The conclusion of Death of the Heart and why it's slipped into obscurity

All right so let's get right to the end of this odd novel, The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen (1938), in which the orphaned teen, Portia, rebuffed by the bizarre young man who can't seem to make up his mind whether he's in love w/ her or despises her and having just learned from a so-called friend of her indifferent sister-in-law that the adults in her life have been sneaking looks at her diary, heads off for the dumpy hotel where Major Buhle, or whatever his name is, is living while he tries to find any kind of job. She throws herself at the Major - he's got to be about 40 years old - and goes up to his room and suggests that they run away together and get married - and he shows himself to be the one and only adult in this novel w/ mores and common sense: He says they have to call her brother and sister-in-law, w/ whom she's living, and get her home. He says how much he respects her family, and she tells him that he's to them nothing more than a joke, that they laugh about him behind his back. This is crushing, the saddest moment in the novel. Then we watch the family slightly worried about what's happened to Portia, but not really willing to do anything about her absence, and when they get the call from the Major go into a long debate about who should go get Portia. Unsurprisingly, the agree to send the housekeeper. These are horrible people, start to finish, and these last two are the best scenes in the novel, laying bare the emotions, or lack of same, in all of the major characters. Om the final scene however - and I will tell the ending - we are in the cab w/ the housekeeper (Matchett) and in her consciousness as she frets about whether the driver knows the locale and whether she can trust the driver. What? Bowen has an opportunity here to really wrap up this novel, which she totally abandons. At the end, Matchett gets out of the cab and pushes open the door to the hotel. No final scene, no dramatic encounter, no telling what happens to Portia - as if Bowen reached her page count and dropped the pen. Didn't an editor even wonder: Did you forget to send me the last chapter? This is a novel so full of intelligence, so open to possibilities for greatness or at least excellence, and the author retreats at every turn. I can see what Bowen's work, unlike that of many of her contemporaries, has slipped into obscurity.