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By Root 7610 0

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