Decline and Fall, page 10
'I don't expect he means it, said Paul, 'and anyway I shouldn't bother about it.
'That's the point. I'm beginning to feel he's quite right. I suppose I am a pretty coarse sort of chap. I don't know anything about art, and I haven't met any grand people, and I don't go to a good tailor, and all that. I'm not what he calls "out of the top drawer". I never pretended I was, but the thing is that up till now it hasn't worried me. I don't think I was a conceited sort of chap, but I felt as good as anyone else, and I didn't care what people thought as long as I had my fun. And I did have fun, too, and, what's more, I enjoyed it. But now I've lived with that man for a week, I feel quite different. I feel half ashamed of myself all the time. And I've come to recognize that supercilious look he gives me in other people's eyes as well.
'Ah, how well I know that feeling! sighed Mr Prendergast.
'I used to think I was popular among the boys, but you know I'm not, and at Mrs Roberts's they only pretend to like me in the hope I'd stand 'em drinks. I did, too, but they never gave me one back. I thought it was just because they were Welsh, but I see now it was because they despised me. I don't blame them. God knows I despise myself. You know, I used to use French phrases a certain amount ‑ things like savoir faire and Je ne sais quoi. I never thought about it, but I suppose I haven't got much of an accent. How could I? I've never been in France except for that war. Well, every time I say one of them now the Doctor gives a sort of wince as if he's bitten on a bad tooth. I have to think the whole time now before I say anything, to see if there's any French in it or any of the expressions he doesn't think refined. Then when I do say anything my voice sounds so funny that I get in a muddle and he winces again. Old boy, it's been hell this last week, and it's worrying me. I'm getting an inferiority complex. Dingy's like that. She just never speaks now. He's always making little jokes about Flossie's clothes, too, but I don't think the old girl sees what he's driving at. That man'll have me crazy before the term's over.
'Well, there's only a week more, was all that Paul could say to comfort him.
* * *
Next morning at prayers Grimes handed Paul a letter. 'Irony, he said.
Paul opened it and read:
John Clutterbuck & Sons,
Wholesale Brewers and Wine Merchants.
My Dear Grimes,
The other day at the sports you asked whether there was by any chance a job open for you at the brewery. I don't know if you were serious in this, but if you were a post has just fallen vacant which I feel might suit you. I should be glad to offer it to any friend who has been so kind to Percy. We employ a certain number of travellers to go round to various inns and hotels to sample the beer and see that it has not been diluted or in any way adulterated. Our junoir traveller, who was a friend of mine from Cambridge, had just developed D.T.'s and has had to be suspended. The salary is two hundred a year with car and travelling expenses. Would this attract you at all? If so, will you let me know during the next few days.
Yours sincerely,
Sam Clutterbuck.
'Just look at that, said Grimes. 'God's own job and mine for the asking! If that had come ten days ago my whole life might have been different.
'You don't think of taking it now?
'Too late, old boy, too late. The saddest words in the English language.
In 'break' Grimes said to Paul: 'Look here, I've decided to take Sam Clutterbuck's job, and be damned to the Fagans! His eyes shone with excitement. 'I shan't say a word to them. I shall just go off. They can do what they like about it. I don't care.
'Splendid! said Paul. 'It's much the best thing you can do.
'I'm going this very afternoon, said Grimes.
An hour later, at the end of morning school, they met again. 'I've been thinking over that letter, said Grimes. 'I see it all now. It's just a joke.
'Nonsense! said Paul. 'I'm sure it isn't. Go and see the Clutterbucks right away.
'No, no, they don't mean it seriously. They've heard about my marriage from Percy, and they're just pulling my leg. It was too good to be true. Why should they offer me a job like that, even if such a wonderful job exists?
'My dear Grimes, I'm perfectly certain it was a genuine offer. Anyway, there's nothing to lose by going to see them.
'No, no, it's too late, old boy. Things like that don't happen. And he disappeared beyond the baize door.
* * *
Next day there was fresh trouble at Llanabba. Two men in stout boots, bowler hats, and thick grey overcoats presented themselves at the Castle with a warrant for Philbrick's arrest. Search was made for him, but it was suddenly discovered that he had already left by the morning train for Holyhead. The boys crowded round the detectives with interest and a good deal of disappointment. They were not, they thought, particularly impressive figures as they stood in the hall fingering their hats and drinking whisky and calling Dingy 'miss'.
'We've been after 'im for some time now, said the first detective. 'Ain't we, Bill?
'Pretty near six months. It's too bad, his getting away like this. They're getting rather restless at H.Q. about our travelling expenses.
'Is it a very serious case? asked Mr Prendergast. The entire school were by this time assembled in the hall. 'Not shooting or anything like that?
'No, there ain't been no bloodshed up to date, sir. I oughtn't to tell about it, really, but seeing as you've all been mixed up in it to some extent, I don't mind telling you that I think he'll get off on a plea of insanity. Loopy, you know.
'What's he been up to?
'False pretences and impersonation, sir. There's five charges against him in different parts of the country, mostly at hotels. He represents himself as a rich man, stays there for some time living like a lord, cashes a big cheque and then goes off. Calls 'isself Sir Solomon Philbrick. Funny thing is, I think he really believes his tale 'isself. I've come across several cases like that one time or another. There was a bloke in Somerset what thought 'e was Bishop of Bath and Wells and confirmed a whole lot of kids ‑ very reverent, too.
'Well, anyway, said Dingy, 'he went without his wages from here.
'I always felt there was something untrustworthy about that man, said Mr Prendergast.
'Lucky devil! said Grimes despondently.
* * *
'I'm worried about Grimes, said Mr Prendergast that evening. 'I never saw a man more changed. He used to be so self‑confident and self‑assertive. He came in here quite timidly just now and asked me whether I believed that Divine retribution took place in this world or the next. I began to talk to him about it, but I could see he wasn't listening. He sighed once or twice and then went out without a word while I was still speaking.
'Beste‑Chetwynde tells me he has kept in the whole of the third form because the blackboard fell down in his classroom this morning. He was convinced they had arranged it on purpose.
'Yes, they often do.
'But in this case, they hadn't. Beste‑Chetwynde said they were quite frightened at the way he spoke to them. Just like an actor, Beste‑Chetwynde said.
'Poor Grimes! I think he is seriously unnerved. It will be a relief when the holidays come.
But Captain Grimes's holiday came sooner than Mr Prendergast expected, and in a way which few people could have forseen. Three days later he did not appear at morning prayers, and Flossie, red‑eyed, admitted that he had not come in from the village the night before. Mr Davies, the stationmaster, confessed to seeing him earlier in the evening in a state of depression. Just before luncheon a youth presented himself at the Castle with a little pile of clothes he had found on the seashore. They were identified without difficulty as having belonged to the Captain. In the breast pocket of the jacket was an envelope addressed to the Doctor, and in it a slip of paper inscribed with the words: 'THOSE THAT LIVE BY THE FLESH SHALL PERISH BY THE FLESH.
As far as was possible this intelligence was kept from the boys.
Flossie, though severely shocked at this untimely curtailment of her married life, was firm in her resolution not to wear mourning. 'I don't think my husband would have expected it of me, she said.
In these distressing circumstances the boys began packing their boxes to go away for the Easter holidays.
end of part one
PART TWO
CHAPTER I King's Thursday
Margot Beste-Chetwynde had two houses in England ‑ one in London and the other in Hampshire. Her London house, built in the reign of William and Mary, was, by universal consent, the most beautiful building between Bond Street and Park Lane, but opinion was divided on the subject of her country house. This was very new indeed; in fact, it was scarcely finished when Paul went to stay there at the beginning of the Easter holidays. No single act in Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's eventful and in many ways disgraceful career had excited quite so much hostile comment as the building, or rather the rebuilding, of this remarkable house.
It was called King's Thursday, and stood on the place which since the reign of Bloody Mary had been the seat of the Earls of Pastmaster. For three centuries the poverty and inertia of this noble family had preserved its home unmodified by any of the succeeding fashions that fell upon domestic architecture. No wing had been added, no window filled in; no portico, façade, terrace, orangery, tower, or battlement marred its timbered front. In the craze for coal‑gas and indoor sanitation, King's Thursday had slept unscathed by plumber or engineer. The estate carpenter, an office hereditary in the family of the original joiner who had panelled the halls and carved the great staircase, did such restorations as became necessary from time to time for the maintenance of the fabric, working with the same tools and with the traditional methods, so that in a few years his work became indistinguishable from that of his grandsires. Rushlights still flickered in the bedrooms long after all Lord Pastmaster's neighbours were blazing away electricity, and in the last fifty years Hampshire had gradually become proud of King's Thursday. From having been considered rather a blot on the progressive county, King's Thursday gradually became the Mecca of week‑end parties. 'I thought we might go over to tea at the Pastmasters', hostesses would say after luncheon on Sundays. 'You really must see their house. Quite unspoilt, my dear. Professor Franks, who was here last week, said it was recognized as the finest piece of domestic Tudor in England.
It was impossible to ring the Pastmasters up, but they were always at home and unaffectedly delighted to see their neighbours, and after tea Lord Pastmaster would lead the newcomers on a tour round the house, along the great galleries and into the bedrooms, and would point out the priest‑hole and the closet where the third Earl imprisoned his wife for wishing to rebuild a smoking chimney. 'That chimney still smokes when the wind's in the east, he would say, 'but we haven't rebuilt it yet.
Later they would drive away in their big motor cars to their modernized manors, and as they sat in their hot baths before dinner the more impressionable visitors might reflect how they seemed to have been privileged to step for an hour and a half out of their own century into the leisurely, prosaic life of the English Renaissance, and how they had talked at tea of field‑sports and the reform of the Prayer‑Book just as the very‑great‑grandparents of their host might have talked in the same chairs and before the same fire three hundred years before, when their own ancestors, perhaps, slept on straw or among the aromatic merchandise of some Hanse ghetto.
But the time came when King's Thursday had to be sold. It had been built in an age when twenty servants were not an unduly extravagant establishment, and it was scarcely possible to live there with fewer. But servants, the Beste‑Chetwyndes found, were less responsive thar their masters to the charms of Tudor simplicity; the bedrooms originally ordained for them among the maze of rafters that supported the arches of uneven stone roofs were unsuited to modern requirements, and only the dirtiest and most tipsy of cooks could be induced to inhabit the enormous stone‑flagged kitchen or turn the spits at the open fire. Housemaids tended to melt away under the recurring strain of trotting in the bleak hour before breakfast up and down the narrow servants' staircases and along the interminable passages with jugs of warm water for the morning baths. Modern democracy called for lifts and labour‑saving devices, for hot‑water taps and cold‑water taps and (horrible innovation!) drinking water taps, for gas‑rings, and electric ovens.
With rather less reluctance than might have been expected, Lord Pastmaster made up his mind to sell the house; to tell the truth, he could never quite see what all the fuss was about; he supposed it was very historic, and all that, but his own taste lay towards the green shutters and semi‑tropical vegetation of a villa on the French Riviera, in which, if his critics had only realized it, he was fulfilling the traditional character of his family far better than by struggling on at King's Thursday. But the County was slow to observe this, and something very like consternation was felt, not only in the Great Houses, but in the bungalows and the villas for miles about, while in the neighbouring rectories antiquarian clergymen devised folk‑tales of the disasters that should come to crops and herds when there was no longer a Beste-Chetwynde at King's Thursday. Mr Jack Spire in the London Hercules wrote eloquently on the Save King's Thursday Fund, urging that it should be preserved for the nation, but only a very small amount was collected of the very large sum which Lord Pastmaster was sensible enough to demand, and the theory that it was to be transplanted and re-erected in Cincinnati found wide acceptance.
Thus the news that Lord Pastmaster's rich sister‑in‑law had bought the family seat was received with the utmost delight by her new neighbours and by Mr Jack Spire, and all sections of the London Press which noticed the sale. Teneat Bene Beste-Chetwunde, the motto carved over the chimneypiece in the great hall, was quoted exultantly on all sides, for very little was known about Margot Beste‑Chetwynde in Hampshire, and the illustrated papers were always pleased to take any occasion to embellish their pages with her latest portrait; the reporter to whom she remarked, 'I can't think of anything more bourgeois and awful than timbered Tudor architecture, did not take in what she meant or include the statement in his 'story'.
King's Thursday had been empty for two years when Margot Beste‑Chetwynde bought it. She had been there once before, during her engagement.
'It's worse than I thought, far worse, she said as she drove up the main avenue which the loyal villagers had decorated with the flags of the sometime allied nations in honour of her arrival. 'Liberty's new building cannot be compared with it, she said, and stirred impatiently in the car, as she remembered, how many years ago, the romantic young heiress who had walked entranced among the cut yews, and had been wooed, how phlegmatically, in the odour of honeysuckle.
Mr Jack Spire was busily saving St Sepulchre's, Egg Street (where Dr Johnson is said once to have attended Matins), when Margot Beste‑Chetwynde's decision to rebuild King's Thursday became public. He said, very seriously: 'Well, we did what we could, and thought no more about it.
Not so the neighbours, who as the work of demolition proceeded, with the aid of all that was most pulverizing in modern machinery, became increasingly enraged, and, in their eagerness to preserve for the county a little of the great manor, even resorted to predatory expeditions, from which they would return with lumps of carved stonework for their rock gardens, until the contractors were forced to maintain an extra watchman at night. The panelling went to South Kensington, where it has come in for a great deal of admiration from the Indian students. Within nine months of Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's taking possession the new architect was at work on his plans.
It was Otto Friedrich Silenus's first important commission. 'Something clean and square, had been Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's instructions, and then she had disappeared on one of her mysterious world‑tours, saying as she left: 'Please see that it is finished by the spring.
Professor Silenus ‑ for that was the title by which this extraordinary young man chose to be called ‑ was a 'find' of Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's. He was not yet very famous anywhere, though all who met him carried away deep and diverse impressions of his genius. He had first attracted Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's attention with the rejected design for a chewing‑gum factory which had been produced in a progressive Hungarian quarterly. His only other completed work was the décor for a cinema‑film of great length and complexity of plot ‑ a complexity rendered the more inextricable by the producer's austere elimination of all human characters, a fact which had proved fatal to its commercial success. He was starving resignedly in a bedsitting‑room in Bloomsbury, despite the untiring efforts of his parents to find him ‑ they were very rich in Hamburg ‑ when he was offered the commission of rebuilding King's Thursday. 'Something clean and square' ‑ he pondered for three hungry days upon the aesthetic implications of these instructions and then began his designs.
'The problem of architecture as I see it, he told a journalist who had come to report on the progress of his surprising creation of ferro‑concrete and aluminium, 'is the problem of all art ‑ the elimination of the human element from the consideration of form. The only perfect building must be the factory, because that is built to house machines, not men. I do not think it is possible for domestic architecture to be beautiful, but I am doing my best. All ill comes from man, he said gloomily; 'please tell your readers that. Man is never beautiful, he is never happy except when he becomes the channel for the distribution of mechanical forces.
The journalist looked doubtful. 'Now, Professor, he said, 'tell me this. Is it a fact that you have refused to take any fee for the work you are doing, if you don't mind my asking?
'It is not, said Professor Silenus.
'Peer's Sister‑in‑Law Mansion Builder on Future of Architecture, thought the journalist happily. 'Will machines live in houses? Amazing forecast of Professor-Architect.
