Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [37]
'I like wine,' said Cordelia.
'My sister Cordelia's last report said that she was not only the worst girl in the school, but the worst there had ever been in the memory of the oldest nun.'
'That's because I refused to be an Enfant de Marie. Reverend Mother said that if I didn't keep my room tidier I couldn't be one one, so I said, well, I won't be one, and I don't believe our Blessed Lasy cares two hoots whether I put my gym shoes on the left or the right of my dancing shoes. Reverend Mother was livid.
'Our Lady cares about obedience.'
'Bridey, you mustn't be pious,' said Sebastian. 'We've got an atheist with us.'
'Agnostic,' I said.
'Really? Is there much of that at your college? There was a certain amount at Magdalen.'
'I really don't know. I was one long before I went to Oxford.'
'It's everywhere,' said Brideshead.
Religion seemed an inevitable topic that day. For some time we talked about the Agricultural Show. Then Brideshead said, 'I saw the Bishop in London last week. You know, he wants to close our chapel.'
'Oh, he couldn't,' said Cordelia.
'I don't think mummy will let him, ' said Sebastian.
'It's too far away,' said Brideshead. 'There are a dozen families round Melstead who can't get here. He wants to open a mass centre there.'
'But what about us?' said Sebastian. 'Do we have to drive out on winter mornings?'
'We must have the Blessed Sacrament here,' said Cordelia. 'I like popping in at odd times; so does mummy.'
'So do I, " said Brideshead, 'but there are so few of us. It's not as though we were old Catholics with everyone on the estate coming to mass. It'll have to go sooner or later, perhaps after mummy's time. The point is whether it wouldn't be better to let it go now. You are an artist, Ryder, what do you think of it aesthetically?'
'I think it's beautiful,' said Cordelia with tears in her eyes.
'Is it Good Art?'
'Well, I don't quite know what you mean,' I said warily. 'I think it's a remarkable example of its period. Probably in eighty years it will be greatly admired.'
'But surely it can't be good twenty years ago and good in eighty years, and not good now?'
'Well, it may be good now. All I mean is that I don't happen to like it much.'
'But is there a difference between liking a thing and thinking it good?'
'Bridey, don't be so Jesuitical,' said Sebastian, but I knew that this disagreement was not a matter of words only, but expressed a deep and impassable division between us; neither had any understanding of the other, nor ever could.
'Isn't that just the distinction you made about wine?'
'No. I like and think good the end to which wine is sometimes the means—the promotion of sympathy between man and man. But in my own case it does not achieve that end, so I neither like it nor think it good for me.'
'Bridey, do stop.'
'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I thought it rather an interesting point.' 'Thank God I went to Eton,' said Sebastian.
After dinner Brideshead said: 'I'm afraid I must take Sebastian away for half an hour. I shall be busy all day tomorrow, and I'm off immediately after the show. I've a lot of papers for father to sign. Sebastian must take them out and explain them to him. It's time you were in bed, Cordelia.'
'Must digest first,' she said. 'I'm not used to gorging like this at night. I'll talk to Charles.'
'"Charles"?' said Sebastian. '"Charles"?' "Mr Ryder" to you, child.'
'Come on Charles.'
When we were alone: she said: 'Are you really an agnostic?'
'Does your family always talk about religion all the time?'
'Not all the time. It's a subject that just comes up naturally, doesn't-it?'
'Does it? It never has with me before.'
'Then perhaps you are an agnostic. I'll pray for you.'
'That's very kind of you.'
'I can't spare you a whole rosary you know. Just a decade. I've got such a long list of people. I take them in order and they get a decade about once a week.'
'I'm sure it's more than I deserve.'
'Oh, I've got some harder cases than you. Lloyd George and the Kaiser and Olive Banks.'
'Who is she?'