Free Told by an Idiot by Rose Macaulay Page B

writing now.
Problem
novels, she called them, for reasons of her own. Rome thought sex no problem; the least problematic affair, perhaps, in this world. Of course, there were problems connected with it, as with everything else, but in itself sex was no problem. Rather the contrary.
The Moonstone
, now—
that
was a problem novel.
    “I don’t like indecency,” said mamma, in her delicate, clipped voice. “These modern writers will say anything. It’s ill-bred.”
    Mamma could not be expected to know that these libertines of 1890 would be regarded as quaint Victorian prudes in 1920.
    “As to that book Mr. Jayne gave you, I call it merely silly,” mamma murmured, with raised brows, and so settled
Dorian Grey
.
    “Silly it is,” Rome agreed. “But here and there, though too seldom, it has a wit.”
    But mamma was not listening. Her mamma-like mind was straying after Mr. Jayne. . . .

2
Mr. Jayne
     
    Mr. Jayne and Rome. Both brilliant, both elegant, both urbane, both so gracefully of the world worldly, yet both scholars too. Mr. Jayne wrote memoirs and enchanting historical and political essays. An amusing yet erudite Oxford man, who had been at the British Legation at St. Petersburg. Hostesses desired him for their more sophisticated parties, because he had a wit, and knew Russia, which was at once more unusual and more fashionable then than now. It was at one of Vicky’s dinner parties that he and Rome had first met. If Vicky thought, how suitable, it was only what any one in the world must think about these two. Afterwards they met continually, and became friends. Rome thought him conceited, clever, entertaining, attractive, and disarming, and the most companionable man of her wide acquaintance. By June, 1890, they were in love; a state of mind unusual in both. They did not mention it, but in July he mentioned to her, what he mentioned to few people, that he had a Russian wife living with her parents, a revolutionary professor and his wife, in the country outside Moscow.
    They were spending Sunday on the Thames, rowing up from Bourne End to Marlow. They spoke of this matter of Mr. Jayne’s wife after their lunch, which they ate on the bank, in the shade of willows.
    “How delightful,” said Rome, taking a Gentleman’s Relish sandwich.
    Delightful to have a wife in Russia; to have a reason, and such a reason, for visiting that interesting land. Delightful for Mr. Jayne to have waiting for him, among steppes and woods, a handsome Russian femaleand two fair Slav infants . . . or perhaps they were English, these little Jaynes, with beautiful mouths and long, thrust-out chins. . . . Delightful, anyhow. The Russian country in the summer, all corn and oil and moujiks. Moscow in the autumn, all churches and revolutionaries and plots and secret police. And in the winter . . . but one cannot think about Russia in the winter at all; it does not bear contemplation, and one does not visit it. . . . What a romance! Mr. Jayne was indeed fortunate.
    So Miss Garden conveyed.
    “I am not there very much,” said Mr. Jayne. “Only on and off. Olga prefers to live there, with her parents and our two children. She has many friends there, all very busy plotting. They are of the intelligentsia. Life is very interesting to her.”
    “I can imagine that it must be.”
    So cool and well-bred were Miss Garden and Mr. Jayne that you never would have divined that the latter, eating sandwiches, was crying within his soul, “My dearest Rome. I dislike my wife. We make each other sick with
ennui
when we meet. We married in a moment’s mania. It is you I want. Don’t you know it? Won’t you let me tell you?” or that the former, sipping cider, was saying silently, “You have told me this at last because you know that we have fallen in love. Why not months ago? And what now?”
    Nothing of this they showed, but lounged in the green shade, and drank and ate, Miss Garden, clear-cut and cool, in a striped cotton boating-dress, with a