Evelyn Waugh: The Complete Stories Of Evelyn Waugh

Dinner at home. His father, his mother, Parsons, his sister with her stupid, pimply face and her dull jealousy of all Imogen said and did and wore.

Dinner at Pont Street, head to head with Lady Rosemary.

Dinner by himself at some very cheap restaurant in Soho. And always at the end of it, Solitude and the thought of Imogen.

Close up: Adam registering despair gradually turning to resolution.

Adam on a bus going to Hanover Gate.

He walks to his home.

Parsons. Parsons opens the door. Mrs. Doure is out; Miss Jane is out; no, Adam does not want any tea.

Adam’s room. It is a rather charming one, high at the top of the house, looking over the trees. At full moon the animals in the Zoological Gardens can be heard from there. Adam comes in and locks the door.

Gladys is there already.

“Suicide, Ada.”

“Yes, but she’ll come in time to stop ’im. See if she don’t.”

“Don’t you be too sure. This is a queer picture, this is.”

He goes to his desk and takes a small blue bottle from one of the pigeon holes.

“What did I tell yer? Poison.”

“The ease with which persons in films contrive to provide themselves with the instruments of death…”

He puts it down, and taking out a sheet of paper writes.

“Last message to ’er. Gives ’er time to come and save ’im. You see.”

“AVE IMPERATRIX IMMORTALIS,

MORITURUS TE SALUTANT.”

Exquisitely written.

He folds it, puts it in an envelope and addresses it.

Then he pauses, uncertain.

A vision appears:

The door of Adam’s room. Mrs. Doure, changed for dinner, comes up to it and knocks; she knocks repeatedly, and in dismay calls for her husband. Professor Doure tries the door and shakes it. Parsons arrives and Jane. After some time the door is forced open; all the time Professor Doure is struggling with it, Mrs. Doure’s agitation increases. Jane makes futile attempts to calm her. At last they all burst into the room. Adam is revealed lying dead on the floor. Scene of unspeakable vulgarity involving tears, hysteria, the telephone, the police. Fade out.

Close up. Adam registering disgust.

Another vision:

A native village in Africa on the edge of the jungle; from one of the low thatch huts creeps a man naked and sick to death, his wives lamenting behind him. He drags himself into the jungle to die alone.

“Lor, Gladys. Instruction.”

Another vision:

Rome in the time of Petronius. A young patrician reclines in the centre of his guests. The producers have spared no effort in creating an atmosphere of superb luxury. The hall, as if in some fevered imagining of Alma Tadema, is built of marble, richly illumined by burning Christians. From right and left barbarian slave boys bring in a course of roasted peacocks. In the centre of the room a slave girl dances to a puma. Exit several of the guests to the vomitorium. Unborn pigs stewed in honey and stuffed with truffles and nightingales’ tongues succeed the peacocks. The puma, inflamed to sudden passion, springs at the girl and bears her to the ground; he stands over her, one paw planted upon her breast from which ooze tiny drops of blood. She lies there on the Alma Tadema marble, her eyes fixed upon the host in terrified appeal. But he is toying with one of the serving boys and does not notice her. More guests depart to the vomitorium. The puma devours the girl. At length, when the feast is at its height, a basin of green marble is borne in. Water, steaming and scented, is poured into it. The host immerses his hand, and a Negro woman who, throughout the banquet has crouched like some angel of death beside his couch, draws a knife from her loin cloth and buries it deep in his wrist. The water becomes red in the green marble. The guests rise to go, and with grave courtesy, though without lifting himself from the couch, he bids them each farewell. Soon he is left alone. The slave boys huddle together in the corners, their bare shoulders pressed against each other. Moved by savage desire, the Negress begins suddenly to kiss and gnaw the deadening arm. He motions her listlessly aside. The martyrs burn lower until there is only a faint glimmer of light in the great hall. The smell of cooking drifts out into the terrace and is lost on the night air. The puma can just be discerned licking its paws in the gloom.

Adam lights a pipe and taps restlessly with the corner of the envelope on the writing table. Then he puts the bottle in his pocket and unlocks the door.

He turns and walks over to his bookshelves and looks through them. Adam’s bookshelves; it is rather a remarkable library for a man of his age and means. Most of the books have a certain rarity and many are elaborately bound; there are also old books of considerable value given him from time to time by his father.

He makes a heap on the floor of the best of them.

MR. MACASSOR’S BOOKSHOP.

There is about Mr. Macassor’s bookshop the appearance of the private library of an ancient and unmethodical scholar. Books are everywhere, on walls, floor and furniture, as though laid down at some interruption and straightway forgotten. First editions and early illustrated books lie hidden among Sermons and Blue Books for the earnest adventurer to find. Mr. Macassor hides his treasures with care.

An elderly man is at the moment engaged in investigating a heap of dusty volumes while Mr. Macassor bends longingly over the table engrossed in a treatise on Alchemy. Suddenly the adventurer’s back straightens; his search has been rewarded and he emerges into the light, bearing a tattered but unquestionably genuine copy of the first edition of “Hydrotaphia.” He asks Mr. Macassor the price. Mr. Macassor adjusts his spectacles and brushes some snuff from his waistcoat and, bearing the book to the door, examines it as if for the first time.

“Ah, yes, a delightful work. Yes, yes, marvellous style,” and he turns the pages fondly, “‘The large stations of the dead,’ what a noble phrase.” He looks at the cover and wipes it with his sleeve. “Why, I had forgotten I had this copy. It used to belong to Horace Walpole, only someone has stolen the bookplate—the rascal. Still, it was only the Oxford one—the armorial one, you know. Well, well, sir, since you have found it I suppose you have the right to claim it. Five guineas, shall I say. But I hate to part with it.”

The purchaser is a discerning man. Had he seen this same book baldly described in a catalogue he would not have paid half this price for it in its present condition, but the excitement of pursuit and the pride of discovery more even than the legends of Strawberry Hill have distorted his sense of values. One cannot haggle with Mr. Macassor as with some mere tradesman in Charing Cross Road. The purchaser pays and goes away triumphant. It is thus that Mr. Macassor’s son at Magdalen is able to keep his rooms full of flowers and, during the season, to hunt two days a week.

Enter Adam from a taxi laden with books. Mr. Macassor offers him snuff from an old tortoiseshell box.

“IT’S A SAD THING TO HAVE TO SELL BOOKS, MR. DOURE. Very sad. I remember as if it was yesterday, Mr. Stevenson coming in to me to sell his books, and will you believe it, Mr. Doure, when it came to the point, after we had arranged everything, his heart failed him and he took them all away again. A great book-lover, Mr. Stevenson.”

Mr. Macassor adjusts his spectacles and examines, caressingly, but like some morbid lover fastening ghoulishly upon every imperfection.

“Well, and how much were you expecting for these?”

Adam hazards, “Seventeen pounds,” but Mr. Macassor shakes his head sadly.

Five minutes later he leaves the shop with ten pounds and gets into his taxi.