The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [21]
And all this happened in four days; if it had been in four months the change would have been remarkable. I could see him developing from one hour to the next.
On our last evening in London I brought out an atlas and tried to explain where we were going. The world for him was divided roughly into three hemispheres—Europe, where there had been a war; it was full of towns like Paris and Buda-Pest, all equally remote and peopled with prostitutes; the East, a place full of camels and elephants, deserts and dervishes and nodding mandarins; and America, which besides its own two continents included Australia, New Zealand, and most of the British Empire not obviously “Eastern”; somewhere, too, there were some “savages.”
“We shall have to stop the night at Brindisi,” I was saying. “Then we can get the Lloyd Trestino in the morning. What a lot you’re smoking!”
We had just returned from a tea and cocktail party. George was standing at the looking glass gazing at himself in his new clothes.
“You know, he has made this suit rather well, Ernest. It’s about the only thing I learned at home—smoking, I mean. I used to go up to the saddle room with Byng.”
“You haven’t told me what you thought of the party.”
“Ernest, why are all your friends being so sweet to me? Is it just because I’m going to be a duke?”
“I expect that makes a difference with some of them—Julia for instance. She said you looked so fugitive.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t like Julia much. No, I mean Peter and that funny Mr. Oliphant.”
“I think they like you.”
“How odd!” He looked at himself in the glass again. “D’you know, I’ll tell you something I’ve been thinking all these last few days. I don’t believe I really am mad at all. It’s only at home I feel so different from everyone else. Of course I don’t know much . . . I’ve been thinking, d’you think it can be grandfather and the aunts who are mad, all the time?”
“They’re certainly getting old.”
“No, mad. I can remember some awfully dotty things they’ve done at one time or another. Last summer Aunt Gertrude swore there was a swarm of bees under her bed and had all the gardeners up with smoke and things. She refused to get out of bed until the bees were gone—and there weren’t any there. And then there was the time grandfather made a wreath of strawberry leaves and danced round the garden singing ‘Cook’s son, Dook’s son, son of a belted earl.’ It didn’t strike me at the time, but that was an odd thing to do, wasn’t it? Anyway, I shan’t see them again for months and months. Oh, Ernest, it’s too wonderful. You don’t think the sleeves are too tight, do you? Are people black in Athens?”
“Not coal black—mostly Jews and undergraduates.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, Peter’s an undergraduate. I was one until a few weeks ago.”
“I say, do you think people will take me for an undergraduate?”
IV
It seems to me sometimes that Nature, like a lazy author, will round off abruptly into a short story what she obviously intended to be the opening of a novel.
Two letters arrived for me by the post next morning. One was from my bank returning the Duke’s cheque for £150 marked “Payment Stopped”; the other from a firm of solicitors enjoining me that they, or rather one of them, would call upon me that morning in connection with the Duke of Vanburgh’s business. I took them in to George.
All he said was: “I had a sort of feeling that this was all too good to last.”
The lawyer duly arrived. He seemed displeased that neither of us was dressed. He intimated that he wished to speak to me alone.
His Grace, he said, had altered his plans for his grandson. He no longer wished him to go abroad. Of course, between ourselves we had to admit that the boy was not quite sane . . . very sad . . . these old families . . . putting me in such a difficult position in case anything happened. . . . His Grace had talked it over with Lady Emily and Lady Gertrude. . . . It really