Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [138]
'Better today. I have lived carefully, sheltered myself from the cold winds, eaten moderately of what was in season, drunk fine claret, slept in my own sheets; I shall live long. I was fifty when they dismounted us and sent us into the line; old men stay at the base, the orders said, but Walter Venables, my commanding officer, my nearest neighbour, said: "You're as fit as the youngest of them, Alex." So I was; so I am now, if I could only breathe.
'No air; no wind stirring under the velvet canopy. When the summer comes,' said Lord Marchmain, oblivious of the deep corn and swelling fruit and the surfeited bees who slowly sought their hives in the heavy afternoon sunlight outside his windows, 'when the summer comes I shall leave my bed and sit in the open air and breathe more easily.
'Who would have thought that all these little gold men, gentlemen in their own country, could live so long without breathing? Like to toads in the coal, down a deep mine, untroubled. God take it, why have they dug a hole for me? Must a man stifle to death in his own cellars? Plender, Gaston, open the windows.'
'The windows are all wide open, my lord.'
A cylinder of oxygen was placed beside his bed, with a long tube, a face-piece, and a little stop-cock he could work himself. Often he said: 'It's empty- look nurse, there's nothing comes out.'
'No, Lord Marchmain, it's quite full; the bubble here in the glass bulb shows that; it's at full pressure; listen, don't you hear it hiss? Try and breathe slowly, Lord Marchmain; quite gently, then you get the benefit.'
'Free as air; that's what they say—"free as air". Now they bring me my air in an iron barrel.'
Once he said: 'Cordelia, what became of the chapel?'
'They locked it up, papa, when mummy died.'
'It was hers, I gave it to her. We've always been builders in our family. I built it for her; in the shade of the pavilion; rebuilt with the old stones behind the old walls; it was the last of the new house to come, the first to go. There used to be a chaplain until the war. Do you remember him?'
'I was too young.'
'Then I went away—left her in the chapel praying. It was hers. It was the place for her. I never came back to disturb her prayers. They said we were fighting for freedom; I had my own victory. Was it a crime?'
'I think it was, papa.'
'Crying to heaven for vengeance? Is that why they've locked me in this cave, do you think, with a black tube of air and the little yellow men along the walls, who live without breathing? Do you think that, child? But the wind will come soon, tomorrow perhaps, and we'll breathe again. The ill wind that will blow me good. Better tomorrow.'
Thus, till mid-July, Lord Marchmain lay dying, wearing himself down in the struggle to-live. Then, since there was no reason to expect an immediate change, Cordelia went to London to see her women s organization about the coming 'emergency'. That day Lord Marchmain became suddenly worse. He lay silent and quite still, breathing laboriously; only his open eyes, which sometimes moved about the room, gave any sign of consciousness.
'Is this the end?' Julia asked.
'It is impossible to say,' the doctor answered; 'when he does die it will probably be like this. He may recover from the present attack. The only thing is not to disturb him. The least shock will be fatal.'
'I'm going for Father Mackay,' she said.
I was not surprised. I had seen it in her mind all the summer. When she had gone I said to the doctor, 'We must stop this nonsense.'
He said: 'My business is with the body. It's not my business to argue whether people are better alive or dead, or what happens to them after death. I only try to keep them alive.'
'And you said just now any shock would kill him. What could be worse for a man who fears death, as he does, than to have a priest brought to him—a priest he turned out when he had the strength?'
'I think it may kill him.'
'Then will you forbid it?'
'I've no authority to forbid anything. I can only give my opinion.'
'Cara, what do you think?'
'I don't want him made unhappy. That is all there is to hope for now; that he'll die without knowing it. But I should like the priest there, all the same.'