The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [140]
She only looked at him like a wild creature, just old enough to know it must dread humans—as though he had cornered her in this place. Yes, she was terrified here, like a bird astray in a room, a bird already stunned by dashing itself against mirrors and panes.
He pushed on quickly her way through the armchairs, saying, more urgently, less easily, lower—"My dear child, are you lost? Have you lost your way?"
"No. I came."
"Well, I'm delighted. But this is a long way from where you live. At this time of night—"
"Oh—is it night?"
"Well, no: I've just finished my dinner. But isn't this just the time when you ought to be having yours?"
"I don't know what time it is."
Her voice rang round the lounge which, whatever despair it may have muffled, cannot have ever rung with such a homeless note. Major Brutt threw a look round instinctively: the porter was off duty; nobody was arriving; they had not begun to come out from dinner yet—there would be the cheese, then the coffee, always served at table. He went round the chair that barricaded her from him and kept them in their two different worlds of uncertainty: he felt Portia measuring his coming nearer with the deliberation of a desperate thing—then, like a bird at still another window, she flung herself at him. Her hands pressed, flattened, on the fronts of his coat; he felt her fingers digging into the stuff. She said something inaudible. Grasping her cold elbows he gently, strongly held her a little back. "Steady, steady, steady—Now, what did you say?"
"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,