The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [115]
This made Portia miss one step, shift her grip on her case. She glanced at St. Quentin's rather sharklike profile, glanced away and stayed silent—so tensely silent that he peered round for another look at her.
"I should lock it up," he said. "I should trust no one an inch."
"But I lost the key."
"Oh, you did? Look here, do let's get this straight: weren't we talking about a hypothetical diary?"
"Mine's just a diary," she said helplessly.
St. Quentin coughed, with just a touch of remorse. "I'm so sorry," he said. "I've been too smart again. But that does me no good, in the long run."
"I'd rather not have it known. It is simply a thing of mine."
"No, that's where you're wrong. Nothing like that stops with oneself. You do a most dangerous thing. All the time, you go making connections—and that can be "a vice."
"I don't know what you mean."
"You're working on us, making us into something. Which is not fair—we are not on our guard with you. For instance, now I know you keep this book, I shall always feel involved in some sort of plan. You precipitate things. I daresay," said St. Quentin kindly, "that what you write is quite silly, but all the same, you are taking a liberty. You set traps for us. You ruin our free will."
"I write what has happened. I don't invent."
"You put constructions on things. You are a most dangerous girl."
"No one knows what I do."
"Oh, but believe me, we feel it. You must see how rattled we are now."
"I don't know what you were like."
"Neither did we: we got on quite well then. What is unfair is, that you hide. God's spy, and so on. Another offence is, you have a loving nature; you are the loving nature in vacuo. You must not mind my saying all this. After all, you and I don't live in the same house; we seldom meet and you seldom affect me. All the same—"
"Are you teasing me now, or were you teasing me before? You must have been teasing one or the other time. First you said you felt sure I kept a diary, then you told me I mustn't, then you asked where it was, then you pretended to be surprised when you knew there was one, after that you called me an unkind spy, now you say I love everyone too much. I see now you knew about my diary.... I suppose Anna found it and told you? Did she?"
St. Quentin glanced at Portia from the tail of his eye. "I don't come out of this well," he said.
"But did she?"
"I am perfectly able to tell a lie, but my trouble is that I have no loyalty. Yes, Anna did, as a matter of fact. Now what a fuss this will make. Now, can I trust your discretion? You see that nobody can rely on mine."
Pushing her hat brim further back from her forehead, Portia turned and sized St. Quentin up boldly. She believed he had a malignant conscience; she did not feel he was really indiscreet. "You mean," she said, "not tell Anna you told me?"
"I would as soon you didn't," said St. Quentin humbly. "Avoid scenes; in future keep one eye on your little desk."
"She told you I had a little desk?"
"I supposed you would have one."
"Has she often—?"
St. Quentin rolled his eyes up. "Not so far as I know. Don't be at all worried. Just find some new place to keep your book. What I have always found is, anything one keeps hidden should now and then be hidden somewhere else."
"Thank you," said Portia, dazed. "It is very kind of you." She was incapable of anything past this: her feet kept walking her on inexorably. The conversation had ended in an abyss—impossible to pretend that it had not. Like all shocked people, she did not see where she was—they were well down Marylebone High Street, among the shoppers—from the depth of her eyes she threw wary, unhuman looks at faces that swam towards her, faces looking her way. She was aware of St. Quentin's presence only as the cause of her wish to run down a side street. They had been walking fast, in this dreadful dream, for some time, when he cried loudly: "These lacunae in people!"
"What did you say?"
"You don't ask what made me do that—you don't even ask yourself."
She said, "You were very kind."
"The most unlikely things one does, the most utterly out of character, arouse no curiosity, even in one's friends. One can suffer a convulsion of one's entire nature, and, unless it makes some noise, no one notices. It's not just that we are incurious; we completely lack any sense of each other's existences. Even you, with that loving nature you have