The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [120]
"My only quarrel with this charming lady," said Mr. Peppingham (who was becoming odious), "is, that she will not tell us what her ideas are."
Anna (now throwing up the sponge completely) replied: "I could if I knew what we were talking about."
Mr. Peppingham, tolerant, turned to dig in the cheese. Anna wanted to reach along the table, grip Major Brutt's hand and say: No good. I've drawn you another blank. I've failed to sell you and, to be perfectly honest, you really don't do much to sell yourself. No good, no good, no good—we can't do any more here. Back with you to The Times advertisement columns, and the off-chance of running into a man who has just run into a man who could put you on to a thing. You ran into us. Well, that hasn't got you far. Better luck next time, old boy. Je n'en peux plus.
In fact, he constituted—today, by so mildly accepting, with his coffee, that there would be nothing more doing about this Shropshire thing, and at all times by the trustfulness of his frequentation of the Quaynes as a family—the same standing, or, better still, undermining reproach as Portia. He was not near enough their hearth, or long enough at it, to take back to Kensington with him any suspicion that the warmth he had found could be illusory. His unfulfilled wishes continued to flock and settle where the Quaynes were, and no doubt he thought of them in the lounge of his hotel, or walking along the Cromwell Road. No doubt he stayed himself on the idea of them when one more thing fell through, when something else came to nothing, when one more of his hopeful letters was unanswered, when yet another iron went stone cold, when he faced that the money was running out. He gave signs that he constantly thought of them. Does it make one more nearly good and happy to be thought good and happy? The policy of pity might keep Anna from ever point-blank disappointing him. He was the appendix to the finished story of Robert. Useless, useless to wish they had never met—they had been bound to, apparently. In a sort of sense, Major Brutt had been legated to her by Robert. Or, was it that she felt she found in him the last of Robert's hurting, hurting because never completely bitter, jokes—one of those hurting exposures of her limitations, to obtain which he seemed able to hire fate?
Major Brutt outstayed the Peppinghams—thus giving her no chance to sing his merits in private, to say that whoever got him would be lucky, or to repeat that he was a D.S.O. Ready to say goodbye after a few minutes, he stood up and looked round the drawingroom.
"Those were lovely carnations you sent me the other day. I got Portia to send you a line because I was tired, and because I hoped I should see you soon. You know how one feels when one gets back. But that makes it all the nicer to find flowers."
He beamed. "Oh, good," he said. "If they cheered you up—"
Some obscure wish to bestir herself, to be human, made her say:
"You did not, I suppose, hear any more of Pidgeon since we've been away?"
"Now it's funny your asking that—"
"Funny?" said Anna.
"Not that I heard from him—that's the devil, you know, about not having a fixed address. People soon give up buzzing letters along. Of course, I've got an address, at this hotel, but when I write from there it never looks permanent. People take it you'll have moved on—at least, so I find. But if I'd had an address I might not have heard from Pidgeon. He never was one to write."
"No, he never was—But what were you going to say?"
"Oh yes. Now that really was very funny. It's the sort of thing that's always happening to me. About a fortnight ago, I missed Pidgeon by about three minutes—literally, by just about that. A most extraordinary thing—I mean, only missing him by about an inch when I didn't know he was in the country at all."
"Tell me about it."
"Well, I happened to go into a fellow's club—