Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [127]
'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.'