The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [133]
"I've got nowhere to be."
"Come, that's nonsense, you know.... Just stay steady and try and tell me what's the matter. Have you had a fright, or what?"
"Yes."
"That's too bad. Look here, don't tell me if you would rather not. Just stay still here for a bit and have some coffee or something, then I'll take you home."
"I'm not going back."
"Oh, come..."
"No, I'm not going back there."
"Look, try sitting down."
"No, no. They all make me do that. I don't want to just sit down: I want to stay."
"Well, I shall sit down. Look, I'm sitting down now. I always do sit down." Having let go of her elbows he reached, when he had sat down, across the arm of his chair, caught her wrist and pulled her round to stand like a pupil by him. "Look here," he said, "Portia, I think the world of you. I don't know when I've met someone I thought so much of. So don't be like a hysterical little kid, because you are not, and it lets me down, you see. Just put whatever's the matter out of your head for a moment and think of me for a minute—I'm sure you will, because you've always been as sweet as anything to me, and I can't tell you what a difference it's made. When you come here and tell me you're running off, you put me in a pretty awful position with your people, who are my very good friends. When a man's a bit on his own, like I've been lately, and is marking time, and feels a bit out of touch, a place like their place, where one can drop in any time and always get a warm welcome, means quite a lot, you know. Seeing you there, so part of it all and happy, has been half the best of it. But I think the world of them, too. You wouldn't mess that up for me, Portia, would you?"
"There's nothing to mess," she said in a very small voice that was implacable. "You are the other person that Anna laughs at," she went on, raising her eyes. "I don't think you understand: Anna's always laughing at you. She says you are quite pathetic. She lauj-lu il at your carnations being the wrong colour, then gave 11 tern to me. And Thomas always thinks you must be alter something. Whatever you do, even send me a puzzle, he thinks that more, and she laughs more. They groan at each other when you have gone away. You and I are the same."
Steps in the hall behind him made Major Brutt crane round automatically: they were beginning to come out from dinner now. "You must sit down," he said to Portia, unexpectedly sharply. "You don't want all these people staring at you." He pulled another chair close: she sat down, distantly shaken by the outside force of what she had just said. Major Brutt intently watched four other people take their own favourite seats. Portia watched him watch; his eyes clung to these people; their ignorance of what he had had to hear made his fellow hotel guests the picture of sanity. There are moments when one can comfort oneself by a look at the most callous faces—these have been innocent of at least one crime. When he could not look any more without having to meet their looks, he dropped his eyes and sat not looking at Portia. It was she, for the moment, who felt how striking their silence, their nearness here had become—anxiety, and the sense of being pursued by glances still more closely than she had been all day made her sit stone still, not even moving her hands.
There seemed no reason why Major Brutt should ever raise his eyes from the floor: he had begun, in fact, to stroke the back of his head. She interposed, in a low voice: "Is there no other place—?"
He frowned slightly.
"Haven't you got a room here?"
"I've been a pretty blundering sort of fellow."
"Oh, can't we go upstairs? Can't we go somewhere else?"
"I don't know what made me think they would have time for me.... What's that you're saying?"
"Everyone's listening to us."