The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen Read Free Book Online Page B

Thomas with an obscure shame—on behalf of his father, himself and society. From the grotesqueries of that marriage he had felt a revulsion. Portia, with her suggestion—during those visits—of scared lurking, had stared at him like a kitten that expects to be drowned. Unavowed relief at the snuffing-out of two ignominious people, who had caused so much chagrin, who seemed to have lived with so little pleasure, had gone far to make Thomas accord with his father’s wish. It was fair, it was only proper (he said when the letter came) that Portia should come to London. With obsessed firmness, he had stood out against Anna’s objections. “For one year,” he said. “He only said for a year.”
    So they had done what was proper. Matchett, when she was told, said: “We could hardly do less, madam. Mrs. Quayne would have felt it was only right.”
    Matchett had helped Anna get ready Portia’s room—a room with a high barred window, that could have been the nursery. Standing up to look out of the window, you saw the park, with its map of lawns and walks, the narrow part of the lake, the diagonal iron bridge. From the bed—Anna tried for a moment with her head on the pillow—you saw, as though in the country, nothing but tops of trees. Anna had, at this moment before they met, the closest feeling for Portia she ever had. Later, she stood on a chair to re-set the cuckoo clock that had been hers as a child. She had new sprigged curtains made, but did not re-paper the room—Portia would only be in it for a year. Stuff from the two cupboards (which had made useful store-places) was moved to the boxroom; and Matchett, who was as strong as a nigger, carried the little desk from another floor. Anna, fitting a pleated shade on the bed lamp, could not help remarking: “This would please Mrs. Quayne.”
    Matchett let this pass with no comment of any kind: she was kneeling, tacking a valance round the bed. She never took up a remark made into the air—thus barring herself against those offhand, meaning approaches from which other people hope so much. She gave, in return for hire, her discretion and her unstinted energy, but made none of those small concessions to whim or self-admiration that servants are unadmittedly paid to make. There were moments when this correctness, behind her apron, cut both ways: she only was not hostile from allowing herself no feeling at all. Having done the valance she got up and, with a creak of her poplin dress at the armpits, reached up and hung a wreathed Dresden mirror Anna had got from somewhere on a nail above a stain on the wall. This was not where Anna meant the mirror to hang—when Matchett’s back was turned she unostentatiously moved it. But Matchett’s having for once exceeded her duties put Anna less in the wrong. When the room was ready, it looked (as she told St. Quentin) very pretty indeed: it ought to be dear to Portia after endless hotels. There was something homely, even, about the faded paper—and also they added, at the last minute, a white rug by the bed, for the girl’s bare feet. If Anna had fought against Portia’s coming, she knew how to give her defeat style… .Portia arrived as black as a little crow, in heavy Swiss mourning chosen by her aunt—back from the East in time to take charge of things. Anna explained at once that mourning not only did not bring the dead back but did nobody good. She got a cheque from Thomas, took Portia shopping round London and bought her frocks, hats, coats, blue, grey, red, jaunty and trim. Matchett, unpacking these when they came home, said: “You have put her in colours, madam?”
    “She need not look like an orphan: it’s bad for her.”
    Matchett only folded her lips.
    “Well, what, Matchett?” Anna said touchily.
    “Young people like to wear what is usual.”
    Anna had been askance. The forecast shadow of Portia, even, had started altering things—that incident of the mirror had marked an unheard-of tendency in Matchett, to