'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 caf?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 b阾ise. 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.'
