The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [116]
I'm not interested enough. You're not even listening, are you?"
"I'm sorry, I—"
"I've no doubt you're upset. So you and I might be at different ends of the world. Stop thinking about your diary and your Anna and listen to me—and don't flinch at me, Portia, as though I were an electric drill. You ought to want some key to why people do what they do. You think us all wicked—"
"I don't, I—"
"It's not so simple as that. What makes you think us wicked is simply our little way of keeping ourselves going. We must live, though you may not see the necessity. In the long run, we may not work out well. We attempt, however, to be more civil and kindly than we feel. The fact is, we have no great wish for each other—no spontaneous wish for each other, that is to say. This lack of gout makes us have to behave with a certain amount of policy. Because I quite like Anna, I overlook much in her, and because she quite likes me she overlooks much in me. We laugh at each other's jokes and we save each other's faces—When I give her away to you, I break an accepted rule. This is not often done. It takes people in a lasting state of hysteria, like your friend Eddie, for instance, or people who feel they have some higher authority (as I've no doubt Eddie feels he has) to break every rule every time. To keep any rule would be an event for him: when he breaks one more rule it is hardly interesting—at least, not to me. I simply cannot account for his fascination for Anna—"
"Does he fascinate Anna?"
"Oh, palpably, don't you think? I suppose the deduction is that she really must have a conventional mind. And of course he has some pretty ways—No, with me there has to be quite a brainstorm before I break any rule, before speaking the truth. Love, drink, anger—something crumbles the whole scene: at once one is in a fantastic universe. Its unseemliness and its glory are indescribable, really. One becomes a Colossus.... I still don't know, all the same, what made that happen just now. It must be this close spring weather. It's religious weather, I think."
"You think she's told Eddie about my diary, then?"
"My dear, don't ask me what they talk about—Why turn down here?"
"I always go through this graveyard."
"The futility of explaining—this is telling you nothing. Some day, you may hear from somebody else that I was an important man, then you'll rack your brains to remember what I once said. Where shall you live next?"
"I don't know. With my aunt."
"Oh, you won't hear of me there."
"I think I am to go and be with my aunt, when I'm not with Thomas and Anna any more."
"Well, with your aunt you may have time to be sorry. No, I am being unfair to you. I should never talk like this if you weren't such a little stone."
"It is what you've told me."
"Naturally, naturally. Do you like to walk through the graveyard? And why has it got a bandstand in the middle? As you're quite near home, do something about your face."
"I don't have any powder."
"I'm not really sorry that this has happened: it was bound to happen sooner or later—No, I don't mean powder: I just mean your expression. One thing one must learn is, how to confront people that at that particular moment one cannot bear to meet."
"Anna's out to tea."
"If we had not said all this, I'd get you to have tea with me in a shop. But anyhow, I'm due somewhere at a quarter to five. I think I ought to go back now. I suppose you're sorry we met?"
"I suppose it's better to know."
"No, truly it is not. In fact I've done something to you I could not bear to have done to myself. And the terrible thing is, I am feeling the better for it. Well, goodbye," said St. Quentin, stopping on the asphalt path in the graveyard, among the tombs and the willows, taking off his hat.
"Goodbye, Mr. Miller. Thank you."