Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [137]
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 goldmounted 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