The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [7]
"During the two days before his departure (during which he stayed in the smoking-room and had his meals sent in to him on a tray) Mrs. Quayne's idealism spread round the house like 'flu. It very strongly affected poor Mr. Quayne. All the kick having gone from the affair with Irene, he fell morally in love with his wife all over again. She had got him that way when he was twenty-two, and she got him again like that at fifty-seven. He blubbered and told Thomas that his mother was a living saint. At the end of the two days, Mrs. Quayne had him packed for and sent him up to Irene by the afternoon train. Thomas was told off to drive him to the station: all the way, arid while they waited on the platform, Mr. Quayne said not a word. Just before the train started, he leaned out and beckoned as though he had something to say. But all he said was: 'Bad luck to watch a train out.' After that he bumped back into his seat. Thomas did watch the train out, and he said its blank end looked quite wretchedly futureless.
"Mrs. Quayne went up to London the following day, and put the divorce proceedings on foot at once. It is even said that she called and had a kind word with Irene. She sailed back to Dorset all heroic reserve, kept the house on, and stayed there through it all. Mr. Quayne, who detested being abroad, went straight to the south of France, which seemed to him the right place, and months later Irene joined him, just in time for the wedding. Portia was then born, in Mentone. Well, they stayed round about there, and almost never came home. Thomas was sent by his mother to visit them three or four times, but I think they all found it terribly lowering. Mr. Quayne and Irene and Portia always had the back rooms in hotels, or dark flats in villas with no view. Mr. Quayne never got used to the chill at sunset: Thomas saw he would die of this, and he did. A few years before he did die, he and Irene came back for a four months' visit to Bournemouth—I suppose Bournemouth because he knew no one there. Thomas and I went to see them two or three times, but as they had left Portia behind in France, I never met her till she came to live with us here."
"Live? I thought she was only staying."
"Whatever it's called, it comes to the same thing."
"But why was she called Portia?"
Anna, surprised, said: "I don't think we ever asked."
Mr. Quayne's love life had taken them round the lake. Already, the All Out whistles were blowing: an inch of park gate was kept open for them alone, and a keeper waited by it with such impatience that St. Quentin broke into a stately trot. Cars slid lights all round the Outer Circle; lamps blurred the frosty mist from here to the Quaynes' door. Anna swung her muff more light-heartedly: she was less unwilling to go in to tea now.
II
THE front door of 2 Windsor Terrace brushed heavily-over the mat and clicked shut. The breath of raw air that had come in with Portia perished on the steady warmth of the hall. Warmth stood up the shaft of staircase, behind the twin white arches. She slid books from under her elbow on to the console table, dropped her latchkey back into her pocket, and went to the radiator, tugging off her gloves. She just saw her reflection cross the mirror, but the hall was a well of dusk—not a light on yet, either upstairs or down. Everywhere, she heard an unliving echo: she had entered one of those pauses in the life of a house that before tea time seem to go on and on. This was a house without any life above-stairs, a house to which nobody had returned yet, which, through the big windows, darkness and silence had naturally stolen in on and begun to inhabit. Reassured, she stood warming her hands.
Down there in the basement a door opened: there was an intent pause, then steps began to come up. They were cautious—the steps of a servant pleasing herself. Whitish, Matchett's