The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [125]
There was a pause in the drawingroom. Then Anna said: "I wish I could just do that; I wish I were sixteen."
Eddie said: "She looks sweet, doesn't she?" At some later time, he came softly across to touch Portia's cheek with his finger, to which Anna, though still there, did not say anything.
III
"REALLY, Anna, things have gone too far!" Eddie, out of the blue, burst out on the telephone. "Portia has just rung me up to say you've been reading her diary. And I could say nothing—someone was in the office."
"Are you on the office telephone now?"
"Yes, but it's lunch time."
"Yes, I know it is lunch time. Major Brutt and two other people are here. You are ruthlessly inconsiderate."
"How was I to know? I thought you might think this urgent. I do. Are they in the room?"
"Naturally."
"Well, goodbye. Bon appétit," added Eddie, in a loud bitter tone. He hung up just before Anna, who returned to the table. The three guests, having heard in her voice that note of loverlike crossness, tried not to look askance: they were all three rather naive. Mr. and Mrs. Peppingham, from Shropshire, had this Monday been asked to lunch because they were known to have a neighbour in Shropshire who was known to be looking for an agent, and it seemed just possible Major Brutt might do. But during lunch it became clearer and clearer that he was only impressing the Peppinghams as being the sort of thoroughly decent fellow who never, for some reason, gets on in the world. Tough luck, but there you are. He was showing a sort of amiable cussedness; he ignored every hoop that Anna held out for him. The Peppinghams clearly thought that though no doubt he had done well in the War, he had not, on the whole, been unlucky in having had the War to do well in. It became useless for Anna to draw him out, to repeat that he had grown rubber, that he had had—for he had had, hadn't he?—the management of a quite large estate. In Malay, of course, but the great thing was—wasn't it?—to know how to manage men.
"Yes, that is certainly so," agreed Mr. Peppingham, safely.
Mrs. Peppingham said: "With all these social changes, I sometimes fear that's a lost art—managing men, I mean. I always feel that people work twice as well if they feel they've got someone to look up to." She flushed up the side of her neck with moral conviction and said firmly: "I'm quite sure that is true." Anna thought: These days there's something dreadful about talk; people's convictions keep bobbing to the surface, making them flush. I'm sure it was better when people connected everything of that sort with religion, and did not talk about religion at meals. She said: "I expect one thinks about that in the country more. That is the worst of London: one never thinks."
"My dear lady," said Mr. Peppingham, "thinking or not thinking, there are some things that you cannot fail to notice. Destroy tradition, and you destroy the sense of responsibility."
"Surely, for instance, in your husband's office—" Mrs. Peppingham said.
"I never go to the office. I don't think Thomas inspires hero worship, if that's what you mean. No, I don't think he'd know what to do with that."
"Oh, I don't mean hero worship. I'm afraid that only leads to dictators, doesn't it? No, what I mean," said Mrs. Peppingham, touching her pearls with a shy but firm smile and flushing slightly again, "is, instinctive respect. That means so much to the people working for us."
"Do you think one really inspires that?"
"One tries to," said Mrs. Peppingham, not looking very pleased.
"It seems so sad to have to try to. I should so much rather just pay people, and leave it at that."
Phyllis inhibited Mrs. Peppingham from any further talk about class by firmly handing the orange soufflé round. Pas Avant les Domestiques might have been carved on the Peppinghams' diningroom