一类事说她可好极了，确实是这样。你知道，内德叔叔干什么事情都是无可指摘的，有一次他因为带一条熊进入劳埃德·乔治主持的会场而被关押起来，所以她对整个事情都抱着通情达理的态度。她希望你们俩和她一道吃饭。”

“啊，天哪！”

“麻烦就在报纸和家庭方面。查尔斯，你有一个糟透了的家庭吗？”

“只有父亲一个人，可是他绝不会听到这件事的。”

“我们家可麻烦极了。由于那些亲戚，可怜的妈妈势必要倒霉了。他们会写信来，还要登门拜访，表示同情，可是同时有一半人心里头说的是：‘这就是把孩子培养成个天主教徒的结果。’另一半人则会说：‘这就是不孩子送去伊顿公学，而不送到斯托尼赫斯特学校的结果。’可怜的妈妈也没法解释清楚。”

午饭我们是和马奇梅因夫人一起吃的。她以幽默的无可奈何的态度接受了这件事。她只责备说：“我想不出你们为什么出去和莫特拉姆住在一起。你们可以先来找我，把这件事告诉我。”

“我可怎么把这件事跟全家人解释呢？”她问道。“他们发现我对这件事还不如他们难过，他们一定感到非常震惊的。你知道我嫂子范妮·罗斯康芒吧？她一向认为我对孩子的教育很坏。现在我开始觉得她说的很对。”

当我们离开后我说：“她实在太好了。那你还发什么愁呢？”

“我说不出原因来。”塞巴斯蒂安悲惨地说。

一个星期后塞巴斯蒂安出庭，他被罚款十镑。报纸把这条消息放在令人难受的显著位置，有一家报纸还用了讽刺性的标题：“侯爵家的儿子不习惯喝葡萄酒。”地方法官说，只是由于警察行动果断，他才没有受到严重的指控……“纯粹是靠了运气好，你才没有负严重责任事故的罪责……”桑格拉斯先生作证说，塞巴斯蒂安的品行是无可指摘的，还说他在牛津大学的灿烂前途已经岌岌可危。报纸也抓住这句话不放——“模范学生的前途危若累卵。”那位地方法官说，如果没有桑格拉斯先生的证词，他可能会受到惩罚性的判决；法律对一个牛津大学的大学生和任何一个小流氓都是一视同仁的；毫无疑问，家庭愈好，犯法行为就愈可耻……

桑格拉斯先生所具有的价值并不只限于鲍夫大街。在牛津大学，他表现出与雷克斯·莫特拉姆在伦敦所表现出来的全部热情和全部机敏。他走访了学校当局、学监们、大学副校长；他还怂恿管理员贝尔去拜访了基督教会学院院长；他还安排了马奇梅因夫人同校长谈话；作为这一切努力的结果，就是禁止我么三人在这学期剩下的日子中出校门。哈德卡斯尔不清楚为了什么缘故，再次被剥夺了使用自己的汽车的权利，这件事就算过去了。我们所遭受到的时间最长的出发却是我们同雷克斯·莫特拉姆和桑格拉斯之间的亲密关系，不过因为雷克斯生活在伦敦的政界和上层金融界，而桑格拉斯却生活在牛津，与我们近在咫尺，所以我们从他那儿受的罪就更大。

在这个学期余下的日子里，他老缠住我们。由于我们受到“禁止外出”的处罚，所以我们晚上也不能在一起度过，从九点起，我们都得各在一处，而且是处在桑格拉斯的支配之下。几乎没有一个晚上他不来找我们中的这一个或那一个。当他说起“我们的那次小小的越轨行为”时，就好像他也曾关在单人牢房里，因此和我们也很有缘分……有一次我翻墙爬出学院，桑格拉斯先生发现我在关了校门后竟在塞巴斯蒂安的房间里，他把这件事也变成了一种束缚。所以，当我圣诞节后到了布赖兹赫德，走进他们称为“挂毯大厅”的那间屋子的时候，看到了桑格拉斯先生独自坐在炉火前面，似乎是在等我的样子，这情形并没有使我惊讶。

“你看我正单独占有这一切。“他说。不错，他的确好像占据了这间厅堂，占据了四周挂满狩猎图的灰沉沉的场面，还占据了壁炉两边的女像柱，当他站起身来，像个主人一样欢迎我的时候，好像还占据了我。“今天早晨，”他继续说，“我们在草坪上举行了马奇梅因猎前聚会——真是一个妙不可言的古色古香的场面——我们所有的年轻朋友们都去猎狐了，甚至塞巴斯蒂安，你听见大概不会吃惊吧，他穿着他那件红色外套，看上去很优雅了。而布赖兹赫德呢，与其说是优雅，倒不如说是给人深刻印象；他和本地一个名叫沃尔特·斯特里克兰—维纳布尔斯爵士的有趣人物当联合主人。我希望这些太单调乏味的挂毯中能加进他们两人的肖像——那么这些挂毯就会显出一种幻想的情调来。

“我们的女主人也留在家里；还有一位正在养病的多明我派的教士，他谈马利丹太多，读黑格尔又太少；还有艾德里安·波森爵士，当然啰，还有两位颇令人生畏的匈牙利表兄弟——我曾经用德语和法语试着跟他们说话，可是他们对哪种语言都没有兴趣。现在这些人都坐车去邻居家做客去了。我就在炉火前，拿着这本绝妙的《查勒斯》消磨一个舒适的下午。你的到来使我增添了打铃要茶的勇气。我怎样使你为这次聚会做好思想准备呢？哎呀，聚会明天就要散啦。朱丽娅小姐到别的地方去庆祝新年，还把时髦的社交人物带走了。我会见不到住在附近的美人们——特别是那个西莉娅；她是我们那个倒霉的老伙计博伊·马尔卡斯特的妹妹，可完全不像他。她说起话来就像小鸟一样，喜欢吹毛求疵，那样子我觉得十分可爱，她的衣着像是学校班长的样式，这种样式我只能说‘帅’啦。我会想念她的，因为明天我不去。明天我就得认真开始搞我们的女主人那本书了——那本书，请你相信，乃是是嗲珍宝的历史宝库；同时也是真实的一九一四年的历史。”

茶送上来了，喝完了茶不久，塞巴斯蒂安就回来了；他说他早就找不到猎狐队的人了，所以就悠悠荡荡地回来了。别的人在他回来后不久，在黄昏时给汽车接回来了。没有布赖兹赫德；他在养狗场有事要办，跟他去的还有科迪莉娅。回来的人挤满了大厅，随后就吃起了炒鸡蛋和烤饼；而那位在家里吃过午饭在炉火前打了一下午盹的桑格拉斯先生，也和他们一起吃着鸡蛋和烤饼。过了一会儿，马奇梅因夫人一行人回来了，还没有等我们上楼梯换晚餐礼服，她就问大家，“谁去教堂念玫瑰经呀？”塞巴斯蒂安和朱丽娅都说他们得马上去洗澡，桑格拉斯先生跟她和那位男修士一起去了。

“我希望桑格拉斯先生去，”塞巴斯蒂安洗澡的时候说，“我厌烦再向他表示感谢了。”

在以后的半个月时间里，对桑格拉斯先生的厌烦已经在整个宅第里成了一个公开的秘密，只要他在场，艾德里安·波森爵士那双漂亮的暗褐色眼睛就仿佛在察看远处的地平线，他的嘴巴就带着典型的悲观主义神气。只有那两个匈牙利表兄弟，他们误解了这位大学教师的身份，把他当成一个享有特殊权得的高级用人，所以没有因为他在场而受到影响。


圣诞节聚会的人中留下来的有桑格拉斯先生、艾德里安·波森爵士，两个匈牙利人、男修士、布赖兹赫德、塞巴斯蒂安和科迪莉娅。

在这所宅第里，宗教居于统治地位。这倒不仅仅表现在这个家庭的种种习惯上——每天早晚都要在小教堂做弥撒和念玫瑰经——而且表现在家庭内人们的交往上。“我们得把查尔斯变成一个天主教徒。”马奇梅因夫人说。在我作客期间，我们在一起闲聊过许多次，每次她都要把话题巧妙地引到这个神圣的问题上来。谈过第一次后，塞巴斯蒂安就说，“妈妈是不是和你闲聊了？她经常这样做。我真希望她可别再这么做了。”

其实谁也没有被叫去聊聊，或者有意识地给引到这种谈话上去；当她希望要亲切地谈谈的时候，人就会发现自己偶然地和她单独在一起了，如果是在夏天，那他就会发现他们正在僻静的水塘岸边散步，或者发现他们在四面有围墙的玫瑰园的一个角落里；倘若是冬天，那就是在二楼她的起居室里了。

这间起居室是完全属于她的；她把这个房间据为己有后，就把它改造了，所以一走进这间房子，你就恍如置身于另一所宅第里。她放低了天花板，因而以各种不同的样式为每一间屋子增光的门楣不见了；四壁，一面装有花缎护墙，却被刮除干净，刷上一层蓝色的底色，上面散布着很多小小的水彩画；房间里的空气甜丝丝的，鲜花的清新芳香和百花香的陈腐气息混杂在一起；她的图书室是软皮护墙，一个黑檀木的小书架上摆满了广博精深的诗集和神学著作；壁炉架上摆满了私人收藏的小珍品——一个象牙圣母像，一尊圣约瑟的石膏像，还有三个当兵的弟弟的几帧遗像。那年光辉灿烂的八月里，我和塞巴斯蒂安两人独自住在布赖兹赫德的时候，她母亲的这个房间是不让我们进去的。

由于回忆起她这间屋子，使我们当时谈话的一些片断重新浮现脑际。我还记得她说：“当我还是女孩子时，我们比较贫困，当然比起大多数人来还是阔气多了，我结了婚的时候，就很富有了。我常常忧虑，自己拥有那么多珍宝，而他人却一无所有，我认为这是错误的。现在我认识到，由于羡慕穷人的特权，富人也可能犯罪。穷人总是上帝和圣徒的宠儿，不过我相信洗净整个生灵——其中包括富人在内——的罪孽乃是神的特殊恩宠。异教徒的罗马帝国的财富必然是残酷得来的；不可能是另外的情况。”

我谈了一下骆驼和针眼的典故，她听到这话就高兴地说到要点。

“不过当然啰，”她说，“骆驼穿过针眼确实是意想不到的事，可是福音书只是种种意想不到的事情的汇编罢了。一头牛和一头驴子竟在畜圈里做起礼拜来，这是意想不到的。在圣徒的生活中，牧畜总是干许多奇怪的事情。这完全是宗教的诗的一面，阿丽丝漫游奇境的一面。”

但是，正如我对她的魅力并不动心一样，对她的信仰我同样也无动于衷；或者毋宁说，这两方面对我的触动都是一个样儿。那时我一心想的只是塞巴斯蒂安，我看到他已经受到威胁，尽管我还不知道这种威胁有多么凶恶。他那经常的、丧失信心的祈祷是单独进行的。在他心中的蔚蓝色海水边和飒飒作响的棕榈树下，他像中太平洋波利尼西亚群岛的土人一样，是快乐的、与世无争的；只是当大船在珊瑚礁石那边抛了锚，小汽艇冲上环礁湖的时候，商人，官吏，传教士和旅游客这群凶恶的入侵者踏上了从来不曾印上过长统靴足迹的斜坡上——这时才发掘出民族的武器，在山中响起了鼓声；或者更容易做到的是离开那阳光照耀的门口，然后躺在黑暗中，在那里，无用的、画出来的神像仿佛在墙上徒然游行，他在酒瓶中间咳嗽得声嘶力竭。

自从塞巴斯蒂安在这群入侵者中间考虑他自己良心和人类感情的一切要求以来，他在阿卡迪亚的淳朴宁静的日子就屈指可数了。因为在这段对我来说是平静的日子里，塞巴斯蒂安却惊恐不安。我对他这种警觉和猜疑的情绪是很熟悉的，他像一头鹿听到远处猎队的声音就突然扬起头来；我看出当他想到他的家庭和他的宗教信仰时，他就变得小心翼翼，而现在我发现我也成了他怀疑的对象。他并不是没有爱，而是他已经没有了爱的欢乐，因为我不再是他寂寞时的伴侣。随着我和他家庭的关系越来越密切，我就越来越成为他力图逃避的那个社会的一部分了；同时我也愈来愈成为他的一种束缚了。而这也正是他母亲在所有和我闲聊中力图让我起的作用。一切都是不言而喻的。我只是模模糊糊地偶尔怀疑似乎正在进行什么活动。

从表面上看，桑格拉斯是唯一的敌人。我和塞巴斯蒂安在布赖兹赫德待了半个月光景，过着自己的生活。他哥哥参加运动和地产经营；桑格拉斯先生在图书室里埋头编纂马奇梅因夫人的那本书；艾德里安·波森爵士则把马奇梅因夫人的大部分时间都占去了。除了晚上以外，我们很少看到他们；在这个宽大的屋顶下面，过各式各样独立生活的地方是绰绰有余的。

过了半个月，塞巴斯蒂安说：“我再也受不了桑格拉斯先生那一套了。我们去伦敦吧。”这样他就和我一起到伦敦住在我家里，现在开始不回“马奇”家而住在我家。我父亲很喜欢他。“我觉得你的朋友很有意思。叫他常来吧。”


后来，我们回到了牛津，重新过起那种仿佛寒冷得缩成一团的生活。上个学期塞巴斯蒂安身上那种很深重的哀伤被一种愠怒代替了，甚至对我也是这样。他心里难受，可是我并不知道是怎么回事，我为他难过，可是又无能为力。

现在，当他快活起来时，通常就是他喝醉了的时候，他喝醉了酒，就尽情发挥“嘲弄桑格拉斯先生”的能事。他谱了一支小调，内有这样的迭句，“绿色的屁股，桑格拉斯——桑格拉斯，绿色的屁股”，并且配上圣玛丽教堂的和谐钟声唱起来，他还在他的窗户下对他唱起小夜曲，大概一个星期有那么一次。桑格拉斯先生由于是第一个在自己房间里装了私人电话的教师而著名，塞巴斯蒂安在喝醉的时候常常打电话给他，把这支小曲唱给他听。对这些，桑格拉斯先生丝毫也不见怪，像人们认为的，每逢遇到我们，他表面上总是微笑着，但是，却带着一种与日俱增的信心，好象每一次凌辱都在某种程度上加强了他对塞巴斯蒂安的控制。

在这个学期里，我开始认识到，塞巴斯蒂安是一个跟我自己完全不同的酒鬼。我常常喝醉，只是由于兴奋过度，并且由于留恋醉酒的时刻，希望延长和增强醉意。而塞巴斯蒂安却是为了逃避现实。随着我们越来越长大，越来越严肃，我喝的越来越少，而他喝的越来越多。我发现有时我回到我的学院以后，他还深夜不睡，兀自狂饮不已。一连串的灾祸那么迅速而又猛烈得意想不到，以致我很难说我究竟什么时候看出来我的朋友正处在极大的苦恼中。到复活节的假期中我才完全明白是怎么回事。

朱丽娅常常说：“可怜的塞巴斯蒂安呀。他身上的‘化学’出了些毛病。”

这是当时流行的时髦话，天知道这是由通俗科学的什么误解衍生出来的。像“他们之间存在着某种化学问题”这句话，就是用来说明随便哪两个人之间极大的仇恨或者爱情的。是用新方式来表达宿命论的旧观念。我决不相信在我的朋友身上会存在什么化学问题。

布赖兹赫德的复活节聚会过得难受极了，最后导致了依次事情虽小然而却令人难以忘怀的事件。当时塞巴斯蒂安在他母亲家里，吃晚饭前喝得酩酊大醉，这标志着他忧郁症病历中一个新时代的开始，继而发展到逃出家庭，导致了他的毁灭。

大批来度复活节假期的人离开布赖兹赫德那天，已经是黄昏时候了。虽说是来度复活节假期，但实际上大家到齐的时候已经是复活节一周间的星期二了，因为弗莱特一家人从濯足节星期四到复活节一直都隐居在一家修道院的客房里。塞巴斯蒂安早就说过今年复活节他不回家，可是到了最后一刻他还是让步了，回家的时候他的心境极为颓唐，我完全无法使他振作起来。

他整整一个星期酒喝得很厉害——只有我知道有多么厉害——喝酒的时候神经紧张，偷偷摸摸，和他过去的习惯完全不一样。在聚会期间，图书室里总放着一托盘的兑了水的烈性酒，塞巴斯蒂安白天一有空就偷偷溜进去，甚至对我都绝口不提。家里白天差不多走空了。这时我则在柱廊那间小小的花园房间里，在画板上画另一幅画。塞巴斯蒂安说自己患了感冒，就留在家里，而在这段时间里他就没有十分清醒过；他不声不响以躲避别人的注意。我时常注意到他引起了人们好奇的目光，不过来度假的大多数人对他不甚了解，也就看不出他身上的变化，而他家的人又很忙，每个人都要应酬各自的客人。

每当我规劝他时，他就说：“周围这些人真让人受不了。”可是众人终于走了以后，他在狭隘的住所不得不面对他的家人，这时他支持不住了。

一般的习惯，六点钟把鸡尾酒托盘端到客厅里；然后我们都自己掺兑自己的饮料，当我们去换礼服时，酒瓶就给拿走了。然后，在吃饭前，鸡尾酒又出现了，由男仆递给每个人。

那天吃完了茶点，塞巴斯蒂安就不见了。天渐渐暗下来，我和科迪莉娅玩了一小时麻将牌。到了六点，就剩下我一个人在客厅里，这时塞巴斯蒂安回来了。他皱着眉头，那种样子我非常熟悉，他刚一说话，我就从他的声音里听出浓重的醉意来。

“他们还没有把鸡尾酒端来吗？”他笨手笨脚地拉铃绳。

我说：“刚才你去哪儿了？”

“在楼上，和保姆在一起。”

“我不信。你一直在什么地方喝酒。”

“我一直在我的房里看书哩。我的感冒今天更重了。”

托盘端进来后，他歪歪斜斜地把杜松子酒和苦艾酒倒进一只平底大杯里，端着酒走出客厅。我跟着他上了楼，一上了楼他就当着我的面把门关上，拧上了锁。

我万分沮丧地回到客厅，心里充满了不祥的预感。

这时全家人都坐在一起。马奇梅因夫人说：“塞巴斯蒂安现在怎么样了？”

“他已经睡下了。他的感冒更厉害了。”

“嗯，亲爱的，我希望他不要得了流感。最近我有一两次觉得他像在发烧。他想要什么吗？”

“不要什么。他特别要求别打搅他。”

我不知道是不是应该跟布赖兹赫德说一下，可是他那副冷酷无情的岩石般的面孔打消了我对他的信任。我上楼去换衣服的时候把这话告诉了朱丽娅。

“塞巴斯蒂安喝醉了。”

“不会吧。他连鸡尾酒也没有来喝呀。”

“整个下午他一直在自己房间里喝酒。”

“真奇怪！太讨厌了！到时候他能来吃晚饭吗？”

“不行。”

“嗨，你必须照料他，这不关我的事。他是不是经常这样喝？”

“近来常这样喝。”

“太讨厌了。”

我试着开塞巴斯蒂安的房门，发现门已经锁了，我希望他睡觉了，可是当我洗完澡回来，却看到他坐在壁炉前的椅子上；他已经穿好了夜礼服，只是没有穿鞋，领带系得歪歪斜斜，头发直竖起来；他满脸通红，眼睛有点歪斜，说话含糊不清。

“查尔斯，你说的十分对。没有在保姆那儿。一直在楼上喝威士忌。现在图书室没人，聚会散了。聚会一散，只有妈妈在。我觉得醉得厉害。看来我还是在楼上用盘子吃些什么好。不和妈妈一起吃饭了。”

“睡觉去吧，”我告诉他，“我就说你的感冒更厉害了。”

“厉害多了。”

我把他带到隔壁他的房间里，想让他躺在床上，可是他坐在梳妆台前面，斜着眼睛照镜子，整理了一下蝴蝶结。在壁炉边那张写字台上放着喝了一半的威士忌酒瓶。我把瓶子拿起来，以为他没看见，可是他立刻从镜子前转过身来说，“把它放下。”

“别傻了，塞巴斯蒂安。你喝的已经够多的了。”

“这到底和你有什么相干？你只不过是这儿的客人——我的客人。在我家里，我想喝什么就喝什么。”

当时他为此会和我打架的。

“也好，”我说着把细颈瓶放了回去，“看在上帝的面上，别让人看见。”

“得嘞，操心你自己的事吧。你是作为我的朋友到这儿来的；现在你替我母亲暗中监视我，我知道。好了，你可以滚了，你替我告诉她，将来我要挑选我的朋友，她可以挑选她的间谍。”

我就这样离开了他，到楼下去吃饭。

“刚才我去塞巴斯蒂安那儿了，他的感冒相当厉害。他已经睡下来，并且说什么也不要。”

“可怜的塞巴斯蒂安，”马奇梅因夫人说，“他最好喝一杯热威士忌，我要去看看他。”

“妈妈别去，还是我去吧。”朱丽娅说着站起来。

“我去，”科迪莉娅说，她这晚上下来吃饭，为了给一些客人饯行。她正在门口，别人还没有拦住她就已经出门了。

朱丽娅迎住我的目光，悲哀地轻轻耸了耸肩。

过了几分钟科迪莉娅回来了，表情很严峻。“看来他什么也不想要。”她说。

“他怎么样了？”

“噢，这我可不知道。可我觉得他醉得厉害。”她说。

“科迪莉娅。”

突然这孩子咯咯地笑起来。“‘侯爵的儿子不习惯喝葡萄酒’，”她引用报纸上的话说，“‘模范学生的前程受到威胁’。”

“查尔斯，这是真的吗？”马奇梅因夫人说。

“真的。”

接着宣布开饭，我们都去了餐室，在那儿没有再说到这个话题。

当只有我和布赖兹赫德在一起的时候，他说：“你是说塞巴斯蒂安喝醉了？”

“是的。”

“怎么单单挑这么个时候，你不能劝他不喝吗？”

“劝不住的。”

“劝不住，”布赖兹赫德说，“我估计你也劝不住。有一次我看见我父亲喝醉了，就是在这间屋子里，那时我大约还不超过十岁。如果有人想要喝醉，那是劝不住的。我母亲就劝不住我父亲，知道吧。”

他古怪地、不带个人感情色彩地讲话。我想，对这个家庭，我看得愈多，就愈觉得他们很特别。“我今天晚上要请母亲给我们朗读。”

我后来才知道这是一个惯例，在家庭处在紧张状态的晚上，总是请马奇梅因夫人高声朗读。她的声音很悦耳，表情非常幽默。这一晚上，她念了《布朗神父的智慧》的片断。朱丽娅坐在那儿，旁边长凳子上摆满了修指甲的东西，她在仔细地修饰自己的指甲；科迪莉娅爱抚着朱丽娅的小狮子狗；布赖兹赫德玩着单人纸牌；我坐着无事可干，就研究起由他们组成的这一伙很妙的群像，我同时还为那个躲在楼上的朋友感到哀伤。

可是这一晚上可怕的事还没有过去。

马奇梅因夫人有时有这样的习惯，当只剩下家里的人的时候，她在睡觉以前要去一趟小教堂。她刚合上书，提出要去小教堂的时候，门就开了，塞巴斯蒂安出现了。他穿的衣服和我看到他时穿的一样，不过这时脸不是涨得通红，而是惨白得瘆人。

“我是来道歉的，”他说。

“塞巴斯蒂安，亲爱的，还是回你的房间去吧。”马奇梅因夫人说，“明天早晨我们再来谈这件事好吧？”

“不是向你道歉。是来向查尔斯道歉的。我待他太过分了，他是我的客人。他是我的客人，也是我唯一的朋友，而我待他太过分了。”

我们大家都感到寒心。我把他领回到他的房间；他全家的人都去作祈祷了。我们上了楼的时候，我注意到那只细颈瓶已经空了。“你该睡觉了。”我说。

塞巴斯蒂安哭泣起来。“你为什么要站在他们一边来反对我？我知道，如果我让你和他们见面，你就会反对我的。你为什么要监视我呢？”

他说了许多我不忍回忆的事情，即使现在都已隔了二十年。我终于安顿他睡下了，然后自己十分哀伤地去睡了。

第二天早晨，他很早就来到我的房间，这时全家人都还睡着；他拉开窗帘，拉窗帘的声音把我弄醒了，我发现他站在那儿，衣服全穿好了，吸着烟，背冲着我，正眺望窗外横在露水上的长长的一道破晓的曙光，最早醒来的鸟儿在正抽芽的树梢头啁啾鸣叫。我刚一说话，他就转过脸来，他脸上没有了前一天晚上的酒意，而是鲜润又愠怒的，就像一张失望的孩子的脸。

“喂，”我说，“你觉得怎么样了？”

“有点奇怪。我觉得也许我还有点醉意呢。我刚才下楼去马厩那儿，想搞一部车子，可是所有的东西都锁着。我们离开这儿吧。”

他拿起枕头边那只水瓶喝了几口水，不烟卷扔出窗外，接着又点燃了一支，手颤抖得就像老人一样。

“你要去哪儿？”

“我不知道。我想去伦敦吧。我能住你家吗？”

“当然可以。”

“好啦，把衣服穿起来。让他们把我们的行李用火车托运去。”

“我们不能这样就走啊。”

“我们不能住下去了。”

他坐在靠窗户的椅子上，他的眼光从我身上移开，望着窗外。过了一会儿他说：“一些烟囱冒烟了。他们大概已经打开马厩门了。走把。”

“我不能走，”我说，“我得跟你母亲道别了再走。”

“真是可爱的哈巴狗。”

“喂，我可不愿偷偷溜走。”

“我可顾不了那么多。我可要偷偷溜走，而且跑得越远越好，越快越好。你和我妈妈愿意策划什么阴谋诡计都随你们的便；我不会回来了。”

“昨天晚上你说的不就是这些吗？”

“我知道。对不起，查尔斯。我跟你说过我还醉着呢。如果要叫你舒服的话，我就要说我真恨透了我自己了。”

“这话一点也不叫我舒服。”

“总会有点舒服吧，我原来是这样想的。好啦，如果你不来的话，请代我向保姆问好。”

“你真的要走？”

“当然啦。”

“在伦敦我会见到你吗？”

“会的，我要去和你住在一起。”

他离开我走了，可是我再也睡不着了；大约过了两个小时，一个男用人端来茶、面包和奶油，还把我新的一天要穿的衣服摆出来。


上午晚些时我找到了马奇梅因夫人；这天风变得强劲了，多仪我们没有出门。我挨着她坐在她房里的壁炉前，这时她俯身做着针线活，正在发芽的爬墙虎在窗玻璃上发出格格的响声。

“我希望我没有看到他就好了，”她说，“这是残酷的。我并不在乎他喝醉了这一点。所有的男人年轻时候都有过这种事。我已经习惯了。我的兄弟们在他这个年龄喝起酒来也厉害得很呢。昨天晚上让人难受的是他一点都不高兴。”

“我知道，”我说，“以前我也没有看见他喝成这个样子。”

“偏偏是昨天晚上……昨天晚上客人都走了，家里就剩了我们这些人——我把你看成我们家里的人一样。塞巴斯蒂安很爱你——在你面前他不需费力假装快乐。他是不快乐的。昨天晚上我睡不着，一直想着这件事，他太不幸了。”

我不可能把我自己还不完全了解的事情跟她讲清楚，甚至在那时候我就感到，“那件事她不久就会认识到的。说不定她现在已经知道了。”

“这是可怕的，”我说，“可是也不要以为他经常这个样子。”

“桑格拉斯先生告诉我，整个上学期他一直喝得很厉害。”

“是很厉害，可是没有像这个样子——以前从来没有喝成这个样子。”

“那么，为什么现在成这个样子？在家里就这样？和我们在一起就这样？一整夜我都在思考，祈祷，不知道应该怎么跟他说才好，而现在，今天早晨，他干脆就不在了。他多么伤人的心啊，连一句话也不说就走了。我并不希望他感到羞愧——使他这样反常才是使人羞愧的事。”

“他为自己的不幸而感到很羞愧。”我说。

“桑格拉斯先生说他又吵又闹，兴高采烈。我相信，”她说道，这时她阴霾重重的脸上闪过一丝幽默的笑意，“我知道你和他有点拿桑格拉斯先生开心。你们太淘气了。我很喜欢桑格拉斯先生，他毕竟为你们办了很多事，你们也该喜欢他。不过我想，如果我在你们这个年龄，又是个男人的话，也许我自己也想戏弄桑格拉斯先生的。不，我并不在意这些事，可是昨天晚上和今天早晨的事情却不一样了。你知道，这种事以前都发生过。”

“我只能这么说：我常常看见他喝醉，我也常常和他一起喝醉，但是昨天晚上的情况我可完全没有见过。”

“噢，我指的不是塞巴斯蒂安。我指的是好多年前的事。我曾经同一个我爱过的人经历过这一切。嗯，你谅必知道我指的是谁吧——是他的父亲。他过去常常像那样喝醉。有人告诉我，他现在不像那样了。我恳求上帝这是真的。如果是真的，我全心全意地感谢上帝啊。可是说到偷偷溜掉——他也是偷偷溜掉的，你知道。正像你刚才所说的那样，他为自己的不幸感到羞愧。他们两个人都不幸，都很羞愧，结果都偷偷溜掉了。这太可怜了。和我一起长大的兄弟们——”她那双大眼睛从绣花手工上转到壁炉架上那个皮面折叠相框里的三帧小照——“他们就不像这个样子。我简直不懂这是怎么回事。你懂得吗？查尔斯？”

“稍稍懂一点。”

“可是塞巴斯蒂安爱你胜过爱我们家任何一个人。你知道。你得帮助他。我没有办法啦。”

我在这里把本来需要用很多话来描述的事情压缩成了很少几句话。马奇梅因夫人说话并不啰唆，但是她以一种女性的、调情的方式来谈论自己的话题，先是兜着圈子迂回，渐渐地靠拢，随后又躲开，声东击西。她就像一只蝴蝶那样，在话题上翩翩起舞；她还耍弄“老太太的步伐”，当别人转过身去的时候，她却神不知鬼不觉地接近要害的地方，当你看到她时，她却稳稳当当地站在那儿不动。不幸，偷偷地溜掉——这两点构成了她的悲哀，她以独特的方式把自己的全部悲哀暴露出来，而且还不到一个小时，她就把她想要说的话都说了。后来，当我站起来要离开时，她仿佛又想起了什么，说：“不知道你看过关于我弟弟的书没有？书刚刚出版。”

我告诉她我在塞巴斯蒂安的房间里浏览过。

“我愿意你也有一本。我可以送给你一本吗？他们是三个杰出的男人；内德是他们中最杰出的。他是最后死的一个，我一接到电报，就知道这种事会发生的，我想：‘现在轮到我的儿子去完成内德未完成的事业了。’当时就我一个人。他刚刚去伊顿。如果你读了关于内德的这部书，你就会理解了。”

在她的写字台上就摆好了一本，这时我想到，“好像我还没有进这间屋子，她就计划好了这样告别的。难道这次谈话她也排演过吗？假如事情的发展不像现在这个样子，她会不会把那本书放回抽屉里呢？”

她在扉页上写下她的名字和我的名字，还有日期和地点。

“昨天夜里，我也为你祈祷来着。”她说。

我走出去，随手把门关上，把迷信的用品、低低的天花板、印花棉布、羊羔皮封面的书、佛洛伦萨的风景画、盛有风信子和百花香的碗钵、那快帆布刺绣、那件小小的难题、那个亲切的女性以及时髦上流社会都关在里面，我回到了穹隆状的、有平顶镶板装饰的屋顶下，回到中央大厅的圆柱旁和柱顶盘下面，回到一个更好时代的、威严的男性气氛里。

我决不是傻瓜；我年纪够大的了，完全足以懂得那处心积虑要收买我的企图；而且我还十分年轻，完全能够感到这种经验很令人愉快。

这天早晨我没有看见朱丽娅，可是正当我离开的时候，科迪莉娅跑到汽车门前来说道：“你会见到塞巴斯蒂安吗？请你带给他我对他的特别的爱。你记得住吗——我特别的爱？”


在去伦敦的火车上我读了一遍马奇梅因夫人送给我的那本书。卷首的插图是一帧复制的一位身穿掷弹兵军服的青年的照片，我从这帧照片上清清楚楚地看到它显示出那种冷酷无情的假面具的血统，布赖兹赫德脸上的这种假面具遮盖住他父亲家族的美貌；照片上这位青年是住在森林里或是岩洞里的人，一个猎人，一个部落社会的法官，是一个同周围环境作斗争的民族种种严厉传统的保持者。书中还有其他一些图片，几张三兄弟在假日的快照，我在每个人脸上都探索出同样的古代血统；我想起马奇梅因夫人，她那样明亮、优雅，我在这些阴沉的男人身上根本找不到与她相似的地方。

她在这本书中很少出现；她比他们中最大的还要年长九岁，她结婚离开家庭的时候，他们还是小学生；在她和他们之间还有两个姐妹；生了第三个女孩之后，父母曾经数度朝圣，虔诚施舍，祈求生一个儿子，因为他们家财万贯，而且还是一个古老的名门望族。男性继承人到很晚才出生，在连续生了好几个儿子的时候，似乎能传宗接代，延续香火，可是在悲剧性的事件中，三个男性继承人先后死亡，这个家族的家系便突然中断了。

这个家族的历史，在英格兰信天主教的乡绅中是很典型的；从伊丽莎白女王统治时期一直到维多利亚女王当政，他们一直过着离群索居的生活，只和他们的承佃人以及亲属来往，他们都送自己的子弟们去国外读书，常常在本地结婚，如果不是族内通婚，就是同几十个和他们一样的世族联姻，他们不能取得高官厚禄，在那迷惘的时代里，还要受到一些教训，这些教训在这个家族最后的三个男人的一生中依旧可以辨认出来。

桑格拉斯先生的巧妙娴熟的编辑工作把各种文体的文字汇集在一起，编排成浑然天成的一本小书——有诗歌、信件、日记片断、一两篇未发表过的文章，这些文字都喷薄着一样高尚的、严肃的、勇武的、富于精神世界的气息，还收辑了他们同时代人的几封来信，在这三位死后写的，虽然文笔表达的水平各有不同，不过讲叙的都是死者的相同故事，说死者生前在学问上和体育上才华横溢，名声卓著，酬金优渥的前程在望，却与朋友同学分道扬镳，成了备极哀荣的牺牲者，献出了自己的生命。这些人为了给胡珀创造一个世界必须去死。他们是土著居民，按照法定的权利是害人虫，从从容容地给人击毙，使那些戴着夹鼻眼镜、用潮乎乎的胖手和别人握手、咧开嘴笑露出满口假牙的旅行商人得到安全。火车载着我离开马奇梅因夫人越来越远的时候，我纳闷，难道在她身上就没有那种同样的火焰，标志着不用战争的方式就使她和她的家属都归于毁灭吗？难道她在她舒适的壁炉通红的火焰中心，从窗玻璃上爬墙虎的格格声中，没有看出或听到死亡征兆吗？

车到帕丁顿火车站，回到家里，我发现塞巴斯蒂安已经在这儿了，我还发现那种悲惨感觉也烟消云散了，他轻松又活泼，就像我当年第一次和他相见时的样子。

“科迪莉娅要我转达她对你的特别的爱。”

“你和妈妈‘聊了聊’吗？”

“聊了。”

“你已经转到她那边去了？”

要是在前一天我就会说：“并不存在对立的双方啊。”这一天我说：“没有，我站在你一边，‘不管世俗观念的塞巴斯蒂安’。”

我们关于这个问题只谈了这几句，从此以后就再没有谈起了。


可是阴影逐渐笼罩在塞巴斯蒂安周围。我们回到牛津，窗下的紫罗兰又一次盛开，栗树照亮了街巷，鹅卵石路上撒满温热的石头碎片；可是事过境迁，已经今非昔比了；在塞巴斯蒂安的心里却是数九隆冬的天气。

几个星期过去了；我们为即将来到的这个学期寻找寄宿的地方，结果在默顿大街找到了一处，那是靠近网球场的一所僻静而又昂贵的小房子。

遇到了近来不大见到的桑格拉斯先生，我就把我们挑选房子的事告诉了他。当时他正站在布莱克韦尔书店的桌子旁，那儿正展览一些最新出版的德文书籍，他把买来的一小堆书放在一边。

“你和塞巴斯蒂安合住吗？”他说，“这么说他下个学期还要上大学啊？”

“我想是这样的。他为什么不上大学呢？”

“我可不知道为什么。不知为什么我觉得也许他会不上大学了。在这类事情上我总是猜得不对的。我倒很喜欢默顿大街。”

他给我看他买的书籍，由于我不懂德文，所以我对这些书毫无兴趣。我离开他的时候，他说：“别以为我多管闲事，你知道，当你们真的住下来以后，我才会在默顿大街做出明确的安排的。”

我把这次谈话告诉了塞巴斯蒂安，他说：“那当然，正在搞阴谋呗。妈妈想让我和管理员贝尔主教住在一起。”

“你怎么不告诉我？”

“因为我不打算和贝尔主教一块住。”

“我觉得你应该告诉我的。这是什么时候的事？”

“呃，这事一直在进行，你知道，妈妈精极了。她看出来在你身上没有成功。我估计就是你看完了关于内德舅舅那本书以后写的那封信起了作用。”

“我几乎什么事也没说啊。”

“就是因为这样。如果你将来能对她有所帮助的话，你就会大说特说了。内德舅舅只是个试验，知道吧。”

不过看来她并没有完全绝望，几天以后我收到她写来的一封便条，上面写着：“我星期二要路过牛津，希望看到你和塞巴斯蒂安。在见到他以前，我想先和你单独见五分钟。这个要求太过分了吗？我将在大约十二点的时候去你的寓所。”

她来了；她很欣赏我的住所……“我弟弟西蒙和内德也在这儿上过学，你知道。内德的房子正对着花园。我原来希望塞巴斯蒂安也来这儿上学的，可是我的丈夫当时在基督教会学院任职，正如你所知道的那样，塞巴斯蒂安的教育是由他负责的。”她又称赞起我的画来……“大家都很喜欢你在花园屋子里画的那些画儿。如果你不把那些画都完成了的话，我们可不答应。”最后，她说到了要点。

“我想你已经猜到了我来这儿要问你些什么。简单极了，这个学期塞巴斯蒂安喝酒喝得很厉害吗？”

我早就猜到了；我回答说：“如果他喝得很厉害，我就不会回答你。事实上，我可以说不厉害。”

她说：“我相信你，谢天谢地！”随后我们就一块去基督教会学院吃了午饭。

这天晚上塞巴斯蒂安又遭到了第三次灾祸。在一点钟的时候，副院长看到他酩酊大醉，在汤姆学院的四方院子里徘徊。

我是在十二点差几分时离开他的，当时虽然他郁郁不乐，可还是完全清醒的。可是在随后的时间里他闷头喝了半瓶威士忌。第二天早晨他来告诉我，这时他记不大清楚了。

“你是不是常常这么干？”我问，“我走了以后你就自己一个人喝开了？”

“大概有两次吧；也许有四次。只有当他们麻烦我的时候我才喝的。如果他们不管我，我就没事了。”

“他们现在不会麻烦你了。”我说。

“我知道。”

我们两人都知道这是一次危机。我那天上午对塞巴斯蒂安没有什么热情可言；他需要热情，可是我没有什么可给他的。

“真的，”我说，“如果你每次看到你家里的一个人，你都要自己闷着头喝一顿酒的话，那你可就完全不可救药了。”

“嗨，是啊，”塞巴斯蒂安黯然神伤，“我知道。是不可救药了。”

可是我的自尊心受到了伤害，因为这使我看来像个撒谎的人，而我又无法满足他的需要。

“喂，你打算怎么办呢？”

“我毫无办法。一切都看他们吧。”

我让他走了，没有给他什么安慰。

随后机器又开始运转起来，我看到十二月经过的事这回又从头至尾演了一遍；桑格拉斯先生和贝尔主教去见了基督教会学院的院长；布赖兹赫德又来这儿住了一夜；大齿轮活动起来；小齿轮飞快旋转。大家都为马奇梅因夫人感到十分遗憾，她弟弟们的名字用金色的字记载在阵亡将士名录上，关于她弟弟们的事，人们记忆犹新。

她又来看我了，我又不得不把一番长谈归纳为几句话，长谈伴着我们从霍利维尔到公园，穿过美索不达米亚街，乘渡船去北牛津，这天晚上她要在北牛津和一屋子修女们度过，她们都是得到她某种方式的保护的。

“你必须相信，”我说，“当我告诉你塞巴斯蒂安不喝酒时，我跟你说的是我所知道的真实情况。”

“我知道你希望做他的好朋友。”

“我并不是这个意思。我相信过去我告诉你的那些话。现在我在某种程度上还相信那些话。我认为他以前喝醉过两三次，不会再多了。”

“这可不好，查尔斯，”她说，“你所有的话无非是说明，你对他的影响和对他的了解，并不像我想的那么大和那样多。我们两人试图相信他是没有用的。过去我对酒鬼还是了解的。他们最可怕的一件事就是欺骗。爱真理是头一件好事。

“在高高兴兴一道吃了那顿午餐之后，当你一走，他对我是那样乖，就像他还是小孩子的时候那样，而我则满足他的一切要求。你知道，我对他和你住在一起一向不放心。我知道你会理解我这话的意思。你知道，撇开你是塞巴斯蒂安的朋友这一点不谈，我们都很喜欢你。如果你总是不赖我们家住，我们会多么想念你啊。可是我希望塞巴斯蒂安有各种各样的朋友，不要只有你一个朋友。贝尔主教告诉我，他从来不和别的天主教徒在一起，也从来不去纽曼俱乐部，甚至很少去做弥撒。决不是他只该认识天主教徒，不过他应当认识几个。要完全独立自主的话，那就需要有很坚强的信仰，而塞巴斯蒂安的信仰可并不坚强。

“不过，我在星期二吃午饭的时候心情非常愉快，我把一切的反对意见都放弃了。我和他到处转，还看了你们挑选的房子。那套房子很可爱。我们还选定了一些家具，你们可以从伦敦运来，把房子布置得更美些。可是就在我见到他的那天晚上——不，查尔斯，这简直不合逻辑。”

当她说这话时，我一面想：“这种话准是她从她的某位知识分子食客那里俭来的。”

“嗯，”我说，“您有补救的办法吗？”

“这个学院还是非常好的。他们说，假如他和贝尔主教住在一起，他们就不开除他。这种事我自己本来是不会提出来的，但这是主教本人的想法。他特地捎口信给你说，随时都欢迎你去。可实际上旧皇宫那里没有你住的地方，可是我想你自己也不愿去那儿的。”

“马奇梅因夫人，倘若你想把他变成个酒鬼的话，那你就这样办吧。难道你就没有看出来，任何要监视他的想法都会致他于死地吗？”

“哦，亲爱的，解释是没有用的。新教徒一向认为天主教教士都是侦探。”

“我不是这个意思。”我想解释，可是解释得不好。“他必须感到自由。”

“不过他一直是自由的，总是自由的，直到如今，看看结果再说吧。”

我们已经到了渡口；我们的讨论也到了僵局。我送她去修道院的路上几乎没有再说什么话，后来搭了公共汽车回到卡尔法克斯站。

塞巴斯蒂安在我的房间里等我。“我要给爸爸拍海底电报，”他说。“他不会让他们强迫我住进这个神父房间里的。”

“可是如果他们把这个作为你上学的条件又怎么办呢？”

“那我就不上学啦。你怎么不为我想想呢——每周做两次弥撒，伺候那些腼腆的新入学的天主教徒吃茶点，陪着那些来短期讲课的人在纽曼俱乐部吃饭，来了客人才喝一杯葡萄酒，贝尔主教的眼睛会盯住我，让我别喝得太多，我一离开房间，他就会说我是当地使人伤透脑筋的酒鬼，我之所以被收留下来，是因为我的母亲十分迷人，是这么回事吧？”

“我跟她说过这样做不行。”我说。

“今天晚上我们真的喝个醉怎么样？”

“只有这一回不会有什么坏处。”我说。

“不管什么世俗观念？”

“不管什么世俗观念。”

“太好啦，查尔斯。留给我们的晚间不多了。”

这天晚上，也是许多星期来的第一次，我们在一起醉得糊涂了。我把他送到大门口，这时所有的钟都响起了午夜钟声，我跌跌撞撞回到自己的房间，头上满天星斗，在高楼之间旋转得令人头晕，我合衣睡下了，已经有一年时间没有过这样的事了。


马奇梅因夫人第二天离开牛津，还带着塞巴斯蒂安一道走。我和布赖兹赫德去了他的住所，把要给他送去的东西和要留下的东西挑拣出来。

布赖兹赫德还像以前那样严峻，冷漠。“遗憾的是塞巴斯蒂安和贝尔主教不太熟，”他说，“他会发现和这人住在一起是很好的。我最后一年上学的时候就是住在他那儿的。我母亲认为塞巴斯蒂安是一个积习很深的酒鬼，是吗？”

“他有成为酒鬼的危险。”

“我相信上帝更喜欢酒鬼，而不是那些体面人。”

“看在上帝面上，”我说，因为这个上午我总是差点就哭出来，“为什么一来就把上帝扯上？”

“对不起，我忘了。可是你知道那是一个十分可笑的问题。”

“可笑吗？”

“对我来说是可笑的，对你说不是。”

“对我来说是不可笑。我觉得如果没有你们那个宗教，塞巴斯蒂安本来是可能成为一个愉快、健康的人的。”

“这话可以讨论，”布赖兹赫德说，“你认为他还会需要这只象脚吗？”

当天傍晚，我穿过院子去找科林斯。只有他一个人在，正坐在窗下借着越来越暗的光线看课本。“喂！”他说，“进来吧。一个学期我都没有看到你了。恐怕我这里没有什么好招待你的。你怎么离开你那漂亮的同伴了？”

“我在牛津是最孤独的人了，”我说，“塞巴斯蒂安·弗莱特已经被开除了。”

过了一会儿我问他在这么长的假期里干什么。他对我讲了；他的话听起来很没意思。后来我又问他是不是已经找到了下学期的住处，他告诉我找到了，很远，不过很舒服。他是和廷盖特合住的，就是学院的散文协会秘书。

“还有一间屋子空着。巴克要来住，可是他觉得应该住得近些，因为现在他正在竞选大学生俱乐部主席。”

我们两人心里都想，我也许会租下这间屋子。

“你要去哪儿住？”

“我本来要和塞巴斯蒂安去默顿大街住。现在已经不行了。”

可是我们两人依旧谁都没有提出租那间房子，时机错过了。我走的时候他说：“我希望你能找到别人去默顿大街住。”我说：“我希望你找到人在伊弗莱路住。”后来我再也没有跟他说起这件事。

只有十天就放假了，我凑合过了这几天，像去年一样，我回到了伦敦，不过是处在与过去不同的情况下，心里没有任何打算。

“你的那位挺漂亮的朋友，”我父亲说，“没有和你一起来吗？”

“没有。”

“我还以为他把这儿当做自己的家了。他没来很遗憾，我很喜欢他。”

“爸爸，你是不是特别希望我取得学位？”

“我希望你得学位吗？要这种东西干什么？对我没有用。照我看来，它对你也没有多大用处。”

“我近来确实也这么想。我想再回牛津上学也许反而是白浪费时间。”

直到这时，我父亲对我正在说的话才多少注意了一些。这时他放下书，摘掉眼镜，紧盯住我。“这么说你已经被开除啦，”他说，“我哥哥警告过我的。”

“没有，还没有。”

“呃，那么，说这些话有什么意思呢？”他烦躁地说，他又戴上眼镜，找寻书上那一页他正在看的地方。“所有人都至少要待上三年。我知道有一个人为了在神学方面取得学位用了七年时间。”

“我只是想，如果我以后并不从事需要学位的那种职业，那么我最好还是现在就开始干我打算干的事。我想当一个画家。”

可是当时我父亲对这番话并没有做出答复。

但是这个念头似乎在他脑子里深深扎下了根；等到我们再次提到这件事的时候，事情已经完全确定下来了。

“一旦要当画家的话，”星期日吃午饭的时候他说，“你就需要一间画室。”

“是的。”

“噢，家里可没有画室。而且连一间可以让你体体面面当画室的房间也没有。我也不打算让你到走廊里去画画儿的。”

“我根本就没有这个打算。”

“我既不愿意看到家里净是光着身子的模特儿，也不愿意听到评论家们那些可怕的行话。再说我也不喜欢松节油的气味。我想你大概打算彻底干一番，用油画颜料吧？”我父亲属于这样一代人，他们根据是否使用油画颜料还是水彩而把画家分为严肃的和业余的两种。

“我认为第一年我不该画太多的油画。无论如何我应该在一家学校里学习。”

“出国去吗？”我父亲怀着希望问。“我相信，国外是有几家相当出色的学校的。”

事情发展得比我打算的要快多了。

“出国去或是在这儿都可以。我得先四处转转。”

“那就出国去转转，”他说。

“这么说你同意我离开牛津了？”

“同意什么？同意什么？亲爱的孩子，你已经二十二岁啦。”

“二十岁，”我说，“到十月二十一岁。”

“是吗？可时间好像长多了。”

马奇梅因夫人的一封来信把这段情节凑齐了。


“我亲爱的查尔斯，”她写道，“塞巴斯蒂安今天早晨离开我出国到他父亲那儿去了。他动身前我问他是否给你写过信。他说没写，这样就得我来写了，尽管我几乎不可能希望在一封信里把我们最后一次散步时我无法说出来的话都说出来。可是也不能让你什么都不知道呀！

“学院只让塞巴斯蒂安停学一个学期，圣诞节过后就可以让他上学了，条件是他要和贝尔主教住在一起。这件事要他自己来决定。与此同时，桑格拉斯先生非常好心地同意了照管他。一俟他看望了他父亲后，桑格拉斯先生就会带着他去地中海诸国，桑格拉斯先生早就很想去那里调查一些东正教修道院。他希望此行也许会引起塞巴斯蒂安对宗教的新兴趣。

“塞巴斯蒂安在家里过得并不愉快。

“我知道当他们在圣诞节回来时，塞巴斯蒂安会希望见到你，我们大家也是这样的。我希望你下学期的安排没有过分打乱，并且希望你诸事顺遂。

你的忠诚的

特里萨·马奇梅因

“今天早晨我去那间花园房子了，感到十分惆怅。”



Chapter 6
AND when we reached the top of the pass,’ said Mr Samgrass, we heard the galloping horses behind, and two soldiers rode up to the head of the caravan and turned us back.  The General had sent them, and they reached us only just in time. There was a Band, not a mile ahead.’

He paused, and his small audience sat silent, conscious that he had sought, to impress them but in doubt as to how they could politely show their interest.  ‘A Band?’ said Julia.’Goodness!’

Still he seemed to expect more. At last Lady Marchmain said, ‘I suppose the sort of folk-music you get in those parts is very monotonous.’ ‘Dear Lady Marchmain, a Band of Brigands. Cordelia, beside me on the sofa, began to giggle noiselessly. ‘The mountains are full of them. Stragglers from Kemal’s army;

Greeks who got cut off in, the retreat. Very desperate fellows, I assure you.’

‘Do pinch me’,’ whispered Cordelia.

I pinched her and the agitation of the sofa-springs ceased. ‘Thanks,’ she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘So you never got to wherever-it-was,’ said Julia. ‘Weren’t you terribly disappointed, Sebastian?’

‘Me?’ said Sebastian from the shadows beyond the lamplight, beyond the warmth of the burning logs, beyond the family circle, and the photographs spread out on the card-table. ‘Me? Oh, I don’t think I was there that day, was I, Sammy?’ ‘That was the day you were ill.’

‘I was ill,’ he repeated like an echo, ‘so I never should have got to wherever-it-was, should I, Sammy?’



‘Now this, Lady Marchmain, is the caravan at Aleppo in the courtyard of the inn.  That’s our Armenian cook, Begedbian; that’s me on the pony; that’s the tent folded up; that’s a rather tiresome Kurd who would follow us about at the time...Here I am in Pontus, Ephesus, Trebizond, Krak-des-chevaliers, Samothrace, Batum - of course, I haven’t got them in chronological order yet.’

‘All guides and ruins and mules, ‘ said Cordelia. ‘Where’s Sebastian?’ ‘He,’ said Mr Samgrass, with a hint of triumph in his voice, as though he had expected the question and prepared the answer, ‘he held the camera. He became quite an expert as soon as he learned not to put his hand over the lens, didn’t you, Sebastian?’ There was no answer from the shadows. Mr Samgrass delved again into his pigskin satchel.  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘is a group taken by a street photographer on the terrace of the St George Hotel at Beirut. There’s Sebastian.’

‘Why, ‘ I said, ‘there’s Anthony Blanche surely?’

‘Yes, we saw quite a lot of him; met him by chance at Constantinople.’ A delightful companion. I can’t think how I missed knowing him. He came with us all the way to Beirut.’

Tea had been cleared away and the curtains drawn. It was two days after Christmas, the first evening of my visit; the first, too, of Sebastian’s and Mr Samgrass’s, whom to my surprise I had found on the platform when I arrived.

Lady Marchmain had written three weeks before: ‘I have just heard from Mr Samgrass that he and Sebastian will be home for Christmas as we hoped. I had not heard from them for so long that I was afraid they were lost and did not want to make any arrangements until I knew. Sebastian will be longing to see you. Do come to us for Christmas if you can manage it, or as soon after as you can.’ Christmas with my uncle was an engagement I could not break, so I travelled across country and joined the local train midway, expecting to find Sebastian already established; there he was, however, in the next carriage to mine, and when I asked him what he was doing, Mr Samgrass replied with such glibness and at such length, telling me of mislaid luggage and of Cook’s being shut over the holidays, that I was at once aware of some other explanation which was being withheld.

Mr Samgrass was not at ease; he maintained all the physical habits of self-confidence, but guilt hung about him like stale cigar smoke, and in Lady Marchmain’s greeting of him I caught a note of anticipation. He kept up a lively account of his tour during tea, and then Lady Marchmain drew him away with her, upstairs, for a ‘little talk’. I watched him go with something near compassion; it was plain to anyone with a poker sense that Mr Samgrass held a very imperfect hand and, as I watched him at tea, I began to suspect that he was not only bluffing but cheating. There was something he must say, did not want to say, and did not quite know how to say to Lady Marchmain about his doings over Christmas, but, more than that, I quessed, there was a great deal he ought to say and had no intention at all of saying, about the whole Levantine tour.

‘Come and see nanny,’ said Sebastian.

‘Please, can I come, too?’ said Cordelia.

‘Come on.’

We climbed to the nursery in the dome. On the way Cordelia said: ‘Aren’t you at all pleased to be home?’

‘Of course I’m pleased,’ said Sebastian.

‘Well, you might show it a bit. I’ve been looking forward to it so much.’

Nanny did not particularly wish to be talked to; she liked visitors best when they paid

no attention to her and let her knit away, and watch their faces and think of them as she

had known them as small children; their present goings-on did not, signify much beside those early illnesses and crimes.

‘Well, ‘ she said, ‘you are looking peaky. I expect it’s all that foreign food doesn’t agree with you. You must fatten up now you’re back. Looks as though you’d been having some late nights, too, by the look of your eyes - dancing, I suppose.’ (It was ever Nanny Hawkins’s belief that the upper classes spent most of their leisure evenings in the ballroom.) ‘And that shirt wants darning. Bring it to me before it goes to the wash.’ Sebastian certainly did look ill; five months had wrought the change of years in him.  He was paler, thinner, pouchy under the eyes, drooping in, the corners of his mouth, and he showed the scars of a boil on the side of his chin; his voice seemed flatter and his movements alternately listless and jumpy; he looked down-at-heel, too, with clothes and hair, which formerly had been happily negligent now unkempt; worst of all there was a wariness in his eye which I had surprised there at Easter, and which now seemed habitual to him.

Restrained by this wariness I asked him nothing of himself, but told him, instead about my autumn and winter. I told him about my rooms in the Ile Saint-Louis and the art school, and how good the old teachers were and how bad the students.  ‘They never go near the Louvre,’ I said, ‘or, if they do, it’s only because one of their absurd reviews has suddenly “discovered” a master who fits in with that month’s aesthetic theory. Half of them are out to make a popular splash like Picabia; the other half quite simply want to earn their living doing advertisements for Vogue and decorating night clubs. And the teachers still go on trying to make them paint like Delacroix.’

‘Charles,’ said Cordelia, ‘Modem Art is all bosh, isn’t it?’

‘Great bosh.’

‘Oh, I’m so glad. I had an argument with one of our nuns- and she said we shouldn’t try and criticize what we didn’t understand. Now I shall tell her I have had it straight from a real artist, and snubs to her.’

Presently it was time for Cordelia to go to her supper, and for Sebastian and me to go down to the drawing-room for our cocktails. Brideshead was there alone, but Wilcox followed on our heels to say to him: ‘Her Ladyship would like to speak to you upstairs, my Lord.’

‘That’s unlike mummy, sending for anyone. She usually lures them up herself.’ There was no sign of the cocktail tray. After a few minutes Sebastian rang the bell. A footman answered. ‘Mr Wilcox is upstairs with her Ladyship.’ ‘Well, never mind, bring in the cocktail things.’

‘Mr Wilcox has the keys, my Lord.’

‘Oh...well, send him in with them when he comes down.’ We talked a little abou t Anthony Blanche - ‘He had a beard in Istanbul, but I made him take it off’ - and after ten minutes Sebastian said: ‘Well, I don’t want a cocktail anyway; I’m off to my bath,’ and left the room.

It was half past seven; I supposed the others had gone to dress, but, as I was going to follow them, I met Brideshead coming down.

‘Just a moment, Charles, there’s something I’ve got to explain. My mother has given orders that no drinks are to be left in any of the rooms. You’ll understand why. If you want anything, ring and ask Wilcox - only better wait until you’re alone. I’m sorry, but there it is.’

‘Is that necessary?’



‘I gather very necessary. You may or may not have heard, Sebastian had another outbreak as soon as he got back to England. He was lost over Christmas. Mr Samgrass only found him yesterday evening.’

‘I guessed something of the kind had happened. Are you sure this is the best way of dealing with it?’

‘It’s my mother’s way. Will you have a cocktail, now that he’s gone upstairs?’

‘It would choke me.’

I was always given the room I had on my first visit; it was next to Sebastian’s, and we shared what had once been a dressing-room and had been changed to a bathroom twenty years back by the substitution for the bed, of a deep, copper, mahogany-framed bath, that was filled by pulling a brass lever heavy as a piece of marine engineering; the rest of the room remained unchanged; a coal fire always burned there in winter. I often think of that bathroom - the water colours dimmed by steam and the huge towel warming on the back of the chintz armchair - and contrast it with the uniform, clinical, little chambers, glittering with chromium-plate and looking-glass, which pass for luxury in the modern world.

I lay in the bath and then dried slowly by the fire, thinking all the time of my friend’s black home-coming. Then I put on my dressing gown and went to Sebastian’s room, entering, as I always did, without knocking. He was sitting by his fire half-dressed, and he started angrily when he heard me and put down a tooth glass.

‘Oh, it’s you. You gave me a fright.’

‘So you got a drink,’ I said.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ I said, ‘you don’t have to pretend with me! ‘You might offer me some.’

‘It’s just something I had in my flask. I’ve finished it now.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing. A lot. I’ll tell you some time.’

I dressed and called in for Sebastian, but found him still sitting as I had left him, half-dressed over his fire.

Julia was alone in the drawing-room.

‘Well,’ I asked, ‘what’s going on?’

‘Oh, just another boring family potin. Sebastian got tight again, so we’ve all got to keep an eye on him. It’s too tedious.’

‘It’s pretty boring for him, too.’

‘Well, it’s his fault. Why can t he behave like anyone else? Talking of keeping an eye on people) what about Mr Samgrass? Charles, do you notice anything at all fishy about that man?’

‘Very fishy. Do you think your mother saw it?’

‘Mummy only sees what suits her. She can’t have the whole household under surveillance. I’m causing anxiety, too, you know.’

‘I didn’t know’ I said, adding humbly, ‘I’ve only just come from Paris.’ so as to avoid giving the impression that any trouble she might be in was not widely notorious.

It was an evening of peculiar gloom. We dined in the Painted Parlour. Sebastian was late, and so painfully excited were we that I think it was in all our minds that he would make some sort of low-comedy entrance, reeling and hiccuping. When he came it was, of course, with perfect propriety; he apologized, sat in the empty place, and allowed Mr Samgrass to resume his monologue, uninterrupted and, it seemed, unheard. Druses, patriarchs, icons, bed-bugs, Romanesque remains, curious dishes of goat and sheeps’

eyes, French and Turkish officials all the catalogue of Near Eastern travel was provided for our amusement.

I watched the champagne go round the table. When it came to Sebastian he said: ‘I’ll have whisky, please,’ and I saw Wilcox glance over his head to Lady Marchmain and saw her give a tiny, hardly perceptible nod. At Brideshead they used small individual spirit decanters which held about a quarter of a bottle, and were always placed, full, before anyone who asked for it; the decanter which Wilcox put before Sebastian was half-empty. Sebastian raised it very deliberately, tilted it, looked at it, and then in silence poured the liquor into his glass, where it covered two fingers. We all began talking at once, all except Sebastian, so that for a moment Mr Samgrass found himself talking to no one, telling the candlesticks about the Maronites; but soon we fell silent again, and he had the table until Lady Marchmain and Julia left the room.  ‘Don’t be long, Bridey,’ she said, at the door, as she always said, and that evening we had no inclination to delay. Our glasses were filled with port and the decanter was at once taken from the room. We drank quickly and went to the drawing-room, where Brideshead asked his mother to read, and she read The Diary of a Nobody with great spirit until ten o’clock, when she closed the book and said she was unaccountably tired, so tired that she would not visit the chapel that night.

‘Who’s hunting tomorrow?’ she asked.

‘Cordelia,’ said Brideshead. ‘I’m taking that young horse of Julia’s, just to show him the hounds; I shan’t keep him out more than a couple of hours.’ ‘Rex is arriving some time,’ said Julia. ‘I’d better stay in to greet him.’

‘Where’s the meet?’ said Sebastian suddenly.

‘Just here at Flyte St Mary.’

‘Then I’d like to hunt, please, if there’s anything for me.’ ‘Of course. That’s delightful. I’d have asked you, only you always used to complain so of being made to go out. You can have Tinkerbell. She’s been going very nicely this season.’

Everyone was suddenly pleased that Sebastian wanted to hunt; it seemed to undo some of the mischief of the evening. Brideshead rang the bell for whisky.  ‘Anyone else want any?’

‘Bring me some, too,’ said Sebastian, and, though it was a footman this time and not Wilcox, I saw the same exchange of glance and nod between the servant and Lady Marchmain. Everyone had been warned. The two drinks were brought in, poured out already in the glasses, like ‘doubles’ at a bar, and all our eyes followed the tray, as though we were dogs in a dining-room smelling game.  The good humour engendered by Sebastian’s wish to hunt persisted, however;

Brideshead wrote out a note for the stables, and we all went to bed quite cheerfully.  Sebastian got straight to bed; I sat by his fire and smoked a pipe. I said: ‘I rather wish I was coming out with you tomorrow.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t see much sport. I can tell you exactly what I’m going to do. I shall leave Bridey at the first covert, hack over to the nearest good pub, and spend the entire day quietly soaking in the bar parlour. If they treat me like a dipsomaniac, they can bloody well have a dipsomaniac. I hate hunting, anyway.’ ‘Well, I can’t stop you.’

‘You can, as a matter of fact - by not giving me any money. They stopped my banking account, you know, in the summer. It’s been one of my chief difficulties. I pawned my watch and cigarette case to ensure a happy Christmas, so I shall have to come to you tomorrow for my day’s expenses.’

‘I won’t. You know perfectly well I can’t.’



‘Won’t you, Charles? Well, I daresay I shall manage on my own somehow. I’ve got rather clever at that lately - managing on my own. I’ve had to.’ ‘Sebastian, what have you and Mr Samgrass been up to?’

‘He told you at dinner - ruins and guides and mules, that’s what Sammy’s been up to.  We decided to go our own ways, that’s all. Poor Sammy’s really behaved rather well so far. I hoped he would keep it up, but he seems to have been very indiscreet about my happy Christmas. I suppose he thought if he gave too good an account of me, he might lose his job as keeper.

‘He makes quite a good thing out of it, you know. I don’t mean that he steals. I should think he’s fairly honest about money. He certainly keeps an embarrassing little note-book in which he puts down the travellers’ cheques he cashes and what he spends it on, for mummy and the lawyer to see. But he wanted to go to all these places, and it’s very convenient for him to have me to take him in comfort, instead of going as dons usually do. The only disadvantage was having to put up with my company, and we soon solved that for him.

‘We began very much on a Grand Tour, you know, with letters to all the chief people everywhere, and stayed with the Military Governor at Rhodes and the Ambassador at Constantinople. That was what Sammy had signed on for in the first place. Of course, he had his work cut out keeping his eye on me, but he warned all our hosts beforehand that I was not responsible.’

‘Sebastian.’

‘Not quite responsible - and as I had no money to spend I couldn’t get away very much. He even did the tipping for me, put the note into the man’s hand and jotted the amount down then and there in his note-book. My lucky time was at Constantinople. I managed to make some money at cards one evening when Sammy wasn’t looking. Next day I gave him the slip and was having a very happy hour in the bar at the Tokatlian when who should come in but Anthony Blanche with a beard and a Jew boy. Anthony lent me a tenner just before Sammy came panting in and recaptured me. After that I didn’t get a minute out of sight; the Embassy staff put us in the boat to Piraeus and watched us sail away. But in Athens it was easy. I simply walked out of the Legation one day after lunch, changed my money at Cook’s, and asked about sailings to Alexandria just to fox Sammy, then went down to the port in a bus, found a sailor who spoke American, lay up with him till his ship sailed, and popped back to Constantinople, and that was that.

‘Anthony and the Jew boy shared a very nice, tumbledown house near the bazaars. I stayed there till it got too cold, then Anthony and I drifted south till we met Sammy by appointment in Syria three weeks ago.’

‘Didn’t Sammy mind?’

‘Oh, I think he quite enjoyed himself in his own ghastly way only of course there was no more high life for him. I think he was a bit anxious at first. I didn’t want him to get the whole Mediterranean Fleet out, so I cabled him from Constantinople that I was quite well and would he send money to the Ottoman Bank. He came hopping over as soon as he got my cable. Of course he was in a difficult position, because I’m of age and not certified yet, so he couldn’t have me arrested. He couldn’t leave me to starve while he was living on my money, and he couldn’t tell mummy without looking pretty silly. I had him all ways, poor Sammy. My original idea had been to leave him flat, but Anthony was very helpful about that, and said it was far better to arrange things amicably; and he did arrange things very amicably. So here I am.’

‘After Christmas.’

‘Yes, I was determined to have a happy Christmas.’



‘Did you?’

‘I think so. I don’t remember it much, and that’s always a good sign, isn’t it?’

Next morning at breakfast Brideshead wore scarlet; Cordelia, very smart herself, with her chin held high over her white stock, wailed when Sebastian appeared in a tweed coat: ‘Oh, Sebastian, you can’t come out like that. Do go and change. You look so lovely in hunting clothes.’

‘Locked away somewhere. Gibbs couldn’t find them.’

‘That’s a fib. I helped get them out myself before you were called.’

‘Half the things are missing.’

‘It just encourages the Strickland-Venableses. They’re behaving rottenly. They’ve even taken their grooms out of top hats.’

It was a quarter to eleven before the horses were brought round, but no one else appeared downstairs; it was as though they were in hiding, listening for Sebastian’s retreating hooves before showing themselves.

Just as he was about to start, when the others were already mounted, Sebastian beckoned me into the hall. On the table beside his hat, gloves, whip, and sandwiches, lay the flask he had put out to be filled. He picked it up and shook it; it was empty.

‘You see,’ he said, ‘I can’t even be trusted that far. It’s they who are mad, not me. Now you can’t refuse me money.’ I gave him a pound.

‘More,’ he said.

I gave him another and watched him mount and trot after his brother and sister.  Then, as though it were his cue on the stage, Mr Samgrass came to my elbow, put an arm in mine, and led me back to the fire. He warmed his neat little hands and then turned to warm his seat.

‘So Sebastian is in pursuit of the fox,’ he said, ‘and our little problem is shelved for an hour or two?’

I was not going to stand this from Mr Samgrass.

‘I heard all about your Grand Tour, last night,’ I said.

‘Ah, I rather supposed you might have.’ Mr Samgrass was undismayed, relieved, it seemed, to have someone else in the know. ‘I did not harrow our hostess with all that.  After all, it turned out far better than one had any right to expect. I did feel, however, that some explanation was due to her of Sebastian’s Christmas festivities. You may have observed last night that there were certain precautions.’ ‘I did.’

‘You thought them excessive? I am with you, particularly as they tend to compromise the comfort of our own little visit. I have seen Lady Marchmain this morning. You must not suppose I am just out of bed. I have had a little talk upstairs with our hostess. I think we may hope for some relaxation tonight. Yesterday was not an evening that any of us would wish to have repeated. I earned less gratitude than I deserved, I think, for my efforts to distract you.’

It was repugnant to me to talk about Sebastian to Mr Samgrass, but I was compelled to say: ‘I’m not sure that tonight would be the best time to start the relaxation.’ ‘But surely? Why not tonight, after a day in the field under Brideshead’s inquisitorial eye? Could one choose better?’

‘Oh, I suppose it’s none of my business really.’

‘Nor mine strictly, now that he is safely home. Lady Marchmain did me the honour of consulting me. But it is less Sebastian’s welfare than our own I have at heart at the moment. I need my third glass of port; I need that hospitable tray in the library. And yet you specifically advise against it tonight. I wonder why. Sebastian can come to no mischief today. For one thing, he has no money. I happen to know. I saw to it. I even have his watch and cigarette case upstairs. He will be quite harmless...as long as no one is so wicked as to give him any...Ah, Lady Julia, good morning to you, good morning. And how is the peke this hunting morning?’

‘Oh, the peke’s all right. Listen. I’ve got Rex Mottram coming here today. We simply can’t have another evening like last night. Someone must speak to mummy.’ ‘Someone has. I spoke. I think it will be all right.’

‘Thank God for that. Are you painting today, Charles?’ It had been the custom that on every visit to Brideshead I painted a medallion on the walls of the garden-room. The custom suited me well, for it gave me a good reason to detach myself from the rest of the party; when the house was full, the garden-room became a rival to the nursery, where from time to time people took refuge to complain about the others; thus without effort I kept in touch with the gossip of the place. There were three finished medallions now, each rather pretty in its way, but unhappily each in a different way, for my tastes had changed and I had become more dexterous in the eighteen months since the series was begun. As a decorative scheme, they were a failure. That morning was typical of the many mornings when I had found the garden-room a sanctuary. There I went and was soon at work. Julia came with me to see me started and we talked, inevitably, of Sebastian.

‘Don’t you, get bored with the subject?’ she asked. ‘Why must everyone make such a Thing about it?’

‘Just because we’re fond of him.’

‘Well. I’m fond of him too, in a way, I suppose, only I wish he’d behave like anybody else. I’ve grown up with one family skeleton, you know - papa. Not to be talked of before the servants, not to be talked of before us when we were children. If mummy is going to start making a skeleton out of Sebastian, it’s too much. If he wants to be always tight, why doesn’t he go to Kenya or somewhere where it doesn’t matter?’ ‘Why does it matter less being unhappy in Kenya than anywhere else?’

‘Don’t pretend to be stupid, Charles. You understand perfectly.’ ‘You mean there won’t be so many embarrassing situations for you? Well, all I was trying to say was that I’m afraid there may be an embarrassing situation tonight if Sebastian gets the chance. He’s in a bad mood.’

‘Oh, a day’s hunting will put that all right.’

It was touching to see the faith which everybody put in the value of a day’s hunting.  Lady Marchmain, who looked in on me during the morning, mocked herself for it with that delicate irony for which she was famous.

‘I’ve always detested hunting,’ she said, ‘because it seems to produce a particularly gross kind of caddishness in the nicest people. I don’t know what it is, but the moment they dress up and get on a horse they become like a lot of Prussians. And so boastful after it. The evenings I’ve sat at dinner appalled at seeing the men and women I know, transformed into half-awake, self-opinionated, monomaniac louts!...and yet, you know - it must be something derived from centuries ago - my heart is quite light today to think of Sebastian out with them. “There’s nothing wrong with him really,” I say, “he’s gone hunting” - as though it were an answer to prayer.’

She asked me about my life in Paris. I told her of my rooms with their view of the river and the towers of Notre Dame. ‘I’m hoping Sebastian will come and stay with me when I go back.’

‘It would have been lovely,’ said Lady Marchmain, sighing as though for the unattainable.



‘I hope he’s coming to stay with me in London.’

‘Charles, you know it isn’t possible. London’s the worst place. Even Mr Samgrass couldn’t hold him there. We have no secrets in this house. He was lost, you know, all through Christmas. Mr Samgrass only found him because he couldn’t pay his bill in the place where he was, so they telephoned our house. It’s too horrible. No, London is impossible; if he can’t behave himself here, with us...We must keep him happy and healthy here for a bit, hunting, and then send him abroad again with Mr Samgrass...You see, I’ve been through all this before.’

The retort was there, unspoken, well-understood by both of us - ‘You couldn’t keep him; he ran away. So will Sebastian. Because they both hate you.’ A horn and the huntsman’s cry sounded in the valley below.

‘There they go now, drawing the home woods. I hope he’s having a good day.’ Thus with Julia and Lady Marchmain I reached deadlock, not because we failed to understand one another, but because we understood too well. With Brideshead, who came home to luncheon and talked to me on the subject - for the subject was everywhere in the house like a fire deep in the hold of a ship, below the water-line, black and red in the darkness, coming to in acrid wisps of smoke that oozed under hatches and billowed suddenly from the scuttles and air pipes - with Brideshead, I was in a strange world, a dead world to me, in a moon-landscape of barren lava, a high place of toiling lungs.

He said: ‘I hope it is dipsomania. That is simply a great misfortune that we must all help him bear. What I used to fear was that he just got drunk deliberately when he liked and because he liked.’

‘That’s exactly what he did - what we both did. It’s what he does with me now. I can keep him to that, if only your mother would trust me. If you worry him with keepers and cures he’ll be a physical wreck in a few years.’

‘There’s nothing wrong in being a physical wreck, you know. There’s no moral obligation to be Postmaster-General or Master of Foxhounds or to live to walk ten miles at eighty.’

‘Wrong,’ I said. ‘Moral obligation - now you’re back on religion again.

‘I never left it, said Brideshead.

‘D’you know, Bridey, if I ever felt for a moment like becoming a Catholic, I should only have to talk to you for five minutes to be cured. You manage to reduce what seem quite sensible propositions to stark nonsense.’

‘It’s odd you should say that. I’ve heard it before from other people. It’s one of the many reasons why I don’t think I should make a good priest. It’s something in the way my mind works, I suppose.’

At luncheon Julia had no thoughts except for her guest who was coming that day. She drove to the station to meet him and brought him home to tea.  ‘Mummy, do look at Rex’s Christmas present.’

It was a small tortoise with Julia’s initials set in diamonds in the living shell, and this slightly obscene object, now slipping impotently on the polished boards, now striding across the card-table, now lumbering over a rug, now withdrawn at a touch, now stretching its neck and swaying its withered, antediluvian head, became a memorable part of the evening, one of those needle-hooks of experience which catch the attention when larger matters are at stake.

‘Dear me,’ said Lady Marchmain. ‘I wonder if it eats the same sort of things as an ordinary tortoise.’

‘What will you do when it’s dead?’ asked Mr Samgrass. ‘Can you have another tortoise fitted into the shell?’



Rex had been told about the problem of Sebastian - he could scarcely have endured in that atmosphere without - and had a solution pat. He propounded it cheerfully and openly at tea, and after a day of whispering it was a relief to hear the thing discussed.  ‘Send him to Borethus at Zurich. Borethus is the man. He works miracles every day at that sanatorium of his. You know how Charlie Kilcartney used to drink.’ ‘No,’ said Lady Marchmain, with that sweet irony of hers. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t know how Charlie Kilcartney drank.’

Julia, hearing her lover mocked, frowned at the tortoise, but Rex Mottram was impervious to such delicate mischief.

‘Two wives despaired of him,’ he said. ‘When he got engaged to Sylvia, she made it a condition that he should take the cure at Zurich. And it worked. He came back in three months a different man. And he hasn’t touched a drop since, even though Sylvia walked out on him.’

‘Why did she do that?’

‘Well, poor Charlie got rather a bore when he stopped drinking. But that’s not really the point of the story.’

‘No, I suppose not. In fact, I suppose, really, it’s meant to be an encouraging story.’

Julia scowled at her jewelled tortoise.

‘He takes sex cases, too, you know.’

‘Oh dear, what very peculiar friends poor Sebastian will make in Zurich.’ ‘He’s booked up for months ahead, but I think he’d find room if I asked him. I could telephone him from here tonight.’

(In his kindest moments Rex displayed a kind of hectoring zeal as if he were thrusting a vacuum cleaner on an unwilling housewife.)

‘We’ll think about it.’

And we were thinking about it when Cordelia returnd from hunting.

‘Oh, Julia, what’s that? How beastly.’

‘It’s Rex’s Christmas present.’

‘Oh, sorry. I’m always putting my foot in it. But how cruel! It must have hurt frightfully.’

‘They can’t feel.’

‘How d’you know? Bet they can.’

She kissed her mother, whom she had not seen that day, shook hands with Rex, and rang for eggs.

‘I had one tea at Mrs Bamey’s, where I telephoned for the car, but I’m still hungry. It was a spiffing day. Jean Strickland-Venables fell in the mud. We ran from Bengers to Upper Eastrey without a check. I reckon that’s five miles, don’t you, Bridey?’

‘Three.’

‘Not as he ran...’ Between mouthfuls of scrambled egg she told us about the hunt.

‘...You should have seen Jean when she came out of the mud.’

‘Where’s Sebastian?’

‘He’s in disgrace.’ The words, in that clear, child’s voice had the ring of a bell tolling, but she went on: ‘Coming out in that beastly rat-catcher coat and mean little tie like something from Captain Morvin’s Riding Academy. I just didn’t recognize him at the meet, and I hope nobody else did. Isn’t he back? I expect he got lost.’ When Wilcox came to clear the tea, Lady Marchmain asked: ‘No sign of Lord Sebastian?’

‘No, my Lady.’

‘He must have stopped for tea with someone. How very unlike him.’



Half an hour later, when Wilcox brought in the cocktail tray, he said: ‘Lord Sebastian has just rung up to be fetched from South Twining.’

‘South Twining? Who lives there?’

‘He was speaking from the hotel, my Lady.’

‘South Twining.?’ said Cordelia. ‘Goodness, he did get lost!’ When he arrived he was flushed and his eyes were feverishly bright; I saw that he was two-thirds drunk.

‘Dear boy,’ said Lady Marchmain. ‘How nice to see you looking so well again. Your day in the open has done you good. The drinks are on the table; do help yourself’ There was nothing unusual in her speech but the fact of her saying it. Six months ago it would not have been said.

‘Thanks, ‘ said Sebastian. ‘I will.’

A blow, expected, repeated, falling on a bruise, with no smart or shock of surprise, only a dull and sickening pain and the doubt whether another like it could be borne - that was how it felt, sitting opposite Sebastian at dinner that night, seeing his clouded eye and groping movements, hearing his thickened voice breaking in, ineptly, after long brutish silences. When at length Lady Marchmain and Julia and the servants left us, Brideshead said: ‘You’d best go to bed, Sebastian.’

‘Have some port first.’

‘Yes, have some port if you want it. But don’t come into the drawing-room.’ ‘Too bloody drunk,’ said Sebastian nodding heavily. ‘Like olden times. Gentlemen always too drunk join ladies in olden times.’

(‘And,yet, you know, it wasn’t,’ said Mr Samgrass, trying to be chatty with me about it afterwards, ‘it wasn’t at all like olden times. I wonder where the difference lies. The lack of good humour? The lack of companionship? You know I think he must have been drinking by himself today. Where did he get the money?’) Sebastian’s gone up,’ said Brideshead when we reached the drawing-room.

‘Yes? Shall I read?’

Julia and Rex played bezique; the tortoise, teased by the pekinese, withdrew into his shell; Lady Marchmain read The Diaiy of a Nobody aloud until, quite early, she said it was time for bed.

‘Can’t I stay up and play a little longer, mummy ? Just three games?’

‘Very well, darling. Come in and see me before you go to bed. I shan’t be asleep.’ It was plain to Mr Samgrass and me that Julia and Rex wanted to be left alone, so we went, too; it was not plain to, Brideshead, who settled down to read The Times, which he had not yet seen that day. Then, going to our side of the house, Mr Samgrass said: ‘It wasn’t at all like olden times.’

Next morning I said to Sebastian: ‘Tell me honestly, do you want me to stay on here?’

‘No, Charles, I don’t believe I do.’

‘I’m no help?’

‘No help.’

So I went to make my excuses to his mother.

‘There’s something I must ask you, Charles. Did you give Sebastian money yesterday?’

‘Yes.’

‘Knowing how he was likely to spend it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘I simply don’t understand how anyone can be so callously wicked.’



She paused, but I do not think she expected any answer; there was nothing I could say unless I were to start all over again on that familiar, endless argument.  ‘I’m not going to reproach you,’ she said. ‘God knows it’s not for me to reproach anyone. Any failure in my children is my failure. But I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how you can have been so nice in so many ways, and then do something so wantonly cruel. I don’t understand how we all liked you so much. Did you hate us all the time? I don’t understand how we deserved it.’

I was unmoved; there was no part of me remotely touched by her distress. It was as I had often imagined being expelled from school. I almost expected to hear her say: ‘I have already written to inform your unhappy father.’ But as I drove away and turned back in the car to take what promised to be my last view of the house, I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.

‘I shall never go back,’ I said to myself.

A door had shut, the low door in the wall I had sought and found in Oxford; open it now and I should find no enchanted garden.

I had come to the surface, into the light of common day and the fresh sea-air, after long captivity in the sunless coral palaces and waving forests of the ocean bed.  I had left behind me - what? Youth? Adolescence? Romance? The conjuring stuff of these things, ‘the Young Magician’s Compendium’, that neat cabinet where the ebony wand had its place beside the delusive billiard balls, the penny that folded double, and the feather flowers that could be drawn into a hollow candle.  ‘I have left behind illusion,’ I said to myself. ‘Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions - with the aid of my five senses.’

I have since learned that there is no such world, but then, as the car turned out of sight of the house, I thought it took no finding, but lay all about me at the end of the avenue.

Thus I returned to Paris, and to the friends I had found there and the habits I had formed. I thought I should hear no more of Brideshead, but life has few separations as sharp as that. It was not three weeks before I received a letter in Cordelia’s Frenchified convent hand:

‘Darling Charles,’ she said. ‘I was so very miserable when you went. You might have come and said good-bye!

‘I heard all about your disgrace, and I am writing to say that I am in disgrace, too. I sneaked Wilcox’s keys and got whisky for Sebastian and got caught. He did seem to want it so. And there was (and is) an awful row.

‘Mr Samgrass has gone (good!), and I think he is a bit in disgrace, too, but I don’t know why.

‘Mr Mottram is very popular with Julia (bad!) and is taking Sebastian away (bad!  bad!) to a German doctor.

‘Julia’s tortoise disappeared. We think it buried itseif, as they do, so there goes a packet (expression of Mr Mottram’s).

‘I am very well.

‘With love from

Cordelia.’

It must have been about a week after receiving this letter that I returned to my rooms one afternoon to find Rex waiting for me.

It was about four, for the light began to fail early in the studio at that time of year. I could see by the expression on the concierge’s face, when she told me I had a visitor waiting, that there was something impressive upstairs; she had a vivid gift of expressing differences of age or attraction; this was the expression which meant someone of the first consequence, and Rex indeed seemed to justify it, as I found him in his big travelling coat, filling the window that looked over the river.  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Well.’

‘I came this morning. They told me where you usually lunched but I couldn’t see you there. Have you got him?’

I did not need to ask whom. ‘So he’s given you the slip, too?’ ‘We got here last night and were going on to Zurich today. I left him at the Lotti after dinner, as he said he was tired, and went round to the Travellers’ for a game.’

I noticed how, even with me, he was making excuses, as though rehearsing his story for retelling elsewhere. ‘As he said he was tired’ was good. I could not well imagine Rex letting a half-tipsy boy interfere with his cards.

‘So you came back and found him gone?’

‘Not at all. I wish I had. I found him sitting up for me. I had a run of luck at the Travellers’ and cleaned up a packet. Sebastian pinched the lot while I was asleep. All he left me was two first-class tickets to Zurich stuck in the edge of the looking-glass. I had nearly three hundred quid, blast him!’

‘And now he may be almost anywhere.’

‘Anywhere. You’re not hiding him by any chance?’

‘No. My dealings with that family are over.’

‘I think mine are just beginning,’ said Rex. ‘I say, I’ve got a lot to talk about, and I promised a chap at the Travellers’ I’d give him his revenge this afternoon. Won’t you dine with me?’

‘Yes. Where?’

‘I usually go to Ciro’s.’

‘Why not Paillard’s?’

‘Never heard of it. I’m paying you know.’

‘I know you are. Let me order dinner.’

‘Well, all right. What’s the place again?’ I wrote it down for him. ‘Is it the sort of place you see native life?’

‘Yes, you might call it that.’

‘Well, it’ll be an experience. Order something good.’

‘That’s my intention.’

I was there twenty minutes before Rex. If I had to spend an evening with him, it should, at any rate, be in my own way. I remember the dinner well - soup of oseille, a sole quite simply cooked in a white-wine sauce, a caneton à la presse, a lemon soufflé.  At the last minute, fearing that the whole thing was too simple for Rex, I added caviar aux blinis. And for wine I let him give me a bottle of 1906 Montrachet, then at its prime, and, with the duck, a Clos de Bèze of 1904.

Living was easy in France then; with the exchange as it was, my allowance went a long way and I did not live frugally. It was very seldom, however, that I had a dinner like this, and I felt well disposed to Rex, when at last he arrived and gave up his hat and coat with the air of not expecting to see them again. He looked round the sombre little place with suspicion as though hoping to see apaches or a drinking party of students. All he saw was four senators with napkins tucked under their beards eating in absolute silence. I could imagine him telling his commercial friends later: ‘...interesting fellow I know; an art student living in Paris. Took me to a funny little restaurant - sort of place you’d pass without looking at - where there was some of the best food I ever ate. There were half a dozen senators there, too, which shows you it was the right place. Wasn’t at all cheap either.’

‘Any sign of Sebastian?’ he asked.

‘There won’t be,’ I said, ‘until he needs money.’

‘It’s a bit thick, going off like that. I was rather hoping that if I made a good job of him, it might do me a bit of good in another direction.’ He plainly wished to talk of his own affairs; they could wait, I thought, for the hour of tolerance and repletion, for the cognac; they could wait until the attention was blunted and one could listen with half the mind only; now in the keen moment when the ma?tre d’h?tel was turning the blinis over in the pan, and, in the background, two humbler men were preparing the press, we would talk of myself.  ‘Did you stay long at Brideshead? Was my name mentioned after I left?’ ‘Was it mentioned? I got sick of the sound of it, old boy. The Marchioness got what she called a “bad conscience” about you. She piled it on pretty thick, I gather, at your last meeting.’

“’Callously wicked”, “wantonly cruel”.’

‘Hard words.’

‘ “It’ doesn’t matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you

up.” ‘

‘Eh?’

‘A saying.’

‘Ah.’ The cream and hot butter mingled and overflowed, separating each glaucous bead of caviar from its fellows, capping it in white and gold.  ‘I like a bit of chopped onion with mine, ‘ said Rex. ‘Chap who-knew told me it brought out the flavour.’

‘Try it without first I said. ‘And tell me more news of myself.’ ‘Well, of course, Greenacre, or whatever he was called - the snooty don - he came a cropper. That was well received by all.

He was the blue-eyed boy for a day or two after you left. Shouldn’t wonder if he hadn’t put the old girl up to pitching you out. He was always being pushed down our throats, so in the end Julia couldn’t bear it any more and gave him away.’ ‘Julia did? ‘

‘Well, he’d begun to stick his nose into our affairs, you see. Julia spotted he was a fake, and one afternoon when Sebastian was tight - he was tight most of the time - she got the whole story of the Grand Tour out of him. And that was the end of Mr Samgrass. After that the Marchioness began to think she might have been a bit rough with you.’

‘And what about the row with Cordelia?’

‘That eclipsed everything. That kid’s a walking marvel - she’d been feeding Sebastian whisky right under our noses for a week. We couldn’t think where he was getting it.  That’s when the Marchioness finally crumbled.’

The soup was delicious after the rich blinis - hot, thin, bitter, frothy.  ‘I’ll tell you a thing, Charles, that Ma Marchmain hasn’t let on to anyone. She’s a very sick woman. Might peg out any minute. George Anstruther saw her in the autumn and put it at two years.’

‘How on earth do you know?’

‘It’s the kind of thing I hear. With the way her family are going on at the moment, I wouldn’t give her a year. I know just the man for her in Vienna. He put Sonia Bamfshire on her feet when everyone including Anstruther had despaired of her. But Ma Marchmain won’t do anything about it. I suppose it’s something to do with her crackbrain religion, not to take care of the body.’

The sole was so simple and unobtrusive that Rex failed to notice it. We ate to the music of the press - the crunch of the bones, the drip of blood and marrow the tap of the spoon basting the thin slices of breast. There was a pause here of a quarter of an hour, while I drank the first glass of the Clos de Bèze and Rex smoked his first cigarette. He leaned back, blew a cloud of smoke across the table, and remarked, ‘You know, the food here isn’t half bad; someone ought to take this place up and make something of it.’

Presently he began again on the Marchmains:

‘I’ll tell you another thing, too - they’ll get a jolt financially soon if they don’t look out.’

‘I thought they were enormously rich.’

‘Well, they are rich in the way people are who just let their money sit quiet. Everyone of that sort is poorer than they were in 1914, and the Flytes don’t seem to realize it. I reckon those lawyers who manage their affairs find it convenient to give them all the cash they want and no questions asked. Look at the way they live - Brideshead and Marchmain House both going full blast, pack of foxhounds, no rents raised, nobody sacked, dozens of old servants doing damn all, being waited on by other servants, and then besides all that there’s the old boy setting up a separate establishment - and setting it up on no humble scale either. D’you know how much they’re overdrawn?’ ‘Of course I don’t.’

‘Jolly near a hundred thousand in London. I don’t know what they owe elsewhere.  Well, that’s quite a packet, you know, for people who aren’t using their money. Ninety-eight thousand last November. It’s the kind of thing I hear.’ Those were the kind of things he heard, mortal illness and debt, I thought.  I rejoiced in the Burgundy. It seemed a, reminder that the world was an older, and better place than Rex knew, that mankind in its long passion had learned another wisdom than his. By chance I met this same wine again, lunching with my wine merchant in St James’s Street, in the first autumn of the war; it had softened and faded in the intervening years, but it still spoke in the pure, authentic accent of its prime, the same words of hope.

‘I don’t mean that they’ll be paupers; the old boy will always be good for an odd thirty thousand a year, but there’ll be a shakeup coming soon, and when the upper-classes get the wind up, their first idea is usually to cut down on the girls. I’d like to get the little matter of a marriage settlement through, before it comes.’ We had by no means reached the cognac, but here we were on the subject of himself.  In twenty minutes I should have been ready for all he had to tell. I closed my mind to him as best I could and gave myself to the food before me, but sentences came breaking in on my happiness, recalling me to the harsh, acquisitive world which Rex inhabited.  He wanted a woman; he wanted the best on the market, and he wanted her at his own price; that was what it amounted to.

‘...Ma Marchmain doesn’t like me. Well, I’m not asking her to. It’s not her I want to marry. She hasn’t the guts to say openly: “You’re not a gentleman. You’re an adventurer from the Colonies.” She says we live in different atmospheres. That’s all right, but Julia happens to fancy my atmosphere...Then she brings up religion. I’ve nothing against her Church; we don’t take much account of Catholics in Canada, but that’s different; in Europe you’ve got some very posh Catholics. All right, Julia can go to church whenever she wants to. I shan’t try and stop her. It doesn’t mean two pins to her, as a matter of fact, but I like a girl to have religion. What’s more, she can bring the children up Catholic. I’ll make all the “promises” they want...Then there’s my past. “We know so little about you.” She knows a sight too much. You may know I’ve been tied up with someone else for a year or two.’

I knew; everyone who had ever met Rex knew of his affair with Brenda Champion; knew also that it was from this affair that he derived everything which distinguished him from every other stock-jobber; his golf with the Prince of Wales, his membership of Bratt’s, even his smoking-room comradeship at the House of Commons, for, when he first appeared there, his party chiefs did not say of him, ‘Look, there is the promising young member for north Gridley who spoke so well on Rent Restrictions.’ They said:

‘There’s Brenda Champion’s latest’; it had done him a great deal of good with men; women he could usually charm.

‘Well, that’s all washed up. Ma Marchmain was too delicate to mention the subject; all she said was that I had “notoriety”. Well, what does she expect as a son-in-law - a sort of half-baked monk like Brideshead? Julia knows all about the other thing; if she doesn’t care, I don’t see it’s anyone else’s business.’

After the duck came a salad of watercress and chicory in a faint mist of chives. I tried to think only of the salad. I succeeded for a time in thinking only of the soufflé. Then came the cognac and the proper hour for these confidences. ‘...Julia’s just rising twenty. I don’t want to wait till she’s of age. Anyway, I don’t want to marry without doing the thing properly...nothing hole-in-corner...I have to see she isn’t jockeyed out of her proper settlement. So as the Marchioness won’t play ball I’m off to see the old man and square him. I gather he’s likely to agree to anything he knows will upset her. He’s at Monte Carlo at the moment. I’d planned to go there after dropping Sebastian off at Zurich. That’s why it’s such a bloody bore having lost him.’ The cognac was not to Rex’s taste. It was clear and pale and it came to us in a bottle free from grime and Napoleonic cyphers. It was only a year or two older than Rex and lately bottled. They gave it to us in very thin tulip-shaped glasses of modest size.  ‘Brandy’s one of the things I do know a bit about,’ said Rex. ‘This is a bad colour.

What’s more, I can’t taste it in this thimble.’

They brought him a balloon the size of his head. He made them warm it over the spirit lamp. Then he rolled the splendid spirit round, buried his face in the fumes, and pronounced it the sort, of stuff he put soda in at home.  So, shamefacedly, they wheeled out of its hiding place the vast and mouldy bottle they kept for people of Rex’s sort.

‘That’s the stuff,’ he said, tilting the treacly concoction till it left dark rings round the sides of his glass. ‘They’ve always got some tucked away, but they won’t bring it out unless you make a fuss. Have some.’

‘I’m quite happy with this.’

‘Well, it’s a crime to drink it, if you don’t really appreciate it.  He lit his cigar and sat back at peace with the world; I, too, was at peace in another world than his. We were both happy. He talked of Julia and I heard his voice, unintelligible at a great distance, like a dog’s barking miles away on a still night.

At the beginning of May the engagement was announced. I saw the notice in the Continental Daily Mail and assumed that Rex had ‘squared the old man’. But things did not go as were expected. The next news I had of them was in the middle of June, when I read that they had been married very quietly at the Savoy Chapel. No royalty was present; nor was the Prime Minister; nor were any of Julia’s family. It sounded like a ‘hole-in-the-corner’ affair, but it was not for several years that I heard the full story.

“我们刚刚到达狭路的尽头时，”桑格拉斯先生说，“我们就听到后面传来一阵奔马疾驰的声音。两个士兵骑马赶到我们旅行队的前头，叫我们回头。他们是将军派来的，来得正是时候。前面不到一英里的地方有一帮人。”

他停顿了一下，他的几个听众默默地坐着，大家都意识到他是设法给他们留下深刻印象，可是他们却不知道该怎样彬彬有礼地表示他们的兴趣。

“一帮人？”朱莉娅说，“天啊！”

他似乎还在等待着更大的惊讶。马奇梅因夫人终于说道：“我想你在那地方采集的这种民间音乐太单调了吧。”

“亲爱的马奇梅因夫人，那是一帮强盗。”坐在我旁边沙发上的科迪莉娅轻声地咯咯笑起来。“满山遍野都是强盗。都是些基马尔军队的散兵游勇；希腊人在撤退时被切断了后路。我敢保证，那是一伙亡命之徒。”

“请拧我一下。”科迪莉娅低声说。

我拧了她一把，沙发弹簧吱吱嘎嘎的响声停了。“谢谢。”她说着用手背擦擦眼睛。

“这么说，你们什么地方也没有去啊。”朱莉娅说，“你感到很失望吧，塞巴斯蒂安？”

“我吗？”塞巴斯蒂安说。他坐在灯光照不到的阴影里，在燃烧着木柴的炉火热力不到的地方，他在家人的圈子以外，把许多照片摊在牌桌上。“我吗？呃，我想，那天我不在，是不是，桑米？”

“那天你病了。”

“我是病啦，”他像回声似地答应，“所以我就什么地方也去不成啦，是吧，桑米？”

“喂，请看这张，马奇梅因夫人，这是在阿勒颇一家酒店院子里的旅行队。这是我们的一位亚美尼亚厨师，贝奇德毕安；那是我骑在小马上；那是折叠起来的帐篷；那是精疲力竭的库尔德，当时他总是跟着我们……这是我在蓬土斯、以弗所、特拉布松、克拉克—德斯—切瓦利埃尔、萨莫色雷斯岛、巴统——当然，我并没有按时间顺序把这些照片排好。”

“全都是向导啦，废墟啦，骡子啦！”科迪莉娅说。“塞巴斯蒂安哪去了？”

“他嘛，”桑格拉斯先生说，声音里带着胜利的意味，好像这个问题已在他意料之中，并且早已准备好怎么回答，“他拿着照相机呢。一当他知道不要把手挡在镜头上，他就成了一个很像样子的摄影师了，是吧，塞巴斯蒂安？”

阴影里没有回答的声音，桑格拉斯先生就去掏他那个猪皮小提包了。

“看这些，”他说，“这组照片是在贝鲁特的圣乔治旅馆的台阶上一个街头摄影师拍的。这不就是塞巴斯蒂安吗？”

“喂，”我说，“那个人大概是安东尼·布兰奇吧？”

“是他，我们常常见到他；我们在君士坦丁堡凑巧碰到他。那是个让人开心的伙伴。我真是和他相见恨晚啦。他跟我们一路去贝鲁特。”

这时茶点已经收拾掉了，窗帘也拉上了。这正是圣诞节已经过去两天后，我到这儿来的第一个晚上；也是塞巴斯蒂安和桑格拉斯先生回来的第一个晚上，我下火车在月台上发现他们，真使我感到十分惊讶。

三个星期以前马奇梅因夫人来过一封信说：“我刚刚收到桑格拉斯先生的信，说他和塞巴斯蒂安将像我们希望的回家过圣诞节。我很久没有听到他们的消息了，以至我担心他们遭了难，我得知道他们的消息后，才做出安排。塞巴斯蒂安将会渴望见到你。如果你能安排好，就来我家过圣诞节吧，要不然就在节后尽快来。”

圣诞节要去我伯父那里，这是事先的约定，不能爽约，探望了伯父，我就坐火车横穿全国，中途又换上支线火车，在希望看到塞巴斯蒂安的时候，他已经在家里住定了，哪知他就在紧挨着我的那节车厢里。当我问起他在干什么的时候，桑格拉斯先生却油嘴滑舌、事无巨细地告诉我说行李如何被错放了，家庭厨师的行李在整个假期又取不到，我立刻就察觉出还有别的事瞒着我没说出来。

桑格拉斯先生并不怎么自在；他在外表仍然保持着自信的样子，可是内疚就像凝滞的雪茄烟雾一样围住他经久不散，在马奇梅因夫人向他问好的时候，我就预感到了他在耍很不高明的手腕。吃茶点的时候，他一直活灵活现地讲着旅行的事情，后来马奇梅因夫人把他引开，到了楼上，和她“作一次小小的谈话”。我怀着某种近乎怜悯的心情看着他走开。就是再麻木不仁的人，也会清楚地看出桑格拉斯的做法漏洞百出，在喝茶时我注意他，我开始怀疑他不但是在做假，而且是在欺骗，肯定有些事情他应该说出来，可他又不想说，而且不大知道该怎么跟马奇梅因夫人讲他自己在圣诞节都干了些什么，而且，更重要的是，我猜测关于整个地中海东部国家的旅行，他一定有很多应该讲而他又根本不打算讲出来的事情。

“跟我来看看保姆吧。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

“请问，我也去行吗？”科迪莉娅说。

“来吧。”

我们爬上在圆屋顶里的育婴室。科迪莉娅边走边问：“你在家一点也不高兴吗？”

“我当然高兴啦。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

“嗯，那你就应该露出一点儿高兴的样子来呀。我一直盼望你回来。”

保姆并不是特别希望有人跟她说话；她最喜欢人家来探望她的时候不注意她，而让她在一边做着毛线活，一边看着他们的脸，回想她记得的他们孩子时候的样子；除了他们幼年时生的病啦，做的错事啦，他们眼下的举动都没有多大意义。

“噢，”她说，“你现在显得瘦了。我看就是那些外国饮食不合你的胃口。现在你回来了得养胖些啦。你那样子好像熬了几个夜晚，还有，看你眼睛的样子——跳了舞吧，我就知道。”（霍金斯保姆一直认为上等阶级大都是在舞厅里打发掉无所事事的夜晚的。）“这件衬衫可该补补啦。送去洗以前先给我拿来。”

塞巴斯蒂安确实是有病的样子；五个月在他身上起了要几年时间才会起的变化。他更苍白了，更瘦了，眼睛下边有了眼袋，嘴角耷拉下来，下巴上显出疖子的疤痕来。他的声音显得更平淡乏味，他的动作一会儿懒散，一会儿又痉挛；他显得邋遢，衣服和头发以前随随便便，但还算过得去，现在却是邋里邋遢的了。更坏的是，他的眼睛里有一种警惕的神情，这种神情在复活节的时候就使我感到奇怪，这时对于他来说似乎已经是习以为常的了。

我受到了这种警惕神情的限制，关于他自己的事，我一句也没有问，而只跟他讲了我秋天和冬天怎么过的。我对他讲了我在圣路易岛大街的寓所，还有美术学校，还告诉他老教师如何好，学生们如何坏。

“他们根本不走近卢浮宫，”我说，“他们即使去，那只是因为他们的一份荒谬的评论刊物，突然‘发现’了某一位大师的作品正好符合这个月的美学理论。有一半学生像皮卡皮亚那样，有意要一举成名；而另外一半学生只是想靠给《时髦》杂志画广告和给夜总会装潢布置来养家餬口。而教师们却一直想使他们画出像德拉克洛瓦那样的画来。”

“查尔斯，”科迪莉娅说，“现代艺术全都是瞎胡闹吧。”

“太瞎胡闹了。”

“噢，我真高兴。我和一个修女发生过一场争执，她说我们不该批评我们不懂的东西。这回我可要告诉她，我的话可是一位真正的艺术家跟我说的，我可要奚落她一顿。”

过了一会儿，科迪莉娅该去吃晚饭了，我和塞巴斯蒂安也该下楼到客厅喝鸡尾酒了。布赖兹赫德独自一个人在那儿，这时威尔科克斯紧跟着我们进来，对他说道：“夫人请你去楼上有话说，少爷。”

“这哪像妈妈干的呢，派人来叫人。她常常是亲自把人引诱到楼上去。”

根本就不见鸡尾酒托盘的影子。过了几分钟塞巴斯蒂安就按起铃来。一位男用人来答话。“威尔科克斯先生正在楼上夫人那里呢。”

“嗯，甭理那一套，把鸡尾酒给端来。”

“威尔科克斯管着钥匙呢，少爷。”

“呃，好了，他一下楼就叫他把酒端来。”

这时我们稍微聊了一下安东尼·布兰奇——“他在伊斯坦布尔的时候留着胡子，可是我叫他剃掉了”——过了十分钟塞巴斯蒂安又说，“呃，我反正不想喝鸡尾酒了，我要去洗澡。”说完就离开了客厅。

这时是七点半钟；我估计别的人都换礼服去了，可是正当我也要去换衣服的时候，碰到布赖兹赫德下楼来。

“请稍等片刻。查尔斯，有些事情我不得不解释一下。我母亲已经吩咐过了，任何房间里都不准留下酒。你会理解为什么要这样做。如果你想喝的话，可以打铃向威尔科克斯要——最好等到只有你一个人的时候。我很抱歉，情况就是这样。”

“有必要这样做吗？”

“我猜想非常必要。你也许听说过，也许没有，塞巴斯蒂安一回到英国就又大发作了。整个圣诞节都没有看到他。昨天晚上桑格拉斯先生才找到他。”

“我就猜到发生了这种事情。你确信这是解决问题的最好方法吗？”

“这是我母亲的方法。既然他已经上楼去了，你不喝点鸡尾酒吗？”

“会把我噎住的。”

给我住的总是我最初来访时住的房间；这间屋子就在塞巴斯蒂安房间隔壁，我们合用那间曾经一度是化妆室、二十年前改成了所谓的洗澡间，把一张床换成了一个深槽的铜质桃花心木框架的浴盆，只要拉拉那支重得像个轮机的铜把手，浴盆就会注满水；房间里其他东西还保持原样；冬天还生煤火炉。我常常想起这个洗澡间——一幅幅水彩画面被蒸汽熏得朦胧不清，搭在印花布面扶手椅靠背上的大毛巾热气腾腾——和与此相对照的，闪耀着镀铬盘子和镜子的光辉——在现代社会被公认为奢侈品的——千篇一律像诊所一样的小房间。

我在浴盆里泡了一阵后，就在火炉边慢慢地烘干，一直想着我的朋友这次回家的低落情绪。随后我穿上晨衣，去塞巴斯蒂安的房间，像往常那样，没有敲门就进去了。他坐在壁炉旁边，衣服没有穿好，当他听见我进来的脚步声，就愤怒地跳将起来，把一只表面很粗糙的玻璃杯放下。

“噢，原来是你呀，吓了我一跳。”

“看来你已经喝了酒了。”我说。

“我不知道你是什么意思？”

“看在基督的面上，”我说，“你不必跟我装蒜吧！你也应该给我喝一点。”

“不过是长颈瓶里剩的一点。我已经都喝光了。”

“到底发生了什么事？”

“没有事。事也多了。有朝一日再告诉你。”

我换好礼服，又去找塞巴斯蒂安，可是发现他还像我离开他时一样，衣服也没有穿好，坐在壁炉旁。

客厅里只有朱莉娅一个人。


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举报 只看该作者 7楼  发表于: 2013-11-19 0

“喂，”我问，“到底发生了什么事呀？”

“嗨，还不是一件令人讨厌的家庭纠纷。塞巴斯蒂安又喝得大醉，我们大家只得留心看着他。这真够烦人。”

“对他来说也是相当烦人的。”

“嗯，那得怪他自己呀。为什么他表现得不像别人一样？说起看管人来，桑格拉斯先生怎么样？查尔斯，你是不是注意到这个人有点靠不住？”

“十分靠不住。你觉得你母亲看出来了？”

“妈妈只看到她中意的东西。她不能把全家的人都置于监视之下。我也正在引起她的焦虑，你知道。”

“我不知道，”我说，还谦虚地补充一句，“我刚刚从巴黎来。”这样我就避免造成这样一个印象，即她可能遇到的任何麻烦并不是恶名流传，尽人皆知的。

这是一个情绪特别低沉的晚上。我们在彩绘客厅吃的晚餐。塞巴斯蒂安来晚了，当时我们心里都痛苦不安，我认为大家心里都以为他准会来一个滑稽戏里的亮相，比如晃下身子，打个呃。他进来时，当然，表现得十分得体，道了歉，坐在一个空位上，就让桑格拉斯重新滔滔不绝讲下去，他没有打断他，也好像没有听。德鲁兹人，东正教的高级主教，圣像，臭虫，罗马建筑的遗迹，由山羊和绵羊的眼珠拼成的稀奇菜，法国和土耳其的官吏——把一切近东旅行的见闻提出来供我们消遣。

我注意着香槟酒在餐桌上斟了一圈。当轮到塞巴斯蒂安时，他说：“我要喝威士忌，请给斟上。”我看到威尔科克斯越过他的头顶向马奇梅因夫人看了一眼，又看到她轻轻地、几乎察觉不出地点了一下头。在布赖兹赫德，大家都用一种又小又特别的盛酒精的细颈瓶喝酒，每瓶大约能盛下四分之一酒瓶的酒，这种瓶子总斟满了摆在想喝的人面前；威尔科克斯放在塞巴斯蒂安面前的那只细颈瓶里只斟了一半。塞巴斯蒂安小心地把瓶子端起来，又把瓶子倾斜过去，注视着，然后默默地把酒倒进他自己的玻璃杯里，用两个手指头遮住它。除了塞巴斯蒂安，我们所有人都立刻说起话来，这时桑格拉斯先生发现自己没有人可以聊天，就对蜡烛台讲起马龙派来了。可是我们很快又都沉默了，他就滔滔不绝，独霸全桌，直到马奇梅因夫人和朱莉娅走出屋子。

“布赖德，不要坐久了。”她照平日习惯出门时说，而这晚上，我们都不想多耽搁了。我们的杯子里都斟满了葡萄酒，细颈瓶立刻被拿走了。我们把酒赶快喝完，就都去了客厅，布赖兹赫德请他母亲念念书，于是她就念了《一位小人物的日记》，情绪饱满地念到十点钟，然后她合上了书，说她感到说不出来的疲劳，她疲劳得这一晚上都不愿意去小教堂了。

“明天谁去打猎？”她问道。

“科迪莉娅去。”布赖兹赫德说，“我要带上朱莉娅的那匹小马，好让它认识一下猎物。我把它带出去不会超过两个小时。”

“雷克斯一会儿要来这儿，”朱莉娅说，“我最好留在家里接他。”

“大家在什么地方会齐？”塞巴斯蒂安突然问道。

“就在这儿，弗莱特家的圣玛丽教堂。”

“那我也想去打猎，行吧，如果也有我的份。”

“当然有啦。这太让人高兴了。我本来要让你去的，只是你常常抱怨说，总是强迫你出去。你可以骑那匹廷克贝尔。这个狩猎期它一直跑得很好。”

大家由于塞巴斯蒂安想去打猎而突然高兴起来；似乎这天晚上那场恶作剧已经一笔勾销了。布赖兹赫德打铃要威士忌。

“还有谁想喝？”

“给我也拿点来。”塞巴斯蒂安说，虽然这一回是一个用人而不是威尔科克斯，我还是看到仆人和马奇梅因夫人之间同样交换了一下眼色和点点头。所有的人都被提醒过。端进来的两种酒，已经倒进杯子里了，就像酒吧的那种“双料酒”，大家的眼睛紧盯着托盘，好像我们是一群在餐厅里嗅猎物的狗。

但是塞巴斯蒂安想去打猎所造成的好情绪依旧没有消失；布赖兹赫德写了条子给管马厩的，我们都兴高采烈地去睡觉了。

塞巴斯蒂安径直上了床；我坐在他房里壁炉旁，吸着一支烟斗，我说：“我真希望明天和你一起出去。”

“喂，”他说，“你不要把打猎看得了不起。我告诉你我究竟要干什么吧。只要碰到第一个隐蔽的地点，我就撇开布赖德，转悠到最近的一家好的小酒店去，然后在那儿打发掉整天的时间，要在酒馆的前厅安安静静地开怀痛饮。如果他们把我当成酒鬼那样对待，那么他们就会不折不扣地有一位酒鬼。我讨厌打猎，随你怎么说。”

“嗨，我没法阻止你。”

“你能阻止，实际上——什么钱也不给我就可以啦。他们停付我的银行账户存款，你知道，是在夏天停的。这是我一个主要的难处。我典当了手表和香烟盒才保证圣诞节过得快乐，所以我明天得找你解决我一天的开销。”

“我不给。你知道得很清楚，我不能给。”

“你不给吗，查尔斯？好吧，我敢说靠我自己也可以想办法解决的。前不久那次靠自己想办法时我可聪明极了。我不得不那样做。”

“塞巴斯蒂安，你和桑格拉斯先生都干了些什么？”

“吃饭的时候他告诉过你们啦——废墟啦，向导啦，骡子啦，这都是桑米干的事。我们决定了按照自己的路线走，就是这么回事。可怜的桑米到现在表现得确实还不坏。我希望他能这样继续下去，不过关于我的快乐的圣诞节的话，他可显得太冒失了。大概他认为，如果把我形容得太好了，他也许会丢掉他当监护人的职位吧。

“他在这件事情上可捞到了相当多的好处，你知道吧。我的意思并不是说他偷窃。我认为在钱财上他是相当诚实的。他确实保存着一个特别麻烦的小笔记本，他记下了所有兑换成现金的旅行支票，还记下了这些钱的用场，好让妈妈和律师检查。可是那些地方他都想去，而对他来说，有我舒舒服服地带着他那可是太方便了，要是像大学教师通常那样旅行就没有这么舒服了。唯一不便的地方就是得容忍我这个同伴，而我们很快就解决了这个问题。

“于是我们开始了一次几乎算得上大旅游的路程，你知道，我们随身带着给各地头面人物的信，住在罗德岛的军事总督和君士坦丁堡大使那里。这是桑米之所以要签约受雇来管我的首要原因。当然喽，他把学校工作停下来监视我，可是他事先给我们所有的东道主都打过招呼说我这个人不可靠。”

“塞巴斯蒂安。”

“是说不十分可靠——由于我没有钱可花，所以差不多就没法到别处去了。甚至连小费那点钱都由他替我付，把钞票塞在人家手里，然后当时当地就草草在笔记本上记下数额。我走运的时候是在君士坦丁堡。有一天晚上我趁桑米没盯住的时候，打牌赢了一些钱。第二天我给他来了个不辞而别，当我正在托卡特里安大街的一间酒吧过得快活极了的时候，这时只见走进一个人来，原来不是别人，是蓄着胡须的安东尼·布兰奇带着一个犹太男孩子。安东尼刚把一张十镑的票子借给我，这时桑米就气喘吁吁地跑进来，把我又抓住了。这以后，我连一分钟都没有躲开他的监视；后来大使馆的职员把我们安顿在去比雷埃夫斯的船上，一直盯住我们驶离码头。可是到了雅典就容易多了。一天吃过了中饭，我随便走出公使馆，到库克餐厅里兑换了钱，只是为了蒙骗桑米还询问了去亚历山大港的班次，然后就坐了一辆公共汽车去了码头，找到了一个说美国英语的水手，就睡在他那里，直到那条船起航，就奔回了君士坦丁堡，就是这么回事。

“安东尼和那个犹太男孩合住在集市附近一所不坏的摇摇欲坠的房子里。我在那里住下来，直到天气太冷了，我就和安东尼坐船南行，三星期以前我和桑米按照约定在叙利亚碰头了。”

“难道桑米不在乎吗？”

“哦，我想他照自己的糟透了的方式生活得还相当高兴哩——当然，只是没有更多的高级生活让他过罢了。我想他最初有些着急，而我并不希望他得知整个地中海舰队的消息，因此我就从君士坦丁堡给他拍了海底电报，说我很好，但愿他把钱寄到奥托曼银行。他一接到我的海底电报，立刻坐飞机来了。他的处境当然很困难，因为我已经成年，而且没有病情证明，所以他也就无法把我扣留起来。他也不能花着我的钱的时候让我挨饿，况且他又没法既把这件事告诉妈妈而又不暴露出他自己愚蠢透顶。可怜的桑米，他得乖乖地听我的话。我本想干脆离开他，可是安东尼在这件事上倒很帮忙，他说把事情友好地解决要好得多；而且他的确把事情非常友好地解决了。瞧，我就回来了。”

“是在圣诞节后。”

“是的，因为我决心要快快乐乐地过一个圣诞节。”

“过得快乐吗？”

“我认为是这样。怎么过的，我现在不大记得了。不过这总算是一个好兆头吧？”


第二天早餐时布赖兹赫德穿了件鲜红的衣服；科迪莉娅漂亮极了，她系着一条白色硬围领，下巴高高地翘起来。当塞巴斯蒂安穿着一件花呢外套进来的时候，她悲叹道：“嗨，塞巴斯蒂安，你怎么能像那样出去呢，快去换衣服吧。你穿着猎装可显得漂亮哩。”

“不知锁在什么地方了。吉布斯找不到。”

“别骗人了。在喊你之前，我已经亲手帮着把那套衣服取出来了。”

“有一半东西都不见了。”

“这只是在鼓励斯特里克兰—维纳布尔斯夫妇。他们的表现可真够糟的。他们连礼帽也不戴就带着马夫出去。”

这时离十一点还差一刻，马匹还没有牵来，可是楼下没有人出现，就好象他们都藏了起来，等着听塞巴斯蒂安打退堂鼓再露面。

当塞巴斯蒂安动身要走的时候，他把我招呼进了前厅，这时别人已经上了马了。那张桌子上除了放着他的帽子、手套、马鞭和夹肉面包外，还放着那个他拿出来准备灌满酒的长颈瓶。他拿起瓶子摇了摇，瓶子是空的。

“你看，”他说，“不信任我甚至到了这种地步。发疯的是他们，而不是我。现在你不能拒绝给我钱了吧。”

我给他一镑。

“再给点。”他说。

我又给他一镑，看着他上了马，放开马在他的哥哥和妹妹后面小跑着。

这时，桑格拉斯先生仿佛在舞台上暗示一样，走到我的肘边，挽着我的胳膊，把我带回到壁炉前。他先烤烤自己那双干净的小手，然后烤烤自己的臀部。

“看来塞巴斯蒂安猎狐去了，”他说，“我们的小难题暂时可以放开一两个小时吧？”

我可不吃桑格拉斯先生这一套。

“你们那次大旅行，我可全听说了，就在昨天晚上。”我说。

“啊，我就猜到你会听说的。”桑格拉斯先生并不害怕，似乎因为别人知道了这件事还松了一口气呢，“我没有用这些事情去折磨我们的女主人。总而言之，这件事结果比人料想的要强多了。但是，我的确感到，关于塞巴斯蒂安在圣诞节的庆祝活动，应当向夫人做一番解释。昨天晚上你注意到了吧，是采取了一些预防措施的。”

“我注意到了。”

“你认为那些措施太过分了吧？我是和你站在一边的，特别是当我们这次小小的访问也要受到波及的时候。今天早晨我去见了马奇梅因夫人。你大概不会以为我现在刚刚起床吧。我和我们的女主人在楼上作了一番小小的谈话。我想我们可以指望今天晚上过得轻松一点了。像昨天晚上那样的情况，谁也不希望再重演了。我想，昨天晚上我努力要使你开心点，可是我得到你的感谢远远不够。”

和桑格拉斯先生谈论塞巴斯蒂安是非常令我反感的，可是我不得不说道：“今天晚上是不是确实可以轻松一下，我可拿不准。”

“当然啰？今天晚上怎么不行，难道在布赖兹赫德检查官似的眼睛监视下，在野外过了一天还不行吗？难道还能挑选到更好的吗？”

“呃，我认为这实在不关我的事。”

“严格地说来，也不关我的事，既然他已经平平安安回了家。马奇梅因夫人肯和我商量事情使我感到很荣幸。可是，此刻我心里想的不是塞巴斯蒂安的幸福，而是我们自己的。我需要喝第三杯葡萄酒；我在图书室里需要这个好客的托盘。可是你还明确说今晚不会松快。我不知道这是为什么。塞巴斯蒂安今天不会搞恶作剧了。就凭一点：他没有钱。这我碰巧知道了。我留心这件事呢。我甚至拿了他楼上的手表和香烟盒。他完全不会害人了……只要没有人邪恶得给他钱……啊，朱莉娅小姐，早上好，早上好。在今天早晨他们去打猎的时候，那只小狮子狗怎么样？”

“噢，狮子狗很好，听着，我已经叫雷克斯·莫特拉姆今天到这儿来。我们简直不能再像昨天晚上那样过了。得有人跟妈妈说说。”

“有人已经说了。我说了。我想今晚一切都会很好。”

“谢谢上帝。查尔斯，今天你画画吗？”

这已经成了惯例，我每次到布赖兹赫德作客，都要在那间花园房间的墙上画一枚大奖章。这个惯例对我倒很好，因为这样我就有充分理由离开其余的人；每当这所宅第宾客盈门的时候，这间花园房子就可以和育婴室媲美了，人们常常躲到这里来发牢骚；因此，我轻而易举地就知道了这里的一切闲话。我这时已经画成了三枚奖章，每一枚就其本身来看都很漂亮，可是从另一种观点来看，每一枚都不够妥当，因为我的趣味已经变了，自从开始画这一系列的奖章以来，我的手在十八个月当中变得越来越灵巧了。作为装饰性的设计，这些奖章只能算是失败。当我发现这间花园房子是一所圣殿时，这个上午在许许多多的上午中是很有代表性的。我一去那里，马上就着手工作。朱莉娅跟我一起来了，她来看我动手画画儿，我们谈起来，不可避免地谈起塞巴斯蒂安。

“这个话题你听腻了没有？”她问，“为什么每个人都把这当成一件大事？”

“因为我们都喜欢他。”

“对啦。我也喜欢他，大概在某种程度上吧，只是我希望他表现得也像别人那样就好了。我是伴随着一桩家丑长大的，你知道——那就是爸爸。当我们还是孩子的时候，人们从来不当着用人的面谈他，也从来不当着我们的面谈他。如果妈妈还要打算把塞巴斯蒂安弄成一桩家丑的话，那就太过分了。如果他想总是喝醉，那他为什么不去肯尼亚，或者去别的什么不在乎喝醉酒的地方呢？”

“为什么他在肯尼亚过得不愉快就不那么要紧呢？”

“别装糊涂，查尔斯。你完全明白。”

“你的意思是不是说，如果他在肯尼亚，你们就不会碰到那么多尴尬的局面了？喏，我想说的是，我很担心如果塞巴斯蒂安抓住个机会，今天晚上就会出现一个令人尴尬的局面。他的心情很不好。”

“嗯，打一天猎会使情绪变好的。”

看到大家都把信心寄托在一天狩猎的价值上，真是令人伤心。今天上午马奇梅因夫人来看我，为此用她尽人皆知的冷嘲方式嘲笑了自己一番。

“我总是痛恨打猎的，”她说，“因为打猎似乎会在最有教养的人身上产生很多粗俗的影响。我不知道打猎是怎么回事，可是一当他们穿上猎装，骑在马上，就变得像一帮普鲁士人了。他们为此还挺得意的呢。到了晚上我坐在那里吃饭，看到我认识的那些男女仿佛都变成了不明事理、刚愎自用、有偏执狂的蠢货，我就感到震惊极了……可是你知道，打猎大概是从几百年前传下来的事情，一想到塞巴斯蒂安今天和他们出去了，我心里就轻松多了。‘实际上他什么毛病也没有，’我心里说，‘他已经打猎去了。’仿佛我的祈祷应验了。”

她问到我在巴黎的生活。我跟她讲，从我那套寓所可以看到塞纳河的风景和巴黎圣母院的许多塔楼。“我希望我回去时塞巴斯蒂安来和我一起住几天。”

“那可太好了。”马奇梅因夫人说，好像因为这是一件无法实现的事而叹了口气。

“我希望他去伦敦和我住几天。”

“查尔斯，你知道这是不行的。伦敦是个最坏的地方。在那里就是桑格拉斯先生也管束不住他。我们家里的事是不瞒你的。他失踪了，你知道，整个圣诞节期间都不见了。桑格拉斯先生之所以能找到他，只是因为他在那个地方没钱付账，这样他们才把电话打到我们家里来。这太可怕了。不，去伦敦是不行的。如果他在这儿和我们在一起还不能规规矩矩的话……那我们就得使他在这儿快乐一点儿，健康一点儿，打打猎，然后打发他跟桑格拉斯先生再到国外去……你知道，这些事我以前都经历过。”

反驳的话是现成的，即便没说出来，我们两人心里也都完全明白——那就是：“你过去没把他管住；他跑掉了。塞巴斯蒂安今后也会跑掉。因为他们两人都恨你。”

这时在我们下面的那个山谷里响起了号角声和猎人们的叫喊声。

“他们去那儿了，快到我们家的那片林地了。我希望他今天过得很好。”

就这样，我和朱莉娅和马奇梅因夫人都僵持住了，这倒不是因为我们之间互不理解，而是因为我们理解得太充分了。布赖兹赫德回来吃午餐，也和我谈到这个话题——这个话题在这个家里随处都要谈到，好像吃水线以下的一艘轮船船舱中的一团火，这火在黑暗中呈现暗红色，从舱口下冒出来一缕缕刺鼻的浓烟，又突然从舷窗口和通气管滚滚冒出来——和布赖兹赫德在一起，我就置身于奇异的世界中，对我而言那是一个死寂的世界，置身于由光秃秃熔岩造成的月球上，置身于一片太空，在那里我即使声嘶力竭地大声叫喊，而对方却毫无所闻。

他说：“我希望这就是嗜酒狂。我们大家都要帮助他去忍受这种病，这简直是极大的不幸。过去我常常担心的是他想喝醉就喝醉，因为他喜欢喝醉。”

“过去他确实是这样的——而且我们俩都是这样的。现在他跟我也是这么干的。倘若你母亲信得过我，我能够使他只到这个地步。如果用监视人和神父的教化来纠缠他的话，不出几年他的身体就会完全垮了。”

“身体垮了可并不是什么罪过，你知道。并没有什么道德的义务要求谁成为邮政部长或者成为训练猎狗的大师，也没有要求谁活到八十岁还能步行十英里路。”

“什么罪过，”我说，“什么道德义务——你又扯到宗教去了。”

“我从来也没有离开过宗教。”布赖兹赫德说。

“布赖德，你要知道，如果我有那么一刻工夫感到愿意当一个天主教徒，那么我只需和你谈上五分钟就会完全消除这个念头。你竟然会把那些看来非常明智的主张变得十分荒谬。”

“真奇怪，你竟这么说。以前我也听到别人说过。我觉得我之所以成不了一个优秀的教士，这也是许多原因中的一个。我想，我的脑子思考问题的方法起了作用。”

吃午饭的时候，朱莉娅满脑子想的都是这天要来的客人。她开车去车站接他，而且把他接回家来吃茶点。

“妈妈，一定要来看看雷克斯的圣诞节礼物。”

这是一只小乌龟，在活生生的乌龟壳上用钻石嵌着朱莉娅名字开头的大写字母，这个有点可憎的东西一会儿在光滑的桌面上有气无力地爬行，一会儿爬过了牌桌，一会儿又笨手笨脚地爬上一块小地毯，碰它一下，它就往回缩一缩，然后又伸出脖子，晃晃它那干瘪的老朽的脑袋，它成了这个晚上令人难忘的一个物件，成了一个有吸引力的东西，在危急关头它把人们的注意力吸引过去。

“哎呀，”马奇梅因夫人说，“我不知道它吃的东西是不是和普通乌龟吃的一样啊。”

“要是它死了，你怎么办呢？”桑格拉斯先生问，“能不能把别的乌龟安进这个乌龟壳里呢？”

雷克斯也曾经听说过塞巴斯蒂安的问题——如果没有别的什么办法，他在这种气氛中几乎没法忍受——于是他就带来这个小动物作为解决办法。在喝茶的时候他兴高采烈地把塞巴斯蒂安的问题公开提出来，到这时候，他们已经窃窃私语了一天，这会儿听人家公开谈论这个问题倒是很宽慰的。“把他打发到苏黎世的博莱图斯那儿去吧。博莱图斯是那人的名字，他在他工作的那个疗养院每天都在创造奇迹。你们都知道查利·基尔卡特尼一向是怎么喝酒的吧。”

“不知道。”马奇梅因夫人说，还带着她那亲切的冷嘲口吻，“不知道，恐怕我不知道查利·基尔卡特尼过去是怎么喝酒的。”

朱莉娅听到她的情人遭到奚落，冲着那只乌龟蹙起眉头，可是雷克斯·莫特拉姆并不懂得这类微妙的玩笑。

“两个妻子对他都绝望了。”他说，“他跟西尔维亚订婚的时候，西尔维亚把他必须去苏黎世进行治疗当作一个条件。治疗是起作用的。过了三个月他回来时已经判若两人了。从那时起，他连一滴酒也没沾，即使西尔维亚抛弃了他也是一样。”

“她为什么要抛弃他呢？”

“嗨，可怜的查利一旦戒了酒就叫人讨厌极了。不过实际上这也并不是这件事的关键。”

“我猜想也不是的。我想事实上这个故事确实是很鼓舞人心的。”

这时朱莉娅怒视着她那只嵌着钻石的乌龟。

“他也接受性病病人，你知道。”

“呃，亲爱的，可怜的塞巴斯蒂安在苏黎世将要结识些什么古怪的朋友啊。”

“要提前好几个月预约好。不过我想，如果我向他要求的话，他会留出空房来的。今天晚上我就可以从这儿给他打电话。”

（雷克斯在他最亲切的时刻展示出来一种虚张声势的热情，就像他把一个真空吸尘器塞给一位很不情愿的家庭主妇手上一样。）

“我们得考虑考虑。”

我们正在考虑这件事，这时科迪莉娅打猎回来了。

“啊，朱莉娅，这是什么？太让人厌恶啦！”

“这是雷克斯送的圣诞节礼物。”

“噢，对不起。我总把事情搞糟了。可是这太狠心啦！它一定痛极了吧。”

“它们不会觉得痛。”

“你怎么知道？我敢断定它们会觉得的。”

她吻了吻这一天她还没见到的母亲，又和雷克斯握握手，就打铃要了鸡蛋。

“我在巴尼太太那儿吃过茶点了，我是从她那儿打电话要汽车的，可是我现在还饿。今天可妙极啦。琼·斯特里克兰—维纳布尔斯摔到泥泞里去了。我们连停也没停，一口气从本格斯跑到了伊斯特莱。我估计有五英里路，是吧，布赖德？”

“三英里。”

“不止三英里，就照他那样跑……”在她大口大口吃炒鸡蛋的时候，她告诉我们打猎的事。“……你们真该看看琼从泥泞里站起来是个什么样子。”

“塞巴斯蒂安在哪儿？”

“他可丢脸了。”这几个字由孩子般的清脆嗓音说出来，就犹如敲响了丧钟，她接着说：“他出门时穿着一件捕鼠人穿的让人恶心的外套，系着一条难看的小领带，就好像是从莫文上尉的骑兵学校里出来的。在集合地点我差点没认出他来，我希望谁也没有认出他来。他没回来吗？我估计他又走丢啦。”

当威尔科克斯把茶具清理走的时候，马奇梅因夫人问道：“没有塞巴斯蒂安少爷的踪迹吗？”

“没有，夫人。”

“他一定停下来和什么人喝茶呢。他怎么会像这样呢。”

又过了半点钟，威尔科克斯端着鸡尾酒的托盘进来的时候说：“塞巴斯蒂安少爷刚才打电话来说要车去南特温宁接他。”

“南特温宁？谁住在那儿？”

“他是从旅馆里打来的电话，夫人。”

“南特温宁？”科迪莉娅说，“天哪，他真的走丢啦！”

他到家的时候，满脸通红，眼睛发烧似的发亮；我看出他已经有七八成的醉意了。

“亲爱的孩子，”马奇梅因夫人说，“看到你的气色又这么好，多叫人高兴啊！在野地里待一天对你的身体很好。桌子上有酒；自己喝吧。”

除了她说有酒这句话以外，她的话里并没有什么特别的东西。而在六个月以前，这话是不会说出来的。

“谢谢，”塞巴斯蒂安说，“我会喝的。”



Chapter 7
IT is time to speak of Julia, who till now has played an intermittent and somewhat enigmatic part in Sebastian’s drama. It was thus she appeared to me at the time, and I to her. We pursued separate aims which brought us near to one another, but we remained strangers. She told me later that she had made a kind of note of me in her mind, as, scanning the shelf for a particular book, one will sometimes have one’s attention caught by another, take it down, glance at the title page and, saying ‘I must read that, too, when I’ve the time,’ replace it, and continue the search. On my side the interest was keener, for there was always the physical likeness between brother and sister, which, caught repeatedly in different poses, under different lights, each time pierced me anew; and, as Sebastian in his sharp decline seemed daily to fade and crumble, so much the more did Julia stand out clear and firm.

She was thin in those days, flat-chested, leggy; she seemed all limbs and neck, bodiless, spidery; thus far she conformed to the fashion, but the hair-cut and the hats of the period, and the blank stare and gape of the period, and the clownish dabs of rouge high on the cheekbones, could not reduce her to type.

When I first met her, when she met me in the station yard and drove me home through the twilight, that high summer of 1923, she was just eighteen and fresh from her first London season.

Some said it was the most brilliant season since the war, that things were getting into their stride again. Julia was at the centre of it. There were then remaining perhaps half a dozen London houses which could be called ‘historic’; Marchmain House in St James’s was one of them, and the ball given for Julia, in spite of the ignoble costume of the time, was by all accounts a splendid spectacle. Sebastian went down for it and half-heartedly suggested my coming with him; I refused and came to regret my refusal, for it was the last ball of its kind given there; the last of a splendid series.  How could I have known? There seemed time for everything in those days; the world was open to be explored at leisure. I was so full of Oxford that summer; London could wait, I thought.

The other great houses belonged to kinsmen or to childhood friends of Julia’s, and beside s them there were countless substantial houses in the squares of Mayfair and Belgravia, alight and thronged, one or other of them, night after night. Foreigners returning on post from their own waste lands wrote home that here they seemed to catch a glimpse of the world they had believed lost forever, among the mud and wire, and through those halcyon weeks Julia darted and shone, part of the sunshine between the tress, part of the candle-light in the mirror’s spectrum, so that elderly men and women sitting aside with their memories, saw her as herself the blue-bird. ‘ “Bridey” Marchmain’s eldest girl,’ they said. ‘Pity he can’t see her tonight.’ That night and the night after, wherever she went always in her own little circle of intimates, she brought a moment of Joy, such as strikes deep to the heart on the river’s bank when the kingfisher suddenly flares across the water.

This was the creature, neither child nor woman, that drove me through the dusk that summer evening, untroubled by love, taken aback by the power of her own beauty, hesitating on the cool edge of life one who had suddenly found herself armed, unawares; the heroine of a fairy story turning over in her hands the magic ring; she had only to stroke it with her fingertips and whisper the charmed word, for the earth to open at her feet and belch forth her titanic servant, the fawning monster who would bring her whatever she asked., but bring it, perhaps, in unwelcome shape.  She had no interest in me that evening; the jinn rumbled below us uncalled; she lived apart in a little world, within a little world, the innermost of a system of concentric spheres, like the ivory balls laboriously carved in China; a little problem troubling her mind - little, as she saw it, in abstract terms and symbols. She was wondering dispassionately and leagues distant from reality, whom she should marry. Thus strategists hesitate over the map, the few pins and lines of coloured chalk, contemplating a change in the pins and lines, a matter of inches, which outside the room, out of sight of the studious officers, may engulf past, present, and future in ruin or life. She was a symbol to herself then, lacking the life of both child and women; victory and defeat were changes of pin and line; she knew nothing of war.  ‘If only one lived abroad,’ she thought, ‘where these things are arranged between parents and lawyers.’

To be married, soon and splendidly, was the aim of all her friends. If she looked further than the wedding, it was to see marriage as the beginning of individual existence; the skirmish where one gained one’s spurs, from which one set out on the true quests of life.

She outshone by far all the girls of her age, but she knew that, in that little world within a world which she inhabited, there were certain grave disabilities from which she suffered. On the sofas against the wall where the old people counted up the points, there were things against her. There was the scandal of her father; that slight, inherited stain upon her brightness that seemed deepened by something in her own way of life - waywardness and wilfulness, a less disciplined habit than most of her contemporaries; but for that, who knows?...

One subject eclipsed all others in importance for the ladies along the wall; who would the young princes marry? They could not hope for purer lineage or a more gracious presence than Julia’s; but there was this faint shadow on her that unfitted her for the highest honours; there was also her religion.

Nothing could have been further from Julia’s ambitions than a royal marriage. She knew, or thought she knew, what she wanted and it was not that. But wherever she turned, it seemed, her religion stood as a barrier between her and her natural goal.  As it seemed to her, the thing was a dead loss. If she apostatized now, having been brought up in the Church, she would go to hell, while the Protestant girls of her acquaintance, schooled in happy ignorance, could marry eldest sons, live at peace with their world, and get to heaven before her. There could be no eldest son for her, and younger sons were indelicate things, necessary, but not to be much spoken of. Younger sons had none of the privileges of obscurity; it was their plain duty to remain hidden until some disaster perchance promoted them to their brother’s places, and, since this was their function, it was desirable that they should keep themselves wholly suitable for succession. Perhaps in a family of three or four boys, a Catholic might get the youngest without opposition. There were of course the Catholics themselves, but these came seldom into the little world Julia had made for herself; those who did were her mother’s kinsmen, who, to her, seemed grim and eccentric. Of the dozen or so rich and noble Catholic families, none at that time had an heir of the right age. Foreigners - there were many among her mother’s family - were tricky about money, odd in their ways, and a sure mark of failure in the English girl who wed them. What was there left?  This was Julia’s problem after her weeks of triumph in London. She knew it was not insurmountable. There must, she thought, be a number of people outside her own world who were well qualified to be drawn into it; the shame was that she must seek them.



Not for her the cruel, delicate luxury of choice, the indolent, cat-and-mouse pastimes of the hearth-rug. No Penelope she; she must hunt in the forest.  She had made a preposterous little picture of the kind of man who would do: he was an English diplomat of great but not very virile beauty, now abroad, with a house smaller than Brideshead, nearer to London; he was old, thirty-two or -three, and had been recently and tragically widowed; Julia thought she would prefer a man a little subdued by earlier grief. He had a great career before him but had grown listless in his loneliness; she was not sure he was not in danger of falling into the hands of an unscrupulous foreign adventuress; he needed a new infusion of young life to carry him to the Embassy at Paris. While professing a mild agnosticism himself he had a liking for the shows of religion and was perfectly agreeable to having his children brought up Catholic; he believed, however in the prudent restriction of his family to two boys and a girl, comfortably, spaced over twelve years, and did not demand, as a Catholic husband might, yearly pregnancies. He had twelve thousand a year above his pay, and no near relations. Someone like that would do, Julia thought, and she was in search of him when she met me at the railway station. I was not her man. She told me as much, without a word, when she took the cigarette from my lips.

All this I learned about Julia, bit by bit, as one does learn the former - as it seems at the time, the preparatory - life of a woman one loves, so that one thinks of oneself as having been part of it, directing it by devious ways, towards oneself.

Julia left Sebastian and me at Brideshead and went to stay with an aunt, Lady Rosscommon, in her villa at Cap Ferrat. All the way she pondered her problem. She had given a name to her widower-diplomat; she called him “Eustace”, and from that moment he became a figure of fun to her, a little interior, incommunicable joke, so that when at last such a man did cross her path - though he was not a diplomat but a wistful major in the Life Guards - and fall in love with her and offer her just those gifts she had chosen, she sent him away moodier and more wistful than ever; for by that time she had met Rex Mottram.

Rex’s age was greatly in his favour, for among Julia’s friends there was a kind of gerontophilic snobbery; young men were held to be gauche and pimply; it was thought very much more chic to be seen lunching alone at the Ritz - a thing, in any case, allowed to few girls of that day, to the tiny circle of Julia’s intimates; a thing looked at askance by the elders who kept the score, chatting pleasantly against the walls of the ballrooms - at the table on the left as you came in, with a starched and wrinkled old roué whom your mother had be warned of as a girl, than than in the centre of the room with a party of exuberant young bloods. Rex, indeed, was neither starched nor wrinkled; his seniors thought him a pushful young cad, but Julia recognized the unmistakable chic - the flavour of ‘Max’ and ‘F. E.’ and the Prince of Wales, of the big table in the Sporting Club, the second magnum, and the fourth cigar, of the chauffeur kept waiting hour after hour without compunction - which her friends would envy. His social position was unique; it had an air of mystery, even of crime, about it; people said Rex went about armed. Julia and her friends had a fascinated abhorrence of what they called ‘Pont Street’; they collected phrases that damned their user, and among themselves - and often, disconcertingly, in public - talked a language made up of them. It was ‘Pont Street’ to wear a signet ring and to give chocolates at the theatre; it was ‘Pont Street’ at a dance to say, ‘Can I forage for you?’ Whatever Rex might be, he was definitely not ‘Pont Street’. He had stepped straight from the underworld into the world of Brenda Champion who was herself the innermost of a number of concentric ivory spheres.

Perhaps Julia recognized in Brenda Champion an intimation of what she and her friends



might be in twelve years’ time; there was an antagonism between the girl and the woman that was hard to explain otherwise. Certainly the fact of his being Brenda Champion’s property sharpened Julia’s appetite for Rex.  Rex and Brenda Champion were staying at the next villa on Cap Ferrat, taken that year by a newspaper magnate, and frequented by politicians. They would not normally have come within Lady Rosscommon’s ambit, but, living so close, the parties mingled and at once, Rex began warily to pay his court.

All that summer he had been feeling restless. Mrs Champion had proved a dead end; it had all been intensely exciting at first, but now the bonds had begun to chafe. Mrs Champion lived as, he found, the English seemed apt to do, in a little world within a little world; Rex demanded a wider horizon. He wanted to consolidate his gains; to strike the black ensign, go ashore, hang the cutlass up over the chimney, and think about the crops. It was time he married; he, too, was in search of a ‘Eustace’, but, living as he did, he met few girls. He knew of Julia; she was by all accounts top debutante, a suitable prize.

With Mrs Champion’s cold eyes watching behind her sunglasses, there was little Rex could do at Cap Ferrat except establish a friendliness which could be widened later. He was never entirely alone with Julia, but he saw to it that she was included in most things they did; he taught her chemin-de-fer, he arranged that it was always in his car that they drove to Monte Carlo or Nice; he did enough to make Lady Rosscommon. write to Lady Marchmain, and Mrs Champion move him, sooner than they had planned, to Antibes.  Julia went to Salzburg to join her mother.

‘Aunt Fanny tells me you made great friends with Mr Mottram. I’m sure he can’t be very nice.’

‘I don’t think he is,’ said Julia. ‘I don’t know that I like nice people.’ There is proverbially a mystery among most men of new wealth, how they made their first ten thousand; it is the qualities they showed then, before they became bullies, when every man was someone to be placated, when only hope sustained them and they could count on nothing from the world but what could be charmed from it, that make them, if they survive their triumph, successful with women. Rex, in the comparative freedom of London, became abject to Julia; he planned his life about hers where he would meet her, ingratiating himself with those who could report well of him to her; he sat on a number of charitable committees in order to be near Lady Marchmain; he offered his services to Brideshead in getting him a seat in Parliament (but was there rebuffed); he expressed a keen interest in the Catholic Church until he found that this was no way to Julia’s heart.  He was always ready to drive her in his Hispano wherever she wanted to go; he took her and parties of her friends to ring-side seats at prize-fights and introduced them afterwards to the pugilists; and all the time he never once made love to her. From being agreeable, he became indispensable to her; from having been proud of him in public she became a little ashamed, but by that time, between Christmas and Easter, he had become indispensable. And then, without in the least expecting it, she suddenly found herself in love.

It came to her, this disturbing and unsought revelation, one evening in May, when Rex had told her he would be busy at the House, and, driving by chance down Charles Street, she saw him leaving what she knew to be Brenda Champion’s house. She was so hurt and angry that she could barely keep up appearances through dinner; as soon as she could, she went home and cried bitterly for ten minutes; then she felt hungry, wished she had eaten more at dinner, ordered some bread-and-milk, and went to bed saying:

‘When Mr Mottram telephones in the morning, whatever time it is, say I am not to be disturbed.’



Next day she breakfasted in bed as usual, read the papers, telephoned to her friends.

Finally she asked: ‘Did Mr Mottram ring up by any chance?’

‘Oh yes my lady four times. Shall I put him through when he rings again?’

‘Yes. No. Say I’ve gone out.’

When she came downstairs there was a message for her on the hall table. Mr Mottram expects Lady Julia at the Ritz at 1.30. ‘I shall lunch at home today, ‘ she said.  That afternoon she went shopping with her mother; they had tea with an aunt and returned at six.

‘Mr Mottram is waiting, my Lady. I’ve shown him into the library.’

‘Oh, mummy, I can’t be bothered with him. Do tell him to go home.’ ‘That’s not at all kind, Julia. I’ve often said he’s not my favourite among your friends, but I have grown quite used to him, almost to like him. You really mustn’t take people up and drop them like this - particularly people like Mr Mottram.’ Oh, mummy, must I see him? There’ll be a scene if I do.’

‘Nonsense, Julia, you twist that poor man round your finger.’

So Julia went into the library and came out an hour later engaged to be married.

‘Oh, mummy, I warned you this would happen if I went in there.’ ‘You did nothing of the kind. You merely said there would be a scene. I never conceived of a scene of this kind.’

‘Anyway, you do like him, mummy. You said so.’

‘He has been very kind in a number of ways. I regard him as entirely unsuitable as your husband. So will everyone.’

‘Damn everybody.’

‘We know nothing about him. He may have black blood - in fact he is suspiciously dark. Darling, the whole thing’s impossible. I can’t see how you can have been so foolish.’

‘Well, what right have I got otherwise to be angry with him if he goes with that horrible old woman? You make a great thing about rescuing fallen women. Well, I’m rescuing, a fallen man for a change. I’m saving Rex from mortal sin.’ ‘Don’t be irreverent, Julia.’

‘Well, isn’t it mortal sin to sleep with Brenda Champion?’

‘Or indecent.’

‘He’s promised never to see her again. I couldn’t ask him to do that unless I admitted I was in love with him could I?’

‘Mrs Champion’s morals, thank God, are not my business. Your happiness is. If you must know, I think Mr Mottram a kind and useful friend, but I wouldn’t trust him an inch, and I’m sure he’ll have very unpleasant children. They always revert. I’ve no doubt you’ll regret the whole thing in a few days. Meanwhile nothing is to be done. No one must be told anything or allowed to suspect. You must stop lunching with him. You may see him here, of course, but nowhere in public. You had better send him to me and I will have a little talk to him about it.’ Thus began a year’s secret engagement for Julia; a time of great stress, for Rex made love to her that afternoon for the first time; not, as had happened to her once or twice before with sentimental and uncertain boys, but with a passion that disclosed the corner of something like it in her. Their passion frightened her, and she came back from the confessional one day determined to put an end to it.  ‘Otherwise I must stop seeing you,’ she said.

Rex was humble at once, just as he had been in the winter, day after day, when he used to wait for her in the cold in his big car.

‘If only we could be married immediately,’ she said.

For six weeks they remained at arm’s length, kissing when they met and parted, sitting meantime at a distance, talking of what they would do and where they would live and of Rex’s chances of an under-secretaryship. Julia was content, deep in love, living in the future. Then, just before the end of the session, she learned that Rex had been staying the week-end with a stockbroker at Sunningdale, when he said he was at his constituency, and that Mrs Champion had been there, too.

On the evening she heard of this, when Rex came as usual to Marchmain House, they

re-enacted the scene of two months before.

‘What do you expect?’ he said. ‘What right have you to ask so much, when you give so little?’

She took her problem to Farm Street and propounded it in general terms, not in the confessional, but in a dark little parlour kept for such interviews.  ‘Surely, Father, it can’t be wrong to commit a small sin myself in order to keep him from a much worse one?’

But the gentle old Jesuit was unyielding. She barely listened to him; he was refusing her what she wanted, that was all she needed to know.

When he had finished he said, ‘Now you had better make your confession.’ ‘No, thank you,’ she said, as though refusing the offer of something in a shop. ‘I don’t think I want to today,’ and walked angrily home.

From that moment she shut her mind against her religion.  And Lady Marchmain saw this and added it to her new grief for Sebastian and her old grief for her husband and to the deadly sickness in her body, and took all these sorrows with her daily to church; it seemed her heart was transfixed with the swords of her dolours, a living heart to match the plaster and paint; what comfort she took home with her, God knows.

So the year-wore on and the secret of the engagement spread from Julia’s confidantes to their confidantes, until, like ripples at last breaking on the mud-verge, there were hints of it in the Press, and Lady Rosscommon as Lady-in-Waiting was closely questioned about it, and something had to be done. Then, after Julia had refused to make her Christmas communion and Lady Marchmain had found herself betrayed first by me, then by Mr Samgrass, then by Cordelia, in the first grey days of 1925, she decided to act. She forbade all talk of an engagement; she forbade Julia and Rex ever to meet; she made plans for shutting Marchmain House for six months and taking Julia on a tour of visits to their foreign kinsmen. It was characteristic of an old, atavistic callousness that went with her delicacy that, even at this crisis, she did not think it unreasonable to put Sebastian in Rex’s charge on the journey to Dr Borethus, and Rex, having failed her in that matter, went on to Monte Carlo, where he completed her rout.  Lord Marchmain did not concern himself with the finer points of Rex’s character; those, he believed, were his daughter’s business. Rex seemed a rough, healthy, prosperous fellow whose name was already familiar to him from reading the political reports; he gambled in an open-handed but sensible manner; he seemed to keep reasonably good company; he had a future; Lady Marchmain disliked him. Lord Marchmain was, on the whole, relieved that Julia should have chosen so well, and gave his consent to an immediate marriage.

Rex gave himself to the preparations with gusto. He bought her a ring, not, as she expected, from a tray at Cartier’s, but in a back room in Hatton Garden from a man who brought stones out of a safe in little bags and displayed them for her on a writing-desk; then another man in another back room made designs for the setting, with a stub of pencil on a sheet, of note-paper, and the result excited the admiration of all her friends.  ‘How d you know about these things, Rex?’ she asked.



She was daily surprised by the things he knew and the things he did not know; both, at the time, added to his attraction.

His present house in Hertford Street was large enough for them both, and had lately been furnished and decorated by the most expensive firm. Julia said she did not want a house in the country yet; they could always take places furnished when they wanted to go away.

There was trouble about the marriage settlement with which Julia refused to interest herself. The lawyers were in despair. Rex absolutely refused to settle any capital. ‘What do I want with trustee stock?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, darling.’

‘I make money work for me,’ he said. ‘I expect fifteen, twenty per cent and I get it. It’s pure waste tying up capital at three and a half’ ‘I’m sure it is, darling.’

‘These fellows talk as though I were trying to rob you. It’s they who are doing the robbing. They want to rob you of two thirds of the income I can make you.’ ‘Does it matter, Rex? We’ve got heaps, haven’t we?’

Rex hoped to have the whole of Julia’s dowry in his hands, to make it work for him.  The lawyers insisted on tying it up, but they could not get, as they asked, a like sum from him. Finally, grudgingly, he agreed to insure his life, after explaining at length to the lawyers that this was merely a device for putting part of his legitimate profits into other people’s pockets; but he had some connection with an insurance office which made the arrangement slightly less painful to him, by which he took for himself the agent’s commission which the lawyers were themselves expecting.  Last and least came the question of Rex’s religion. He had once attended a royal wedding in Madrid, and he wanted something of the kind for himself.  ‘That’s one thing your Church can do,’ he said, ‘put on a good show. You never saw anything to equal the cardinals. How many do you have in England?’ ‘Only one, darling.’

‘Only one? Can we hire some others from abroad?’

It was then explained to him that a mixed marriage was a very unostentatious affair.

‘How d’you mean “mixed”;’ I’m not a nigger or anything.’

‘No, darling, between a Catholic and a Protestant.’

‘Oh, that? Well, if that’s all, it’s soon unmixed. I’ll become a Catholic. What does one have to do?’

Lady Marchmain was dismayed and perplexed by this new development; it was no good her telling herself that in charity she must assume his good faith; it brought back memories of another courtship and another conversion.  ‘Rex,’ she said. ‘I sometimes wonder if you realize how big a thing you are taking on in the Faith. It would be very wicked to take a step like this without believing sincerely.’ He was masterly in his treatment of her.

‘I don’t pretend to be a very devout man,’ he said, ‘nor much of a theologian, but I know it’s a bad plan to have two religions in one house. A man needs a religion. If your Church is good enough for Julia, it’s good enough for me.’ ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘I will see about having you instructed.’ ‘Look, Lady Marchmain, I have the time. Instruction will be wasted on me. Just you give me the form and I’ll sign on the dotted line.’

‘It usually takes some months - often a lifetime.’

‘Well, I’m a quick learner. Try me.’



So Rex was sent to Farm Street to Father Mowbray, a priest renowned for his triumphs with obdurate catechumens. After the third interview he came to tea with Lady Marchmain.

‘Well, how do you find my future son-in-law?’

‘He’s the most difficult convert I have ever met.’

‘Oh dear, I thought he was going to make it so easy.’

‘That’s exactly it. I can’t get anywhere near him. He doesn’t seem to have the least intellectual curiosity or natural piety.

‘The first day I wanted to find out what sort of religious life he had till now, so I asked him what he meant by prayer. He said: “I don’t mean anything. You tell me.” I tried to, in a few words, and he said: “Right. So much for prayer; What’s the next thing?” I gave him the catechism to take away. Yesterday I asked him whether Our Lord had more than one nature. He said: “Just as many as you say, Father.” ‘Then again I asked him: “Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud and said ‘It’s going to rain’, would that be bound to happen?” “Oh, yes, Father.” “But supposing it didn’t?” He thought a moment and said, “I suppose it would be sort of raining spiritually, only we were too sinful to see it.”

‘Lady Marchmain, he doesn’t correspond to any degree of paganism known to the missionaries.’

‘Julia,’ said Lady Marchmain, when the priest had gone, ‘are you sure that Rex isn’t doing this thing purely with the idea of pleasing us?’

‘I don’t think it enters his head,’ said Julia.

‘He’s really sincere in his conversion?’

‘He’s absolutely determined to become a Catholic, mummy,’ and to herself she said:

‘In her long history the Church must have had some pretty queer converts. I don’t suppose all Clovis’s army were exactly Catholic-minded. One more won’t hurt.’ Next week the Jesuit came to tea again. It was the Easter holidays and Cordelia was there, too.

‘Lady Marchmain,’ he said. ‘You should have chosen one of the younger fathers for this task. I shall be dead long before Rex is a Catholic.’ ‘Oh dear, I thought it was going so well.’

‘It was, in a sense. He was exceptionally docile, and he accepted everything I told him, remembered bits of it, asked no questions. I wasn’t happy about him. He seemed to have no sense of reality, but I knew he was coming under a steady Catholic influence, so I was willing to receive him. One has to take a chance sometimes with semi-imbeciles, for instance. You never know quite how much they have understood. As long as you know there’s someone to keep an eye on them, you do take the chance.’ ‘How I wish Rex could hear this!’ said Cordelia.

‘But yesterday I got a regular eye-opener. The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what’s been taught and what’s been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into the depths of confusion you didn’t know existed. Take yesterday. He seemed to be doing very well. He learned large bits of the catechism by heart, and the Lord’s Prayer, and the Hail Mary. Then I asked him as usual if there was anything troubling him, and he looked at me in a crafty way and said, “Look, Father, I don’t think you’re being straight with me. I want to join your Church and I’m going to join your Church, but you’re holding too much back.” I asked what he meant, and he said: “I’ve had a long talk with a Catholic - a very pious well-educated one and I’ve learned a thing or two.

For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that’s the



direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I’ll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d’you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a Cardinal?  And what about the box 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 inquiries about my prospective brother-in-law, as no one else seemed interested,’ said Brideshead. ‘I got the final answer tonight. He was married in Montreal in 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 het 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 look out. 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 was 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 blossom 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 of 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 Rosscommon’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 modem 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.

现在该谈谈朱莉娅了，在塞巴斯蒂安这出戏中，到现在她一直扮演了一个时隐时现的、有点像迷一样的角色。当时她给我的印象也正是这个样子，而我给她的，也是如此。我们各自追求的目标使我们彼此接近，但是我们依然还是陌生人。她后来跟我说，她在脑子里多少还是注意到我的，这就好比一个人查看书架专门要找某一本书，可是有时另一本书会引起他的注意一样，他把这本书取下来，瞥了一眼封面上的书名说：“有了时间我一定也要读读这本书，”然后又把它放回原处，继续寻找他要找的书。我的兴趣要更浓一些，因为在兄妹之间总是存在着身体上的相似，这种相似在不同的姿势中，在不同的光线下，每次看起来都重新触动我，而且，由于塞巴斯蒂安的形象迅速颓唐，仿佛每天都变得暗淡、模糊，而朱莉娅的形象就显得更加清晰和实在了。

那时她很瘦，胸脯扁平，双腿修长；她的四肢和脖子很显眼，而身体却不引人注意，就像个蜘蛛似的。从这些方面看，她是时髦的，但是那个时代的发式和女帽，那个时代的茫然目光和张嘴凝视的神情，还有颧骨高处涂的两团可笑的胭脂，都不能使她成为时髦的典型。

当我初次遇到她的时候，也就是她在那个车站的车场里接到我，在暮色中开车送我到家的一九二三年那个盛夏的时候，她刚刚十八岁，初次参加伦敦社交季节。

有人说，那是战争爆发以来最为盛大辉煌的一次社交季节了，生活又在大步前进。朱莉娅当时是社交场上令人瞩目的人物。当时大概还遗留着五六家可以称之为“历史上著名的”伦敦世家；圣詹姆斯大街上的马奇梅因公馆就是其中的一个。为朱莉娅举行的舞会，尽管当时的服装简陋粗糙，但据大家说，还是颇为壮观的。塞巴斯蒂安也为此来到伦敦，只是随便提了一句让我和他一起去参加舞会；我拒绝了，可是接着我又后悔不应该拒绝，因为这是那里举行的最后一次舞会了；而且也是一系列辉煌舞会的最后一场了。

我怎么会预见到这些呢？在那些日子里，似乎有的是时间去干任何事情；社交界是开放的，可以从从容容地去细看一番。那个夏天我心里想的差不多都是牛津的事；我想，伦敦还可以等等再说。

另外几处大公馆是属于朱莉娅男性亲属的或她幼年时的朋友们的，除此之外，在五月市街区和贝尔格拉维亚街区还有无数的富裕人家，那里灯火通明，人们摩肩接踵，轮番举行舞会，夜夜不断，那些从荒芜的国土上返任的外国人给他们国内写信说道，在伦敦他们仿佛瞥见了他们原以为永远在泥泞和铁丝网中消失了的那个世界。经过几个平稳幸福的星期，朱莉娅崭露头角，光彩照人，犹如透过树林缝隙的阳光，又如镜子里的烛光，使得那些坐在一边回忆自己当年的上了岁数的男人和女人们看出她就像自己过去一样是一只幸福的青鸟。“那是‘布赖德’·马奇梅因家的长女，”他们说，“可惜他今晚看不到她。”

那一夜，以及接踵而来的几夜，她所到之处，总是一头扎在亲密朋友的小圈子里，引起了一阵欢乐声，如翠鸟倏地掠过水面，引起河岸上的人心里猛地一惊。

就是这个人，已经不是孩子，但还不是妇人，在那个夏日傍晚的薄暮中给我开车，她没有尝过爱情的苦恼，由于她自己的美而吃惊，却在生活的冷漠边缘上犹豫。她猛然发现自己无意中已经武装起来了；这位神话故事中的女主角转动手里那只魔指环；她只消用指尖摸一下这只魔指环，轻声念着咒语，大地就会在她脚下裂开，她那个力大无比的仆人就会冒出来，无论她要求什么，那位谄媚的妖怪都会给她带来，可是带来的东西的形状也许不能令她满意。

那天晚上她对我没有兴趣；那个精灵不请自来，在我们下面低沉地响着；她离群索居在一个狭小的世界里，而且不走出这个狭小的世界，住在像精心雕刻的镂空的中国象牙球的最深处。有些问题苦恼着她——照抽象术语和符号来讲在她看来是微不足道的。她不动感情又远离现实，战略家们就是这样面对地图上一些大头钉和彩色粉笔的线条踌躇不决，他们冥思苦索着大头钉和粉笔线条如何变动，虽说就是几英寸的事，可是在外面，在这些小心谨慎的军官们看不见的地方，却会把过去、现在和将来的生活毁掉或保存下来。当时对她自己来说，她也无非是个符号，既缺乏孩子的生活，也缺乏妇人的经验；胜利和失败要看大头钉和线条的种种变化；而她对战争却一无所知。

“要是住在国外的话，”她思考着，“这些事情由父母和律师一道安排就好了。”

赶快结婚，而且要仪式隆重，这就是她所有朋友们的目标。如果她的眼光看得远一点的话，她就会把结婚看成是独立生活的开始；看成是一种使人受到鼓励的战斗，是从此探索人生真谛的途径。

她比她同年龄的姑娘们光彩照人得多，不过她知道在她所居住的那个世界里的狭小的地方，她为了某些严重缺陷而苦恼。老人们坐在靠墙的沙发上，计算了分数，存在着于她不利的事情，有她父亲的丑闻，这丑闻留给她污点，那个不大的污点，落在她明朗的性格上，由于她自己的生活方式似乎污点更加深——她任性、固执，比起大多数同年龄人显得较缺乏训练；可是，如果没有这一切，后果如何，又有谁知道呢？……

对于坐在靠墙沙发椅上的夫人们，有一个话题使别的一切话题都黯然失色：年轻的王子们会和谁结婚呢？他们不能期待比朱莉娅血统更纯粹，或风度比她更优雅的了；可是她身上却笼罩着一层淡淡的阴影，使她无法享受这种至高无上的荣誉；还有她的宗教信仰问题。

朱莉娅最不敢奢望的事情，就是与皇室攀亲了。她知道，或许她自以为知道，她想望的是什么，反正决不是与皇室结亲。可是无论她向哪里发展，她的宗教信仰似乎是她婚姻方面的一个障碍。

她觉得，这是一件无可挽回的事了。即使她这时背叛原来的宗教信仰，由于从小受的是天主教教育，她也得下地狱，而那些和她认识的信新教的姑娘们受的教育使她们天真快乐，能够和长子结婚，与身边的社会相安无事，而且要在她之前进入天国。对她来说，根本不可能找到长子了，而次子们都是一些鄙俗的家伙，对于她乃是必然的，但是并没有什么值得称道的。幼子们无权让自己默默无闻；他们明显的义务是不要出头露面，等着什么意外的灾祸把他们推上长兄的位置，因为这也是他们应起的作用，所以就要求他们完全保持着随时适合接替长兄的状态。也许在一个有三四个男孩的家庭里，一个天主教的女孩可以嫁给最小的儿子而不致引起非议，当然还有一些本人就是天主教徒，但是他们很少进入到朱莉娅给自己创造的小圈子里面；进入这个小圈子里的人都是她母亲那边的男性亲属，她觉得那些人都太冷酷太怪僻了。在当时五六个富有而高贵的天主教家庭中，又没有一个年龄与她相当的男孩子。而外国人呢——在她母亲的家族方面，外国人很多——那些人对于钱财又都诡计多端，习惯很怪僻，一个英国姑娘要嫁给这种外国人，结果必定是失败的。还有什么人可供选择呢。

上面是朱莉娅在伦敦几个星期获得胜利之后所遇到的问题。她知道这个问题不是不能解决的。她感觉到她的圈子外边肯定还有一些够格的人可以引到她的圈子里面来的。使她感到羞耻的是她得去寻找他们。那种严格的、精挑细选的奢望，在壁炉前地毯上捉迷藏的消遣，可不是她的了。她并不是珀涅罗珀；她必须在森林里去寻猎。

她曾经描画出过一个她认为可以的男人的荒唐可笑的形象，那个人很漂亮但并不是特别具有男性美的英国外交家，此时正在国外，有一所比布赖兹赫德小些的庄园，离伦敦较近；他岁数不小，有三十二三，新近悲惨地丧偶；朱莉娅觉得她更喜欢由于早年的不幸而有些消沉的男人。他本来有着远大前程，可是由于生活寂寞已经变得冷漠了；她无法确定的是，他是不是有可能落入无耻的外国女骗子手中；他需要注入一种新的青春活力，好把他带进驻巴黎的大使馆去。虽然他自己宣称相信一种温和的不可知论，但他还喜欢宗教仪式，并且同意让他的孩子们受到天主教的教育。他还相信他的家庭要谨慎地限制在生两个男孩和一个女孩之内，并且要舒适地把这三个孩子分散在十二年里生，而不像一个天主教的丈夫要求的那样，要她年年都怀孕。除了工资，他每年还有一万二千镑的进项，而且没有家庭负担，朱莉娅想，像这样的人是中她意的，那一年夏天她去火车站接我的时候，就在寻找他。我并不是她所要找的人。当她从我的嘴唇上取下香烟的时候，尽管一句话没说，但是其实已经把这些都告诉我了。

我所知道的关于朱莉娅的这一切，都是一点一滴得来的，正如一个人了解一个他所爱恋的女人的早年生活一样——这生活，在当时，仿佛是她生活的准备阶段——这个人就会认为自己就是她生活的一部分，迂回曲折地把她早年生活引向自己。


朱莉娅把我和塞巴斯蒂安留在了布赖兹赫德，自己去了她的舅妈罗斯康芒夫人那里，住在弗拉角她的别墅里。一路上她都在思索她的问题。她已经给她那位丧偶的外交官起了一个名字；她把他叫做“尤斯塔斯”，从那时起，他已经成为她的一个有趣的人物了，稍稍有些内向，不苟言笑，因此当最后这么一个人和她邂逅相遇的时候——虽然他并不是个外交官而是御林军骑兵团的愁闷的少校——他立刻就爱上了朱莉娅，而且送给她的礼物恰恰都是她中意的，可是她把他打发走了，让他比以前更加愁闷；因为这时她已经遇到了雷克斯·莫特拉姆。

雷克斯的年龄对他十分有利，因为在朱莉娅的朋友中有一些过分敬老的势利之徒；而青年人都被认为是不善交际，满脸脓疱。让人家看见单独在利兹餐厅吃午饭，是很时髦不过的事——这种事无论如何当时的女孩子是不允许做的，但朱莉娅的小群密友却可以做，这种事，上了年岁的爱说闲话的人看了表示轻蔑，他们一边靠在舞厅的墙边愉快地闲聊天——在你进门时左边桌上坐着一个古板的满脸皱纹的老浪子，你母亲在做姑娘时人家就曾提醒她要提防着的人，而不是舞厅中央那一伙精力充沛的年轻的子弟。雷克斯的确既不古板又没有皱纹；他的上司认为他是个有进取心的年轻人，但是朱莉娅却在他身上看出明确的潇洒风度——马克斯和弗·伊和皇太子的风度来，还看出狩猎俱乐部大桌子边的人的情调，喝第二瓶两夸脱的大瓶酒，吸第四支雪茄，还有满不在乎地让汽车司机一连等上好几个小时的气派——这些都会让她的朋友们嫉妒。雷克斯的社会地位是很独特的，围绕着这种社会地位有一种神秘的甚至是犯罪的气氛；人家都说雷克斯带着熗到处闯荡过。朱莉娅和她的朋友们非常憎恨所谓的“庞特街”；她们把那些用了要遭天谴的语言都搜集起来，在她们中间——也常常在大庭广众之前令人吃惊地——用这种拼凑起来的语言来说话。戴着图章戒指，看戏的时候送人巧克力糖，这就是所谓“庞特街”的做派；也正是“庞特街”才在跳舞的时候说，“我能为你去抢劫吗？”管他雷克斯是什么人，反正他肯定不是“庞特街”。他曾从下流社会径直步入布伦达·钱皮恩的圈子，而她本身就处在许多镂空象牙球的最深处。也许朱莉娅在布伦达·钱皮恩身上就清楚地看出她和她的朋友十二年内的形象来；在这个姑娘和那种女人之间存在着一种对抗情绪，这对抗是很难用别的方式来解释的。确实，单单是雷克斯被布伦达·钱皮恩据为己有这件事本身，就加深了朱莉娅对雷克斯的好感。

雷克斯和布伦达·钱皮恩刚好也在弗拉角，就住在邻近的一家别墅里，那一年这所别墅被一位报界巨头买下了，频繁出入的都是些政客们。通常他们并不经常进入罗斯康芒夫人的领地来；可是他们住得太近了，这两伙人混到了一起，于是雷克斯就立刻小心翼翼地开始献起殷勤来。

整个夏天雷克斯都觉得坐卧不安。事实证明钱皮恩太太是一条没有出路的死胡同；最初这两个人打得火热，而现在种种束缚开始使他恼火了。他发现钱皮恩太太的生活也像英国人习惯的生活一样，也是生活在一个狭小世界的小圈子里，而雷克斯要求一个更广阔的天地。他要巩固他的利益；他要降下黑旗上岸生活，要把水手用的弯刀收起来，盘算起种地的收成。他这时也该结婚了；他也正在寻找一个“尤斯塔斯”，可是，像他过去那样生活，他遇不到姑娘。他听说过朱莉娅，照大家的说法，她乃是初进社交界的少女中的佼佼者，是个很值得追求的对象。

由于钱皮恩太太墨镜后面冷冰冰的眼睛监视着，雷克斯在弗拉角是很难施展得开的，只能建立一种日后能够发展的友谊而已。他从来没有跟朱莉娅单独在一起过，不过他也留意使她参加到他们的一切活动里来；他教她打牌赌博，他们驱车去蒙特卡洛或是去尼斯的时候，他总设法安排让她们坐在他的汽车里；他还一个劲儿地怂恿罗斯康芒夫人给马奇梅因夫人写信，钱皮恩太太还没有等他和罗斯康芒夫人筹划停当，就迫使他去了昂蒂布了。

朱莉娅去萨尔茨堡和她母亲住在一起了。

“范妮舅妈告诉我说，你和莫特拉姆先生来往很密切。我敢肯定他决不会是很体面的人。”

“我也觉得他不是，”朱莉娅说，“可是我知道我自己并不喜欢很体面的人。”

人人都知道，在大部分暴发户的男人中间，有一个如何发第一笔万镑家财的秘密，那就是他们变成恶棍之前所表现出来的品质；那时侯，他们得安抚每一个人，那时侯只有希望支持他们，他们不能依靠世界上任何东西，只能依靠以魅力取来的东西，如果他能在胜利后存活下来，他就会在女人方面获得成功。雷克斯生活在伦敦比较自由的气氛里，他对朱莉娅的手段越来越卑鄙，他故意把自己的生活围绕着她的生活安排，在什么地方会遇见她，他就去什么地方；对于凡是能够向她讲自己好话的人他都讨好巴结；为了接近马奇梅因夫人，他还参加了许多慈善事业委员会；他多次给布赖兹赫德帮忙，要给他弄到一个议会的席位（可是遭到议会拒绝）；对天主教他也表现出强烈的兴趣，直到他发现这并不能使朱莉娅动心才作罢。他随时准备开了他那部小轿车送她去她要去的地方。他还把她和她的朋友们带到职业拳击赛比赛场的最好坐位去看比赛，比赛结束后还把她们引见给拳击家们；可是从始至终他一次也没有向她表露过爱情。对于她，雷克斯从一个合意的人变成一个不可少的人。在公开的场合，她先是以雷克斯为骄傲，后来变得有点不好意思，但是到了从圣诞节到复活节中间的那段时间，雷克斯已经变成为不可少的人了。后来，她一点也没有料到，她突然发现自己堕入情网了。

可是五月的一个傍晚，当雷克斯跟她说过他在议院办事，当她偶然开车到查尔斯大街，瞥见雷克斯正从据她所知是布伦达·钱皮恩的家的那个地方出来的时候，那件令人心烦意乱、不期而遇的意外事却临到她身上。她感到那么伤心，那么愤怒，以致在吃晚饭的过程中，她几乎无法装门面。她一吃完饭，就马上回到家里，失声痛哭了十分钟；后来她感到饿了，这才想到要是刚才吃晚饭的时候多吃点就好了，于是又叫人拿来面包牛奶，睡觉的时候吩咐说：“要是莫特拉姆先生早晨打电话来，不管是什么时候，就说我不要人打搅。”

第二天她像往常那样在床上吃了早餐，看了报纸，给朋友们打过电话。最后她还是问道：“是不是凑巧有莫特拉姆先生来的电话呢？”

“有的，小姐，来过四次呢。如果他再来电话，我是不是给接过来呢？”

“接过来。不要接。就说我出去了。”

她到了楼下，大厅的桌子上有她的一封信。莫特拉姆先生希望朱莉娅小姐一点半时到利兹餐厅。“今天我可要在家里吃饭啦。”她说。

下午她和母亲出去买东西；然后她们又和一位姨妈一起喝了茶，六点钟时回到家里。

“莫特拉姆先生正等着呢，小姐。我已经把他带到图书室去了。”

“哎呀，妈妈，我可不能让他给打搅了。叫他回家去吧。”

“朱莉娅，这样做也太不友好了。虽然以前我常常说，你的朋友中我并不特别喜欢他，可是我倒对他越来越习惯了，差不多喜欢他了。你不能对人这样忽冷忽热呢——特别是对像莫特拉姆这样的人。”

“嗯，妈妈，我非得见他吗？恐怕见了面准得吵起来。”

“别胡扯了，朱莉娅，你这是在随意摆布那个可怜的人哩。”

就这样朱莉娅走进了那间图书室，一个小时后出来的时候他们已经订婚了。

“咳，妈妈，我警告过你，我要是进去的话准会发生这种事。”

“你根本就没有这样说过。你只是说准会吵架的。这样的吵架我可是绝对想象不出来呀。”

“不管怎么着，你是喜欢他的，妈妈，你这样说过啦。”

“他以前在许多方面还是非常不错的。可是他要做你的丈夫，我认为可完全不合适。大家也都会这么想的。”

“什么大家，见鬼去吧。”

“我们对他并不了解嘛。也许他还有黑人的血统呢——实际上他的肤色发黑就很让人犯疑。亲爱的，整个事情都是不可能的。我不明白你怎么能这么傻呢。”

“噢，如果我不跟他好，那么他跟那个要命的老婆子搞恋爱，我可有什么权利生他的气呢？你把拯救堕落的女人当做一件大好事。嘿，为了改变改变，我来拯救一个堕落的男人。我要把雷克斯从他的罪孽中解救出来。”

“不要这样胡闹，朱莉娅。”

“噢，和布伦达·钱皮恩一块儿睡觉就不算一宗大罪吗？”

“大概算很下流吧。”

“他已经答应了决不再见她了。要是我不承认我爱他，我怎么能够要求他这么做呢，是吧？”

“钱皮恩太太的品行，谢天谢地，跟我没什么关系。你的幸福可就跟我有关系了。如果你一定要了解的话，我认为，莫特拉姆先生是一个很亲切很有用的朋友，可是我一点儿也不信任他，我肯定他会生一群不招人喜欢的孩子。他们总要出现返祖现象的。我并不怀疑过几天你就会后悔的。在这个期间，千万不要干出什么事来。什么事也不要告诉别人，也不要让人猜疑到什么。而且你也不能再同他一起吃午饭了。你可以在家里和他见面，当然啦，凡是公共场合都不要去。你最好还是叫他来见见我，我要跟他稍微谈谈这件事情。”

于是就这样开始了为期达一年之久的朱莉娅的秘密订婚。就由于雷克斯这天下午第一次向她表露了爱情，因而使得这一年过得十分艰难；求爱对她可不是第一次，这不像她以前和那些多愁善感捉摸不定的男孩有过的一两次瓜葛，这一次他是以激情来表示的，这激情使她也流露出来类似某种激情的隐秘的东西。他们的激情把她吓坏了，一天她忏悔回来，她决心把这件事了结掉。

“要不然我一定不再见你了。”她说。

雷克斯马上就低三下四起来，就像他在冬天那样，当时他每天总是坐在他自己的小轿车里瑟缩地等待她。

“但愿我们马上就能结婚。”她说。

六个星期来他们一直保持着距离，见面和分手的时候都吻一下，同时坐着的时候也彼此分开，谈话是要做什么事啦，将来住在什么地方啦，再就是雷克斯是不是可能得到副部长的职位啦。陶醉在爱情里的朱莉娅，心满意足，生活在未来里。后来，正是这一学期快要结束的时候，她听说雷克斯在森宁代尔的一个证券经纪人那里度周末，可是他说是去他的选区，而且钱皮恩太太也恰恰去了森宁代尔。

就在她听说这个消息的晚上，雷克斯像往常那样来到马奇梅因公馆，于是他们又重演了一次两个月以前那样的争吵。

“你指望些什么呢？”他说，“你给我的这么少，你有什么权利对我要求这么多呢？”

她带着她的问题去了法姆大街神父那里，她把问题一般地提了出来，谈话的地方并不是在忏悔室里，而是在专门为这种谈话用的一间黑暗的小客厅里。

“神父，我为了使他不犯更坏的罪恶而自己犯下了一个小小的罪恶，这肯定不是错误吧？”

可是那位温和的老耶稣会会员却偏偏不同意。她几乎没有听他在说什么。他拒绝满足她的要求，她知道这一点就够了。

他说完前面那些话后又接着说：“现在你最好还是忏悔吧。”

“不，谢谢你，”她说，仿佛是在拒绝商店里建议她买的东西似的。“我今天不想做，”随后就怒气冲冲地步行回家了。

从这以后，她开始对她的宗教不理会了。

马奇梅因夫人看出了这种情形，再加上她新近为了塞巴斯蒂安感到非常悲伤，旧日为了丈夫感到非常哀痛，以及她身体上的沉疴，又加上了这一桩伤心事，她天天都要带着这些旧恨新愁去做礼拜；她的心似乎已经被几把忧伤之剑刺穿了，这颗活着的心要敷上膏药和软膏；可是她回家时又带回了什么样的安慰呢？那只有天知道了。


这一年就这样过去了，而订婚的秘密却从朱莉娅的知心女友传到她们的知心女友们，到后来就像檐口泥制的滴水瓦上的卷纹花饰终于破裂一样，报纸上终于也有所影射了，而作为公主侍女的罗斯康芒夫人，对这件事穷追不舍，刨根问底，这样不得不做一些事来补救。接着，也就是在朱莉娅拒绝接受圣诞节圣餐礼之后，马奇梅因夫人发现了起初是我，继而是桑格拉斯先生，接着是科迪莉娅都背叛了她，在一九二五年初的头几天阴沉沉的日子里，她决定采取行动了。她禁止大家谈论订婚一事；并且不许朱莉娅和雷克斯再见面；她还打算把马奇梅因公馆关闭六个月，带着朱莉娅去她的那些外国的男亲属那里去走访一圈。这正是伴随着病弱身体的老年返祖现象的一种麻木冷淡的特性，使得她甚至在这场危机中，让雷克斯陪伴塞巴斯蒂安去找什么博尔图斯医生，也不觉得有什么荒谬悖理的地方，而雷克斯在这事上使她失望了，就去了蒙特卡洛，在那儿雷克斯彻底把她打败了。马奇梅因勋爵并不关心雷克斯的人品还有什么更好的优点；这些事情，他认为都是女儿自己的事情。雷克斯看上去是一个粗犷、健康、事业兴旺的人，他的名字马奇梅因勋爵通过阅读那些政治报告早就熟悉了。他赌起来既慷慨大方，又通情达理；他交往的人似乎都很正派体面；他很有前途；可是马奇梅因夫人并不喜欢他。总的说来，马奇梅因勋爵对朱莉娅竟选择得如此之好大感宽慰，并且同意他们马上结婚。

于是雷克斯兴高采烈地着手进行各种准备工作。他给她买了一只戒指，不过并不像她希望的那样从卡尔蒂商店的盘子里买的，而是在哈顿公园的一间密室里一个男人从一个保险柜的几个小袋子里取出来的一些宝石，给她摆在一张写字台上的。后来在另一间密室里又有一个男人用一个铅笔头在一张便条纸上画出几个镶嵌宝石的草图来，其结果引起了她所有朋友们的赞叹。

“这些事情你是怎么知道的，雷克斯？”她问道。

她每天都要因他所知道的事情和他所不知道的事情而大为惊异。这两种情形此时都使他平添了不少吸引力。

他眼下在赫特福德大街的房子很大，他们两个人住是绰绰有余了，新近又由最豪华的一家公司配置了家具，并且装饰一新。朱莉娅说她还不想在乡下置别墅；要是出去玩一玩，也总能租到带家具的寓所的。

关于妻子的嫁妆问题却遇到麻烦，而这件事朱莉娅又不愿意参与。律师们一筹莫展。雷克斯坚决不同意用股本进行结算。“我拿着信托公债券有什么用呢？”他问。

“我哪知道呀，亲爱的。”

“我要能给我生利的金钱，”他说。“我指望的是百分之十五到百分之二十的利息，这我才能接受。不能随意变卖的百分之三点五的股本，纯粹是一堆废纸。”

“我相信的确如此，亲爱的。”

“那帮家伙说起来好像我要抢劫你似的。是他们在干着抢劫的勾当。他们是想把我可以给你弄到的三分之二的收入都抢走啊。”

“那又有什么关系，雷克斯？我们不是已经有了好多了吗？”

雷克斯希望把朱莉娅的嫁妆都弄到手，好让这些嫁妆给他发挥作用。律师们坚持要使嫁妆受到限制，不能随意变卖，不过他们也没有办法从他那里得到他们提出的一笔类似的金额。最后，他勉强同意给自己做了人寿保险，在同意之前，他曾经详细向律师们解释，这种做法不过是把他一部分合法收入交给别人支配。但是他和保险公司有联系，所以这一安排对他还不算太难受，通过安排，他取得了代理人佣金，这佣金本来是律师们希望得到的。

最后碰到的问题，也是最微不足道的问题，是雷克斯的宗教信仰问题。他曾经在马德里参加过一次皇家婚礼，因此他想给自己也举行像那种规模的婚礼。

“这种事情只有你那个教会才能办到，”他说，“办得很排场。你根本找不出什么人能比得上红衣主教。你在英国认识多少个？”

“只认识一个，亲爱的。”

“只一个？我们从国外雇几个来怎么样？”

接着朱莉娅对他好好解释一番，异教通婚办起来是没有什么排场的。

“你说的‘异教’是什么意思？我又不是个黑鬼什么的。”

“不是的，亲爱的，我是指天主教徒和新教徒之间通婚。”

“哦，这么回事？好啦，如果就是这么回事的话，马上就会不是异教通婚了。我要成为一个天主教徒。要成为一个天主教徒必须干些什么？”

马奇梅因夫人被这一新的发展弄得惊愕不已，茫然不知所措；即使她对自己说必须以博爱的精神来接受他的真诚，那也是无济于事的。这反倒使她回想起另一起求婚和改变宗教信仰的事情。

“雷克斯，”她说，“我有时不知道，你是否意识到了你在宗教上所要承担的是一件多么重大的事情。如果并非虔诚信仰而采取这一步骤，那将是非常恶劣的。”

在对付她这一点上他可是很高明的。

“我并不假装是个多么虔诚的人，”他说，“更装不出神学家的样子，可是我懂得在一个家里有两种宗教信仰，这种安排可糟糕透了。男人需要有宗教信仰。如果你们的宗教对朱莉娅有利，那对我也是很有利的。”

“那好极了，”她说，“我会留意使你得到指导的。”

“喂喂，马奇梅因夫人，我可没时间啊。宗教指导会浪费我的时间。干脆你把表格给我，我就毫不迟疑地签上名就得了。”

“这通常要用几个月的时间呢——而且常常是一辈子的时间。”

“嗨，我学起来很快。考验我一下吧。”

于是雷克斯就给打发到法姆大街莫布雷神父那里，这个神父是以多次感动过顽冥不化的新入教的教徒而著名。在第三次谈话以后，他来同马奇梅因夫人一起喝茶。

“喂，你觉得我未来的女婿怎么样？”

“他是我所遇见的最难皈依过来的人了。”

“呃，亲爱的，我原来还以为他很容易皈依呢。”

“说的正是这话。我根本不懂他是怎么回事。他似乎没有一点理性方面的求知欲，或者天生的虔诚。

“第一天，我想知道到今日为止，他过的是一种什么样的宗教生活，我就问他，知道祈祷是什么意思吗？他说：‘我不知道是什么意思。你告诉我吧。’我尽力简单地讲给他听，没讲几句，他就说：‘好啦，关于祈祷就讲这么多吧。还有什么事情要做？’我把《教义问答》给他，叫他带走。昨天我问他，上帝是否只有一种本性。他回答：‘你说有多少本性就有多少，神父。’

“接着我又问他：‘假定教皇抬头看到了一朵云彩，说就要下雨了，那么是不是就一定要下雨呢？’‘哦，是的，神父。’‘可是假设没有下雨呢？’他想了一下说：‘我推想大概下的是那种精神的雨吧，只是我们罪孽深重，所以看不见。’

“马奇梅因夫人，就我们传教士所了解的异教信仰的程度来说，他可是哪种也不符合啊。”

“朱莉娅，”马奇梅因夫人说，这时那位神父已经走了，“你敢肯定雷克斯要改教这件事，完全不是想讨我们喜欢？”

“我想这事并没有往他的脑子里去，”朱莉娅说。

“他改教是真的诚心诚意吗？”

“他是完全下定决心要变成天主教徒的，妈妈，”接着她又自言自语地说道，“在天主教的漫长历史中，大概也有一些相当古怪的改教者吧。我估计克洛维的军队里并不是全部具有天主教思想的人。再多一个改教者也不会有什么坏处。”

第二个星期，那个耶稣会教士又来喝茶。这一天正是复活节假日，科迪莉娅也在那儿。

“马奇梅因夫人，”他说，“你本该挑选一名年轻一些的神父完成这项工作的。等不到雷克斯成为天主教徒，我早就死了。”

“呃，亲爱的，我还以为进行得很顺利呢。”

“在某种意义上说倒是很顺利的。出奇地服帖，他说不管我告诉他什么他都接受，一点一点全记下来，不提任何问题。我可并不喜欢他这样。他显得不理解真正的含义，不过我知道他正处在天主教稳定的影响下，所以我还是愿意收下他。有时候人是不得不怀着侥幸心理的——例如，也许半低能儿会聪明起来的。你根本无从知道他们究竟懂得了多少。你只要知道有人在照看他们，你就能够碰运气了。”

“雷克斯要能听到这话就好啦！”科迪莉娅说。

“不过我也是昨天才开了眼界。现代教育的麻烦在于，你根本不知道人们有多么愚昧。凡是超过五十岁的人，你都可以满有把握知道哪些东西他们学过，哪些是空白。可是那些年轻人表面上才华毕露，似乎学识渊博，哪天脑袋瓜子突然裂开，内瓤可是乱七八糟的一团，你都不知道是些什么东西。就拿昨天来说吧，他似乎学得还像个样子。《教义问答》十有八九他都背下来了，还背下了《主祷文》和《福哉马利亚》。随后我就照平常那样问他，是否有什么心烦意乱的事情。他却用一种狡猾的眼光望着我，说道，‘喂，神父，我觉得你跟我不够开诚相见。我想要加入你们的教会，而且我正在加入啦，可是你却什么都要瞒着我。’我问他这话怎么讲，他说：‘我跟一位天主教徒长谈了一次——一个非常虔诚、受过良好教育的天主教徒，我这才略知一二了。例如，睡觉的时候脚要朝着东方，因为那边是上天堂的方向，如果你在夜里死了，那么你就可以走到天堂里去。以后我睡觉的时候脚的方向都要朝着朱莉娅中意的方向。难道你能指望一个成年人会相信走进天堂的说法吗？还有，教皇把他的一匹马变成个红衣主教是怎么回事？还有，你在教堂入口放一只盒子，如果把一张写着某人名字的一镑钞票放进去，他们就会被打进地狱里去。我并不是说这一切事情没有什么道理，’他说，‘可是你应该告诉我这些，而不要让我自己找出来。’”

“这位可怜的人到底是什么意思呢？”马奇梅因夫人说。

“你知道他距教会可远着呢。”莫布雷神父说。

“可是究竟是谁跟他说这种话的呢？难道这一切都是他梦见的吗？科迪莉娅，到底是怎么回事呢？”

“真是一个笨蛋！啊，妈妈，真是一个难得的大笨蛋！”

“科迪莉娅，是你干的。”

“嗨，妈妈，谁能够想到他会当真呢？除了这些，我还跟他说了那么多的事情呢。什么梵蒂冈的神猴啦——各种各样的事情。”

“喏，你这下可给我增添了相当多的工作，”莫布雷神父说。

“可怜的雷克斯哟，”马奇梅因夫人说，“我认为这样倒使他更讨人喜欢了。你只当他是一个傻孩子吧，莫布雷神父。”

就这样，宗教指导依旧继续进行下去，而莫布雷神父也终于同意了在婚礼前一个星期接受雷克斯入教。

“你以为让我入教他们自己就全满意了，”雷克斯发牢骚说，“我对他们在种种方面也会有帮助的；而他们却好像是一些给赌徒发入场券的家伙。再说呢，”他又说道，“科迪莉娅把我都弄糊涂了，我分不清什么是《教义问答》上的，什么是她瞎编的了。”

婚礼前的三个星期情形大体上就是这样；请贴发出去了，礼品迅速源源而来，女傧相们也很喜欢她们的礼服。接着就发生了朱莉娅称之为“布赖德的炸弹”事件。

布赖德以特有的冷酷无情的方式，事先也不警告一声，就把一个炸弹扔进了到那时为止还是快快乐乐的家人当中。此时马奇梅因公馆的图书室正在用来陈放结婚礼品；马奇梅因夫人、朱莉娅、科迪莉娅和雷克斯正在忙着把礼品包解开，登记。这时布赖兹赫德走了进来，观察了他们片刻。

“贝蒂舅妈送的有裂纹的花瓶，”科迪莉娅说，“老掉牙的东西了。我记得这些花瓶是放在他们巴克博恩家中楼梯上的。”

“这都是些什么？”布赖兹赫德问道。

“彭德尔—加思韦特家的先生、太太和小姐送的，一套早茶茶具。古德店里买的，三十先令，也太小气啦。”

“你们最好把这些破烂货再包起来吧。”

“布赖德，你这话是什么意思？”

“没别的意思，就是说婚礼取消了。”

“布赖德。”

“我早就认为对我这位未来妹夫的为人，还是调查调查的好，当时大家对调查似乎都不感兴趣。”布赖兹赫德说，“今天晚上我得到最后的答复。他于一九一五年在蒙特里尔和萨拉·伊万杰琳·卡特勒小姐结过婚了，而她至今还住在那里。”

“雷克斯，这是真的？”

雷克斯站在那里，正用鉴定的眼光打量着手里拿着的一个飞龙玉雕；他小心翼翼地把玉龙放回到那只乌檀木底座上，接着就冲着所有的人坦然而天真地微笑着。

“这倒是真的，”他说，“那又怎么啦？你们为什么都这么大惊小怪的？她现在跟我没什么关系了。她不是我要的人。她根本没有怀着什么好意。无论如何，当时我还是孩子哩。像这类错误谁都可能犯的。我早在一九一九年就离婚了。在布赖德告诉我以前，我连她现在在什么地方都不知道呢。这有什么可吵闹的呢？”

“你早该告诉我的，”朱莉娅说。

“你从来也没有问过呀。老实说，我已经好多年没有想起她来了。”

一望而知他是真诚的，他们也只好坐下来冷静地谈论这件事情。

“你这个可怜的小傻瓜，难道你不明白，”朱莉娅说，“当你的另一个妻子还活着的时候，你作为一个天主教徒是不能再结婚的？”

“可是我没有哇。我刚才不是告诉你了，我们已经在六年前离婚了。”

“可是作为一个天主教徒，你是不能离婚的。”

“我当时可并不是天主教徒，而且我离婚了。离婚的文件我在什么地方放着呢。”

“难道莫布雷神父没有跟你讲解过结婚的问题吗？”

“他倒是说过我不能和你离婚的。喏，我也不想离呵。我记不住他跟我讲的一切——什么神猴啦，天主教的大赦啦，临终四件大事啦——反正如果把他的话都记住的话，我就没时间干别的事了。不管怎么说，你们的那位意大利表妹弗朗西斯卡又怎么样？她就结过两次婚嘛。”

“她获准取消婚姻。”

“那也行，我也取消婚姻。需要花多少钱？从谁那儿可以取得呢？莫布雷神父受理过吗？我只想做正正当当的事。没有人告诉我呀。”

费了好长时间才算使雷克斯认识到他的婚姻上存在着严重的障碍。他们一直讨论到吃晚饭的时候，仆人们在场的时候就沉默不讲了，到只剩下他们的时候，讨论又重新开始，一直延续到午夜以后很久。争论几起几落，兜着圈子，就像一只海鸥忽而盘旋环绕，忽而急转直下，此时飞临大海，无影无踪，随后又钻入层层阴霾，在枝节琐碎的循环反复中迂回穿行，忽而又正好落在泛起沉渣的地方。

“你们想让我怎么办呢？我该去见谁呢？”雷克斯不住嘴地问，“别说没有人能够决定这件事吧。”

“没有办法啦，雷克斯，”布赖兹赫德说，“这只意味着你们的婚事不能办了，我很抱歉，从任何人的观点来看，这件事都是太突如其来了。你自己应该告诉我们这件事的。”

“喂，”雷克斯说，“你说的也许并不错；严格按照法律，也许我不该在你们的大教堂里结婚。可是大教堂已经预订好了，教堂的人并没有提出什么疑问；而红衣主教对这件事又不知道；莫布雷神父对这件事也是一无所知。除了我们，谁也不知道。那又何必这么添很多麻烦呢？只要一直不声张，让这件事就这么过去，好像没这么回事一样。这样，不是对谁都没有损失吗？也许我担了将来下地狱的风险。得了，我准备担这个风险吧。这和别人又有什么关系呢？”

“怎么没有？”朱莉娅说，“我不相信教士们无所不知。我不相信为了这种事情就要下地狱。我知道我决不相信什么地狱，尽管如此，这却是我们应当注意的事。我们也并不要求你的灵魂冒什么风险。只是请走开吧。”

“朱莉娅，我恨你。”科迪莉娅说着就走出了房间。

“我们大家都累了，”马奇梅因夫人说，“如果还有什么话要说，我提议到早晨再说。”

“可是没有什么可讨论的了，”布赖兹赫德说，“倒是还要讨论用什么最稳妥的方式来结束这件事。这个由我和妈妈商定。我们必须在《泰晤士报》和《晨邮报》上登一个启事；这些礼品都得退回去。我不知道女傧相的礼服通常该怎么办。”

“请等会儿，”雷克斯说，“请等会儿。也许你是能够不让我们在你们的大教堂结婚。好吧，见鬼去吧，那我们就在一个新教教堂里结婚。”

“这个我也不许可。”马奇梅因夫人说。

“可是我认为你办不到，妈妈。”朱莉娅说，“你知道，我做雷克斯的情妇已经有一段时间了，我还要继续做下去，不管和他有没有结婚。”

“雷克斯，这是真的吗？”

“不是的，该死，不是的，”雷克斯说，“我倒希望是真的呢。”

“我看我们只好等到早晨再讨论这件事，”马奇梅因夫人有气无力地说，“现在再谈下去我受不了啦。”

现在，她连上楼都得靠儿子搀扶。


“你到底为什么要跟你妈妈说那种话？”过了许多年我问朱莉娅，当时她正跟我讲那场争吵的情形。

“这也正是雷克斯想知道的。我大概是因为我以为真是如此吧。并不是照字面上的意义说——虽然你一定记得我当时只有二十岁，光是听别人讲，谁也不会真正懂得‘实际的生活’是什么——不过，当然啦，我当时的话并不是说确实是真的。当时我不知道另外该如何表达我的意思。我的意思是说，我和雷克斯的关系已经很深，不能说什么‘预定的结婚不能够举行’这类的话，然后就这样算了。我想要做一个诚实的妇女。从那时起我一直想望着——现在我才开始明白这一点了。”

“后来呢？”

“后来又是讨论来讨论去。可怜的妈妈呀。而神父们也掺合进来了，姑妈姨妈们也来插一手。五花八门的建议什么都有——什么雷克斯去加拿大啦，什么莫布雷神父去一趟罗马，看看是否有可能办理取消婚姻啦；什么我到国外先待上一年啦。正讨论到半截，雷克斯就给爸爸拍了一封电报：‘我与朱莉娅愿意按新教仪式举行婚礼。是否反对？’他复电：‘很高兴。’于是就把妈妈按法律禁止我们举行的事情解决了。接着许多人的呼吁和要求接踵而来。我奉命跟神父们、修女们和姑婶姨妈们谈话。雷克斯却不动声色地——或者说相当不动声色地——按照计划进行。

“啊，查尔斯，那是一次多么寒酸的婚礼啊！索沃伊小教堂在当时是离过婚的人结婚的地方——又简陋，又狭小，完全不是雷克斯原来打算的那个派头。我只要求在一天早晨溜进婚姻登记处，请两个打杂女工做证婚人，把这件事了结了就算了，雷克斯也无非是找来了女傧相，戴戴香橙花，奏奏婚礼进行曲而已。情形是令人厌恶的。

“可怜的妈妈的举动好像是个殉难者，她坚决要我披上她的花边网纱——喏，她多少也该这样做——那件衣服原本就是围绕着花边设计的。我的朋友都来了，当然，还有雷克斯称之为他的朋友的那群稀奇古怪的家伙。其他参加婚礼的人可就五花八门了。妈妈那边的亲戚当然谁也没有来；爸爸那边的亲戚来了一两个。那些老顽固们都躲得远远的了——你知道，其中有安克雷奇夫妇，查斯姆夫妇，范布勒夫妇——当时我就想：‘幸亏他们不在，反正他们总是对我鄙夷不屑的。’可是雷克斯大光其火，因为显然他希望正是这些人来。

“我还一度希望不要搞什么聚会了。妈妈也说我们不能使用马奇公馆，雷克斯就想给爸爸拍封电报，企图让家庭律师打头，率领筹办宴会的人抢占公馆。到最后才商定头天晚上在家里举办一个聚会，看看结婚礼品——很明显，按照莫布雷神父的看法，这样做是对的。再说，谁能忍得住，不去看看自己送的礼品呢，因此，这次聚会举办得还相当成功，可是第二天雷克斯在索沃伊小教堂为那些参加婚礼的来宾们举办的招待会可就太寒酸了。

“对待那里的承租人可是尴尬极了。最后还是布赖德赶来招待他们吃了一顿晚饭，并且在那儿举办了一个营火晚会，可是吃的根本不是他们原来指望的作为答谢的山珍海味。

“可怜的科迪莉娅真是有苦说不出。她原来特别盼望着做我的女傧相——这件事在我初次进入社交界时早就是我们常常谈论的话题了——当然，她也是一个非常虔诚的孩子。最初她不跟我说话。后来就是举行婚礼的那天早晨——当时我已经在前一天晚上搬到舅妈范妮·罗斯康芒家里去住了；大家都认为这样做比较合适——一大早我还没有起床她就一头闯进来，她是径直从法姆大街来的，眼泪直往下流，求我不要结婚了，又紧紧地把我搂住，把她买的一个可爱的小胸针送给了我，然后说她祝我永远幸福。永远幸福啊，查尔斯！

“这是一次极其不得人心的婚礼，你知道。所有的人都站在妈妈一边，她们向来都是这样——并不是因为她们可以从中得到什么好处。妈妈这一辈子得到过所有人的同情，唯独没有得到过她所爱的那些人的同情。大家都说，我对她表现得可恶极了。实际上，雷克斯发现他娶了一个弃儿，这结果与他原来的希望正好相反。

“你也看出了吧，一切事情看来进行的都不顺利。从一开始厄运就落到了我们头上。尽管如此，我还是很爱雷克斯的。

“想起来怪可笑的，是不是？

“你知道，莫布雷神父一眼就识破了雷克斯的本来面目，而我结婚后却花了一年的时间才看出来。他简直不是一个头脑清醒的人。他根本就不是一个完全的人。他只是一个人身上的一个细小的部分，发育得很不正常。像是装在一个瓶子里的什么东西，或者是在实验室里才存活的器官。我本以为他是一种原始的野蛮人。可是他却又完全现代化，又时髦，只有这个可怕的时代才能产生得出来。有一点人味，却装得像一个完整的人。

“好啦，这一切都过去啦。”

她跟我说这番话的时候已经是在十年以后，在大西洋上的暴风雨中
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Chapter 8
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 cafés, 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 café 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-shed, 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 gar?onnière in Auteuil - and wished I had not come.

We dined that night at the Café Royal. There things were a little more warlike, for the Café was full of undergraduates who had come down for ‘National Service’. One group, from Cambridge, had that afternoon signed on to run messages for Trans-port 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 Nègre 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 comer 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, conked 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 Marseille 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-1-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 Marseille 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 out 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, embracing with a flourish of his hand 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 tonight.’

‘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 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’ show Defence Corps. All good chaps. Being fixed in Bratt’s.’

‘I’ll join.’

‘You remember Bratt’s?’

‘No. I’ll join that, too.’

‘That’s right. All good chaps like the dead chaps.’

So I joined Bill Meadows’ show, which was a flying squad, protecting food deliveries in the poorest 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 peace-makers (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’ 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 of 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 ugly 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 warmness.

‘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’s 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 tea 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 took 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 hat 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 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 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 hat’ 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 and 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 science sometimes have for limiting themselves to inessentials, for pruning back their work to the 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 ties there and never complains - and there is much to complain of. We have no facilities. The Government give us what they can spare from kind. There is a poor German boy with 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 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, some how, 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 today, 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 Kurt would like it?’

‘For God’s sake,’ I said, ‘you don’t mean to spend your life with Kurt, do you?’ ‘I don’t know. He seems to mean to spend it with me. “It’th all right for him, I reckon, maybe,”’ he said, mimicking Kurt’s accent, and then he added what, if I had paid more attention, should have given me the key I lacked; at the time I heard and remembered it, without taking notice. ‘You know, Charles,’ he said, ‘it’s rather a pleasant change when all your life you’ve had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself.  Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me.’ I was able to straighten his money affairs before I left. He had lived till then by getting into difficulties and then telegraphing for odd sums to his lawyers. I saw the branch manager of the bank and arranged for him, if funds were forthcoming from London, to receive Sebastian’s quarterly allowance and pay him a weekly sum of pocket money with a reserve to be drawn in emergencies. This sum was only to be given to Sebastian personally, and only when the manager was satisfied that he had a proper use for it. Sebastian agreed readily to all this.

‘Otherwise,’ he said, ‘Kurt will get me to sign a cheque for the whole lot when I’m tight and then he’ll go off and get into all kinds of trouble.’ I saw Sebastian home from the hospital. He seemed weaker in his basket chair than he had been in bed. The two sick men, he and Kurt, sat opposite one another with the gramophone between them.

‘It was time you came back, ‘ said Kurt. ‘I need you.’

‘Do you, Kurt?’

‘I reckon so. It’s not so good being alone when you’re sick. That boy’s a lazy fellow - always slipping off when I want him. Once he stayed out all night and there was no one to make my coffee when I woke up. It’s no good having a foot full of pus. Times I can’t sleep good. Maybe another time I shall slip off, too, and go where I can be looked after.’ He clapped his hands but no servant came. ‘You see?’ he said.

‘What d’you want?’

‘Cigarettes. I got some in the bag under my bed.’

Sebastian began painfully to rise from his chair.

‘I’ll get them,’ I said. ‘Where’s his bed?’

‘No, that’s my job,’ said Sebastian.

‘Yeth, ‘ said Kurt, ‘I reckon that’s Sebastian’s job.’

So I left him with his friend in the little enclosed house at the end of the alley. There was nothing more I could do for Sebastian.

I had meant to return direct to Paris, but this business of Sebastian’s allowance meant that I must go to London and see Brideshead. I travelled by sea, taking the P. & 0. from Tangier, and was home in early June.

‘Do you consider,’ asked Brideshead, ‘that there is anything vicious in my brother’s connection with this German?’

‘No. I’m sure not. It’s simply a case of two waifs coming together.’

‘You say he is a criminal?’

‘I said “a criminal type”. He’s been in the military prison and was dishonourably discharged.’

‘And the doctor says Sebastian is killing himself with drink?’

‘Weakening himself. He hasn’t D.T.s or cirrhosis.’

‘He’s not insane?’



‘Certainly not. He’s found a companion he happens to like and a place where he happens to like living.’

‘Then he must have his allowance as you suggest. The thing is quite clear.’ In some ways Brideshead was an easy man to deal with. He had a kind of mad certainty about everything which made his decisions swift and easy.  ‘Would you like to paint this house?’ he asked suddenly. ‘A picture of the front, another of the back on the park, another of the staircase, another of the big drawing-room? Four small oils; that is what my father wants done for a record, to keep at Brideshead. I don’t know any painters. Julia said you specialized in architecture.’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I should like to very much.’

‘You know it’s being pulled down? My father’s selling it. They are going to put up a block of flats here. They’re keeping the name - we can’t stop them apparently.’ ‘What a sad thing.’

‘Well, I’m sorry of course. But you think it good architecturally?’

‘One of the most beautiful houses I know.’

‘Can’t see it. I’ve always thought it rather ugly. Perhaps your pictures will make me see it differently.’

This was my first commission; I had to work against time, for the contractors were only waiting for the final signature to start their work of destruction. In spite, or perhaps, because, of that for it is my vice to spend too long on a canvas, never content to leave well alone - those four paintings are particular favourites of mine, and it was their success, both with myself and others, that confirmed me in what has since been my career.

I began in the long drawing-room, for they were anxious to shift the furniture, which had stood there since it was built. It was a long, elaborate, symmetrical Adam room, with two bays of windows opening into Green Park. The light, streaming in from the west on the afternoon when I began to paint there, was fresh green from the young trees outside.

I had the perspective set out in pencil and the detail carefully placed. I held back from painting, like a diver on the water’s edge; once in I found myself buoyed and exhilarated. I was normally a slow and deliberate painter; that afternoon and all next day, and the day after, I worked fast. I could do nothing wrong. At the end of each passage I paused, tense, afraid to start the next, fearing, like a gambler, that luck must turn and the pile be lost. Bit by bit, minute by minute, the thing came into being. There were no difficulties; the intricate multiplicity of light and colour became a whole; the right colour was where I wanted it, on the palette; each brush stroke, as soon as it was complete, seemed to have been there always.

Presently on the last afternoon I heard a voice behind me say: ‘May I stay here and watch?’

I turned and found Cordelia.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘if you don’t talk,’ and I worked on, oblivious of her, until the failing sun made me put up my brushes.

‘It must be lovely to be able to do that.’

I had forgotten she was there.

‘It is.’

I could not even now leave my picture, although the sun was down and the room fading to monochrome. I took it from the easel and held it up to the windows, put it back and lightened a shadow. Then, suddenly weary in head and eyes and back and arm, I gave it up for the evening and turned to Cordelia.

She was now fifteen and had grown tall, nearly to her full height, in the last eighteen months. She had not the promise of Julia’s full quattrocento loveliness; there was a touch of Brideshead already in her length of nose and high cheekbone; she was in black, mourning for her mother.

‘I’m tired,’ I said.

‘I bet you are. Is it finished?’

‘Practically. I must go over it again tomorrow.’

‘D’you know it’s long past dinner time? There’s no one here to cook anything now. I only came up today, and didn’t realize how far the decay had gone. You wouldn’t like to take me out to dinner, would, you?’

We left by the garden door, into the park, and walked in the twilight to the Ritz Grill.

‘You’ve seen Sebastian? He won’t come home, even now?’ I did not realize till then that she had understood so much. I said so ‘Well, I love him more than anyone,’ she said. ‘It’s sad about Marchers, isn’t it? Do you know they’re going to build a block of flats, and that Rex wanted to take I what he called a “penthouse” at the top. Isn’t it like him? Poor Julia. That was too much for her.  He couldn’t understand at all; he thought she would like to keep up with her old home.  Things have all come to an end very quickly, haven’t they? Apparently papa has been terribly in debt for a long time. Selling Marchers has put him straight again and saved I don’t know how much a year in rates. But it seems a shame to pull it down. Julia says she’d sooner that than to have someone else live there.’ ‘What’s going to happen to you?’

‘What, indeed? There are all kinds of suggestions. Aunt Fanny Rosscommon wants me to live with her. Then Rex and Julia talk of taking over half Brideshead and living there. Papa won’t come back. We thought he might, but no.  ‘They’ve closed the chapel at Brideshead, Bridey and the Bishop; mummy’s Requiem was the last mass said there. After she was buried the priest came in - I was there alone.  I don’t think he saw me - and took out the altar stone and put it in his bag; then he burned the wads of wool with the holy oil on them and threw the ash outside; he emptied the holy-water stoop and blew out the lamp in the sanctuary, and left the tabernacle open, and empty, as though from now on it was always to be Good Friday. I suppose none of this makes any sense to you, Charles, poor agnostic. I stayed there till he was gone, and then, suddenly, there wasn’t any chapel there any more, just an oddly decorated room. I can’t tell you what it felt like. You’ve.never been to Tenebrae, I suppose?’

‘Never.’

‘Well, if you had you’d know what the Jews felt about their temple. Quomodo sedet sola civitas...it’s a beautiful chant. You ought to go once, just to hear it.’ ‘Still trying to convert me, Cordelia?’

‘Oh, no. That’s all over, too. D’you know what papa said when he became a Catholic?  Mummy told me once. He said to her: “You have brought back my family to the faith of their ancestors.” Pompous, you know. It takes people different ways. Anyhow, the family haven’t been very constant, have they? There’s him gone and Sebastian gone and Julia gone. But God won’t let them go for long, you know. I wonder if you remember the story mummy read us the evening Sebastian first got drunk I mean the bad evening.  “Father Brown” said something like “I caught him” (the thief) “with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”’ We scarcely mentioned her mother. All the time we talked, she ate voraciously. Once she said:



‘Did you see Sir Adrian Porson’s poem in The Times? It’s funny: he knew her best of anyone - he loved her all his life, you know - and yet it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with her at all.

‘I got on best with her of any of us, but I don’t believe I ever really loved her. Not as she wanted or deserved. It’s odd I didn’t, because I’m full of natural affections.’ ‘I never really knew your Mother,’ I said.

‘You didn’t like her. I sometimes think when people wanted to hate God they hated mummy.’

‘What do you mean by that, Cordelia?’

‘Well, you see, she was saintly but she wasn’t a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can’t really hate God either. When they want to hate him and his saints, they have to find something like themselves and pretend it’s God and hate that. I suppose you think that’s all bosh.’

‘I heard almost the same thing once before - from someone very different.’

‘Oh, I’m quite serious. I’ve thought about it a lot. It seems to explain poor mummy.’ Then this odd child tucked into her dinner with renewed relish. ‘First time I’ve ever been taken out to dinner alone at a restaurant,’ she said.  Later: ‘When Julia heard they were selling Marchers she said: “Poor Cordelia. She won’t have her coming-out ball there after all.” It’s a thing we used to talk about - like my being her bridesmaid. That didn’t come off either. When Julia had her ball I was allowed down for an hour, to sit in the corner with Aunt Fanny, and she said, “In six years’ time you’ll have all this.”...I hope I’ve got a vocation.’ ‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘It means you can be a nun. If you haven’t a vocation it’s no good however much you want to be; and if you have a vocation, you can’t get away from it, however much you hate it. Bridey thinks he has a vocation and hasn’t. I used to think Sebastian had and hated it - but I don’t know now. Everything has changed so much suddenly.’ But I had no patience with this convent chatter. I had felt the brush take life in my hand that afternoon; I had had my finger in the great, succulent pie of creation. I was a man of the Renaissance that evening - of Browning’s renaissance. I, who had walked the streets of Rome in Genoa velvet and had seen the stars through Galileo’s tube, spurned the friars, with their dusty tomes and their sunken, jealous eyes and their crabbed hairsplitting speech.

‘You’ll fall in love,’ I said.

‘Oh, pray not. I say, do you think I could have another of those scrumptious meringues?’

我在一九二六年的春天由于当时的总罢工回到了伦敦。

这次总罢工是巴黎的一个话题。法国人对旧日朋友的窘困处境总是眉飞色舞，而且把海峡对面我们那些相当含糊不清的概念都变成了他们自己十分精确的术语，预言将在英国发生革命和内战。每天傍晚报摊上都要宣扬这场厄运的消息，老相识们在咖啡馆里半带嘲讽地打着招呼：“哈，我的朋友，你在这儿总比在国内强多了，是吧？”直到我和几个与我处境相同的朋友真的相信我们的祖国处在危急中，而且我们的责任就在祖国那边为止。我们这伙人中还加进了一位比利时未来主义派，平时他是用一个我认为是假的名字：吉恩·德·布里萨克·拉·莫特，他宣称在任何地方任何战争中有权拿起武器对下层阶级作战。

我们这些人走到一起来了，都是精神抖擞的男子汉，大家盼望着到了多佛尔。在我们面前展现出近些年来在欧洲各地反复出现而且没有什么变化的历史情景，这种情景在我脑海里勾画出一幅清晰然而是拼凑出来的“革命”的画面——邮政局上红旗飘扬，有轨电车被推翻在地，到处是醉醺醺的兵士们，监狱被打开，被释放的犯人成群结伙在街头游荡，从首都开出的火车到不了目的地。这种情形人们在报纸上读到过，在电影里看到过，并且在咖啡馆的桌子旁边反复听了六七年，这种情形现在成为一个人的亲身经历，以前都是间接听来的，例如所谓佛兰德的泥淖和美索不达米亚的苍蝇这一类的东西。

后来我们靠岸下船，遇到的却是旧时海关那套例行手续，正点到达的邮船联运列车，在维多利亚火车站的月台上排成一行的、聚集在头等车厢旁的搬运工人，以及排成长队等待客人的出租汽车。

“我们要分手啦，”大家说道，“看看在发生什么事啦。晚饭的时候再碰碰头，那时再交换情况。”不过我们心里已经明白什么事也没有发生；至少没有发生需要我们参加的事情。

“噢，亲爱的，”我父亲说道，他碰巧在楼梯碰见我，“这么快又见到你，多叫人高兴。”（我去国外已经有十五个月了。）“你回来正赶上困难的时候，知道吧。两天以后他们还要举行一次总罢工——全都是胡闹——所以我也说不准什么时候你才能够离开这里。”

我想起我放弃了的本来要在塞纳河畔路灯亮时举行的一个晚会和那里的同伴们——当时我正惦念着两位解放了的美国姑娘，她们合住在奥特伊尔区的单身宿舍里——这么一想，我真希望我没回来就好了。

这天晚上我们在皇家咖啡馆吃的饭。那天气氛倒多少有些战争的味道，咖啡馆里挤满了到伦敦来服国民义务兵役的没有毕业的大学生。从剑桥来的一伙学生整个下午都在签名当运输部门的送信人，而他们桌子后面的另一伙学生则被录用为特种警察了。这一伙或那一伙不时地会回过头来对那一伙挑衅地叫嚷，不过像这种背对背的叫喊并不会导致严重的冲突，后来他们互相敬了高杯的淡啤酒就算完事了。

“你们应该在霍尔蒂开进布达佩斯的时候到达那儿才对。”吉恩说，“那才叫政治呢。”

这天晚上瑞琴特公园里有一个为刚刚抵达英国的“黑鸟”乐队举行的集会。我们中的一个受到邀请，于是我们也跟着去了。

对于我们这些经常出入“砖顶”咖啡馆和布洛海街黑人舞厅的人来说，那里的景象并没有什么特殊的地方；当我刚走进公园大门我就听到了一个决不会弄错的嗓音，此时听起来就像从遥远的过去传来的一个回声。

“不，”这个嗓音说道，“他们并不是动物园里给人瞪着眼睛看的动物，马尔卡斯特。他们是艺术家，亲爱的，非常伟大的艺术家，应当受到尊敬。”

安东尼·布兰奇和博伊·马尔卡斯特这时正坐在桌子边，桌子上摆着葡萄酒。

“谢天谢地，幸亏我这儿还有认识的人。”马尔卡斯特说，这时我和他们坐到了一起。“原来是个姑娘带我来的，现在不知她跑到哪去了。”

“她溜掉啦，亲爱的，你知道原因吗？因为你看上去可笑地不适当，马尔卡斯特。这里压根儿就不是你这种人来的地方；你不应该在这儿，知道吧，应该去老一百号，再不就去贝尔格雷夫街参加那种悲惨的舞会。”

“就是从一个舞会来这儿的，”马尔卡斯特说，“去老一百号现在还太早。我还得在这儿再耽搁会儿。也许会热闹起来的。”

“我真不屑理你，”安东尼说，“查尔斯，还是跟你说说话吧。”

我们拿上酒瓶和杯子到另一间屋子里找到了一个角落。我们的脚边有五个“黑鸟”管弦乐队的人蹲着掷骰子玩。

“那边的一个，”安东尼说，“就是脸色稍微苍白一些的那个，亲爱的，有天早晨他给阿诺德·弗里克海姆太太的脑袋上梆地来了一下，亲爱的，是用牛奶瓶打的。”

差不多是立刻地、也是必然地，我们谈起了塞巴斯蒂安。

“亲爱的，他已经成了那种酒鬼了。去年你把他甩了以后他就跟我一起住在马赛，也真够我受的。整天就像个有钱的老贵妇，喝呀，喝呀，喝呀。而且还偷偷摸摸。我总是丢失一些小东西，亲爱的，那都是我很喜欢的东西。那天早晨，我丢了两套衣服，是莱斯利和罗伯茨送来的。当然啦，我并不知道就是塞巴斯蒂安干的——因为我那套小公寓进进出出的差不多都是些阴阳怪气的家伙。我偏爱这种家伙你知道的最清楚了。嘿，末了，我们发现了塞巴斯蒂安把我东西当——当——当掉的那家当铺，可是后来他手里可没有什么当票了；当票也是有销路的，在小酒馆里就可以卖掉。

“我看得出来你眼睛里那种清教徒式的、不以为然的神色，亲爱的查尔斯，大概你以为我是在教唆那个小家伙吧。这就是塞巴斯蒂安不太招人喜欢的一个品质，他给人的印象总好像有人在教——教——教唆他——好像马戏团的小马驹子被牵着跑似的。可是我向你担保，我一切都做了。我一再苦口婆心地对他说：‘干吗喝酒？如果你想要陶醉陶醉的话，开心的事可多啦。’我带他去找那个挺不错的人；对啦，你跟我一样，对那个人也是很了解的，纳达·阿罗波夫，琼·勒克斯莫尔，所有我们认识的一切人，都和他有过好几年的来往——他总是去女王酒吧——可是后来，我们都为此出了麻烦，因为塞巴斯蒂安给他一张空头支票——一张假——假——假支票，亲爱的——一大帮子凶神恶煞样的家伙闯到公寓里来了——都是些暴徒，亲爱的——当时塞巴斯蒂安还懵懵懂懂的呢，反正这事情可真让人扫兴透了。”

这时博伊·马尔卡斯特朝我们这边蹭过来，他坐下来，不请自来，坐到了我旁边。

“那边的酒快喝光了。”他说着，自己从我们的酒瓶里倒出酒来，把酒瓶倒空了。“这个地方我连一个人也没有见过——都是些黑家伙。”

安东尼不理睬他，接着说下去：“这以后我们就离开了马赛，又去了丹吉尔，在那儿，亲爱的，塞巴斯蒂安和他那位新结识的朋友可真是打得火热。我怎么形容他呢？他很像电影《警告的阴影》里的那位男仆人——德国人的那种大块头，在外籍军团干过。由于他的大脚趾被打掉了就离开外籍军团了。到现在伤口还没有好呢。塞巴斯蒂安发现他时，他正在卡斯巴大街的一家商号当推销员，正在饿肚子。样子可怕极了。塞巴斯蒂安把他带来和我们住在一起。太可怕了。所以我就回来了，亲爱的，回到善良古老的英格兰——善良古老的英格兰。”他重复了一遍，还把手一挥，把在我们脚边赌博的黑人也包括了进去，这时马尔卡斯特呆呆地望着前边，我们那位身穿着睡衣睡裤的女主人向我们做自我介绍。

“以前从没有见到过你们呀，”她说，“也从来没有请过你们。不管怎样，这些穷酸白人都是什么人？我好像走错了地方呢。”

“国难当头，”马尔卡斯特说，“什么事情都可能发生的。”

“聚会进行得挺好吧？”她焦虑地问道，“你们觉得今晚弗洛伦斯·米尔斯会唱歌吗？我们以前见过面，”她又对安东尼说道。

“常见，我亲爱的，可是今儿晚上你没请我来啊。”

“咦，亲爱的，大概是因为我不喜欢你吧。我原以为我谁都喜欢。”

“你们觉得怎么样，”女主人走后马尔卡斯特问道，“去报火警是不是很有趣呢？”

“不错，博伊，快跑去打电话吧。”

“我的意见是，这样也许会热闹起来。”

“完全对。”

马尔卡斯特离开我们去找电话。

“我认为塞巴斯蒂安和他那位瘸腿的好朋友去了法属摩洛哥了，”安东尼继续说道，“我离开他们的时候，丹吉尔的警察正在找他们的麻烦呢。自从我回到伦敦，侯爵夫人可真招人讨厌，她想让我和他们联系上。这个可怜的女人过的是什么日子！这只说明生活里还有点正义哩。”

过了一会儿米尔斯小姐开始唱歌了，除了那一伙掷骰子赌博玩的人以外，大家都拥到隔壁房间里去了。

“那个就是我的女孩子，”马尔卡斯特说，“和那个黑人在一起的那个。就是那个女孩子把我带来的。”

“她好像已经把你忘掉啦。”

“是忘了。我还不如不来呢。咱们去别的地方吧。”

当我们走开的时候，开来了两辆救火车，一大群戴着防护帽的人拥到水泄不通的楼上。

“那个家伙，布兰奇，”马尔卡斯特说，“可不是个好东西。有一次我把他丢进池子里去了。”

我们又去了几家夜总会。在两年的时间里马尔卡斯特看来已经实现了他的那个简单的抱负，他在这种地方出了名，受到欢迎。在最后一家夜总会，我和他由于一股爱国主义的热情都激动起来了。

“你和我嘛，”他说道，“都还太年轻，不能上前线去打仗。而别的小伙子们去战斗，几百万人都阵亡了。牺牲的不是我们。我们要让他们看看。我们要向那些死去的人证明，我们也能打仗。”

“我就是为这个回来的，”我说道，“从海外归来，在危急时刻聚集在古老的祖国身边。”

“就像澳大利亚人一样。”

“像那些可怜的阵亡了的澳大利亚人一样。”

“你在哪个部门？”

“还没有定。还没有做好备战工作。”

“要去就去一个地方——那就是比尔·梅多斯队——保卫团。那里全是好小伙子。都安排在布拉特俱乐部里了。”

“我参加。”

“你记得布拉特俱乐部吗？”

“不记得，我也参加。”

“那好极了。所有的好小伙子都会像那些已经死了的小伙子们一样。”

我就这样参加了比尔·梅多斯队，这是一个配备汽车的警察追捕队，保护在伦敦最贫穷地区的食品运输。起先我被编入保卫团，还宣誓效忠皇室，并且发给了一个头盔和一根警棍；随后我又被提名为布拉特俱乐部的会员，并且和其他会员一起在一个专门为对付这种形势而召集的一个委员会会议上入选了。我们一个星期一直待在布拉特俱乐部里整装待命，有时一天出动三次，坐在卡车上给我们护送的运牛奶车开路。我们受到嘲笑，有时还受到恶言恶语的辱骂，不过我们只有一次采取了行动。

那天吃完了午饭，我们正围坐在一起，这时比尔·梅多斯精神抖擞地打完了电话回来。

“出动，”他说道，“商业路上有一场恶战。”

我们飞速地开车而去，到了那儿只见两根灯柱子间拉起了一根钢缆，一辆卡车被推翻在地，人行道上只剩下了一个警察，正遭到五六个青年拳打脚踢。在这打成一团的人两边，隔得不太远，聚集起互相敌对的两伙人马。当我们跳下车的时候，离我们很近，又有一个警察坐在人行道上，两眼发呆，双手捂住脑袋，鲜血顺着手指缝流出来；两三个同情的人严密监视着他；在钢缆的那一边，是一小伙满怀敌意的码头工人。我们兴高采烈地冲进去，把那个警察解救出来，当我们刚刚冲进敌人堆里的时候，这时却和从另一路同时赶到企图进行劝说的一伙地方教士和城市地方议会议员发生了冲突。在他们刚赶到的时候，有人喊了一声“留神点，警察来了。”这时一辆满载警察的卡车在我们后方停下，于是这伙教士和议员就成了我们的唯一牺牲品。

人群一哄而散，消失了踪影。我们把这些调解人捉了起来（其中只有一个人伤势严重），我们又去了一些偏僻的街道上巡视一遍，看看还有没有什么动乱，由于没有发现什么事，我们最后都回到了布拉特俱乐部。第二天总罢工宣布取消了，除了煤田，全国所有地方都恢复了正常。就好像传说的一头野兽要出来恣意横行，它露出头来一个小时，嗅出了危险，就悄悄溜回了它的巢穴。所以我离开巴黎并不值得。

吉恩参加了另一个连队，在坎登城由于被一个老年寡妇的栽着羊齿植物的花盆打在脑袋上，在医院里住了一个星期。


因为我是比尔·梅多斯的警察追捕队的成员，所以朱莉娅知道我回到了英国。她打电话来说她母亲迫切想见我。

“你会看到她病得很重了。”她说。

和平后的第一天上午，我就去了马奇梅因公馆。当我到达的时候，艾德里安·波森爵士在大厅从我身边走过，他正要离开；他把一方大花手帕捂住脸，盲目地摸索着他的帽子和手杖；他在流泪。

我被带进图书室，不到一分钟，朱莉娅就来到我面前。她带着新奇的文雅而严肃的神情和我握了握手，在这间阴暗的房间里，她仿佛是一个幽灵。

“你来了真好，妈妈一直在问你，可是我却不知道她现在究竟能不能见你。她刚刚跟艾德里安·波森告了别，这已经使她精疲力竭了。”

“告别？”

“是啊，她快死了。也许还能活一两个星期，也许随时就不行了。她太衰弱了。我去问一问护士。”

死亡的沉寂似乎已经笼罩着这栋房子。在马奇梅因公馆里，已经没有人来图书室里坐着了。在他们家的两处住宅里，图书室都是个很阴沉的屋子。那个维多利亚时代的橡木书架上摆着许多卷英国议会会议记录，还有从来没有打开过的老式的百科全书；那张光秃秃的桃花心木的桌子摆在那里似乎是为了一个委员会开会用的；这地方的气氛，既像是门庭若市，又像是车马冷落；图书室外面是院子，围栏，还有一条静寂的死胡同。

过了一会儿朱莉娅回来了。

“不行啦，恐怕你见不上她了。她睡着了。她可能像这样一连躺上好几个小时；她所希望的事我可以告诉你。咱们到别处去吧。我讨厌这间屋子。”

我们穿过大厅来到那间常常聚在一起吃午饭的小客厅，我们分坐在壁炉两边。朱莉娅的脸上似乎映照着墙壁上深红和金黄的色彩，她好像失去了一些热情。

“首先，我知道妈妈想说她多么对不起你，和你最后一次见面时对你太粗暴了。她经常提到这件事。现在她知道错怪了你。我完全相信你会谅解这一点，并且你很快就把这件事丢到脑后的，可是为了这种事，妈妈永远不会原谅她自己——这是她难得做的一种事。”

“请告诉她说，我完全谅解了。”

“另一件事，你当然已经猜到了——是关于塞巴斯蒂安。她很想见他。我不知道这是否可能。可能吗？”

“我听说他的情况很糟。”

“我们也听说了。我们拍了海底电报到我们所得到的最后一个地址，可是没有答复。他也许还来得及见她。我一听说你在英国，我就想到你是唯一的希望了。你能不能想法把他找来呢？这种要求是太难启齿了，不过我想如果塞巴斯蒂安明白了的话，他也会想见她的。”

“我来试试吧。”

“我们再也没有旁的人可求了。雷克斯忙得很。”

“知道。我从报道中听说了他正在忙着组建煤气厂。”

“是的，”她说道，露出她一向那种干巴巴的口气。“他从这次罢工中得到很多称赞。”

接着我们又闲谈了几分钟布拉特追捕队的事。她告诉我说布赖兹赫德拒绝担任任何公职，因为他认为这事业缺乏正义性；科迪莉娅在伦敦，现在正在睡觉，她守侯了母亲整整一夜。我告诉她说我已经从事建筑绘画了，并且说我很喜欢这种工作。这些话全是无关紧要的；该说的话我们在头一两分钟里已经说完了；我留下来喝茶，然后就离开了她。


法国航空公司有飞卡萨布兰卡的业务；我到了卡萨布兰卡又搭公共汽车去非斯，天蒙蒙亮就动身了，傍晚的时候才到这座新兴的城市。我从旅馆里给英国领事打了电话，这天晚上在他那栋挨着旧城墙的住宅里和他一道吃了晚饭。他人很和气，也很严肃。

“我很高兴终于有人来照看年轻的弗莱特了，”他说，“他在这里可使我们伤透了脑筋。这里可不是靠国内汇款生活的人待的地方。法国人对他完全不理解。他们认为，凡是不做买卖的，就一定是间谍。他的生活也真不像一个英国绅士。这儿的日子也不好过。虽然你可能没有想到，但是离这栋房子不到三十哩的地方就在进行战争。上个星期我们这儿来了几个骑自行车的小傻瓜，他们是志愿参加阿卜杜勒·克里姆的军队的。

“再说那些摩尔人是一帮狡猾透顶的家伙；他们不赞成喝酒，而我们这位年轻的朋友，你也许知道，差不多一天到晚都泡在酒里。他到这里来干什么呢？他在拉巴特和丹吉尔有的是地方住，那里的人们爱投合旅游者所好。他在当地城里租了一间房子，你知道。我想阻止他，可是他从一个在艺术品部门工作的法国人手上租到了那间房子。我并不是说他在那里有什么坏处，但是他的确是让人担心的。还有一个依赖他过活的坏小子——一个从外籍军团出来的德国人。大家说，那人可真是个地地道道的坏蛋。肯定会惹出麻烦来的。

“请注意，我是喜欢弗莱特的。我和他见面的时候不多。过去他常常到这儿来来洗澡，他在寓所里住下后才不来了。他总是非常迷人的，我的妻子特别喜欢他。他需要的是职业。”

我说明我这次使命。

“你现在可能在他家里找到他。天知道，到了晚上，旧城就没有什么地方可去了。如果你愿意的话，我可以叫我的门房带你去。”

这样我吃过晚饭就动身了，那个领事馆的门房走在前面，手里提着灯笼。对我来说，摩洛哥还是一个新鲜而陌生的国家。白天赶了一天路，在平坦的战略公路上乘车行驶了一天，跑了许多英里，路过葡萄园和军事哨所，新建的白色住宅区，高高地挺立着早熟的庄稼的开阔的田野，还有贴着法国商品广告的招贴板——有杜邦涅商店，米什兰商店和卢浮宫商店——我原以为这地方是现代化的近郊区；现在在星光下这座城市四面围着城墙，街道是积满灰尘的缓坡，两边的城墙耸立着，没有窗户，头上一会儿一片漆黑，一会儿星光灿烂；厚厚的尘土积满在碎石路上，行人静悄悄地从身旁走过，他们穿着一身白色长衣，软底拖鞋，或是光着坚硬的脚板；这里的空气中丁香花的香气、焚香的气味和烧柴的烟味混合在一起——这时我才明白是什么东西把塞巴斯蒂安吸引到这里来，而且又使他待了这么久。

领事馆的门房提着摇来晃去的灯，在前面大摇大摆地走着，长手杖笃笃敲地；有时从敞开的大门口显露出一伙人静静地坐在金黄的灯光下，围着一只火钵。

“这些人真够脏的，”门房回过头来非常藐视地说，“没有教养。法国人就让他们这么脏里巴叽的。就不像不列颠人。咱们的人呀，”他说道，“总是十足不列颠味儿的。”

他是从苏丹警察局来的，所以看待他的古老文化中心不列颠就像新西兰人看古罗马一样。

经过了许多装有饰钉的大门，我们终于来到最后一扇门前，门房用他的手杖敲打着大门。

“英国勋爵的公馆。”他说。

门栅栏出现了灯光和一张黑乎乎的脸膛。这位领事馆的门房吹胡子瞪眼地说着话。几道门栓被撤掉了，我们走进一个小院落，院子当中有一口井，头顶的架上爬着葡萄藤。

“我在这儿等着，”门房说，“你跟你这位同胞去吧。”

我走进房子，走下一段台阶，然后进了起居室，我发现一个留声机，一个煤油炉，中间有个青年人，后来当我环顾周围的时候，我才注意到还有别的更使人惬意的东西——地上铺着一块块小地毯，墙上挂着刺绣的绸缎，天花板上雕梁画栋，沉重的带网罩的吊灯从一根链子上吊下来，在房间里投下灯罩的柔和阴影。不过一进来先看的这三样，即刺耳的留声机——正播放着法国爵士乐队的唱片——油味刺鼻的炉子，还有那个表情像狼一样的年轻人，这三者使我的神经大受刺激。他懒洋洋地躺在一张柳条椅里，一只裹着绷带的脚伸在一个箱子上；他穿着一件瘦小的、中欧式的仿花格呢衣服，露出一件开口的网球衫；那只没有受伤的脚穿着一只棕色的粗帆布鞋；他的身边有一个木腿的铜托盘，上面摆着两只啤酒瓶，一只脏盘子，和一个放满了烟蒂的碟子；他手里端着一杯啤酒，下嘴唇上叼着一支香烟，当他说话的时候，烟卷就粘在下嘴唇上。他那头长长的金黄色头发向后梳着，没有分发缝，在他明显的还是年轻的脸上，却反常地起了皱纹；他的一个大门牙已经没了，因此他发“咝”音的时候，有时候就要咬舌头，有时候又费劲地发出吹哨声，逢到这种情形他就傻笑一声掩盖过去；剩下的那些牙也被烟草熏黄了，牙缝很大。

这显然就是那位英国领事描述的那个“地地道道的坏蛋”，电影里的安东尼的仆人了。

“我要找塞巴斯蒂安·弗莱特。这是他的住宅，是不是？”我提高嗓门说，好盖过舞曲，让他能听到，可是他却用英语很柔和地回答，相当流利，说明现在他已经习惯说英语了。

“塞（是）的。不过他不在。这儿只有我，没有别人。”

“我是从英国来的，有要紧的事找他。能不能告诉我在什么地方可以找到他？”

那张唱片这时已经放完。这个德国人把唱片翻了面，上紧发条，唱机又唱起来了，这才回答我的话。

“塞巴斯蒂安病了。修士们带他去医院了。他们也许会让你看他，也许不让。我很块（快）哪一天也得去医院把我的脚包扎一下。到那时我也要问问他们。如果塞巴斯蒂安好一些的话，他们也许会让你看看的。”

那儿还有一把椅子，于是我坐下来。那个德国人看到我打算留下来，就递给我一杯啤酒。

“你不是桑（塞）巴斯蒂安的哥哥吧？”他说，“也许是表哥吧？也许你和他的米米（妹妹）结婚了吧？”

“我只是他的朋友。大学的同学。”

“我过去在大学也有一个朋友。我们是学历史的。我的朋友比我聪明；他身体很弱——每当我生起气来，我就常常抓住他，把他猛摇——可是他逮（太）聪明了。后来有一天我们说：‘这不是见鬼吗？在德国没什么可干的了，德国完蛋了。’于是我们就去向教授们告别，他们说：‘不错，德国是完蛋了。现在学生在这儿也没有什么学的。’这样我们就走掉了，走哇走的，最后我们就走到这儿了。后来我们说：‘德国现在没有军队了，所以我们得当绷（兵）。’于是我们又加入了外籍军团。我的朋友去年得痢疾死了，当时他正在阿特拉斯山作战。他死了以后，我说：‘这不是见鬼吗？’于是我就朝我的脚打了一熗。这只脚现在全是脓，虽然我已经治了一年了。”

“不错，”我说，“这倒挺有意思。可是我眼下关心的是塞巴斯蒂安。也许你能告诉我一些他的情况吧。”

“他是一个挺不错的人，塞巴斯蒂安。对我说来他很好。丹吉尔那地方糟得很。于是他就把我带到这儿来了——房子啦，食物啦，仆人啦，都很好——对我说来这一切都很好，我是这么想的。我很喜欢。”

“他的母亲病得很重，”我说，“我是来告诉他的。”

“她有钱吗？”

“有钱。”

“那么为什么她不多给他点钱呢？那么我们就可以住在卡萨布兰卡了，也许还住在一套体面的公寓里呢。你跟她很熟吗？你能不能让她多给他点钱？”

“他出了什么事？”

“我不知道。我估计也许他喝得太多了吧。修士们会照看他的。那儿对他很好。修士们都是好人。那儿也很便宜。”

他拍了拍巴掌，吩咐再拿啤酒来。

“你敢（看）到了吧？有一个很好的仆人照顾我呢。这就很好。”

我打听出那所医院的名字就走了。

“告诉塞巴斯蒂安我还在这儿，很好。我估计他也许在为我担心呢。”


我第二天早晨去的那所医院，是在旧城和新城之间的一片平房。医院是由方济各会修道士们开办的。我从一群摩尔病人中间穿过，来到医生诊室。他是一个世俗人，脸刮得光溜溜的，穿着一身白色的、浆洗过的罩衫。我们用法语说起来，他告诉我塞巴斯蒂安并没有什么危险，不过很不适宜旅行。他患了流行性感冒，有一边肺部还有轻度的炎症；他的身体很虚弱；抵抗力也很差；谁能预料会怎么样呢？再说他又是饮酒过度的人。医生不动感情地、几乎是冷酷地说，并且带着搞科学的人常有的那种爱好，话只限于无关紧要的，把他的工作删略到枯燥乏味的地步。他把我交给一位留着胡子赤着脚板的修士，这个修士称不上医务人员，只是个干脏活的人，他的说话却另是一样。

“他很有耐性。一点儿也不像个年轻人。他躺在那里从来也不抱怨——这里有很多可抱怨的。我们这儿没有什么设备。政府给我们的都是些军队剩下来的东西。他人很和气。还有一个可怜的德国小家伙，一只脚没有治好，还有二期梅毒，也到这儿来治疗。弗莱特勋爵在丹吉尔发现他在挨饿，就带他回来，让他有住有吃。一个真正乐善好施的人。”

“可怜的头脑简单的修道士，”我想，“可怜的笨蛋。”上帝饶恕我吧！

塞巴斯蒂安住在专门为欧洲人保留的厢房里，病床被低矮的隔板分隔成一间间的小室，还有某种单间的意味。他正躺着，双手放在被子上，凝视着墙壁，墙上唯一的装饰品是一张石印的宗教油画。

“你的朋友来了，”修士说道。

他慢慢回头望望。

“哟，我以为他说的是库尔特来了呢。查尔斯，你在这儿干什么？”

他比以前更消瘦了；饮酒使别人肥胖起来，红光满面，可是似乎却使他枯萎干瘪了。那位修士离开了我们，我在他的床边坐下，说起了他的病情。

“我的神经错乱了一两天，”他说道，“我一直觉得回到牛津。你去过我的住所了吗？喜欢那地方吗？库尔特还在那儿吗？我不问你喜欢不喜欢库尔特；没人喜欢他。说来可笑——如果没有他，我就没法过活啦，知道吧。”

随后我讲他母亲的情况。一时他什么话也没有说，只是躺着盯着看那张七悲圣母的石印油画，后来说道：

“可怜的妈妈。她真是一个不幸的女人，不是吗？轻轻一碰就要她的命了。”

我给朱莉娅拍了电报，说塞巴斯蒂安不能旅行，随后我又在非斯待了一个星期，每天都到医院去，到后来他恢复到能够走动了。他恢复体力的头一个迹象，是在看望他的第二天他要喝白兰地。第二天，他也不知道用什么方法弄到了一些，他把酒藏在被单底下。

那个医生说：“你的朋友可又喝开了。这里是禁止喝酒的。我可有什么办法呢？这儿又不是少年教养所。我也不能在病房里安置警察呀。我到这儿是来给人看病，而不是来防止他们染上恶习，或是来教他们学会自我控制。白兰地酒现在对他还没有什么害处。等他下次再病了就会使他更加衰弱了，以后总有一天一点小病就会要他的命的。这里并不是酒鬼之家啊。这个周末他就得出院。”

那个打杂的修士说：“你的朋友今天分外高兴，好像变了一个人似的。”

“可怜的头脑简单的修士，”我想到，“可怜的笨蛋。”可是他又说：“你知道为什么吗？他把一瓶白兰地藏在他的床上。我发现这是第二次了。我刚拿走这一瓶，他马上又弄到一瓶。可真够淘气的。是那几个阿拉伯小孩给他带进来的。看到他又很高兴也好，这一向他太伤心了。”

最后一个下午我说道：“塞巴斯蒂安，你母亲已经去世了”——这个消息是当天上午到的——“你想回英国去吗？”

“这会是很好的，从某些方面来说，”他说，“可是你认为库尔特会愿意吗？”

“看在上帝的面上，”我说，“你不打算和库尔特过一辈子吧？”

“我不知道。好像他打算跟我过一辈子的。‘寨（这）也许对他很好，我猜，’”他模仿库尔特的口音说道，以后他又说了些话，如果我当时对他说的多加注意的话，我就会明白我一直不解的症结在什么地方；那些话我当时听到了，而且也记住了，可是却没有注意。“你知道，查尔斯，”他说，“当你的一生有了人来照顾你，有一个人来照顾你自己，这种变化是多么愉快啊。当然，非得是一个需要我来照顾的、濒于绝望的人。”

在我动身以前，我还能够把他的钱财问题安排妥当。他到这时候，日子过得十分拮据，就靠给他的律师打电报要他寄一些零星的钱来。我见了银行分行的经理，给他把事情安排好，如果将来从伦敦寄来了钱，他就收下塞巴斯蒂安每个季度的生活费，以后每星期付给他一笔零用钱，并且留下一部分钱作为他随时可以提取的应急款项。这笔钱只能支付给塞巴斯蒂安本人，而且只有经理认为他有正当用途的时候才能支付。塞巴斯蒂安欣然同意了这些安排。

“否则的话，”他说道，“当我喝醉了，库尔特就会骗我把所有的支票都签上名，然后跑掉，那可就会碰上各种各样的麻烦。”

我把塞巴斯蒂安从医院送回家去。他坐在柳条椅里似乎比躺在床上还显得虚弱。这两个病人，他和库尔特，面对面坐着，中间隔着那架留声机。

“你也该回来了，”库尔特说，“我需要你呢。”

“真的吗，库尔特？”

“我估计是这样的。你病了的时候，一个人待着可太不愉快了。那个用人是个懒骨头——我需要他时，他总是溜掉了。有一次他在外面待了整整一夜，我醒来的时候竟没有人给我煮咖啡。一只脚全是脓可真不是滋味。我睡眠也非常不好。说不定什么时候我也要溜掉的，到能够照顾我的地方去。”他拍了拍巴掌，可是没有仆人来。“看到了吧？”他说。

“你要什么？”

“香烟。我的床底下那只袋子里还有一些。”

塞巴斯蒂安痛苦地离开椅子站起来。

“我拿吧，”我说，“床在什么地方？”

“别去，这是我的事。”塞巴斯蒂安说。

“塞（是）的，”库尔特说，“我认为这是塞巴斯蒂安的事。”

于是我就把他和他的朋友留在这条死胡同尽头一间封闭着的小房子里了。我对塞巴斯蒂安再也无能为力了。

本来我打算直接回巴黎去，可是塞巴斯蒂安的生活费的事却意味着得去伦敦见布赖兹赫德。我取道海路，在丹吉尔又搭上了半岛和东方航运公司的客船，六月初回到了家里。


“据你看来，”布赖兹赫德问道，“我弟弟和这个德国人之间的关系有没有什么不正经的地方？”

“没有。我肯定没有。无非是两个流浪人漂流到了一起罢了。”

“你是说他是一个罪犯吗？”

“我说的是罪犯一类的人。他原来蹲过军事监狱，后来挺不光彩地被释放了。”

“医生是不是说塞巴斯蒂安是在用酒精来自杀？”

“是使他的身体越来越衰弱。他既没有得震颤性的酒狂，也没有肝硬化。”

“他没有神经错乱吧？”

“当然没有。他找到了一个凑巧他很喜欢的同伴，又找到了恰巧他愿意住的一个地方。”

“那么就照你的建议，他一定可以得到他的生活费。情况已经十分清楚了。”

在某些方面，布赖兹赫德是个很容易打交道的人。他对一切抱着一种狂热的确信，使他做出决定又快又简单。

“你愿意画画这栋房子吗？”他突然问道，“一张画正面，一张画后面的园林，一张画楼梯，一张画大客厅，行吗？四幅小油画；这是我父亲一直想要留下作纪念的，以后保存在布赖兹赫德。而我一个画画儿的人都不认识。朱莉娅说过你是专门学建筑绘画的。”

“好吧，”我说，“我非常愿意画。”

“你知道这儿将要拆毁吗？我父亲要把它卖掉。他们要在这儿盖一座公寓。而且他们还要保留这个名字——我们显然不能阻止他们这样做。”

“真是件伤心的事情。”

“呃，我当然也很难过啦。不过，你不觉得这个建筑很不错吗？”

“这是我见过的最漂亮的一所房子了。”

“我看不出来。我原来只觉得它很难看。也许你的画儿会使我用不同的眼光来看它的。”

这是我受到的第一次委托。我得尽力抢时间完成工作，因为买房地的人只等最后一签字就动手拆毁房子了。尽管如此，或许正因为如此——因为我有一种在一块画布上花费极长时间的坏毛病，我从来不愿意草率从事——这四幅油画成了我的最为得意之作，也正是这些画儿的成功，在我自己和其他的人们看来，都使我坚定了对我未来事业的信心。

我首先画那间长形客厅，因为他们急于搬走里面的家具，这些家具自从这间客厅建起来以后就一直摆在那儿。这是一间狭长、精美、对称的亚当设计建造的房子，有两扇朝格林公园开的凸窗。下午我在客厅里开始画画的时候，光线从西边的窗户流泻进来，由于外面鲜嫩的小树呈现出鲜亮的绿色。

我用铅笔把各种比例关系确定下来，再把详图仔细地设计好。然后我就像一个潜水员在水边跳水的样子后退几步；一跳下去我就发现自己已经浮了起来，于是干劲倍增。一般说来我是一个动笔很慢、谨慎小心的画家；所以这个下午，第二天一整天，再加上第三天，我都在加紧工作。而且我一点错也不能出。每当告一段落时，我就停一停，心情紧张得很，不敢开始画下一段，就像一个赌徒一样，生怕以后手气会变坏了，大堆钱财化为乌有。画面终于一点一滴一分一秒地逐渐成形了。其实倒没有什么困难；错综复杂的光线和色彩融为一体；而且我在调色板上调出来的色彩恰好就是我想要的那种；每一道笔划，一当完成，似乎一直在那儿似的。

在最后一个下午，我开始不久就听见一个声音在我背后说：“我可以在这儿看看吗？”

我回头一看，发现了科迪莉娅。

“可以，”我说，“只要你不说话就行，”我又继续画下去，把她忘了，一直画到暗淡的光线使我收起画具。

“会干这种事情一定是挺有意思的。”

我已经忘了她还在这儿。

“是的。”

即使这时我也无法离开我的画儿，尽管夕阳西下，房间黯淡下来，周围变成了一幅单色画。我把画从画架上取下来，把它举到窗户前，然后再放回去，把阴影部分的色调调淡一些。突然间，我的脑袋、眼睛、背部和胳膊都涌上一阵疲倦的感觉，由于天色已晚我不画了，就转向科迪莉娅。

她现在十五岁了，在这十八个月当中她个子长高了，她的个儿几乎已经长够了。她丝毫没有朱莉娅那种十五世纪意大利文艺复兴时代的丰满漂亮的容貌；她修长的鼻梁和突出的颧骨却已然有了布赖兹赫德家族的样子。她穿着黑衣服，正在为她母亲服丧。

“我累啦，”我说道。

“我敢断定你是累了。画完了吗？”

“差不多完了。明天我还得再润色一下。”

“你知道早就过了吃晚饭的时间吧？现在已经没有人做饭了。我也是今天刚到，我没有了解到这里竟破败到这样地步。你不想带我出去吃饭吗？”

我们从花园门出去，过了公园，在苍茫的暮色中走到里茨·格里尔餐厅。

“你见到了塞巴斯蒂安吗？他甚至现在也不愿意回家吗？”

到这时我才认识到她现在已经很懂事了。我说是这样。

“唔，我爱他胜过爱任何人，”她说道，“说到马奇家族，真叫人伤心，是吧？你知道，他们在这里要盖一座公寓，而雷克斯想住进顶层上他称为‘楼顶房屋’那种房子。这倒挺像他的为人，是吧？可怜的朱莉娅。对她来说，这是太过分了。他丝毫也不理解；他以为她舍不得这所旧宅呢。事情很快就都要完结，是不是？显然爸爸负债累累已经很久了。卖掉马奇公馆，使他还清债务，而且我不知他一年还能存下几个钱来。可是朱莉娅认为把房子拆毁了好像是很丢脸的事。她说宁肯让别人住进来也不愿意把它毁了。”

“那么你怎么办呢？”

“的确，怎么办？有各式各样的建议。范妮·罗斯康芒舅妈想叫我跟她一块儿住。后来雷克斯和朱莉娅谈到要把布赖兹赫德拿过来一半，就住在那儿。爸爸不会回来。我们原来以为他会回来的，可是他不回来。

“他们关闭了布赖兹赫德的小教堂，是布赖德和主教一道关闭的；妈妈的安灵弥撒就是那个小教堂里念的最后一次弥撒。妈妈安葬完了以后，那个神父就走进小教堂来——当时只有我一个在。我想他没有看到我——他拿出那块祭坛石放进他的袋子里；他又把圣油浇在一卷卷的羊毛上点燃了，以后又把灰烬扔到外面；他倒空了圣水钵，吹熄了祭坛上的灯，然后让神龛敞开着，里面空荡荡的，好像从这时起就永远是耶稣受难日了，我想你一点也不懂其中的意义的，查尔斯，你这个可怜的不可知论者。我一直待在那儿，直到他走了，一霎时，那里根本就不存在什么小教堂了，只剩下一间装饰得稀奇古怪的房子。我真没法跟你讲清楚它像个什么东西。我想，你从来没有参加过纪念耶稣受难的圣歌晨祷吧？”

“从来没有。”

“对啦，如果你参加过，你就会明白犹太人对他们的圣殿的看法了。寂无人烟的城市就像这样屹立在那里……这是一首很美的圣歌。你应该去一次，去听听这首圣歌。”

“还想让我改变信仰吗，科迪莉娅？”

“啊，不是。那也都是过去的事了。你知道爸爸成了天主教徒的时候他是怎么说的吗？妈妈有一次告诉过我。他对她说：‘你已经使我的家庭恢复祖先的信仰了。’这是夸大其词，你知道。信仰对人的影响不一样。无论怎么说，这个家庭一直不是一成不变的，是不是？他走了，塞巴斯蒂安走了，朱莉娅也走了。可是你知道，上帝不会让他们走开很久的。我不知道你是不是还记得妈妈在塞巴斯蒂安头一次喝醉的那个晚上念的那篇故事——我指的是过得很糟的那个晚上。‘布朗神父’说了这么些话，‘我抓住了他’（指那个小偷），‘用的是一个看不见的钩子，还有一条看不见的长线，那条线长得足够让他游荡到天涯海角，但是猛拉这条线，就能把他拉回来。’”

我们很少提到她的母亲。我们一直谈着，她狼吞虎咽地吃。一次她说：

“你看过艾德里安·波森爵士在《泰晤士报》上发表的那首诗吗？那诗很可笑；他认为她是最杰出的人——你知道，他一辈子都爱着她——但是好像又跟她一点关系都没有。

“我们家里的人，就数我跟她相处得最好了，但是我认为我并没有真正爱过她，不像她希望的那样，也不像她应该得到的那样。我不爱她，这实在是奇怪的事，因为我充满了正常的感情。”

“实际上我从来不了解你母亲，”我说。

“你并不喜欢她。我有时觉得，当人们要恨上帝的时候，就恨妈妈。”

“你这话是什么意思，科迪莉娅？”

“喏，你看，她像圣徒一样，可是她并不是圣徒。谁也不能真的恨一个圣徒，能够吗？他们也不能真的恨上帝。当他们想要恨他和他的圣徒的时候，他们就不得不找到和他相似的东西，假托这就是上帝，然后加以仇恨。大概你觉得这都是胡说八道吧。”

“以前我也听到过几乎和这一模一样的话——那是一个完全不同的人说的。”

“唉，我是非常严肃的啊。这话我想了很多。这话好像可以解释清楚妈妈的情况。”

说完了这些话，这个令人不解的孩子又津津有味地大吃起来。“我这是头一次单独被带进饭馆里吃饭，”她说。

后来她说：“朱莉娅一听说他们要卖掉马奇公馆，她就说：‘可怜的科迪莉娅。毕竟她不能在那儿举行她第一次进社交界的舞会了。’这是我们常常谈论的事——就像常常谈论我做她的女傧相一样。傧相也没有当成。朱莉娅举行舞会时，允许我下楼和范妮舅妈在角落里坐了一个小时，她说：‘再过六年，你也会有这样的舞会。’我希望我得到神召。”

“我不懂这是什么意思。”

“意思是说你可以做一个修女。如果没有神召，不管你多么向往也没有用；如果得到神召，你就怎么也摆脱不了，不管你多么憎恨它。布赖德以为他得到神召，其实并没有。我过去常常觉得塞巴斯蒂安得到神召，而且恨神召——不过现在我不知道了。一切事情一下子全变了。”

可是我没有耐性谈什么修道院。我觉得那天下午画笔在我手里有了生命；我已经参与了那个伟大的、生气勃勃的创造了；那天晚上我是一个文艺复兴时代的人——勃郎宁的文艺复兴时代的人。我曾经身穿热那亚的丝绒衣服踯躅在罗马街头，曾经用伽利略的望远镜眺望繁星，但是我蔑视修道士那些尘封的浩繁经典，妒火中烧的凹陷下去的眼睛，还有他们那些晦涩而烦琐的讲演。

“你以后会落入情网。”我说。

“哟，千万不要。喂，你说我还能再吃些这种美味的蛋白甜饼？”



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Chapter 9
MY theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time.

These memories, which are my life - for we possess nothing certainly except the past - were always with me. Like the pigeons of St Mark’s, they were everywhere, under my feet, singly, in pairs, in little honey-voiced congregations, nodding, strutting, winking, rolling the tender feathers of their necks, perching sometimes, if I stood still, on my shoulder; until, suddenly, the noon gun boomed and in a moment, with a flutter and sweep of wings, the pavement was bare and the whole sky above dark with a tumult of fowl. Thus it was that morning of war-time.

For nearly ten dead years after that evening with Cordelia I was borne along a road outwardly full of change and incident, but never during that time, except sometimes in my painting - and that at longer and longer intervals - did I come alive as I had been during the time of my friendship with Sebastian. I took it to be youth, not life, that I was losing. My work upheld me, for I had chosen to do what I could do well, did better daily, and liked doing; incidentally it was something which no one else at that time was attempting to do. I became an architectural painter.

More even than the work of the great architects, I loved buildings that grew silently with the centuries, catching and keeping the best of each generation, while time curbed the artist’s pride and the Philistine’s vulgarity, and repaired the clumsiness of the dull workman. In such buildings England abounded, and, in the last decade of their grandeur, Englishmen seemed for the first time to become conscious of what before was taken for granted, and to salute their achievement at the moment of extinction. Hence my prosperity, far beyond my merits; my work had nothing to recommend it except my growing technical skill, enthusiasm for my subject, and independence of popular notions.

The financial slump of the period, which left many painters without employment, served to enhance my success, which was, indeed, itself a symptom of the decline.  When the water-holes were dry people sought to drink at the mirage. After my first exhibition I was called to all parts of the country to make portraits of houses that were soon to be deserted or debased; indeed, my arrival seemed often to be only a few paces ahead of the auctioneer’s, a presage of doom.

I published three splendid folios - Ryder’s Country Seats, Ryder’s English Homes, and Ryder’s Village and Provincial Architecture, which each sold its thousand copies at five guineas apiece. I seldom failed to please, for there was no conflict between myself and my patrons, we both wanted the same thing. But, as the years passed, I began to mourn the loss of something I had known in the drawing-room of Marchmain House and once or twice since, the intensity and singleness and the belief that it was not all done by hand - in a word, the inspiration.

In quest of this fading light I went abroad, in the augustan manner, laden with the apparatus of my trade, for two years’ refreshment among alien styles. I did not go to Europe; her treasures were safe, too safe, swaddled in expert care, obscured by reverence. Europe could wait. There would be a time for Europe, I thought; all too soon the days would come when I should need a man at my side to put up my easel and carry my paints; when I could not venture more than an hour’s journey from a good hotel; when I should need soft breezes and mellow sunshine all day long; then I would take my old eyes to Germany and Italy. Now while I had the strength I would go to the wild lands where man had deserted his post and the jungle was creeping back to its old strongholds.

Accordingly, by slow but not easy stages, I travelled through Mexico and Central America in a world which had all I needed, and the change from parkland and hall should have quickened me and set me right with myself. I sought inspiration among gutted palaces and cloisters embowered in weed, derelict churches where the vampire-bats hung in the dome like dry seed-pods and only the ants were ceaselessly astir tunnelling in the rich stalls; cities where no road led, and mausoleums where a single, agued family of Indians sheltered from the rains. There in great labour, sickness, and occasionally in some danger, I made the first drawings for Ryder’s Latin America.

Every few weeks I came to rest, finding myself once more in the zone of trade or tourism, recuperated, set up my studio, transcribed my sketches, anxiously packed the complete canvases, dispatched them to my New York agent, and then set out again, with my small retinue, into the wastes.

I was in no great pains to keep in touch with England. I followed local advice for my itinerary and had no settled route, so that much of my mail never reached me, and the rest accumulated until there was more than could be read at a sitting. I used to stuff a bundle of letters into my bag and read them when I felt inclined, which was in circumstances so incongruous swinging in my hammock, under the net, by the light of a storm-lantern; drifting down river, amidships in the canoe, with the boys astern of me lazily keeping our nose out of the bank, with the dark water keeping pace with us, in the green shade, with the great trees towering above us and the monkeys screeching in the sunlight, high overhead among the flowers on the roof of the forest; on the veranda of a hospitable ranch, where the ice and the dice clicked, and a tiger cat played with its chain on the mown grass - that they seemed voices so distant as to be meaningless; their matter passed clean through the mind, and out leaving no mark, like the facts about themselves which fellow travellers distribute so freely in American railway trains.  But despite this isolation and this long sojourn in a strange world, I remained unchanged, still a small part of myself pretending to be whole. I discarded the experiences of those two years with my tropical kit and returned to New York as I had set out. I had a fine haul - eleven paintings and fifty odd drawings and when eventually I exhibited them in London, the art critics many of whom hitherto had been patronizing in tone, as my success invited, acclaimed a new and richer note in my work. Mr Ryder, the most respected of them wrote, rises like a fresh young trout to the hypodermic injection of a new culture and discloses a powerful facet in the vista of his potentialities....By focusing the frankly traditional battery of his elegance and erudition on the maelstrom of barbarism, Mr Ryder has at last found himself.  Grateful words, but, alas, not true by a long chalk. My wife, who crossed to New York to meet me and saw the fruits of our separation displayed in my agent’s office, summed the thing up better by saying: ‘Of course, I can see they’re perfectly brilliant and really rather beautiful in a sinister way, but somehow I don’t feel they are quite you.’

In Europe my wife was sometimes taken for an American because of her dapper and jaunty way of dressing, and the curiously hygienic quality of her prettiness; in America she assumed an English softness and reticence. She arrived a day or two before me, and was on the pier when my ship docked.

‘It has been a long time,’ she said fondly when we met.  She had not joined the expedition; she explained to our friends that the country was unsuitable and she had her son at home. There was also a daughter now, she remarked, and it came back to me that there had been talk of this before I started, as an additional reason for her staying behind. There had been some mention of it, too, in her letters.  ‘I don’t believe you read my letters,’ she said that night, when at last, late, after a dinner party and some hours at a cabaret, we found ourselves alone in our hotel bedroom.

‘Some went astray. I remember distinctly your telling me that the daffodils in the orchard were a dream, that the nursery-maid was a jewel, that the Regency four-poster was a find, but frankly I do not remember hearing that your new baby was called Caroline’. Why did you call it that?’

‘After Charles, of course.’

‘I made Bertha Van Halt godmother. I thought she was safe for a good present. What do you think she gave?’



‘Bertha Van Halt is a well-known trap. What?’

‘A fifteen shilling book-token. Now that Johnjohn has a companion - ‘ ‘Who?’

‘Your son, darling. You haven’t forgotten him, too?’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ I said, ‘why do you call him that?’

‘It’s the name he invented for himself. Don’t you think it sweet? Now that Johnjohn has a companion I think we’d better not have any more for some time, don’t you?’ ‘Just as you please.’

‘Johnjohn talks of you such a lot. He prays every night for your safe return.’ She talked in this way while she undressed with an effort to appear at ease; then she sat at the dressing table, ran a comb through her hair, and with her bare back towards me, looking at herself in the glass, said: ‘Shall I put my face to bed?’ It was a familiar phrase, one that I did not like; she meant should she remove her make-up, cover herself with grease and put her hair in a net.  ‘No,’ I said, ‘not at once.’

Then she knew what was wanted. She had neat, hygienic ways for that too, but there were both relief and triumph in her smile of welcome; later we parted and lay in our twin beds a yard or two distant, smoking. I looked at my watch; it was four o’clock, but neither of us was ready to sleep, for in that city there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

‘I don’t believe you’ve changed at all, Charles.’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘D’you want to change?’

‘It’s the only evidence of life.’

‘But you might change so that you didn’t love me any more.’

‘There is that risk.’

‘Charles, you haven’t stopped loving me.’

‘You said yourself I hadn’t changed.’

‘Well, I’m beginning to think you have. I haven’t.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘no; I can see that.’

‘Were you at all frightened at meeting me today?’

‘Not the least.’

‘You didn’t wonder if I should have fallen in love with someone else in the meantime?’

‘No. Have you?’

‘You know I haven’t. Have you?’

‘No. I’m not in love.’

My wife seemed content with this answer. She had married me six years ago at the time of my first exhibition, and had done much since then to push our interests. People said she had ‘made’ me, but she herself took credit only for supplying me with a congenial background; she had firm faith in my genius and in the ‘artistic temperament’, and in the principle that things done on the sly are not really done at all.  Presently she said: ‘Looking forward to getting home?’ (My father gave me as a wedding present the price of a house, and I bought an. old rectory in my wife’s part of the country.) ‘I’ve got a surprise for you.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve turned the old barn into a studio for you, so that you needn’t be disturbed by the children or when we have people to stay. I got Emden to do it. Everyone thinks it a great success.

There was an article on it in Country Life; I bought it for you to see.’



She showed me the article: ‘...happy example of architectural good manners...Sir Joseph Emden’s tactful adaptation of traditional material to modern needs...’; there were some photographs; wide oak boards now covered the earthen floor; a high, stone-mullioned bay-window had been built in the north wall, and the great timbered roof, which before had been lost in shadow, now stood out stark, well lit, with clean white plaster between the beams; it looked like a village hall. I remembered the smell of the place, which would now be lost.

‘I rather liked that barn.’ I said.

‘But you’ll be able to work there, won’t you?’

‘After squatting in a cloud of sting-fly,’ I said, ‘under a sun which scorched the paper off the block as I drew, I could work on the top of an omnibus. I expect the vicar would like to borrow the place for whist drives.’

‘There’s a lot of work waiting for you. I promised Lady Anchorage you would do Anchorage House as soon as you got back. That’s coming down, too, you know - shops underneath and two-roomed flats above. You don’t think, do you, Charles, that all this exotic work you’ve been doing, is going to spoil you for that sort of thing?’ ‘Why should it?’

‘Well, it’s so different. Don’t be cross.’

‘It’s just another jungle closing in.’

‘I know just how you feel, darling. The Georgian Society made such a fuss, but we couldn’t do anything...Did you ever get my letter about Boy?’ ‘Did I? What did it say?’

(‘Boy’ Mulcaster was her brother.)

‘About his engagement. It doesn’t matter now because it’s all off, but father and mother were terribly upset. She was an awful girl. They had to give her money in the end.’

‘No, I heard nothing of Boy.’

‘He and Johnjohn are tremendous friends, now. It’s so sweet to see them together.  Whenever he comes the first thing he does is to drive straight to the Old Rectory. He just walks into the house, pays no attention to anyone else, and hollers out: “Where’s my chum Johnjohn?” and Johnjohn comes tumbling downstairs and off they go into the spinney together and play for hours. You’d think, to hear them talk to each other, they were the same age. It was really Johnjohn who made him see reason about that girl; seriously, you know, he’s frightfully sharp. He must have heard mother and me talking because next time Boy came he said: “Uncle Boy shan’t marry horrid girl and leave Johnjohn,” and that was the very day he settled for two thousand pounds out of court.  Johnjohn admires Boy so tremendously and imitates him in everything. It’s so good for them both.’

I crossed the room and tried once more, ineffectively, to moderate the heat of the radiators; I drank some iced water and opened the window, but, besides the sharp night air, music was borne in from the next room where they were playing the wireless. I shut it and turned back towards my wife.

At length she began talking again, more drowsily ‘The garden’s come on a lot...The box hedges you planted grew five inches last year...I had some men down from London to put the tennis court right...first-class cook at the moment...’ As the city below us began to wake, we both fell asleep, but not for long; the telephone rang and a voice of hermaphroditic gaiety said: ‘Savoy-Carlton-Hotel-goodmorning. It is now a quarter of eight.’

‘I didn’t ask to be called, you know.’

‘Pardon me?’



‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’

‘You’re welcome.’

As I was shaving, my wife from the bath said: ‘Just like old times. I’m not worrying any more, Charles.’

‘Good.’

‘I was so terribly afraid that two years might have made a difference. Now I know we can start again exactly where we left off.’

‘When?’ I asked. ‘What? When we left off what?’

When you went away, of course.’

‘You are not thinking of something else, a little time before?’ ‘Oh, Charles, that’s old history. That was nothing. It was never anything. It’s all over and forgotten.’

‘I just wanted to know,’ I said. ‘We’re back as we were the day I went abroad, is that it?’

So we started that day exactly where we left off two years before, with my wife in tears.

My wife’s softness and English reticence , her very white, small regular teeth, her neat rosy finger-nails, her schoolgirl air of innocent mischief and her schoolgirl dress, her modern jewellery, which was made at great expense to give the impression, at a distance, of having been mass produced, her ready, rewarding smile, her deference to me and her zeal in my interests, her motherly heart which made her cable daily to the nanny at home - in short, her peculiar charm - made her popular among the Americans, and our cabin on the day of departure was full of cellophane packages - flowers, fruit, sweets, books, toys for the children - from friends she had known for a week. Stewards, like sisters in a nursing home, used to judge their passengers’ importance by the number and value of these trophies; we therefore started the voyage in high esteem.  My wife’s first thought on coming aboard was of the passenger list.  ‘Such a lot of friends,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be a lovely trip. Let’s have a cocktail party this evening.’

The companion-ways were no sooner cast off than she was busy with the telephone.  ‘Julia. This is Celia - Celia Ryder. It’s lovely to find you on board. What have you been up to? Come and have a cocktail this evening and tell me all about it.’ ‘Julia who?’

‘Mottram. I haven’t seen her for years.’

Nor had I; not, in fact, since my wedding day, not to speak to for any time, since the private view of my exhibition where the four canvases of Marchmain House, lent by Brideshead, had hung together attracting much attention. Those pictures were my last contact with the Flytes; our lives, so close for a year or two, had drawn apart. Sebastian, I knew, was still abroad; Rex and Julia, I sometimes heard said, were unhappy together.

Rex was not prospering quite as well as had been predicted; he remained on the fringe of the Government, prominent but vaguely suspect. He lived among the very rich, and in his speeches seemed to incline to revolutionary policies, flirting, with Communists and Fascists. I heard the Mottrams’ names in conversation; I saw their faces now and again peeping from the Tatler, as I turned the pages impatiently waiting for someone to come, but they and I had fallen apart, as one could in England and only there, into separate worlds, little spinning planets of personal relationship; there is probably a perfect metaphor for the process to be found in physics, from the way in which, I dimly apprehend, particles of energy group and regroup themselves in separate magnetic systems; a metaphor ready to hand for the man who can speak of these things with assurance; not for me, who can only say that England abounded in these small companies of intimate friends, so that, as in this case of Julia and myself, we could live in the same street in London, see at times, a few miles distant, the rural horizon, could have a liking one for the other, a mild curiosity about the other’s fortunes, a regret, even, that we should be separated, and the knowledge that either of us had only to pick up the telephone and speak by the other’s pillow, enjoy the intimacies of the levee, coming in, as it were, with the morning orange juice and the sun, yet be restrained from doing so by the centripetal force of our own worlds, and the cold, interstellar space between them.  My wife, perched on the back of the sofa in a litter of cellophane and silk ribbons, continued telephoning, working brightly through the passenger list...’Yes, do of course bring him, I’m told he’s sweet...Yes, I’ve got Charles back from the wilds at last; isn’t it lovely...What a treat seeing your name in the list! It’s made my trip...darling, we were at the Savoy-Carlton, too; how can we have missed you?’...Sometimes she turned to me and said: ‘I have to make sure you’re still really there. I haven’t got used to it yet.’ I went up and out as we steamed slowly down the river to one of the great glass cases where the passengers stood to watch the land slip by. ‘Such a lot of friends,’ my wife had said. They looked a strange crowd to me; the emotions of leave-taking were just beginning to subside; some of them, who had been drinking till the last moment with those who were seeing them off, were still boisterous; others were planning where they, would have their deck chairs; the band played unnoticed - all were as restless as ants.  I turned into some of the halls of the ship, which were huge without any splendour, as though they had been designed for a railway coach and preposterously magnified. I passed through vast bronze gates on which paper-thin Assyrian animals cavorted; I trod carpets the colour of blotting paper; the painted panels of the walls were like blotting paper, too - kindergarten work in flat, drab colours - and between the walls were yards and yards of biscuit-coloured wood which no carpenter’s tool had ever touched, wood that had been bent round comers, invisibly joined strip to strip, steamed and squeezed and polished; all over the blotting-paper carpet were strewn tables designed perhaps by a sanitary engineer, square blocks of stuffing, with square holes for sitting in, and upholstered, it seemed, in blotting paper also; the light of the hall was suffused from scores of hollows, giving an even glow, casting no shadows - the whole place hummed from its hundred ventilators and vibrated with the turn of the great engines below.  ‘Here I am,’ I thought, ‘back from the jungle, back from the ruins. Here where wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity. Quomodo sedet sola civitas’ (for I had heard that great lament, which Cordelia once quoted to me in the drawing-room of Marchmain House, sung by a half-caste choir in Guatemala, nearly a year ago).  A steward came up to me.

‘Can I get you anything, sir?’

‘A whisky and soda, not iced.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, all the soda is iced.’

‘Is the water iced, too?’

‘Oh yes, sir.’

‘Well, it, doesn’t matter.’

He trotted off, puzzled, soundless in the pervading hum.

‘Charles.’

I looked behind me. Julia was sitting in a cube of blotting paper, her hands folded in her lap, so still that I had passed by without noticing her.  ‘I heard you were here. Celia telephoned to me. It’s delightful.’

‘What are you doing?’

She opened the empty hands in her lap with a little eloquent gesture. ‘Waiting. My maid’s unpacking; she’s been so disagreeable ever since we left England. She’s complaining now about my cabin. I can’t think why. It seems a lap to me.’ The steward returned with whisky and two jugs, one of iced water, the other of boiling water; I mixed them to the rig ht temperature. He watched and said: ‘I’ll remember that’s how you take it, sir.’

Most passengers had fads; he was paid to fortify their self-esteem. Julia asked for a cup of hot chocolate. I sat by her in the next cube.

‘I never see you now, ‘ she said. ‘I never seem to see anyone I like. I don’t know why.’ But she spoke as though it were a matter of weeks rather than of years; as though, too, before our parting we had been firm friends. It was dead contrary to the common experience of such encounters, when time is found to have built its own defensive lines, camouflaged vulnerable points, and laid a field of mines across all but a few well-trodden paths, so that, more often than not, we can only signal to one another from either side of the tangle of wire. Here she and I, who were never friends before, met on terms of long and unbroken intimacy.

‘What have you been doing in America?’

She looked up slowly from her chocolate and, her splendid, serious eyes in mine, said: ‘Don’t you know? I’ll tell you about it sometimes I’ve been a mug. I thought I was in love with someone, but it didn’t turn out that way.’ And my mind went back ten years to the evening at Brideshead, when that lovely, spidery child of nineteen, as though brought in for an hour from the nursery and nettled by lack of attention from the grown-ups, had said: ‘I’m causing anxiety, too, you know,’ and I had thought at the time, though scarcely, it now seemed to me, in long trousers myself, ‘How important these girls make themselves with their love affairs.’

Now it was different; there was nothing but humility and friendly candour in the way she spoke.

I wished I could respond to her confidence, give some token of acceptance, but there was nothing in my last, flat, eventful years that I could share with her. I began instead to talk of my time in the jungle, of the comic characters I had met and the lost places I had visited, but in this mood of old friendship the tale faltered and came to an end abruptly.

‘I long to see the paintings,’ she said.

‘Celia wanted me to unpack some and stick them round the cabin for her cocktail party. I couldn’t do that.’

‘No...is Celia as pretty as ever? I always thought she had the most delicious looks of any girl of my year.’

‘She hasn’t changed.’

‘You have, Charles. So lean and grim; not at all the pretty boy Sebastian brought home with him. Harder, too.’

‘And you’re softer.’

‘Yes, I think so...and very patient now.’

She was not yet thirty, but was approaching the zenith of her loveliness, all her rich promise abundantly fulfilled. She had lost that fashionable, spidery look; the head that I used to think quattrocento, which had sat a little oddly on her, was now part of herself and not at all Florentine; not connected in any way with painting or the arts or with anything except herself, so that it would be idle to itemize and dissect her beauty, which was her own essence, and could only be known in her and by her authority and in the love I was soon to have for her.

Time had wrought another change, too; not for her the sly, complacent smile of la Gioconda; the years had been more than ‘the sound of lyres and flutes’, and had saddened her. She seemed to say: ‘Look at me. I have done my share. I am beautiful. It is something quite out of the ordinary, this beauty of mine. I am made for delight. But what do I get out of it? Where is my reward?’

That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.

‘Sadder, too,’ I said.

‘Oh yes, much sadder.’

My wife was in exuberant spirits when, two hours later, I returned to the cabin.

‘I’ve had to do everything. How does it look?’

We had been given, without paying more for it, a large suite of rooms, one so large, in fact, that it was seldom booked except by directors of the line, and on most voyages, the chief purser admitted, was given to those he wished to honour. (My wife was adept in achieving such small advantages, first impressing the impressionable with her chic and my celebrity and, superiority once firmly established, changing quickly to a pose of almost flirtatious affability.) In token of her appreciation the chief purser had, been asked to our party and he, in token of his appreciation, had sent before him the life-size effigy of a swan, moulded in ice and filled with caviar. This chilly piece of magnificence now dominated the room, standing on a table in the centre, thawing gently, dripping at the beak into its silver dish. The flowers of the morning delivery hid as much as possible of the panelling (for this room was a miniature of the monstrous hall above).

‘You must get dressed at once. Where have you been all this time?’

‘Talking to Julia Mottram.’

‘D’you know her? Oh, of course, you were a friend of the dipso brother. Goodness, her glamour!’

‘She greatly admires your looks, too.’

‘She used to be a girl friend of Boy’s.’

‘Surely not?’

‘He always said so.’

‘Have you considered,’ I asked, ‘how your guests are going to eat this caviar?’ ‘I have. It’s insoluble. But there’s all this’ - she revealed some trays of glassy titbits - ‘and anyway, people always find ways of eating things at parties. D’you remember we once ate potted shrimps with a paper knife?’

‘Did we?’

‘Darling’ it was the night you popped the question.’

‘As I remember, you popped.’

‘Well, the night we got engaged. But you haven’t said how you like the, arrangements.’

The arrangements, apart from the swan and the flowers, consisted of a steward already inextricably trapped in the corner behind an improvised bar, and another steward, tray in hand, in comparative freedom.

‘A cinema actor’s dream,’ I said.

‘Cinema actors,’ said my wife; ‘that’s what I want to talk about.’ She came with me to my dressing-room and talked while I changed. It had occurred to her that, with my interest in architecture, my true métier was designing scenery for the films, and she had asked two Hollywood magnates to the party with whom she wished to ingratiate me.

We returned to the sitting-room.



‘Darling, I believe you’ve taken against my bird. Don’t be beastly about it in front of the purser. It was sweet of him to think of it. Besides, you know, if you had read about it in the description of a sixteenth-century banquet in Venice, you would have said those were the days to live.’

‘In sixteenth-century Venice it would have been a somewhat different shape.’

‘Here is Father Christmas. We were just in raptures over your swan.’

The chief purser came into the room and shook hands, powerfully.  ‘Dear Lady Celia,’ he said, ‘if you’ll put on your warmest clothes and come on an expedition into the cold storage with me tomorrow, I can show you a whole Noah’s Ark of such objects. The toast will be along in a minute. They’re keeping it hot.’ ‘Toast!’ said my wife, as though this was something beyond the dreams of gluttony.

‘Do you hear that Charles? Toast.’

Soon the guests began to arrive; there was nothing to delay them. ‘Celia,’ they said, ‘what a grand cabin and what a beautiful swan!’ and, for all that it was one of the largest in the ship, our room was soon painfully crowded; they began to put out their cigarettes in the little pool of ice-water which now surrounded the swan.  The purser made a sensation, as sailors like to do, by predicting a storm. ‘How can you be so beastly?’ asked my wife, conveying the flattering suggestion that not only the cabin and the caviar, but the waves, too, were at his command. ‘Anyway, storms don’t affect a ship like this, do they?’

‘Might hold us back a bit.’

‘But it wouldn’t make us sick?’

‘Depends if you’re a good sailor. I’m always sick in storms, ever since I was a boy.’ ‘I don’t believe it. He’s just being sadistic. Come over here, there’s something I want to show you.’

It was the latest photograph of her children. ‘Charles hasn’t even seen Caroline yet.

Isn’t it thrilling for him?’

There were no friends of mine there, but I knew about a third of the party, and talked away civilly enough. An elderly woman said to me, ‘So you’re Charles. I feel I know you through and through, Celia’s talked so much about you.’ ‘Through and through,’ I thought. ‘Through and through is a long way, madam. Can you indeed see into those dark places where my own eyes seek in vain to guide me? Can you tell me, dear Mrs Stuyvesant Oglander - if I am correct in thinking that is how I heard my wife speak of you - why it is that at this moment, while I talk to you, here, about my forthcoming exhibition, I am thinking all the time only of when Julia will come? Why can I talk like this to you, but not to her? Why have I already set her apart from humankind, and myself with her? What is going on in those secret places of my spirit with which you make so free? What is cooking, Mrs Stuyvesant Oglander?’ Still Julia did not come, and the noise of twenty people in that tiny room, which was so large that no one hired it, was the noise of a multitude.  Then I saw a curious thing. There was a little red-headed man whom no one seemed to know, a dowdy fellow quite unlike the general run of my wife’s guests; he had been standing by the caviar for twenty minutes eating as fast as a rabbit. Now he wiped his mouth with his handkerchief and, on the impulse apparently, leaned forward and dabbed the beak of the swan, removing the drop of water that had been swelling there and would soon have fallen. Then he looked round furtively to see if he had been observed, caught my eye, and giggled nervously.

‘Been wanting to do that for a long time,’ he said. ‘Bet you don’t know how many drops to the minute. I do, I counted.’

‘I’ve no idea.’



‘Guess. Tanner if you’re wrong; half a dollar if you’re right. That’s fair.’

‘Three,’ I said.

‘Coo, you’re a sharp one. Been counting ‘em yourself.’ But he showed no inclination to pay this debt. Instead he said: ‘How d’you figure this out. I’m an Englishman born and bred, but this is my first time on the Atlantic.’

‘You flew out perhaps?’

‘No, nor over it.’

‘Then I presume you went round the world and came across the Pacific.’ ‘You are a sharp one and no mistake. I’ve made quite a bit getting into arguments over that one.’

‘What was your route?’ I asked, wishing to be agreeable.

‘Ah, that’d be telling. Well, I must skedaddle. So long.’

‘Charles, said my wife, ‘this is Mr Kramm, of Interastral Films.’

‘So you are Mr Charles Ryder,’ said Mr Kramm.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, well., well,’ he paused. I waited. ‘The purser here says we’re heading for dirty weather. What d’you know about that?’

‘Far less than the purser.’

‘Pardon me, Mr Ryder, I don’t quite get you.’

‘I mean I know less than the purser.’

‘Is that so? Well, well, well. I’ve enjoyed our talk very much. I hope that it will be the first of many.’

An Englishwoman said: ‘Oh, that swan! Six weeks in America has given me an absolute phobia of ice. Do tell me, how did it feel meeting Celia again after two years? I know I should feel indecently bridal. But Celia’s never quite got the orange blossom out of her hair, has she?’

Another woman said: ‘Isn’t it heaven saying good-bye and knowing we shall meet again in half an hour and go on meeting every half-hour for days?’ Our guests began to go, and each on leaving informed me of something my wife had promised to bring me to in the near future; it was the theme of the evening that we should all be seeing a lot of each other, that we had formed one of those molecular systems that physicists can illustrate. At last the swan was wheeled out, too, and I said to my wife, ‘Julia never came.’

‘No, she telephoned. I couldn’t hear what she said, there was such a noise going on - something about a dress. Quite lucky really, there wasn’t room for a cat. It was a lovely party, wasn’t it? Did you hate it very much? You behaved beautifully and looked so distinguished. Who was your red-haired chum?’

‘No chum of mine.’

‘How very peculiar! Did you say anything to Mr Kramm about working in Hollywood?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Oh, Charles, you are a worry to me. It’s not enough just stand about looking distinguished and a martyr for Art. Let’s go to dinner. We’re at the. Captain’s table. I don’t suppose he’ll dine down tonight, but it’s polite to be fairly punctual.’ By the time that we reached the table the rest of the party had arranged themselves.

On either side of the Captain’s empty chair sat Julia and Mrs Stuyvesant Oglander;

besides them there was an English diplomat and his wife, Senator Stuyvesant Oglander,

and an American clergyman at present totally isolated between two pairs of empty

chairs. This clergyman later described himself - redundantly it seemed - as an

Episcopalian Bishop. Husbands and wives sat together here. My wife was confronted



with a quick decision, and although the steward attempted to direct us otherwise, sat so that she had the senator and I the Bishop. Julia gave us both a little dismal signal of sympathy.

‘I’m miserable about the party,’ she said, ‘my beastly maid totally disappeared with every dress I have. She only turned up half an hour ago. She’d been playing ping-pong.’ ‘I’ve been telling the Senator what he missed,’ said Mrs Stuyvesant Oglander.

‘Wherever Celia is, you’ll find she knows all the significant people.’ ‘On my right,’ said the Bishop, ‘a significant couple are expected. They take all their meals in their cabin except when they have been informed in advance that the Captain will be present.’

We were a gruesome circle; even my wife’s high social spirit faltered. At moments I heard bits of her conversation.

‘...an extraordinary little red-haired man. Captain Foulenough in person.’

‘But I understood you to say, Lady Celia, that you were unacquainted with him.’

‘I meant he was like Captain Foulenough.’

‘I begin to comprehend. He impersonated this friend of yours in order to come to your party.’

‘No, no. Captain Foulenough is simply a comic character.’ ‘There seems to have been nothing very amusing about this other man. Your friend is a comedian?’

‘No, no. Captain Foulenough is an imaginary character in an English paper. You know, like your “Popeye”.’

The senator laid down knife and fork. ‘To recapitulate: an impostor came to your party and you admitted him because of a fancied resemblance to a fictitious character in a cartoon.’

‘Yes, I suppose that was it really.’

The senator looked at his wife as much as to say: ‘Significant people, huh!’ I heard Julia across the table trying to trace, for the benefit of the diplomat, the marriage-connections of her Hungarian and Italian cousins. The diamonds flashed in her hair and on her fingers, but her hands were nervously rolling little balls of crumb, and her starry head drooped in despair.

The Bishop told me of the goodwill mission on which he was travelling to Barcelona...’a very, very valuable work of clearance has been performed, Mr Ryder. The time has now come to rebuild on broader foundations. I have made it my aim to reconcile the so-called Anarchists and the so-called Communists, and with that in view I and my committee have digested all the available documentation of the subject. Our conclusion, Mr Ryder, is unanimous. There is no fundamental diversity between the two ideologies. It is a matter of personalities, Mr Ryder, and what personalities have put asunder personalities can unite...’

On the other side I heard: ‘And may I make so bold as to ask what institutions sponsored your husband’s expedition?’

The diplomat’s wife bravely engaged the Bishop across the gulf that separated them.

‘And what language will you speak when you get to Barcelona?’ ‘The language of Reason and Brotherhood, madam,’ and, turning back to me, ‘The speech of the coming century is in thoughts not in words. Do you not agree, Mr Ryder?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

‘What are words?’ said the Bishop.

‘What indeed?’

‘Mere conventional symbols, Mr Ryder, and this is an age rightly sceptical of conventional symbols.’



My mind reeled; after the parrot-house fever of my wife’s party, and unplumbed emotions of the afternoon, after all the exertions of my wife’s pleasures in New York, after the months of solitude in the steaming, green shadows of the jungle, this was too much. I felt like Lear on the heath, like the Duchess of Malfi bayed by madmen. I summoned cataracts and hurricanoes, and as if by conjury the call was immediately answered.

For some time now, though whether it was a mere trick of the nerves I did not then know, I had felt a recurrent and persistently growing motion - a heave and shudder of the large dining-room as of the breast of a man in deep sleep. Now my wife turned to me and said: ‘Either I am a little drunk or it’s getting rough,’ and, even as she spoke we found ourselves leaning sideways in our chairs; there was a crash and tinkle of falling cutlery by the wall, and on our table the wine glasses all together toppled and rolled over, while each of us steadied the plate and forks and looked at the other with expressions that varied between frank horror in the diplomat’s wife and relief in Julia.  The gale which, unheard, unseen, unfelt, in our enclosed and insulated world had, for an hour, been mounting over us, had now veered and fallen full on our bows.  Silenced followed the crash, then a high, nervous babble of laughter. Stewards laid napkins on the pools of spilt wine. We tried to resume the conversation, but all were waiting, as the little ginger man had watched the drop swell and fall from the swan’s beak, for the next great blow; it came, heavier than the last.  ‘This is where I say good night to you all,’ said the diplomat’s wife, rising.

Her husband led her to their cabin. The dining-room was emptying fast. Soon only Julia, my wife, and I were left at the table, and, telepathically, Julia said, ‘Like King Lear.’

‘Only each of us is all three of them.’

‘What can you mean?’ asked my wife.

‘Lear, Kent, Fool.’

‘Oh dear, it’s like that agonizing Foulenough conversation over again. Don’t try and explain.’

‘I doubt if I could,’ I said.

Another climb, another vast drop. The stewards were at work making things fast, shutting things up, hustling away unstable ornaments.

‘Well, we’ve finished dinner and set a fine example of British phlegm,’ said my wife.

‘Let’s go and see what’s on.’

Once, on our way to the lounge, we had all three to cling to a pillar; when we got there we found it almost deserted; the band played but no one danced; the tables were set for tombola but no one bought a card, and the ship’s officer, who made a speciality of calling the numbers with all the patter of the lower deck - ‘sweet sixteen and never been kissed - key of the door, twenty-one - clickety-click, sixty-six’ - was idly talking to his colleagues; there were a score of scattered novel readers, a few games of bridge, some brandy drinking in the smoking-room, but all our guests of two hours before had disappeared.

The three of us sat for a little by the empty dance floor- my wife was full of schemes by which, without impoliteness, we could move to another table in the dining-room. ‘It’s crazy to go to the restaurant,’ she said, ‘and pay extra for exactly the same dinner. Only film people go there, anyway. I don’t see why we should be made to.’ Presently she said: ‘It’s making my head ache and I’m tired, anyway. I’m going to bed.’

Julia went with her. I walked round the ship, on one of the covered decks where the wind howled and the spray leaped up from the darkness and smashed white and brown against the glass screen; men were posted to keep the passengers off the open decks.

Then I, too, went below.

In my dressing-room everything breakable had been stowed away, the door to the cabin was hooked open, and my wife called plaintively from within.  ‘I feel terrible. I didn’t know a ship of this size could pitch like this, she said, and her eyes were full of consternation and resentment, like those of a woman who, at the end of her time, at length realizes that however luxurious the nursing home, and however well paid the doctor, her labour is inevitable; and the lift and fall of the ship came regularly as the pains of childbirth.

I slept next door; or, rather, I lay there between dreaming and waking. In a narrow bunk, on a hard mattress, there might have been rest, but here the beds were broad and buoyant; I collected what cushions I could find and tried to wedge myself firm, but through the night I turned with each swing and twist of the ship - she was rolling now as well as pitching - and my head rang with the creak and thud.  Once, an hour before dawn, my wife appeared like a ghost in the doorway, supporting herself with either hand on the jambs, saying: ‘Are you awake? Can’t you do something?  Can’t you get something from the doctor?’

I rang for the night steward, who had a draught ready prepared, which comforted her a little.

And all night between dreaming and waking I thought of Julia; in my brief dreams she took a hundred fantastic and terrible and obscene forms, but in my waking thoughts she returned with her sad, starry head just as I had seen her at dinner.

After first light I slept for an hour or two, then awoke clearheaded, with a joyous sense of anticipation.

The wind had dropped a little, the steward told me, but was still blowing hard and there was a very heavy swell; ‘which there’s nothing worse than a heavy swell’, he said, ‘for the enjoyment of the passengers. There’s not many breakfasts wanted this morning.’ I looked in at my wife, found her sleeping, and closed the door between us; then I ate salmon kedgeree and cold Bradenham ham and telephoned for a barber to come and shave me.

‘There’s a lot of stuff in the sitting-room for the lady,’ said the steward; ‘shall I leave it for the time?’

I went to see. There was a second delivery of cellophane parcels from the shops on board, some ordered by radio from friends in New York whose secretaries had failed to remind them of our departure in time, some by our guests as they left the cocktail party.  It was no day for flower vases; I told him to leave them on the floor and then, struck by the thought, removed the card from Mr Kramm’s roses and sent them with my love to Julia.

She telephoned while I was being shaved.

‘W hat a deplorable thing to do, Charles! How unlike you!’

‘Don’t you like them?’

‘What can I do with roses on a day like this?’

‘Smell them.’

There was a pause and a rustle of unpacking. ‘They’ve absolutely no smell at all.’

‘What have you had for breakfast?’

‘Muscat grapes and cantaloupe’

‘When shall I see you?’

‘Before lunch. I’m busy till then with a masseuse.’

‘A masseuse?’





‘Yes, isn’t it peculiar? I’ve never had one before, except once when I hurt my shoulder hunting. What is it about being on a boat that makes everyone behave like a film star?’ ‘I don’t.’

‘How about these very embarrassing roses?’

‘The barber did his work with extraordinary dexterity indeed, with agility, for he stood like a swordsman in a ballet sometimes on the point of one foot, sometimes on the other, lightly flicking the lather off his blade, and swooping back to my chin as the ship righted herself; I should not have dared use a safety razor on myself.  The telephone rang again.

It was my wife.

‘How are you Charles?’

‘Tired.’

‘Aren’t you coming to see me?’

‘I came once. I’ll be in again.’

I brought her the flowers from the sitting-room; they completed the atmosphere of a maternity ward which she had managed to create in the cabin; the stewardess had the air of a midwife, standing by the bed, a pillar of starched linen and composure. My wife turned her head on the pillow and smiled wanly; she stretched out a bare arm and caressed with the tips of her fingers the cellophane and silk ribbons of the largest bouquet. ‘How sweet people are, ‘ she said faintly, as though the gale were a private misfortune of her own for which the world in its love was condoling with her.  ‘I take it you’re not getting up.’

‘Oh no, Mrs Clark is being so sweet’; she was always quick to get servants’ names.

‘Don’t bother. Come in sometimes and tell me what’s going on.’

‘Now, now, dear,’ said the stewardess, ‘the less we are disturbed today the better.’

My wife seemed to make a sacred, female rite even of sea-sickness.  Julia’s cabin, I knew, was somewhere below ours. I waited for her by the lift on the main deck; when she came we walked once round the promenade; I held the rail; she took my other arm. It was hard going; through the streaming glass we saw a distorted world of grey sky and black water. When the ship rolled heavily I swung her round so that she could hold the rail with her other hand; the howl of the wind was subdued, but the whole ship creaked with strain. We made the circuit once, then Julia said: ‘It’s no good. That woman beat hell out of me, and I feel limp, anyway. Let’s sit down.’ The great bronze doors of the lounge had torn away from their hooks and were swinging free with the roll of the ship; regularly and, it seemed, irresistibly, first one, then the other, opened and shut; they paused at the completion of each half circle, began to move slowly and finished fast with a resounding clash. There was no real risk in passing them, except of slipping and being caught by that swift, final blow; there was ample time to walk through unhurried but there was something forbidding in the sight of that great weight of uncontrolled metal, flapping to and fro, which might have made a timid man flinch or skip through too quickly; I rejoiced to feel Julia’s hand perfectly steady on my arm and know, as I walked beside her, that she was wholly undismayed.  ‘Bravo,’ said a man sitting nearby. ‘I confess I went round the other way. I didn’t like the look of those doors somehow. They’ve been trying to fix them all the morning.’ There were few people about that day, and that few seemed bound together by a camaraderie of reciprocal esteem; they did nothing except sit rather glumly in their armchairs, drink occasionally, and exchange congratulations on not being seasick.  ‘You’re the first lady I’ve seen,’ said the man.

‘I’m very lucky.’

‘We are very lucky,’ he said, with a movement which began as a bow and ended as a lurch forward to his knees, as the blotting-paper floor dipped steeply between us. The roll carried us away from him, clinging together but still on our feet, and we quickly sat where our dance led us, on the further side, in isolation; a web of life-lines had been stretched across the lounge, and we seemed like boxers, roped into the ring.  The steward approached. ‘Your usual, sir? Whisky and tepid water, I think. And for the lady? Might I suggest a nip of champagne?’

‘D’you know, the awful thing is I would like champagne very much,’ said Julia. ‘What a life of pleasure - roses, half an hour with a female pugilist, and now champagne!’ ‘I wish you wouldn’t go on about the roses. It wasn’t my idea in the first place.

Someone sent them to Celia.’

‘Oh, that ‘s quite different. It lets you out completely. But it makes my massage worse.’

‘I was shaved in bed.’

‘I’m glad about the roses,’ said Julia. ‘Frankly, they were a shock. They made me think we were starting the day on the wrong foot.’

I knew what she meant, and in that moment felt as though I had shaken off some of the dust and grit of ten dry years; then and always, however she spoke to me, in half sentences, single words, stock phrases of contemporary jargon, in scarcely perceptible movements of eyes or lips or hands, however inexpressible her thought, however quick and far it had glanced from the matter in hand, however deep it had plunged, as it often did, straight from the surface to the depths, I knew; even that day when I still stood on the extreme verge of love, I knew what she meant.

We drank our wine and soon our new friend came lurching towards us down the life-line.

‘Mind if I join you? Nothing like a bit of rough weather for bringing people together.  This is my tenth crossing, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I can see you are an experienced sailor, young lady.’

‘No. As a matter of fact, I’ve never been at sea before except coming to New York and, of course, crossing the Channel. I don’t feel sick, thank God, but I feel tired. I thought at first it was only the massage, but I’m coming to the conclusion it’s the ship.’ ‘My wife’s in a terrible way. She’s an experienced sailor. Only shows, doesn’t it?’ He joined us at luncheon, and I did not mind his being there; he had clearly taken a fancy to Julia, and he thought we were man and wife; this misconception and his gallantry seemed in some way to bring her and me closer together. ‘Saw you two last night at the Captain’s table,’ he said, ‘with all the nobs.’ ‘Very dull nobs.’

‘If you ask me, nobs always are. When you get a storm like this you find out what people are really made of’ ‘You have a predilection for good sailors?’

‘Well, put like that I don’t know that I do - what I mean is, it makes for getting together.’

‘Yes.’

‘Take us for example. But for this we might never have met. I’ve had some very romantic encounters at sea in my time. If the lady will excuse me, I’d like to tell you about a little adventure I had in the Gulf of Lions when I was younger than I am now.’

We were both weary; lack of sleep, the incessant din, and the strain every movement required, wore us down. We spent that afternoon apart in our cabins. I slept and when I awoke the sea was as high as ever, inky clouds swept over us, and the glass streamed still with water, but I had grown used to the storm In my sleep, had made its rhythm mine, had become part of it, so that I arose strongly and confidently and found Julia already up and in the same temper.

‘What d’you think?’ she said. ‘That man’s giving a little “get together party” tonight in the smoking-room for all the good sailors. He asked me to bring my husband.’ ‘Are we going?’

‘Of course...I wonder if I ought to feel like the lady our friend met on the way to Barcelona. I don’t, Charles not a bit.’

There were eighteen people at the ‘get-together party’; we had nothing in common except immunity from seasickness. We drank champagne, and presently our host said:

‘Tell you what, I’ve got a roulette wheel. Trouble is we can’t go to my cabin on account of the wife, and we aren’t allowed to play in public.’

So the party adjourned to my sitting-room and we played for low stakes until late into the night, when Julia left and our host had drunk too much wine to be surprised that she and I were not in the same quarters. When all but he had gone, he fell asleep in his chair, and I left him there. It was the last I saw of him, for later - so the steward told me when he came from returning the roulette things to the man’s cabin - he broke his thigh, falling in the corridor, and was taken to the ship’s hospital.  All next day Julia and I spent together without interruption; talking, scarcely moving, held in our chairs by the swell of the sea. After luncheon the last hardy passengers went to rest and we were alone as though the place had been cleared for us, as though tact on a titanic scale had sent everyone tip-toeing out to leave us to one another.  The bronze doors of the lounge had been fixed, but not before two seamen had been badly injured. They had tried various devices, lashing with ropes and, later, when these failed, with steel hawsers, but there was nothing to which they could be made fast; finally, they drove wooden wedges under them, catching them in the brief moment of repose when they were full open, and these held firm.

When, before dinner, she went to her cabin to get ready (no one dressed that night) and I came with her, uninvited, unopposed, expected, and behind closed doors took her in my arms and first kissed her, there was no alteration from the mood of the afternoon.  Later, turning it over in my mind, as I turned in my bed with the rise and fall of the ship, through the long, lonely, drowsy night, I recalled the courtships of the past, dead, ten years; how, knotting my tie before setting out, putting the gardenia in my buttonhole, I would plan my evening and think at such and such a time, at such and such an opportunity, I shall cross the start-line and open my attack for better or worse; ‘this phase of the battle has gone on long enough’, I would think; ‘a decision must be reached.’ With Julia there were no phases, no start-line, no tactics at all.  But later that night when she went to bed and I followed her to her door, she stopped me.

‘No, Charles, not yet. Perhaps never. I don’t know. I don’t know if I want love.’ Then something, some surviving ghost from those dead ten years - for one cannot die, even for a little, without some loss made me say, ‘Love? I’m not asking for love.’ ‘Oh yes, Charles, you are,’ she said, and putting up her hand gently stroked my cheek; then shut her door.

And I reeled back, first on one wall, then on the other, of the long, softly lighted, empty corridor; for the storm, it appeared, had the form of a ring; all day we had been sailing through its still centre; now we were once more in the full fury of the wind and that night was to be rougher than the one before.

Ten hours of talking: what had we to say? Plain fact mostly, the record of our two lives, so long widely separate, now being knit to one. Through all that storrn-tossed night I rehearsed what she had told me; she was no longer the alternate succubus and starry, vision of the night before; she had given all that was transferable of her past into my keeping. She told me, as I have already retold, of her courtship and marriage; she told me, as though fondly turning the pages of an old nursery-book, of her childhood, and I lived long, sunny days with her in the meadows, with Nanny Hawkins on her camp stool and Cordelia asleep in the pram, slept quiet nights under the dome with the religious pictures fading round the cot as the nightlight burned low and the embers settled in the grate. She told me of her life with Rex and of the secret, vicious, disastrous escapade that had taken her to New York. She, too, had had her dead years.  She told me of her long struggle with Rex as to whether she should have a child; at first she wanted one, but learned after a year that an operation was needed to make it possible; by that time Rex and she were out of love, but he still wanted his child, and when at last she consented, it was born dead.

‘Rex has never been unkind to me intentionally,’ she said. ‘It’s just that he isn’t a real person at all; he’s just a few faculties of a man highly developed; the rest simply isn’t there. He couldn’t imagine why it hurt me to find two months after we came back to London from our honeymoon, that he was still keeping up with Brenda Champion.’ ‘I was glad when I found Celia was unfaithful,’ I said. ‘I felt it was all right for me to dislike her.’

‘Is she? Do you? I’m glad. I don’t like her either. Why did you marry her?’

‘Physical attraction. Ambition. Everyone agrees she’s the ideal wife for a painter.

Loneliness, missing Sebastian.’

‘You loved him, didn’t you?’

‘Oh yes. He was the forerunner.’

Julia understood.

The ship creaked and shuddered, rose and fell. My wife called to me from the next room: ‘Charles, are you there?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve been asleep such a long while. What time is it?’

‘Half past three.’

‘It’s no better, is it?’

‘Worse.’

‘I feel a little better, though. D’you think they’d bring me some tea or something if I rang the bell?’

I got her some tea and biscuits from the night steward.

‘Did you have an amusing evening?’

‘Everyone’s seasick.’

‘Poor Charles. It was going to have been such a lovely trip, too. It may be better tomorrow.’

I turned out the light and shut the door between us.

Waking and dreaming, through the strain and creak and heave of the long night, firm on my back with my arms and legs spread wide to check the roll, and my eyes open to the darkness, I lay thinking of Julia.

‘...We thought papa might come back to England after mummy died, or that he might marry again, but he lives just as he did. Rex and I often go to see him now. I’ve grown fond-of him... Sebastian’s disappeared completely...Cordelia’s in Spain with anambulance...Bridey leads his own extraordinary life. He wanted to shut Brideshead after mummy died, but papa wouldn’t have it for some reason, so Rex and I live there now, and Bridey has two rooms up in the dome, next to Nanny Hawkins, part of the old nurseries. He’s like a character from Chekhov. One meets him sometimes coming out of the library or on the stairs - I never know when he’s at home - and now and then he suddenly comes in to dinner like a ghost quite unexpectedly. ‘...Rex’s parties! Politics and money. They can’t do anything except for money; if they walk round the lake they have to make bets about how many swans they see...sitting up till two, amusing Rex’s girls, hearing them gossip, rattling away endlessly on the backgammon board while the men play cards and smoke cigars. The cigar smoke. I can smell it in my hair when I wake up in the morning; it’s in my clothes when I dress at night. Do I smell of it now? D’you think that woman who rubbed me, felt it in my skin?

‘...At first I used to stay away with Rex in his friends’ houses. He doesn’t make me any more. He was ashamed of me when he found I didn’t cut the kind of figure he wanted, ashamed of himself for having been taken in. I wasn’t at all the article he’d bargained for. He can’t see the point of me, but whenever he’s made up his mind there isn’t a point and he’s begun to feel comfortable, he gets a surprise - some man, or even woman, he respects, takes a fancy to me and he suddenly sees that there is i whole world of things we understand and he doesn’t ... he was upset when I went away. He’ll be delighted to have me back. I was faithful to’ him until this last thing came along. There’s nothing like a good upbringing. Do you know last year, when I thought I was going to have a child, I’d decided to have it brought up a Catholic? I hadn’t thought about religion before; I haven’t since; but just at that time, when I was waiting for the birth, I thought, “That’s one thing I can give her. It doesn’t seem to have done me much good, but my child shall have it.” It was odd, wanting to give something one had - lost oneself. Then, in the end, I couldn’t even give that: I couldn’t even give her life. I never saw her; I was too ill to know what was going on, and afterwards, for a long time, until now, I didn’t want to speak about her - she was a daughter, so Rex didn’t so much mind her being dead.

‘I’ve been punished a little for marrying Rex. You see, I can’t get all that sort of thing out of my mind, quite - Death, Judgement, Heaven, Hell, Nanny Hawkins, and the catechism. It becomes part of oneself, if they give it one early enough. And yet I wanted my child to have it...now I suppose I shall be punished for what I’ve just done. Perhaps that is why you and I are here together like this...part of a plan.’ That was almost the last thing she said to me -‘part of a plan’ - before we went below and I left her at the cabin door.

Next day the wind had again dropped, and again we were wallowing in the swell. The talk was less of seasickness now than of broken bones; people had been thrown about in the night, and there had been many nasty accidents on bathroom floors. That day, because we had talked so much the day before and because what we had to say needed few words, we spoke little. We had books; Julia found a game she liked. When after long silences we spoke, our thoughts, we found, had kept pace together side by side.

Once I said, ‘You are standing guard over your sadness.’

‘It’s all I have earned. You said yesterday. My wages.’

‘An I.O.U. from life. A promise to pay on demand.’

Rain ceased at midday; at evening the clouds dispersed and the sun, astern of us, suddenly broke into the lounge where we sat, putting all the lights to shame. ‘Sunset, ‘ said Julia, ‘the end of our day.’

She rose And, though the roll and pitch of the ship seemed unabated, led me up to the boat-deck. She put her arm through mine and her hand into mine, in my great-coat pocket. The deck was dry and empty, swept only by the wind of the ship’s speed. As we made our halting, laborious way forward, away from the flying smuts of the smokestack, we were alternately jostled together, then strained, nearly sundered, arms and fingers interlocked as I held the rail and Julia clung to me, thrust together again, drawn apart; then, in a plunge deeper than the rest, I found myself flung across her, pressing her against the rail, warding myself off her with the arms that held her prisoner on either side, and as the ship paused at the end of its drop as though gathering strength for the ascent, we stood thus embraced, in the open, cheek against cheek, her hair blowing across my eyes; the dark horizon of tumbling water, flashing now with gold, stood still above us, then came sweeping down till I was staring through Julia’s dark hair into a wide and golden sky, and she was thrown forward on my heart, held up by my hands on the rail, her face still pressed to mine.

In that minute, with her lips to my ear and her breath warm in the salt wind, Julia said, though. I had not spoken, ‘Yes, now,’ and as the ship righted herself and for the moment ran into calmer waters, Julia led me below.

It was no time for the sweets of luxury; they would come, in their season, with the swallow and the lime flowers. Now on the rough water there was a formality to be observed, no more. It was as though a deed of conveyance of her narrow loins had been drawn and sealed. I was making my first entry as the freeholder of a property I would enjoy and develop at leisure.

We dined that night high up in the ship, in the restaurant, and saw through the bow windows the stars come out and sweep across the sky as once, I remembered, I had seen them sweep across the sky as once, I remembered, I had seen them sweep above the towers and gables of Oxford. The stewards promised that tomorrow night the band would play again and the place be full. We had better book now, they said, if we wanted a good table’.

‘Oh dear,’ said Julia, ‘where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?’ I could not leave her that night, but early next morning, as once again I made my way back along the corridor, I found I could walk without difficulty; the ship rode easily on a smooth sea, and I knew that our solitude was broken.

My wife called joyously from her cabin: ‘Charles, Charles, I feel so well. What do you think I am having for breakfast?’

I went to see. She was eating a beef-steak.

‘I’ve fixed up for a visit to the hairdresser - do you know they couldn’t take me till four o’clock this afternoon, they’re so busy suddenly? So I shan’t appear till the evening, but lots of people are coming in to see us this morning, and I’ve asked Miles and Janet to lunch with us in our sitting-room. I’m afraid I’ve been a worthless wife to you the last two days. What have you been up to?’

‘One gay evening,’ I said, ‘we played roulette till two o’clock, next door in the sitting-room, and our host passed out.’

‘Goodness. It sounds very disreputable. Have you been behaving, Charles? You haven’t been picking up sirens?’

‘There was scarcely a woman about. I spent most of the time with Julia.’ ‘Oh, good. I always wanted to bring you together. She’s one of my friends I knew you’d like. I expect you were a godsend to her. She’s had rather a gloomy time lately. I don’t expect she mentioned it, but...’ my wife proceeded to relate a current version of Julia’s journey to New York. ‘I’ll ask her to cocktails this morning,’ she concluded. Julia came among the others, and it was happiness enough, now merely to be near her.

‘I hear you’ve been looking after my husband for me,’ my wife said.

‘Yes, we’ve become very matey. He and I and a man whose name we don’t know.’

‘Mr Kramm, what have you done to your arm?’

‘It was the bathroom floor, ‘ said Mr Kramm, and explained at length how he had fallen.

That night the captain dined at his table and the circle was complete, for claimants came to the chairs on the Bishop’s right, two Japanese who expressed deep interest in his projects for world-brotherhood. The captain was full of chaff at Julia’s endurance in the storm, offering to engage her as a seaman; years of sea-going had given him jokes for every occasion. My wife, fresh from the beauty parlour, was unmarked by her three days of distress, and in the eyes of many seemed to outshine Julia, whose sadness had gone and been replaced by an incommunicable content and tranquillity; incommunicable save to me; she and I, separated by the crowd, sat alone together close enwrapped, as we had lain in each other’s arms the night before. ‘There was a gala spirit in the ship that night. Though it meant rising at dawn to pack, everyone was determined that for this one night he would enjoy the luxury the storm had denied him. There was no solitude. Every corner of the ship was thronged; dance music and high, excited chatter, stewards darting everywhere with trays of glasses, the voice of the officer in charge of tombola - ‘Kelly’s eye - number one; legs, eleven; and we’ll Shake the Bag’ - Mrs Stuyvesant Oglander in a paper cap, Mr Kramm and his bandages, the two Japanese decorously throwing paper streamers and hissing like geese. I did not speak to Julia, alone, all that evening.

We met for a minute next day on the starboard side of the ship while everyone else crowded to port to see the officials come aboard and to gaze at the green coastline of Devon.

‘What are your plans?’

‘London for a bit, ‘ she said.

‘Celia’s going straight home. She wants to see the children.’

‘You too?’

‘No.’

‘In London then.’

‘Charles, the little red-haired man Foulenough. Did you see? Two plain clothes police have taken him off.’

‘I missed it. There was such a crowd on that side of the ship.’ ‘I found out the trains and sent a telegram. We shall be home by dinner. The children will be asleep. Perhaps we might wake Johnjohn up, just for once.’ ‘You go down,’ I said. ‘I shall have to stay in London.’

‘Oh, but Charles, you must come. You haven’t seen Caroline.’

‘Will she change much in a week or two?’

‘Darling, she changes every day.’

‘Then what’s the point of seeing her now? I’m sorry, my dear, but I must get the pictures unpacked and see how they’ve travelled. I must fix up for the exhibition right away.’

‘Must you?’ she said, but I knew that her resistance ended when I appealed to the mysteries of my trade. ‘It’s very disappointing. Besides, I don’t know if Andrew and Cynthia will be out of the flat. They took it till the end of the month.’ ‘I can go to an hotel.’

‘But that’s so grim. I can’t bear you to be alone your first night home. I’ll stay and go down tomorrow.’

‘You mustn’t disappoint the children.’

‘No.’ Her children, my art, the two mysteries of our trades.

‘Will you come for the week-end?’

‘If I can.’

‘All British passports to the smoking-room, please,’ said a steward. ‘I’ve arranged with that sweet Foreign Office man at our table to get us off early with him,’ said my wife.

我的主题是回忆，在战争时期一个阴暗的早晨，一群长着翅膀的东西在我的周围飞翔。

这些回忆时时刻刻伴随着我，构成了我的生命——因为我们确定能拥有的，除了过去一无所有了。这些回忆就像圣马克教堂外面的鸽子一样，到处都是，在脚边，或是单个，或是成双，悦耳地咕咕叫着聚在一起，点着头，神气地走着，眯着眼睛，梳理脖颈间柔软的羽毛，如果我站着不动，它们有时会栖息在我的肩膀上；直到突然传来一阵中午的炮声，马上，它们全都扑棱棱地乱飞起来，人行道空荡荡的了，整个天空被喧嚣的鸽子遮得黑压压的。战争时期的那个阴暗的早晨就是这样。

自从和科迪莉娅度过了那个晚上，以后就是死寂的十年，我被迫沿着一条表面上充满了动荡与事变的道路走下去，但是在此期间，除了有时当我画画的时候——而且间隔的时间越来越长——我都没有像和塞巴斯蒂安交往的日子里那样活跃过。我认为我正在失去的是青春，而不是岁月。我的工作支撑着我，因为我选择了我能干好的工作，一天比一天干得更好，而且也很喜欢干；顺便说一句，这种工作当时也是没有什么人愿意干的。我成了一位建筑画家。

甚至比起伟大的建筑师们的作品来，我还是更爱那些默默地过了好几个世纪的建筑物，这些建筑物保留并记录了每个时代的最出色的特点，与此同时，时间限制了艺术家的骄傲和市侩的鄙俗，却弥补了那些平庸工匠的拙陋。这类建筑物在英格兰比比皆是，英国人在他们鼎盛的最近十年中，似乎第一次对于以前熟视无睹的东西有了认识，并且在那些建筑物即将败落的时期第一次颂扬起它们的成就来了。因此我的幸运远远超过我的功绩；而我的作品也并没有什么值得称道的，只不过是技巧日臻成熟，对主题充满热情，对流行的见解不屑一顾而已。

这个时期的经济萧条，使许多画家找不到雇主，却使我更加成功，当然这种情形本身就是经济衰退的征兆：当水泉干涸时，人们会寻求海市蜃楼来解渴。我在第一次画展以后，就被请去全国各地给那些马上就要荒废衰败的宅第画像；的确，我常常要比拍卖商早几步赶到那里，成为厄运的先兆。

我还出版了三种富丽堂皇的对开画册——即“赖德的乡间别墅”、“赖德的英国住宅”、“赖德的乡村建筑和外省建筑”，每一种以每份五个畿尼卖了上千份。我很少使人不满意，因为在我和我的主顾之间没有什么摩擦，我们双方的要求是一致的。不过，随着岁月的流逝，我开始为马奇梅因公馆客厅里我所熟悉的、但没有表现出来的东西而感到悲哀，这以后我有一两次认识到那就是画的力度与单一性，我并且相信这光靠手是表现不出来的——一句话，得靠灵感。

为了寻求日渐消失的灵性，我以一种古典的方式，携带着大批我这个行当所需要的工具，出国到各种异域情调中旅游了两年岁月。我没有去欧洲；欧洲的珍品保护得很牢靠，甚至太牢靠了，受到重重的专门保护，而且被顶礼膜拜弄得云遮雾障。欧洲可以等一等。早晚有时间去欧洲的。我想，岁月催人，不久后我需要有一个人在身旁，帮助我安放画架，携带油彩颜料；那时我从一家上等旅馆出去也不能超过一个小时的路程；那时我将要整天沐浴在轻柔的微风和温和的阳光里；那时我那双褐色的眼睛会紧紧注视着德国和意大利，这样的日子很快就会来到。现在当我有力量的时候，我要去那些蛮荒之地，那里人们已经抛弃了他们的岗哨，莽丛密林一步一步地蔓延到了古老的城堡。

因此，经历了缓慢然而并不轻松的几个阶段，我游历了墨西哥和中美洲，一个有着我需要的一切的天地，离开别墅园林和客厅，已经增加了我的活力，并使我心情愉快。那些宫殿的内部陈设荡然无存，修道院的回廊野草埋径，教堂被废弃，吸血蝠像豆荚一样倒挂在穹顶上，只有蚂蚁在富丽的长排座椅间熙熙攘攘不停地钻洞掘穴，城镇没有道路相通，高大阴森的房子里有一家冷颤的印第安人在躲避风雨，所有这一切都是我寻取灵感的地方。我历尽千辛万苦，忍受疾病的折磨，有时还要冒着危险，创作了《赖德的拉丁美洲》画册中最初几幅作品。过几个星期我就要休息一下，置身于商业区或游览区，借此来恢复精力，建起自己的画室，把我的那些速写详细画出来，然后急急忙忙把已经画完了的画布包装好，给我纽约的代理人寄出。接着我又出发了，带着我的小随从踏上荒原。

我没有尽力跟英国保持联系。我根据当地人的建议来安排自己的行程，没有固定的路线，结果很多邮件没有到我手里，而收到的邮件积攒起来，到了坐下来一次都读不完的程度。我常常把一捆信件塞在袋子里，等我有兴致的时候来读，读的时候和当时的环境是那样不协调——或是躺在吊床上晃来晃去，或是在蚊帐里，就着防风灯的光亮；或是漂在水上顺流而下，坐在独木舟上由我身后的孩子们划着船，缓缓驶离岸边，幽暗的河水载着我们流向前方，或是坐在绿阴里，巨树直插云天，鲜花在头顶上高高的树冠从中，猴子们晒着太阳发出尖叫声；或是在宜人的大牧场的阳台上，耳旁响着杯中冰块的搅动声和掷骰子声，在修剪过的草坪上，一只豹猫玩着脖子上的链子——以至信件仿佛是遥远的声音，没有什么意义，其中的事情在心头一闪而过，不留痕迹，就像在美洲火车车厢中，萍水相逢的旅客随意讲起他们自己的事，听后都成了过眼烟云。

尽管与世隔绝，长期旅居在一个陌生的天地，我却依然故我，然而真正未变的那几分故我只残留在我的音容笑貌上，貌似我过去的全部形象罢了。我把这两年的经历连同热带用的工具一股脑儿甩到一边，回到了纽约，它样子和我出发时一样。我满载而归——十一幅油画，外加五十多张素描——后来我把这些作品在伦敦展览的时候，那些艺术评论家们，他们当中很多人至今一直对别人的作品持一种屈尊迁就的态度，现在我的成功使他们不得不赞扬我的作品中具有崭新的和更加丰富的意境。文艺批评家中最受人景仰的人这样写道：赖德先生的崛起就像一条欢蹦乱跳的小鳟鱼在皮下注射了一种新的营养，是一种新兴的文化的皮下注射，在他蕴藏的潜力中发出了强大的威力……由于他把自己的优雅风度和渊博学识这种显然属于传统的排炮瞄准了野蛮的浩劫，赖德先生最终发现了自己。

天啊，这些溢美之词没有一个字是实事求是的。我的妻子远渡重洋到纽约和我相见，当她看到了我们分别的成果陈列在我的代理人的办公室里的时候，她说的这样一句话颇为中肯：“当然，我看得出这些画极为出色，而且在那邪恶的表现方式中确实有非常优美的地方。不过不知怎的，我总觉得这些画根本没有表现你。”


在欧洲，我的妻子由于穿着打扮时髦和她的出奇的健美，有时被人误认为是个美国人；而在美国，她却表现出一副英国人的温顺和沉默的气派。她比我先到一两天，当我的船抵达港口时，她在码头上等候着。
“分离的时间多么长啊。”我们一见面她就亲热地说道。

她没有参加这次探险；她对朋友们解释说这是因为那个国家对她很不相宜，而且家里还有个儿子，她还说，现在又添了一个女儿，这时我才想起在我动身之前曾经说起这件事，这就成为她留下来的附加理由。这件事在她的信中也曾提起过。

“我想你没有看我的信吧。”那天夜里她说道，其时天色已晚，晚餐的聚会已经结束，在一家有歌舞表演的餐馆又逗留了几个小时以后，我们终于发现自己独自在旅馆卧室里了。

“有些信寄丢了。我清楚地记得你写信说什么果园的水仙花就是一个梦境啦，什么保姆就是一颗宝石啦，什么发现了一张摄政时期的四柱床啦，可是老实说我并不记得你说过新生的婴儿取了卡罗琳这个名字。你为什么要起这个名字？”

“那当然是随着查尔斯起的啰。”

“啊！”

“我请了伯莎·范·霍尔特做孩子的教母。我考虑她保险会送一份像样的礼物。你知道她送了什么吗？”

“伯莎·范·霍尔特是一个出名的诡计多端的人。送了什么呢？”

“一张十五先令的书籍预约证。既然约翰约翰有了一个伴儿——”

“你说谁？”

“你的儿子呀，亲爱的。你还没有忘了他吧？”

“看在基督的面上，”我说，“你怎么这样叫他呢？”

“这个名字是他自己发明的。你不觉得这名字很甜吗？既然约翰约翰已经有了一个伴儿，所以我认为在一段时间里我们最好还是不要再有孩子了，你说呢？”

“随便怎么都行。”

“约翰约翰常常念叨你。他每天晚上都要为你祈祷，祝你平安归来。”

她一边这么说着，一边脱掉衣服，极力表现出随随便便的样子。随后她坐在梳妆台前，用一把梳子梳理着头发，她那赤裸的脊背冲着我，自己照着镜子，她说道：“我要不要卸妆上床？”

这是我不喜欢的一句熟悉的话；她的意思是说她该去掉脸上的脂粉，搽上油，戴上发网。

“不要，”我说，“眼下不要。”

然而她明白需要的是什么。在那种事情上她也讲究清洁卫生的方式，不过在她那种表示欢迎的微笑中有着宽慰和胜利的表情。后来我们分开了，各自躺在相隔一二码远的一对床上，吸着烟。我看了看表，已经四点了，但我们谁也没有睡意，在这座城市里流传着一种神经机能病，居民们都误以为是精力旺盛的表现。

“我认为你一点也没有变，查尔斯。”

“不错，恐怕是没有变。”

“难道你希望变吗？”

“变是生活的唯一证明。”

“不过你可能变，变得不再爱我了。”

“这种危险是存在的。”

“查尔斯，你还爱我吧？”

“你自己说过我并没有变。”

“唔，我现在开始觉得你变了。可我没变。”

“没有，”我说道，“没有，我看得出没变。”

“你今天和我见面一点也不害怕吗？”

“一点也不。”

“难道你不怀疑我在此期间爱上了别的人吗？”

“没有。你爱上啦？”

“你知道我没有，你呢？”

“没有。我并没有恋爱。”

我妻子对这个回答看来很满意。她是六年前我第一次画展时和我结婚的。从那时起，为了扩展我们的事业，她做了很多事情。大家都说是她“成就”了我，不过她自己只承认她的功劳是给我提供了一个合适惬意的环境；她对我的天才和“艺术家的气质”深信不疑，并且深信这样一条准则，背着人干的事情实际就等于根本没干。

过了一会儿她说：“你现在盼着回家吗？”（我父亲送给我够买一所房子的钱作为结婚礼物，后来我在妻子的家乡买了一所教区长的房子。）“我有件惊人的事告诉你。”

“是吗？”

“我已经把那间谷仓给你改成了一间画室，这样不管是孩子们还是来了人，都不会打扰你了。我叫埃姆登改建的。大家都认为好极了。《乡村生活》上还有一篇文章谈到这件事哩；我买了这份杂志留给你看。”

她给我看那篇文章：“……建筑学上优美形式的好范例……约瑟夫·埃姆登爵士独具匠心，把传统材料变得适合于现代的需要……”；还刊登了几幅照片；地上已经铺了宽大的橡木地板；北面的墙上开了一个石质中棂的凸窗，巨大的木屋顶，以前这所房子全部笼罩在阴影里，而现在突兀而立，轮廓清楚，光线充足，桁条之间都还抹上了洁白的灰泥；看上去简直像一所乡村府邸。我还记得原来那里的气味，大概现在也没有了。

“我倒喜欢那个谷仓，”我说。

“可是你现在可以在这儿工作了呀，不是吗？”

“经历了蹲在蜇人的飞虫团里作画，”我说，“头顶上的烈日把纸张都烤成了铁砧那种日子以后，即便在公共汽车的顶上我也能够工作了。我想教区牧师大概会乐意借这个地方玩惠斯特牌的。”

“有一大堆工作在等着你呢。我已经答应了安柯雷奇夫人，等你一回来就去画安柯雷奇公馆。那里也败落下来了，知道吧——就剩了下面几间铺子和上面两居室的一套房子。你没想到吧，查尔斯，你一直画着所有异国情调的画儿，会把你毁了，会使你画不了英国的建筑，你想到没有？”

“怎么会呢？”

“嗨，因为太不相同啦。请别生气。”

“这不过是即将被另一片莽丛包围住的地方。”

“我完全知道你的感受，亲爱的。乔治王朝协会弄得乱哄哄的了，我们也没有办法……你收到我谈到博伊的那封信了吗？”

“是吗？信上说什么？”

（博伊·马尔卡斯特是她的哥哥。）

“是关于他订婚的事，现在关系不大了，事情全过去了，不过当时这件事使爸爸和妈妈搞得非常心烦意乱。她可是个可怕的姑娘。后来他们还是给了她钱才算了事。”

“我可一点儿也没有听说博伊的事。”

“他现在和约翰约翰好得要命。看着他们在一起的样子可真让人心里觉得甜滋滋的。他不管何时来，首先把车子径直开到教区长的旧宅去。走进屋里，谁也不理睬，马上喊道：‘我的小哥们儿约翰约翰在哪儿？’接着约翰约翰东倒西歪地从楼上跑下来，然后他们就出去，一起到小灌木林里去一连玩上好几个小时。你想想，要是听听他们之间的谈话，你还以为他们一般大呢。正是约翰约翰，使他在那个姑娘的问题上接受了劝告；说正经的，知道吧，他可机灵了。他可能是听到我和妈妈的谈话了，博伊再来的时候他就说：‘博伊舅舅别跟那个可怕的姑娘结婚，丢下约翰约翰一个人。’就在这天，他不经过法庭，用二千英镑把这件事给了结了。约翰约翰对博伊佩服极了，事事处处都要模仿他。这对他们两人倒都挺好的。”

我走到房间那边，再次徒劳无益地试图调节散热器的热度。我喝了些放了冰块的水，把窗子打开，可是除了夜晚清冽的空气外，音乐声从隔壁那间屋子飘进来，那儿人们正放着收音机。我又关上窗户，转过身来朝我的妻子走过去。

她又开始详详细细地说开了，带着困倦的睡意……“花园里长得可茂盛了……你种的黄杨树篱去年长高了五英寸……我已经从伦敦找了几个人把网球场拾掇好了……当时第一流的厨师……”

当我们下面的城市醒过来的时候，我们两人却都睡着了，但是没过多久；电话铃响了，一个快乐的男不男女不女的声音说道：“萨沃伊——卡顿——旅馆——早安。现在是八点一刻。”

“我并没有要求你叫我，知道吗。”

“对不起。”

“噢，没关系。”

“向你问好。”

当我正在刮脸的时候，妻子在浴室中说道：“跟过去一样了。我不再担忧了，查尔斯。”

“很好。”

“我原来真是担心两年的时间可能会产生什么影响，现在我知道，我们可以完全从停下来的地方重新开始啦。”

“什么时候？”我问道，“什么？我们什么时候停下什么了？”

“自然是你离开的时候呗。”

“不久以前，你就没有想到别的事情？”

“哟，查尔斯，那是过去的事了。已经没什么了。从来也没有什么事。事情已经过去了，早忘掉了。”

“我只是想知道，”我说。“我们又回到我出国时我们那样的情形了，是吗？”

就这样，我们恰恰又在两年前我们停下来的地方开始了这一天的生活，我的妻子流下了眼泪。


我妻子的温柔和英国人的沉默气质，她的细小整齐的白牙齿，整洁的玫瑰色指甲，天真无邪的调皮的女学生样子和女学生的衣着，她那些昂贵的从远处看好像是成批生产的时髦首饰，她那常常挂在脸上善于应酬的微笑，她对我的尊敬顺从，她对我的爱好的热心，还有使她每日都要朝家里保姆拍海底电报的慈母之心——总而言之，她独具的魅力——使她在美国人当中很得人心。动身那天，我们的船舱里堆满了她认识不过一个星期的朋友们送的玻璃纸包装的大包小包礼品——鲜花、水果、糖、书籍和孩子们的玩具等等。而服务员也像育婴堂的修女一样，常常根据礼品的数量和价值来判断旅客的身份高下；所以航行开始时我们就倍受尊重。

一上了船我的妻子首先想到的就是旅客名单。

“有这么多的朋友呢，”她说，“这次旅行一定是很有意思的。今天晚上我们举办一次鸡尾酒会吧。”

升降口的扶梯刚一撤走，她就忙着打起电话来。

“朱莉娅吗？我是西莉娅——西莉娅·赖德。发现你也在船上真高兴极了。你一直在干什么呢？今天晚上到这儿来参加鸡尾酒会吧，跟我谈谈你的一切情况。”

“哪个朱莉娅？”

“朱莉娅·莫特拉姆呀。我好多年没有看见她了。”

我也好多年没见她了；事实上，自从我的婚礼那天起，我就再也没有见过她，自从我的画展预展以后也就再没有跟她说过话了，在那次画展上，布赖兹赫德提供的我画的那四幅马奇梅因公馆的油画挂在一起十分引人注目。这些画就是我和弗莱特家的最后联系了；我们密切来往了一两年，后来我们的生活就此分道扬镳。我知道塞巴斯蒂安还在国外；雷克斯和朱莉娅呢，我有时听说他们在一起并不幸福。雷克斯并没有完全像原来预测的那样飞黄腾达，他仍然停留在政府的边缘，名声不小，但令人暗生疑端。他与富豪们来往，他的讲演却似乎倾向革命政策，既向共产党又向法西斯暗送秋波。我听到人们在谈话中提到莫特拉姆的名字。当我翻着报纸不耐烦地等候某人的时候，我不时看到他们的面孔在《闲话报》上隐现，但是我和他们已经是陌路人了。人们在英国，而且只有在英国，才会处在隔离的世界里，彼此无关，各在一个旋转着的星球上。这个过程也许在物理学上可以找到十分贴切的比喻来，我模模糊糊地领悟到，带能量的粒子都是分别组合和重新组合到不同的磁力体系中；对于一个很有把握谈这类物理学现象的人们来说，这个比喻倒是现成的；但对于我却不适用，我只能说英国处处都有这种亲朋密友的小圈子，因此，就我和朱莉娅的情形而论，即使我们住在伦敦同一条街上，有时同时看到几英里外乡间的地平线，而且我们可能彼此很有好感，比较关心对方的前途，甚至为彼此分开感到惆怅，而且知道我们每一方只消拿起电话筒，就可以在枕边跟对方通话，说上几句，借以享受一下见面的亲密，仿佛随着早餐的橙汁和阳光一道进来；但是，由于受到我们各自的星球的向心力作用以及包围着各自的星球的冷寂的星际空间的限制而不能这样做。

我的妻子高踞在堆放在玻璃纸和丝绸彩带中的沙发背上，继续打着电话，兴致勃勃地查阅旅客名单……“是的，当然要带他来，听说他很可爱……是的，我终于把查尔斯从蛮荒的地方弄回来了；真够好的吧……没想到在登记簿上看到你的名字，真是太好啦！这使我的旅途……亲爱的，我们也是住在萨沃伊—卡顿旅馆呢，我们怎么能把你们漏掉呢？”……有时她转过身来对我说，“我得看看你是否确实还在那儿；我现在还不习惯呢。”

我走出舱外，这时轮船缓慢地驶进河道，我走向一扇大玻璃窗，旅客们正站在许多玻璃窗前注视着向后滑去的陆地。“有这么多朋友哩，”我妻子刚才是这么说的。这一群人对我来说都是素不相识的；刚才告别的激情也正在开始冷下去；有些人直到最后一刻还在和送行人一起饮酒话别，这时更是激情高涨；而另一些人则在盘算在什么地方弄到甲板坐椅；乐队不引人注意地演奏着——所有的人都像一群乱哄哄的蚂蚁。

我转身走进了几个娱乐厅，那里都非常大，但一点也不富丽堂皇，仿佛是设计成铁路车厢似的，而且荒唐地扩大了几倍。我走过一道巨大的青铜大门，上面刻着像纸一样薄的栩栩如生的亚述时代的动物；我脚下的地毯，颜色如同吸墨纸一样；彩绘的墙壁镶板也像吸墨纸一样——一种单调的、不鲜明的幼儿园的手工制品——在墙和墙之间有着一码又一码未经木匠斧凿过的淡褐色木头，还有墙角里扭弯了的镶木，它们经过蒸、挤、抛光，表面上看不出来地一片一片地连接起来；吸墨纸似的地毯上四处摆着大约是卫生设备工程师设计出来的桌子和填心的块料，块料上是方形的凹陷，可以坐进去，而且装上垫子，这些东西上面看上去似乎也显出吸墨纸的颜色；大厅的灯光从几十个洞中散射出来，光线均匀，没有留下阴影——整个大厅里充斥着上百个通风器的嗡鸣声，并且由于大厅下面转动着的巨大蒸汽机而颤动着。

“我回来了，”我想，“是从密林里归来，从废墟中归来。所以此时此刻，财富已不再那么令人目眩，权力也不再具有尊严。‘寂无人烟的城市就像这样屹立在那里’。”（我以前听到这句伟大的赞美诗，一次是科迪莉娅在马奇梅因公馆的客厅里给我念的，另一次是大约一年以前在危地马拉听一个混血儿的唱诗班唱的。）

一个服务员走到我跟前。

“先生，我可以给你弄点什么吃的吗？”

“一杯威士忌和苏打水，不要冰镇的。”

“非常抱歉，所有的苏打水都是冰镇的。”

“难道水也冰镇了吗？”

“是的，先生。”

“那好吧，冰镇就冰镇吧。”

他一溜小跑走开了，很困窘地在弥漫的嗡嗡声中无声无息地走掉了。

“查尔斯。”

我回过头去，只见朱莉娅正坐在一个吸墨纸般的方垫上，她的双手叠着放在大腿上，不声不响，所以我经过的时候没注意到她。

“我听说你也在这儿。西莉娅打电话告诉我的。真高兴。”

“你在干什么呢？”

她摊开放在腿上的空空的双手，做了一个优雅的手势。“在等着。我的女仆正在解行李；自从我们离开英国以来，她就一直很别扭。现在又抱怨起我的客舱来啦。真不知道有什么可抱怨的。好像我要的饮料来了。”

那个服务员又回来了，端着威士忌和两个杯子，一杯是冰镇水，另一杯是开水；我把酒和水兑在一起，使温度合适。他一边观察，一边说道：“先生，我得记住你是怎么兑的。”

大部分旅客都各有所好；他是雇来增强这些旅客的自信心的。朱莉娅要了一杯热巧克力。我挨着她坐在另一个方垫上。

“刚才我根本就没有看到你，”她说，“凡是我喜欢的人我似乎永远看不见。我不知道是怎么回事。”

可是她说话的口气就仿佛只是隔了几个星期，而不是已经隔了很多年了；而且好像我们在分别以前就已经是挚友似的。时光的流逝筑起了层层防线，把薄弱环节伪装起来，并且除了几条人来人往的熟路以外到处都布了地雷，因而我们大概只能在缠得乱七八糟的电线的这一头，向对方发发信号而已。像这样的不期而遇，情形就与普通的经历大不相同了。我和她以前算不上什么朋友，现在却以长期亲密无间的关系在这里相遇了。

“你在美国干些什么来着？”

她喝着巧克力，这时慢慢扬起头来，抬起那双明亮而严肃的眼睛看着我的眼睛，说：“你不知道吗？那我以后什么时候再告诉你吧。我真是个傻瓜。我自以为我爱上了什么人，可是结果并不是那么回事。”这时我的思绪回到了十年前在布赖兹赫德的那个夜晚，当时这个可爱的、细胳膊瘦腿的十九岁的女孩，仿佛是从育婴室带出来待一个小时，由于成年人不注意她而着恼，当时她说道：“我也在引起别人心神不安呢，你知道。”而我当时想：“这些姑娘把她们的恋爱看得多么重要啊。”但现在我却几乎没有这种看法了。

现在情形却不相同了；她说话的态度只剩下谦卑和亲切的直爽了。

我本希望对她的这种信任能有所反应，做出接受的表示，可是在我过去平淡的、多事的岁月里，实在没有什么可以与她同甘共苦的东西。我只好跟她谈谈我在丛林中的日子，遇到过的滑稽可笑的人物，游历过的废墟遗址，可是老交情的心情使故事讲得吞吞吐吐，最后突然中断了。

“我渴望看看那些画儿，”她说道。

“西莉娅为了鸡尾酒会也希望我能拿出一些挂在客舱里，这我办不到。”

“对的……西莉娅还那么漂亮吗？我一向认为比起当年我们那些女孩子来，她长得最秀气了。”

“她没有什么变化。”

“你变了，查尔斯。你瘦多啦，也严峻了；一点儿也不是当年塞巴斯蒂安带回家来的那个漂亮的男孩子了。也更刚强了。”

“而你却更温柔了。”

“是的，我也这么觉得……而且现在很有耐性。”

她还不到三十岁，正走向她美的顶峰，她原来丰富的潜在的美已经完全显现出来了。她已经没有了当年风行一时的那种细胳膊瘦腿的模样了；而我曾经觉得具有意大利文艺复兴时期风味的头，原来多少有些不协调地长在她的肩上，现在真正成了她自己的一部分，完全没有佛洛伦萨美人的风韵了；如果不是多多少少同绘画、或是同艺术等类事情联系起来的话，要对她的美详加列举，细加分析是无济于事的，她的美丽是她的本质，只有在她身上，得到她的认可，在我很快就要对她产生的爱情中她的美才能被理解。

岁月还造成了另一种变化，对于她来说，倒没有那种含蓄而自得其乐的蒙娜丽莎式的微笑；岁月比“七弦竖琴和长笛的声音”更使她忧愁。她仿佛在说：“看看我吧。我尽了我的本分。我是美丽的。我的美是不寻常的美。我是为快乐而生的。可是我从中得到什么呢？而我的报酬又在哪儿呢？”

这就是她十年来的变化；这确实就是她的报酬，那种令人魂牵梦绕的具有魔力的哀伤，它直接向心灵倾诉并使人沉默。这就是她的美的顶峰。

“也更哀伤了。”我说道。

“噢，不错，哀伤得多了。”


两个小时以后我回到了客舱，这时我的妻子精神饱满，情绪高涨。

“我不得不把一切都准备好了。看上去怎么样？”

我们没有花过多的钱，一套宽绰的舱房就为我们准备好了，其中的一间大得除了这家轮船公司的董事们使用外实际上很少预订出去，在大多数的航行中，经事务长同意，这套舱房常常租给他希望致以敬意的旅客。（我的妻子是很擅长捞取这种小小实惠的，先是用她的漂亮和我的声望给很吃这一套的人以深刻印象，一旦优势既已造成，马上变换出一种讨人喜欢的姿态来。）为了表示她的谢意，事务长被邀请来参加鸡尾酒会，而他为了表示他的谢意，在赴会之前送了一只和实物一般大小的天鹅塑像，塑像是用冰浇铸出来的，里面填满了鱼子酱。这件寒气逼人的豪华礼物雄视全屋，摆在房子中央的桌子上，它渐渐地融化，天鹅喙上滴下的水落在盛它的那只银盘子里。今天早上送来的鲜花尽可能地把镶板都遮盖住了（这间客舱是上面那个巨大的大厅的雏形）。

“你得赶快换礼服了。你一直在哪儿呀？”

“跟朱莉娅·莫特拉姆聊天。”

“你认识她？噢，自然啦，你以前是她那嗜酒如命的哥哥的朋友。谢天谢地，她还挺有魅力吧！”

“她也极为称赞你的漂亮呢。”

“她原来还是博伊的一位女朋友呢。”

“不至于吧？”

“他自己常常这么说的。”

“你考虑过没有，”我问道，“你的客人们怎么吃里面的鱼子酱呢？”

“考虑过了。是不好办。不过东西这儿全有啦。”——她给我看了装满几个托盘的透明的美味珍品——“不管怎么样，参加酒会的人总找得到吃东西的办法的。你还记得我们有一次曾有一把裁纸刀吃罐装的小虾吗？”

“是吗？”

“亲爱的，就是你求婚的那个晚上嘛。”

“就我记得，是你求的婚。”

“好啦，反正是我们订婚的那个晚上。可是你还没有说你觉得安排得如何呢。”

所谓安排，除了那只天鹅和那些鲜花以外，还包括一个已经无法脱身、被困在临时柜台后面角落里的服务员，和另外一个手里端着托盘相对地要自由得多的服务员。

“一个电影演员的梦。”我说。

“电影演员们，”我的妻子说，“这正是我要谈论的。”

她跟着我来到化妆室，我一边换衣服，她一边跟我说话。她脑子一转便想到，既然我的兴趣是在建筑方面，那我的专长就是给电影设计布景，所以就邀请了两位好莱坞的大亨参加鸡尾酒会，并且希望我巴结巴结他们。

我们又回到起居室。

“亲爱的，我知道你对我的这只鸟很反感。在事务长面前可不要对它太厉害了。他想到这个也怪不错的了。再说，你知道，如果你在描述十六世纪威尼斯宴会的情况中看到过这种天鹅的话，那么你就会说这是那个时代的再现啦。”

“十六世纪威尼斯天鹅的样子也会有些不同的。”

“这位是圣诞老人。我们对你的这只天鹅都喜欢得发狂啦。”

那位事务长走进客舱，有力地和人们握了握手。

“亲爱的西莉娅夫人，”他说道，“明天如果你愿意穿上最暖和的衣服，和我到冷库里去探探险的话，我还能让你看到一条装着这类东西的完整的诺亚方舟。烤面包片一会儿就来。他们正在把它烤热一些。”

“烤面包片！”我的妻子说道，仿佛烤面包片是什么超过大吃大喝的美味。“你听见了吗，查尔斯？烤面包片呀。”

客人们很快就陆续光临了；没有什么事情耽搁他们。“西莉娅，”客人们都说，“多么大的客舱啊！多么漂亮的天鹅啊！”尽管这间客舱是全船最大的，这里还是很快就挤得水泄不通了。这时客人们也开始在环绕着那只天鹅的小水池里熄灭他们的烟头了。

这时事务长照水手们的习惯预言将有一场暴风雨来临，于是造成了一阵骚动。“你怎么这么狠心啊？”我妻子问道，弦外之音让人听出一种讨好恭维的意思，似乎不仅这间客舱，这些鱼子酱，而且还有风浪也都统统听候这个事务长的调遣似的。“不管怎么样，暴风雨总不会影响到这样的一条客轮吧？”

“也许会稍微阻碍我们航行。”

“不过不会使我们晕船吧？”

“那就要看你是不是一个不晕船的人了。在暴风雨中我总是晕船，我从小就是这样。”

“这我可不信。他这是故意折磨人的。到这儿来，我给你看点儿东西。”

那是一张她的孩子们的近照。“查尔斯还没有见过卡罗琳呢。看了一定会快乐得发抖啦。”

这里没有我的朋友，不过三分之一参加酒会的人我都认识，我十分彬彬有礼地和他们一直聊天。一个老妇人对我说，“你就是查尔斯啊。我觉得我彻底了解你了，西莉娅谈你谈得可多啦。”

“彻底了解，”我在心里想，“彻底了解可需要很长时间呀，夫人。难道你真能够看透我企图支配自己思想感情的隐秘地方吗？难道你能够跟我讲清楚，施托伊弗桑特·奥格兰德夫人——我妻子这样叫你，如果我没有听错的话——那么为什么就在此刻，我和你在这里一边谈我即将举行的展览，却一直在想朱莉娅什么时候会来呢？为什么我能跟你这样聊天，跟她却不能呢？为什么我已经把她和我自己置身于世人之外呢？你知道我精神的隐秘地方正在发生些什么吗？你竟敢肆意胡说？施托伊弗桑特·奥格兰德夫人，你在捏造些什么呢？”

朱莉娅还没有来，这间房子本来由于太大而没有人租用，现在这间小屋里二十余人的喧闹声，却成了一大群人的吵闹声。

这时我看到一个很出奇的家伙。那边有一个红脑袋的小个子男人，似乎谁也不认识他，而且这个邋里邋遢的家伙也完全不像我妻子的客人那一流人；他一直站在鱼子酱旁边，有二十来分钟了，吃得就像野兔吃食一样快。这时他用手帕揩干净嘴，显然是一时冲动，他向前探探身子，轻轻地擦了擦天鹅的嘴，擦掉了一滴已经凝聚在天鹅嘴上马上就要滴落下去的水珠。然后他偷偷摸摸地四下里张望了一下，看看是不是有人注意他，他碰到了我的眼光，就神经质地咯咯笑起来。

“早就想干这个了，”他说道，“谅你也不知道每分钟滴多少下。我可知道，我数过了。”

“不知道。”

“猜猜看。如果你错了就给六便士；如果你猜着了就是半个美元。这是很公平合理的。”

“三下。”我说。

“哦呀呀，你真够机灵的。你自己一直在数着吧。”不过他并没有露出要付款的意思来，而是说，“你是怎么算出来的啊。我生长在英国，不过这是头一次在大西洋上航行呢。”

“大概你是坐飞机出国的吧？”

“不对，根本没有坐过飞机。”

“那我猜你是环绕地球，从太平洋那边绕过来的吧？”

“你真够机灵的，没错儿。我还因为这个问题跟别人争论得相当厉害呢。”

“那你走的是哪条路线呢？”我问道，想要投其所好。

“啊，这以后再说吧。好啦，我得赶快逃啦，再见！”


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举报 只看该作者 10楼  发表于: 2013-11-19 0

“查尔斯，”我的妻子说，“这位就是克拉姆先生，星际电影制片公司的。”

“你就是查尔斯·赖德先生，”克拉姆说。

“是的。”

“好，好，好，”他停顿了一下。我等待着。“船上的事务长说我们就要碰上暴风雨了。关于这件事你还知道些什么？”

“比事务长知道的差多了。”

“对不起，赖德先生，我不十分明白你的意思。”

“我的意思是说我所知道的比事务长少。”

“是这样吗？好，好，好。我非常欣赏我们这场谈话。希望这是以后多次谈话的开始。”

这时一个英国女人说道：“啊，瞧这只天鹅！我在美国待了六个星期，现在对冰真腻烦透了。跟我说说，隔了两年重见西莉娅是什么感觉？我知道我可能觉得像个不大恰当的婚礼。不过西莉娅从来没有把她头上的香橙花完全摘下来，是不是？”

另一个女人说道：“一边说再见，一边又知道我们过半个小时又会见面，而且许多天每隔半小时都要见一次面，这不是妙极了吗？”

客人们陆续告辞了，每个人走的时候都要告诉我，我的妻子已经答应了在最近的时间里我将为他做些什么事。这个晚上的话题就是：我们大家都会常常碰面，以及我们形成了一个只有物理学家才能描述得出来的分子体系。末了那只天鹅也用轮车推走了，我对妻子说，“朱莉娅一直没来。”

“不来了，她打过电话了。我听不清她的话，噪音就一直没断——她大概为了一件衣服吧。不过真够幸运的了，这儿连个活动余地都没有了。这个聚会挺不错吧？你很讨厌它吗？你的举止好极了，而且看起来派头很高贵。你那个红头发的好朋友是谁呀？”

“不是我的什么好朋友。”

“那可太奇怪了！你跟克拉姆先生说过去好莱坞工作的事吗？”

“当然没有。”

“唉，查尔斯，你真叫我操心。光是站在那儿摆出尊贵的派头，像个为艺术而牺牲的人，这是不够的。咱们吃晚饭去吧。我们在船长那张桌子吃。我想今天晚上他大概不会下来吃的，不过遵守时间才有礼貌。”

当我们到了桌子跟前时，其他聚会的人已经各就各位了。在空着的船长那张椅子两边坐着朱莉娅和施托伊弗桑特·奥格兰德夫人；除了他们，还有一位英国外交官和他的妻子，还有上议员施托伊弗桑特·奥格兰德，还有一位美国教士，这时他孤零零地坐在两对空着的椅子中间那张椅子上。这位教士后来把自己说成是——似乎有些多余—一位圣公会的主教。餐桌旁夫妻都是坐在一起的。这时我的妻子必须当机立断，尽管那位服务员企图指挥我们另外一个坐法，可是她还是分开坐了，她挨着那位上议员坐，我挨着主教。朱莉娅对我们两人忧郁地露出一点儿同情的表示来。

“说到鸡尾酒会真让人丧气，”她说道，“当时我的要命的女仆和我所有的衣服都不见了。她半个小时前才回来。原来她打乒乓球去了。”

“我跟上议员说了他没看到什么人，”施托伊弗桑特·奥格兰德夫人说。“无论西莉娅到什么地方，你准会发现那里所有的头面人物她全都认识。”

“在我右边的，”那位主教说，“预料会来的是一对重要人物。他们在自己的客舱里吃饭，除非事先得到通知船长会光临才来这里。”

我们是乏味透顶的一圈人；连我的妻子喜欢社交的精神也动摇了。我不时听到她的片片断断的谈话。

“……一个非凡的红头发的小个子男人。相貌像福尔纳夫船长。”

“但是我认为你的意思是说，西莉娅小姐，你并不认识他。”

“我是说他像福尔纳夫船长。”

“我有些明白了。他为了参加你的酒会而冒充你的这位朋友。”

“不，不。福尔纳夫船长不过是个喜剧角色。”

“另外这个人听起来也没有多大意思啊。你的朋友是一个喜剧演员吗？”

“不是，不是。福尔纳夫船长是一家英国报纸上的虚构人物。知道吧，就像你们的虚构人物‘凸眼球’一样。”

那位上议员放下手里的刀叉。“简单地说：一个骗子参加你的宴会，而你又接纳了他，因为他和一部动画片里的一个虚构人物出奇地相像。”

“是的，我想的确是这样。”

上议员看着他的妻子似乎像是说：“头面人物，嘿！”

我听见桌子对面朱莉娅正在替那个外交官试图追溯她的匈牙利和意大利表兄妹之间的婚姻关系。一颗颗宝石在她头上和手指上闪着光，可是她的手却神经质地揉搓着几个小面包球，她那闪着宝石光泽的头绝望地低垂着。

那位主教告诉我他去巴塞罗那担负着友好亲善的使命……“一项非常非常有意义的清理工作已经完成了，赖德先生。在更广阔的基础上重建的时机已经来临。我定的目标是：让所谓的无政府主义者和所谓的共产主义者和解。以此为目的，我和我的委员会也已经深入研究了关于这个问题的一切有采用价值的文件。赖德先生，我们的结论是一致的。两种思想意识之间，并没有根本的分歧。分歧是人物性格的问题，赖德先生，凡是由于人物性格而出现分歧的问题，人物性格也可以把它统一起来……”

在另一边我听到说：“我可否斗胆地问一句，你丈夫去考察，是什么单位发起的呢？”

那位外交官夫人勇敢地跨过把他们隔开来的鸿沟和主教攀谈起来。

“你到了巴塞罗那，将说哪一种语言呢？”

“说理性和兄弟情谊的语言，夫人。”然后他又转过身来对我说，“下一个世纪，说话将用思想而不是用语言。你不同意吗，赖德先生？”

“同意，”我说，“同意。”

“什么是语言呢？”主教说。

“确实，什么是语言呢？”

“无非是传统的符号罢了，赖德先生，这个时代恰恰是适当地怀疑传统符号的时代。”

我的脑子感到天旋地转；经历了我妻子举办的那个吵吵嚷嚷的酒会，和今天下午那种难以了解的情绪，经历了和我的妻子在纽约的纵情享乐，在充满瘴疠和绿阴的丛林中过了好几个月的孤独生活以后，目前这种状态实在是不堪忍受了。我觉得自己就像荒野里的李尔王，就像那个被疯子逼到绝路的马尔菲公爵夫人一样，我呼唤着狂风暴雨，仿佛依靠巫术，我的召唤就会应验似的。

这时有那么一刻，尽管我当时弄不清楚是不是神经紧张变出来的幻觉，反正我感到有一种周而复始、持续不断的逐渐增长的运动——这间宽大的餐厅猛地膨胀和震颤，就像一个人酣睡时的胸脯一样。这时我的妻子扭过脸对我说：“要么是我有些醉了，要么是暴风雨来了。”就在她说话的时候，我们觉得自己坐在椅子上歪到一边去了；这时靠墙放着的刀叉餐具掉落下来发出一片猛烈的碰撞声和叮叮当当的声音，桌上的酒杯全都打翻了，在桌子上滚动起来，而这时我们每个人都稳住盘子叉子，用各种不同的表情望着别人，从外交官太太明显的恐惧到朱莉娅的怡然自得。

在我们这个封闭隔绝的天地里听不到、看不到也感觉不到的外面的八级大风，在上面高空飕飕地刮了一小时，现在已经变了风向，直向船首猛扑过来。

猛烈的碰撞声过后接着就是一片沉寂，随后又爆发出一阵高声的神经质的咯咯笑声。服务员们把餐巾撂在洒出来的一摊摊葡萄酒上。我们还想继续谈话，可是大家都在等待着，就像那淡褐黄色的小个子男人盯住水滴胀大从天鹅嘴上滴落下来那样，等待着下一次巨大的冲击；冲击来了，比上一次还要猛烈。

“我该向大家告辞了。”外交官太太说着站起来。

她的丈夫带她回自己的舱里去了。整个餐厅霎时间便空了。很快就剩了朱莉娅、我妻子和我还在餐桌旁，好像是心灵感应似的，朱莉娅说道：“就像李尔王似的。”

“只是我们每一个人完完全全就像他们三个人。”

“你说的是什么意思？”我的妻子说道。

“李尔、肯特和弄臣。”

“噢，亲爱的，好像又要谈一遍刚才那场折磨人的福尔纳夫式的谈话了吧。不要再解释了吧。”

“我怀疑我是否能解释得了呢。”我说。

又上升，又猛地跌落。值班的服务员把东西系紧，关上，赶快把放不稳的装饰品拿走。

“好啦，我们已经吃完了晚饭，表现了英国人镇定的好榜样。”我的妻子说，“走吧，去看看情况怎么样啦。”

去休息厅的路上，有一次我们三个人不得不紧紧地抱住一根柱子；当我们到了休息厅的时候，发现那里几乎无人了，乐队奏着曲子，可是没有人跳舞；摆好几张卖汤博拉彩票的桌子，可是没有人买一张彩票，那个船上的高级船员专用下级船员的顺口溜来报数——“漂亮的十六，亲嘴没轮上——房门的钥匙，二十——稀里哗啦，六十六”——这时他正在和他的同事们懒洋洋地聊着天；大厅里稀稀落落还有二十来个看小说的人，还有几桌人在打桥牌，吸烟室里还有几个人在喝白兰地，可是我们的两个小时以前的客人都不见了。

我们三人在空荡荡的舞池旁稍坐片刻；我的妻子一肚子鬼算盘，按照她的主意，我们可以不失礼地挪到餐厅另一张桌子上去。“要去饭馆可就太蠢了，”她说，“完全一样的饭菜，还得付额外的钱。总而言之，饭馆只有电影界的人才去。我不知道我们为什么非得去那儿不可。”

过了一会儿她说：“使我的脑袋都疼了，我毕竟累了。我要去睡觉啦。”

朱莉娅和她一起走了。我在船上四处转悠，在一片盖着顶蓬的甲板上，狂风呼啸，浪花从昏暗的地方飞溅起来，撞击在大玻璃窗上，碎成白色和褐色的水点。有人把守着，不让旅客们到露天甲板上去。因此我也下到舱里来了。

在我的梳妆室里，一切易碎的物品都已经收藏起来了，通向客舱的门大开着，从外面勾住了，我妻子哀怨地从里面呼喊。

“我觉得太可怕了。我不知道这样大的船会颠簸成这个样子。”她说道，眼睛里充满了惊愕和怨恨，就像一个快分娩的妇女的眼睛一样，她终于明白了，不管小型私人医院多么豪华，不管医生的费用多么昂贵，但她分娩痛苦却是不可避免的；这时轮船的起落就像分娩时的阵痛一样有规律。

我睡在隔壁房间里；或者毋宁说我躺在那儿，迷迷糊糊，似睡非睡。如果睡在狭窄的睡铺里，躺在硬床垫上的话，我可能得到好好的休息，可是这儿的床铺又宽大又松软；我把能找到的垫子都搜集起来，拼命用垫子把自己塞得牢实些，可是一整夜我都随着船一起摇晃，颠簸——这时船不仅上下颠簸，而且还左右摇晃——我的脑袋里回响着吱吱嘎嘎乒乒乓乓的声音。

破晓前一个小时，我的妻子像一个幽灵一样出现在门口，她用双手扶着门的两侧来支撑住自己，说：“你醒着吧？能不能想点办法？能不能到医生那儿拿点药？”

我按铃叫来夜间的服务员，他那儿有准备好的药，这使她舒服一些。

整夜在迷迷糊糊似睡非睡的我，想的一直是朱莉娅；在我的短暂的梦境里她变幻成上百种奇异、可怕而又模糊不清的形象，可是等我醒来，她在我脑子里的形象又恢复到那种哀伤的、头上宝石闪耀着光芒的样子，就像吃晚饭时我看见她的那副样子。


第一道曙光出现以后，我又睡了一两个小时，醒来的时候脑子非常清楚，并且有一种快乐的预感。

服务员告诉我说，风已经减弱了，可是还刮得很猛烈，浪涛还汹涌澎湃；“对旅客的享受而言，再没有比巨浪更糟糕的了，”他说道，“今天早晨要早餐的人可不多。”

我顺便看了看我的妻子，发现她还在睡，我把我们之间的那扇门关好；然后我吃了鲑鱼和鸡蛋葱豆烩饭还有冷火腿，然后打电话叫理发师来给我理发。

“起居室有夫人的一堆东西，”那位服务员说，“是不是暂时把东西留在那儿？”

我走过去看了看。原来是船上商店送来的第二批玻璃纸包装的大小包裹，有些是纽约的朋友拍无线电报订购的，他们的秘书没有及时把我们要离开的消息提醒他们，有些是我们的客人在离开鸡尾酒会时买来送我们的。这种天气不是摆花瓶的时候；我叫服务员把花瓶都挪到地板上，这时我又灵机一动，把克拉姆先生送的玫瑰花上的名片取掉，叫人把花和我的情意一起给朱莉娅送去。

当我刮脸的时候她打来电话。

“查尔斯，你干了多么可叹的事啊！这可不像你的为人啊！”

“你不喜欢吗？”

“这种天气你可让我怎么处置这些玫瑰花呢？”

“闻一闻呗。”

一阵沉默，随后又是一阵拆包的沙沙声。“这些花完全没有香味了。”

“你早饭吃了什么？”

“圆叶葡萄和罗马甜瓜。”

“我什么时候能见到你？”

“午饭以前吧。吃午饭以前有一位女按摩师忙着给我按摩。”

“女按摩师？”

“是的，不是很奇怪吗？我以前从来没有做过按摩，除了有一次打猎伤了肩膀。在一条船上使人人都表现得像电影明星的派头，这是怎么回事？”

“我可不像。”

“送这些让人很为难的玫瑰花，又是什么派头呢？”

那位理发师异常敏捷地理着发——确实是很灵活，他站的姿势活像一位芭蕾舞中的剑客，有时用这个脚尖站着，一会儿又用另一个脚尖，他轻巧地把剃刀刃上的泡沫抹下来，当船恢复了平稳的时候，他就又猛地刮我的下巴，我自己连保险剃刀都不敢用的。

这时电话铃又响了。

是我妻子打来的。

“你好吗，查尔斯？”

“累了。”

“你不来看看我吗？”

“我来了一次了。我这就再来。”

我把起居室里的花带给了她；这些花使得她在这间客舱里创造的产房的气氛完满了；那位女服务员身上就有助产士气派，她站在床边，俨然是一位穿着浆洗过亚麻衣杉的安详的支柱。我的妻子在枕头上转过头来，惨淡地微笑了一下；她伸出一只裸露的胳膊，用手指尖抚弄着那把最大的花束的玻璃罩纸和缎带。“人们多可爱啊，”她软弱无力地说着，就仿佛这场八级大风只是她个人的不幸，世人都要以其眷爱向她表示慰问。

“我还以为你没有起来呢？”

“哦，没有，克拉克太太可好极了。”她总是很快就知道用人们的名字。“别记挂。有时进来跟我讲讲外面的情形吧。”

“喂，喂，亲爱的，”那位女服务员说，“今天越少打扰我们越好。”

甚至晕船，我的妻子似乎都把它搞成一种庄严的女性的仪式。

我知道朱莉娅的客舱就在我们下面一层。我在主甲板扶梯旁边等着她；她来了后我们就围着这块散步场兜了一圈；我扶住栏杆；她挽住我另外的一只胳膊。走起来很不容易；透过流淌着雨水的玻璃，我们看到一个被灰色的天和黑浊的海水扭曲了的世界。船又猛烈地摆动起来，我使她转过身来，使她能用另外一只手抓住栏杆；呼嚎的狂风减弱了，可是船由于张力而发出吱吱嘎嘎的声音。我们又兜了一圈，这时朱莉娅说道：“天气可真不好。那个女按摩师真把我折腾得够戗。我总觉得身子软极了。还是坐下来吧。”

休息厅的青铜大门从挂钩上扯开了，这时正随着船的晃动而摇摆着。大门有节奏地然而似乎又势不可挡地张开又合上，先是这扇门，随后又是那扇；每当运动了半周时门就停顿一下，然后又缓慢地开始移动起来，随着一声响亮的碰撞声飞速地往回摆。要通过这两扇大门并没有什么真正的危险，只要不滑倒，不被飞速的最后一下冲击碰撞上；不慌不忙地走过去时间是绰绰有余的，不过看到这么个失控的、沉重的金属家伙来回摆动也是很令人害怕的，也许令胆小的人畏缩不前或是太快地跳过去。在感觉到朱莉娅挽住我胳膊的那只手非常镇定，而且知道当我在她身边行走时她完全不害怕，我感到很高兴。

“妙极了，”坐在附近的一个男人看到我们说，“我承认我是从另一条路绕过来的。不知怎么搞的，我很不喜欢这两扇门的样子。他们一上午一直在设法把这两扇门固定住。”

那一天附近的人很少，而这几个人似乎是由于互相尊重的同志友谊才聚到一块的；他们只是愁眉苦脸地坐在扶手椅里，偶尔地喝一两口酒，互相祝贺彼此都没有晕船。

“你是我所见到的第一位不晕船的夫人。”那个男人说。

“我很幸运。”

“我们都很幸运，”他说。当我们之间那块吸墨纸颜色的地板突然呼地往下一沉的时候，他起先像是一鞠躬，结果向前扑倒在膝盖上。这一次摇摆把我们从他旁边甩开了，我们紧紧地互相抓住，不过还是站住了，而且我们马上趁这次摇晃时在我们跳过去的地方坐下，在与人隔离得更远的那一边；休息厅里已经横着拉上了一条救生索，而我们都仿佛是拳击员，用绳子围进拳击场里面了。

服务员们走过来。“还是原样吗，先生？威士忌和温水，我想是这样吧。夫人要什么呢？我可以建议来一点儿香槟酒吗？”

“你知道吧，事情糟就糟在我总是非常喜欢喝香槟酒，”朱莉娅说。“何等的人生享乐呵——玫瑰花，半个小时的按摩，现在又是香槟酒！”

“我希望你不要再提什么玫瑰花了。首先这也并不是我的主意。是人家送给西莉娅的。”

“哟，这可是两回事啦。这可使你完全说出来了。可是却把我的按摩给糟蹋了。”

“那时我正在床上让人刮脸呢。”

“我很喜欢那些玫瑰花，”朱莉娅说，“坦白地说，这些花可让我吃一惊。它使我想到我们一开始就不顺利。”

我懂得她话的意思，而这时我感到仿佛我多少抖落掉了那些冷冰冰的十年来落在我身上的一些尘埃和砂粒；那时侯是，而且总是这样；不管她怎么跟我说话，有时说半句话，有时说几个字，说当代流行的隐语，有时用眼睛、嘴唇、或是手的难以察觉的动作来表达，不管她的思想是多么难以表现，不管她的思想多么迅速而远远地从眼前的事物一瞥而过，不管她的思想怎样直接从表面沉入幽深迷茫之中，像她经常那样，我还是懂得她的意思；甚至在那天，我已经站在爱情最边缘的地方，我还懂得她是什么意思。

我们喝着葡萄酒，不大一会我们那位新朋友就沿着救生绳跌跌撞撞朝我们走过来。

“可以到你们这儿来吗？再没有什么比一场暴风雨更会促使人们聚到一起。这是我第十次渡过海峡，可从来没有碰见过这样的天气。年轻的夫人，我看得出你是一位经验丰富的旅客。”

“不。事实上我除了去纽约以前还从来没有在海上航行过，当然啦，还是渡过英吉利海峡的。我并不觉得晕船，谢谢上帝，可是我觉得很累。起初我还以为是因为按摩呢，不过我现在断定是这条船的缘故。”

“我妻子的情形可糟极了。而她可是一位老练的旅客。不过只是表面上罢了，是不是？”

他和我们一起吃了午饭，而我倒不太在意他是不是在旁边；很明显他已经喜欢上朱莉娅了，他还以为我们是夫妇呢；这种误解和他的殷勤反倒使我和她更亲密了。“昨天晚上我看到你们俩在船长的餐桌上，”他说道，“和那些名流在一起呵。”

“非常无聊的名流。”

“如果叫我来说，我就会说名流往往是乏味的。一旦碰上了这样的暴风雨，你们就会看出人们真的是什么材料构成的了。”

“你对不晕船的旅客有所偏爱吧？”

“嗯，要是这样说，我倒不知道我有什么偏爱——我的意思是说，暴风雨使得大家聚在一起罢了。”

“不错。”

“比如我们吧。要不是这场暴风雨，也许我们永远遇不见。在我的一生中，我曾经在海上碰到过几起非常浪漫的事情。假如这位夫人不怪罪我的话，我倒很愿意讲讲我在利翁湾碰到的一次小小艳遇，当时我比现在年轻一些。”

我们俩都很疲倦了；由于缺少睡眠，连续不断的噪声，一举一动所需要的过度劳力都使我们疲惫不堪。这天下午我们在各自的客舱里消磨过去。我睡了觉，醒来时海浪还像以往一样猛烈，墨染的乌云席卷而来，玻璃上依然淌着雨水，不过在睡眠中我已经习惯了暴风雨，并且把暴风雨的节奏变成了我的节奏，使自己变成暴风雨的一部分。所以我睡醒的时候，精力旺盛，充满了信心，我发现朱莉娅也已经起来了，和我的情绪一样。

“你看怎么样？”她说道，“那个人今天晚上要为所有不晕船的旅客在吸烟室里举行一次‘聚会’。他请我带我丈夫一起去。”

“我们去吗？”

“当然……我不知道我是否应当像我们那位朋友去巴塞罗那中途遇到的那位夫人那样，我不像她，查尔斯，一点都不像。”

“聚会”上一共有十八个人。除了都不晕船以外，我们这些人毫无共同之处。我们喝着香槟酒，过了一会儿那位东道主说道：“我可要告诉你们啦，我这儿有一个轮盘赌的盘子。麻烦就出在我的妻子身上，我们不能去我的客舱里玩，而在公开的地方又不允许玩轮盘赌。”

于是聚会移到我的起居室里继续进行，我们以小赌注玩开，一直玩到深夜，当朱莉娅离开的时候，那位东道主已经喝得酩酊大醉，对于她和我原来并不在一间屋子里已经不感到惊讶了。大家都散去了，只有他一个人在椅子里睡着了，我也就让他待在那儿。这是我最后一次看见他，因为后来——当服务员把轮盘赌具送回到那个人的客舱里对我讲——他已经把股骨摔断了，在走廊里摔的，被抬到船上的医院里去了。

第二天一整天我和朱莉娅都是无人打搅地在一起度过的。我们谈着话，很少走动，由于海浪汹涌一直坐在椅子上。吃过了午饭，最后一批经得住折腾的旅客都去休息了，就剩了我们两人，仿佛这个地方是专为我们清理出来的，好像大家都极其机智，人人都踮着脚尖溜了出去，就剩下我们两个人。

休息厅那两扇青铜大门已经被固定住了，不过那是在两个海员受到重伤以后的事。他们试了各种各样的方法，先用绳子捆住，失败以后，就用钢缆缚住，可是无论什么东西都无法把这两扇大门捆紧；最后，他们把木楔子打进大门底下，趁两扇大门全张开的片刻静止时刻把木楔子打进去，于是两扇大门给固定住了。


吃晚饭以前，她回自己的客舱去做准备（这晚上没有人穿礼服），这时我跟着她，未经邀请，也没有遭到反对，倒是期待着，我随手把门关上，搂住她，第一次吻了她，下午的那种心情一直持续着。后来，我在床上随着轮船的上下颠簸辗转反侧，在这个漫长的、孤独的、睡意蒙胧的黑夜里，我心里反复思量这件事，同时我回忆起过去消逝了十年的求爱；我出去之前，一面打领带，把栀子花插在扣眼里，一面计划着这个晚上，并且考虑在这样那样的时候，利用这样那样的机会，我将冲出起跑线，不计成败地进攻：“这个阶段的战役拖的时间够长了，”我反复地想，“必须作出决定了。”而对朱莉娅来说，却没有阶段，没有起跑线，而且完全没有什么战术。

可是那天晚上夜深时，她回去睡觉，我跟着她到她的门口时，她把我拦住了。

“不，查尔斯，还不。也许永远不。我不知道。我不知道我是不是需要爱。”

然后，有某种东西，某种从死去的十年残存下来的幽灵使我说（因为一个人死亡，即使是片刻，也不能不招致一些损失）：“爱吗？我不是要求爱。”

“是的，查尔斯，你是要求爱。”她说着，抬起手温柔地抚摸了一下我的脸颊；然后把她的舱门关上了。

我往回走，沿着漫长的、光线柔和而又空荡荡的走廊，先是靠在这边墙壁上，后来又靠在那边。暴风雨似乎采取了一种环形形式；白天一整天我们都是航行在暴风雨的平静中心里；而这时我们又一次处在狂暴的大风中——这一夜比前一夜的风浪更加汹涌了。


长达十个小时的谈话：我们有些什么要说的呢？大部分是明显的事实，是我们两个人的生活经历，长时间相隔遥远，而现在又联结为一体，在这个狂风暴雨的夜晚，我整夜都在背诵她跟我说的那些话；这时她不再是那个轮番变幻的魔女和前夜星空灿烂的幻影；她已经把她过去所有可以转移的东西都交给我保存了；她把自己的恋爱和结婚的经过告诉了我，这前面我已经讲过，她仿佛在钟爱地翻阅一本当年保育室记事本似的，给我讲她的童年，于是我伴随她在草地上共同度过了充满阳光的悠长白昼，霍金斯保姆坐在轻便折凳上，科迪莉娅睡在婴儿车里，每天她安睡在圆屋顶下，摇床的四周都是已经褪色的宗教绘画，灯阑夜尽，壁炉里唯余灰烬。她还告诉我她和雷克斯的生活，和这次秘密的、邪恶的、灾难性的出走美国，她也同样有她死去的十年；她告诉我说，为了是否要一个孩子，她和雷克斯曾经长期争执不休；最初她想要一个，可是过了一年以后她知道为了能生孩子需要动手术；而这时她和雷克斯已经没有爱情了，可是他还要孩子，她终于同意了，可是她生下来的是个死婴。

“雷克斯倒从来没有存心对我不好，”她说道，“问题只是他根本就不是一个真正的人。他只不过是人的几种高度发展的本能罢了；其余的一切简直没有。当我们从伦敦度完蜜月回来两个月后，我发现他和布伦达·钱皮恩还藕断丝连，他竟想象不到这会叫我多么伤心。”

“当我发现西莉娅并不忠实的时候我倒很高兴呢，”我说，“我觉得这么一来我讨厌她就是理所当然的了。”

“她不忠实？你高兴？那我很高兴。我也不喜欢她。那你为什么和她结婚呢？”

“生理上的吸引力吧。还有野心。所有的人都认为她是画家的理想妻子。因为孤独，失去了塞巴斯蒂安。”

“你爱他，是吗？”

“是的。他是一个序幕。”

朱莉娅理解了。

轮船发出吱吱嘎嘎的声音，颤抖着，忽而升起，忽而跌下，我的妻子从隔壁的门里叫我：“查尔斯，你在那儿吗？”

“在。”

“我睡了好长时间。现在几点了？”

“三点半了。”

“天气还不见好，是吗？”

“更坏了。”

“可是我觉得好些了。你认为如果我打铃的话，他们会给我端来点茶水之类的东西吗？”

我从夜班服务员那里给她弄到茶和饼干。

“你晚上过得有意思吗？”

“大家都晕船了。”

“可怜的查尔斯。将来会是很愉快的旅行的。也许明天天气会好一些吧。”

我把灯关了，然后关上我们之间那扇门。

我一会儿醒来，一会又堕入梦境，漫长的黑夜始终令人极度紧张，海船嘎吱作响，忽起忽落，我大力地伸开胳膊腿控制住摇晃，牢稳地仰卧着，我睁着眼睛，望着黑暗的地方，想着朱莉娅。

“我原来以为妈妈过世后爸爸也许会回英国，或者再结婚，可是他的生活仍然一如既往。我和雷克斯现在经常去看他。我渐渐喜欢起他来……塞巴斯蒂安完全杳无音信……科迪莉娅跟着一个战地救护队去了西班牙……布赖德还过着他自己那种奇怪的日子。妈妈去世以后，他打算关闭布赖兹赫德，可是爸爸出于某种原因不愿意这样，所以现在我和雷克斯住在那儿，布赖德在上面穹顶里挨着保姆霍金斯占了两间屋子，原来是育婴室的一部分。他很像契诃夫作品中的人物，我们有时在图书室外面或者在楼梯上遇见他——我根本不知道他什么时候在家——他有时突如其来地进来吃晚饭，就像一个幽灵，一个不速之客。

“……哦，雷克斯那伙人呀！无非是政治和金钱。除非为了搞钱，他们什么也不干。如果他们沿着池塘散步，那他们就非得打赌他们看到多少只天鹅……一坐就到夜里两点钟，拿雷克斯带来的姑娘们开心逗乐，听着她们闲聊，十五子棋的棋盘嗒嗒地响个不停，那些男人们玩着扑克牌，吸着雪茄烟。那股雪茄烟烟味！我早上醒来的时候就能在我头发里闻到雪茄烟味。晚上换衣服的时候，衣服里也有这种气味。现在我身上还有烟味吗？你觉得给我按摩的那个女人今天会不会闻出我的皮肤里有烟味？

“……最初我常常跟着雷克斯去他那些朋友家里小住。现在他不再要我去了。当他发现我没有显出他希望我显出的样子来，这时他就觉得脸上不光彩，上了当。我可不是他廉价买来的东西呀。他看不出我的优点，可是每当他认定我没有什么长处时，他就觉得很舒服。但是他大吃一惊——他所敬重的那些男人，甚至还有一些女人很喜欢我，他突然看出我和他们理解的东西很多，而他却一无所知……我一出走，他就心烦意乱。要能使我回去他会很快乐。我一直对他很忠实，直至发生最后这件事情。没有什么比得上良好的教养。你知道吗，去年，当我想我要有孩子了的时候，我决定把他教育成一个天主教徒。以前我从没有考虑过宗教信仰问题；打那以后也没有再考虑过；可是恰恰在我等候分娩的时候，我想，这是我可以给她的一种东西。宗教似乎没有给我带来很多好处，但是我的孩子应当有宗教信仰。说来也怪，一个人竟想把自己失掉了的东西送给别人。然而，到头来我甚至连这种东西也无法给了：我甚至不能给她生命。我没有看见过她；我病得太厉害了，以致无法知道发生了什么事情，后来过了很长时间，直到现在，我都一直不愿意谈到她——她是个小女孩，所以她死了雷克斯也不大在乎。

“我因为和雷克斯结婚多少受到了些惩罚。你知道，像这类事情我没法从脑子里完全排除掉，尤其是——死亡，最后审判，地狱，保姆霍金斯，还有《教义问答》等等。如果一个人从小就得到这类东西，它就会成为一个人的一部分了。而且我还希望我的孩子也具有这些东西……现在我觉得我终有一天会因为我的所作所为而受到惩罚的。这也许就是你我像这样在这里聚会的原因吧……这是几分天意。”

这是我要到下面舱里去把她留在舱门口时她说的最后的话——这是几分天意。


第二天风势又减弱了，而我们又在摇摆颠簸中晃来晃去。大家很少谈到晕船的事，更多地谈到摔断骨头的事了；夜晚人们被摔在地上，在洗澡间的地板上就已经发生了多起令人不愉快的事故。

这一天，因为我和朱莉娅前一天已经说了那么多了，又因为我们不得不说的只需要几个字，所以我们很少说话。我们都带着书；这时朱莉娅发现了她喜欢的一种游戏。经过长时间的沉默，我们一说起来就发现我们的思想竟是齐头并进的。

有一次我说道：“你在守卫着你的哀伤。”

“这就是我得到的一切。你昨天说过。我的报酬呵。”

“这是从生活中得到的一张借据。一张见票即付的凭证。”

中午时分雨停了。到了傍晚，浓云消散，太阳从船后突然射进休息厅里我们坐的地方，使所有的灯光都黯然失色了。

“夕阳西下，”朱莉娅说，“也是我们的活动时期的终结。”

她站起身，尽管船的摇晃和颠簸似乎并没有减弱，她却把我带到船甲板上。她挽住我的胳膊，她的手放在我的手里，揣进我的大衣口袋。甲板上是干的，没有人，只有船快速前进时引起的风吹拂着。我们东倒西歪费力地向前走着，躲开从烟囱里飞出来的黑煤烟末儿，我们俩轮流地冲撞着，然后又紧紧地拥抱住，接着又几乎被扯开，我扶住了栏杆，朱莉娅紧紧地抓住我，我们的手指和胳膊都盘结在一起，又冲撞到一起，又被拉开，在一次更猛烈的颠簸中，我觉得自己被抛到她身上，把她紧紧地压在栏杆上，为了避开她，我用胳膊抱住她的两侧免得碰撞她，当船下沉到了底仿佛是要积蓄着力量再上升而停顿了那样的时刻，我们就这样拥抱着站着，就在露天里，脸颊贴着脸颊，她的头发吹到了我的眼睛上；原来海水翻腾的黑暗的海平线上，这时放出金灿灿的光彩，滞留在我们上面，接着又席卷而下，我透过朱莉娅乌黑的头发凝视着辽阔的金黄色的天空，她被甩过来贴在我的胸口上，也被我的手支撑在栏杆上，她的脸依然紧紧地贴在我的脸上。

这时候，她的嘴唇贴在我的耳朵上，她那热乎乎的气息夹在咸腥味的海风中，虽然我一直没有开口，朱莉娅却说：“好吧，现在。”而当船恢复平稳暂时冲入平静的海水上的时候，朱莉娅就带我下到舱里去了。

馥郁华贵的芳香还不是时令，到了时候，芳香自会来临，伴随着燕子和橙花。而这时在波涛汹涌的海上，就要遵守礼仪，仅此而已。仿佛占有她的纤细腰身的转让契约已经拟定并且盖了章。我作为一笔财产的完全保有者而正在把它记入我的第一笔账目中，这笔财产我要从容地享用和开发。

那个晚上我们在船的最高部分，在餐馆里吃的晚饭，我们从船头的窗户望见星星显现出来，横扫天空，就像我记得的自己也曾看见过星星在牛津大学的塔楼和三角形屋顶上掠过一样。服务员们断言说，第二天晚上乐队将会又演奏，并且这里一定客满。他们说，如果我们要占一张好桌子，最好现在定好座。

“亲爱的，”朱莉娅说，“在好天气里我们能躲藏到哪儿呢？我们是暴风雨的两个孤儿。”

这个晚上我离不开她，不过第二天清晨，当我又一次沿着走廊回去的时候，我发现走起路来毫不费力了；轮船在平静的海面上平稳地航行，我明白我们与世隔绝的生活结束了。


我的妻子从她的客舱里高兴地叫道：“查尔斯，查尔斯，我觉得好极了。你知道我正在吃什么早饭吗？”

我走过去看。她正在吃一块牛排。

“我已经和发型师预约好时间了——你知道他们要到下午四点才能给我做呢，他们突然间这么忙？所以我要到傍晚才能露面，不过今天早晨有很多人来看咱们，我已经请了迈尔斯和珍妮特来我们的起居室一块吃午饭。恐怕这两天我对你已经成了一位毫无用处的妻子了。你一直在做什么？”

“一个快活的晚上，”我说道，“我们玩了轮盘赌，一直玩到两点钟，就在隔壁的起居室里玩的，我们那位东道主昏了过去。”

“天哪。听起来真够不体面的。查尔斯，你过得规矩吗？你没有结识海上迷人的女妖吧？”

“几乎一个女人也没有。大部分时间我都是和朱莉娅过的。”

“噢，那好。我一向希望把你们弄到一起。我知道她是我的一个你会喜欢的朋友。我希望你会是天赐给她的朋友。她近来的生活忧闷极了。我估计她不会提这些事的，不过……”这时我的妻子开始讲起关于朱莉娅纽约之行当前的看法。“今天早晨，我要请她来参加鸡尾酒会。”她作出了决定。

朱莉娅和其他的人一起来，现在只要挨近朱莉娅，我就感到十分幸福。

“听说你一直替我照料我丈夫来着。”我的妻子说。

“是啊，我们已经非常友好啦。我和他，还有一个我们不知名字的男人。”

“克拉姆先生，你的胳膊怎么搞的？”

“就怪洗澡间的地板。”克拉姆说道，他详细解释他是怎么摔倒的。

这天晚上船长在他的桌子上吃饭，这一聚会的人就都到齐了，有两个要求参加这个聚会的人坐到主教的右手，这是两个日本人，他们对主教的世界亲善计划表现了浓厚的兴趣。船长一个劲儿地拿朱莉娅在暴风雨中的忍耐力说笑打趣，表示要雇她当一名水手。多年的远洋航行使这位船长在什么场合都能开玩笑。我的妻子从美容室出来时容光焕发，丝毫没有留下三天来倍受折磨的痕迹，在许多人的眼里，似乎比朱莉娅更加光艳照人，而朱莉娅呢，哀伤忧愁的样子已经没有了，却被一种不可言传的满意和宁静所代替了；除了对我，对所有人都是不可言传的。我和她被众人隔开，被人紧紧包围住单独坐在一起，就像前天晚上我们互相搂抱着那样。

这天晚上船上到处是节日的气氛。尽管一到天亮大家就要起身收拾行装，可是所有的人还是打定主意，这一个晚上要好好享受一番被暴风雨剥夺掉的快乐。没有一个清净的地方。船上每个角落都是人头攒动；到处是舞曲和高昂热烈的谈话，服务员们端着放满玻璃杯的托盘四处穿插，还可以听到那个负责发行汤博拉彩票的高级船员的声音——“凯利眼睛，一号；两腿，十一号；我们可要‘摇口袋’啦”——施托伊弗桑特·奥格兰德夫人戴着一顶纸帽子，克拉姆缠着绷带，那两个日本人彬彬有礼地扔着纸飘带，发出像鹅叫一样的声音。

我没有跟朱莉娅说话，整个晚上都是一个人独自待着。

第二天我们在右舷谈了几分钟，这时大家都拥挤在左舷去看一些出现在船上的高级官员们，而且眺望远处德文郡绿色的海岸线。

“你有些什么打算？”

“在伦敦待几天。”

“西莉娅要直接回家去。她想看孩子们。”

“你也回家吗？”

“不。”

“那么就在伦敦。”


“查尔斯，那个红头发的矮个子男人——那就是福尔纳夫。你看见他吗？两个便衣警察把他带走了。”

“我错过了。当时船那边人太多了。”

“我已经看了火车时刻表，并且拍了个电报。吃晚饭的时候我们就可以到家了。孩子们会睡着了。也许我们可以叫醒约翰约翰，就这一次。”

“你回去吧，”我说道，“我还得在伦敦耽搁几天呢。”

“唔，可是查尔斯，你非回去不可。你还没见过卡罗琳呢。”

“难道过一两个星期她就会变了很大模样不成？”

“亲爱的，她每天都在变样子呢。”

“为什么非要现在见她不可呢？我很抱歉，亲爱的，可是我必须把这些画解开包，看看经过这一趟旅行这些画怎么样了。我还得立刻把展览的事商定下来。”

“你必须这样吗？”她说道。我知道，当我求助我这个职业的玄妙力量的时候，她的执拗就土崩瓦解了。“这多叫人扫兴啊。再说，我还不知道安德鲁和辛西娅是否会离开那套公寓。他们原来是租到这个月底的。”

“我可以去住旅馆。”

“可是这样也太不讲情分了。第一天晚上回家就让你一个人，我可受不了。我也要去住一晚，明天再回家。”

“你不可以让孩子们失望啊。”

“不可以。”她的孩子们，我的艺术，这是我们之间交易的两桩秘密。

“那你回来过周末吗？”

“如果可能。”

“所有持英国护照的人请到吸烟室去。”一个服务员喊道。

“我已经和那个跟我们一个桌子吃饭的挺可爱的外国官员商量好了，请他带我们早些下船。”我的妻子说。



Chapter 10
IT was my wife’s idea to hold the private view on Friday.  ‘We are out to catch the critics this time, I she said. ‘It’s high time they began to take you seriously, and they know it. This is their chance. If you open on Monday, they’ll most of them have just come up from the country, and they’ll dash off a few paragraphs before dinner - I’m only worrying about the weeklies of course. If we give them the week-end to think about it, we shall have them in an urbane Sunday-in-the-country mood. They’ll settle down after a good luncheon, tuck up their cuffs, and turn out a nice, leisurely full-length essay, which they’ll reprint later in a nice little book. Nothing less will do this time.’

She was up and down from the Old Rectory several times during the month of preparation, revising the list of invitations and helping with the hanging.  On the morning of the private view I telephoned to Julia and said: ‘I’m sick of the pictures already and never want to see them again, but I suppose I shall have to put in an appearance.’

‘D’you want me to come?’

‘I’d much rather you didn’t.’

‘Celia sent a card with “Bring everyone” written across it in green ink. When do we meet?’

‘In the train. You might pick up my luggage.’

‘If you’ll have it packed soon I’ll pick you up, too, and drop you at the gallery. I’ve got a fitting next door at twelve.’

When I reached the gallery my wife was standing looking through the window to the street. Behind her half a dozen unknown picture-lovers were moving from canvas to canvas, catalogue in hand; they were people who had once bought a wood: cut and were consequently on the gallery’s list of patrons.

‘No one has come yet,’ said my wife. ‘I’ve been here since ten and it’s been very dull.

Whose car was that you came in?’

‘Julia’s.’

‘Julia’s? Why didn’t, you bring her in? Oddly enough, I’ve just been talking about Brideshead to a funny little man who seemed to know us very well. He said he was called Mr Samgrass. Apparently he’s one of Lord Copper’s middle-aged young men on the Daily Beast. I tried to feed him some paragraphs, but he seemed to know more about you than I do. He said he’d met me years ago at Brideshead. I wish Julia had come in; then we could have asked her about him.’

‘I remember him well.He’s a crook.’

‘Yes, that stuck out a mile. He’s been talking all about what he calls the “’Brideshead set”, Apparently Rex Mottram has made the place a nest of party mutiny. Did you know? What would Teresa Marchmain have thought?’ ‘I’m going there tonight.’

‘Not tonight, Charles; you can’t go there tonight. You’re expected at home. You promised, as soon as the exhibition was ready, you’d come home. Johnjohn and Nanny have made a banner with “Welcome” on it. And you haven’t seen Caroline yet.’



‘I’m sorry, it’s all settled.’

‘Besides, Daddy will think it so odd. And Boy is home for Sunday. And you haven’t seen the new studio. You can’t go tonight. Did they ask me?’ ‘Of course; but I knew you wouldn’t be able to come.’ ‘I can’t now. I could have, if you’d let me know earlier. I should adore to see the “Brideshead set” at home. I do think you re perfectly beastly, but this is no time for a family rumpus. The Clarences promised to come in before luncheon; they may be here any minute.’

We were interrupted, however, not by royalty, but by a woman reporter from one of the dailies, whom the manager of the gallery now led up to us. She had not come to see the pictures but to get a “human story” of the dangers of my journey. I left her to my wife, and next day read in her paper: ‘Charles “Stately Homes” Ryder steps off the map.  That the snakes and vampires of the jungle have nothing on Mayfair is the opinion of socialite artist Ryder, who has, abandoned the houses of the great for the ruins of equatorial Africa...’

The rooms began to fill and I was soon busy being civil. My wife was everywhere, greeting people, introducing people, deftly transforming the crowd into a party. I saw her lead friends forward one after another to the subscription list that had been opened for the book of Ryder’s Latin America I heard her say: ‘No, darling, I’m not at all surprised, but you wouldn’t expect me to be, would you? You see Charles lives for one thing - Beauty. I think he got bored with finding it ready-made in England; he had to go and create it for himself. He wanted new worlds to conquer. After all, he has said the last word about country houses, hasn’t he? Not, I mean, that he’s given that up altogether. I’m sure he’ll always do one or two more for friends.’ A photographer brought us together, flashed a lamp in our faces, and let us part.  Presently there was the slight hush and edging away which follows the entry of a royal party. I saw my wife curtsey and heard her say: ‘Oh, sir, you are sweet’; then I was led into the clearing and the Duke of Clarence said: ‘Pretty hot out there I should think.’ ‘It was, sir.’

‘Awfully clever the way you’ve hit off the impression of heat. Makes me feel quite uncomfortable in my greatcoat.’

‘Ha, ha.’

When they had gone my wife said: ‘Goodness, we’re late for lunch. Margot’s giving a party in your honour, and in the taxi she said: ‘I’ve just thought of something. Why don’t you write and ask the Duchess of Clarence’s permission to dedicate Latin America to her?’

‘Why should I?’

‘She’d love it so.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of dedicating it to anyone.’

‘There you are; that’s typical of you, Charles. Why miss an opportunity to give pleasure?’

There were a dozen at luncheon, and though it pleased my hostess and my wife to say that they were there in my honour, it was plain to me that half of them did not know of my exhibition and had come because they had been invited and had no other engagement. Throughout luncheon they talked, without stopping, of Mrs Simpson, but they all, or nearly all, came back with us to the gallery.

The hour after luncheon was the busiest time. There were representatives of the Tate Gallery and the National Art Collections Fund, who all promised to return shortly with colleagues and, in the meantime, reserved certain pictures for further consideration. The most influential critic, who in the past had dismissed me with a few wounding commendations, peered out at me from between his slouch hat and woollen muffler, gripped my arm, and said: ‘I knew you had it. I saw it there. I’ve been waiting for it.’ From fashionable and unfashionable lips alike I heard fragments of praise. ‘If you’d asked me to guess,’ I overheard, ‘Ryder’s is the last name would have occurred to me.  They’re so virile, so passionate.’

They all thought they had found something new. It had not been thus at my last exhibition in these same rooms, shortly before my going abroad. Then there had been an unmistakable note of weariness. Then the talk had been less of me than of the houses, anecdotes of their owners. That same woman, it came back to me, who now applauded my virility and passion, had stood quite near me, before a painfully laboured canvas, and said, ‘So facile.’

I remembered the exhibition, too, for another reason; it was the week I detected my wife in adultery. Then, as now, she was, a tireless hostess, and I heard her say:

‘Whenever I see anything lovely nowadays - a building or a piece of scenery - I think to myself, “that’s by Charles”. I see everything through his eyes. He is England to me.’ I heard her say that; it was the sort of thing she had the habit of saying. Throughout our married life, again and again, I had felt my bowels shrivel within me at the things she said. But that day, in this gallery, I heard her unmoved, and suddenly realized that she was powerless to hurt me any more; I was a free man; she had given me my manumission in that brief, sly lapse of hers; my cuckold’s horns made me lord of the forest.

At the end of the day my wife said: ‘Darling, I must go. It’s been a terrific success, hasn’t it? I’ll think of something to tell them at home, but I wish it hadn’t got to happen quite this way.’

‘So she knows,’ I thought. ‘She’s a sharp one. She’s had her nose down since luncheon and picked up the scent.’

I let her get clear of the place and was about to follow - the rooms were nearly empty - when I heard a voice at the turnstile I had not heard for many years, an unforgettable self-taught stammer, a sharp cadence of remonstration.  ‘No. I have not brought a card of invitation. I do not even know whether I received one. I have not come to a social function- I do not seek to scrape acquaintance with Lady Celia; I do not want my photograph in the Tatler; I have not come to exhibit myself. I have come to see the pictures. Perhaps you are unaware that there are any pictures here. I happen to have a personal interest in the artist - if that word has any meaning for you.’

‘Antoine’ I said, ‘come in.’

‘My dear, there is a g-g-gorgon here who thinks I am g-g-gate-crashing. I only arrived in London yesterday, and heard quite by chance at luncheon that you were having an exhibition, so, of course I dashed impetuously to the shrine to pay homage. Have I changed? Would you recognize me? Where are, the pictures? Let me explain them to you.’

Anthony Blanche had not changed from when I last saw him; not, indeed, from when I first saw him. He swept lightly across the room to the most prominent canvas - a jungle landscape paused a moment, his head cocked like a knowing terrier, and asked:

‘Where, my dear Charles, did you find this sumptuous greenery? The comer of a hothouse at T-t-rent or T-t-tring? What gorgeous usurer nurture.d these fronds for your pleasure?’ Then he made a tour of the two rooms; once or twice he sighed deeply, otherwise he kept silence. When he came to the end he sighed once more, more deeply than ever, and said: ‘But they tell me, My dear, you are happy in love. That is everything, is it not, or nearly everything?’



‘Are they as bad as that?’

Anthony dropped his voice to a piercing whisper: ‘My dear, let us not expose your little imposture before these good, plain people’ - he gave a conspiratorial glance to the last remnants of the crowd - ‘let us not spoil their innocent pleasure. We know, you and I, that this is all t-t-terrible t-t-tripe. Let us go, before we offend the connoisseurs. I know of a louche little bar quite near here. Let us go there and talk of your other c-c-conquests.’

It needed this voice from the past to recall me; the indiscriminate chatter of praise all that crowded day had worked on me like a succession of advertisement hoardings on a long road, kilometre after kilometre between the poplars, commanding one to stay at some new hotel, so that when at the end of the drive, stiff and dusty, one arrives at the destination, it seems inevitable to turn into the yard under the name that had first bored, then angered one, and finally become an inseparable part of one’s fatigue.  Anthony led me from the gallery and down a side street to a door between a disreputable newsagent and a disreputable chemist, painted with the words ‘Blue Grotto Club. Members only.’

‘Not quite your milieu, my dear, but mine, I assure you. After all, you have been in your milieu all day.’

He led me downstairs, from a smell of cats to a smell of gin and cigarette-ends and the sound of a wireless.

‘I was given the address by a dirty old man in the Boeuf sur le Toit. I am most grateful to him. I have been out of England so long, and really sympathetic little joints like this change so fast. I presented myself here for the first time yesterday evening, and already I feel quite at home. Good evening, Cyril.’

‘ ‘Lo, Toni, back again?’ said the youth behind the bar.

‘We will take our drinks and sit in a comer. You must remember, my dear, that here you are just as conspicuous and, may I say, abnormal, my dear, as I should be in B-b-bratt’s.’

The place was painted cobalt; there was cobalt lineoleum on the floor. Fishes of silver and gold paper had been pasted haphazard on ceiling and walls. Half a dozen youths were drinking and playing with the slot-machines; an older, natty, crapulous-looking man seemed to be in control; there was some sniggering round the fruit-gum machine; then one of the youths came up to us and said, ‘Would your friend care to rhumba?’ ‘No, Tom, he would not, and I’m not going to give you a drink; not yet, anyway.

That’s a very impudent boy, a regular little gold-digger, my dear.’ ‘Well,’ I said, affecting an ease I was far from feeling in that den, what have you been up to all these years?’

‘My dear, it is what you have been up to that we are here to talk about. I’ve been watching you, my dear. I’m a faithful old body and I’ve kept my eye on you.’ As he spoke the bar and the bar-tender, the blue wicker furniture, the gambling-machines, the gramophone, the couple of youths dancing on the oilcloth, the youths sniggenng round the slots,. the purple-veined, stiffly-, dressed elderly man drinking in the corner opposite us, the whole drab and furtive joint seemed to fade, and I was back in Oxford looking out over Christ Church meadow through a window of Ruskin-Gothic. ‘I went to your first exhibition,’ said Anthony; ‘I found it - charming. There was an interior of Marchmain House, very English, very correct, but quite delicious. “Charles has done something,” I said; “not all he will do, not all he can do, but something.”

‘Even then, my dear, I wondered a little. It seemed to me that there was something a little gentlemanly about your painting. You must remember I am not English; I cannot understand this keen zest to be well-bred. English snobbery is more macabre to me even than English morals. However, I said, “Charles has done something delicious. What will he do next?”

‘The next thing I saw was your very handsome volume “Village and Provincial Architecture”, was it called? Quite a tome, my dear, and what did I find? Charm again.  “Not quite my cup of tea,” I thought; “this is too English.” I have the fancy for rather spicy things, you know, not for the shade of the cedar tree, the cucumber sandwich, the silver cream-jug, the English girl dressed in whatever English girls do wear for tennis - not that, not Jane Austen, not M-m-miss M-m-mitford. Then, to be frank, dear Charles, I despaired of you. “I am a degenerate old d-d-dago,” I said “and Charles - I speak of your art, my dear - is a dean’s daughter in flowered muslin.” ‘Imagine then my excitement at luncheon today. Everyone was talking about you. My hostess was a friend of my mother’s, a Mrs Stuyvesant Oglander; a friend of yours, too, my dear. Such a frump! Not at all the society I imagined you to keep. However, they, had all been to your exhibition, but it was you they talked of, how you had broke away, my dear, gone to the tropics, become a Gauguin, a Rimbaud. You can imagine how my old heart leaped.

‘ “Poor Celia,” they said, “after all she’s done for him.” “He owes everything to her.  It’s too bad.” “And with Julia,” they said, “after the way she behaved in America.” “Just as she was going back to Rex.”

‘ “But the pictures,” I said; “Tell me about them.”

‘Oh, the pictures,” they said; “they’re most peculiar.” “Not at all what he usually does.” “Very forceful.” “Quite barbaric.” “I call them downright unhealthy,” said Mrs Stuyvesant Oglander.

‘My dear, I could hardly keep still in my chair. I wanted to dash out of the house and leap in a taxi and say, “Take me to Charles’s unhealthy pictures.” Well, I went, but the gallery after luncheon was so full of absurd women in the sort of hats they should be made to eat, that I rested a little - I rested here with Cyril and Tom and these saucy boys. Then I came back at the unfashionable time of five o’clock, all agog, my dear; and what did I find? I found, my dear, a very naughty and very successful practical joke. It reminded me of dear Sebastian when he liked so much to dress up in false whiskers. It was charm again, my dear, simple, creamy English charm, playing tigers.’ ‘You’re-quite right,’ I said.

‘My dear, of course I’m right. I was right years ago - more years, I am happy to say, than either of us shows - when I warned you. I took you out to dinner to warn you of charm. I warned you expressly and in great detail of the Flyte family. Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.’ The youth called Tom approached us again. ‘Don’t be a tease, Toni; buy me a drink.’ I remembered my train and left Anthony with him.

As I stood on the platform by the restaurant-car I saw my luggage and Julia’s go past with Julia’s sour-faced maid strutting beside the porter. They had begun shutting the carriage doors when Julia arrived, unhurried, and took her place in front of me. I had a table for two. This was a very convenient train; there was half an hour before, dinner and half and hour after it; then, instead of changing to the branch line, as had been the rule in Lady Marchmain’s day, we were met at the junction. It was night as we drew out of Paddington, and the glow of the town gave place first to the scattered lights of the suburbs, then to the darkness of the fields.

‘It seems days since I saw you,’ I said.

‘Six hours; and we were together all yesterday. You look worn out.’

‘It’s been a day of nightmare - crowds, critics, the Clarences, a luncheon party at Margot’s, ending up with half an hour’s well-reasoned abuse of my pictures in a pansy bar...I think Celia knows about us.’

‘Well, she had to know some time.’

‘Everyone seems to know. My pansy friend had not been in London twenty-four hours before he’d heard.’

‘Damn everybody.’

‘What about Rex?’

‘Rex isn’t anybody at all,’ said Julia; ‘he just doesn’t exist.’ The knives and forks jingled on the table as we sped through the darkness; the little- circle of gin and vermouth in the glasses lengthened to oval, contracted again, with the sway of the carriage, touched the lip, lapped back again, never spilt; I was leaving the day behind me. Julia pulled off her hat and tossed it into the rack above her, and shook her night-dark hair with a little sigh of ease - a sigh fit for the pillow, the sinking firelight, and a bedroom window open to the stars and the whisper of bare trees.

‘It’s great to have you back, Charles; like the old days.’

‘Like the old days?’ I thought.

Rex, in his early forties, had grown heavy and ruddy; he had lost his Canadian accent and acquired instead the hoarse, loud tone that was common to all his friends, as though their voices were perpetually strained to make themselves heard above a crowd, as though, with youth forsaking them, there was no time to wait the opportunity to speak, no time to listen, no time to reply; time for a laugh - a throaty mirthless laugh, the base currency of goodwill.

There were half a dozen of these friends in the Tapestry Hall: politicians; ‘young Conservatives’ in the early forties, with sparse hair and high blood-pressure; a Socialist from the coal-mines who had already caught their clear accents, whose cigars came to pieces on his lips, whose hand shook when he poured himself out a drink; a financier older than the rest, and, one might guess from the way they treated him, richer; a love-sick columnist, who alone was silent, gloating sombrely on the only woman of the party; a woman they called ‘Grizel’, a knowing rake whom, in their hearts, they all feared a little.

They all feared Julia, too, Grizel included. She greeted them and apologized for not being there to welcome them, with a formality which hushed there for a minute; then she came and sat with me near the fire, and the storm of talk arose once more and whirled about our ears.

‘Of course, he can marry her and make her queen tomorrow.’ ‘We had our chance in October. Why didn’t we send the Italian fleet to the bottom of Mare Nostrum? Why didn’t we blow Spezia to blazes? Why didn’t we land on Pantelleria?’

‘Franco’s simply a German agent. They tried to put him in to prepare air bases to bomb France. That bluff has been called, anyway.’

‘It would make the monarchy stronger than it’s been since Tudor times. The people are with him.’

‘The Press are with him.’

‘I’m with him.’

‘Who cares about divorce now except a few old maids who aren’t married, anyway?’

‘If he has a show-down with the old gang, they’ll just disappear like, like...’

‘Why didn’t we close the canal? Why didn’t we bomb Rome?’

‘It wouldn’t have been necessary. One firm note...’



‘One firm speech.’

‘One show-down.’

‘Anyway, Franco will soon be skipping back to Morocco. Chap I come from Barcelona...’

‘...Chap just come from Fort Belvedere...’

‘...Chap just come from the Palazzo Venezia... ‘

‘All we want is a show-down.’

‘A show-down with Baldwin.’

‘A show-down with Hitler.’

‘A show-down with the Old Gang.’

‘...That I should live to see my country, the land of Clive and Nelson...’

‘...My country of Hawkins and Drake.’

‘...My country of Palmerston... ‘ saw today just

‘Would you very much mind not doing that?’ said Grizel to the columnist, who had been attempting in a maudlin manner to twist her wrist; ‘I don’t happen to enjoy it.’

‘I wonder which is the more horrible,’ I said, ‘Celia’s Art and Fashion or Rex’s Politics and Money.’

‘Why worry about them?’

‘Oh, my darling, why is it that love makes me hate the world? It’s supposed to have quite the opposite effect. I feel as though all mankind, and God, too, were in a conspiracy against us.’

‘They are, they are.’

‘But we’ve got our happiness in spite of them; here and now, we’ve taken possession of it. They can’t hurt us, can they?’

‘Not tonight; not now.’

‘Not for how many nights?’

在星期五举行一次预展，这主意是我妻子出的。

“趁这个机会我们可以出来听听批评家的意见，”她说，“该是他们认真对待你的时候了。他们也知道这一点，这是他们的好机会。如果你在星期一预展的话，那时侯他们大多数人刚刚从乡下回来，就会在晚饭前匆匆忙忙写上几行评论——我担心的当然是几家周刊了。如果我们让他们在周末进行思考，我们就可以使他们有一种温文尔雅的假日心情。他们吃过一顿丰盛的午餐以后就会静下心来，挽起袖口，撰写一篇洋洋洒洒的优美文章来，这种文章他们以后还会重印在精美的小册子里呢。这个时间的好处可不少啦。”

在筹备画展的那个月里，她往返奔波于老教区和伦敦之间，重新审订了邀请的客人名单，并且帮助布置画展。

预展那天早晨，我打电话给朱莉娅，说道：“我对那些画早就腻味了，再也不想着见它们了，不过我不得不露面。”

“你希望我去吗？”

“我希望你千万别来。”

“西莉娅寄来了一张请贴，还用绿墨水写着‘可携带朋友’的字样呢。我们什么时候见面呢。”

“在火车上。你可以把我的行李捎来。”

“如果你早点收拾好行装的话，我还可以让你搭车，然后让你在画廊下车。十二点时我要在隔壁试衣服样子。”

当我到达画廊的时候，我妻子正站在窗户前向大街上张望。她身后有五六个不知名的绘画爱好者正在一幅画一幅画地观看，手里都拿着目录；这些人都是曾经在画廊里买过一幅木刻画，因而被登进画廊赞助人名录里的人。

“还没有来一个人呢，”我的妻子说，“我从十点钟就到这儿了，很无聊。你坐谁的车子来的？”

“朱莉娅的。”

“朱莉娅的？你怎么不带她进来呢？太怪了，我刚才跟一个很滑稽的小个子男人谈到了布赖兹赫德，他好像很了解我们似的。他说他叫桑格拉斯先生。他显然是科泊勋爵在《每日兽报》上提到过的一个已进入中年的年轻人。我本来想给他讲一讲，可是他似乎比我还熟悉你。他说许多年以前曾经在布赖兹赫德见过你。我希望朱莉娅来，那样我们就可以问问她有关他的情况了。”

“我对他可是记得很清楚。他是个江湖骗子。”

“没错，那是一目了然的。他一直谈论他称作‘布赖兹赫德的一伙人’的那些事情。显然雷克斯·莫特拉姆已经把这个地方变成了阴谋造反分子的巢穴了。你听说了吗？特里萨·马奇梅因要是知道会怎么想呢？”

“今天晚上我要去那里。”

“今天晚上别去，查尔斯；你今天晚上不能去那儿，家里人都盼着你回去呢。你答应过，一等展览会准备停当你就回家来的。约翰约翰和保姆还做了一面有‘欢迎’两个字的旗子。而且你还没有见过卡罗琳呢。”

“我很抱歉，已经都安排好了。”

“再说，爸爸也会觉得太蹊跷了。而且博伊也要去家里过星期日的。你还没有见过那个新画室呢。今天晚上你不能去。他们邀请我了吗？”

“当然邀请了。不过我知道你不能去。”

“我现在不能。如果你早点告诉我的话，我是可以去的。我倒很愿意在家里会见‘布赖兹赫德一伙人’的。我觉得你真够狠心的，不过现在不是闹家庭纠纷的时候。克拉伦斯夫妇答应了午饭前来的；他们随时都可能到。”

我们被打断了，不过倒不是由于什么皇亲国戚莅临，而是由于一家日报的女记者来访，这时画廊的经理人把她带到我们跟前。她不是来看绘画的，而是要采访关于我在旅行的艰难危险中的“人性的故事”。我把她交给了我的妻子，第二天她的那家报纸这样写道：“查尔斯·‘华厦’·赖德旅行。密林丛莽的毒蛇和吸血蝙蝠在五月花区没有什么关系，这就是社会名流艺术家赖德的看法，他放弃了伟大人物的华厦，而去追求赤道非洲的颓垣断壁……”

几间展室渐渐挤满了人，我马上就忙着殷勤招待他们。我的妻子四处出现，欢迎这些人，给一些人介绍，再不就是机智地把来宾们变成一个聚会。我还看见她把那些朋友一个接一个地带到打开让人订购《赖德的拉丁美洲》的签名簿面前；我听见她说：“不，亲爱的，我并不惊讶，不过你也不会希望我惊讶的，是不是？你知道查尔斯只为一件事活着——那就是美。我认为他对在英国发现美感到腻烦了；他只好出去，为自己创造美。他希望征服新的领域。他对乡间别墅毕竟做了权威性的结论，是不是？不，我的意思是说他已经把那项工作完全抛弃。我相信为了朋友们，他总会再画一两幅的。”

一位摄影师把我们带到一起，闪光灯朝我们的脸上一闪，这才让我们分散。

不久，人群中稍微安静了一下，随着皇家客人进来，人们慢慢走开。我看见我的妻子行了一个屈膝礼，听见她说：“啊，阁下，您真让人高兴。”随后我就被带进人们给贵宾空出来的地方，克拉伦斯公爵说道：“我想那边相当热。”

“是的，阁下。”

“你把那种炎热的印象画得很逼真，手法妙极了。使我都觉得穿着这件大衣很难受。”

“哈！哈！”

他们走了以后，我的妻子说：“哦唷，我们吃午饭要晚了。马戈特夫妇要举行一次午餐会来向你祝贺。”她在出租汽车里说，“我刚刚想起一件事来。你为什么不给克拉伦斯公爵夫人写信，请她允许把《拉丁美洲》奉献给她呢？”

“我为什么要奉献给她？”

“她很喜欢这本画册嘛。”

“我没有考虑把这本书奉献给任何人。”

“你瞧，这本书是你的代表性作品，查尔斯，为什么要错过一个让人高兴的机会呢？”

午餐会有十几个人，他们来这儿是为了向我祝贺，这话尽管说起来会使我的女主人和妻子高兴，不过很明显他们当中有一半人并没有听说过我的画展，他们之所以来，只是因为他们接到邀请，而且没有别的约会。午餐时他们一直谈着辛普森夫人，不过后来他们全体，或者说几乎是全体都和我们一起回到了画廊。

午饭后这段时间忙得不亦乐乎。在场的有塔特美术馆的代理人和国家艺术收藏品基金会的代理人，他们全都答应不久要和同事们再来，同时他们还保留了几幅油画进一步考虑购买。还有那个最有影响的评论家，过去曾经用寥寥几句令人不快的赞许就把我打发掉了，而现在，他的眼睛从阔边软呢帽和毛围巾的缝隙间凝视着我，他抓住我的胳膊说：“我过去就知道你有才气的。我在你过去的作品中看出来了。我一直等待着呢。”

我从时髦的和旧派人的言谈中都听到了一些恭维话，“如果你要我猜的话，”我无意中听到，“我再也想不到是赖德画的。那些画非常雄浑，非常热情。”

他们全都认为自己发现了什么新的东西。在我出国前不久，就在这几间展览室里我的最后一次画展上情形却不是这样。那时出现了一种明显的厌倦迹象。随后就不怎么谈论我而是热烈的谈论起画中的房屋以及房主的轶事来。我回忆起来，还是那个女人，刚才对我的绘画的雄浑和热情大加称赞，过去却曾站在我的一幅呕心沥血画成的油画面前，在我身边说：“画得多么不费力啊。”

我回忆到那次展览当然还有另外的原因，就是在画展的那个星期我侦察到我妻子的奸情。当时她也像现在这样是一个不知疲倦的女主人，而且我听到她说：“不论什么时候，如今我一看到什么可爱的东西——比如说一座建筑啦或是一幅风景啦——我心里就想：‘这是查尔斯画的。’我看任何东西都是通过他的眼睛来看的。对于我来说，他就是英格兰。”

我听见她说这番话；这是她说惯了的话，在我们整个婚后生活中，我一次又一次地感到我对她的话已经无动于衷了。可是这一天，在这家画廊里，我无动于衷地听她说着，突然意识到，她再也无力伤害我了；我是个自由的人了；由于她短时的偷偷摸摸有失检点的行为，她使我获得了解放。而我那绿帽子的双角使我成了森林之王。

这一天结束时我的妻子说：“亲爱的，我得走了。展览非常成功，不是吗？我会想出什么话回家告诉他们的，不过我希望情形不曾变成这个样子。”

“这么说她知道了，”我想，“她很机灵。从吃午饭的时候她开始警觉起来，并且嗅出气味。”

我让她离开这地方，而且我正要跟着她出去的时候——几个展室里几乎没有人了——这时我听到在旋转栅门那儿有一个多年没有听到的嗓音，是一种令人难忘的自己学来的结巴声音，一种尖声的抗议。

“不，我没有带请帖。而且我甚至不知道是否收到过。我没有参加过那次盛大的集会；我并不是企图硬和西莉娅小姐交朋友；我不想让自己的照片登在《闲话报》上；我不是来展览自己的；我是来看绘画的。大概你还不知道这儿有个绘画展出吧。我个人凑巧对这位艺术家有些兴趣——如果对你来说有任何意义的话。”

“安东尼，”我说，“请进啊。”

“我亲爱的，这儿有一位丑——丑——丑婆娘，她以为我是没——没——没有请帖硬要来的呢。我昨天刚到伦敦，吃午饭的时候凑巧听说你正在举办画展，一听这话，我当然性急地冲到这个神殿来表示敬意。我变样了没有？你还认得出我吗？画在什么地方？让我向你解释解释。”

安东尼·布兰奇和我上次见到他时没有什么改变；甚至和我最初看到他时都没有什么改变。他正掠过展室，走到那张最醒目的油画面前——这是一张丛林风景画——停了片刻，他扬着头，活像一只机警的小猎狗，然后问道：“亲爱的查尔斯，你在什么地方发现这片繁盛葱茏的草木的？是在特——特——特伦特，要不然是在德——德——德灵的温室的旮旯里发现的吧？那位讨人喜欢的高利贷者竟培育出这些蕨类植物让你来享乐？”

接着他又浏览了两间展室；有一两次他深深地叹了口气，要不然就保持沉默。当他走到画室尽头，他比以前更深长地叹了口气，说：“可是这些画让我看出，亲爱的，你陶醉在恋爱中啦。这就是一切，或者差不多是一切，是不是？”

“我的画坏到这种程度？”

安东尼把声音放低成一种尖锐的耳语声：“亲爱的，让我们别在这些善良而又平凡的人们面前揭露你的小小的欺骗行为吧”——他怀着鬼胎向最后几个观众扫了一眼——“让我们不要败坏他们天真的乐趣吧。我们，也就是你和我都知道，这完全是一堆糟——糟——糟糕透顶的破——破——破烂货，咱们走吧，免得我们惹恼了收藏家。我知道一家不正经的小酒吧，就在附近。我们还是去那地方，谈谈这一次被你征——征——征服的女人吧。”

要使我回忆往事，就需要这种来自过去的声音；在这乱哄哄的一整天里，那些一味恭维的话在我身上起的作用，就像一条漫长的道路上不断出现的广告牌一样，一公里接一公里，钉在白杨树上，指示行人去住某家新开的旅馆，因此当他把车开到了车路的尽头，身体僵直，满面灰尘，这时他到了目的地，似乎必然会把车开进那家旅馆的院子里，这个名字起初使他厌烦，接着使他愤怒，最后，这家旅馆的名字终于和他身上的疲劳不可分地联成了一体。

安东尼带着我走出画廊，走到一条小街，来到一家破烂的报刊经售店和一家破烂不堪的药店之间的一扇门前，上面用油漆写着：“蓝穴俱乐部。非会员免进。”

“可不大像你那种环境了，亲爱的，而是我的环境了，的确如此。话说回来，你已经在你那个环境里待了一整天了。”

他带我走下楼去，从散发着猫的气味的地方走到散发着杜松子酒和烟蒂气味，还有收音机声音的地方。

“是屋顶爵士乐队演奏期间一个脏老头给了我这个地址的。我很感激他。我离开英国那么久了，像这种可人心意的小酒吧变化真快。昨天晚上我头一次光临这个地方，就已经颇有宾至如归的感觉了。晚上好，西里尔。”

“哟，托尼，又回来啦？”柜台后面的一个青年说道。

“我们要喝几杯，挑个角落坐坐。你该还记得，亲爱的，在这儿你可够显眼和不正常的，请允许我冒昧地说，正如我在布——布——布拉特俱乐部那样。”

房间里四壁涂了蓝色颜料；地板上铺着蓝色油布。天花板上墙壁杂乱无章地贴着银色和金色的鱼形花纸；五六个小伙子一边饮酒，一边赌着“吃角子老虎”；一个衣冠整洁，但显得酗酒过度的上了岁数的人看样子像是主事的；水果胶姆糖出售机那儿围着几个人在叽叽喳喳地说笑着；这时那群青年中有一个人到我们跟前说：“你的这位朋友愿意跳伦巴舞吗？”

“不跳，汤姆，他不愿跳，我也不愿给你酒喝了；无论如何，现在还不给。这是个不要脸的家伙，一个十足的骗人钱财的小白脸，亲爱的。”

“喂，”我说道，并且装出一副轻松自如的样子，其实在这个贼窝里我是绝对不感到轻松的，“这些年来你干了些什么？”

“亲爱的，我们到这儿来要谈的是你干了些什么。我一直注意着你呢，亲爱的。我可是个讲义气的老伙计，一直密切注意看你呢。”在他讲话的时候，那个柜台，那个酒吧间的招待员，那种蓝色的柳条家具，那架赌博机器，那架留声机，那在漆布上跳舞的一对青年，那些围着自动售货机器叽叽喳喳的年轻人，那个坐在我们对面角落里穿着紫纹笔挺衣服喝着酒的老头，总之整个这个死气沉沉鬼影憧憧的下流地方，似乎都已经隐去，我仿佛回到了牛津，从罗斯金的哥特式建筑的一扇窗户眺望着基督教会学院的草地。“我看过你的第一次画展，”安东尼说，“我觉得这个画展——很迷人。有张画是马奇梅因公馆的内部，英国味很足，非常准确，可是十分美妙。‘查尔斯已经干出点事来了，’我说，‘不是他要做的一切也不是他能做的一切，但是做了一些成绩。’

“亲爱的，即使在当时我还有点不解。我觉得你的绘画中多少有点绅士派头。谅必你会说我并不是英国人，我真不能理解这种想受‘良好教养’的热衷。对我来说，英国人的势利眼甚至比英国人的道德观更可怕。但是我还是说了，‘查尔斯已经搞了些美的东西。下回他会干些什么呢？’

“我看到的你的下一件东西是漂亮极了的一巨册——《乡村和外省建筑》，是这么个名字吧？的确是一巨册，亲爱的，我在里面发现什么呢？又是魅力。‘不十分对我的胃口，’我想，‘这些也太富于英国风味了。’我喜欢有味儿的东西，你知道，我可不喜欢什么雪松和树阴啦，什么黄瓜三明治啦，银质奶油杯啦，也不喜欢穿着英格兰姑娘打网球时穿的那种服装的英国姑娘——我喜欢的不是这些，也不喜欢简·奥斯汀，米——米——米特福德小姐。跟你坦白地说了吧，亲爱的查尔斯，我对你感到失望。‘我是一个血统不纯的老德——德——德戈，’我说，‘而查尔斯呢——我指的是你的艺术，亲爱的——却是一位穿着绣花细纱衣服的教长的女儿。’

“想想今天我午餐时的惊讶吧。所有的人都在谈论你。我的女主人是我母亲的一位朋友，一位施托伊弗桑特·奥格兰德夫人；也是你的一位朋友，亲爱的。那么一个老顽固！完全不是我想象的和你来往的人。但是，他们全都看过你的展览，他们谈论的也全是你，说你是怎么逃掉啦，亲爱的，逃到热带地区去，又是怎么成了一位高更，一位兰波，如此等等。你可以想象我这颗衰老的心是怎么怦怦乱跳的吧。

“‘可怜的西莉娅，’他们说，‘她毕竟为赖德做了事。’‘他的一切都归功于她，这太糟了。’‘竟然和朱莉娅在一起，’他们说，‘在她在美国表现得那样之后。’‘正当她要回到雷克斯那里去的时候。’

“‘可是绘画怎么样呢，’我说，‘还是跟我谈谈那些画吧。’

“‘噢，那些画啊，’他们说，‘这些画可是不同凡响。’什么‘跟他以往的画完全两样’啦，什么‘很有力量’啦，‘十分野蛮’啦，‘我简直认为这些画完全不健康，’施托伊弗桑特·奥格兰德这么说。

“亲爱的，我在椅子上几乎都坐不住啦。我真想冲出屋子，跳上一辆出租汽车，说：‘把我拉到查尔斯的不健康的画展去。’我到了那儿，可是午饭后的画廊挤满了一大堆荒唐的女人，戴着鬼知道是什么样的帽子。我先歇息了一下——我就在这儿休息，和西里尔，汤姆，还有一些漂亮的小家伙们一起在这儿休息。后来我在不合时宜的五点钟又回转去，那个轰动劲儿，亲爱的；可是我发现了什么呢？我发现，亲爱的，一场调皮透顶、十分成功的恶作剧。我一下子就想到了亲爱的塞巴斯蒂安，当时他非常喜欢戴假颊须。又是一种魅力，我亲爱的，是那种简单的、奶油般的、英国式的魅力，装得神气活现。”

“你说得太对了。”我说。

“亲爱的，当然我是对的。多少年以前我就说对了——说起来我很高兴，比我们俩显出的年纪都要久——当时我警告过你。我那次带你出去吃晚餐，我警告你要提防魅力。我明确而详尽地警告过你要提防弗莱特家的人。魅力是一种损害伟大英格兰的疾病。这种疾病在潮湿的英伦三岛之外是不存在的。凡是让它碰上的，都得被玷污扼杀。它扼杀爱情；扼杀艺术；我很担心，亲爱的查尔斯，它也把你扼杀了。”

那个叫做汤姆的青年又走近我们。“别戏弄人，托尼，给我买杯酒吧。”我想起来我还要上火车，就丢下安东尼和他纠缠去了。

当我站在靠着餐车的月台上的时候，我看到我的行李和朱莉娅的行李正从眼前经过，朱莉娅那个一脸愠怒的女仆大摇大摆地在搬运工旁边走着。朱莉娅在快要关上车厢门的时候才到，她不慌不忙地在我前边就了座。我的这张桌子是两个人用的。这趟列车十分方便；晚餐前半小时开车，晚餐后半小时到达；后来，我们没有照当年马奇梅因夫人在世时的规矩换乘支线火车，而是在联轨车站我们会合到一起。火车开出帕丁顿站的时候天已经黑了，灯火辉煌的城市先让位于灯火零落的郊区，以后又让位于黑沉沉的田野。

“我们好像好多天没见了。”我说。

“才六个小时；昨天一整天我们都在一起。你看起来疲倦得很。”

“这是一天的噩梦——观众啦，批评家啦，克拉伦斯公爵夫妇啦，又是马戈特家的午餐会，最后以在一家搞同性恋的酒吧间里让我的画受了半小时合理的责骂才算完事……我觉得西莉娅知道咱们的事了。”

“噢，她总有一天得知道的。”

“而且好像大家都知道了。我那位搞同性恋的朋友到伦敦还不到二十四小时就已经听说了。”

“他们都该死。”

“雷克斯怎么样？”

“雷克斯根本就不算什么，”朱莉娅说，“他简直就不存在。”

火车加快速度，冲过黑暗，这时桌子上的刀叉发出丁丁当当的响声，玻璃杯里杜松子酒和苦艾酒形成的小圆圈，拉长成椭圆，又缩成圆形，随着车厢的晃动，酒凑到唇边，又流回去，没有洒溅出来。我把这一天抛到脑后。朱莉娅把帽子摘下来，丢到了她头顶上的架子上，然后又抖了抖她那黑夜般漆黑的头发，轻松地叹了口气——这叹息适合在枕边，在将熄灭的炉火旁，在可以看到星星的和光秃秃的树林发出飒飒声的卧室的敞开的窗边听到。

“查尔斯，要你回来可真妙极了；就像往日一样了。”

“就像往日一样？”我想。

雷克斯刚刚四十出头，就已经变得笨重讨厌了；他的加拿大口音已经没有了，反而有了他所有的朋友共有的沙哑的大嗓门，好像为了让观众听到他们的声音而不停地大声嘶叫，好像青春一去不复返，没有时间等待说话的机会，也没有时间去倾听，没有时间去回答；只有哈哈一笑的时间——笑声沙哑而沉闷，表达出卑鄙的好意来。

挂毯大厅里有五六个朋友：政客们；都是四十刚出头的年轻的保守党人，头发稀疏，患高血压病；一位从煤矿来的社会主义者，他已经掌握住他们那种发音清晰的语言，他嘴唇上的雪茄烟都嚼成碎末，在往酒杯里倒酒的时候他的手发抖；一位比其余人岁数都大的金融家，从人家对待他的态度来看，可以猜出他比别人有钱；一位害着相思病的专栏作家，他一个人默默无言，阴沉地死死盯住在座的唯一的一个女人，这个女人大家管她叫“格里泽尔”，这是个老练的放荡女人，大家在心里都有点怕她。

他们，包括格里泽尔在内，都怕朱莉娅。她冲他们打了声招呼，道歉说她没有在这儿欢迎他们，彬彬有礼的样子使他们一时都说不出话来；然后她过来和我坐在壁炉旁边，轰轰的谈话声又一次爆发，在我们耳边轰鸣。

“当然啦，他可以娶她，第二天就使她成为王后。”

“我们在十月会有机会。我们为什么不把意大利舰队打发到属于一国或多国的海底去呢？我们为什么不把斯培西亚炸成一片火海呢？我们为什么不在潘特莱里亚岛登陆呢？”

“佛朗哥不过是个德国间谍，他们试图让他上台，好准备建立轰炸法国的空军基地。不管怎样，已经摊牌了。”

“这将使英国的君主制比都铎王朝以来的任何时期都更强大。人民是拥护它的。”

“新闻界是拥护它的。”

“我是拥护它的。”

“除了几个没结婚的老处女，无论如何，谁还会操心离婚不离婚呢？”

“如果他还要和那帮老家伙摊牌的话，那他们就会消失得像……像……”

“我们为什么不封锁运河呢？我们为什么不轰炸罗马呢？”

“可没有那个必要。只消一次强硬的照会……”

“只消一次强硬的演说。”

“一次摊牌。”

“无论如何，佛朗哥会很快回到摩洛哥的。我今天看到查普刚从巴塞罗那回来……”

“查普是刚从贝尔维迪尔堡回来的……”

“查普刚从威尼斯宫回来……”

“我们的全部要求就是摊牌。”

“和鲍德温摊牌。”

“和希特勒摊牌。”

“和那帮歹徒摊牌。”

“……但愿我能看到我的祖国，克莱夫和纳尔逊的土地……”

“……我的霍金斯和德雷克的祖国。”

“……我的帕麦斯顿的祖国……”

“请你别这样做好吗？”格里泽尔对那个专栏作家说，他一直颇为伤感地想要拧她的手腕，“我不喜欢这样。”


“我也不知道哪种东西更可怕，”我说，“是西莉娅的策略和时装呢，还是雷克斯的政治和金钱。”

“干吗为他们操心？”

“噢，亲爱的，为什么爱情竟使我仇恨起世界来？应该具有一种完全相反的效果。我觉得好像整个人类，还有上帝都在阴谋暗算我们。”

“他们正在暗算，正在暗算。”

“尽管他们暗算，我们还是得到了幸福；此时此地我们拥有幸福；他们无法伤害我们，对吗？”

“今天晚上不会，现在不会。”

“有多少个夜晚不会伤害我们呢？”
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Chapter 11
‘Do you remember, said Julia, in the tranquil, lime-scented evening, ‘do you remember the storm?’

‘The bronze doors banging.’

‘The roses in cellophane.’

‘The man who gave the “get-together” party and was never seen again.’ ‘Do you remember how the sun came out on our last evening just as it has done today?’

It had been an afternoon of low cloud and summer squalls, so overcast that at times I had stopped work and roused Julia from the light trance in which she sat - she had sat so often; I never tired of painting her, forever finding in her new wealth and delicacy - until at length we had gone early to our baths and, on coming down, dressed for dinner, in the last half-hour of the day, we found the world transformed; the sun had emerged; the wind had fallen to a soft breeze which gently stirred the blossom in the limes and carried its fragrance, fresh from the late rains, to merge with the sweet breath of box and the drying stone. The shadow of the obelisk spanned the terrace.

I had carried two garden cushions from the shelter of the colonnade and put them on the rim of the fountain. There Julia sat, in a tight little gold tunic and a white gown, one hand in the water idly turning an emerald ring to catch the fire of the sunset; the carved

animals mounted over her dark head in a cumulus of green moss and glowing stone and dense shadow, and the waters round them flashed and bubbled and broke into scattered flames.

‘...So much to remember,’ she said. ‘How many days have there been since then, when we haven’t seen each other; a hundred, do you think?’ ‘Not so many.’

‘Two Christmases’ - those bleak, annual excursions into propriety. Boughton, home of my family, home of my cousin Jasper, with what glum memories of childhood I revisited its pitch-pine corridors and dripping walls! How querulously my father and I, seated side by side in my uncle’s Humber, approached the avenue of Wellingtonias knowing that at the end of the drive we should find my uncle, my aunt, my Aunt Phillippa, my cousin Jasper, and, of recent years, Jasper’s wife and children; and besides them, perhaps already arrived, perhaps every moment expected, my wife and my children. This annual sacrifice united us; here among the holly and mistletoe and the cut spruce, the parlour game’s ritually performed, the brandy-butter and the Carlsbad plums, the village choir in the pitch-pine minstrels’ gallery, gold twine and sprigged wrapping-paper, she and I were accepted, whatever ugly rumours had been afloat in tile past year, as man and wife. ‘We must keep it up, whatever it costs us, for the sake of the children my wife said.

‘Yes, two Christmases...And the three days, of good taste before I followed you to Capri.’

‘Our first summer.’

‘Do you remember how I hung about Naples, then followed, how we met by arrangement on the hill path and how flat it fell?’

‘I went back to the villa and said, “Papa, who do you think has arrived at the hotel?” and he said, “Charles Ryder, I suppose.” I said, “Why did you think of him?” and papa replied, “Cara came back from Paris with the news that you and he were inseparable. He seems to have a penchant for my children. However, bring him here; I think we have the room.”

‘There was the time you had jaundice and wouldn’t let me see you.’

‘And when I had flu and you were afraid to come.’

‘Countless visits to Rex’s constituency.’

‘And Coronation Week, when you ran away from London. Your goodwill mission to your father-in-law. The time you went to Oxford to paint the picture they didn’t like.  Oh, yes, quite a hundred days.’

‘A hundred days wasted out of two years and a bit...not a day’s coldness or mistrust or disappointment.’

‘Never that.’

We fell silent; only the birds spoke in a multitude of small, clear voices in the lime-trees; only the waters spoke among their carved stones.  Julia took the handkerchief from my breast pocket and dried her hand; then lit a cigarette. I feared to break the spell of memories, but for once our thoughts had not kept pace together, for when at length Julia spoke, she said sadly: ‘How many more? Another hundred?’

‘A lifetime.’

‘I want to marry you, Charles.’

‘One day; why now?’

‘War,’ she said, ‘this year, next year, sometime soon. I want a day or two with you of real peace.’

‘Isn’t this peace?’

The sun had sunk now to the line of woodland beyond the valley; all the opposing slope was already in twilight, but the lakes below us were aflame; the light grew in strength and splendour as it neared death, drawing long shadows across the pasture, falling full on the rich stone spaces of the house, firing the panes in the windows, glowing on cornices and colonnade and dome, spreading out all the stacked merchandise of colour and scent from earth and stone and leaf, glorifying the head and golden shoulders of the woman beside me.

‘What do you mean by “peace”, if not this?’

‘So much more’; and then in a chill, matter-of-fact tone she continued: ‘Marriage isn’t a thing we can take when the impulse moves us. There must be a divorce - two divorces.  We must make plans.’

‘Plans, divorce, war - on an evening like this.’

‘Sometimes said Julia, ‘I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.’ Then Wilcox came down the steps into the sunset to tell us that dinner was ready.

Shutters were up, curtains drawn, candles lit, in the Painted Parlour.

‘Hullo, it’s laid for three,’

‘Lord Brideshead arrived half an hour ago, my lady. He sent a message would you please not wait dinner for him as he may be a little late.’ ‘It seems months since he was here last,’ said Julia. ‘What does he do in London?’ It was often a matter for speculation between us - giving birth to many fantasies, for Bridey was a mystery; a creature from underground; a hard-snouted, burrowing, hibernating animal who shunned the light. He had been completely without action in all his years of adult life; the talk of his going into the army and into parliament and into a monastery, had all come to nothing. All that he was known with certainty to have done and this because in a season of scant news it had formed the subject of a newspaper article entitled ‘Peer’s Unusual Hobby’ - was to form a collection of match-boxes; he kept them mounted on boards, card-indexed, yearly occupying a larger and larger space in his small house in Westminster. At first he was bashful about the notoriety which the newspaper caused, but later greatly pleased, for he found it the means of his getting into touch with other collectors in all parts of the world with whom he now corresponded and swapped duplicates. Other than this he was not known to have any interests. He remained joint Master of the Marchmain and hunted with them dutifully on their two days a week when he was at home; he never hunted with the neighbouring pack, who had the better country. He had no real zest for sport, and had not been out a dozen times that season; he had few friends; he visited his aunts; he went to public dinners held in the Catholic interest. At Brideshead he performed all unavoidable local duties, bringing with him to platform and fête and committee room his own thin mist of clumsiness and - aloofness.

‘There was a girl found strangled with a piece of barbed wire at Wandsworth last week,’ I said, reviving an old fantasy.

‘That must be Bridey. He is naughty.’

When we had been a quarter of an hour at the table, he joined us, coming ponderously into the room in the bottle-green velvet smoking suit which he kept at Brideshead and always wore when he was there. At thirty-eight he had grown heavy and bald, and might have been taken for forty-five.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘well, only you two; I hoped to find Rex here.’

I often wondered what he made of me and of my continual presence; he seemed to accept me, without curiosity, as one of the household. Twice in the past two years he had surprised me by what seemed to be acts of friendship; that Christmas he had sent me a photograph of himself in the robes of a Knight of Malta, and shortly afterwards asked me to go with him to a dining club. Both acts had an explanation: he had had more copies of his portrait printed than he knew what to do with; he was proud of his club. It was a surprising association of men quite eminent in their professions who met once a month for an evening of ceremonious buffoonery; each had his sobriquet Bridey was called ‘Brother Grandee’ - and a specially designed jewel worn like an order of chivalry, symbolizing it; they had club buttons for their waistcoats and an elaborate ritual for the introduction of guests; after dinner a paper was read and facetious speeches were made. There was plainly some competition to bring guests of distinction and since Bridey had few friends, and since I was tolerably well known, I was invited. Even on that convivial evening I could feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of social uneasiness, creating, rather, a pool of general embarrassment about himself in which, he floated with log-like calm.

He sat down opposite me and bowed his sparse, pink head over his plate.

‘Well, Bridey. What’s the news?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I have some news. But it can wait.’

‘Tell us now.’

He made a grimace which I took to mean ‘not in front of the servants’, and said, ‘How is the painting, Charles?’

‘Which painting?’

‘Whatever you have on the stocks.’

‘I began a sketch of Julia, but the light was tricky all today.’ ‘Julia? I thought you’d done her before. I suppose it’s a change from architecture, and much more difficult.’

His conversation abounded in long pauses during which his mind seemed to remain motionless; he always brought one back with a start to the exact point where he had stopped. Now after more than a minute he said: ‘The world is full of different subjects.’ ‘Very true, Bridey.’

‘If I were a painter,’ he said, ‘I should choose an entirely different subject every time; subjects with plenty of action in them like...’ Another pause. What, I wondered was coming? The Flying Scotsman? The Charge of the Light Brigade? Henley Regatta?  Then surprisingly he said: ‘...like Macbeth.’ There was something supremely preposterous in the idea of Bridey as a painter of action pictures; he was usually preposterous yet somehow achieved a certain dignity by his remoteness and agelessness; he was still half-child, already half-veteran; there seemed no spark of contemporary life in him; he had a kind of massive rectitude and impermeability, an indifference to the world, which compelled respect. Though we often laughed at him, he was never wholly ridiculous; at times he was even formidable.  We talked of the news from central Europe until, suddenly cutting across this barren topic, Bridey asked: ‘Where are mummy’s jewels?’

‘This was hers,’ said Julia, ‘and this. Cordelia and I had all her own things. The family jewels went to the bank.’

‘It’s so long since I’ve seen them - I don’t know that I ever saw them all. What is there? Aren’t there some rather famous rubies, someone was telling me?’ ‘Yes, a necklace. Mummy used often to wear it, don’t you remember? And there are the pearls - she always had those out. But most of it stayed in the bank year after year.  There are some hideous diamond fenders, I remember, and a Victorian diamond collar no one could wear now. There’s a mass of good stones. Why?’ ‘I’d like to have a took at them some day.’



‘I say, papa isn’t going to pop them, is he? He hasn’t got into debt again?’

‘No, no, nothing like that.’

Bridey was a slow and copious eater. Julia and I watched him between the candles.  Presently he said: ‘If I was Rex’ - his mind seemed full of such suppositions: ‘If I was Archbishop of Westminster’, ‘If I was head of the Great Western Railway’, ‘If I was an actress’, as though it were a mere trick of fate that he was none of these things, and he might awake any morning to find the matter adjusted - ‘if I was Rex I should want to live in my constituency.’

‘Rex says it saves four days’ work a week not to.’

‘I’m so he’s not here. I have a little announcement to make.’

‘Bridey, don’t be so mysterious. Out with it.’

He made the grimace which seemed to mean ‘not before the servants.’ Later when port was on the table and we three were alone Julia said: ‘I’m not going till I hear the announcement.’

‘Well,’ said Bridey, sitting back in his chair and gazing fixedly at his glass. ‘You have only to wait until Monday to see it in black and white in the newspapers. I am engaged to be married. I hope you are pleased.’

‘Bridey. How...how very exciting! Who to?’

‘Oh, no one you know.’

‘Is she pretty?’

‘I don’t think you would exactly call her pretty; “comely” is the word I think of in her connection. She is a big woman.’

‘Fat?’

‘No, big. She is called Mrs Muspratt; her Christian name is Beryl. I have known her for a long time, but until last year she had a husband; now she is a widow. Why do you laugh?’

‘I’m sorry. It isn’t the least funny. It’s just so unexpected. Is she...is she about your own age?’

‘Just about, I believe. She has three children, the eldest boy has just gone to Ampleforth. She is not at all well off.’

‘But, Bridey, where did you find her?’

‘Her late husband, Admiral Muspratt, collected matchboxes he said with complete gravity.

Julia trembled on the verge of laughter, recovered her self-possession, and asked:

‘You’re not marrying her for her matchboxes?’

‘No, no; the whole collection was left to the Falmouth Town Library. I have a great affection for her. In spite of all her difficulties she is a very cheerful woman, very fond of acting. She is connected with the Catholic Players’ Guild.’ ‘Does papa know?’

‘I had a letter from him this morning giving me his approval. He has been urging me to marry for some time.’

It occurred both to Julia and myself simultaneously that we were allowing curiosity and surprise to predominate; now we congratulated him in gentler tones from which mockery was almost excluded.

‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘thank you. I think I am very fortunate.’ ‘But when are we going to meet her? I do think you might have brought her down with you.’

He said nothing, sipped and gazed.

‘Bridey,’ said Julia. ‘You sly, smug old brute, why haven’t you brought her here?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t do that, you know.’



‘Why couldn’t you? I’m dying to meet her. Let’s ring her up now and invite her. She’ll think us most peculiar leaving her alone at a time like this.’ ‘She has the children,’ said Brideshead. ‘Besides, you are peculiar, aren’t you?’

‘What can you mean?’

Brideshead raised his head and looked solemnly at his sister, and continued in the same simple way, as though he were saying nothing particularly different from what had gone before, ‘I couldn’t ask her here, as things are. It wouldn’t be suitable. After all, I am a lodger here. This is Rex’s house at the moment, so far as it’s anybody’s. What goes on here is his business. But I couldn’t bring Beryl here.’ ‘I simply don’t understand,’ said Julia rather sharply. I looked at her. All the gentle mockery had gone; she was alert, almost scared, it seemed. ‘Of course, Rex and I want her to come.’

‘Oh, yes, I don’t doubt that. The difficulty is quite otherwise.’ He finished his port, refilled his glass, and pushed the decanter towards me. ‘You must understand that Beryl is a woman of strict Catholic principle fortified by the prejudices of the middle class. I couldn’t possibly bring her here. It is a matter of indifference whether you choose to live in sin with Rex or Charles or both - I have always avoided inquiry into the details of your ménage - but in no case would Beryl consent to be your guest.’

Julia rose. ‘Why, you pompous ass... ‘ she said, stopped, and turned towards the door.  At first I thought she was overcome by laughter; then, as I opened the door to her, I saw with consternation that she was in tears. I hesitated. She slipped past me without a glance.

‘I may have given the impression that this was a marriage of convenience’ Brideshead continued placidly. I cannot speak for Beryl; no doubt the security of my position has some influence on her. Indeed, she has said as much. But for myself, let me emphasize, I am ardently attracted.’

‘Bridey, what a bloody offensive thing to say to Julia!’ ‘There was nothing she should object to. I was merely stating a fact well known to her.’

She was not in the library; I mounted to her room, but she was not there. I paused by her laden dressing table wondering if she would come. Then through the open window, as the light streamed out across the terrace into the dusk, to the fountain which in that house seemed always to draw us to itself for comfort and refreshment I caught the glimpse of a white skirt against the stones. It was nearly night. I found her in the darkest refuge, on a wooden seat, in a bay of the clipped box which encircled the basin. I took her in my arms and she pressed her face to my heart.

‘Aren’t you cold out here?’

She did not answer, only clung closer to me, and shook with sobs.  ‘My darling, what is it? Why do you mind? What does it matter what that old booby says?’

‘I don’t; it doesn’t. It’s just the shock. Don’t laugh at me.’ In the two years of our love, which seemed a lifetime, I had not seen her so moved or felt so powerless to help.  ‘How dare he speak to you like that?’ I said. ‘The cold-blooded old humbug...’ But I was failing her in sympathy.

‘No,’ she said ‘it’s not that. He’s quite right. They know all about it, Bridey and his widow; they’ve got it in black and white; they bought it for a penny at the church door.

You can get anything there for a penny, in black and white, and nobody to see that you

pay; only an old woman with a broom at the other end, rattling round the confessionals,



and a young woman lighting a candle at the Seven Dolours. Put a penny in the box, or not, just as you like; take your tract. There you’ve got it, in black and white.  ‘All in one word, too, one little, flat, deadly word that covers a lifetime.  ‘ “Living in sin”; not just doing wrong, as I did when I went to America; doing wrong, knowing it is wrong, stopping doing it, forgetting. That’s not what they mean. That’s not Bridey’s pennyworth. He means just what it says in black and white.

‘Living in sin, with sin, always the same, like an idiot child carefully nursed, guarded from the world. “Poor Julia,” they say, “she can’t go out. She’s got to take care of her sin. A pity it ever lived,”

they say, “but it’s so strong. Children like that always are.

Julia’s so good to her little, mad sin.” ‘

‘An hour ago,’ I thought, ‘under the sunset, she sat turning her ring in the water and counting the days of happiness; now under the first stars and the last grey whisper of day, all this mysterious tumult of sorrow! What had happened to us in the Painted Parlour? What shadow had fallen in the candlelight? Two rough sentences and a trite phrase.’ She was beside herself; her voice, now muffled in my breast, now clear and anguished, came to me in single words and broken sentences.  ‘Past and future; the years when I was trying to be a good wife, in the cigar smoke, while the counters clicked on the backgammon board, and the man who was “dummy” at the men’s table filled the glasses; when I was trying to bear his child, torn in pieces by something already dead; putting him away, forgetting him, finding you, the past two years with you, all the future with you, all the future with or without you, war coming, world ending - sin.

‘A word from so long ago, from Nanny Hawkins stitching by the hearth and the nightlight burning before the Sacred Heart. Cordelia and me with the catechism, in mummy’s room, before luncheon on Sundays. Mummy carrying my sin with her to church, bowed under it and the black lace veil, in the chapel; slipping out with it in London before the fires were lit; taking it with her through the empty streets, where the milkman’s ponies stood with their forefeet on the pavement; mummy dying with my sin eating at her, more cruelly than her own deadly illness.  ‘Mummy dying with it; Christ dying with it, nailed hand and foot; hanging over the bed in the night-nursery; hanging year after year in the dark little study at Farm Street with the shining oilcloth hanging in the dark church where only the old char-woman raises the dust and one candle burns; hanging at noon high among the crowds and the soldiers; no comfort except a sponge of vinegar and the kind words of a thief; hanging for ever; never the cool sepulchre and the grave clothes spread on the stone slab, never the oil and spices in the dark cave; always the midday sun and the dice clicking for the seamless coat.

‘No way back; the gates barred; all the saints and angels posted along the walls.  Thrown away, scrapped, rotting down; the old man with lupus and the forked stick who limps out at nightfall to turn the rubbish, hoping for something to put in his sack, something marketable, turns away with disgust.

‘Nameless and dead, like the baby they wrapped up and took away before I had seen her.’

Between her tears she talked herself into silence. I could do nothing; I was adrift in a strange sea; my hands on the metal-spun threads of her tunic were cold and stiff, my eyes dry; I was as far from her in spirit, as she clung to me in the darkness, as when years ago I had lit her cigarette on the way from the station; as far as when she was out of mind, in the dry, empty years at the Old Rectory, and in the jungle.  Tears spring from speech; presently in her silence her weeping stopped. She sat up, away from me, took my handkerchief, shivered, rose to her feet.



‘Well,’ she said, in a voice much like normal. ‘Bridey is one for bombshells, isn’t he?’

I followed her into the house and to her room; she sat at her looking-glass.  ‘Considering that I’ve just recovered from a fit of hysteria,’ she said, ‘I don’t call that at all bad.’ Her eyes seemed unnaturally large and bright, her cheeks pale with two spots of high colour, where, as a girl, she used to put a dab of rouge. ‘Most hysterical women look as if they had a bad cold. You’d better change your shirt before going down; it’s all tears and lipstick.’

‘Are we going down?’

‘Of course, we mustn’t leave poor Bridey on his engagement night.’ When I went back to her she said: ‘I’m sorry for that appalling scene, Charles. I can’t explain.’

Brideshead was in the library, smoking his pipe, placidly reading a detective story.

‘Was it nice out? If I’d known you were going I’d have come, too.’

‘Rather cold.’

‘I hope it’s not going to be inconvenient for Rex moving out of here. You see, Barton Street is much too small for us and the three children. Besides, Beryl likes the country.  In his letter papa proposed making over the whole estate right away.’ I remembered how Rex had greeted me on my first arrival at Brideshead as Julia’s guest. ‘A very happy arrangement,’ he had said. ‘Suits me down to the ground. The old boy keeps the place up; Bridey does all the feudal stuff with the tenants; I have the run of the house rent free. All it costs me is the food and the wages of the indoor servants.  Couldn’t ask fairer than that, could you?’

‘I should think he’ll be sorry to go,’ I said.

‘Oh, he’ll find another bargain somewhere, ‘ said Julia; ‘trust him.’ ‘Beryl’s got some furniture of her own she’s very attached to. I don’t know if it would go very well here. You know, oak dressers and coffin stools and things. I thought she could put it in mummy’s old room.

‘Yes, that would be the place.’

So brother and sister sat and talked about the arrangement of the house until bed-time. ‘An hour ago,’ I thought, ‘in the black refuge in the box hedge, she wept her heart out for the death of her God; now she is discussing whether Beryl’s children shall take the old smoking-room or the school-room for their own.’ I was all at sea.  ‘Julia,’ I said later, when Brideshead had gone upstairs, ‘have you ever seen a picture of Holman Hunt’s called “The Awakened Conscience” ‘ ‘No.’

I had seen a copy of Pre-Raphaelitism in the library some days before; I found it again and read her Ruskin’s description. She laughed quite happily.  ‘You’re perfectly right. That’s exactly what I did feel.’ ‘But, darling, I won’t believe that great spout of tears came just from a few words.of Bridey’s. You must have been thinking about it before.’ ‘Hardly at all; now and then; more, lately, with the Last Trump so near.’ ‘Of course it’s a thing psychologists could explain; a preconditioning from childhood; feelings of guilt from the nonsense you were taught in the nursery. You do know at heart that it’s all bosh, don’t you?’

‘How I wish it was!’

‘Sebastian once said almost the same thing to me.’

‘He’s gone back to the Church, you know. Of course, he never left it as definitely as I did. I’ve gone too far; there’s no turning back now; I know that, if that’s what you mean by thinking it all bosh. All I can hope to do is to put my life in some sort of order in a human way, before all human order comes to an end. That’s why I want to marry you. I should like to have a child. That’s one thing I can do...Let’s go out again. The moon should be up by now.’

The moon was full and high. We walked round the house; under the limes Julia paused and idly snapped off one of the long shoots, last year’s growth, that fringed their boles, and stripped it as she walked, making a switch, as children do, but with petulant movements that were not a child’s, snatching nervously at the leaves and crumbling them between her fingers; she began peeling the bark, scratching it with her nails.  Once more we stood by the fountain.

‘It’s like the setting of a comedy,’ I said. ‘Scene: a Baroque fountain in a nobleman’s grounds. Act one, sunset; act two, dusk; act three, moonlight. The characters keep assembling at the fountain for no very clear reason.’

‘Comedy?’

‘Drama. Tragedy. Farce. What you will. This is the reconciliation scene.’

‘Was there a quarrel?’

‘Estrangement and misunderstanding in act two.’

‘Oh, don’t talk in that damned bounderish way. Why must you see everything second-hand? Why must this be a play? Why must my conscience be a Pre-Raphaelite picture?’ ‘It’s a way I have.’

‘I hate it.’

Her anger was as unexpected as every change on this evening of swift veering moods.  Suddenly she cut me across the face with her switch, a vicious, stinging little blow as hard as she could strike.

‘Now do you see how I hate it?’

She hit me again.

‘All right,’ I said ‘go on.’

Then, though her hand was raised, she stopped and threw the half-peeled wand into the water, where it floated white and black in the moonlight.  ‘Did that hurt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did it?...Did I?’

In the instant her rage was gone; her tears, newly flowing, were on my cheek. I held her at arm’s length and she put down her head, stroking my hand on her shoulder with her face, catlike, but, unlike a cat, leaving a tear there.

‘Cat on the roof-top,’ I said.

‘Beast!’

She bit at my hand, but when I did not move it and her teeth touched me, she changed the bite to a kiss, the kiss to a lick of her tongue.

‘Cat in the moonlight.’

This was the mood I knew. We turned towards the house. When we came to the lighted hall she said: ‘Your poor face,’ touching the weals with her fingers. ‘Will there be a mark tomorrow?’

‘I expect so.’

‘Charles, am I going crazy? What’s happened tonight? I’m so tired.’ She yawned; a fit of yawning took her. She sat at her dressing table, head bowed, hair over her face, yawning helplessly; when she looked up I saw over her shoulder in the glass a face that was dazed with weariness like a retreating soldier’s, and beside it my own, streaked with two crimson lines.

‘So tired,’ she repeated,, taking off her gold tunic and letting it fall to the floor, ‘tired and crazy and good for nothing.’

I saw her to bed; the blue lids fell over her eyes; her pale lips moved on the pillow but whether to wish me good night or to murmur a prayer - a jingle of the nursery that came to her now in the twilight world between sorrow and sleep: some ancient pious rhyme that had come down to Nanny Hawkins from centuries of bedtime whispering, through all the changes of language, from the days of pack-horses on the Pilgrim’s Way - I did not know.

Next night Rex and his political associates were with us.

‘They won’t fight.’

‘They can’t fight. They haven’t the money; they haven’t the oil.’

‘They haven’t the wolfram; they haven’t the men.’

‘They haven’t the guts.’

‘They’re afraid.’

‘Scared of the French; scared of the Czechs; scared of the Slovaks; scared of us.’

‘It’s a bluff.’

‘Of course it’s a bluff Where’s their tungsten? Where’s their manganese?’

‘Where’s their chrome?’

‘I’ll tell you a thing...’

‘Listen to this; it’ll be good; Rex will tell you a thing.’ Friend of mine motoring in the Black Forest only the other day, just came back and told me about it while we played a round of golf. Well, this friend driving along, turned down a lane into the high road. What should he find but a military convoy? Couldn’t stop, drove right into it, smack into a tank, broadside on. Gave himself up for dead...Hold on this is the funny part.’

‘This is the funny part.’

‘Drove clean through it, didn’t scratch his paint;. What do you think? It was made of canvas - a bamboo frame and painted canvas.’

‘They haven’t the steel.’

‘They haven’t the tools. They haven’t the labour. They’re half starving. They haven’t the fats. The children have rickets.’

‘The women are barren.’

‘The men are impotent.’

‘They haven’t the doctors.’

‘The doctors were Jewish.’

‘Now they’ve got consumption.’

‘Now they’ve got syphilis.’

‘Goering told a friend of mine...’

‘Goebbels told a friend of mine...’

‘Ribbentrop told me that the army just kept Hitler in power so long as he was able to get things for nothing. The moment anyone stands up to him, he’s finished. The army will shoot him.’

‘The Liberals will hang him.’

‘The Communists will tear him limb from limb.’

‘He’ll scupper himself.’

‘He’d do it now if it wasn’t for Chamberlain.’

‘If it wasn’t for Halifax.’

‘If it wasn’t for Sir Samuel Hoare.’

‘And the 1922Committee.’

‘Peace Pledge.’

‘Foreign Office.’

‘New York Banks.’



‘All that’s wanted is a good strong line.’

‘A line from Rex.’

‘We’ll give Europe a good strong line. Europe is waiting for a speech from Rex.’

‘And a speech from me.’

‘And a speech from me. Rally the freedom-loving peoples of the world. Germany will rise; Austria will rise. The Czechs and the Slovaks are bound to rise.’ ‘To a speech from Rex and a speech from me.’

‘What about a rubber? How about a whisky? Which of you chaps will have a big cigar? Hullo, you two going out?’

‘Yes, Rex, ‘ said Julia. ‘Charles and I are going into the moonlight.’ We shut the windows behind us and the voices ceased; the moonlight lay like hoar-frost on the terrace and the music of the fountain crept in our ears- the stone balustrade of the terrace might have been the Trojan walls, and in the silent park might have stood the Grecian tents where Cressid lay that night.

‘A few days, a few months.’

‘No time to be lost.’

‘A lifetime between the rising of the moon and its setting. Then the dark.’

“你还记得吗，”朱莉娅在一个静谧的散发着橙花香味的夜晚说，“还记得那次暴风雨吗？”

“青铜大门乒乒乓乓地响。”

“玻璃纸包的玫瑰花。”

“举办那次聚会，后来再没有看见过的那个人。”

“你还记得吗，最后一天的傍晚，太阳不正像今天下午一样露出来？”

那是个乌云低垂的下午，刮着夏天伴有雨雹的暴风，天色晦暗，因此我有时不得不停下工作，把坐在那里昏昏欲睡的朱莉娅唤醒——她常常这样坐着。给她画像我从来不感到厌倦，在她身上永远能够发现新的富丽而优美的姿态——我们终于早早地去洗了澡，下楼的时候，又换上了吃晚饭的礼服，在白天的最后半个小时里，我们发现世界变了样：太阳露出来了，狂风减弱了，变成了轻柔的微风，吹拂着橙树盛开的花朵，带来了橙花的芳香，由于最近下的几场雨显得香气格外清新，并且和黄杨树以及逐渐干起来的石头的甜丝丝的气息混杂在一起。方尖塔的影子落在平台上。

我从柱廊的掩蔽处拿来了两个露天用的靠垫，安放在喷泉边上。朱莉娅坐在那儿，她穿着一件金黄色紧身短上衣，又穿了一件白色长衣，在水里悠闲地转动着手上戴着的绿宝石戒指，来反射落日的余辉；在她的乌黑的头顶上，矗立着石头雕刻的各种动物，上面是一堆堆绿色的台藓，闪着光的石头，和浓重的阴影，动物四周的泉水闪着光，喷涌着，散落成一片片疏疏落落的光芒。

“……有那么多可回忆的啊，”她说，“从那时以后，我们彼此就没见过。有多少天了，有一百天了吧，你说有吗？”

“没有那么多。”

“两个圣诞节”——两次一年一度的、在萧瑟季节里的短途旅行成了一种礼节。波顿，我们家族的家，我堂兄贾斯珀的家，怀着童年时代愁闷的回忆，重访家里的油松回廊和湿淋淋的墙壁！我和父亲是怒气冲冲地并排坐在伯父的亨伯牌小汽车里，快到韦林顿尼亚斯林阴道的时候，我们知道沿着这条路开到头就可以看到我的伯父、伯母、菲利帕姑姑、堂兄贾斯珀，以及这几年才有的贾斯珀的妻子和孩子们；除了这些人，就是那些也许已经到了、也许随时可能来到的人，就是我的妻子和我的孩子们。这一年一度的感恩圣餐把我们联系在一起；在冬青树、檞寄生和雕刻的云杉下面，按照仪式举行的客厅游戏，还有带白兰地味的黄油，卡尔斯巴德地方的葡萄干，还有在那间油松门廊里扮成黑人演唱歌曲的乡村唱诗班，还有金绳和有枝叶花纹的包装纸，等等，我和她作为夫妇受到了接待，尽管这一年来流言蜚语不胫而走。“为了我们的孩子，我们必须维持现状，不管我们要付出多大的代价，”我的妻子说。

“是的，两个圣诞节……还有在我跟随你去卡普里岛以前那令人陶醉的三天。”

“我们的第一个夏天。”

“你还记得吧，当时我如何在那波利港市流连，后来又去找你，我们约好在山坡小路上会见，又是怎么出了岔子吗？”

“当时我回到了别墅，说道：‘爸爸，你知道谁到了旅馆吗？’他说：‘是查尔斯·赖德，我猜。’我说：‘为什么你想起他呢？’爸爸回答道：‘卡拉从巴黎回来带来了你和他来往很密的消息。他似乎很喜欢我的孩子们。不管怎样，把他带到这儿来吧；我想我们有空房间。’”

“你一度患了黄疸，不让我见你。”

“而当我得了流行性感冒的时候，你也不敢来了。”

“去雷克斯的选区就不计其数了。”

“举行加冕典礼那个星期，你从伦敦逃出去了。你肩负着友好的使命去见岳父大人。那次你去牛津画了那幅他们并不喜欢的画。哟，不错，足足有一百天呢。”

“两年多的时间里浪费了一百天……没有一天感到冷淡、猜疑和失望。”

“从来没有过。”

我们陷入了沉默；只有鸟儿在橙树上用细小清脆的歌喉重迭地啁啾鸣叫；只有泉水在石雕动物中间潺潺低语。

朱莉娅从我的上衣口袋里掏出手帕，把手揩干了；然后点燃了一支烟卷。我唯恐打破了回忆的魅力，可是我们的思想这一次并没有想到一块去，朱莉娅最后开口时，她哀伤地说道：“还要多少天？又是一个一百天？”

“是一辈子。”

“查尔斯，我想和你结婚。”

“将来有一天吧；为什么要现在？”

“因为战争，”她说道，“今年，明年，战争说不定不久就会发生。我希望和你过一两天真正和平的日子。”

“这样就不和平吗？”

这时太阳已经落进山谷那边那排树林后面了；对面整个山坡已经笼罩在暮色里，下面的几泓湖水染成一片火红，光线把长长的影子拖在牧草地上，变得更浓、更辉煌，仿佛是回光返照，光线全部照射在这所房屋的石墙上，它照亮了窗户玻璃，辉映在檐口、柱廊和穹顶上，将堆积起来的泥土、石头、叶子的色彩和芳香扩散开来，把我身边这个女人的头部和双肩照得光彩夺目。

“你说的‘和平’是什么意思，如果不是眼前的情景？”

“比这复杂多了，”她又用一种冷冰冰干巴巴的腔调继续说道，“结婚并不是我们一时冲动就可以办成的事。首先要办一个离婚手续——是两个离婚手续。我们得好好筹划。”

“筹划、离婚、战争——都在这样的一个黄昏办。”

“有时候，”朱莉娅说，“我觉得过去和将来在两头挤得如此紧，根本就没有现在的地方。”

这时威尔科克斯走下台阶，进到落日余辉里，他告诉我们晚饭已经准备好了。


在“彩绘客厅”里，百叶窗关上，窗帘拉上了，蜡烛点燃了。

“喂，这儿摆了三个人的餐具。”

“半个小时以前布赖兹赫德回来了，夫人。他留下话：他要回来稍晚一些，请你不要等他吃晚饭。”

“从他上次在这里算起，似乎已经有好几个月了，”朱莉娅说道，“他在伦敦究竟干些什么呢？”

这是我们两人之间常常推测的一件事情——于是就产生了许多奇想，因为布赖德是个神秘人物；一个从地底下出来的人；一只躲避阳光、长鼻硬嘴的、掘洞的冬眠动物。在他成年的一生中他完全无所事事，什么进入军界啦，进议院啦，去修道院啦，这些统统成了空话。而外界确实知道他做过的一切就是收藏火柴盒——这是因为在缺乏消息的淡季里，这件事成了某家报纸的一条新闻，标题为“贵族的不凡癖好”——就是收藏火柴盒；他把火柴盒摞在几个架子上保存，并且编了索引卡片，在他那个不算宽敞的威斯敏斯特的住所里，年复一年地火柴盒要占据着愈来愈大的空间。最初他对报纸给他引起的狼藉名声感到很狼狈，可是后来他却非常高兴，因为他发现这件新闻成了他同世界各地的火柴收藏家发生接触的手段了，现在他和那些人互通信件，互相交换复制品。除此之外，人们就不知道他还有别的什么爱好了。他仍然保持着马奇梅因家联合猎狐专家的地位，当他在家的时候，一个星期内就要恪尽厥职和人们去打两天猎；他从不和附近的领地更好一些的猎狐者一块去打猎。他对打猎也没有真正的热情，他在打猎的季节里出外围猎也不到十来次；他几乎没有什么朋友；他倒是去看望婶婶和姨妈；他参加为天主教募捐而举行的聚餐会。在布赖兹赫德庄园，他履行当地一切不可推卸的责任，他给讲台、宴会和委员会的会议室随身带来他自己的迟钝和冷漠的薄雾。

“上个星期在旺茨沃思人们发现有一个女孩子被人用一段有倒刺的铁丝勒死了，”我说道，并回想起一个古老的奇想。

“那肯定是布赖德。他可不正经。”

我们已经在餐桌边坐了一刻钟的时候，他才来和我们一起吃饭，他穿着一件深绿丝绒的吸烟服闷闷不乐地走进房间，这套衣服他放在布赖兹赫德庄园，他每逢回来就穿上。在三十八岁的时候，他已经变得迟钝了，秃顶了，可能被误认为他有四十五岁了。

“哦，”他说，“哦，就你们两个；我原来还指望在这儿看到雷克斯呢。”

我经常纳闷他怎么看待我，怎么看待我一直住在这里；他似乎把我当作家庭成员接受了，不感到奇怪。过去两年里有两次他似乎以友好的举动而使我感到诧异；一次是这个圣诞节他寄给我一张他穿着马尔他爵士官服的照片，不久又邀请我同他一起去一家晚餐俱乐部。这两次举动有一个解释；一是他的照片印得太多，不知道该如何处理；二是他很以他的俱乐部为荣。这是各行各业的名流的奇怪的联谊会，他们每个月聚会一次，度过一个繁文缛礼滑稽可笑的夜晚；每个人都有自己的绰号——布赖德叫做“大公兄弟”——而且每个人都有一枚专门设计的、戴起来象征各自等级的宝石，就像骑士的勋章一样；他们的背心上都缀着俱乐部的纽扣，并且有一套讲究的引见客人的仪式；吃完了晚饭就读报纸，发表一通滑稽演说。显然他们争着要带来名流，由于布赖德朋友寥寥无几，又由于我还算有些名气，因此我就接到邀请。即使在这个吃喝交际的夜晚，我都能觉察出来我的主人散发出使联欢会不安的一股小小的磁波，却在自己周围创造出让大家感到尴尬的一池死水，他像死木头疙瘩一样冷静地漂浮在水上。

他坐在我的对面，垂着他那头发稀疏、粉红色的脑袋，俯在他的盘子上。

“喂，布赖德，有什么消息？”

“事实上，”他说道，“我有些消息。不过不必着急。”

“现在就跟我们说吧。”

他做了一个怪相，我认为这是表示“不能当着仆人们的面说”的意思，他接着说：“查尔斯，你的画怎么样了？”

“哪张画？”

“凡是你计划中的。”

“我开始画一张朱莉娅的素描，可是今天一整天光线都很难处理。”

“给朱莉娅画？我还以为你以前给她画过了呢。我想这是从画建筑变成画人物吧，这可困难多了。”

他说起话来常常要停顿很长时间，停顿时间里他的思想仿佛停滞了似的；而且总要别人提醒他刚才他说到什么地方了。这时大约过了一分多钟，他又说道：“世界上充满了各种各样的主题。”

“很对，布赖德。”

“如果我是个画家的话，”他说，“我每次都要选择一个完全不同的主题；具有丰富的行动的主题，就像……”又一次停顿。我不知道会谈到什么？从伦敦到爱丁堡的快车？轻骑兵队的冲锋？抑或亨莱塞船会？接着他又出人意外的说道：“……就像麦克白。”把布赖德想象成为一个行动派画家那是极荒谬的；布赖德自己倒常常是很荒谬的，然而他以他表现出来的冷漠和无情赢得了一定的尊重。他既年事已长，又稚气未消；当代生活的气息他身上似乎一点也没有；他有些拘谨，难与人交往，对世事漠不关心，这些态度倒使人不得不尊敬他；尽管我们经常取笑他，不过他并非是完全可笑的，他有时甚至是令人生畏的。

我们一直在谈论中欧的消息，直到布赖德突然打断了枯燥的话题，他问道：“妈妈的首饰在什么地方了？”

“这就是她的，”朱莉娅说，“还有这个。她本人的东西都在我和科迪莉娅手里。属于家庭的首饰都送到银行去了。”

“我很久没有看见这些东西了——我不知道我是不是全部首饰都看见过。有些什么东西？有人跟我说，是不是有些很名贵的红宝石？”

“有的，是一串项链。妈妈过去常常戴，你不记得吗？还有些珍珠——她总是戴了出去的。不过这些东西大部分都是年年放在银行里。我记得还有一些难看的宝石垫座，还有一个维多利亚时代的宝石项圈，现在没人戴得了啦。还有大量的一般宝石。你问这个干什么？”

“我想哪天看看这些东西。”

“喂，爸爸不是要把这些东西典当了吧？他没有再欠债吧？”

“不，不，没有这类的事情。”

布赖德吃得很慢，很多。我和朱莉娅都注视着坐在蜡烛中间的他。过了会儿他说：“如果我是雷克斯的话”——似乎他满脑子都是这类假设：“假如我是威斯敏斯特大主教的话”，“假如我是大西方铁路公司的老板的话”，“假如我是个女演员的话”，等等，仿佛仅仅由于命运捉弄人，他才没有成为这样的一个人物，也许哪天早晨醒来他会发现事情已经改正过来——“如果我是雷克斯的话，我就会住在我的选区。”

“雷克斯说不住在那里，每周可以免掉四天的工作。”

“很遗憾他不在这儿。我要宣布一件小事情。”

“布赖德，别那么神秘。说出来吧。”

他又做了一个怪相，似乎意味着“不能当着仆人们的面说”。

后来当葡萄酒放到了桌子上，只剩下我们三人的时候，朱莉娅说道：“直到我听到你宣布了我才走。”

“好吧。”布赖德说，他靠在椅子上，眼睛死死地盯住他的酒杯，“你只要等到星期一就可以看到报纸上刊登出来。我已经定好要结婚了。我希望你们会高兴的。”

“布赖德，太……太惊人啦！和谁啊？”

“噢，和你不认识的一位。”

“她漂亮吗？”

“我想你倒未必会说她很漂亮。我认为‘标致’这个词儿倒和她有关系。她是个大个子女人。”

“胖吗？”

“不，是高大。她名叫马斯普拉特夫人。她的教名是贝里尔。我认识她很久了，而且直到去年她还有丈夫；现在她成了寡妇。你们笑什么？”

“很抱歉。倒是一点儿也不可笑。只是太出人意料了。她……她的年龄和你差不多吧？”

“我想差不多。她有三个孩子，最大的孩子刚刚去了安普尔福思。她的境况不太好。”

“不过，布赖德，你是在哪儿找到她的？”

“她已故的丈夫，海军上将马斯普拉特，也收集火柴盒。”他十分严肃地说。

朱莉娅颤抖了一下，差点没笑出声来，随后克制住自己。她又问道：“你不是因为她的那些火柴盒才要她的吧？”

“不是，不是，全部收藏品都已经遗赠给法尔默思市图书馆了。我对她极为爱慕。尽管她生活拮据，她还是个快乐的女人，非常喜欢演戏。她和天主教演员协会有联系。”

“爸爸知道吗？”

“今天早晨我收到他的一封来信表示同意。他一直催我择日结婚。”

这时我和朱莉娅同时想到，我们不能一味听任好奇和惊诧支配；因此我们用一种几乎不带嘲笑的、尽量柔和的口吻向他表示祝贺。

“谢谢你们，”他说道，“谢谢你们。我觉得我非常幸运。”

“可是我们什么时候会见到她呢？我的确觉得你应该把她带到这里来。”

他什么也没说，一边小口喝着葡萄酒，一边凝视着。

“布赖德，”朱莉娅说，“你这个狡猾的、得意洋洋、没有心肝的家伙，为什么不把她带来呢？”

“哦，我不能这么做，你知道的。”

“为什么不能？我非常想见她。现在就给她打电话请她来吧。这时候撇下她一个人在家，她会认为我们太古怪了。”

“她还有孩子们呢，”布赖兹赫德说，“再说，你不就是挺古怪的吗？”

“你这话是什么意思？”

布赖兹赫德扬起头来，严肃地望着他的妹妹，继续用同样单调的口吻说道，好像他现在说的事同前边说的完全没有两样。“照现在这个情形，我不能请她到这儿来。这是不合适的。毕竟，我在这里只是个房客。就这儿是谁的来说，眼下还是雷克斯的家。这里发生什么事，是他自己的事。不过我不能把贝里尔带到这儿来。”

“我简直不理解。”朱莉娅相当严厉地说。我望着她。一切温和的嘲笑都不见了；看起来她警觉了，差不多大吃一惊。“当然，我和雷克斯都希望她来。”

“噢，不错，这一点我并不怀疑。问题完全不在这里。”他喝干了葡萄酒，又斟满了，把酒瓶推到我面前。“你们应该理解，贝里尔是一位具有严格天主教原则的女人，这种原则由于中产阶级的偏见更加牢不可破。我不可能把她带到这儿来。你愿意和雷克斯姘居，还是和查尔斯，或者跟两个人姘居，这种事无关紧要——我也一向总是避免探究你们的私生活——可是无论如何贝里尔是不会同意做你的客人的。”

朱莉娅站起来。“呸，你这个自以为了不起的蠢货……”她说到这儿住口了，转身朝门口走去。

起初我以为她会忍俊不住笑起来；当我随后打开门到她那里时，却惊恐地看到她泪流满面。我犹疑起来。她从我身边溜过去，看也没有看一眼。

“大概我给别人这么一种印象，仿佛这是一次有利可图的婚姻，”布赖兹赫德继续若无其事地说道，“我不能为贝里尔辩护；毫无疑问，我的牢固地位对她是有影响的。的确她自己也这么说过。不过就我自己来说，请允许我着重指出来，我对她可是很倾心啊。”

“布赖德，你对朱莉娅说了多么过分的无礼的话！”

“并没有什么会引起她反感的话。我只不过说了一件她知道得很清楚的事实。”


她不在图书室里；我上楼到她的房间，她也不在那里。我在她那摆满了东西的梳妆台旁站了一会儿，不知道她是否会回来。通过敞开的窗户，房子里的灯光经过阳台流泻出去，和暮色交融在一起，照到喷泉那儿，这个喷泉总是吸引我们去休憩养神，我瞥见了靠在石头上的白裙子。时近夜晚了。我发现她躲在最漆黑的隐蔽处，坐在木椅子上，在环绕着水池的修剪过的黄杨树的凹处。我把她搂在怀里，她把脸贴到我的心上。

“你在外面不冷吗？”

她没有回答，只是依偎得更紧了，接着就啜泣得颤抖起来。

“亲爱的，怎么啦？你干吗在乎呢？那个老呆子说什么，又有什么关系呢？”

“我不在乎；没什么关系。只是让人感到震惊。别笑话我。”

在我们仿佛是一辈子的两年恋爱时间里，我还没有看到她像现在这样激动过，这样毫无办法。

“他怎么敢跟你像这样讲话？”我说，“这个冷血的老骗子……”可是我的同情并没有得到她的反应。

“不，”她说，“不是这样。他完全对，他们，布赖德和他那个寡妇全都知道了；白纸黑字他们看得清楚。他们在教堂门口花上一便士，就可以买到印刷传单了。你要是花上一便士，什么事情都可以知道，白纸黑字印得清楚，谁也不知道你花了钱；只有一个老妇女拿把笤帚在忏悔室那头哗哗地扫着，一个年轻的女人在七悲圣母像前点亮一支蜡烛。往盒子里放进一个便士，不放也行，随你的便；然后取走你的传单。用白纸黑字印出来，这你就明白了。

“归结为一个字眼，也就是归结为一个简短的、平凡的、致命的并且影响你一生的字眼。

“这就是‘姘居’。不仅仅是做了错事，像我当初去美国做的错事。做了错事，知道错了，不再做了，就忘记它。他们指的可不是这个。这可丝毫也不是布赖德的意思。他的意思就像用白纸黑字表明的一样。

“姘居，或者有罪的生活，总之都一样，就像一个受到小心照料和保护他不受人世影响的白痴儿童一样。‘可怜的朱莉娅，’人们说，‘她可不能再抛头露面了。她得清楚她的罪孽。这种事仍然存在，多么遗憾。’他们会说，‘可是这罪孽又是那么深重。像这样的孩子总是这样的。朱莉娅舍不得抛弃她的小小的、疯狂的罪孽。’”

“就在一个小时前，”我想，“在夕阳下她坐着在水里转动她的戒指，数着幸福的日子；而现在星星初现，白天阴暗的飒飒声刚刚结束，竟全是不可名状的哀伤！我们在彩绘客厅里发生了什么事情？烛光里落下什么阴影？两句粗言，一句陈词滥调而已。”她发狂了；她的声音，一会儿在我胸前闷响，一会儿清晰而充满了痛苦，以零落的词和断断续续的句子传到我耳中。

“过去和将来；那些年我还试着想做一个好妻子，在雪茄烟的烟雾中，筹码在十五子棋棋盘上噼啪作响，在男人们桌旁斟酒的那个”笨蛋“般的男人；当我打算给他生个孩子的时候，死胎折磨得我死去活来；抛开他，忘掉他，找到了你，和你在一起的两年，和你在一起的将来，或者不和你在一起的将来，战争来临，世界毁灭了——罪孽。

“很早以前从坐在圣心像前，坐在壁炉旁，伴着摇曳的烛光在编织的霍金斯保姆那里听到罪孽这个字眼。每个星期日午餐以后，在妈妈房间里，我和科迪莉娅都带着《教义问答》。妈妈带着我的罪恶去教堂，在伦敦点燃灯火之前偷偷溜出来；带着我的罪恶走过空荡荡的大街，大街上送奶的人的马前蹄踏在人行道上。妈妈是由于我那使她苦恼万分的罪恶死的，这罪恶比她自己致命的病还要残酷。

“妈妈是由于我的罪孽死的；基督是由于世人的罪孽死的，手和脚都钉在十字架上；罪孽笼罩在夜间育婴室的床边；年复一年地笼罩在法姆大街那间狭小的、铺着闪光油布的书房里；笼罩在那座只有一个年老的打杂女工扬起灰尘、只有一支蜡烛在燃烧的阴暗的教堂里；在正午、高高地笼罩在人群和士兵头上；除了蘸满醋的海绒和一个强盗的宽心话以外，没有得到什么安慰；永远笼罩着；永远没有冰冷的石墓，石板上也没有展开的尸衣，黑洞洞的墓穴里也没有香油和香料；总是正午的太阳和掷骰子分一件无缝衣服的喀嗒声。

“没有退路；大门上了栓；圣徒们和天使们都沿墙排列着。被抛弃了，给丢弃了，颓毁了；那个患狼疮的老头带着根有叉的手杖，在黄昏的时候一瘸一拐地出去翻弄垃圾，希望找到什么东西装进麻袋里，找到可以出卖的东西，可是厌恶地走开了。

“没有名字，死了，就像那个死婴。我还没有看到她，就被他们包起来拿走了。”

她在哭泣中间讲着讲着就陷入了沉寂。我毫无办法；我漂流在一个陌生的海上；我的手放在她那件紧身短外衣的金缕线上，又冷又僵，我的眼睛干涩；现在当她在黑暗中紧紧地抱住我的时候我的精神却离开她很远，正像许多年以前从火车站回家路上我给她点燃纸烟的时候一样远；也像当年她在教区长旧宅精神错乱的那些冷寞、空虚的岁月一样远，像我在密林丛莽中时一样远。

眼泪随着絮语涌出来；过了一会儿她默默地停止哭泣。她坐起来，离开我，拿着我的手帕，颤抖着，站起来。

“好啦，”她用一种听起来正常多了的声音说道，“布赖德总是干这种出人意料的事情，是不是？”

我跟她走进屋，到她的房间。她坐在镜子前面。“我认为我已经摆脱歇斯底里恢复正常了，”她说道，“我认为并不算坏。”她的眼睛显得不正常地很大很亮，她那苍白的双颊上有两块红晕，那是她做姑娘时常常搽胭脂的地方。“大部分歇斯底里的女人看上去都好像得了重伤风似的。你最好先换掉这件衬衫再下楼；上面全是泪水和口红。”

“我们还要下去吗？”

“当然啦，我们不能在可怜的布赖德订婚的晚上丢下他。”

当我回到她房里的时候，她说：“查尔斯，我很抱歉刚才出现了那样可怕的情形。我解释不清。”

布赖兹赫德正在图书室里，抽着烟斗，平静地读着一本侦探小说。

“外面天气好吗？如果我知道你们要去的话，我就会来了。”

“外面相当冷。”

“我希望雷克斯从这儿搬出去不会感到不方便。你知道，巴顿大街的房子对于我们和三个孩子来说地方太小了。而且贝里尔喜欢乡村。爸爸在来信中还建议把这里所有的地产立刻都转让出去呢。”

我记得我作为朱莉娅的客人初到布赖兹赫德时雷克斯曾多么热烈地欢迎我。“非常令人高兴的安排啊，”他曾经这么说过，“对我简直太合适了。老家伙一直照料这个地方，而布赖德和那些承租人搞那些封建地租的玩艺儿，我则免费管理房子。我开销的只是伙食费和宅子里仆人的工资。你不能要求比这更公平的待遇，是不是？”

“我觉得要他走，他会很伤心的。”我说道。

“喏，他会在别处找到便宜的地方，”朱莉娅说道，“相信他吧。”

“贝里尔还有几件她自己十分喜爱的家具。我不知道那些家具在这儿是不是适用。你知道，是些栎木的食具柜，几条架棺材的凳子一类的东西。我想她可以把这些东西放在妈妈原来那间屋子里。”

“不错，那儿正好。”

就这样兄妹二人坐在一起讨论如何安排这栋住宅，一直谈到睡觉的时候。“就在一个小时以前，”我思忖着，“在那黄杨树篱的黑洞洞的隐蔽地方她还为她的上帝死亡哭得死去活来呢；而现在她却讨论起贝里尔的孩子们是住在原来的吸烟室里好呢，还是住在他们自己的教室里好呢。”我如坠五里雾中。

“朱莉娅，”我后来说道，这时布赖兹赫德已经上楼去了，“你看过霍尔曼·亨特的一幅叫做《苏醒的良心》的画吗？”

“没有。”

几天前我曾经在图书室看到一本名叫《拉斐尔前派》的书。我又把这本书找出来，给她读了罗斯金的论述。她十分快活地大笑起来。

“你说得太对了，这正是我感觉到的。”

“可是亲爱的，我不相信那场痛哭是由于布赖德几句话引起来的。你一定一直在考虑这件事情。”

“几乎没有；有时候也想想；最近想得多些，由于最后审判日的号声越来越近了。”

“当然，这是心理学家才能解释清楚的事情。从儿童时期就预先做好思想准备；从育婴室里受到的胡说八道的教育里产生了犯罪感。你心里也知道那全是些废话吧，是不是？”

“我多么希望那全是废话啊！”

“塞巴斯蒂安有一次跟我说过几乎同样的话。”

“你知道，他已经皈依宗教了。当然他从来没有像我这样干脆地脱离过宗教。我已经走得太远了；现在已经不可能回头了；这个我明白，如果你所谓的废话指的就是这个意思。我所希望的，无非是把我的生活按照人类生活的方式纳入某种生活常规里去，趁着一切人类的秩序还没有结束的时候。这就是我想和你结婚的原因。我想要一个孩子。这是我能做的唯一的一件事……再到外面去吧。月亮这时一定升起来了。”

满月高悬在中天。我们在宅院周围漫步；朱莉娅在橙树下停住，随便折断一条很长的嫩枝，这是去年长出来的，垂在树干周围，她一边走着，一边把树皮剥去，然后做了一条鞭子，就像孩子的做法一样，可是她那愠怒的姿态已经完全不是孩子的了，她神经质地揪下树叶，用手指揉碎，她又开始剥树皮，用手指抠着。

我们又站在喷泉池边。

“它好像是一出喜剧的背景，”我说道，“地点：一个贵族之家的庭院中巴罗克喷泉旁边。第一幕，日落；第二幕，黄昏；第三幕，月光。由于一种不太清楚的原因，剧中人物总是聚在喷泉旁边。”

“喜剧吗？”

“是戏剧。悲剧。笑剧。随你怎么叫。这是和解的场面。”

“原来吵嘴了吗？”

“第二幕中出现疏远和误解。”

“啊，别用这种该死的古怪方式讲话。你为什么看什么事情都要隔着一层？为什么这一定是一出戏？我的良心为什么一定是一幅拉斐尔前派的画呢？”

“这就是我的方式。”

“我讨厌这种方式。”

她的愠怒就像这一晚上那瞬息万变的心情一样意外。突然她用那只鞭子抽打了一下我的脸，她能抽多重就抽多重的热辣辣的一下。

“现在你知道我多么讨厌它吧？”

“她又抽了我一下。

“好吧，”我说道，“抽下去吧。”

随后她虽然扬起手来，不过却停住了，把这只剥光了一半皮的树枝扔进水里，它漂在水面上，在月光下显得黑白分明。

“疼吗？”

“疼。”

“真的……真的吗？”

一刹时她的愤怒烟消云散了；她的眼泪重新涌了出来，流到我的脸颊上。我隔着一臂的距离扶着她，她垂下头，用她的脸抚摩着我放在她肩上的手，就像一只猫那样，可又不像猫，在手上淌下一滴泪水。

“猫在屋顶上呢。”我说。

“没有心肝！”

她咬我的手，但是当我并没有抽回手，她的牙齿已经碰到我的时候，顺势一变，咬变成了吻，吻又变成用舌尖舔了。

“猫在月光里呢。”

这就是我所知道的那种心情。我们转身朝屋子里走去。当我们走到灯火通明的大厅时她说道：“你的可怜的脸呀，”她用手指抚摸着那些伤痕，“明天还会有痕迹吗？”

“我想是这样。”

“查尔斯，我要发疯了吗？今天晚上发生了什么事？我太累了。”

她打着呵欠；接着她又打了一连串的呵欠，她在梳妆台前坐下，头垂下来，头发遮住脸，并且情不自禁地打着呵欠；当她扬起脸来时，我从她的肩头看见那疲倦得茫然若失的脸像残兵败将的脸一样，而旁边是我自己的脸，上面留着两道鲜红的痕迹。

“太累了，”她又说了一遍，随后就脱掉她的金色束腰上衣，任它落在地板上，“又累，又疯狂，又没有用处。”

我照料她上了床；蓝色的眼睑合上了，盖住了她的眼睛；她的苍白嘴唇在枕头上动了一下，不知是向我道晚安，还是喃喃地祈祷着，我就不知道了。只是一阵单调的育婴室的诗句传到她那介于哀伤和睡梦之间的幽暗世界；这是古代一直传到霍金斯保姆的古老的虔诚歌曲，是几个世纪前用爱催眠的低语，经过几度语言变化，从进香朝圣路上使用驮马的年代流传下来的——我也说不清楚。

第二天晚上雷克斯同他那些政界的搭档们和我们在一起。

“他们不会开战。”

“他们不能开战。他们没有钱；他们没有石油。”

“他们没有钨；他们没有人。”

“他们没有勇气。”

“他们害怕。”

“怕法国人；怕捷克人；怕斯洛伐克人；怕我们。”

“这是讹诈。”

“当然是讹诈。他们的钨在哪儿呢？他们的锰在哪儿呢？”

“他们的铬在哪儿呢？”

“我要告诉你们一件事……”

“听着听着；肯定是好事；雷克斯要跟你们讲一件事啦。”

“……我的一位朋友骑着摩托在黑森林里跑，就是几天前，刚从那儿回来，在我们打了一轮高尔夫球的当儿把这话告诉我的。是这样，这位朋友朝前开着摩托车，顺着一条小路，开到公路上。除了一支军事护送队以外，他还会发现什么呢？不能停下来，他就照直开了进去，接着正撞在一辆横在路上的坦克身上。这不是自己找死吗……等一等，这就是滑稽可笑的地方。”

“这就是滑稽可笑的地方。”

“他干脆穿了过去，连漆皮都没有蹭掉。你们猜怎么回事？坦克是用帆布做的——用竹子框架和画好的帆布做的。”

“他们没有钢。”

“他们没有机床。他们没有劳动力。他们吃不饱肚子。他们没有大肥肉。儿童们都得了佝偻病。”

“女人们都生不了孩子。”

“男人们阳痿。”

“他们没有医生。”

“医生们都是犹太人。”

“现在他们都得了肺结核。”

“现在他们都得了梅毒。”

“戈林跟我的一个朋友说过……”

“戈培尔跟我的一个朋友说过……”

“里宾特洛甫告诉过我，只要希特勒能够凭空搞到东西，军队就会支持希特勒继续执政。一旦有人和他分庭抗礼，他就算完蛋了。军队就会把他打死。”

“自由派会把他吊死。”

“共产党会把他肢解。”

“他会毁灭自己。”

“要不是有张伯伦的话，他现在就会毁灭。”

“要不是有哈里法克斯的话。”

“要不是有塞缪尔·霍尔的话。”

“还有一九二二年委员会。”

“和平保证。”

“外交部。”

“纽约银行。”

“需要的一切就是一条坚不可摧的战线。”

“由雷克斯组成的战线。”

“由我组成的战线。”

“我们要给欧洲一条坚不可摧的战线。欧洲正在等待着雷克斯的讲演。”

“还有我的讲演。”

“还有我的讲演。世界上热爱自由的人民团结起来。德国会起来；奥地利会起来。捷克人和斯洛伐克人一定会起来的。”

“听我的讲演和雷克斯的讲演。”

“来打一局牌好吗？喝威士忌好吗？你们哪个家伙要吸一支大雪茄？喂，你们两个要出去吗？”

“嗯，雷克斯，”朱莉娅说，“我和查尔斯要去赏月。”

我们把身后的一扇扇窗户都关上，各种声音都没有了；月光洒在阳台上像霜一样白，喷泉淙淙作响悠然入耳；而阳台上的石栏杆也许是特洛伊人的城墙，静悄悄的园里也许支着希腊人的帐篷，而这个夜晚克瑞西达就躺在里面。

“几天，几个月。”

“时不可失。”

“在月亮升起与落下之间的一生呵。以后就是黑暗。”



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Chapter 12
‘AND of course Celia will have custody of the children.’

‘Of course.’

‘Then what about the Old Rectory? I don’t imagine you’ll want to settle down with Julia bang at our gates. The children look on it as their home, you know. Robin’s got no place of his own till his uncle dies. After all, you never used the studio, did You? Robin was saying only the other day what a good playroom it would make - big enough for Badminton.’

‘Robin can have the Old Rectory.’

‘Now with regard to money, Celia and Robin naturally don’t want to accept anything for themselves, but there’s the question of the children’s education.’ ‘That will be all right. I’ll see the lawyers about it.’

‘Well, I think that’s everything,’ said Mulcaster. ‘You know, I’ve seen a few divorces in my time, and I’ve never known one work out so happily for all concerned. Almost always, however matey people are at the start, bad blood crops up when they get down to detail. Mind you, I don’t mind saying there have been times in the last two years when I thought you were treating Celia a bit rough. It’s hard to tell with one’s own sister, but I’ve always thought her a jolly attractive girl, the sort of girl any chap would be glad to have - artistic, too, just down your street. But I must admit you’re a good picker. I’ve always had a soft spot for Julia. Anyway, as things have turned out everyone seems satisfied. Robin’s been mad about Celia for a year or more. D’you know him?’ ‘Vaguely. A half-baked, pimply youth as I remember him.’ ‘Oh, I wouldn’t quite say that. He’s rather young, of course, but the great thing is that Johnjohn and Caroline adore him. You’ve got two grand kids there, Charles. Remember me to Julia; wish her all the best for old times’ sake.’

‘So you’re being divorced,’ said my father. ‘Isn’t that rather unnecessary, after you’ve been happy together all these years?’

‘We weren’t particularly happy, you know.’

‘Weren’t you? Were you not? I distinctly remember last Christmas seeing you

together and thinking how happy you looked, and wondering why. You’ll find it very

disturbing, you know, starting off again. How old are you - thirty-four? That’s no age to be starting. You ought to be settling down. Have you made any plans?’ ‘Yes. I’m marrying again as soon as the divorce is through.’ ‘Well, I do call that a lot of nonsense. I can understand a man, wishing he hadn’t married and trying to get out of it - though I never felt anything of the kind myself - but to get rid of one wife and take up with another immediately, is beyond all reason. Celia was always perfectly civil to me. I had quite a liking for her, in a way. If you couldn’t be happy with her, why on earth should you expect to be happy with anyone else? Take my advice, my dear boy, and give up the whole idea.’

‘Why bring Julia and me into this?’ asked Rex. ‘If Celia wants to marry again, well and good; let her. That’s your business and hers. But I should have thought Julia and I were quite happy as we are. You can’t say I’ve been difficult. Lots of chaps would have cut up nasty. I hope I’m a man of the world. I’ve had my own fish to fry, too. But a divorce is a different thing altogether; I’ve never known a divorce do anyone any good.’ ‘That’s your affair and Julia’s.’

‘Oh, Julia’s set on it. What I hoped was, you might be able to talk her round. I’ve tried to keep out of the way as much as I could; if I’ve been around too much, just tell me; I shan’t mind. But there’s too much going on altogether at the moment, what with Bridey wanting me to clear out of the house; it’s disturbing, and I’ve got a lot on my mind.’ Rex’s public life was approaching a climacteric. Things had not gone as smoothly with him as he had planned. I knew nothing of finance, but I heard it said that his dealings were badly looked on by orthodox Conservatives; even his good qualities of geniality and impetuosity counted against him, for his parties at Brideshead got talked about. There was always too much about him in the papers; he was one with the Press lords and their sad-eyed, smiling hangers-on; in his speeches he said the sort of thing which ‘made a story’ in Fleet Street, and that did him no good with his party chiefs; only war could put Rex’s fortunes right and carry him into power. A divorce would do him no great harm; it was rather that with a big bank running he could not look up from the table.

‘If Julia insists on a divorce, I suppose she must have it,’ he said. ‘But she couldn’t have chosen a worse time. Tell her to hang on a bit, Charles, there’s a good fellow.’

‘Bridey’s widow said: “So you’re divorcing one divorced man and marrying another.  It sounds rather complicated, but my dear” - she called me “my dear” about twenty times - “I’ve usually found every Catholic family has one lapsed member, and it’s often the nicest.” ‘ Julia had just returned from a luncheon party given by Lady Rosscommon in honour of Brideshead’s engagement.

‘What’s she like?’

‘Majestic and voluptuous; common, of course; husky voice, big mouth, small eyes, dyed hair - I’ll tell you one thing, she’s lied to Bridey about her age. She’s a good forty-five. I don’t see her providing an heir. Bridey can’t take his eyes off her. He was gloating on her in the most revolting way all through luncheon.’ ‘Friendly?’

‘Goodness, yes, in a condescending way. You see, I imagine she’s been used to bossing things rather in naval circles, with flag-lieutenants trotting round and young officers on-the-make sucking up to her. Well, she clearly couldn’t do a great deal of bossing at Aunt Fanny’s, so it put her rather at ease to have me there as the black sheep.

She concentrated on me in fact, asked my advice about shops and things, said, rather pointedly, she hoped to see me often in London. I think Bridey’s scruples only extend to her sleeping under the same roof with me. Apparently I can do her no serious harm in a hat-shop or hairdresser’s or lunching at the Ritz. The scruples are all on Bridey’s part, anyway; the widow is madly tough.’

‘Does she boss him?’

‘Not yet, much. He’s in an amorous stupor, poor beast, and doesn’t quite know where he is. She’s just a good-hearted woman who wants a good home for her children and isn’t going to let anything get in her way. She’s playing up the religious stuff at the moment for all it’s worth. I daresay she’ll go easier when she’s settled.’

The divorces were much talked of among our friends; even in that summer of general alarm there were still corners where private affairs commanded first attention. My wife was able to make it understood that the business was at the same time a matter of congratulation for her and reproach for me; that she had behaved wonderfully, had stood it longer than anyone but she would have done. Robin was seven years younger and a little immature for his age, they whispered in their private corners, but he was absolutely devoted to poor Celia, and really she deserved it after all she had been through. As for Julia and me, that was an old story. ‘To put it crudely,’ said my cousin Jasper, as though he had ever in his life put anything otherwise: ‘I don’t see why you bother to marry.’

Summer passed; delirious crowds cheered Neville Chamberlain’s return from Munich; Rex made a rabid speech in the House of Commons which sealed his fate one way or the other; sealed it, as is sometimes done with naval orders, to be opened later at sea. Julia’s family lawyers, whose black, tin boxes, painted ‘Marquis of Marchmain’, seemed to fill a room, began the slow process of her divorce; my own, brisker firm, two doors down, were weeks ahead with my affairs. It was necessary for Rex and Julia to separate formally, and since, for the time being, Brideshead was still her home, she remained there and Rex removed his trunks and valet to their house in London.  Evidence was taken against Julia and me in my flat. A date was fixed for Brideshead’s wedding, early in the Christmas holidays, so that his future step-children might take part.

One afternoon in November Julia and I stood at a window in the drawing-room watching the wind at work stripping the lime trees, sweeping down the yellow leaves, sweeping them up and round and along the terrace and lawns, trailing them through puddles and over the wet grass, pasting them on walls and window-panes, leaving them at length in sodden piles against the stonework.

‘We shan’t see them in spring,’ said Julia; ‘perhaps never again.’

‘Once before,’ I said, ‘I went away, thinking I should never return.’

‘Perhaps years later, to what’s left of it, with what’s left of us...’ A door opened and shut in the darkling room behind us. Wilcox approached through the firelight into the dusk about the long windows.

‘A telephone message, my Lady, from Lady Cordelia.’

‘Lady Cordelia! -Where was she?’

‘In London, my Lady.’

‘Wilcox, how lovely! Is she coming home?’

‘She was just starting for the station. She will be here after dinner.’ ‘I haven’t seen her for twelve years,’ I said - not since the evening when we dined together and she spoke of being a nun; the evening when I painted the drawing-room at Marchmain House. ‘She was an enchanting child.’

‘She’s had an odd life. First, the convent; then, when that was no good, the war in Spain. I’ve not seen her since then. The other girls, who went with the ambulance came back when the war was over; she stayed on, getting people back to their homes, helping in the prison-camps. An odd girl. She’s grown up quite plain, you know.’ ‘Does she know about us?’

‘Yes, she wrote me a sweet letter.’

It hurt to think of Cordelia growing up ‘quite plain’; to think of all that burning love spending itself on serum-injections and delousing powder. When she arrived, tired from her journey, rather shabby, moving in the manner of one who has no interest in pleasing, I thought her an ugly woman. It was odd, I thought, how the same ingredients, differently dispensed, could produce Brideshead, Sebastian, Julia, and her. She was unmistakably their sister, without any of Julia’s or Sebastian’s grace, without Brideshead’s gravity. She seemed brisk and matter-of-fact, steeped in the atmosphere of camp and dressing-station, so accustomed to gross suffering as to lose the finer shades of pleasure. She looked more than her twenty-six years; hard living had roughened her; constant intercourse in a foreign tongue had worn away the nuances of speech; she straddled a little as she sat by the fire, and when she said, ‘It’s wonderful to be home,’ it sounded to my ears like the grunt of an animal returning to its basket.  Those were the impressions of the first half hour, sharpened by the contrast with Julia’s white skin and silk and jewelled hair and with my memories of her as a child.  ‘My job’s over in Spain,’ she said; ‘the authorities were very polite, thanked me for all I’d done, gave me a medal, and sent me packing. It ‘ looks as though there’ll be plenty of the same sort of work over here soon.’

Then she said: ‘Is it too late to see nanny?’

‘No, she sits up to all hours with her wireless.’

We went up, all three together, to the old nursery. Julia and I always spent part -of our day there. Nanny Hawkins and my father were two people who seemed impervious to change, neither an hour older than when I first knew them. A wireless set had now been added to Nanny Hawkins’ small -assembly of pleasures - the rosary, the Peerage with its neat brown-paper wrapping protecting the red and gold covers, the photographs, and holiday souvenirs - on her table. When we broke it to her that Julia and I were to be married, she said: ‘Well, dear, I hope it’s all for the best,’ for it was not part of her religion to question the propriety of Julia’s actions.

Brideshead had never been a favourite with her; she greeted the news of his engagement with: ‘He’s certainly taken long enough to make up his mind,’ and, when the search through Debrett afforded no information about Mrs Muspratt’s connections:

‘She’s caught him, I daresay.’

We found her, as always in the evening, at the fireside with her teapot, and the wool rug she was making.

‘I knew you’d be up,’ she said. ‘Mr Wilcox sent to tell me you were coming.’

‘I brought you some lace.’

‘Well, dear, that is nice. Just like her poor Ladyship used to wear at mass. Though why they made it black I never did understand, seeing lace is white naturally. That is very welcome, I’m sure.’

‘May I turn off the wireless, nanny?’

‘Why, of course; I didn’t notice it was on, in the pleasure of’ seeing you. What have you done to your hair?’

‘I know it’s terrible. I must get all that put right now I’m back. Darling nanny.’ As we sat there talking, and I saw Cordelia’s fond eyes on all of us, I began to realize that she, too, had a beauty of her own.



‘I saw Sebastian last month.’

‘What a time he’s been gone! Was he quite well?’

‘Not very. That’s why I went. It’s quite near you know from Spain to Tunis. He’s with the monks there.’

‘I hope they look- after him properly. I expect they find him a regular handful. He always sends to me at Christmas, but it’s not the same as having him home. Why you must all always be going abroad I never did understand. Just like his Lordship. When there was that talk about going to war with Munich, I said to myself, “There’s Cordelia and Sebastian and his Lordship all abroad; that’ll be very awkward for them.” ‘ ‘I wanted him to come home with me, but he wouldn’t. He’s got a beard now, you know, and he’s very religious.’

‘That I won’t believe, not even if I see it. He was always a little heathen. Brideshead was one for church, not Sebastian. And a beard, only fancy; such a nice fair skin as he had; always looked clean though he’d not been near water all day, while Brideshead there was no doing anything with, scrub as you might.’

‘It’s frightening,’ Julia once said, ‘to think how completely you have forgotten Sebastian.’

‘He was the forerunner.’

‘That’s what you said ‘in the storm. I’ve thought since, perhaps I am only a forerunner, too.’

‘Perhaps,’ I thought, while her words still hung in the air between us like a wisp of tobacco smoke - a thought to fade and vanish like, smoke without a trace - ‘perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that other have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in. our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.’

I had not forgotten Sebastian. He was with me daily in Julia; or rather it was Julia I had known in him, in those distant Arcadian days.

‘That’s cold comfort for a girl,’ she said when I tried to explain. ‘How do I know I shan’t suddenly turn out to be somebody else? It’s an easy way to chuck.’ I had not forgotten Sebastian; every stone of the house had a memory of him, and hearing him spoken of by Cordelia as someone she had seen a month ago, my lost friend filled my thoughts. When we left the nursery, I said, ‘I want to hear all about Sebastian.’ ‘Tomorrow. It’s a long story.’

And next day, walking through the windswept park, she told me:

‘I heard he was dying, ‘ she said. ‘A journalist in Burgos told me, who’d just arrived from North Africa. A down-and-out called Flyte, who people said was an English lord, whom the fathers had found starving and taken in at a monastery near Carthage. That was how the story reached me. I knew it couldn’t be quite true - however little we did for Sebastian, he at least got his money sent him - but I started off at once.

‘It was all quite easy. I went to the consulate first and they knew all about him; he was in the infirmary of the head house of some missionary fathers. The consul’s story was that Sebastian had turned up in Tunis one day in a motor bus from Algiers, and had applied to be taken on as a missionary lay-brother. The Fathers took one look at him and turned him down. Then he started drinking. He lived in a little hotel on the edge of the Arab quarter. I went to see the place later; it was a bar with a few rooms over it, kept by a Greek, smelling of hot oil and garlic and stale wine and old clothes, a place where the small Greek traders came and played draughts and listened to the wireless. He stayed there a month drinking Greek absinthe, occasionally wandering out, they didn’t know where, coming back and drinking again. They were afraid he would come to harm -and followed him sometimes, but he only went to the church or took a car to the monastery outside the town. They loved him there. He’s still loved, you see, wherever he goes, whatever condition he’s in. It’s a thing about him he’ll never lose. You should have heard the proprietor and his family talk of him, tears running down their cheeks; they’d clearly robbed him right and left, but they’d looked after him and tried to make him eat his food. That was the thing that shocked them about him; that he wouldn’t eat; there he was with all that money, so thin. Some of the clients of the place came in while we were talking in very peculiar’ French; they all had the same story; such a good man, they said, it made them unhappy to see him so low. They thought very ill of his family for leaving him like that; it couldn’t happen with their people, they said, and I daresay they’re right.  ‘Anyway, that was later; after the consulate I went straight to the monastery and saw the Superior. He was a grim old Dutchman who had spent fifty years in Central Africa.  He told me his part of the story; how Sebastian had turned up, just as the consul said, with his beard and a suitcase, and asked to be admitted as a lay brother. “He was very earnest,” the Superior said’ Cordelia imitated his-guttural tones; she had an aptitude for mimicry, I remembered, in the schoolroom - ‘ “Please do not think there is any doubt of that - he is quite sane and -quite in earnest.” He wanted to go to the bush, as far away as he could get, among the simplest people, to the cannibals. The Superior said: “We have no cannibals in our missions.” He said, well, pygmies would do, or just a primitive village somewhere on a river, or lepers, lepers would do best of anything. The Superior said: “We have plenty of lepers, but they live in our settlements with doctors and nuns.  It is all very orderly.” He thought again, and said perhaps lepers were not what he wanted, was there not some small church by a river - he always wanted a river you see which he could look after when the priest was away. The Superior said: “Yes, there are such churches. Now tell me about yourself.” “Oh, I’m nothing,” he said. “We see some queer fish,” ‘ Cordelia lapsed again into mimicry; ‘ “he was a queer fish but he was very earnest.” The Superior told him about the novitiate and the training and said: “You are not a young man. You do not seem strong to me.” He said: “No, I don’t want to be trained. I don’t want to do things that need training.” The Superior said: “My friend, you need a missionary for yourself,” and he said: “Yes, of course.” Then he sent him away.  ‘Next day he came back again. He had been drinking. He said he had decided to become a novice and be trained. “Well,” said the Superior, “there are certain things that are impossible for a man in the bush. One of them is drinking. It is not the worst thing, but it is nevertheless quite fatal. I sent him away.” Then he kept coming two or three times a week, always drunk, until the Superior gave orders that the porter was to keep him out. I said, “Oh dear, I’m afraid he was a terrible nuisance to you,” but of course that’s a thing they don’t understand in a place like that. The Superior simply said, “I did not think there was anything I could do to help him except pray.” He was a very holy old man and recognized it in others.’

‘Holiness?’

‘Oh yes, Charles, that’s what you’ve got to understand about Sebastian.  ‘Well, finally one day they found Sebastian lying outside the main gate unconscious, he had walked out - usually he took a car - and fallen down and lain there all night. At first they thought he was merely drunk again; then they realized he was very ill, so they put him in the infirmary, where he’s been ever since.

‘I stayed a fortnight with him till he was over the worst of his illness. He looked terrible, any age, rather bald with a straggling beard, but he had his old sweet manner.



They’d given him a room to himself; it was barely more than a monk’s cell with a bed and a crucifix and white walls. At first he couldn’t talk much and was not at all surprised to see me; then he was surprised and wouldn’t talk much, until just before I was going, when he told me all that had been happening to him. It was mostly about Kurt, his German friend. Well, you met him, so you know all about that. He sounds gruesome, but as long as Sebastian had him to look after, he was happy. He told me he’d practically given up drinking at one time while he and Kurt lived together. Kurt was ill and had a wound that wouldn’t heal. Sebastian saw him through that. Then they went to Greece when Kurt got well. You know how Germans sometimes seem to discover a sense of decency when they get to a classical country. It seems to have worked With Kurt.  Sebastian says he became quite human in Athens. Then he got sent to prison; I couldn’t quite make out why; apparently it wasn’t particularly his fault - some brawl with an official. Once he was locked up the German authorities got at him. It was the time when they were rounding up all their nationals from all parts of the world to make them into Nazis. Kurt didn’t want to leave Greece, but the Greeks didn’t want him, and he was marched straight from prison with a lot of other toughs into a German boat and shipped home.

‘Sebastian went after him, and for a year could find no trace. Then in the end he ran him to earth dressed as a storm-trooper in a provincial town. At first he wouldn’t have anything to do with Sebastian; spouted all the official jargon about the rebirth of his country, and his belonging to his country, and finding self-realization in the life of the race. But it was only skin deep with him. Six years of Sebastian had taught him more than a year of Hitler; eventually he chucked it, admitted he hated Germany, and wanted to get out. I don’t know how much it was simply the call of the easy life, sponging on Sebastian, bathing in the Mediterranean, sitting about in cafés, having his shoes polished. Sebastian says it wasn’t entirely that; Kurt had just begun to grow up in Athens. It may be he’s right. Anyway, he decided to try and get out. But it didn’t work.  He always got into trouble whatever he did, Sebastian said. They caught him and put him in a concentration camp. Sebastian couldn’t get near him or hear a word of him; he couldn’t even find what camp he was in; he hung about for nearly a year in Germany, drinking again, until one day in his cups he took up with a man who was just out of the camp where Kurt had been, and learned that he had hanged himself in his hut the first week.

‘So that was the end of Europe for Sebastian. He went back to Morocco, where he had been happy, and gradually drifted down the coast, from place to place, until one day when he had sobered up - his drinking goes in pretty regular bouts now - he conceived the idea of escaping to the savages. And there he was.

‘I didn’t suggest his coming home. I knew he wouldn’t and he was too weak still to argue it out. He seemed quite happy by the time I left. He’ll never be able to go into the bush, of course, or join the order, but the Father Superior is going to take charge of him.  They had the idea of making him a sort of under-porter; there are usually a few odd hangers-on in a religious house, you know; people who can’t quite fit in either to the world or the monastic rule. I suppose I’m something of the sort myself But as I don’t happen to drink, I’m more employable.’

We had reached the turn in our walk, the stone bridge at the foot of the last and smallest lake, under which the swollen waters fell in a cataract to the stream below; beyond, the path doubled back towards the house. We paused at the parapet looking down into the dark water.

‘I once had a governess who jumped off this bridge and drowned herself.’

‘Yes, I know.’



‘How could you know?’

‘It was the first thing I ever heard about you - before I ever met you.’

‘How very odd...’

‘Have you told Julia this about Sebastian?’

‘The substance of it; not quite as I told you. She never loved him, you know, as we do.’

‘Do’. The word reproached me; there was no past tense in Cordelia’s verb ‘to love’.

‘Poor Sebastian!’ I said. ‘It’s too pitiful. How will it end?’ ‘I think I can tell you exactly, Charles. I’ve seen others like him, and I believe they are very near and dear to God. He’ll live on, half in, half out of, the community, a familiar figure pottering round with his broom and his bunch of keys. He’ll be a great favourite with the old fathers, something of a joke to the novices. Everyone will know about his drinking; he’ll disappear for two or three days every month or so, and they’ll all nod and smile and say in their various accents, “Old Sebastian’s on the spree again,” and then he’ll come back dishevelled and shamefaced and be more devout for a day or two in the chapel. He’ll probably have little hiding places about the garden where he keeps a bottle and takes a swig now and then on the sly. They’ll bring him forward to act as guide, whenever they have an English speaking visitor, and he will be completely charming so that before they go, they’ll ask about him and perhaps be given a hint that he has high connections at home. If he lives long enough, generations of missionaries in all kinds of remote places will think of him as a queer old character who was somehow part of the Home of their student days, and remember him in their masses. He’ll develop little eccentricities of devotion, intense personal cults of his own; he’ll be found in the chapel at odd times and missed when he’s expected. Then one morning, after one of his drinking bouts, he’ll be picked up at the gate dying, and show by a mere flicker of the eyelid that he is conscious when they give him the last sacraments. It’s not such a bad way of getting through one’s life.’

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 s he 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.

“当然西莉娅会照管孩子们。”

“那当然。”

“那么，旧教区长的房子怎么办？我想你不会愿意和朱莉娅住在那里，还要乒乒乓乓地敲我们的门吧。你知道，孩子们把这里看成了自己的家。而且罗宾要到他叔叔死后才会有自己的住所。而且你毕竟从来也没有用过那间画室吧？罗宾前几天还说这间画室可以布置成一间很好的儿童游戏室——那里大得足够打羽毛球的。”

“罗宾可以买下旧教区长的房子嘛。”

“现在，关于钱的问题，西莉娅和罗宾本人自然不愿接受任何东西，可是孩子们的教育却是问题。”

“这些事都会安排妥当的。这件事我会找律师谈的。”

“好吧，我想那是最重要的事情，”马尔卡斯特说道，“你知道，我一生中看到过几起离婚案件，可是我还没有见到过一次离婚案件解决得令有关双方都高高兴兴的。几乎总是这样，不管两人开始时多么友好，可是一旦涉及具体问题，就会产生仇恨。请注意，我冒昧地说一句，在这两年的时间里，有几次我认为你对待西荔娅的态度是有点粗暴的。说到自己的妹妹人是很难讲什么的，不过我一向认为她是一个十分迷人的姑娘，任何一个小伙子都会愿意得到她的——又爱好艺术，正好和你趣味相投。我得承认你的眼力出众。我一直对朱莉娅有偏爱。无论如何，事情落到这样的结局似乎也皆大欢喜了。有一年或一年多的时间，罗宾一直狂热地迷恋着西莉娅。你认识他吗？”

“模模糊糊。就我记得的。大概是一个没有多少学问、满脸长着疙瘩的青年。”

“哦，我要说的并不完全是这个。他相当年轻，当然啦，关键的问题是约翰约翰和卡罗琳都很喜欢他。查尔斯，你那里还有两个漂亮的儿女呀。代我向朱莉娅问好吧；为了过去，祝她事事如意。”

“这么说，你正在办离婚啦，”我父亲说道，“你们在一起过了这么多年幸福的生活，离婚实在没有什么必要吧？”

“你知道，我们并不很幸福。”

“你们不幸福？你们不幸福？我清楚记得去年圣诞节看到你们在一起，而且我认为看起来你们很幸福哩，当时还纳闷为什么呢。你会发现，你知道一切都要从新开始，这种事会把人搞得焦头烂额。你有多大岁数啦？——三十四岁了吧？这决不是从新开始生活的年龄啦。你应该渐渐安顿下来。你有什么计划吗？”

“有。一等离婚办妥了我立刻就结婚。”

“哦，我说这可太荒唐啦。我能够理解一个人希望他没有结婚，因而企图摆脱婚姻——虽然我自己从来没有过这样的体验——可是甩掉一个妻子，又赶快娶另外一个，这完全没有道理。再说，西莉娅一向对我很好。我在某种程度上也十分喜欢她。如果你和她在一起都不能幸福的话，那么你到底怎么能指望和别的人就会幸福呢？听我的劝告吧，亲爱的孩子，抛掉整个的想法吧。”

“为什么把朱莉娅和我扯进来？”雷克斯问道，“如果西莉娅想要再结婚的话，好，那很好；让她结去吧。这是你和她的事。不过我觉得我和朱莉娅本来很幸福。你总不能说我这个人不好相处吧。许多家伙的脾气都乖张得很呢。而我相信自己是一个很通事故的人。我也有自己的事业。而离婚可不是一般的事情；我从来不知道离婚对什么人会有好处。”

“这是你和朱莉娅的事。”

“得啦，朱莉娅决心要这么干。我希望你能够说服朱莉娅，使她回心转意。我一直尽量不碍事；如果我在附近游荡得过多了，你尽管说；我不在意。可是就在这个时候，许多事情都凑到一起来了，一方面由于布赖德想要把我从这儿轰出去呢；真是焦头烂额，我心里的事就够多的了。”

雷克斯的社会生活正面临着危机。事情并没有如他计划的进行得那样顺顺当当。我对财政一窍不通，但是我听人说，他的交往遭到正统的保守党人的非议；甚至他那些好品性，如待人亲切和办事有魄力都对他不利，在布赖兹赫德的他那伙同党也引起了纷纷议论。而且报纸上关于他的消息一向也太多了；他这人和报界大亨们以及大亨们的那些眼神黯淡、微笑的的帮闲们过从太密。在他的讲演中说的话，都是舰队街能“制造新闻”的材料，这种情况对他同他那个党的头头们没有好处；只有战争才能使雷克斯的财产情况好转，并且使他上台。离婚对他的损害并不大；毋宁说，因为他在经营着一家大银行，他不能顾及旁的事情。

“如果朱莉娅坚持要离婚的话，我想她肯定可以离成。”他说，“但是她选择的时机实在太坏了。告诉她稍微拖延一下吧，查尔斯，你真是一个好人。”


“布赖德的寡妇说：‘这么说，你正和一个离过婚的男人离婚，而且还要个一个离过婚的男人结婚。这事听起来真够复杂的。不过我亲爱的’——她称呼我为‘我亲爱的’大约不下二十次了——‘我常常发现每一个天主教家庭里总有一个叛教的人，而且往往是最漂亮的那个。’”

朱莉娅刚参加了罗斯康芒夫人为庆祝布赖兹赫德订婚而举行的午餐会回来。

“她人长得怎么样？”

“高大，肉感；当然，相貌平常；哑嗓子，大嘴巴，小眼睛，染过的头发——有一件事我可要告诉你，关于她的年龄，她可骗了布赖德了。她足足有四十五岁。我看她连一个继承人也没有供养。布赖德始终注视着她。在整个午餐时间垂涎欲滴地紧盯着她，令人十分厌恶。”

“她友好吗？”

“谢天谢地，还可以，是那种屈尊迁就的友好方式。你知道，我想她以前在海军的圈子里一定是颐指气使惯了的，有一帮子将军副官围着她团团转，还有一堆想往上爬的青年军官对她献殷勤。嘿，她在范妮舅妈的午餐会上明明不能太盛气凌人，有我这个害群之马在场，倒使她轻松自在了。实际上她尽力和我周旋，征求我对商店和一些事情的意见，并且说，相当直截了当地，她希望在伦敦常常看到我。我想布赖德的顾忌只是怕她和我睡在一个房间里。很明显，在女帽店里、美容店里、或者是在利兹饭店午餐，我都不能给她带来什么严重的损害。所谓顾忌，横竖都是布赖德这方面的，那个寡妇可蛮横极了。”

“她指挥他吗？”

“眼下还没有，还不厉害。他掉进了情网昏了头，可怜的家伙，简直不知道他身在何处了。她只是个心地善良的女人，一心想让她的孩子们有一个好的家，不愿意让任何人妨碍她。目前，她拼命地大肆宣传起宗教那套废话来了。我想她一旦安顿下来，就会变得随和一点了。”


这两起离婚在朋友中间引起纷纷议论；即使在这个普通恐慌的夏天，有些地方还是有人把别人的私事放在第一位。我的妻子有能耐让人们相信，离婚的事对于她颇值得庆贺，同时却使我声名狼藉；而且还让人觉得她表现得很好，只有她才忍受了这么长的时间。人们在背地里议论，罗宾比她小七岁，以他的年龄而论，他还有点不够成熟，但是他对可怜的西莉娅十分忠诚，而且在她经历了许多痛苦以后，她的确理该得到这爱情。至于说到我和朱莉娅，还是老一套了。“冒昧地问一句，”我的堂兄贾斯珀说，那口气就仿佛在他的一生里就不曾用别种方式说过话，“我实在不明白你为什么费那么大劲儿去结婚。”

夏天过去了；疯狂的民众欢呼内维尔·张伯伦从慕尼黑归来；雷克斯在下院发表了一通狂热的演说，这通演说却这样或那样地决定了他以后的命运；它所决定的，就像有时海军任命的情形一样，为日后在海上任职铺平了道路。朱莉娅的家庭律师们开始办理她的离婚的缓慢的诉讼手续，他们的包着铁皮的红色文件箱上都画着“马奇梅因侯爵”的字样，多到似乎能塞满一个房间；而我的更兴旺的事务所，就在过去两个门的地方，几个星期以前就着手办理我的案子了。对于雷克斯和朱莉娅，他们必须正式分居，而眼下他的行李和贴身男仆都转移到了他们在伦敦的家里。显然朱莉娅不能和我住在我的寓所。布赖兹赫德举行婚礼的日期定了下来，在圣诞节一开始就办，这样他那些继子们也就可能参加了。

十一月的一个下午，我和朱莉娅站在客厅窗前向外眺望，看寒风把橙树的叶子吹落，刮下枯黄的树叶，然后又把枯叶卷起来，吹得团团打转，后来又吹过阳台和草坪，又把树叶卷过水洼，吹到潮湿的草地上，又贴在墙上和窗玻璃上，最后树叶就湿漉漉地堆集在石砌的房基旁边。

“看来到春天我们不会再看见这些了，”朱莉娅说，“或许永远不会了。”

“以前有一次，”我说，“我离开的时候想，我再也不会回来了。”

“也许好多年以后，会回来旧地重游，看看这里的遗迹，回忆我们的往事……”

在这间黑洞洞的房间里，我们身后一扇门打开又关上了。威尔科克斯穿过壁炉的火光走进落地窗户附近的暮色里。

“有一个电话留下话，小姐，是科迪莉娅小姐打来的。”

“科迪莉娅小姐！她在哪儿？”

“在伦敦，小姐。”

“威尔科克斯，太好啦！她要回家来吗？”

“她刚动身去火车站。晚饭后她就会到这儿。”

“我已经有十二年没有见到她了。”我说道——不是从那晚上，当时我们在一起吃的晚饭，她说起要当修女的时候算起，而是从我在马奇梅因公馆画那间客厅的傍晚算起。“她过去是一个迷人的女孩。”

“她过着奇怪的生活。起初，在修道院；后来遇到战争，那里不行了，就去了西班牙。从那时我就再也没有看到她了。仗打完了，战地救护队其他的姑娘们都回来了；她却留下了，协助人们回到自己的家园，还在战俘营里帮过忙。多么奇怪的姑娘。她长大后相貌很平常，你知道。”

“她知道我们的情况吗？”

“知道，她还给我写过一封很亲切的信呢。”

想到科迪莉娅长大了“相貌平常”，这真叫人痛心；只消想想她全部炽烈的感情都耗费在血浆注射和除虱粉上面，真叫人难受。她到家时，由于旅途劳顿而疲惫不堪，而且衣衫褴褛，神情举止似乎无意取悦别人，我觉得她是个难看的女人。说来也奇怪，我想，同样的遗传因子，经过不同的排列和组合，怎么就会产生出布赖兹赫德、塞巴斯蒂安、朱莉娅和她这样不同的人来。她毫无疑问是他们的妹妹，既没有朱莉娅或塞巴斯蒂安身上的优雅，也没有布赖兹赫德的庄严持重。她显得生气勃勃，而又注重实际，浑身都浸透了战俘营和裹伤站的气味，由于习惯了大苦大难，她没有了各种优美的快乐表情。她看起来要比二十六岁大，而且艰苦的生活也使她变得粗糙了。经年累月使用外语和人交往使得她把语言音调的细微差别都消磨殆尽了；她坐在壁炉边稍微叉着双腿，说了一声“回大家来真是太美啦”。这话听起来好像是一头野兽回到巢穴时发出的呼噜呼噜的声音。

由于同朱莉娅的白皙皮肤、丝绸般柔软、满头钻石的头发对比，同留在我记忆中科迪莉娅少女时代的模样对比，最初半个小时她给我的印象就显得更加突出了。

“我在西班牙的工作已经结束了，”她说，“当局对我很客气，对我做了的一切表示了感谢，还奖给我一枚奖章，然后就打发我回来了。看样子这里好像不久也会有同样性质的工作了。”

接着她又说：“现在太晚了，没法去看保姆了吧？”

“不晚，她一直坐着听她的收音机呢。”

我们三人一起上楼去，到了过去的育婴室。我和朱莉娅每天总要在这儿消磨一段时间。霍金斯保姆和我父亲都是那种似乎永远不变的人，他们的样子比我最初看到他们时一点都没有显老。在霍金斯保姆桌子上那寥寥几件爱物中—一串念珠，一部《英国贵族名录》，一张干净的棕色纸包裹着这部名录的红色烫金的封面，还有几张照片和几件节日礼物——现在又添了一架收音机。当我们突如其来向她透露我和朱莉娅要结婚的时候，她说：“啊，亲爱的，我希望一切都吉祥如意。”她的宗教使她不好询问朱莉娅的行为是否合适。

她一直不喜欢布赖兹赫德。听到他订婚的消息时她说：“他肯定费了好长的时间才拿定主意的。”后来她查《英国贵族名录》，查不到马斯普拉特夫人的亲戚中有任何贵族关系，又说道，“我想，她把他攥在手心里了。”

我们看到她时，她就像平时傍晚的样子，坐在壁炉旁，身边还有她的茶壶和一块她正在编织的羊毛小地毯。

“我知道你们会上来的，”她说道，“威尔科克斯先生派人来告诉我说你们要来。”

“我给你带来一些花边。”

“哦，亲爱的，真好啊。这跟可怜的夫人望弥撒时常穿的衣服花边差不多。不过我始终不明白人们为什么要把花边做成黑色的，要知道花边本来是白色的嘛。我相信，这件东西真招人爱。”

“奶妈，我可以把收音机关掉吗？”

“当然，可以可以；我没注意它还开着呢，见到你看我这高兴劲儿。你把头发梳成个什么样子了？”

“我知道它难看极了。现在我回来了，得好好地拾掇拾掇了，亲爱的奶妈。”

我们坐着谈话，而且我注意到科迪莉娅的温情眼光盯在我们几个人身上时，我才开始发现她也有她自己的美。

“上个月我见到塞巴斯蒂安了。”

“他走了多么久啦！他还好吗？”

“不太好。这也正是我去那儿的原因。你知道西班牙离突尼斯很近。他在那里和修道士在一起。”

“我希望他们会好好照料他。我料到他们会觉得他是个很难对付的人。每逢圣诞节，他总是给我寄贺年片，不过这和他在家里总不一样。为什么你们总要到国外去呢，我可始终不明白。就像爵爷一样。那阵子都说要跟慕尼黑打仗了，我就自言自语说，‘科迪莉娅和塞巴斯蒂安，还有爵爷，他们全都在国外呢；这下他们可要受罪了。’”

“我想让他跟我一块回家来，可是他不愿意。现在他蓄起了胡子，你知道，而且虔诚地信教了。”

“这我可不信，即使亲眼看见也不信。他一向有些异教味儿。布赖兹赫德倒是个适合进教会的人，塞巴斯蒂安可不是的。再说，还有什么胡子，只是幻想罢了；他的皮肤那么白，总是显得那么清洁，尽管他一天不洗还是那么干净，可是尽管你给布赖兹赫德怎样擦洗，他也白净不了。”


“多可怕啊，”朱莉娅有一次说道，“想想你怎么把塞巴斯蒂安完全忘记了。”

“他是一个‘序幕’。”

“这是你在那场暴风雨中说过的话。从那时起，我就一直想，也许我也不过是个‘序幕’罢了。”

“也许，”我想，同时她的话还在我们之间的空气中飘荡，就像烟草的一缕青烟——一个将要像一缕青烟一样变淡、又消失得无影无踪的念头——“也许我们的全部爱情只是些暗示和象征罢了；这是涂写在门柱上和前面已经有人走过的疲倦的路上随便涂写的文字罢了；也许你和我是典型的人物，那时落在我俩中间的哀伤是由于我们在寻求中感到失望而产生的，每人都在努力你追我赶，不时瞥见对方的影子，而那影子总是在我们前面一两步就拐过了街角。”

我没有忘掉塞巴斯蒂安。他在朱莉娅身上每天都和我在一起，或者毋宁说，在遥远的田园牧歌式的日子里，我在他身上认识了朱莉娅。

“对一个姑娘来说，这是一种冷冰冰的安慰。”当我试着解释时她说道，“我怎么能知道我不会突然变成另外一个人呢？这道是个糊弄人的好方法。”

我没有忘掉塞巴斯蒂安；这所房子的每一块石头都勾引起对他的回忆，听到科迪莉娅说起她在一个月以前看到了他本人的时候，萦绕在我脑中的全都是我这位失踪的朋友。当我们离开育婴室的时候，我说道：“我要听听关于塞巴斯蒂安的全部情况。”

“明天吧。说起来话长呢。”

到第二天，我们在寒风呼啸的园林里散步时，她告诉我说：

“当时我听说他快要死了。”她说道，“这是布尔戈斯一位刚从北非来的新闻记者告诉我的。说那儿有个穷困潦倒的人，叫弗莱特，大家都说是一位英国勋爵，神父们发现他的时候他快饿死了，于是就把他收留在迦太基附近一家修道院里了。我就这样听到这个消息的。当时我知道这个消息不可能十分准确——尽管我们为塞巴斯蒂安做的事很有限，可是他起码有寄给他的钱吧——可是我还是立刻动身了。

“说起来简单。我先去了领事馆，他们对他的情况很清楚。他正在传教神父总部的医院里。按照领事的说法，塞巴斯蒂安是某一天坐着一辆从阿尔及尔开来的公共汽车到突尼斯来的，后来他请求雇佣他当一名教会的杂役僧侣。神父们看了他一眼，就拒绝了。后来他又开始喝酒。他住在阿拉伯人居住区边上的一家小客店里。后来我去看了看那地方，那是个酒吧间，上边有几间住房，由一个希腊人经营，里面散发着热油、大蒜、走了味的葡萄酒和旧衣服的气味。一些希腊小商人到这地方来，玩玩西洋跳棋，听听收音机。他在那儿住了一个月，喝的是希腊艾酒，还不时出去溜达，他们都不知道他去的地方，回来后又喝开酒了。人们怕他会出事，有时候就在后面尾随他，可是他只是到教堂去，再不就是搭辆汽车去城外的修道院。那里的人全都喜欢他。不管他到了什么地方，也不管他的境遇如何，他总是挺招人喜欢的。他身上招人喜欢的东西是永远不会失掉的。你们真该听听那个旅馆老板和他一家人是怎样谈到他的，他们一个劲儿地流眼泪；那些人分明是到处抢劫了他，不过他们倒也照看他，想方设法让他吃上饭。可是让他们吃惊不小的是，他不愿吃饭；而且他随身带着那么些钱，却那么瘦。当我们用很特别的发育谈着话的时候，又进来几个住在这地方的人；他们说的情形全都一样。多么好的人呀，他们说，看到他这么潦倒他们都十分难过。由于让他落到了这步田地，他们对他的家庭很有恶感。他们说，他们的人就不会发生这样的事，我相信他们说得很对。

“无论如何，这是以后的事情了。从领事馆出来，我径直去那所修道院，见到了院长。他是一个严峻的丹麦老头，在中非洲待了五十年。他对我讲了他了解的那一部分情况；塞巴斯蒂安如何被发现的，像领事说的一样，他蓄着胡须，拿着小提箱，要求收留下来当一名打杂的僧侣。‘他诚恳极了，’那位院长说”——科迪莉娅模仿着他那奇怪的腔调；我记得她上学的时候就有一种模仿的本领——“‘请不要以为这里面有什么可疑的地方——他的神智完全正常，而且也十分诚恳。’他希望到未开垦的丛林中去，走得越远越好，到最单纯的人们当中去，到吃人生番中去。院长说道：‘我们的教区里可没有吃人生番啊。’他说，好吧，俾格米人就行，或者只是河边的原始村落，再不就是麻风病人住的地方，麻风病人是他求之不得的了。院长说：‘我们倒是有不少麻风病人，可是他们全住在有医生和修女的居留地里，那里一切都是井井有条的。’他又想想，然后说也许他所希望的并不是麻风病人，是不是有一座靠着河边的小教堂——你看，他总是要一条河——当神父走了以后，这座教堂可以由他来照管。院长说：‘不错，像这样的教堂倒是有的。现在你给我讲讲你自己的情况吧。’‘咳，我是微不足道的。’他说道。‘我们看出他是个怪人，’”科迪莉娅又模仿起院长的调子来，“‘他是个怪人，不过倒是十分诚恳。’院长给他讲入院以前要经过一个见习期和训练时期，然后又说，‘你不算年轻了。我看你身子骨也不太壮实。’他说道：‘不，我可不想受训练。我想干那种需要训练的事情。’院长说：‘我的朋友，你自己倒是需要一位传教士来管你，’他说：‘是的，当然啰。’于是院长把他打发走了。

“第二天他又回来了。他又喝了酒。他说他已经决定当一个见习修道士，并且愿意接受训练。‘好啦，’院长说，‘有些事情是去丛林里工作的人不许做的。其中一项就是喝酒。喝酒虽然不是最糟糕的事，但却是很致命的。我又把他打发走了。’以后每个星期他都要来两三次，总是喝得醉醺醺的，以至后来院长吩咐门房不许他再进来。我说：‘噢，亲爱的，恐怕他让你很厌烦吧，’当然啦，这是那种地方的人不会理解的事情。那位院长只是说：‘除了为他祈祷外，我认为我对他再也没有办法帮助了。’院长是一个非常圣洁的老人，并且在别人身上也看得出圣洁来。”

“圣洁吗？”

“是啊，查尔斯，这就是你们必须理解塞巴斯蒂安的道理。

“嗯，最后有一天他们发现塞巴斯蒂安躺在大门外不省人事，原来他步行出去——平常他总是搭一辆汽车——后来就摔倒了，在那儿躺了一夜。起初他们还以为他不过是又喝醉了；后来他们才明白原来他病得十分厉害，这样他们就把他送进医院里，打那以后他就一直待在那儿了。

“我陪着他待了半个月，直到他度过了病情最严重的时期。他的样子很可怕，说不上有多大岁数，头顶秃得厉害，胡须蓬乱，不过他的举止还像平时那样亲切可爱。他们让他住一个单间；这房间比修道士的秘室只强一点儿，一张床，一个十字架，四周是白墙壁。最初他连话都不能多说，看到我一点也不觉得奇怪；后来他感到奇怪了，但不愿多说话，直到我要离开的时候，他才把他的遭遇全都告诉我了。他讲的几乎大部分都是关于他的德国朋友库尔特的事。对啦，你见到过库尔特，看来你也明白一切了。库尔特这人的事听起来让人很厌恶，不过只要塞巴斯蒂安有他照看，倒是很愉快的。他告诉我，当他和库尔特住在一起时，他几乎一度戒了酒。库尔特有病，还带着治不好的伤。塞巴斯蒂安照看他脱离苦难。后来库尔特的身体好了，他们就去了希腊。你知道当德国人到了一个古雅的国家时，他就会发现一种正派的感觉。这种情形似乎也在库尔特身上发生了作用。塞巴斯蒂安说库尔特在雅典变得非常通人情。后来他给送进监狱；我不十分了解是什么原因；显然不完全是他的过错——是同一个军官吵了架。他一旦被拘留起来，德国当局就抓住他了。当时德国当局正在围捕国外的侨民，让他们都参加纳粹组织。库尔特不愿意离开希腊，而希腊人却不需要他，于是他和一大群流氓一起被直接从监狱押上一只德国船，运回德国去了。

“塞巴斯蒂安寻找他，寻了一年也没有见踪影。后来他终于在一个外省城市里追查到他，这时他已经穿上纳粹冲锋队员的服装。起初，他不愿和塞巴斯蒂安有什么往来，后来却滔滔不绝地讲起德国官方的术语来，什么复兴祖国啦，他属于他的祖国啦，什么在他那种族的生活里可以充分发挥自己的才能啦。其实这不过是些表面文章。塞巴斯蒂安六年对他的影响毕竟比希特勒一年对他影响要大；最后，他丢弃了这些表面的话，承认他恨德国，想逃出去。我不知道他想离开的原因在多大程度上是由于贪图安闲的生活；依赖塞巴斯蒂安过日子，在地中海游泳，在咖啡馆里闲坐，让人把他的皮鞋擦得锃亮。塞巴斯蒂安说完全不是这么回事；他在雅典就已经开始成熟了。也许塞巴斯蒂安说得对。不管怎样，他决定逃跑。可是他的决定并没有实现。不管他做什么，总是要倒大霉，塞巴斯蒂安说。他们抓住了库尔特，把他投进集中营。塞巴斯蒂安无法接近他，也得不到关于他的一点儿消息；甚至连他给关在哪一个集中营他都听不出来；他在德国游荡了快一年，又喝开了酒，后来有一天在他喝醉的时候，交上了一位朋友，恰好这个人是刚从库尔特曾经待过的集中营里出来的，这才知道库尔特在第一个星期就在他的牢房里自缢死了。

“这样塞巴斯蒂安的欧洲之行就结束了。他又回到摩洛哥，他在那里一度过得很快活，他沿地中海岸坐着船停停走走，从一个地方到另一个地方，直到有一天他清醒过来了——现在他已经到了经常酗酒的地步了——他就产生了要逃避到野蛮人中间去的想法。以后他就在那里了。

“我没有提出要求他回家。我知道他不愿意回来的，再说他的身体也太虚弱了，也无法说服他打消这个念头。我离开的时候他似乎相当高兴。他永远不可能去丛林地区了，当然也不可能担任什么神职，不过那位修道院长将要照管他的；他们打算让他当一个下级勤杂工。你知道，在一个宗教性的组织里，总有几个吃闲饭的人，这些人既不适合过世俗生活又不适应寺院的清规。我想我自己就是这种人。不过碰巧由于我不喝酒，所以我更适于人家雇用。”

我们已转到道路转弯的地方，这是最后也是最小的一个水塘尽头的石桥边，桥下漫涨的池水瀑布般地落下来，注入下面的溪流里；在远处，小路折转过来，回到宅邸那里。我们在桥栏杆边停住脚，凝视着下面黑黝黝的池水。

“我过去有个女教师，她从这个桥上跳下去自杀了。”

“嗯，我知道。”

“你怎么知道的？”

“这是我听说的关于你的第一件事——是在我见到你以前。”

“多么奇怪……”

“你跟朱莉娅谈过关于塞巴斯蒂安的这些情况吗？”

“大体上说了说；不大像我对你讲的。你知道，她从来不爱他，像我们现在这样爱他。”

“像现在这样。”她用现在时态责备我；在科迪莉娅用动词“爱”时，没有过去时态。

“可怜的塞巴斯蒂安！”我说，“太可怜了。以后可怎么收场呢？”

“查尔斯，我想我能够确切地告诉你。我曾经见过像他这样的人，我相信他们更接近上帝，而且更爱上帝。他的生活会半是超群出世，半是涉足红尘，是我们都熟悉的一个带着一把扫帚和一串钥匙游游荡荡的人物。他会是老神父的大宠儿，也是见习修道士们开玩笑的对象。大家都会知道他喝酒的事；他每个月都会失踪两三天，大家就会摇摇头，会心一笑，异口同声地说：‘老塞巴斯蒂安又狂欢了。’后来，他回来时邋里邋遢，满面羞惭，一两天之内他在小教堂里会显得更虔诚。他也许在花园附近还有几处小小的储藏处，藏着一瓶酒，不时地偷偷大口大口喝一通。每逢有一位讲英语的客人来访，他们就会请他当向导，而他会表现得十分可爱，这样在他们临走时，他们会问起他自己的事，他也许会隐隐约约地向他们暗示他在国内还有一些很有名望的亲戚呢。如果他活的岁数够大，一代又一代从远方各处来的传教士会把他看作一个奇怪的老人，是他们学生时代的家乡的一部分，他们做弥撒的时候会想起他来。他还形成了笃信宗教的种种怪癖，以及他自己热烈崇拜上帝的仪式。他偶尔也会在小教堂里出现，可是当他没来时，人们会想念他。然后有一天早晨在他狂饮了一通之后，他会在大门口被人抱起来，奄奄一息，当他们给他举行最后圣礼的时候，只是由于眼睑眨动而表明他还有点知觉。这样度过一生也不能算太坏了。”

我想起了在繁花似锦的栗子树下带着玩具熊的那个青年。“谁要不会预料到这样的光景，”我说，“我想他没有受苦吧？”

“嗯，他受了苦，我想他受了苦。像他那样受到很大的损害——失去了尊严，失去了意志力，人根本想象不出他痛苦到何等地步。可是人不受苦就不能成圣。这就是他的痛苦的形式……近几年来我目睹的苦难太多了。不久，每个人还要受更多的苦难。。这是爱的春天……”接着她又对我的异教精神抱着宽宏大量的态度说，“他住在洋非常美丽的地方，你知道，在海边——白色的回廊，一座钟楼，几畦绿油油的菜蔬，夕阳西下时有一个修道士在浇水灌园。”

我哈哈笑起来。“你认为我不理解你的话吗？”

“你和朱莉娅……”她说道。后来当我们朝宅邸走去的时候，她又说，“昨晚你见到我的时候，你是不是这么想，‘可怜的科迪莉娅，这么个迷人的小姑娘，却长成了一个相貌平常、笃信宗教、做了许多好事的老处女了？’你有没有想到‘遭到挫折’这个字？”

现在不是搪塞的时候了。“是的，”我说，“我想到过。不过现在不这么想，想的不太多。”

“说来也可笑，”她说，“这个字恰恰是我为你和朱莉娅想到的，当时我们待在楼上和保姆在育婴室里。‘受到挫折的感情，’我这么想。”

她说着话，带着她母亲传给她的那种温柔细致的嘲笑语调，但是到傍晚将尽时，我又生动地想起她的话来。

朱莉娅穿了一件绣花的中国式上衣，这件长衣是我们俩在布赖兹赫德单独吃晚饭时常常穿的。这件长衣的分量和硬褶加强了她安娴的态度，她的头优雅地从她颈上的淡雅金项链中扬起来，两只手平静地放在膝上锈的几条龙上。在数不清的夜晚，我总是看着她这样坐着而感到高兴，在这个夜晚，我注视着她坐在炉火的光和罩着灯罩的灯光之间，她的美使我的眼光舍不得望着别的地方。我突然想：“我在另外什么时候看到她这种样子呢？为什么使我回忆起另一次的幻影呢？”于是我回想起那天海上风暴来到前，在那艘轮船上，她正是这样坐着；那时她的样子也正是这样，我意识到重新获得了我认为她永远失去了的东西，就是吸引住我的她那迷人的哀伤，就是她那“遭到挫折”的面容，她仿佛在说：“除此之外，我生来肯定还有另外的人生目的吧？”

这天晚上我在黑暗中醒来，躺在那儿，脑子里翻腾着和科迪莉娅的谈话。我怎么竟说“你认为我不会理解你的话。”我常常感觉到，我被猛地卡住，好像一匹全速奔跑的马不肯跳过障碍而停住一样，不顾马刺的踢扎而向后倒退，由于太胆怯甚至不敢用鼻子嗅一嗅和看一看那样东西。

这时我的脑中出现另外一个幻象，北极圈里一间小屋，一个身边有野兽毛皮、煤油灯和火堆的孤单的捕兽人；一切都很干燥，井井有条，屋内暖烘烘的，屋外冬天最后一场暴风雪在咆哮，大雪堆积起来封住了屋门。无声无息地在木门上形成了越来越大的压力；轴洞里的门闩栓得紧紧的；在外面漆黑一团里一个白色的雪堆一分钟一分钟地封住屋门，直到不久风势减弱了，太阳在冰封雪盖的斜坡上露出来，融雪的时候来到了，巨大的冰块就会移动，滑落，翻滚着，上面高处积聚着力量直到整个山坡似乎都坍塌下来，这时那个小小的闪着亮光的小房子就会裂开，压碎，消失，随着雪崩滚进深谷里。


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Chapter 13
MY divorce case, or rather my wife’s, was due to be heard at about the same time as Brideshead was to be married. Julia’s would not come up till the following term; meanwhile the game of General Post - moving my property from the Old Rectory to my flat, my wife’s from my flat to the Old Rectory, Julia’s from Rex’s house and from Brideshead to my flat, Rex’s from Brideshead to his house, and Mrs Muspratt’s from Falmouth to Brideshead - was in full swing and we were all, in varying degrees, homeless, when a halt was called and Lord Marchmain, with a taste for the dramatically inopportune which was plainly the prototype of his elder son’s, declared his intention, in view of the international situation, of returning to England and passing his declining years, in his old home.

The only member of the family to whom this change promised any benefit was Cordelia, who had been sadly abandoned in the turmoil. Brideshead, indeed, had made a formal request to her to consider his house her home for as long as it suited her, but when she learned that her sister-in-law proposed to install her children there for the holidays immediately after the wedding, in the charge of a sister of hers and the sister’s friend, Cordelia had decided to move, too, and was talking of setting up alone in London. She now found herself, Cinderella-like, promoted chatelaine, while her brother and his wife who had till that moment expected to find themselves, within a matter of  days, in absolute command, were without a roof; the deeds of conveyance, engrossed and ready for signing, were rolled up, tied, and put away in one of the black tin boxes in Lincoln’s Inn. It was bitter for Mrs Muspratt; she was not an ambitious woman; something very much less grand than Brideshead would have contented her heartily, but she did aspire to find some shelter for her children over Christmas. The house at Falmouth was stripped and up for sale; moreover, Mrs Muspratt had taken leave of the place with some justifiably rather large talk of her new establishment; they could not return there. She was obliged in a hurry to move her furniture from Lady Marchmain’s room to a disused coach-house and to take a furnished villa at Torquay. She was not, as I have said, a woman of high ambition, but, having had her expectations so much raised, it was disconcerting to be brought so low so suddenly. In the village the working party who had been preparing the decorations for the bridal entry, began unpacking the Bs on the bunting and substitutin Ms, obliterating the Earl’s points and stencilling balls and strawberry leaves on the painted, coronets, in preparation for Lord Marchmain’s return.  News of his intentions came first to the solicitors, then to Cordelia, then to Julia and me, in a rapid succession of contradictory cables. Lord Marchmain would arrive in time for the wedding; he would arrive after the wedding, having seen Lord and Lady Brideshead on their way through Paris; he would see them in Rome. He was not well enough to travel at all; he was just starting; he had unhappy memories of winter at Brideshead and would not come until spring was well advanced and the heating apparatus overhauled; he was coming alone; he was bringing his Italian household; he wished his return to be unannounced and to lead a life of complete seclusion; he would give a ball. At last a date in January was chosen which proved to be the correct one.  Plender preceded him by some days; there was a difficulty here. Plender was not an original member of the Brideshead household; he had been Lord Marchmain’s servant in the yeomanry, and had only once met Wilcox on the painful occasion of the removal of his master’s luggage when it was decided not to return from the war; then Plender had been valet, as, officially, he still was, but he had, in the past years introduced a kind of suffragan, a Swiss body-servant, to attend to the wardrobe and also, when occasion arose, lend a hand with less dignified tasks about the house, and had in effect become majordomo of that fluctuating and mobile household; sometimes he even referred to himself on the telephone as ‘the secretary’. There was an acre of thin ice between him and Wilcox.

Fortunately the two men took a liking to one another, and the thing was solved in a series of three-cornered discussions with Cordelia. Plender and Wilcox became joint grooms of the chambers, like ‘Blues’ and Life Guards with equal precedence, Plender having as his particular province his Lordship’s own apartments and Wilcox a sphere of influence in the public rooms; the senior footman was given a black coat and promoted butler, the non-descript Swiss, on arrival, was to have plain clothes and full valet’s status there was a general increase in wages to meet the new dignities, and all were content.  Julia and I, who had left Brideshead a month before, thinking we should not return, moved back for the reception. When the day came, Cordelia went to the station and we remained to greet him at home. It was a bleak and gusty day. Cottages and lodges were decorated; plans for a bonfire that night and for the village silver band to play on the terrace, were put down, but the house flag, that had not flown for twenty-five years, was hoisted over the pediment, and flapped sharply against the leaden sky. Whatever harsh voices might be bawling into the microphones of central Europe, and whatever lathes spinning in the armament factories, the return of Lord Marchmain was a matter of first importance in his own neighbourhood.

He was due at three o’clock. Julia and I waited in the drawing-room until Wilcox, who had arranged with the stationmaster to be kept informed, announced ‘the train is signalled’, and a minute later, ‘the train is in; his Lordship is on the way.’ Then we went to the front portico and waited there with the upper servants. Soon the Rolls appeared at the turn in the drive, followed at some distance by the two vans. It drew up; first Cordelia got out, then Cara; there was a pause, a rug was handed to the chauffeur, a stick to the footman; then a leg was cautiously thrust forward. Plender was by now at the car door; another servant - the Swiss valet - had emerged from a van; together they lifted Lord Marchmain out and set him on his feet; he felt for his stick, grasped it, and stood for a minute collecting his strength for the few low steps which led to the front door.

Julia gave a little sigh of surprise and touched my hand. We had seen him nine months ago at Monte Carlo, when he had been an upright and stately figure, little changed from when I first met him in Venice. Now he was an old man. Plender had told us his master had been unwell lately: he had not prepared us for this.  Lord Marchmain stood bowed and shrunken, weighed down by his great-coat, a white muffler fluttering untidily at his throat, a cloth cap pulled low on his forehead, his face white and lined, his nose coloured by the cold; the tears which gathered in his eyes came not from emotion but from the east wind; he breathed heavily. Cara tucked in the end of his muffler and whispered something to him. He raised a gloved hand - a schoolboy’s glove of grey wool - and made a small, weary gesture of greeting to the group at the door; then, very slowly, with his eyes on the ground before him, he made his way into the house.

They took off his coat and cap and muffler and the kind of leather jerkin which he wore under them; thus stripped he seemed more than ever wasted but more elegant; he had cast the shabbiness of extreme fatigue. Cara straightened his tie; he wiped his eyes with -a bandanna handkerchief and shuffled with his stick to the hall fire.  There was a little heraldic chair by the chimney-piece, one of a set which stood against the walls, a little, inhospitable, flat-seated thing, a mere excuse for the elaborate armorial painting on its back, on which, perhaps, no one, not even a weary footman, had ever sat since it was made; there Lord Marchmain sat and wiped his eyes.  ‘It’s the cold,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten how cold it is in England. Quite bowled me over.’

‘Can I get you anything, my lord?’

‘Nothing, thank you. Cara, where are those confounded pills?’

‘Alex, the doctor said not more than three times a day.’

‘Damn the doctor. I feel quite bowled over.’

Cara produced a blue bottle from her bag and Lord March main took a pill. Whatever was in it, seemed to revive him. He remained seated, his long legs stuck out before him, his cane between them, his chin on its ivory handle, but he began to take notice of us all, to greet us and to give orders.

‘I’m afraid I’m not at all the thing today; the joumey’s taken it out of me. Ought to have waited a night at Dover. Wilcox, what rooms have you prepared for me?’ ‘Your old ones, my Lord.’

‘Won’t do; not till I’m fit again. Too many stairs; must be on the ground floor.  Plender, get a bed made up for me downstairs.’ Plender and Wilcox exchanged an anxious glance.

‘Very good, my Lord. Which room shall we put it in?’ Lord Marchmain thought for a moment. ‘The Chinese drawing-room; and, Wilcox, the “Queen’s bed”.’ ‘The Chinese drawing-room, my lord, the “Queen’s bed”?’

‘Yes, yes. I may be spending some time there in the next few weeks.’

The Chinese drawing-room was one I had never seen used; in fact one could not normally go further into it than a small roped area round the door, where sight-seers were corralled on the days the house was open to the public; it was a splendid, uninhabitable museum of Chippendale carving and porcelain’ and lacquer and painted hangings; the Queen’s bed too, was an exhibition piece, a vast velvet tent like the baldachino at St Peter’s. Had Lord Marchmain planned this lying-in-state for himself, I wondered, before he left the sunshine of Italy? Had he thought of it during the scudding rain of his long, fretful journey? Had it come to him at that moment, an awakened memory of childhood, a dream in the nursery - ‘When I’m grown up I’ll sleep in the Queen’s bed in the Chinese drawing-room’ - the apotheosis of adult grandeur?  Few things, certainly, could have caused more stir in the house. What had been foreseen as a day of formality became one of fierce exertion; housemaids began making a fire, removing covers, unfolding linen- men in aprons, never normally seen, shifted furniture; the estate carpenters were collected to dismantle the bed. It came down the main staircase in pieces, at intervals during the afternoon; huge sections of Rococo, velvet-covered cornice; the twisted, gilt and velvet columns which formed its posts; beams of unpolished wood, made not to be seen, which performed invisible structural functions below the draperies; plumes of dyed feathers, which sprang from gold-mounted ostrich eggs and crowned the canopy; finally, the mattresses with four toiling men to each. Lord Marchmain seemed to derive comfort from the consequences of his whim; he sat by the fire watching the bustle, while we stood in a half circle - Cara, Cordelia, Julia, and I - and talked to him.

Colour came back to his checks and light to his eyes. ‘Brideshead and his wife dined with me in Rome,’ he said. ‘Since we are all members of the family’ - and his eye moved ironically from Cara to me - ‘I can speak without reserve. I found her deplorable. Her former consort, I understand, was a seafaring man and, presumably, the less exacting, but how my son, at the ripe age of thirty-eight, with, unless things have changed very much, a very free choice among the women of England, can have settled on - I suppose I must call her so - Beryl...’ He left the sentence eloquently unfinished.  Lord Marchmain showed no inclination to move, so presently we drew up chairs - the little, heraldic chairs, for everything else in the hall was ponderous - and sat round him.  ‘I daresay I shall not be really fit again until summer comes, he said. ‘I look to you four to amuse me.’ There seemed little we could do at the moment to lighten the rather sombre mood; he, indeed, was the most cheerful of us. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘the circumstances of Brideshead’s courtship.’

We told him what we knew.

‘Match-boxes,’ he said. ‘Match-boxes. I think she’s past childbearing.’

Tea was brought us at the hall fireplace.

‘In Italy,’ he said, ‘no one believes there will be a war. They think it will all be “arranged”. I suppose, Julia, you no longer have access to political information? Cara, here, is fortunately a British subject by marriage. It is not a thing she customarily mentions, but it may prove valuable. She is legally Mrs Hicks, are you not, my dear?  We know little of Hicks, but we shall be grateful to him, none the less, if it comes to war. And you,’ he said, turning the attack to me, ‘you will no doubt become an official artist?’

‘No. As a matter of fact I am negotiating now for a commission in the Special Reserve.’

‘Oh, but you should be an artist. I had one with my squadron during the last war, for weeks - until we went up to the line.’ This waspishness was new. I had always been aware of a frame of malevolence under his urbanity; now it protruded like his own sharp bones through the sunken skin.

It was dark before the bed was finished; we went to see it, Lord Marchmain stepping quite briskly now through the intervening rooms.

‘I congratulate you. It really looks remarkably well. Wilcox, I seem to remember a silver basin and ewer - they stood in a room we called “the Cardinal’s dressing-room”, I think - suppose we had them here on the console. Then if you will send Plender and Gaston to me, the luggage can wait till tomorrow - simply the dressing case and what I need for the night. Plender will know. If you will leave me with Plender and Gaston, I will go to bed. We will meet later; you will dine here and keep me amused.’ We turned to go; as I was at the door he called me back.

‘It looks very well, does it not?’

‘Very well.’

‘You might paint it, eh - and call it the Death Bed?’

‘Yes,’ said Cara, ‘he has come home to die.’

‘But when he first arrived he was talking so confidently of recovery.  ‘That was because he was so ill. When he is himself, he knows he is dying and accepts it. His sickness is up and down, one day, sometimes for several days on end, he is strong and lively and then he is ready for death, then he is down and afraid. I do not know how it will be when he is more and more down. That must come in good time.  The doctors in Rome gave him less than a year. There is someone coming from London, I think tomorrow, who will tell us more.’

‘What is it?’

‘His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word.’ That evening Lord Marchmain was in good spirits; the room had a Hogarthian aspect, with the dinner-table set for the four of us by the grotesque, chinoiserie chimney-piece, and the old man propped among his pillows, sipping champagne, tasting, praising, and failing to eat, the succession of dishes which had been prepared for his homecoming.  Wilcox had brought out for the occasion the gold plate, which I had not before seen in use; that, the gilt mirrors, and the lacquer and the drapery of the great bed and Julia’s mandarin coat gave the scene an air of pantomime, of Aladdin’s cave.  Just at the end, when the time came for us to go, his spirits flagged.  ‘I shall not sleep,’ he said. ‘Who is going to sit with me? Cara, carissima, you are fatigued. Cordelia, will you watch for an hour in this Gethsemane?’ Next morning I asked her how the night had passed.

‘He went to sleep almost at once. I came in to see him at two to make up the fire; the lights were on, but he was asleep again. He must have woken up and turned them on; he had to get out of bed to do that. I think perhaps he is afraid of the dark.’ It was natural, with her hospital experience, that Cordelia should take charge of her father. When the doctors came that day they gave their instructions to her, instinctively.  ‘Until he gets worse,’ she said, ‘I and the valet can look after him. We don’t want nurses in the house before they are needed.’ At this stage the doctors had nothing to recommend except to keep him comfortable and administer certain drugs when his attacks came on.

‘How long will it be?’

‘Lady Cordelia, there are men walking about in hearty old age whom their doctors gave a week to live. I have learned one thing in medicine; never prophesy.’ These two men had made a long journey to tell her this; the local doctor was there to accept the same advice in technical phrases.

That night Lord Marchmain reverted to the topic of his new daughter-in-law; it had never been long out of his mind, finding expression in various sly hints throughout the day; now he lay back in his pillows and talked of her at length.  ‘I have never been much moved by family piety until now,’ he said, ‘but I am frankly appalled at the prospect of - of Beryl taking what was once my mother’s place in this house. Why should that uncouth pair sit here childless while the place crumbles about their ears? I will not disguise from you that I have taken a dislike to Beryl.

‘Perhaps it was unfortunate that we met in Rome. Anywhere else might have been more sympathetic. And yet, if one comes to consider it, where could I have met her without repugnance? We dined at Ranieri’s; it is a quiet little restaurant I have frequented for years - no doubt you know it. Beryl seemed to fill the place. I, of course, was host, though to hear Beryl press my son with food you might have thought otherwise. Brideshead was always a greedy boy- a wife who has his best interests at heart should seek to restrain him. However, that is a matter of small importance.  ‘She had no doubt heard of me as a man of irregular life. I can only describe her manner to me as roguish. A naughty old man, that’s what she thought I was. I suppose she had met naughty old admirals and knew how they should be humoured...I could not attempt to reproduce her conversation. I will give you one example.  ‘They had been to an audience at the Vatican that morning; a blessing for their marriage - I did not follow attentively something of the kind had happened before, I gathered, some previous husband, some previous Pope. She described, rather vivaciously, how on this earlier occasion she had gone with a whole body - of newly married couples, mostly Italians of all ranks, some or the simpler girls in their wedding dresses, and how each had appraised the other, the bridegrooms looking the brides over, comparing their own with one another’s, and so forth. Then she said, “This time, of course, we were in private, -but do you know, Lord Marchmain, I felt as though it was I who was leading in the bride.”

‘It was said with great indelicacy. I have not yet quite fathomed her meaning. Was she making a play on my son’s name, or was she, do you think, referring to his undoubted virginity? I fancy the latter. Anyway, it was with pleasantries of that kind that we passed the evening.

‘I don’t think she would be quite in her proper element here, do you? Who shall I leave it to? The entail ended with me, you know. Sebastian, alas, is out of the question.  Who wants it? Quis? Would you like it, Cara? No, of course you would not. Cordelia? I think I shall leave it to Julia and Charles.’

‘Of course not, papa, it’s Bridey’s.’

‘And...Beryl’s? I will have Gregson down one day soon and go over the matter. It is time I brought my will up to date; it is full of anomalies and anachronisms...I have rather a fancy for the idea of installing Julia here; so beautiful this evening, my dear; so beautiful always; much, much more suitable.’

Shortly after this he sent to London for his solicitor, but, on the day he came, Lord Marchmain was suffering from an attack and would not see him. ‘Plenty of time,’ he said, between painful gasps for breath, ‘another day, when I am stronger,’ but the choice of his heir was constantly in his mind, and he referred often to the time when Julia and I should be married and in possession.

‘Do you think he really means to leave it to us?’ I asked Julia.

‘Yes, I think he does.’

‘But it’s monstrous for Bridey.’

‘Is it? I don’t think he cares much for the place. I do, you know. He and Beryl would be much more content in some little house somewhere.’ ‘You mean to accept it?’

‘Certainly. It’s papa’s to leave as he likes. I think you and I could be very happy here.’

It opened a prospect; the prospect one gained at the turn of the avenue, as I had first seen it with Sebastian, of the secluded valley, the lakes falling away one below the other, the old house in the foreground, the rest of the world abandoned and forgotten; a world of its own of peace and love and beauty; a soldier’s dream in a foreign bivouac; such a prospect perhaps as a high pinnacle of the temple afforded after the hungry days in the desert and the jackal-haunted nights. Need I reproach myself if sometimes I was taken by the vision?

The weeks of illness wore on and the life of the house kept pace with the faltering strength of the sick man. There were days when Lord Marchmain was dressed, when he stood at the window or moved on his valet’s arm from fire to fire through the rooms of the ground floor, when visitors came and went neighbours and people from the estate, men of business from London - parcels of new books were opened and discussed, a piano was moved into the Chinese drawing-room; once at the end of February, on a single, unexpected day of brilliant sunshine, he called for a car and got as far as the hall, had on his fur coat, and reached the front door. Then suddenly he lost interest in the drive, said ‘Not now. Later. One day in the summer,’ took his man’s arm again and was led back to his chair. Once he had the humour of changing his room and gave detailed orders for a move to the Painted Parlour; the chinoiserie, he said, disturbed his rest - he kept the lights full on at night - but again lost heart, countermanded everything, and kept his room.

On other days the house was hushed as he sat high in bed, propped by his pillows, with labouring breath; even then he wanted to have us round him; night or day he could not bear to be alone; when he could not speak his eyes followed us, and if anyone left the room he would look distressed, and Cara, sitting often for hours at a time by his side against the pillows with an arm in his, would say, ‘It’s all right, Alex, she’s coming back.’

Brideshead and his wife returned from their honeymoon and stayed a few nights; it was one of the bad times, and Lord Marchmain refused to have them near him. It was Beryl’s first visit, and she would have been unnatural if she had shown no curiosity about what had nearly been, and now again promised soon to be, her home. Beryl was natural enough, and surveyed the place fairly thoroughly in the days she was there. In the strange disorder caused by Lord Marchmain’s illness, it must have seemed capable of much improvement; she referred once or twice to the way in which establishments of similar size had been managed at various Government Houses she had visited.  Brideshead took her visiting among the tenants by day, and in the evenings, she talked to me of painting, or to Cordelia of hospitals, or to Julia of clothes, with cheerful assurance. The shadow of betrayal, the knowledge of how precarious were their just expectations, was all one-sided. I was not easy with them; but that was no new thing to Brideshead; in the little circle of shyness in which he was used to move, my guilt passed unseen.

Eventually it became clear that Lord Marchmain did not intend to see more of them.

Brideshead was admitted alone for a minute’s leave-taking; then they left.

‘There’s nothing we can do here,’ said Brideshead, ‘and it’s very distressing for Beryl.

We’ll come back if things get worse.’

The bad spells became longer and more frequent; a nurse was engaged. ‘I never saw such a room, ‘ she said, ‘nothing like it anywhere; ‘no conveniences of any sort.’ She tried to have her patient moved upstairs, where there was running water, a dressing-room for herself, a ‘sensible’ narrow bed she could ‘get round’ - what she was used to - but Lord Marchmain would not budge. Soon, as days and nights became indistinguishable to him, a second nurse was installed; the specialists came again from London; they recommended a new and rather daring treatment, but his body seemed weary of all drugs and did not respond. Presently there were no good spells, merely brief fluctuations in the speed of his decline.

Brideshead was called. It was the Easter holidays and Beryl was busy with her children. He came alone, and having stood silently for some minutes beside his father, who sat silently looking at him, he left the room and, joining the rest of us, who were in the library, said, ‘Papa must see a priest.’

It was not the first time the topic had come up. In the early days, when Lord Marchmain first arrived, the parish priest since the chapel was shut there was a new church and presbytery in Mel stead - had come to call as a matter of politeness. Cordelia had put him off with apologies and excuses, but when he was gone she said: ‘Not yet.  Papa doesn’t want him yet.’

Julia, Cara, and I were there at the time; we each had something to say, began to speak, and thought better of it. It was never mentioned between the four of us, but Julia, alone with me, said, ‘Charles, I see great Church troubles ahead.’ ‘Can’t they even let him die in peace?’

‘They mean something so different by “peace”.’

‘It would be an outrage. No one could have made it clearer, all his life, what he thought of religion. They’ll come now, when his mind’s wandering and he hasn’t the strength to resist, and claim him as a death-bed penitent. I’ve had a certain, respect for their Church up till now. If they do a thing like that I shall know that everything stupid people say about them is quite true - that it’s all superstition and trickery.’ Julia said nothing. ‘Don’t you agree?’ Still Julia said nothing. ‘Don’t you agree?’ ‘I don’t know, Charles. I simply don’t know.’

And, though none of us spoke of it, I felt the question ever present, growing through all the weeks of Lord Marchmain’s illness; I saw it when Cordelia drove off early in the mornings to mass; I saw it as Cara took to going with her; this little cloud, the size of a man’s hand, that was going to swell into a storm among us.  Now Brideshead, in his heavy, ruthless way, planted the problem down before us.

‘Oh, Bridey, do you think he would?’ asked Cordelia.

‘I shall see that he does, ‘ said Brideshead. ‘I shall take Father Mackay in to him tomorrow.’

Still the clouds gathered and did not break; none of us spoke. Cara and Cordelia went back to the sick-room; Brideshead looked for a book, found one, and left us.  ‘Julia,’ I said, ‘how can we stop this tomfoolery?’

She did not answer for some time; then: ‘Why should we.?’

‘You know as well as I do. It’s just -just an unseemly incident.’ ‘Who am I to object to unseemly incidents?’ she asked sadly. ‘Anyway, what harm can it do? Let’s ask the doctor.’

We asked the doctor, who said: ‘It’s hard to say. It might alarm him of course; on the other hand, I have known cases where it has had a wonderfully soothing effect on a patient; I’ve even known it act as a positive stimulant. It certainly is usually a great comfort to the relations. Really I think it’s a thing for Lord Brideshead to decide. Mind you, there is no need for immediate anxiety. Lord Marchmain is very weak today; tomorrow he may be quite strong again. Is it not usual to wait a little?’ ‘Well, he wasn’t much help,’ I said to Julia, when we left him.  ‘Help? I really can’t quite see why you’ve taken it so much to heart that my father shall not have the last sacraments.’

‘It’s such a lot of witchcraft and hypocrisy.’

‘Is it? Anyway, it’s been going on for nearly two thousand years. I don’t know why you should suddenly get in a rage now.’ Her voice rose; she was swift to anger of late months. ‘For Christ’s sake, write to The Times; get up and make a speech in Hyde Park; start a “No Popery” riot, but don’t bore me about it. What’s it got to do with you or me whether my father sees his parish priest?’

I knew these fierce moods of Julia’s, such as had overtaken her at the fountain in moonlight, and dimly surmised their origin; I knew they could not be assuaged by words. Nor could I have spoken, for the answer to her question was still unformed; the sense that the fate of more souls than one was at issue; that the snow was beginning to shift on the high slopes.

Brideshead and I breakfasted together next morning with the night-nurse, who had just come off duty.

‘He’s much brighter today,’ she said. ‘He slept very nicely for nearly three hours.

When Gaston came to shave him he was quite chatty.’ ‘Good,’ said Brideshead. ‘Cordelia went to mass. She’s driving Father Mackay back here to breakfast.’

I had met Father Mackay several times; he was a stocky, middle-aged, genial Glasgow-Irishman who, when we met, was apt to ask me such questions as, ‘Would you say now, Mr Ryder, that the painter Titian was more truly artistic than the painter Raphael?’ and, more disconcertingly still, to remember my answers: ‘To revert, Mr Ryder, to what you said when last I had the pleasure to meet you, would it be right now to say that the painter Titian...’ usually ending with some such reflection as: ‘Ah, it’s a grand resource for a man to have the talent you have, Mr Ryder, and the time to indulge it.’ Cordelia could imitate him.

This morning he made a hearty breakfast, glanced at the headlines of the paper, and then said with professional briskness: ‘And now, Lord Brideshead, would the poor soul be ready to see me, do you think?’

Brideshead led him out; Cordelia followed, and I was left alone among the breakfast things. In less than a minute I heard the voices of all three outside the door.  ‘...can only apologize.’

‘...poor soul. Mark you, it was seeing a strange face; depend upon it, it was that - an unexpected stranger. I well understand it.’

‘...Father, I am sorry...bringing you all this way...’

‘Don’t think about it at all, Lady Cordelia. Why, I’ve had bottles thrown at me in the Gorbals...Give him time. I’ve known worse cases make beautiful deaths. Pray for him...I’ll come again...and now if you’ll excuse me I’ll just pay a little visit to Mrs Hawkins. Yes, indeed, I know the way well.’

Then Cordelia and Brideshead came into the room.

‘I gather the visit was not a success.’

‘It was not. Cordelia, will you drive Father Mackay home when he comes down from nanny? I’m going to telephone to Beryl and see when she needs me home.’ ‘Bridey, it was horrible. What are we to do?’

‘We’ve done everything we can at the moment.’ He left the room.  Cordelia’s face was grave; she took a piece of bacon from the dish, dipped it in mustard and ate it. ‘Damn Bridey,’ she said, ‘I knew it wouldn’t work.’ ‘What happened?’

‘Would you like to know? We walked in there in a line; Cara was reading the paper aloud to papa. Bridey said, “I’ve brought Father Mackay to see you”; papa said, “Father Mackay, I am afraid you have been brought here under a misapprehension. I am not in extremis, and I have not been a practising member of your Church for twenty-five years.  Brideshead, show Father Mackay the way out.” Then we all turned about and walked away, and I heard Cara start reading the paper again, and that, Charles, was that.’ I carried the news to Julia, who lay with her bed-table amid a litter of newspapers and envelopes. ‘Mumbo-jumbo is off,’ I said. ‘The witch-doctor has gone.’



‘Poor papa.’

‘It’s great sucks to Bridey.’

I felt triumphant. I had been right, everyone else had been wrong, truth had prevailed; the threat that I had felt hanging over Julia and me ever since that evening at the fountain, had been averted, perhaps dispelled for ever; and there was also - I can now confess it - another unexpressed, inexpressible, indecent little victory that I was furtively celebrating. I guessed that that morning’s business had put Brideshead some considerable way further from his rightful inheritance.  In that I, was correct; a man was sent for from the solicitors in London; in a day or two he came and it was known throughout the house that Lord Marchmain had made a new will. But I was wrong in thinking that the religious controversy was quashed; it flamed up again after dinner on Brideshead’s last evening.

‘...What papa said was, “I am not in extremis, I have not been a practising member of the Church for twenty-five years.” ‘

‘Not “the Church”, “your Church”.’

‘I don’t see the difference.’

‘There’s every difference.’

‘Bridey, it’s quite plain what he meant.’

‘I presume he meant what he said. He meant that he had not been accustomed regularly to receive the sacraments, and since he was not at the moment dying, he did not mean to change his ways - yet.’

‘That’s simply a quibble.’

‘Why do people always think that one is quibbling when one tries to be precise? His plain meaning was that he did not want to see a priest that day, but that he would when he was “in extremis”.’

‘I wish someone would explain to me,’ I said, ‘quite what the significance of these sacraments is. Do you mean that if he dies alone he goes to hell, and that if a priest puts oil on him - ‘ ‘Oh, it’s not the oil,’ said Cordelia, ‘that’s to heal him.’ ‘Odder still - well, whatever it is the priest does - that he then goes to heaven. Is that what you believe?’

Cara then interposed: ‘I think my nurse told me, someone did anyway, that if the priest got there before the body was cold it was all right. That’s so, isn’t it?’ The others turned to her.

‘No, Cara, it’s not.’

‘Of course not.’

‘You’ve got it all wrong, Cara.’

‘Well, I remember when Alphonse de Grenet died, Madame de Grenet had a priest hidden outside the door - he couldn’t bear the sight of a priest - and brought him in before the body was cold; she told me herself, and they had a full Requiem for him, and I went to it.’

‘Having a Requiem doesn’t mean you go to heaven necessarily.’

‘Madame de Grenet thought it did.’

‘Well, she was wrong.’

‘Do any of you Catholics know what good you think this priest can do?’ I asked. ‘Do you simply want to arrange it so that your father can have Christian burial? Do you want to keep him out of hell? I only want to be told.’

Brideshead told me at some length, and when he had finished Cara slightly marred the unity of the Catholic front by saying in simple wonder, ‘I never heard that before.’



‘Let’s get this clear,’ I said; ‘he has to make an act of will; he has to be contrite and wish to be reconciled; is that right? But only God knows whether he has really made an act of will; the priest can’t tell; and if there isn’t a priest there, and he makes the act of will alone, that’s as good as if there were a priest. And it’s quite possible that the will may still be working when a man is too weak to make any outward sign of it; is that right? He may be lying, as though for dead, and willing all the time, and being reconciled, and God understands that; is that right?’

‘More or less, ‘ said Brideshead.

‘Well, for heaven’s sake.’ I said, ‘what is the priest for?’ There was a pause in which Julia sighed and Brideshead drew breath as though to start further subdividing the propositions. In the silence Cara said, ‘All I know is that I shall take very good care to have a priest.’

‘Bless you,’ said Cordelia, ‘I believe that’s the best answer.’ And we let the argument drop, each for different reasons, thinking it had been inconclusive.

Later Julia said: ‘I wish you wouldn’t start these religious arguments.’

‘I didn’t start it.’

‘You don’t convince anyone else and you don’t really convince yourself.’

‘I only want to know what these people believe. They say it’s all based on logic.’

‘If you’d let Bridey finish, he would have made it all quite logical.’

‘There were four of you,’ I said. ‘Cara didn’t know the first thing it was about, and may or may not have believed it; you knew a bit and didn’t believe a word; Cordelia knew about as much and believed it madly; only poor Bridey knew and believed, and I thought he made a pretty poor show when it came to explaining. And people go round saying, “At least Catholics know what they believe.” We had a fair cross-section tonight - ‘

‘Oh, Charles, don’t rant. I shall begin to think you’re getting doubts yourself.’

The weeks passed and still Lord Marchmain lived on. In June my divorce was made absolute and my former wife married for the second time. Julia would be free in September. The nearer our marriage got, the more wistfully, I noticed, Julia spoke of it; war was growing nearer, too - we neither of us doubted that - but Julia’s tender, remote, it sometimes seemed, desperate longing did not come from any uncertainty outside herself; it suddenly darkened, too, into brief accesses of hate when she seemed to throw herself against the restraints of her love for me like a caged animal against the bars.  I was summoned to the War Office, interviewed, and put on a list in case of emergency; Cordelia also, on another list; lists were becoming part of our lives once more, as they had been at school. Everything was being got ready for the coming ‘Emergency’. No one in that dark office spoke the word ‘war’; it was taboo; we should be called for if there was ‘an emergency’ - not in case of strife, an act of human will; nothing so clear and simple as wrath or retribution; an emergency- something coming out of the waters, a monster with sightless face and thrashing tail thrown up from the depths.

Lord Marchmain took little interest in events outside his own room; we took him the papers daily and made the attempt to read to him, but he turned his head on the pillows and with his eyes followed the intricate patterns about him. ‘Shall I go on?’ ‘Please do if it’s not boring you.’ But he was not listening; occasionally at a familiar name he would whisper: ‘Irwin...I knew him - a mediocre fellow’; occasionally some remote comment:

‘Czechs make good coachmen; nothing else’; but his mind was far from world affairs; it was there, on the spot, turned in on himself; he had no strength for any other war than his own solitary struggle to keep alive.

I said to the doctor, who was with us daily. ‘He’s got a wonderful will to live, hasn’t he?’

‘Would you put it like that? I should say a great fear of death.’

‘Is there a difference?’

‘Oh dear, yes. He doesn’t derive any strength from his fear, you know. It’s wearing him out.’

Next to death, perhaps because they are like death, he feared darkness and loneliness.  He liked to have us in his room and the lights burnt all night among the gilt figures; he did not wish us to speak much, but he talked himself, so quietly that we often could not hear him; he talked, I think, because his was the only voice he could trust, when it assured him that he was still alive; what he said was not for us, nor for any ears but his own.

‘Better today. Better today. I can see now, in the comer of the fireplace, where the mandarin is holding his gold bell and the crooked tree is in flower below his feet, where yesterday I was confused and took the little tower for another man. Soon I shall see the bridge and the three storks and know where the path leads over the hill.  ‘Better tomorrow. We live long in our family and marry late. Seventy-three is no great age. Aunt Julia, my father’s aunt, lived to be eighty-eight, born and died here, never married, saw the fire on beacon hill for the battle of Trafalgar, always called it “the New House”; that was the name they had for it in the nursery and in the fields when unlettered men had long memories. You can see where the old house stood near the village church; they call the field “Castle Hill”, Horlick’s field where the ground’s uneven and half of it is waste, nettle, and brier in hollows too deep for ploughing. They dug to the foundations to carry the stone for the new house; the house that was a century old when Aunt Julia was born. Those were our roots in the waste hollows of Castle Hill, in the brier and nettle; among the tombs in the old church and the chantry where no clerk sings.

‘Aunt Julia knew the tombs, cross-legged knight and doubleted earl, marquis like a Roman senator, limestone, alabaster, and Italian marble; tapped the escutcheons with her ebony cane, made the casque ring over old Sir Roger. We were knights then, barons since Agincourt, the larger honours came with the Georges. They came the last and they’ll go the first; the barony goes on. When all of you are dead Julia’s son will be called by the name his fathers bore before the fat days; the days of wool shearing and the wide corn lands, the days of growth and building, when the marshes were drained and the waste land brought under the plough, when one built the house, his son added the dome, his son spread the wings and dammed the river. Aunt Julia watched them build the fountain; it was old before it came here, weathered two hundred years by the suns of Naples, brought by man-o’-war in the days of Nelson. Soon the fountain will be dry till the rain fills it, setting the fallen leaves afloat in the basin; and over the lakes the reeds will spread and close. Better today.

‘Better today. I have lived carefully, sheltered myself from the cold winds, eaten moderately of what was in season, drunk fine claret, slept in my own sheets; I shall live long. I was fifty when they dismounted us and sent us into the line; old men stay at the base, the orders said, but Walter Venables, my commanding officer, my nearest neighbour, said: “You’re as fit as the youngest of them, Alex.” So I was; so I am now, if I could only breathe.

‘No air; no wind stirring under the velvet canopy. When the summer comes,’ said

Lord Marchmain, oblivious of the deep corn and swelling fruit and the surfeited bees who slowly sought their hives in the heavy afternoon sunlight outside his windows, ‘when the summer comes I shall leave my bed and sit in the open air and breathe more easily.

‘Who would have thought that all these little gold men, gentlemen in their own country, could live so long without breathing? Like to toads in the coal, down a deep mine, untroubled. God take it, why have they dug a hole for me? Must a man stifle to death in his own cellars? Plender, Gaston, open the windows.’ ‘The windows are all wide open, my lord.’

A cylinder of oxygen was placed beside his bed, with a long tube, a face-piece, and a little stop-cock he could work himself. Often he said: ‘It’s empty- look nurse, there’s nothing comes out.’

‘No, Lord Marchmain, it’s quite full; the bubble here in the glass bulb shows that; it’s at full pressure; listen, don’t you hear it hiss? Try and breathe slowly, Lord Marchmain; quite gently, then you get the benefit.’

‘Free as air; that’s what they say - “free as air”. Now they bring me my air in an iron barrel.’

Once he said: ‘Cordelia, what became of the chapel?’

‘They locked it up, papa, when mummy died.’

‘It was hers, I gave it to her. We’ve always been builders in our family. I built it for her; in the shade of the pavilion; rebuilt with the old stones behind the old walls; it was the last of the new house to come, the first to go. There used to be a chaplain until the war. Do you remember him?’

‘I was too young.’

‘Then I went away - left her in the chapel praying. It was hers. It was the place for her. I never came back to disturb her prayers. They said we were fighting for freedom; I had my own victory. Was it a crime?’

‘I think it was, papa.’

‘Crying to heaven for vengeance? Is that why they’ve locked me in this cave, do you think, with a black tube of air and the little yellow men along the walls, who live without breathing? Do you think that, child? But the wind will come soon, tomorrow perhaps, and we’ll breathe again. The ill wind that will blow me good. Better tomorrow.’ Thus, till mid-July, Lord Marchmain lay dying, wearing himself down in the struggle to-live. Then, since there was no reason to expect an immediate change, Cordelia went to London to see her women s organization about the coming ‘emergency’. That day Lord Marchmain became suddenly worse. He lay silent and quite still, breathing laboriously; only his open eyes, which sometimes moved about the room, gave any sign of consciousness.

‘Is this the end?’ Julia asked.

‘It is impossible to say,’ the doctor answered; ‘when he does die it will probably be like this. He may recover from the present attack. The only thing is not to disturb him.  The least shock will be fatal.’

‘I’m going for Father Mackay,’ she said.

I was not surprised. I had seen it in her mind all the summer. When she had gone I said to the doctor, ‘We must stop this nonsense.’

He said: ‘My business is with the body. It’s not my business to argue whether people are better alive or dead, or what happens to them after death. I only try to keep them alive.’

‘And you said just now any shock would kill him. What could be worse for a man who fears death, as he does, than to have a priest brought to him - a priest he turned out when he had the strength?’



‘I think it may kill him.’

‘Then will you forbid it?’

‘I’ve no authority to forbid anything. I can only give my opinion.’

‘Cara, what do you think?’

‘I don’t want him made unhappy. That is all there is to hope for now; that he’ll die without knowing it. But I should like the priest there, all the same.’ ‘Will you try and persuade Julia to keep him away - until the end? After that he can do no harm.’

‘I will ask her to leave Alex happy, yes.’

In half an hour Julia was back with Father Mackay. We all met in the library.  ‘I’ve telegraphed for Bridey and Cordelia,’ I said. ‘I hope you agree that nothing must be done till they arrive.’

‘I wish they were here, ‘ said Julia.

‘You can’t take the responsibility alone,’ I said; ‘everyone else is against you. Doctor Grant, tell her what you said to me just now.’

‘I said that the shock of seeing a priest might well kill him; without that he may survive this attack. As his medical man I must protest against anything being done to disturb him.’

‘Cara?’

‘Julia, dear, I know you are thinking for the best, but, you know, Alex was not a religious man. He scoffed always. We mustn’t take advantage of him, now he’s weak, to comfort our own consciences. If Father Mackay comes to him when he is unconscious, then he can be buried in the proper way, can he not, Father?’ ‘I’ll go and see how he is, ‘ said the doctor, leaving us.

‘Father Mackay,’ I said. ‘You know how Lord Marchmain greeted you last time you came; do you think it possible he can have changed now?’ ‘Thank God, by his grace it is possible.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Cara, ‘you could slip in while he is sleeping, say the words of absolution over him; he would never know.’

‘I have seen so many men and women die,’ said the priest; ‘I never knew them sorry to have me there at the end.’

‘But they were Catholics; Lord Marchmain has never been one except in name - at any rate, not for years. He was a scoffer, Cara said so.’ ‘Christ came to call, not the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’

The doctor returned. ‘There’s no change,’ he said.

‘Now doctor,’ said the priest, ‘how would I be a shock to anyone?’ He turned his bland, innocent, matter-of-fact face first on the doctor, then upon the rest of us. ‘Do you know what I want to do? It is something so small, no show about it. I don’t wear special clothes, you know. I go just as I am. He knows the look of me now. There’s nothing alarming. I just want to ask him if he is sorry for his sins. I want him to make some little sign of assent; I want him, anyway, not to refuse me; then I want to give him God’s pardon. Then, though that’s not essential, I want to anoint him. It is nothing, a touch of the fingers, just some oil from this little box, look it is nothing to hurt him.’ ‘Oh, Julia,’ said Cara, ‘what are we to say? Let me speak to him.’ She went to the Chinese drawing-room; we waited in silence; there was a wall of fire between Julia and me. Presently Cara returned.

‘I don’t think he heard,’ she said. ‘I thought I knew how to put it to him. I said: “’Alex, you remember the priest from Melstead. You were very naughty when he came to see you. You hurt his feelings very much. Now he’s here again. I want you to see him just

for my sake, to make friends.” But he didn’t answer. If he’s unconscious, it couldn’t make him unhappy to see the priest, could it, doctor?’ Julia, who had been standing still and silent, suddenly moved.  ‘Thank you for your advice, doctor,’ she said. ‘I take full responsibility for whatever happens. Father Mackay, will you please come and see my father now,’ and without looking at me, led him to the door.

We all followed. Lord Marchmain was lying as I had seen him that morning, but his eyes were now shut; his hands lay, palms upwards, above the bed-clothes; the nurse had her fingers on the pulse of one of them. ‘Come in,’ she said brightly, ‘you won’t disturb him now.’

‘D’you mean...’

‘No, no, but he’s past noticing anything.’

She held the oxygen apparatus to his face and the hiss of escaping gas was the only sound at the bedside.

The priest bent over Lord Marchmain and blessed him. Julia and Cara knelt at the foot of the bed. The doctor, the nurse, and I stood behind them.  ‘Now,’ said the priest, ‘I know you are sorry for all the sins of your life, aren’t you?  Make a sign, if you can. You’re sorry, aren’t you?’ But there was no sign. ‘Try and remember your sins; tell God you are sorry. I am going to give you absolution. While I am giving it, tell God you are sorry you have offended him.’ He began to speak in Latin.  I recognized the words ‘ego te absolvo in nomine Patris...’ and saw the priest make the sign of the cross. Then I knelt, too, and prayed: ‘O God,.if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such thing as sin,’ and the man on the bed opened his eyes and gave a sigh, the sort of sigh I had imagined people made at the moment of death, but his eyes moved so that we knew there was still life in him.

I suddenly felt the longing for a sign, if only of courtesy, if only for the sake of the woman I loved, who knelt in front of me, praying, I knew, for a sign. It seemed so small a thing that was asked, the bare acknowledgement of a present, a nod in the crowd. I prayed more simply; ‘God forgive him his sins’ and ‘Please God, make him accept your forgiveness.’

So small a thing to ask.

The priest took the little silver box from his pocket and spoke again in Latin, touching the dying man with an oil wad; he finished what he had to do, put away the box and gave the final blessing. Suddenly Lord Marchmain moved his hand to his forehead; I thought he had felt the touch of the chrism and was wiping it away. ‘O God,’ I prayed, ‘don’t let him do that.’ But there was no need for fear; the hand moved slowly down his breast, then to his shoulder, and Lord Marchmain made the sign of the cross.  Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.

It was over; we stood up; the nurse went back to the oxygen cylinder; the doctor bent over his patient. Julia whispered to me: ‘Will you see Father Mackay out? I’m staying here for a little.’

Outside the door Father Mackay became the simple, genial man I had known before.  ‘Well, now, and that was a beautiful thing to me. I’ve known it happen that way again and again. The devil resists to the last moment and then the Grace of God is too much for him. You’re not a Catholic I think, Mr Ryder, but at least you’ll be glad for the ladies to have the comfort of it.’

As we were waiting for the chauffeur, it occurred to me that Father Mackay should be paid for his services. I asked him awkwardly. ‘Why, don’t think about it, Mr Ryder. It was a pleasure,’ he said, ‘but anything you care to give is useful in a parish like mine.’.I found I had three pounds in my note-case and gave them to him. ‘Why, indeed, that’s more than generous. God bless you, Mr Ryder. I’ll call again, but I don’t think the poor soul has 1ong for this world.’

Julia remained in the Chinese drawing-room until, at five o’clock that evening, her father died proving both, sides right in the dispute, priest and doctor.

Thus I come to the broken sentences which were the last words spoken between Julia and me, the last memories.

When her father died Julia remained some minutes with his body; the nurse came to the next room to announce the news and I had a glimpse of her through the open door, kneeling at the foot of the bed, and of Cara sitting by her. Presently the two women came out together, and Julia said to me: ‘Not now; I’m just taking Cara up to her room; later.’

While she was still upstairs Brideshead and Cordelia arrived from London; when at last we met alone it was by stealth, like young lovers.

Julia said: ‘Here in the shadow, in the corner of the stair - a minute to say good-bye.’

‘So long to say so little.’

‘You knew?’

‘Since this morning; since before this morning; all this year.’ ‘I didn’t know till today. Oh, my dear, if you could only understand. Then I could bear to part, or bear it better. I should say my heart was breaking, if I believed in broken hearts. I can’t marry you, Charles; I can’t be with you ever again.’ ‘I know.’

‘How can you know?’

‘What will you do?’

‘Just go on - alone. How can I tell what I shall do? You know the whole of me. You know I’m not one for a life of mourning. I’ve always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can’t shut myself out from his mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without him. One can only hope to see one step ahead. But I saw today there was one thing unforgivable - like things in the school-room, so bad they were unpunishable, that only mummy could deal with - the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I’m not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God’s. Why should I be allowed to understand that, and not you, Charles? It may be because of mummy, nanny, Cordelia, Sebastian - perhaps Bridey and Mrs Muspratt - keeping my name in their prayers; or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, he won’t quite despair of me in the end.

‘Now we shall both be alone, and I shall have no way of making you understand.’ ‘I don’t want to make it easier for you,’ I said; ‘I hope your heart may break; but I do understand.’

The avalanche was down, the hillside swept barebehind it; the last echoes died on the white slopes; the new mound glittered and lay still in the silent valley.

我的离婚案，或者毋宁说是我妻子的离婚案预定开审的时间大约和布赖兹赫德举行婚礼的时间相同。朱莉娅的离婚案要等到下一个开庭期才会提交审理；就在这时，大搬家的游戏全面开始了——我的东西从教区长旧宅搬到我的寓所，我妻子的东西从我的寓所搬到教区长旧宅，朱莉娅的东西从雷克斯的住宅并从布赖兹赫德搬到我的那套房间里，雷克斯的从布赖兹赫德搬到他的住宅，马斯普拉特夫人的从法尔默斯搬到布赖兹赫德——我们所有的人，程度不同地都无家可归了，这时候突然有人命令“停止”，因为显然是他长子行动楷模的、喜欢采取戏剧性的不合时宜行动的马奇梅因勋爵突然宣布，由于当前国际局势动乱，他打算回到英国，在家乡度过晚年。

这个家庭中，唯一会从大变动中得到好处的人就是科迪莉娅了，在这场喧闹中她可怜地受到冷落。布赖兹赫德的确曾向她正式提出过请她把他的住宅当作她自己的家，只要她愿意，但是听见她嫂子打算在婚礼之后立刻就要把她的孩子们安顿在布赖兹赫德庄园，让她的一个姐妹和她的朋友来照管，科迪莉娅就决定搬出去，而且说要独自住在伦敦。这时，她发现自己竟如灰姑娘一样，被提升为大别墅的女主人，而她的哥哥和嫂子一直指望他们自己几天之内就要成为庄园的主人，现在却成了上无片瓦下无立锥之地的人了；已经正式写成只等签字的庄园转让文契这时只好卷扎起来存放在林肯酒馆的一只黑铁皮箱子里。这件事真够让马斯普拉特夫人心酸的，她并非一个野心勃勃的女人，其实别的比布赖兹赫德规模小得多的地方也能够使她心满意足，她衷心希望的无非是给孩子们找到一处过圣诞节的藏身处罢了。现在，法尔默斯那所房子都已经搬空了，准备出卖；而且，马斯普拉特夫人已经向邻居告别了，同时无可非议地谈论了一番新居的阔气；他们不可能回到旧居去。马斯普拉特夫人不得不匆匆把她的家具从马奇梅因夫人的住房里搬到一个久已废弃的马车房里，又在托尔奎租了一套带家具的别墅。正如我说过的，她并不是个野心很大的女人，可是她自己的种种希望既然一度提到如此高的程度，而一下子却落到如此地步，也真叫她狼狈不堪了。村子里那一伙原来为准备迎接新娘进门而进行装饰工作的工人们，此时已经着手拆下旗帜上的Bs徽记，换上了Ms徽记，并且抹去了彩色花冠上标志着伯爵勋位的尖状物，再印上花球和草莓叶子，以此准备迎接马奇梅因勋爵归来。

有关马奇梅因勋爵种种计划的消息，通过一连串纷至沓来的自相矛盾的海底电报先到私人律师们那里，接着到科迪莉娅手里，然后到朱莉娅和我手里。马奇梅因勋爵将按时来参加婚礼；他将在婚礼之后抵达，因为在布赖兹赫德勋爵和夫人途经巴黎时他已和他们见过面；他将在罗马见到他们。他的身体不佳，完全不适于旅行；他正要启程；冬天的布赖兹赫德留给他十分不愉快的印象，因此要等到春暖花开，供暖设备彻底检修完才回来；他单独一个人回来；他要带他那位意大利同居者同回；他希望他归来不向外界公布，他要过与世隔绝的生活；他将要举行一次舞会。直到最后他才选定了在一月里的一个日子到家，后来证明这个日期是准确的。

普伦德比他提前几天到达，出现了一点纠葛。普伦德并不是布赖兹赫德宅子里的老班底；他原来在义勇骑兵队给马奇梅因勋爵当随从，在搬主人行李的一个狼狈场合下才同威尔科克斯见过一面，当时他已经决定打完仗不回家了；普伦德一直就是个贴身男仆，这一向是他的正式身分，不过在过去几年里，他引荐了一位副监督之类的人物，是一个瑞士侍从，让他料理勋爵的服装，而且每当事到临头，也帮着干一些家里有失身分的活儿，因此事实上，成了这个动荡不定四处漂流的家庭的总管家了；有时他甚至还在电话里自称是“秘书”。在他和威尔科克斯之间横着一大片薄冰。

幸而这两个人互相很投合，再加上有科迪莉娅参加的一系列三边商讨，问题也得到了解决。普伦德和威尔科克斯成为共同的贴身侍从，就像“近卫骑兵”和“英王卫队”一样，地位完全平等，普伦德把爵爷的私人房间当作专管领域，而威尔科克斯的势力范围是公用房间；那个资格较老的仆人得到一件黑上衣，并且提升为主管酒类、膳食的男仆；那个难以安排的瑞士人到来的时候，将穿上便衣，并且完全享受贴身男仆的待遇；薪水也普遍提高了，使之和新的显要职位相称，结果皆大欢喜。

一个月前我和朱莉娅已经离开了布赖兹赫德，由于考虑到我们不会再到那个地方，所以就又回来为马奇梅因勋爵接风洗尘。到那一天，科迪莉娅去火车站，我们则留在家迎接他。天气阴沉沉的，刮着阵风。村舍农户也都装饰起来了；原本打算在这个晚上举行营火晚会并请乡村银管乐队在平台上演奏的计划就被取消了，可是那面二十五年之久没有飘扬过的家族徽旗却在山墙上凌空升起，在铅灰色天空衬托下飘动着。不管什么粗糙刺耳的声音朝着中欧的麦克风里嘶喊，不管什么兵工厂里的车床正在飞速旋转，可是马奇梅因勋爵重归故里却是邻居乡里们的头等大事。

马奇梅因勋爵定于三点到达。我和朱莉娅在客厅里等候着，直到和车站站长早有安排，一直通着消息的威尔科克斯宣布“火车已经发出进站信号了”，一分钟以后又宣布，“火车已经进站了；爵爷已经上路了”。后来我们就去了前院的门廊，和管家们在那里等候着。不久那辆劳斯莱斯牌轿车在车道拐弯的地方出现了，后面不远跟着两辆行李车。汽车停了下来；科迪莉娅先钻出车来，接着是卡拉；随后是片刻停顿，只见有一块小毛毯递给了汽车司机，一根手杖递给了男仆；这时才有一条腿小心翼翼地伸出来。普伦德此时已经站在车门旁了；另一个仆人——那个瑞士贴身男仆——也从一辆货车里出现了；他们俩合力把马奇梅因勋爵抬了出来，让他站稳；他摸索着好他的手杖，紧紧抓住，然后站了足足有一分钟，缓一口气，好走上通前门的那几级低矮的台阶。

朱莉娅发出了一声轻微的惊叹声，碰了碰我的手。九个月以前我们曾经在蒙特卡洛进到过他，当时他依然腰板挺直，气概庄严，比起我在威尼斯初见他时变化很少。这时候他却变得老态龙钟了。普伦德跟我们说起过他的主人近来身体十分不好；但是他并没有使我们对此事做好思想准备。

马奇梅因勋爵弓着腰，缩成一团站在那里，那件厚大衣沉重地压在身上，脖子上随随便便地围着一条白围巾，一顶布帽子低低地戴在前额上，他脸色苍白，布满皱纹，鼻子冻得通红；他的眼睛里凝聚着泪水，但并不是由于激动，而是由于被东风吹的，他费力地喘着气。卡拉替他塞好围巾，小声跟他说了几句话。他抬起一只戴着手套的手——那种中学生戴的灰色羊毛手套——向聚在门口的人群做了个有气无力的手势；然后，他非常缓慢地，眼睛盯着脚底下，走进了屋里。

大家给他脱去大衣、帽子、围巾，还有穿在里面的紧身皮上衣。脱掉了这些东西，他似乎愈发瘦骨伶仃，但是更显得风度优雅；他那种疲惫不堪和寒酸狼狈的样子没有了。卡拉把他的领带弄弄直；他用一块印花大手帕擦了擦眼睛，然后又拄着手杖蹒跚地走到前厅的壁炉跟前。

壁炉架旁边有一把印有纹章的小椅子，是靠墙摆着的一套椅子中的一把，这套不宜于用来招待客人的平底小椅，仅仅由于椅背上画上精致的纹章图样这种理由，这套椅子自从做出来以后也许就没有人、甚至连瘦弱的仆人也没有坐过；马奇梅因勋爵坐在上面擦擦眼睛。

“是冷风吹的，”他说，“我都忘了英国有多么冷啦。真让我招架不住。”

“您要什么东西吗，老爷？”

“什么也不要，谢谢。卡拉，那些讨厌的丸药在什么地方？”

“亚力克斯，医生说过一天用量不能超过三次。”

“该死的医生，我觉得都招架不住啦。”

卡拉从提包里取出一个蓝色的药瓶，马奇梅因勋爵吃了一片药。不管药瓶里装的是什么药，反正似乎让他恢复过来了。他一直坐着，长腿伸向前面，手杖夹在两腿中间，下巴顶在象牙手柄上，不过这时他开始注意到我们大家，一边和我们打招呼，一边吩咐事情。

“恐怕今天我身体很不舒服；这趟旅行简直弄得我散架啦。本来该在多佛住上一夜的。威尔科克斯，你给我准备的是哪些房间啊？”

“您原来住的那些，老爷。”

“不行；等我缓过劲儿来再说。楼梯太多。只能住在一楼。普伦德，在楼下给我搭一张床。”

普伦德和威尔科克斯不安地互相看了一眼。

“是，老爷。我们把床放进哪一间屋子呢？”

马奇梅因勋爵思索了片刻。“就在那间中国式客厅；还有，威尔科克斯，我要那张‘王后的床’。”

“中国式客厅，老爷，还有那张‘王后的床’？”

“对，对。我也许要在那间房里住上几个星期。”

中国式客厅是我从来没有看见使用过的房间；而实际上除了门口被绳子围起来的那块不大的地方以外，谁也不能够跨进一步，在这所宅院向公众开放的时候，游客们就在那块围起来的小地方向里面张望一番；这是一间富丽堂皇而不适于居住的博物馆，里面都是齐彭代尔的木刻家具，瓷器，漆盘，还有各种彩绘的挂毯；王后的床也是一件供展览的东西，那顶巨大的丝绒床幔像圣彼得大教堂祭坛上的华盖。我很奇怪，马奇梅因勋爵是在离开阳光灿烂的意大利之前就想好了让自己像这样供人瞻仰遗容呢？还是在他漫长的、恼人的凄风苦雨的旅途中想起了这件事？还是由于这时在他身上苏醒了一种儿时的回忆，一个在育婴室里的旧梦——“当我长大后要在中国式客厅里的王后的床上睡一睡”——这种成年人威严的神圣化呢？

当然，几乎没有事情能在家里搅得更鸡犬不宁了。原来以为不过是一番仪式罢了，但这一天结果却累得大家死去活来。女仆们开始生火，取走床罩等物，铺上亚麻床单；围着围裙从来没有正式露过面的男仆们把家具移走；招集了领地的木匠们把那张床拆卸开。整个下去，拆散了的大床部分分批搬到了主楼楼梯下；洛可可式的巨大部件；覆盖着丝绒的横楣；那些构成床杆的扭曲的、镀金的、包着丝绒的床柱子；没有抛光的原木做的桁条，在帷幕下面起着看不见的床架的作用；染了色的羽毛饰物从镀金的鸵鸟蛋中伸展出来，形成了华盖；最后是四个床垫，每个要用四个壮劳力才抬得动。马奇梅因勋爵似乎从他的狂想造成的结果中得到不少乐趣；他坐在壁炉旁，看人们忙成一团，这时我们——卡拉、科迪莉娅、朱莉娅和我——站成半圆形陪他说话。

他的脸颊上有了血色，眼睛一也有了光彩。“布赖兹赫德和他的妻子同我在罗马一起吃了饭，”他说道，“既然我们都是家里人”——他的眼睛揶揄地从卡拉身上移到我身上——“所以我可以畅所欲言了。我发现她样子可悲。我了解到，她的前夫原来是一位航海的人，看起来，为人并不很苛刻刁钻，可是我的儿子，正当三十八岁的壮年，除非情形发生了很大变化，可以随意挑选英国女人中的一个，怎么竟决定了——大概我得这么称呼她吧——决定了选贝里尔呢……”他故意意味深长地让这句话没有说完。

马奇梅因勋爵显然不愿意再挪动地方了，所以过了一会儿我们就把那些椅子——那些印有纹章的小椅子拖过来，因为客厅里别的东西都太笨重了——然后围着他坐下来。

“我相信要等夏天来了我才会真正健康起来，”他说道，“我可盼着你们四个让我高兴高兴哩。”

在这样的时刻，我们似乎毫无办法来减轻这种相当阴暗的心情。他在我们这些人中竟是兴致最高的人。“给我讲讲，”他说道，“布赖兹赫德求婚的过程。”

我们把知道的情况告诉了他。

“火柴盒子啊，”他说，“火柴盒子。我想她已经过了生育年龄了吧。”

仆人把茶点端到了客厅的壁炉前。
“在意大利，”他说，“谁也不相信会有战争。他们认为事情可以‘安排’好。朱莉娅，我想你再也没有门径听到政治方面的消息了吧？卡拉在这儿由于婚姻关系，幸运地成为英国臣民了。这件事情她不习惯提到，不过也许事实证明这件事是有价值的。在法律上她是希克斯太太，是吧，亲爱的？我们简直不了解希克斯这个人。不过我们仍然要感谢他的，如果爆发一场战争的话。还有你，”他说着把矛头指向了我，“无疑你会成为一个正式的画家吧？”
“不会的。事实上我现在正在特别预备队里谋一个职位呢。”

“噢，可是你应该成为一名艺术家。上次大战期间在我原来的那个连队就有一个，他和我们在一起待了几个星期——直到我们上了前线。”

像这样尖酸刻薄的话是新鲜的。我常常觉察到，在他的温文尔雅下面掩盖着一种恶意；现在这种恶意就像他那塌陷皮肤下面的嶙峋骨头一样破皮欲出。

床还没有弄好天就已经黑了；我们都过去看看弄得怎么样了，这时马奇梅因勋爵步履轻松地穿过中间隔着的房间走过来。

“我祝贺你。它看起来实在好极了。威尔科克斯，我记得似乎还有一个银脸盆和一个银水壶——这些东西放在一间我们称为‘主教化妆室’的房间里，我想——让我们把这些东西放在这儿的架子上吧。还有，请你把普伦德和加斯顿派到我这儿来，行李什么的可以等到明天再说——只需要那个化妆盒子和晚上需用的东西。普伦德知道的，如果你让普伦德和加斯顿留下的话，我可要上床睡觉了。我们以后再见；你们到这儿来吃晚饭，好让我开开心。”

我们都转身走了；当我走到门口时他把我叫住了。

“这张床样子非常不错吧？”

“非常不错。”

“你可以把它画下来，哦——就把它叫做灵床怎么样？”


“不错，”卡拉说，“他回家来就是准备死的。”

“可是他刚到的时候还那么满怀信心地谈到恢复健康呢。”

“这是因为他病得很厉害了。当他处在正常的状态中的时候，他就知道他将要死了，并且承认这一点。他的病时好时坏。有时候一连好几天，突然有那么一天他又硬朗起来，显得有生气，然后他又愿意死，又垮下来，害怕得要命。我真不知道他身体越来越差的时候会是什么样子。这一天很快就会来到。在罗马，医生估计他活不了一年。伦敦有人会来，我想是明天吧，他会告诉我们详细的病情。”

“什么病？”

“他的心脏有毛病。一个很长的医学名词。要他命的正是这个叫着很长的名字的病。”

这天晚上马奇梅因勋爵情绪很好；房间具有那种霍格斯式的风貌，在那个古怪的中国式的壁炉架旁边摆了一张供我们四个人用的餐桌和椅子，老人用几只枕头支撑着，啜饮香槟酒，品尝着，称赞着，但是并不吃那为他重返旧居而准备的一道道端上来的菜肴。威尔科克斯为了这种场合已经把那个金盘子特地取了出来，这个金盘子以前我没看见用过。一面面镀金的镜子，漆器和那张大床的帷幔，还有朱莉娅那件中式对襟绣花外套，这些都使得此情此景有一种哑剧的气氛和阿拉丁山洞的意味。

刚刚吃完饭，我们大家正要离去的时候，他的情绪低落下来。

“我还不睡，”他说，“谁陪我坐一会儿？卡拉，卡莉西玛，你累了。科迪莉娅，你要在这个客西马尼守护一个小时吗？”

第二天我问科迪莉娅这一晚上是怎样度过的。

“他差不多立刻就睡了。我在两点钟的时候进去看看他怎么样，又添了添火；几盏灯都还亮着，他又睡着了。他大概是中间醒来时把灯打开的；他得起床才能开灯。我想他大概是害怕黑暗吧。”

因为科迪莉娅具有医院工作的经验，由她来照料她的父亲可说是很自然的事情。那天医生们来给老人看病的时候，也就自然而然地把医嘱交给她。

“除非他的病情恶化了，”她说，“否则我和那个贴身男仆可以照看他。只要能够不用护士，我们就尽量不用。”

到了这种地步，医生们除了吩咐使他舒服一些，并且开一些他心脏病发作时服的药物以外，就再没有什么可建议的了。

“还会有多长时间？”

“科迪莉娅，有些医生预言病人活不了一个星期，可是病人愈活愈健壮，还四处溜达。我在医学上学会了一件事；永远不要预言。”

那两个长途跋涉而来的医生告诉她的就是这些；而从本地医生所得到的也无非是用医学术语说出来的同样意见。

这天晚上马奇梅因勋爵又谈起了关于他新儿媳的话题。这档子事几乎一直在他脑子里转悠，在那一整天各种各样闪闪烁烁的暗示中表现出来；这时他靠在枕头上，终于又说起她来了。

“在这以前，我对于家庭的天伦之乐在感情上从来不太在乎，”他说道，“可是坦率地说我还是很害怕一种前景——就是贝里尔将来会处在当年我母亲所处的地位上。这样一对不相称的夫妇为什么要无儿无女地坐在这里，眼看这所大宅子在他们眼前慢慢地颓败呢？不瞒你们说，我是不喜欢贝里尔的。

“大概糟就糟在我们是在罗马会见的吧。在别的什么地方她也许会得到我更多的同情吧。但是如果一个人真地考虑一下，我在什么地方跟她见面就不会感到反感呢？我们在拉尼尔里餐馆吃的晚饭；这是一家安静的小餐馆，多年来我常常光顾——你们无疑也是知道这地方的。贝里尔显得非常喧宾夺主。我当然是东道主啦，可是听到贝里尔逼我儿子吃饭菜的声调，别人还会以为是另外一种情况哩。布赖兹赫德一向是个嘴馋的孩子，一个从心眼里关心他的妻子应该想办法约束他。不过，这种事毕竟关系不大。

“她肯定听说了我是一个生活不检点的男人。她对我的态度我只能称之为捣蛋。一个下流的老头，这就是她对我的想法。我估计她以前遇到过一些下流的老海军将军，并且知道应该如何同他们应酬……我不打算重复她说过的话了。我给你们举一个例子吧。

“那天早晨他们去梵蒂冈去听布道；也就是为他们的结婚祝福——当时我并没有很在意地听——这样的事情以前也发生过，我想无非是以前的某位丈夫、某位教皇那一类事情而已。她却活灵活现讲起来，她如何同一伙新婚夫妇一起去参加更早些的仪式，这一行人当中大部分是各个阶层的意大利人，还有一些穿着结婚礼服的单纯的姑娘，她们彼此互相恭维，新郎们有不住地瞟着姑娘们，拿自己的那位和别人的进行比较，诸如此类的话。接着她有说：‘这回，当然是咱们私下里说，不过你知道吧，马奇梅因勋爵，我当时就觉得在新娘当中我似乎算是头一号了。”

“她说这话的时候真够鄙俗不堪，我当时还没有完全揣摸出她是什么意思。是她挖空心思要得到我儿子的徽号呢，还是，你们想想看，还是她考虑到我儿子无可置疑是个童男呢？我猜测是后者。无论如何，那一晚上我们就是这样说说玩笑打哈哈过去的。

“我认为她住在这儿绝对不会很适宜，你们觉着呢？以后我该把这地方留给谁呢？限定继承权利到我这儿就算完了，你们知道吧。塞巴斯蒂安，我的天啊，就不必谈了。谁想要它？谁呢？卡拉，你想要吗？不想要，当然，你是不会想要的。科迪莉娅呢？我考虑要把这所房子留给朱莉娅和查尔斯。”

“当然不行，爸爸，这是布赖德的。”

“也是……贝里尔的吗？哪天我得赶快叫格雷格森到这儿来，快把这件事考虑一番。现在是时候了，应当把我的遗嘱修订好；这地方充满了反常乖戾的事情和背离潮流的人物……我还是非常喜欢把朱莉娅安顿在这里的；今天晚上多么美好啊，亲爱的；而且总是这样美好；非常合适，合适多了。”

这话说过不久，他就派人去伦敦找他的律师来，可是当律师来的这一天，马奇梅因勋爵的心脏病复发了，因此不能见他。“时间还充裕，”他在费劲地喘着气中间说，“哪一天等我身体好一些再说。”不过选择继承人的事情一直萦绕在他的脑际，而且他还常常谈到我和朱莉娅应该在什么时候结婚，我们在什么时候可以得到这个庄园。

“你觉得他真打算把这所庄园给我们吗？”我问朱莉娅。

“是啊，我想他是这么打算的。”

“可是这对布赖德太可怕了。”

“是吗？我倒觉得他对这个地方并不十分在意。我很在意，知道吧。他和贝里尔在别处小一点的地方住会觉得更满足。”

“你打算接受吗？”

“当然啦。这是爸爸本人愿意赠给我们的嘛。我认为你和我住在这儿会很快乐的。”

这给我展现了一个前景，这个前景一个人在大路转弯的地方就可以看到，像我当初和塞巴斯蒂安在一起第一次看到过的那样，一片与世隔绝的幽谷，一片比一片低的湖泊，前景是一片旧宅，世上的其余东西都被丢弃和遗忘了。这是一个拥有自己独特的安宁、爱情和美的天地；这是一个在异国露营地的士兵的梦；这种前景也许正如在经历了许多天沙漠中饥饿的白天和豺狼出没的黑夜之后，一所神殿的高高的尖顶所提供的前景。如果我有时被这种幻象迷住，难道我就该责备我自己吗？

病重的几个星期好不容易挨过去，这所房子里的生活随着病人颤颤悠悠的精力亦步亦趋地挨过去。也有过几天，马奇梅因勋爵穿戴停当，这时他站在窗前，或者由他的男仆搀扶着，穿过一楼的几个房间，从这个壁炉旁走到那个壁炉旁，也有几天客人来来往往——邻居、佃户或是从伦敦来办事的人——这时一包包的新书被打开并加以讨论，一架钢琴也移进了那间中国式的客厅；在二月底有一次在一个意外的阳光灿烂的日子，他吩咐把汽车开来，他竟一直走到前厅，穿着那件皮大衣，坐车到了大门口。这时他突然又对乘车出游没了兴趣，说道：“现在不去了。以后再说吧。到夏天哪一天再出去。”然后又挽着仆人的胳膊给领回他的椅子那儿去了。有一次他一时兴趣要换换房间，于是就详细地吩咐如何搬到那间彩绘客厅里去。他说，这间中国风格的屋子妨碍他休息——他在夜里要让所有的灯都亮着——可是随后又灰心丧气，所有的命令都取消了，他仍然住在原来的房间里。

在其他的日子里，他高高地坐在床上，用几个枕头支撑着，费力地喘着气，整个住宅就寂然无声。即使在这种时候他也希望我们在他周围，黑夜白天，让他一个人待着他受不了。当他说不出话来的时候，他的眼光就跟着我们转来转去，如果有谁离开了房间，他就会露出难过的样子；卡拉在他身边已做就是好几个小时，靠着枕头挽住他的胳膊，这时她就说：“没有关系，亚力克斯，她就会来的。”

布赖兹赫德和他的妻子度完蜜月回来，在这儿住了几个晚上。这时正赶上马奇梅因勋爵身体不好的时候，他不让他们靠近。贝里尔还是第一次来这里作客，如果她不对这个几乎已经是她的家而现在又垂手可得的地方感到很大兴趣的话那倒是很不正常的了。贝里尔很正常，她在逗留期间把这所房子里里外外勘测了个仔细。看来因马奇梅因勋爵的疾病而造成的乱七八糟的局面，需要大加改善；她有一两次谈到她访问过的政府大厦与布赖兹赫德规模相仿的各种机构的管理方法。白天，布赖兹赫德就带着她去拜访各个承租人，晚上她就跟我谈绘画，再不就和科迪莉娅谈医院，或者和朱莉娅谈衣服，充满了愉快的信心。而背信弃义的阴影，以及他们的正当期望即将落空，这一切只有我这一方才知道。跟他们在一起时我很不自在；不过我这种态度对布赖兹赫德并不是什么新鲜事，在他常来常往的腼腆的人们的小圈子里，我的内疚并没有被他发现。

最后，情况愈来愈明朗，马奇梅因勋爵不想多看到他们。老人只允许布赖兹赫德单独在他面前待一分钟来告别；随后他们就走了。

“我们在这儿也无事可干，”布赖兹赫德说，“而且对贝里尔来说也很痛苦。如果病情恶化，我们会再回来的。”

这时疾病发作的时间越来越长，也愈来愈频繁了；这时雇用了一名护士。“这样的屋子我从来没有见过，”她说，“哪儿也不像这里，什么样的方便设施都没有呀。”她还努力想把她的病人搬到楼上去住，楼上有自来水，还有一间可供她使用的化妆室，还有一张她可以“巡回活动”的——她习惯如此——“合用的小床”，可是马奇梅因勋爵不愿意动。不久，由于他连白天黑夜都分辨不出来了，这时又安插了第二个护士；专家们又从伦敦赶来；他们提出了一个新的而且颇为大胆的治疗方案，可是药物对他的身体已经不起作用了，吃下去也没有效果。不久，他已经不存在什么发病的问题了，只是在迅速垮下去的过程中的短暂波动而已。

布赖兹赫德给叫来了。当时正在复活节的假期，贝里尔正忙于照顾她的孩子们。他一个人来的，在他的父亲床侧默默地站了几分钟，他的父亲也坐着默默地看着他，然后他就离开了屋子，爱图书室里找到我们，他说：“爸爸该找一位神父来了。”

这个话题并不是第一次提出的。当初马奇梅因勋爵刚到的时候，那位教区神父——由于小教堂已经关闭了，因此在梅尔斯蒂德就有了一所新教堂和一个教务评议会——到这里来作礼节性的拜访。科迪莉娅又是道歉又是赔不是，敷衍了他一阵，可是等他一走，她就说：“现在不行。爸爸还不需要他呢。”

这时在场的有朱莉娅、科迪莉娅和我；我们每个人都有话要说，开始要说，经过考虑又不说了。因此我们四个人之间绝口不谈这个问题。可是当朱莉娅单独和我在一起的时候，她说：“查尔斯，我看宗教问题将来是个很大的麻烦。”

“他们就不能让他平平安安地去世吗？”

“他们所谓的‘平安’是具有截然不同的含义的。”

“这样做会是一种粗暴的行为。谁也说不清楚他一生中对宗教的想法。他们现在会来的，趁他神不守舍，又无力反抗的时候，他们会要求他在临终忏悔的。直到现在我对宗教还是抱着一定的尊敬。如果他们干这样的事，那我就知道了人们关于教会所说的种种蠢话都是真实可信的了——也就是说教会搞的全都是迷信和诡计。”朱莉娅一句话也没有说。“你不同意吗？”朱莉娅还是一言不发，“你不同意吗？”

“我不知道，查尔斯，我实在不知道。”

尽管我们当中谁都不提起这件事，可是在马奇梅因勋爵患病的这几个星期当中，我始终感到这个问题是存在的，越来越突出了。当科迪莉娅每天一大早就开车出去做弥撒的时候，我看到了这个问题；当卡拉开始跟她一块去的时候，我又看到了这个问题；这片小小的乌云，和巴掌一般大小，就要膨胀起来，在我们中间掀起一场暴风雨。

这时布赖兹赫德以他沉重而又无情的方式，把这个问题摆在我们面前。

“咦，布赖德，你认为他会同意吗？”科迪莉娅问道。

“我一定设法使他同意，”布赖兹赫德说，“我明天就把麦凯神父带到他这儿来。”

乌云愈聚愈浓，没有消散；我们当中谁都不说话。卡拉和科迪莉娅回病房去了；布赖兹赫德找一本书，找到了，就离开了我们。

“朱莉娅，我们怎么制止这桩蠢事呢？”

她一时没有回答，后来说：“为什么我们应该制止呢？”

“你像我一样了解。这确实——确实是一件不恰当的事情。”

“我算什么人，还能反对什么不恰当的事情呢？”她悲伤地问。“话说回来，这样做会有什么害处吗？还是去问问医生吧。”

我们问了医生，他说：“这很难说。当然可能惊吓了他，另一方面，我也知道一些病例，这种做法对病人反而起到一种意想不到的镇静作用。我甚至还看到过这种做法起了积极作用。当然对亲属来说，这通常也是极大的安慰。实际上我认为这是应该由马奇梅因勋爵自己来决定的事。请注意，千万不要操之过急。马奇梅因勋爵今天特别虚弱，不过明天他又会强壮起来的。等一等再做不是很平常的事吗？”

“唔，医生没有解决什么问题。”等我们离开了他时，我对朱莉娅说。

“解决问题？我实在不明白，你为什么这样处心积虑不让我父亲做临终仪式呢？”

“因为这样做不过是一大套魔法和虚伪罢了。”

“是吗？无论如何，这一套搞了已经差不多两千年了；我不懂你为什么现在突然发起脾气来。”她提高了嗓门。近几个月来她动不动就发怒。“看在基督的面上，你可以给《泰晤士报》写文章，到海德公园去发表演说，去发动一场‘反对罗马天主教’的闹剧吧，但是不要就这件事来烦扰我。我爸爸见不见教区神父，这和我或者和你又有什么相干呢？”

我理解朱莉娅的这种激烈的情绪，和那次在月光下喷泉旁控制着她的那种心情一样，我模糊地猜到这种心情的来源。我也知道靠语言是无法使它平息的；而且我也无法再说什么，因为对于她的问题我心里还没有答案。我意识到，不止一个人的命运在等待裁决；还意识到高坡上的雪块开始滑动了。


第二天早晨布赖兹赫德和我一起吃早饭，在座的还有刚刚下班的夜班护士。

“他今天精神好多了。”她说，“他差不多踏踏实实睡了三个小时。加斯顿来给他修面的时候，他还挺爱讲话的呢。”

“好，”布赖兹赫德说，“科迪莉娅去做弥撒了。她要把麦凯神父带到这儿来吃早饭。”

我以前和麦凯神父见过几次，他是个矮胖、温和的中年格拉斯哥—爱尔兰人。每当我们见面的时候，他总爱问我这样一些问题；“赖德先生，现在你是不是会说画家提香比画家拉斐尔的确更富于艺术性呢？”更使我为难的是他想起我的回答，问我，“赖德先生，上次我有荣幸见到你时，你说过一番话，我还牢记在心，不知道现在这样说是不是正确的，就是画家提香……”而且通常是以这样的见解来结束谈话的，“啊呀，赖德先生，一个人有你这样的才能、又有时间来发挥这种才能的人是多么快乐啊。”科迪莉娅可以惟妙惟肖地模仿他这种语调。

这天早晨他吃了一顿丰盛的早饭，浏览了一下报纸的大标题，接着他用一种职业上的活泼态度说道：“喂，布赖兹赫德勋爵，你看看，那个可怜的人愿意见我吗？”

布赖兹赫德把他带到门外；科迪莉娅也跟着出去了，就剩了我一个人留在早餐桌子旁边。不到一分钟我就听到他们三个人在门外说话的声音。

“……只好抱歉了。”

“……可怜的人。请注意，这是要见一张陌生的面孔；你相信我好啦，这是——一个意外的陌生人。我很理解。”

“……神父，我十分抱歉……这么远把你找来。”

“科迪莉娅小姐，千万不要介意。嘿唷，在戈鲍尔家我还挨过瓶子揍呢……要给他时间。我以前遇到过几个更糟糕的病人，却死得更美。为他祈祷吧……我以后再来……如果你们不见怪的话，我就去看看霍金斯太太。不错，的确，我认识路。”

然后科迪莉娅和布赖兹赫德走进屋来。

“我猜，他这回去没有成功。”

“没有。科迪莉娅，等麦凯神父从保姆那儿下来，你是不是可以开车送他回去？我要给贝里尔打电话，看看她要我什么时候回家。”

“布赖德，这太糟糕了。我们怎么办呢？”

“此刻，凡是我们能做的我们都做了。”他说着走出了房间。

科迪莉娅脸色阴沉。她从盘子里叉起一片火腿，在芥末里蘸了蘸，吃了。“该死的布赖德，”他说，“我知道不成。”

“发生了什么事？”

“你想知道吗？刚才我们排成一行进去。卡拉正在高声给爸爸念报纸。布赖德说：‘我带了麦凯神父来进你了。’父亲说：‘麦凯神父，恐怕你带他到这儿来是误会了。我还没临终哩。我已经有二十五年不参加你们教会的各种仪式了。布赖兹赫德，把麦凯神父领出去吧。’于是我们全体向后转，走出来了，我听见卡拉又开始给爸爸念起报纸来。查尔斯，就是这些了。”

我把这消息带给朱莉娅，她正躺着，旁边的小桌子上堆着许多报纸和来信。“巫师走了，”我说道，“那个巫师已经走了。”

“可怜的爸爸。”

“这下可叫布赖德大失所望了。”

我感到胜利了。我是对的，而其他的人都错了，真理胜利了。自从那晚在喷泉旁边我感到悬在我和朱莉娅头上的威胁已经给排除了，也许永远被消除了。然而还有一个——现在我可以直言不讳——另一个没有表达、也无法表达出来的、不够光彩的小小胜利，我曾偷偷地为之庆幸了一番。我认为这天早晨发生的事情使布赖兹赫德离他的合法继承权更远了。

在这一点上我猜对了；伦敦的律师们差遣了一个人来。一两天后这人来了，全家上下都知道了马奇梅因勋爵立了一个新的遗嘱。但是我错在认为关于宗教的争执已经风平浪静了，这场争执在布赖兹赫德待的最后一个晚上吃完晚饭后又爆发了。

“……爸爸说的是，‘我还没有临终呢，我已经有二十年不参加教会的各种仪式了。’”

“不是‘教会’，而是‘你们的教会’。”

“我看这没有什么区别。”

“大有区别。”

“布赖德，他的意思再清楚不过了。”

“我认为他说的是正经话。他的意思是说他一直不很习惯经常接受各种圣礼，由于他还没有到临终，所以他——还不打算改变他的习惯。”

“这简直是诡辩。”

“当一个人想要把话说得确切些，为什么别人总认为他在诡辩呢？他的清清楚楚的意思是这一天他还不想见一位神父，可是当他临终的时候他就愿意了。”

“我希望有人向我解释解释，”我说，“圣礼的意义究竟何在。你的意思是不是说，如果他一个人孤独地死去就得下地狱，而如果一位神父往他身上涂了油的话——”

“哦，不是油，”科迪莉娅说，“是给他治病。”

“愈发奇怪啦——好吧，不管教士干的是什么——做了以后他就会升入天堂。你们信奉的就是这个吗？”

这时卡拉插话说：“我想护士告诉过我，不管怎么样别人也说过，有人相信，神父在尸体还没有冷之前到场，一切就都好了，是这样，不是吗？”

其他的人们都攻击起她来。

“不，卡拉，不是这样的。”

“当然不是。”

“你理解得完全不对了，卡拉。”

“喏，我记得阿尔芳斯·德·嘉涅特死的时候，嘉涅特夫人叫一位教士藏在门外——他一看到教士就受不了——在尸体还没有冷就带他进去了。她亲口告诉我，他们给他做了一场规模很大的安魂弥撒，我也参加了。”

“做了安魂弥撒并不意味着你必定会升入天堂。”

“嘉涅特夫人认为是升了天堂的。”

“哦，那她可就错了。”

“你们这些天主教徒有哪一个知道，这个神父能够做出什么好事来呢？”我问，“难道你们如此安排只是好让你们的父亲能有一个基督教的葬礼吗？还是你们想使他免得下地狱呢？我倒很想领教领教。”

布赖兹赫德稍微详尽地给我讲了讲，刚一说完，卡拉就提出了一个简单的疑问：“这些我以前可没听说过。”她的话结果多少破坏了这个天主教阵线的联合。

“请把这点弄明白，”我说，“他必须按照他自己的志愿行事；他必须感到悔悟，并且希望得到赦免；对不对呢？然而只有上帝才知道他是否真的按照自己的意愿行事。神父说不清楚；如果没有神父在场，他就独自依照自己的意愿行事，不就如同有一位神父在场一样了吗。当一个人身体太虚弱，他自己的意愿无法表达出来的时候，他的意愿很可能仍然在起作用；对不对呢？他也许躺着，好像在等待着死亡，一直行使着自己的意志力，得到赦免，而且上帝是理解的；对不对呢？”

“多少是这样吧。”布赖兹赫德说道。

“好啦，看在老天的面上，”我说，“神父有什么用处呢？”

大家都不说话了，这时朱莉娅叹了一口气，布赖兹赫德吸了一口气，仿佛开始要把这些种种说法进一步分析。在沉默中卡拉说：“我知道的就是请神父来的事我要特别当心。”

“天哪，”科迪莉娅说，“我认为这是最好的回答了。”

让我们别再争论了，各有各的理由，不过大家都认为这场争论得不出什么结论。

后来朱莉娅说：“我希望你不要再挑起这场宗教争论来。”

“并不是我挑起来的。”

“你没有说服别人，你也没有真的说服自己。”

“我只是想知道那些人相信的究竟是什么。他们都说那样做是合乎逻辑的。”

“如果你让布赖德把话讲完，他就会把这件事说得完全合乎逻辑。”

“你们一共有四个人。”我说，“关于宗教，卡拉什么也不懂，因此她可能信，也可能不信；你懂一点儿，连一个字也不相信；科迪莉娅也懂得那么些，并且疯狂相信；只有可怜的布赖德懂得，而且相信，可是一到要解释的时候，我觉得他可就出丑了。人们来回重复地说：‘至少天主教徒知道他们相信的是什么。’今天晚上我们做了很好的典型分析——”

“哦，查尔斯，别说大话。我看你越来越怀疑自己了。”


几个星期过去了，马奇梅因勋爵依然活着。到了六月，我的离婚判决了，我的前妻接着就第二次结婚了。而朱莉娅九月里才会自由。我注意到，当我们结婚的日子越来越近时，朱莉娅就越发不满足似地谈到结婚的事情；而战争也愈来愈临近了——对这一点我们两人谁都不怀疑——但是朱莉娅那种温情的、有时似乎是冷漠的、绝望的渴望并不是来自她自身以外的任何不可逆料的事情；当她显得像一头被关在笼子里的动物要冲破她对我的爱的牢笼的时候，这种渴望突然变得阴暗得像短短的一阵近乎仇恨的发作。

这时我被叫到战争部，经过询问，编进了紧急状态时征募的人员名册里；科迪莉娅也一样，被编入另一份名册中；于是名册就像我们在中学时一样，又一次成为我们生活的一部分了。一切事情都在为应付迫在眉睫的“紧急情况”作准备。在那间黑洞洞的办公室里，“战争”这个字是没有人提到的；这是一种禁忌；如果有了“紧急情况”，我们就会被召集起来——不是遇到冲突，那是根据人类意志的行为；不像复仇或天灾那么简单明白；一种“紧急情况”；一个露出海面的东西，一个看不见面孔，抽打着尾巴从深水冒出来的妖怪。

马奇梅因勋爵对他房间以外的事变不感兴趣。我们每天给他送来报纸，试着读给他听，可是他的脑袋在枕头上扭过来，眼睛却随着他周围复杂的格局转动。“还要往下念吗？”“如果你不腻烦的话就请往下念吧。”可是他并没有听。偶尔听到某个熟悉的名字他就咕哝着：“欧文……我认识他——一个平庸之辈”；有时还发出一些不着边际的话：“捷克人天生就是优秀的马车夫，如此而已。”然而他的心却远离尘事了；而他想的就在这儿，就在此时此地，他一味地想心事；除了为生存而进行孤独的挣扎外，他也再没有力气进行别的斗争了。

我对那个每天都和我们在一起的医生说：“他有一种要活下去的了不起的意志，是不是？”

“你想这样来解释吗？我看还不如说是对死亡的极端恐惧。”

“难道这有什么区别吗？”

“噢，亲爱的，有区别。你知道，你从恐惧中汲取不到什么力量。恐惧使他精疲力竭了。”

仅次于死亡，他最害怕的就是黑暗和孤独，或许因为这两者像死亡一样。他愿意让我们在他的房间里，让一盏盏灯在那些塑像中间整夜点着；他不希望我们多说话，但是他却喃喃自语，声音很轻，以致我们常常听不出他说的是什么；他所以要讲话，我想是因为只有他自己的声音才是他能够信赖的，只有说话的时候，他才确信他还活着；他的话并不是说给我们听的，也不是给任何人听的，而是给他自己听的。

“今天好些了，今天好些了。现在我能看见壁炉那个角落里，那个清朝大臣手拿着金铃铛，他脚底下那棵歪歪扭扭的树繁花盛开。而昨天我头脑混乱啦，把那个小宝塔也当成人了。不久，我就会看到那座桥和三只鹳了，我还会分辨出那条道路在哪儿通到山上去。

“明天会更好些。我们住在家里的时间长，结婚却晚了。七十三岁的年龄并不算很大。朱莉娅奶奶，我父亲的姑姑，活到了八十八岁，是在这儿生的，也是在这儿去世的，她没有结过婚，曾经在灯塔山上看到过特拉法加角战役的炮火，她总是把这个地方叫作‘新房子’；这是他们在育婴室或者在打仗时给这房子起的名称，不识字的人记得很久以前的事情。你们现在在乡村教堂附近还可以看到那所旧房子；他们管那片田地叫作‘城堡山’，是霍利克家的地，坑坑洼洼，有一半荒废了，地里都是茂密的荨麻和荆棘，太深了，无法耕种。他们把房屋的根基挖出来，把石头运去盖成这片新房子；朱莉娅奶奶出生的时候，这所房子已经有一百年了。这些石头就是我们在城堡山废了的洼地中的根；也是在荆棘和荨麻丛中的根；而且在那个旧教堂和附属小教堂里的墓穴丛中，没有教会人员唱诗。

“朱莉娅奶奶知道这些墓穴，跷着二郎腿的骑士啦，穿着马甲的伯爵啦，跟罗马参议员差不多的侯爵啦，石灰石，雪花石膏，还有意大利的大理石；她曾经用她的乌檀木手杖敲打过那些饰有纹章的盾牌，还把盔瓣做成花环放在老罗杰爵士的墓上。那时我们家是骑士，自从阿金考特战役就成了男爵，在乔治王朝，荣誉更大。他们是后来的，却要先垮下去；男爵爵位仍然保留下来。如果你们都死了，朱莉娅的孩子就要用他那些出生在全盛时代以前的祖先的名字来取名了；在那个全盛时代，是剪羊毛和广袤的麦地的时期，是欣欣向荣、大兴土木的时期，那时侯沼泽地排干了，荒凉的原野开垦出来了，当时一位祖先建了一所房子，他的儿子就在上面加了一个穹顶，儿子的儿子又给房子两边添上厢房，筑上河堤，拦住河水。朱莉娅奶奶眼瞅着他们建起那个喷泉来，这座喷泉装置运来以前就已经很古老了，在那不勒斯的太阳下曝晒了二百多年，在纳尔逊时代用军舰运回来。不久这个喷泉就会枯干，直到雨水给它注满水为止，水池里的落叶就漂浮起来；在几池湖水上面芦苇会蔓延开来，又缩小。今天好些了。

“今天好些了。我一向十分注意起居，保护自己不让冷风吹着，应时令的菜肴吃起来也有节制，喝的是上等的红葡萄酒，睡觉盖我自己的被单。我还能活很长时间。我五十岁的时候，他们让我们下马，把我们送上前线；年纪大的都留在基地上，这是命令，可是我的顶头上司——也是我的紧邻沃尔特·维纳布尔斯说：‘亚力克斯，你的身体和那些小伙子一样棒。’我当时确实是这样；现在我还是这样，只要我还能够呼吸。

“没有空气。丝绒帐下一丝风也没有，当夏天来临的时候。”马奇梅因勋爵说着，他已经完全忘却了那根深叶茂的谷物，渐渐胀大的果实，吃多了的蜜蜂在他的窗外闷热的下午阳光里悠闲地寻觅蜂巢，“当夏天来临的时候，我就会下床，坐在户外，更舒畅地呼吸了。

“谁会想象得到，所有那些小小的金做的人物，那些在自己的国家里都是些绅士的人，不呼吸还能够活这么长时间呢？就像煤层里的癞蛤蟆，在矿井下面的深处，无忧无虑。天晓得，他们为什么要给我挖一个洞？难道一个人就得在自己的地窖里活活闷死吗？普伦德，加斯顿，给我把窗户打开。”


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爱就像蓝天白云，晴空万里，突然暴风雨！
举报 只看该作者 14楼  发表于: 2013-11-20 0

“窗户都敞开着呢，老爷。”

一只氧气筒放到他床边来了，上面有一个长长的软管，一个面罩，还有洋他可以自己操作的小活塞。他老是说：“里面空了；护士瞧吧，没有什么气出来了。”

“不，马奇梅因勋爵，里面满极了，请看这个球形玻璃管里的气泡就知道了；压力也很足，请听，你没有听见里面发出的嘶嘶声吗？马奇梅因勋爵，试着慢慢呼吸，要从从容容地，这样你就会得到好处了。”

“像空气那样自由，大家都这么说——‘像空气那样自由’。而现在却把我的空气装在一只铁筒里给我。”

有一次他说：“科迪莉娅，那个小教堂怎么样了？”

“爸爸，妈妈死了的时候他们已经把它关闭了。”

“那小教堂是她的，是我送给她的。我们一向是我们家族里的建筑者。我为她建的这座小教堂，就建在亭子背阴的地方；那是在旧围墙后面用旧石料重建的；这是建成的新房子的最后一部分，也是第一个消失的。在战争爆发以前一直有一位牧师。你们还记得他吗？”

“那时我还太小呢。”

“然后我走了——留下她一个人在这个小教堂里祈祷。这教堂是她的。这是她的地方。我从来没有回来打搅她祈祷。人们都说我们是为自由而奋斗。我获得了自己的胜利。这是罪过吗？”

“我想是的，爸爸。”

“在向苍天呼喊复仇吗？你想想，这不就是他们把我关在这个洞穴里，带着一罐空气，伴着沿着墙站着的、没有空气也能生活的黄皮肤的小人们的原因吗？你是这样想的吗，孩子？不过风不久就会来的，也许是明天，到那时我们又可以呼吸了。坏事对我倒成了好事。我明天会好些。”

就这样，直到七月中旬，马奇梅因勋爵躺着奄奄一息了，为活下去而进行的挣扎把他拖得完全精疲力竭。后来，由于预计不会迅速恶化，科迪莉娅就去伦敦到她的那个妇女组织看看有没有什么“紧急情况”。这天马奇梅因勋爵的情况突然恶化了。他默默地躺着，一点儿声息也没有，费力地喘着气；只有他那睁着的眼睛，不时扫一扫屋子四处，表示他还有知觉。

“是不是快不行了？”朱莉娅问。

“这可没法断定。”医生回答，“当他快要死的时候，很可能就像现在这个样子。他也许还能从现在的发作中缓过来。关键是千万别打搅他。一点点惊扰也会是致命的。”

“我要去找麦凯神父。”她说。

我并不诧异。整个夏天我看出来她想的就是这个。她走了以后我对医生说：“我们必须制止这种瞎胡闹。”

他说：“我的责任是管病人的身体。我的责任不是同人家辩论活着好还是死了好，或者争论一个人死了以后怎么样。我只是想方设法让他活着。”

“你刚才说的是，任何惊扰都会置他于死地。而对于一个怕死的人来说，比如就像他这样怕死，难道还有什么能比给他带来一位神父——这位神父又是他有精力时曾经赶走的——还有什么比这更糟的事吗？”

“我想，这也许会置他于死地。”

“那么你还不加以制止吗？”

“我没有权利制止任何事情。我只能提供意见。”

“卡拉，你是怎么想的。”

“我不愿意使他不快乐。现在只有一个希望了；希望他不知不觉地去世。但是我还是愿意这儿有一位神父。”

“那你可不可以好好劝劝朱莉娅让神父别进来——一直等到他不行了才来？那以后神父进来也就没有危害了。”

“我会请求她让亚力克斯快乐，好吧。”

过了半小时，朱莉娅带着麦凯神父回来了。我们大家在图书室里见了面。

“我已经打电报告诉布赖德和科迪莉娅了，”我说，“希望你能够同意，等大家都到齐了以后再说。”

“他们要在这儿就好了。”朱莉娅说。

“你不能单独承担责任。”我说，“其他的人都反对你。格兰德医生，请你把你刚才对我说的话告诉她。”

“刚才我说看到神父引起的震惊，可能会置他于死地；如果不惊吓他，他也许会熬过这次发作。作为一个医生，做任何惊扰他的事情，我一概反对。”

“卡拉，你呢？”

“朱莉娅，亲爱的，我知道你是想尽力把事情办得很好，可你要知道，亚力克斯并不是一个信教的人；对宗教的态度他向来是嘲弄的。我们万万不能趁着他现在身体虚弱的机会，以此来安慰我们自己的良心。如果他没有了知觉时麦凯神父再到他跟前去的话，那么就可以用妥当的方式把他安葬，是这样吗，神父？”

“我去看看他现在怎么样了。”医生说完就离开了我们。

“麦凯神父，”我说，“你也知道你上次来时马奇梅因勋爵是怎么对待你的，难道你以为他现在可能改变了吗？”

“感谢上帝，靠神的恩典，是可能改变的。”

“也许如此，”卡拉说，“在他睡着了的时候你可以溜进去看看，对他念念赦罪文；他不会知道的。”

“我见过许多男男女女去世，”神父说，“我从来没见过谁在临终时刻会不愿意我在身边。”

“可是他们是天主教徒啊，而马奇梅因勋爵除了名义上，根本就不是个天主教徒——无论如何，已经有很多年不是了。他是一个天主教的嘲弄者，卡拉就是这么说的。”

“基督来召唤的不是善人完人，而是要罪人来忏悔。”

这时医生回来说：“没有什么变化。”

“喂，医生，”神父说，“我怎么会惊扰什么人呢？”他先是把他那漠然的、纯洁的、乏味的面孔转向医生，随后又转向我们，“你们知道我要做什么吗？这件事情很小，没有什么排场。你知道，我没有穿专门的服装。我就像现在这样去。他看过我现在的打扮。没有什么使人惊恐的。我只打算问问他是否对他自己的罪孽感到追悔。我希望他做出很小的一点同意的表示；不管怎样，我希望他不要拒绝我；然后我就祈求上帝饶恕他。然后，虽然这一点并不很重要，我还希望给他举行涂油式。这没有什么，只是用手指碰一碰，只是从这个小盒里蘸一点油，看，对他完全没有害处。”

“哦，朱莉娅，”卡拉说，“我们应该怎么说呢？让我去跟他讲一讲吧。”

她去了中国式客厅；我们默默地等着。在我和朱莉娅之间隔着一道无形的墙。不一会儿卡拉回来了。

“我觉得他并没有听见，”她说，“我认为我知道该怎么向他说的。我说：‘亚力克斯，你还记得从梅尔斯蒂德来的那个神父吗。他来看你时，你非常任性。你伤了他的感情。现在他又在这儿了。我希望你就看在我的面上见见他，做个朋友。’但是他没有回答。如果他失去知觉，那么看到一位神父也就不会让他不高兴了吧，是不是，医生？”

原来一直默默地站着不动的朱莉娅这时突然移动了。

“医生，非常感谢你的劝告。”她说道，“无论发生了什么事情，我都承担全部责任。麦凯神父，现在请你来看看我父亲吧，”她连看也没有看我一眼，就带着神父向门口走去。

我们大家也跟着去了。马奇梅因勋爵还像我早晨看到时那样躺着，不过这时他的眼睛阖上了；他的双手放在被单上面，手心向上；那个护士的手指在给其中一只手诊脉。“请进，”她乐观地说道，“你们现在不会打搅他啦。”

“你是说……”

“不，不，但是任何事情他都注意不到了。”

她拿起那个氧气装置凑到他脸前，只听见床边逸出的氧气发出嘶嘶声。

神父向马奇梅因勋爵俯下身去，为他祝福。朱莉娅和卡拉在床脚边跪下来。医生、护士，和我就站在他们身后。

“现在，”神父说道，“我知道你为你一生中种种罪恶深感悔恨，是不是？如果能够，请你做个表示。你悔恨了，是不是？”可是病人什么表示也没有。“努力回忆你的罪恶吧，对上帝说，你已经悔恨了。我就要给你举行忏悔仪式了。当我给你举行仪式的时候，请告诉上帝你因为违犯了他的旨意而悔恨。”接着他开始用拉丁文念叨起来。我听出这些话是“以天父的名义我宣布你无罪……”我看到神父划十字。这时我也跪下来，并且祷告：“啊，上帝，如果真有上帝，请宽恕他的罪恶吧，如果真有罪恶这种东西。”这时躺在床上的人睁了睁眼睛，发出了一声叹息，这种叹息我以前认为是人们临死的时候发出来的，但是他的眼睛动了动，所以我们看出他的身上还有生命。

这时我突然感到渴望有所表示，即使只是处于礼貌，即使只是为了我爱恋着的那个跪在我前面正在祈祷的女人。她祈求的就是一个表示。我看，要求的事情很小，只是承认收到了一件礼物，在人群里点点头。我的祷告更加简单：“请上帝宽恕他的罪过吧”和“请上帝使他接受你的宽恕吧”。

祈求的是那样微不足道的事情。

神父从他的口袋里掏出那只小银盒，又用拉丁文念叨起来，同时用一小团蘸了油的东西碰碰这个临死的人。他干完了他该干的事情，就收起小盒子来，念诵起最后的祈祷。突然马奇梅因把手移向自己的额头；我以为他感觉到了圣油的触感，要把油揩掉。“啊，上帝，”我祷告，“千万别让他这样做。”但是完全不必担心，那只手缓慢地移到胸前，又移到肩膀，马奇梅因勋爵做出了划十字的表示来。这时我才明白，原来我所请求的那种表示并非一桩小事，也不是一种随随便便的点头招呼，这时我想起儿童时代听到的一句话来，圣殿的帷幔从头到底被撕开。

事情过去了。我们站起来，护士又去弄那个氧气筒，医生俯下身检查病人。朱莉娅小声对我说道：“你送麦凯神父出去好吗？我在这儿待一会儿。”

门外麦凯神父又变成了我以前认识的那个单纯、和蔼的人了。“喂，你瞧，这件事看起来很美，我以前一次又一次看见过。魔鬼抵抗到最后一刻，然而神恩对他是浩荡无边的。赖德先生，我想你并不是一个天主教徒，可是你至少会因为女士们得到宽慰而高兴吧。”

我们等司机的时候，我猛然想起麦凯神父应该得到举行仪式的报酬。我颇为狼狈地问他。“喏，赖德先生，不必操心，这是一种快乐，”他说，“不过无论你赠送什么，在我这样的教区里都是用得着的。”我发现我的皮夹子里还有三个英镑，就把这些钱给了他。“唷，你实在太慷慨了，上帝赐福给你，赖德先生。我会再来的，不过我认为那个可怜的人会不久人世啦。”

朱莉娅一直在中国式客厅里，直到傍晚五点钟，她的父亲去世，证实了神父和医生的那场争执双方都是正确的。


到这里，我来谈谈我和朱莉娅之间的最后一些零碎的话，我的最后的回忆吧。

朱莉娅的父亲去世后，她在他的遗体旁边待了几分钟。护士到隔壁来宣布去世的消息，这时我从敞开的门向里面瞥见了她一眼，她跪在床边，卡拉坐在她身旁。过了一会儿两个女人一块走出来，朱莉娅对我说：“现在不。我要带卡拉上楼去她的房间，以后再说。”

当她还在楼上的时候，布赖兹赫德和科迪莉娅从伦敦赶来了；最后当我和朱莉娅单独见面的时候，像是年轻的、秘密的恋人。

朱莉娅说：“就在这个阴暗的地方，在这个楼梯拐角——用一分钟来告别吧。”

“经过这么长时间就说这么一句话。”

“你已经知道了吗？”

“从今天早晨起；从今天早晨以前起；从今年一年以来。”

“到今天早晨我才明白。啊，亲爱的，但愿你能够理解。这样我就能够忍受分离了，或者说，能更好地忍受了。我得说我的心已经碎了，如果我相信心会碎的话。我不能跟你结婚，查尔斯，我再也不能和你在一起了。”

“我知道。”

“你怎么会知道。”

“你今后怎么办？”

“就这样下去——一个人过。我怎么知道今后怎么办呢？你了解整个的我。你知道我这个人不是会伤心一辈子的人。我一向很坏。很可能我以后还会很坏，还会受到惩罚。不过我越坏，我就越需要上帝。我不能拒绝上帝的慈悲。这话的意思就是这样；和你开始过活，离开那个人。人只能希望看到前面一步。但是今天我看到一件不可饶恕的事——像在教室里犯的错误，严重得没法惩罚，只有妈妈才能处理——这件坏事我正要做，但是我还没有坏到那种程度，不能干。我要开始从事一件比得上上帝的至善的好事。为什么让我理解了这一点，而不是让你呢，查尔斯？也许是因为妈妈，保姆，科迪莉娅，塞巴斯蒂安——也许还有布赖德和马斯普拉特夫人——他们一直都在为我祈祷；也许这是我和上帝之间的一桩个人交易，即如果我放弃了这件唯一的、我日夜想念的事情的话，那么不管我有多么坏，上帝到头来是不会对我完全绝望的。

“现在我们两个都要单独过了，而且我也没有办法让你理解了。”

“我不希望使你对这件事抱着轻松一些的态度，”我说，“我希望你的心是会碎的；可是我的确理解。”

雪崩滚下来，崩雪扫荡净了它后面的山坡；最后的回声消失在白茫茫的山坡上；那新的土丘闪着光，静静地躺在死寂的山谷里。




Epilogue
BRIDESHEAD REVISITED



‘THE worst place we’ve struck yet,’ said the commanding officer; ‘no facilities, no amenities, and Brigade sitting right on top of us. There’s one pub in Flyte St Mary with capacity for about twenty - that, of course, will be out of bounds for officers; there’s a Naafi in the camp area. I hope to run transport once a week to Melstead Carbury.  Marchmain is ten miles away and damn-all when you get there. It will therefore be the first concern of company officers to organize recreation for their men. M.O., I want you to take a look at the lakes to see if they’re fit for bathing.’ ‘Very good, sir.’

‘Brigade expects us to clean up the house for them. I should have thought some of those half-shaven scrim-shankers I see lounging round Headquarters might have saved us the trouble; however...Ryder, you will find a party of fifty and report to the Quartering Comandant at the house at 1045 hours; he’ll show you what we’re taking over.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Our predecessors do not seem to have been very enterprising. The valley has great potentialities for an assault course and a mortar range. Weapon-training officer, make a recce this morning and get something laid on before Brigade arrives.’ ‘Very good, sir.’

‘I’m going out myself with the adjutant to recce training areas. Anyone happen to know this district?’

I said nothing.

‘That’s all then, get cracking.’

‘Wonderful old place in its way,’ said the Quartering Commandant; ‘pity to knock it about too much.’

He was an old, retired, re-appointed lieutenant-colonel from some miles away. We met in the space before the main doors, where I had my half-company fallen-in, waiting for orders. ‘Come in. I’ll soon show you over. It’s a great warren of a place, but we’ve only requisitioned the ground floor and half a dozen bedrooms. Everything else upstairs is still private property, mostly cram-full of furniture; you never saw such stuff, priceless some of it.

‘There’s a caretaker and a couple of old servants live at the top - they won’t be any trouble to you - and a blitzed R.C. padre whom Lady Julia gave a home to -jittery old bird, but no trouble. He’s opened the chapel; that’s in bounds for the troops; surprising lot use it, too.

‘The place belongs to Lady Julia Flyte, as she calls herself now. She was married to Mottram, the Minister of-whatever-it-is. She’s abroad in some woman’s service, and I try to keep an eye on things for her. Queer thing the old marquis leaving everything to her - rough on the boys.

‘Now this is where the last lot put the clerks; plenty of room, anyway. I’ve had the walls and fireplaces boarded up you see valuable old work underneath. Hullo, someone seems to have been making a beast of himself here; destructive beggars, soldiers are!  Lucky we spotted it, or it would have been charged to you chaps.  ‘This is another good-sized room, used to be full of tapestry. I’d advise you to use this for conferences.’

‘I’m only here to clean up, sir. Someone from Brigade will allot the rooms.’ ‘Oh, well, you’ve got an easy job. Very decent fellows the last lot. They shouldn’t have done that to the fireplace though. How did they manage it? Looks solid enough. I wonder if it can be mended?

‘I expect the brigadier will take this for his office; the last did. It’s got a lot of painting that can’t be moved, done on the walls. As you see, I’ve covered it up as best I can, but



soldiers get through anything - as the brigadier’s done in the corner. There was another painted room, outside under pillars - modern work but, if you ask me, the prettiest in the place; it was the signal office and they made absolute hay of it; rather a shame.  ‘This eyesore is what they used as the mess; that’s why I didn’t cover it up; not that it would matter much if it did get damaged; always reminds me of one of the costlier knocking-shops, you know - “ Maison Japonaise”...and this was the ante-room...’

It did not take us long to make our tour of the echoing rooms. Then we went outside on the terrace.

‘Those are the other ranks’ latrines and wash-house; can’t think why they built them just there; it was done before I took the job over. All this used to be cut off from the front. We laid the road through the trees joining it up with the main drive; unsightly but very practical; awful lot of transport comes in and out; cuts the place up, too. Look where one careless devil went smack through the box-hedge and carried away all that balustrade; did it with a three-ton lorry, too; you’d think he had a Churchill tank at least.  ‘That fountain is rather a tender spot with our landlady; the young officers used to lark about in it on guest nights and it was looking a bit the worse for wear, so I wired it in and turned the water off. Looks a bit untidy now; all the drivers throw their cigarette-ends and the remains of the sandwiches there, and you can’t get to it to clean it up, since I put the wire round it. Florid great thing, isn’t it?...

‘Well, if you’ve seen everything I’ll push off. Good day to you.’ His driver threw a cigarette into the dry basin of the fountain; saluted and opened the door of the car. I saluted and the Quartering Commandant drove away through the new, metalled gap in the lime trees.

‘Hooper,’ I said, when I had seen my men started, ‘do you think I can safely leave you in charge of the work-party for half an hour?’

‘I was just wondering where we could scrounge some tea.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ I said, ‘they’ve only just begun work.’

‘They’re awfully browned off.’

‘Keep them at it.’

‘Rightyoh.’

I did not spend long in the desolate ground-floor rooms, but went upstairs and wandered down the familiar corridors, trying doors that were locked, opening doors into rooms piled to the ceiling with furniture. At length I met an old housemaid carrying a cup of tea. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘isn’t it Mr Ryder?’

‘It is. I was wondering when I should meet someone I know.’

‘Mrs Hawkins is up in her old room. I was just taking her some tea.’ ‘I’ll take it for you, I said, and passed through the baize doors, up the uncarpeted stairs, to the nursery.

Nanny Hawkins did not recognize me until I spoke, and my arrival threw her into some confusion; it was not until I had been sitting some time by her fireside that she recovered her old calm. She, who had changed so little in all the years I knew her, had lately become greatly aged. The changes of the last years had come too late in her life to be accepted and understood; her sight was failing, she told me, and she could see only the coarsest needlework. Her speech, sharpened by years of gentle conversation, had reverted now to the soft, peasant tones of its origin.

‘...only myself here and the two girls and poor Father Membling who was blown up, not a roof to his head nor a stick of furniture till Julia took him in with the kind heart she’s got, and his nerves something shocking...Lady Brideshead, too, Marchmain it is now, who I ought by rights to call her Ladyship now, but it doesn’t come natural, it was the same with her. First, when Julia and Cordelia left to the war, she came here with the two boys and then the military turned them out, so they went to London, nor they hadn’t been in their house not a month, and Bridey away with the yeomanry the same as his poor Lordship, when they were blown up too, everything gone, all the furniture she brought here and kept in the coach-house. Then she had another house outside London, and the military took that, too, and there she is now, when I last heard, in a hotel at the seaside, which isn’t the same as your own home, is it? It doesn’t seem right.  ‘...Did you listen to Mr Mottram last night? Very nasty he was about Hitler. I said to the girl Effie who does for me: “If Hitler was listening, and if he understands English, which I doubt, he must feel very small.” Who would have thought of Mr Mottram doing so well? And so many of his friends, too, that used to stay here? I said to Mr Wilcox, who comes to see me regular on the bus from Melstead twice a month, which is very good of him and I appreciate it, I said: “We were entertaining angels unawares,” because Mr Wilcox never liked Mr Mottram’s friends, which I never saw, but used to hear about from all of you, nor Julia didn’t like them, but they’ve done very well, haven’t they?’

At last I asked her: ‘Have you heard from Julia?’

‘From Cordelia, only last week, and they’re together still as they have been all the time, and Julia sent me love at the bottom of the page. They’re both very well, though they couldn’t say where, but Father Membling said, reading between the lines, it was Palestine, which is where Bridey’s yeomanry is, so that’s very nice for them all. Cordelia said they were looking forward to coming home after the war, which I am sure we all are, though whether I live to see it, is another story.’

I stayed with her for half an hour, and left promising to return often. When I reached the hall I found no sign of work and Hooper looking guilty.  ‘They had to go off to draw the bed-straw. I didn’t know till Sergeant Block told me. I don’t know whether they’re coming back.’

‘Don’t know? What orders did you give?’

‘Well, I told Sergeant Block to bring them back if he thought it was worthwhile; I mean if there was time before dinner.’

It was nearly twelve. ‘You’ve been hotted again, Hooper. That straw was to be drawn any time before six tonight.’

‘Oh Lor; sorry, Ryder. Sergeant Block - ‘

‘It’s my own fault for going away...Fall in the same party immediately after dinner, bring them back here and keep them here till the job’s done.’ ‘Rightyoh. I say, did you say you knew this place before?’ ‘Yes, very well. It belongs to friends of mine,’ and as I said the words they sounded as odd in my I ears as Sebastian’s had done, when, instead of saying, ‘It is my home,’ he said, ‘It is where my family live.’

‘It doesn’t seem to make any sense - one family in a place this size. What’s the use of it?’

‘Well, I suppose Brigade are finding it useful.’

‘But that’s not what it was built for, is it?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘not what it was built for. Perhaps that’s one of the pleasures of building, like having a son, wondering how he’ll grow up. I don’t know; I never built anything, and I forfeited the right to watch my son grow up. I’m homeless, childless, middle-aged, loveless, Hooper.’ He looked to see if I was being funny, decided that I was, and laughed. ‘Now go back to camp, keep out of the C.O.’s way, if he’s back from his recce, and don’t let on to anyone that we’ve made a nonsense of the morning.’ ‘Okey, Ryder.’



There was one part of the house I had not yet visited, and I went there now. The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect; the art-nouveau paint was as fresh and bright as ever; the art-nouveau lamp burned once more before the altar. I said a prayer, an ancient, newly-learned form of words, and left, turning towards the camp; and as I walked back, and the cook-house bugle sounded ahead of me, I thought:

‘The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing; Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

‘And yet,’ I thought, stepping out more briskly towards the camp, where the bugles after a pause had taken up the second call and were sounding ‘Pick-em-up, pick-em-up, hot potatoes’, ‘and yet that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back.

‘Something quite remote from anything the builders intended, has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time; a small red flame - a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.’

I quickened my pace and reached the hut which served us for our ante-room.

‘You’re looking unusually cheerful today,’ said the second-in-command.

“到现在为止，这是我们到过的最糟糕的地方了。”那个指挥官说道，“没有便利设备，又没有什么可玩儿的，旅部就驻在我们的上头。弗莱特圣玛丽地方有个小酒店，大概能坐二十来人——当然啦，这地方是不准许军官进去的；在营地还有一个三军小卖部。我希望一个星期去梅尔斯蒂德—卡伯里跑一趟运输。马奇梅因家的宅邸离这儿有十英里路，等你到了那儿一切也都完蛋啦。所有军官们首先关心的事情就是给他们连队的士兵们组织娱乐活动。军医官，我希望你去看看那些水池，看看那儿适不适合洗澡。”

“是，长官。”

“旅部指望我们把这所房子给他们打扫干净。我本来认为我看见的一些胡子拉碴的、在司令部附近游逛、什么事儿也不干的那些军官们会免了咱们这件麻烦事。但是……赖德，你去找五十人一组的杂役，然后在十点四十五分的时候去那所房子向营指挥官报到；他会向你们交代任务的。”

“是，长官。”

“看来我们前任的气魄并不是很大。这个山谷有很大潜力来进行突击训练和迫击炮射击的。武器训练官，今天上午去侦察，在旅部到达前把东西布置好。”

“是，长官。”

“我要亲自和副官出去侦察一下训练地区。有谁熟悉这个地方？”

我没说话。

“那么就完了，开始干吧。”

“就它本身说，这个旧宅可真了不起，”营指挥官说，“可惜毁得太厉害了。”

他是一位上了年纪的、退了伍又重新任命的陆军中校，从几英里路外来的。我们在大门前一块空地上见面，我率领着我的集合起来的半连兵士在这儿待命。“请进。我带去到处看看。这地方的房子很多，不过我们只征用了一楼，还有五六间卧室。楼上其余的一切还是私人财产，大部分都塞满了家具。你决没有见过那样的东西，有些可是无价之宝哩。

“楼的顶层还住着一个看房人和两个老仆人——他们决不会麻烦你的——还有一个受了闪电战袭击影响的红十字会随军牧师，朱莉娅小姐给了他一间屋子——一个惶惶不可终日的老家伙，不过也不碍事。他已经开放了那个小教堂；那地方准许部队进去；利用这个小教堂的人可多极啦。

“这个地方是属于朱莉娅·弗莱特小姐的，现在她这样称呼自己。她原来嫁给了莫特拉姆，不知道是个什么部的部长。她现在在国外的某个妇女服务部门工作，我尽力给她照管这些东西。说来也怪，那个老侯爵把所有的东西都留给她了——对儿子们可狠啦。

“现在这是最后一处安顿办事员的地方了；不管怎样，还有很多房间。你看，我已经叫人把墙壁和壁炉都用木板盖住了——那下面是很有价值的古老的作品。喂，好像有人在这儿捣蛋呢，一批搞破坏的穷要饭的，这些士兵们！幸亏我们发现了这个地方，否则就会让你们把这地方糟蹋了。

“这是另一间大房子，过去里面都是挂毯和绒绣。我建议你把这间屋子做会议室。”

“我只是来这儿打扫的，长官。以后旅部的人会来分配房间。”

“哦，嗯，你可捞了一件轻松的活儿；最后来到的这批人可真是很不错。可是他们不该把壁炉弄成这个样子。他们怎么弄的？壁炉看来是很结实的。不知道这壁炉能不能修好？

“我估计旅长会把这间屋子当他们办公室的；上一个长官就是这样做的。这间屋子里有许多画没法移走，那是画在墙上的。像你看到的，我已经尽可能把墙都覆盖起来了，可是当兵的什么事都干得出来——就像旅长在那个角落里干的那样。另外还有一间画了画的屋子，在外面廊柱下——都是现代画，你要问我的话，我得说那是这所宅院最最出色的东西了；原来这儿当了通讯部，他们把这里弄得乱七八糟，真太不像话了。

“这个难看的房间是他们原来当饭厅用的，所以我没有把这间屋子的墙盖住；即使遭到毁害，倒也不会有太大的关系。这地方总使我想起一家颇豪华的拍卖商店，你知道——叫‘日本式房间’……这是接待室……”

没费多长时间我们就浏览了这些发出回声的空房间。随后，我们出来走到平台上。

“这间房子是其他军阶的军官的厕所和盥洗室，真猜不透他们为什么偏偏要把厕所建在这个地方。我接管这项工作以前这地方就搞成这样了。这里和前边原来是隔断的。我们铺设了穿过树林那条小路，使它与大路连接起来，虽然不很雅观，却很实用。进进出出的运输车辆多极了，也把这地方弄得乱七八糟的。看看，不知哪个冒失鬼不偏不倚正从黄杨树篱中间穿过去，把所有的栏杆都撞倒了；还是一辆三吨卡车干的。你还会以为至少是一辆丘吉尔型坦克干的。

“那个喷泉是我们女主人最心爱的一处地方。每逢招待宾客的夜晚，青年军官们经常在里面嬉闹，这个喷泉装置有点破烂不堪了，所以我就用铁丝网把它围起来，并且把水源关掉。看起来现在还是有些不整洁。司机们都把烟蒂和吃剩的三明治扔到里面，你们无法进里面去打扫，因为我在四周拉了铁丝网。真是个漂亮的、了不起的地方，是不是……”

“喂，如果你所有的地方都看过了，那我可就走了。祝你今天顺利。”

他的司机把一支烟卷扔进了喷泉干涸了的池里，行了一个礼，然后打开了小汽车的车门。我行了礼，这位营指挥官的车就开走了，穿过了橙树林中那条新开的碎石铺路的豁口。

“胡珀，”我叫道，这时我已经看到我的人开始干起来了，“你看我把这伙人让你管半小时行不行？”

“刚才我一直在琢磨，不知道我们能在什么地方搞到一些茶叶。”

“看在基督的面上，”我说道，“他们才刚刚开始干活哩。”

“大家都厌倦透了。”

“叫他们别松劲儿。”

“好嘞。”

我在凄凉萧索的一楼逗留的时间不长，我上了楼，徘徊在那熟悉的走廊里，我试着推开锁着的门，打开没锁的门进去看看，里面的家具一直堆到天花板。最后我终于碰见了一位老女仆，她手里端着一杯茶。“哎呀，”她说道，“这不是赖德先生吗？”

“是我。我正在想什么时候能碰到一个熟人呢。”

“霍金斯太太正在上面她原来的屋子里呢。我这是给她端茶去。”

“我替你拿吧。”我说，穿过一扇扇挂着粗呢布的门，走上没有铺地毯的楼梯，就到了育婴室。

保姆霍金斯直到我说话才认出我来，我的到来一时使她有点慌乱。直到我在炉边挨着她坐了一会儿，她才恢复了原来的那种平静。她在我认识她的这些年中变化不大，但近来也显得老态龙钟了。最近几年的种种变故在她的晚年发生，所以很难让她接受和理解。她告诉我说，她的眼力已经不行了，只能做一些粗针线活计。她的声音由于多年温柔的谈话边的尖锐了，现在却又恢复了原来那种柔和而悦耳的声调了。

“……只有我自己还在这儿，还有两个年轻的女仆，和那个可怜的蒙布灵神父，他的家遭了轰炸，炸得简直上无片瓦，一点家具也没有，后来朱莉娅菩萨心肠把他带到这儿来住，他的神经受到些刺激……还有布赖兹赫德夫人，现在是马奇梅因夫人了，照理说，我该尊称她‘夫人’的，可是这么叫她，我感到很别扭，她也很别扭。起先，朱莉娅和科迪莉娅打仗去了，她就带着两个男孩到这儿来了，后来军队把他们赶出去了，他们就去了伦敦。他们在家里连一个月都没有住到，布赖德就像可怜的爵爷一样，跟义勇骑兵队走了，他们的家也遭了轰炸，所有的东西都没了，她过去搬到这儿的、存放在马车房里的家具也统统没有了。她在伦敦郊区又弄到一所房子，后来也被军队占用了。我最后听说，她现在住在海边一家旅馆里，那种地方总归和自己家一不一样吧？这也似乎不怎么合适啦。

“……你昨天晚上没有听莫特拉姆先生的讲话吧？他把希特勒骂得狗血喷头。我对服侍我的女仆艾菲说：‘如果希特勒在听他的讲话，如果他听得懂英语的话，虽然我不太相信，那他一定也会觉得没脸见人啦。’谁想得到莫特拉姆会干得这么漂亮呢？还有他的那么多在这儿住过的朋友也干得不错。威尔科克斯先生经常按时搭公共汽车从梅尔斯蒂德来看我，每个月两次，他人可真好，我很感激。我对他说：‘真没想到，我们招待的还是一帮子天使呢。’因为威尔科克斯先生从来也不喜欢莫特拉姆先生那帮子朋友，我没有看见过那些人，还都是听你们说的，朱莉娅也不喜欢他们，不过他们干得很漂亮，不是吗？”

最后我问她：“你接到过朱莉娅的信吗？”

“科迪莉娅来过信，是在上星期，她们一直在一起。朱莉娅在信纸下边附了一句问候我的话。她们两个都很好，尽管她们不能说在什么地方，可是蒙布灵神父说，从字里行间体会到那地方是巴勒斯坦，布赖德的义勇骑兵队也在那个地方，这样对他们来说可就好了。科迪莉娅说，她们盼望打完仗回家来，我相信我们大家都盼着这一天呢，不过我活不活得到那一天，就是另一回事了。”

我在她那儿待了半个小时，离开时答应常来看她。我走到走廊时，发现人们没有干活的迹象，胡珀一脸内疚的神色。

“他们都得去拉垫床的草去了。布洛克中士告诉我时，我才知道。我不知道他们是不是快回来了。”

“不知道？你怎么下达的命令的？”

“噢，我告诉布洛克中士说，如果他认为还值得拉的话，那就把士兵的垫草拉回来，我的意思是说如果晚饭前还有时间的话。”

这时已经将近十二点了。“胡珀，你们又心血来潮了。下午六点以前，有的是时间去拉草呀。”

“唉，上帝，对不起，赖德，布洛克中士——”

“都怪我自己走开了……一吃完中饭把那批人集合起来带到这儿来，把活干完了才能放他们走。”

“好咧——啊，喂，你不是说你以前认识这个地方吗？”

“认识，很熟悉这儿。它是我的一位朋友的。”当我说出这几个字的时候，这几个字在我听起来就像塞巴斯蒂安说这话时一样的古怪，那时他没有说“这是我的家”，而是说“这是我的家住的地方”。

“这似乎没有什么意思吧——一个家住在这么大的地方。有什么用呢？”

“嗯，我想旅长觉得它很有用处的。”

“可是当初这所房子可不是为了这个用途造的吧？”

“不是，”我说，“当然不是为这个用途造的。也许只是出于一种建筑方面的乐趣而已，就像生一个儿子，却不知道他会怎么长大成人。我也不知道；我什么也没有建筑过，而且我也失去了把我的儿子抚养成人的权利。我没有家，没有儿女，到了中年，没有爱情，胡珀。”他望了望我，看看我是不是在说笑话，后来断定我真是如此，就笑了起来。“现在回营房去吧，避开指挥官，如果他搜索完了回来，别向任何人透露出我们一上午干的蠢事。”

“好咧——啊，赖德。”

这所住宅有一处我还没有去过，现在我去了那里。小教堂并没有露出年久失修的凋敝景象；那幅“新艺术”绘画还像以前那样新鲜和光泽照眼；那“新艺术”的灯又在祭坛前点燃起来。我念了一句祈祷文，那是一句古老的、新学来的祈祷词，念完了就离开了那儿，转身朝营房走去。在我往回走的路上，我听见前方炊事班号声响起来了，这时我想：

“建筑者们不知道他们的建筑将会落得什么样的用场。他们用那个旧城堡的石块建造了一所新房子；年复一年，一代一代，他们装饰，扩建这所房子；一年年过去，园林里郁郁葱葱的树长大成材；直到后来严霜骤降，出现了胡珀的时代；于是这片地方萧条荒废，整个工程荡然无存；寂无人烟的城就像这样屹立在那里。空虚的空虚，一切都是空虚。

“但是，”我一边思索着，一边步履轻捷地走向营房，原来的号声停顿了一下，接着又开始响起来，发出“快来——吃哟，快来——吃哟，热乎乎的土豆哟”的号声，“但是这还不是最后的话；甚至也还不是恰当的话；而是十年前一个死去了的字眼。

“建造者们最初未料到的东西已经从他们的建筑中产生，从我在其中扮演了个角色的剧烈的小小人间悲剧中产生；某种我们当时谁也没有想到的东西已经产生。一个小小的红色火光——一盏有着凄凉图案的铜箔灯盏在礼拜堂的铜箔大门前重新点燃，这是古老的骑士从他们坟墓里看到点燃上、又看见熄灭掉的火光；这火光又为另外的士兵们点燃上，他们的心远离家庭，比亚克港、比耶路撒冷还要遥远。要不是为了建筑师们和悲剧演员们，这灯光不会重新点燃的，而今天早晨我找到了它，在古老的石块中间重新点燃起来。”

我加快了步子，到了那间供我们做会客室的小屋。

“今天你看起来非常愉快。”那位副指挥官说。
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天啦撸楼主好棒！个人非常非常喜欢新版的故园电影，三个主演海狸姐、小本和马修古迪都演得超好啊，而且颜值如此之高~电影前半部分在大学里拍摄的场景很美
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