The Empire Trilogy by J. G. Farrell Page A

“every day I miss you more and more,” she toyed with her napkin ring and kept her eyes, unfocused and unseeing, on the sparkling silver crown of the cut-glass salt-cellar in front of her.
    When at last it was over (no question of the women retiring while the men drank port; at the Majestic everyone retired together, “like a platoon under fire,” thought the Major sourly), and in the pitch-black corridor of the third floor he felt his hand close over the handle of the door to his room the Major was assailed by an immense sensation of relief and surrender. With a sigh he opened the door.
    Inside, however, he received a truly terrible shock. Either he was in the wrong room or his bed had not been made up! But he
was
in the right room: his suitcase was there, his bottles of cologne and macassar were standing on the dressing-table.
    He had no sheets to sleep in.
    Now this was really too much! He picked up a china pitcher and dashed it savagely against the wall. It made a terrible crash as it splintered. But then silence descended, the all-absorbing silence of the mild Irish night. A squadron of fat brown moths zoomed clumsily in through the open window, attracted by the light. He closed it and sat disconsolately on the bed. The house was dark and silent now. He could hardly rouse the Spencers and demand sheets. He would simply have to sleep here as best he could, wrapped in dusty blankets. (It was true, of course, that he had slept in worse circumstances, but all the same...!)
    Then he noticed again, more strongly than before, the sweetish, nauseating odour he had decided to forget about earlier. It was an awful smell. He could not stand it. But the thought of opening the window to more moths made his skin crawl. He took a slipper from his suitcase and stalked the fluttering moths. But after he had splattered one or two against the wall he stopped, his nerves jangled by remorse, and wished he had left them alive. So while the others continued to whiz and circle around the electric light he started to search for the source of the smell, looking in cupboards, sniffing the washbasin, peering under the bed (none of these things, as it happened, smelled very savoury).
    A small cupboard stood beside the bed. He wrenched open the door. On the top shelf there was nothing. On the bottom shelf was a chamber-pot and in the chamber-pot was a decaying object crawling with white maggots. From the middle of this object a large eye, bluish and corrupt, gazed up at the Major, who scarcely had time to reach the bathroom before he began to vomit brown soup and steamed bacon and cabbage. Little by little the smell of the object stole into the bathroom and enveloped him.
    â€œLet us pray. Let us thank the Lord for all His mercies, let us thank Him for His Justice enshrined in the peace treaty signed in Versailles last week in which the Prussian tyranny is accorded punishment...For the righteous shall triumph, saith the Lord; and in this world we are all subject, great and small, to God’s Justice and to His Order. For there
is
an order in the universe...there
is
an order. Everything is ordained for a purpose in this life, from the lowest to the highest, for God’s universe is like a pyramid reaching from the most lowly amongst us up to Heaven. Without this purpose our life here below would be nothing more than a random collection of desperate acts...I repeat, a random collection of desperate acts. Ripon, would you have the common decency to put that cigarette out and wait until I’ve finished?”
    â€œWhat?” said Ripon, looking surprised. “Oh, sorry.”
    Edward waited impressively while his son dropped his cigarette into the murky water of a vase containing a few pale-yellow roses.
    â€œNow,” Edward went on with a frown, his concentration disturbed, “let us...let us never forget our position, the part each one of us must play in the Divine Purpose. We must not shirk. For there
is
an order.