III.
All Josiana's instincts impelled her to yield herself gallantly ratherthan to give herself legally. To surrender on the score of gallantryimplies learning, recalls Menalcas and Amaryllis, and is almost aliterary act. Mademoiselle de Scudery, putting aside the attraction ofugliness for ugliness' sake, had no other motive for yielding toPelisson.
The maiden a sovereign, the wife a subject, such was the old Englishnotion. Josiana was deferring the hour of this subjection as long as shecould. She must eventually marry Lord David, since such was the royalpleasure. It was a necessity, doubtless; but what a pity! Josianaappreciated Lord David, and showed him off. There was between them atacit agreement neither to conclude nor to break off the engagement.They eluded each other. This method of making love, one step in advanceand two back, is expressed in the dances of the period, the minuet andthe gavotte.
It is unbecoming to be married--fades one's ribbons and makes one lookold. An espousal is a dreary absorption of brilliancy. A woman handedover to you by a notary, how commonplace! The brutality of marriagecreates definite situations; suppresses the will; kills choice; has asyntax, like grammar; replaces inspiration by orthography; makes adictation of love; disperses all life's mysteries; diminishes the rightsboth of sovereign and subject; by a turn of the scale destroys thecharming equilibrium of the sexes, the one robust in bodily strength,the other all-powerful in feminine weakness--strength on one side,beauty on the other; makes one a master and the other a servant, whilewithout marriage one is a slave, the other a queen.
To make Love prosaically decent, how gross! to deprive it of allimpropriety, how dull!
Lord David was ripening. Forty; 'tis a marked period. He did notperceive this, and in truth he looked no more than thirty. He consideredit more amusing to desire Josiana than to possess her. He possessedothers. He had mistresses. On the other hand, Josiana had dreams.
The Duchess Josiana had a peculiarity, less rare than it is supposed.One of her eyes was blue and the other black. Her pupils were made forlove and hate, for happiness and misery. Night and day were mingled inher look.
Her ambition was this--to show herself capable of impossibilities. Oneday she said to Swift, "You people fancy that you know what scorn is.""You people" meant the human race.
She was a skin-deep Papist. Her Catholicism did not exceed the amountnecessary for fashion. She would have been a Puseyite in the presentday. She wore great dresses of velvet, satin, or moire, some composed offifteen or sixteen yards of material, with embroideries of gold andsilver; and round her waist many knots of pearls, alternating with otherprecious stones. She was extravagant in gold lace. Sometimes she wore anembroidered cloth jacket like a bachelor. She rode on a man's saddle,notwithstanding the invention of side-saddles, introduced into Englandin the fourteenth century by Anne, wife of Richard II. She washed herface, arms, shoulders, and neck, in sugar-candy, diluted in white ofegg, after the fashion of Castile. There came over her face, after anyone had spoken wittily in her presence, a reflective smile of singulargrace. She was free from malice, and rather good-natured than otherwise.