‘What is it

‘What is it?’
‘His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word.’ That evening Lord Marchmain was in good spirits; the room had a Hogarthian aspect, with the dinner-table set for the four of us by the grotesque, chinoiserie chimney-piece, and the old man propped among his pillows, sipping champagne, tasting, praising, and failing to eat, the succession of dishes which had been prepared for his homecoming. Wilcox had brought out for the occasion the gold plate, which I had not before seen in use; that, the gilt mirrors, and the lacquer and the drapery of the great bed and Julia’s mandarin coat gave the scene an air of pantomime, of Aladdin’s cave. Just at the end, when the time came for us to go, his spirits flagged. ‘I shall not sleep,’ he said. ‘Who is going to sit with me? Cara, carissima, you are fatigued. Cordelia, will you watch for an hour in this Gethsemane?’ Next morning I asked her how the night had passed.
‘He went to sleep almost at once. I came in to see him at two to make up the fire; the lights were on, but he was asleep again,jeremy scott wings. He must have woken up and turned them on; he had to get out of bed to do that. I think perhaps he is afraid of the dark.’ It was natural, with her hospital experience, that Cordelia should take charge of her father. When the doctors came that day they gave their instructions to her, instinctively. ‘Until he gets worse,’ she said, ‘I and the valet can look after him. We don’t want nurses in the house before they are needed.’ At this stage the doctors had nothing to recommend except to keep him comfortable and administer certain drugs when his attacks came on.
‘How long will it be?’
‘Lady Cordelia, there are men walking about in hearty old age whom their doctors gave a week to live. I have learned one thing in medicine; never prophesy.’ These two men had made a long journey to tell her this; the local doctor was there to accept the same advice in technical phrases.
That night Lord Marchmain reverted to the topic of his new daughter-in-law; it had never been long out of his mind, finding expression in various sly hints throughout the day; now he lay back in his pillows and talked of her at length,http://www.rolexsubmarinerreplica1.com. ‘I have never been much moved by family piety until now,’ he said, ‘but I am frankly appalled at the prospect of - of Beryl taking what was once my mother’s place in this house. Why should that uncouth pair sit here childless while the place crumbles about their ears? I will not disguise from you that I have taken a dislike to Beryl.
‘Perhaps it was unfortunate that we met in Rome. Anywhere else might have been more sympathetic. And yet, if one comes to consider it, where could I have met her without repugnance? We dined at Ranieri’s; it is a quiet little restaurant I have frequented for years - no doubt you know it. Beryl seemed to fill the place. I, of course, was host, though to hear Beryl press my son with food you might have thought otherwise. Brideshead was always a greedy boy- a wife who has his best interests at heart should seek to restrain him. However, that is a matter of small importance. ‘She had no doubt heard of me as a man of irregular life. I can only describe her manner to me as roguish. A naughty old man, that’s what she thought I was. I suppose she had met naughty old admirals and knew how they should be humoured...I could not attempt to reproduce her conversation. I will give you one example. ‘They had been to an audience at the Vatican that morning; a blessing for their marriage - I did not follow attentively something of the kind had happened before, I gathered, some previous husband, some previous Pope. She described, rather vivaciously, how on this earlier occasion she had gone with a whole body - of newly married couples, mostly Italians of all ranks, some or the simpler girls in their wedding dresses, and how each had appraised the other,SHIPPING INFO., the bridegrooms looking the brides over, comparing their own with one another’s, and so forth,Rolex Sea Dweller. Then she said, “This time, of course, we were in private, -but do you know, Lord Marchmain, I felt as though it was I who was leading in the bride.”