The Death of the Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

she asked for her gloves. She went half out of the door, then she gave me a sort of look. ‘Those arrangements are Miss Portia’s hobbies, madam,’ I said. She said: ‘Oh, of course,’ and went out of the house. No more was said at the time. It isn’t that she’s so tidy, but she thinks how things look.”
    Matchett’s voice was flat and dispassionate: when she had done she folded her lips exactly. Letting her hair fall forward to hide her face from Matchett, Portia stooped over the table, getting her books together. Books under her arm, she stood waiting to go up.
    “All I mean is,” went on Matchett, “don’t give her more to pick on. Not for a day or two, till it passes off.”
    “But what was she doing in my room?”
    “I suppose she just took the fancy. It’s her house, like it or not.”
    “But she always says it’s my room…Has she touched things?”
    “How would I know? What if she did? You didn’t ought to have secrets, at your age.”
    “I noticed some toothpowder had come off the top of one of my bears’ cakes, but I thought that was the draught. I suppose I ought to have known. Birds know if you have been at their eggs: they desert.”
    “And, pray, where would you desert to?—You’d better go on up, if you don’t want her and Mr. Miller right in on top of you. They’ll be in early, likely, with this cold.”
    Portia, sighing, started up to her room. The solid stone staircase was so deep in carpet that her feet made no sound. Sometimes her elbow, sometimes her school-girlish overcoat, unbuttoned, brushed on the white wall. When she got to the first landing, she leaned down. “Will Mr. St. Quentin Miller be having tea?”
    “Why not?”
    “He talks so much.”
    “Well, then, he won’t eat you. Don’t you be so silly.”
    Portia went on up, up the next flight. When the bedroom door had been heard shutting, Matchett returned to the basement. Phyllis was darting about in her saucy new cap, getting ready the tray for drawingroom tea.

    When Anna, with St. Quentin on her heels, came into the drawingroom it appeared to be empty—then by the light of one distant lamp and the fire they perceived Portia, sitting on a stool. Her dark dress almost blotted her out against a dark lacquer screen—but now she rose up politely, to shake hands with St. Quentin. “So here you are,” said Anna. “When did you get back?”
    “Just now. I’ve been washing.”
    St. Quentin said: “How dirty lessons must be!”
    Anna went on, with keyed-up vivacity: “Had a nice day?”
    “We’ve been doing constitutional history, musical appreciation and French.”
    “Goodness!” said Anna, glancing at the tea-tray set inexorably with three cups. She switched on all the other lamps, dropped her muff in a chair, came out of her fur coat, and peeled off the two tricots she had worn under it. Then she looked round with these garments hanging over her arm. Portia said: “Shall I put those away for you?”
    “If you would be angelic—look, take my cap as well.”
    “How obliging …” St. Quentin said, while Portia was out of earshot. But Anna, propping her elbow on the mantelpiece, looked at him with implacable melancholy. In the pretty air-tight room with its drawn aquamarine curtains, scrolled sofa and half-circle of yellow chairs, silk-shaded lamps cast light into the mirrors and on to Samarkand rugs. There was a smell of freesias and sandalwood: it was nice to be in from the cold park. “Well,” St. Quentin said, “we shall all be glad of our tea.” Loudly sighing with gratification, he arranged himself in an armchair—crossed his legs, tipped up his chin, looked down his nose at the fire. By sitting like this, he exaggerated the tension they had found in the room, outside which he consciously placed himself. Everything nearly was so pleasant—Anna rapped on the marble with her fingernails.
    He said: “My dear Anna, this is only one of what will be many teas.”
    Portia came back again; she said: