AT last Oxo gave place to Bovril, Bovril to
Pears' Soap. BUFFET faded and GENTLEMEN
waned. Alone, the telegraph wires kept pace,
lowering themselves as if in a caress, until with
a flash of vertical blackness they were recalled
. to the dignity of their first altitude. The com-
partment, which Miss Clame had to herself,
smelt of ectoplasm.
"Doctor," she would say, "I cannot sleep.
For three nights I have been sleepless. I am
overstrung. "
"Can you particularise your symptoms?
Shall I examine you? "
"My symptoms, doctor, are mental. They
are of the brain. Not, I mean, that my faculties
are impaired. I am still lucid. I can multiply,
divide, apportion the rent, read Scriabin at sight,
translate from the Russian, tell a genuine Gorgione
a furlong off. But I am listless, drowsy, spirit-
ually numb. My nerves are agog. The openings -
and shuttings of doors bewilder me. The sight
of a lady-bird makes me faint. The scent of a
" A little saline of a morning, my dear lady ... "
"No, doctor. I am open to no facile cure.
Physically, I am a marvel. My plight is graver.
My repartees fail me. My gestures no longer
express me. My thoughts are turbulent and dis-
ordered, cohesive, clotted, no longer a calm
melodious flow of intelligence. My charm
dwindles. My wits are ageing, my deportment
that of a child."
" All this society life you ladies will lead tells
on you in the end. Rest and solitude will work
wonders. Cancel all engagements until August."
" That is the one month, doctor, when I have
no engagement. My pique would madden me.
In my sleep I should haunt the Berkeley, during
massage envisage Hurlingham.?"
"Bave you a worry, a millstone on' the
mind? "
" My independence, doctor, is complete. Un-
fitted by training and temperament for life's more
onerous duties, I am left free for the' cult of self-
enjoyment. I have a great capacity for pleasure.
Provided with (thanks to Hipswell & Boltby)
over five hundred a year, no relatives to whom I
must account, no occupation, no scruples, a com-
fortable home, charming companions, I should-
soar through existence, a veritable albatross of de-
light. Yet what am I ? A caged linnet, an ass in
the shafts, a glow-worm climbing up an arc-lamp."
" Dear lady, are you in love? "
It was a time for tears.
All the way from Slough past the Dolphin
signal-box and the Home Counties Bacon Factory
to Langley (Bucks) she wept, the sly tears rolling
out like little sins in a confessional. Miss Clame
in love! What would each one of them say?
" Such a frivolous little thing."
" Try bicycling."
" Come with me my next slumming-day."
" Again?" (That would be Ruth Gweller.)
"Give boldly. Be proud and open in your
passion." (Deevie.)
" Is she not past the age? "
At Langley (Bucks) she became more cerebral.
After all, determination knows no barriers.
(Office-boy to impressario, ice-man to rail-road
king.) The will was there already, but there
remained strategies to be considered, tactics
planned, technique mastered. Assuredly, she
must read Stendhal and La Vie Parisienne. Abler
than any of her acquaintances, why should she
fail ?
These overweening Green-Travers must be
humbled, Betty above all. With Princess Vaya-
dere, something might be done. A word in that
quarter would not stay there for long. The
Princess was a star, but have not stars their
perigees? Up and play the comet, the bold in-
truder. "Princess, my visit may surprise you.
. . . Unfortunately it is as obligatory for me as
it will be divertin~ to you. . . . One of your
friends, Princess, is worse than faithless. . . . I
mention no names, but in setting her cap ... "
Then would follow the story, a series of bold
brush-strokes till the canvas reeked. Or else a
Scribe-Legouve "Bataille des Dames." "My
intelligence and wit, my fragile charm against her
hoydenish healthiness. In cow-milking, maybe,
I am no match for her: at lacrosse, my lustre is
dimmed. But question me on Schopenhauer,
income-tax, counter-point or the price ofIam-
preys. Confront me with an electorate. No
fist will daunt me, no argument leave me tongue-
tied." And all this must be divined rather than
said. As an aroma it must irradiate (scent and
light mingled in a higher unity) her person, her
apartment,. her path through the world. A
strenuous course of before-breakfast exercises
seemed necessary.
Over the devoured line, the houses cast long
shadows. Every second, Beam Square with its
mornings, otiose and unending Sunday after-
noons, hot summer evenings of intolerable
tension) loomed more largely. In the living-
room (" our parlour," they called it), like love-
birds playing at nests, would be Deevie full
length on the mauve divan or even, cushioned
with pale blue and tete de ncgre, on the buff floor.
She would be looking upwards, as if a naughty
picture were set in the ceiling. Mavina might
well be on the window-sill, by her adventurous
pose giving it the look of a crag on the Matter-
horn. Her eyes, turned through the window,
would almost penetrate the soil of the square
garden-plot, as if inflamed with longing to up-
root the weeds that had not yet pierced the
surface. Her conversation (at least, in what it
left unspoken) was a clumsy version of the
Georgies. When it rained, her lips seemed
framed to utter" Rake and hoe," no less than
they enjoined sweepings of dead leaves, prunings
and transplantings, when autumn winds were
blowing. Frost on the ground was for her a
symbol of buttressed celery, June mellowness of
the adhesive pea. What with "lambings" and
" calvings " and her knowledge of poultry-yards
she would bring a blush to Chelsea Hospitalr
Miss Clame regarded both of them as tolerably
suitable for her. She was outshone by neither.
In Deevie there was a streak-more than a streak,
said some---of vulgarity, which alternately amused
and had to be discouraged. Miss Clame thanked
Heaven that she was free from that. When with
Lady Cecilia and other such, it would have been
perpetually to be repressed. It was something
to be the daughter of an army man and an army
woman-tor the late Mrs. Clame was the sixth
daughter of a brigadier-general-even if they
only left fourteen thousand between them. (Jane
Austen would tell her readers this with perfect
frankness. See the beginning of Mansfield Park.
Nothing is so bourgeois as to be afraid to speak
of money.)
Miss Clame was not ashamed of her small in-
come, though it thwarted her about eight times
a day. If she were wealthier she would probably
not know Deevie or Mavina. It was no reflec-
tion upon them. But the Queen of Sheba cannot
pose as a love-bird, or sprawl on a badly made
mauve divan. (Miss Clame had always been
against that divan, even if its absence meant the
loss of atmosphere.) The Queen of Sheba would
have real lion-skins and tiger-skins and ostrich
plumes, and orgies suitable to her trappings.
Poor Deevie never had orgies. It was hard for
her even to raise an intrigue. Mavina did not want either. She was a captive. When she
met a young man she would ask him about a new
variety of phlox or the rhododendron that grows
only on the Himalayas and in somebody's garden
near Torquay. Well, the Jack and Mrs. Sprat
principle was a very good one. It was a pity
that Deevie could not be made more sexless.
Perhaps by giving her special food the result
might be achieved. (It 'was Miss Clame's turn
to do the catering again.) Fortunately Deevie's
ideal was a common young man with a loose
mouth, cheekily familiar and physically forward.
To her Geoffrey would mean less than Plotinus.
"On the whole," Miss Clame decided, as
Paddington station swallowed up the train,
" Deevie had better know nothing. I may say
a little to Mavina, if the mood takes me. But
now that I have discovered that I really am in
love, I feel a healthy impulse to reticence. I was
a little free with my dream at Elfindale, I think.
But the Homfrays are of no account, and Ruth is
one of those people who can only fffid a needle
when ids in a haystack. Having persuaded her-
self that she is ' subtle '-for the implications of
that word see Gide's Les Caves du Vatican-
she has become a regular booby over the obvious.
Several problems confront me. I must not fall
between two stools. But I can hear Lady Browne
reply, ' Oh, nobody at all.' What would Deevie
say if I demanded to have my father's portrait
over the mantelpiece? She might produce her
chocolate-boxy aunt. (Portrait of a woman of
the lower middle class, c. 1880.) No, as I am
living with them, I must be neat rather than
gaudy. There is nothing I hate so much as
snobbery. Perhaps because I have reason to
fear it .... "
She settled into a taxi, amazed at her bold self-
analysis. That was the style-a great advance
upon" Doctor, I am overstrung." "First realise
what you are,", she told herself, " then what you
wish to be. That is half the battle." . . . "Miss
Clame returned to London on Tuesday afternoon,
having spent a long week-end near Maidenhead.
. . . A marriage has been arranged and will
shortly take place .... Towards those in all
ranks of society she has the same charming
manner. . .. Your successes, Lydia, come with-
out effort. . . . My dear Duchess, you flatter
me. . . ."
Then came Beam Square, and another sleep-
less night.
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