“Ingenious, certainly,” Georgiana was saying. “But is the real nightingale any less wonderful? Can anyone possibly believe that Nature herself is without design? For my part—”
“You must forgive us,” Mary Hood said. “We English are rather fond of argument.”
“I am not arguing, Mary, I am merely saying that in this age of mechanical ingenuity—”
Don Juan listened with delight to the voices of the Englishwomen, one speaking Italian, the other French, a language he understood nearly as well — the one with a gentle, musical voice, the other more energetic and abrupt, reaching higher and lower in the scale — while greenish shadows rippled down onto the cream-colored and sky-blue silk of their hooped gowns. It was a brilliant summer afternoon. Everything interested him: the wide, forearm-length cuffs of Hood’s coat, the tight horizontal side-curls of his wig, the figure of Moses striking water from a rock at the top of a cascade, the silk ribbons around the sisters’ necks, the Rotunda with its telescope and its view of the river Ymber, the Garden of Shakespeare with its sixty-four statues of comical and tragical characters in dramatic attitudes, Hood’s explanation of the construction of a rill. At the top of the path they entered the cool grotto, passed out the other side into a picturesque meadow bordered by a wood, and walked along a winding path that somehow led back to the great house.
Dinner was served at four o’clock on the broad lawn that sloped down to the Ymber. Osiers trailed their branches in the slow brown water; a few swans swam flickering through sun and shade. On the grass by the riverbank was a stone bench on which lay a yellow silk pillow, a fan with ivory sticks, and a book bound in red morocco. A footman stood before Don Juan, holding out a silver bowl containing bunches of grapes so purple and glistening that they looked like a painting of a bowl of grapes, each with its careful highlight. Juan dropped a grape into his mouth, hesitating a moment, as if it might be an object of wax, before biting down and feeling the juice burst against his tongue — and while Mary Hood smiled at her husband under the shade of her hat, and Georgiana brushed an ant from her blue silk shoulder, and the pleasant voice of Augustus Hood was saying that a universe was not precisely like a pocket watch, and beyond the river a field of hayricks lay burning in the sun, Don Juan felt a rich sense of peace, of relaxation, as if for a long time he had been clenching unknown muscles. He felt ten years old again, listening to his father explaining how the flower ripens into the fruit, in the orchard that went down to the Guadalquivir. Venice seemed a dark dream, a fever-vision from which he had wakened to a new morning. Don Juan had no intention of sparing the women— idly he wondered whether Mary or Georgiana would lead the way — but for the first time in his life he was in no hurry.
Over the next few days a loose, easy-flowing routine was established at Swan Park. Don Juan, who was accustomed to rising late in the morning, would come down to find that Squire Hood had risen six hours earlier and was out supervising one of his many projects in the gardens or parkland. Mary and Georgiana had eaten at nine but sat with Juan in the breakfast room as he was served the third breakfast of the day: hot brown bread, honey, hot chocolate, buttered toast, and a pot of steaming tea. The three would then walk along the river, or on one of the many garden paths, as they awaited the return of Squire Hood. He would come galloping along the riding path, swing from his horse, cry “Hah!” or “Gad, what a day!” and burst into enthusiastic talk about his projects as he took a short turn with them in the gardens before riding off with Juan to the farthest reaches of Swan Park. The gentle squire, Juan thought, was like a fire — or a Spanish rake: he was always burning. They returned for dinner at four, in the high dining room or on the lawn above the Ymber. Hood, dressed carelessly in riding boots and an old broadcloth coat, consumed platefuls of roast veal and pigeon pie washed down with cider and red port as he discussed everything under the sun: the operation of a silk loom, the superiority of timber props to pillars of coal for supporting the roofs of mines, the idea — shocking to Juan — that modern battle heroes depicted in paintings ought to be shown in contemporary garb instead of in Greek or Roman armor. The elaborate dinner, lasting two hours, ended with bowls of gooseberries, thick wedges of currant pie, orange pudding, and pots of green and black tea.
After dinner they played charades or piquet in the drawing room, walked by the river, and sometimes drove in a calash along the graveled riding path that wound among the gardens. Then Hood retired to the library, to read a treatise on the cultivation of laburnum or the operation of a Newcomen engine, or to examine a bit of leaf or the wing of an insect through the microscope that stood on a corner table. A light supper of cold meats was served at nine-thirty or ten; afterward first Hood and then the women retired to their rooms. Juan, unused to going to bed before dawn, would climb the stairs to his apartment— a bedroom and sitting room in a separate wing — where his new valet had prepared his bed for the night. On the third day Juan had sent his servant back to Venice, unable to bear the thought of having about him the all-too-faithful partner of his Venetian revels; Hood had immediately supplied an English valet, the self-effacing cousin of a Swan Park chambermaid. In the long night Juan would play dozens of games of patience at an inlaid mahogany table in his sitting room. He would drink Madeira, look at the sky through the telescope that Hood had mounted for him on a stand by one of his sitting-room windows, and glance through the leather volumes of English poets that Mary had chosen for him from the library. Then he would sit for a long time in his bedroom armchair in the embrasure of the casement window, savoring his solitude and staring out at a distant turn of the Ymber before climbing into his canopied bed at three in the morning.
In the vast house, he was the only guest. Hood, for all his exuberance, enjoyed his solitude — or at any rate he was happy to shut himself up in the library whenever he liked. One afternoon his landscape architect, a quietly amiable man named William Gravenor, came to dinner, during which he unrolled a large sheet of paper that knocked over a glass of port; after dinner the two of them retired immediately to the library, while Don Juan walked with the women by the river. He knew that Hood liked him, but it struck him that he was also useful to the squire, who could disappear at a moment’s notice.
“I walk,” Mary Hood was saying, as she and Juan walked along the path of osiers behind Georgiana and Augustus, “every day. I am walking — now — at this moment. ’Tis the difference between what is customary and what is singular. I am walking beside the river.”
“I am walking,” Juan said, “beside the river.”
“You are walking beside the river,” Mary said. “You are talking beside the river. We are walking and talking beside the river.”
“I am talking beside the river,” Juan said. “We are walking beside the river.”
“They are walking beside the river,” Mary said, pointing at Georgiana and Augustus. “The birds are singing in the trees. The sun is setting in the west.”
“Night is coming,” Juan said. “We are walking in the north beside the river. Day is dying.”
“I am going mad,” Georgiana said, glancing back over her left shoulder, “beside the river.”
He was making rapid progress in English. Mary had taken it upon herself to be his teacher, and he spoke to her easily, though an odd shyness prevented him from practicing his sentences with Georgiana. He was never alone with either woman; he wondered whether it was by design. Of the two, Mary seemed to enjoy his company frankly, while Georgiana held him at a playful distance, as if he were a very amusing piece of foreign furniture — just how amusing, he would show her in time. Georgiana liked to engage in serious discussions with her brother-in-law, about such matters as whether natural beauty might ever be excelled by artistic beauty, or how the impression made by a word differed from the impression made by the object represented by a word; Juan admired her brilliant gray-green eyes with their long, curved lashes, the green feathers she liked to wear in her thick auburn hair, and the green silk ribbons around her neck. Her movements were quick, even impatient; there was a tension in her hands and at the edges of her mouth that suggested secret energies. Mary Hood was gentler and more flowing in her motions. She liked to assume the role of teacher, repeating sentences patiently and giving examples, as if Juan were a child of seven and she a stern governess with excellent references; at dinner she preferred to listen. Her hair seemed to Juan a contradiction: light brown, like a paler, duller version of her sister’s, combed softly back from the forehead and temples, but at the back thickly ringleted and hanging to the nape; when she moved, her curls shook continually, as if her passions were in her hair. Her eyes were hazel. She was given to sudden, unexpected fits of laughter.