CHAPTER III.
THE DUCHESS JOSIANA.
Towards 1705, although Lady Josiana was twenty-three and Lord Davidforty-four, the wedding had not yet taken place, and that for the bestreasons in the world. Did they hate each other? Far from it; but whatcannot escape from you inspires you with no haste to obtain it. Josianawanted to remain free, David to remain young. To have no tie until aslate as possible appeared to him to be a prolongation of youth.Middle-aged young men abounded in those rakish times. They grew gray asyoung fops. The wig was an accomplice: later on, powder became theauxiliary. At fifty-five Lord Charles Gerrard, Baron Gerrard, one of theGerrards of Bromley, filled London with his successes. The young andpretty Duchess of Buckingham, Countess of Coventry, made a fool ofherself for love of the handsome Thomas Bellasys, Viscount Falconberg,who was sixty-seven. People quoted the famous verses of Corneille, theseptuagenarian, to a girl of twenty--"_Marquise, si mon visage_." Women,too, had their successes in the autumn of life. Witness Ninon andMarion. Such were the models of the day.
Josiana and David carried on a flirtation of a particular shade. Theydid not love, they pleased, each other. To be at each other's sidesufficed them. Why hasten the conclusion? The novels of those dayscarried lovers and engaged couples to that kind of stage which was themost becoming. Besides, Josiana, while she knew herself to be a bastard,felt herself a princess, and carried her authority over him with a hightone in all their arrangements. She had a fancy for Lord David. LordDavid was handsome, but that was over and above the bargain. Sheconsidered him to be fashionable.
To be fashionable is everything. Caliban, fashionable and magnificent,would distance Ariel, poor. Lord David was handsome, so much the better.The danger in being handsome is being insipid; and that he was not. Hebetted, boxed, ran into debt. Josiana thought great things of hishorses, his dogs, his losses at play, his mistresses. Lord David, on hisside, bowed down before the fascinations of the Duchess Josiana--amaiden without spot or scruple, haughty, inaccessible, and audacious. Headdressed sonnets to her, which Josiana sometimes read. In these sonnetshe declared that to possess Josiana would be to rise to the stars, whichdid not prevent his always putting the ascent off to the following year.He waited in the antechamber outside Josiana's heart; and this suitedthe convenience of both. At court all admired the good taste of thisdelay. Lady Josiana said, "It is a bore that I should be obliged tomarry Lord David; I, who would desire nothing better than to be in lovewith him!"
Josiana was "the flesh." Nothing could be more resplendent. She was verytall--too tall. Her hair was of that tinge which might be called redgold. She was plump, fresh, strong, and rosy, with immense boldness andwit. She had eyes which were too intelligible. She had neither loversnor chastity. She walled herself round with pride. Men! oh, fie! a godonly would be worthy of her, or a monster. If virtue consists in theprotection of an inaccessible position, Josiana possessed all possiblevirtue, but without any innocence. She disdained intrigues; but shewould not have been displeased had she been supposed to have engaged insome, provided that the objects were uncommon, and proportioned to themerits of one so highly placed. She thought little of her reputation,but much of her glory. To appear yielding, and to be unapproachable, isperfection. Josiana felt herself majestic and material. Hers was acumbrous beauty. She usurped rather than charmed. She trod upon hearts.She was earthly. She would have been as much astonished at being provedto have a soul in her bosom as wings on her back. She discoursed onLocke; she was polite; she was suspected of knowing Arabic.
To be "the flesh" and to be woman are two different things. Where awoman is vulnerable, on the side of pity, for instance, which so readilyturns to love, Josiana was not. Not that she was unfeeling. The ancientcomparison of flesh to marble is absolutely false. The beauty of fleshconsists in not being marble: its beauty is to palpitate, to tremble, toblush, to bleed, to have firmness without hardness, to be white withoutbeing cold, to have its sensations and its infirmities; its beauty is tobe life, and marble is death.
Flesh, when it attains a certain degree of beauty, has almost a claim tothe right of nudity; it conceals itself in its own dazzling charms as ina veil. He who might have looked upon Josiana nude would have perceivedher outlines only through a surrounding glory. She would have shownherself without hesitation to a satyr or a eunuch. She had theself-possession of a goddess. To have made her nudity a torment, evereluding a pursuing Tantalus, would have been an amusement to her.
The king had made her a duchess, and Jupiter a Nereid--a doubleirradiation of which the strange, brightness of this creature wascomposed. In admiring her you felt yourself becoming a pagan and alackey. Her origin had been bastardy and the ocean. She appeared to haveemerged from the foam. From the stream had risen the first jet of herdestiny; but the spring was royal. In her there was something of thewave, of chance, of the patrician, and of the tempest. She was well readand accomplished. Never had a passion approached her, yet she hadsounded them all. She had a disgust for realizations, and at the sametime a taste for them. If she had stabbed herself, it would, likeLucretia, not have been until afterwards. She was a virgin stained withevery defilement in its visionary stage. She was a possible Astarte in areal Diana. She was, in the insolence of high birth, tempting andinaccessible. Nevertheless, she might find it amusing to plan a fall forherself. She dwelt in a halo of glory, half wishing to descend from it,and perhaps feeling curious to know what a fall was like. She was alittle too heavy for her cloud. To err is a diversion. Princelyunconstraint has the privilege of experiment, and what is frailty in aplebeian is only frolic in a duchess. Josiana was in everything--inbirth, in beauty, in irony, in brilliancy--almost a queen. She had felta moment's enthusiasm for Louis de Bouffles, who used to breakhorseshoes between his fingers. She regretted that Hercules was dead.She lived in some undefined expectation of a voluptuous and supremeideal.
Morally, Josiana brought to one's mind the line--
"Un beau torse de femme en hydre se termine."
Hers was a noble neck, a splendid bosom, heaving harmoniously over aroyal heart, a glance full of life and light, a countenance pure andhaughty, and who knows? below the surface was there not, in asemi-transparent and misty depth, an undulating, supernaturalprolongation, perchance deformed and dragon-like--a proud virtue endingin vice in the depth of dreams.