The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [84]
"Oh, hullo!" she said, "what do you want?"
"Mrs. Heccomb thought you might like me to drop in."
"Oh, by all means do," said Daphne. Moving her tongue across from one cheek to the other, she went on knitting. Portia, one finger on Daphne's desk, looked round and said: "What a large number of books."
"And that isn't all, either. However, do sit down."
"I do wonder who reads them."
"Oh, that's quite simple," said Daphne. "You'd soon see. Does your sister-in-law read?"
"She says she would like to if she had more time."
"It's extraordinary how much time people do have. I mean, it really does make you think. I daresay she has a guaranteed subscription? People with those give an awful lot of fuss—they come popping back for a book before one has ordered it. I suppose they feel they are getting their money's worth. What I always say is—"
Miss Scott, from the back of the room, gave a warning cough, which meant subscribers were coming in. Two ladies approached the table, said "Good morning" placatingly and returned their books. Daphne rolled up her knitting and gave them a look.
"Such a lovely morning...."
"Yes," said Daphne repressively.
"And how is your mother?"
"Oh, she's getting along."
The lady who had not spoken was already dithering round a table of new novels. Her friend threw the novels rather a longing look, then turned strong-mindedly to the cabinet of belles lettres. Raising her nose so as to bring her pince-nez to the correct angle, she took out a succession of books, scanned their title pages, looked through all the pictures and almost always replaced them with a frustrated sigh. Did she not know that Daphne hated people to stick around messing the books? "I suppose these is something here I should really like?" she said. "It's so hard to tell from the outsides."
"Miss Scott," said Daphne plaintively, "can't you help Mrs. Adams?"
Mrs. Adams, mortified, said: "I ought to make out a list."
"Well, people do find it helps."
Mrs. Adams did not half like being turned over to Miss Scott, who gave her a collection of well-known essays she was ashamed to refuse. She looked wistfully at her friend, who came back with a gay-looking novel and a happy face. "You really oughtn't to miss these; they are beautifully written," said Miss Scott, giving poor Mrs. Adams a shrewish look—in her subservient way, she was learning to be as great a bully as Daphne.
Daphne flicked the subscribers' cards out of the box and sat with pencil poised, preparing to make disdainful marks on them. It was clear that Daphne added, and knew that she added, cachet to Smoots' by her air of barely condoning the traffic that went on there. Her palpable wish never to read placed at a disadvantage those who had become dependent on this habit, and it was a disadvantage they seemed to enjoy. Miss Scott, though so much more useful, cut no ice: she (unlike Daphne) was not a lady, and she not only read but was paid to read, which was worse. Also, she had not Daphne's dashing appearance: most of the Seale subscribers were elderly, and age and even the mildest form of intellect both tend to make people physical snobs. There may be libraries in which Daphne would not have done so well. But for this clientele of discarded people her bloom and her nonchalance served, somehow, to place her above literature. These were readers who could expect no more from life, and just dared to look in books to see how much they had missed. The old are often masochists, and their slackening hearts twitched at her bold cold smile. Perhaps there was an interchange of cruelty, for Smoots' subscribers had, after all, the power to keep this fine girl chained. A bald patch in the carpet under her desk would have showed, had they cared to look, with what restless fury she dug in her heels. On a sunny day they would tell her it seemed hard she should not be out of doors, then they doddered off with their books in the salty sun down the street.