PARTISAN REVIEW
her, but by retiring early and leaving them to talk it had been man–
aged....
The voice shut off and Mrs. Searle gave zealous attention to the
flowers once more. The clumps of lupins were massed like an over–
painted sunset-anchovy, orange and lemon against skyblue-only
the very top of their spikes had been bent and hung like dripping
candles. The crests of the delphiniums were broken too, and the
petals lay around pale iceblue and darkblue like scattered boat-race
favours. Mrs. Searle shrank back as she surveyed the tall verbascums;
their yellow flowers were covered in caterpillars, many of which had
been drowned or smashed by the rain, their bodies now dried and
blackening in the hot sun. "Miss Eccles, Miss Eccles" she called "are
you good with caterpillars?"
A very tall young woman got up from a deck chair on the lawn
and moved lopingly across to the flower bed; the white linen trousers
seemed to accentuate her lumbering gait and her ungainly height;
her thin white face was cut sharply by the line of her hard, vermilion
lipstick; her straight, green-gold hair was worn long at the neck. "I'll
see what I can do, Mrs. Searle" she said, and began rapidly to pick off
the insects. "But you
are
good with caterpillars" said Miranda Searle.
"It's a gift, of course, like being good with children. I'm glad to say
that I hold each in equal abhorrence. Don't you think the verbascum
very beautiful? I do, but then it's natural I
should
like them. I share
their great quality of spikiness."
If
you were covered with caterpillars,
thought Elspeth Eccles, I wouldn't budge an inch to remove them, I
should laugh like hell. She had always believed that absolute sin–
cerity was the only basis for human relationships, and she felt con–
vinced that a little truth-telling would work wonders with Mrs. Searle's
egotistical artificiality, but somehow she shrank from the experiment
of telling her hostess what she really thought of her spikiness, there
was no doubt that for all her futility and selfishness she was a little
daunting. It was the difference of age, of course, and the unfair
superiority of riches, but still she preferred to change the topic. "What
are those red and blue flowers with the light foliage?" she asked.
"Linum" replied Mrs. Searle. "You know-'Thou wilt not quench
the burning flax, nor hurt the bruised reed,' only that doesn't sound
quite right." "It certainly seems a little meaningless" commented
Elspeth. "Oh! I should hope so" said Mrs. Searle. "It's religious. You
