Don Juan understood that his genius in the art of seduction lay not in his gift of beauty, not in his power to charm, not in his fearlessness, not even in his ferocious will, but rather in a subtle evolution in the domain of feeling: his uncanny ability to burrow his way deep into a woman’s nature, to detect with precision the slight, subterranean ripples of inclination and repulsion that constituted the hidden life of women. He knew that Mary Hood enjoyed his company, and he knew something more: her interest in him quickened whenever he turned his attention toward Georgiana. Then he would sense in her body a slight stiffening, in her bottom lip a slight drawing in; and lowering her eyes, she would wait for his attention to fall on her again. Juan understood that this was not yet jealousy, but some elusive foreshadowing of it, akin to an instinct of ownership. It was as if Mary Hood had taken charge of him and didn’t like him to stray. Juan understood one other thing: it was the beginning of a particular interest in him that might, in time, take a more lively turn. It was his way in.
Meanwhile, he savored his long outings with the tireless squire of Swan Park, who proved to be a passionate horseman with a fondness for dangerous descents along craggy paths and wild gallops across open downs. The outer reaches of Swan Park were in a continual state of development and reinvention, and Hood was in the thick of things, assisting laborers as they cut a glade or opened a serpentine path through a wood, directing the construction of a pond or the draining of a swamp, and discussing with tenants on outlying farms the breeding of cattle or the cultivation of turnips. He had strong opinions about a host of subjects that Juan had never given a thought to. Lakes, Hood declared, should always be wooded to the shore, their ends lost to view among trees, and he argued that the most picturesque coppice was one composed of beeches and Scots firs. He was currently overseeing a number of exciting ventures, including an interconnected series of subterranean tunnels, a hollow hill containing a library, and several curious projects that he called “living representations”—small tracts of parkland turned into legendary or historical places that blended perfectly into the forests of oak, beech, and ash, the undulating meadows and fields, the hills and valleys of Swan Park. Passing through a thick wood, they came to a region of gently rising hills and shady dales, watered by many streams. A shepherd sat on a rock under a tree, playing a reed pipe, while eight or nine shorn sheep grazed nearby. This, Hood explained, was the land of Arcadia, where real shepherds and shepherdesses dressed in authentic Greek costumes tended flocks of sheep, whose wool was sheared by tenant farmers and sold to merchants in Flanders, while skilled musicians wearing the costumes of shepherds and shepherdesses played pipes made from reeds imported from the Peloponnesus, and actors dressed like Elizabethan lords and ladies enacted scenes of love-longing, such as sighing aloud, weeping by the sides of brooks, pining away in shady groves, and writing love sonnets to hang on the branches of trees. As they rode, Juan saw one young lord in doublet and hose leaning cross-legged against an oak, staring sorrowfully at the ground; the lord looked up at the intruders on horseback, and turned his face away with an expression of angry despair.
Scarcely had they passed through Arcadia when Hood began to speak eagerly about a more recent representation — a venture into the Saxon past. After a time they came to a realm of thick forest and swampland; dark islands rose from the marsh. Here, Hood explained proudly, stood the Isle of Athelney; here during the Danish wars, when all of Wessex was on the verge of a humiliating defeat, King Alfred had retreated for seven long weeks, brooding over the fate of England, waiting for the chance to strike back at his enemies, and emerging at last to defeat Guthrum at the battle of Edington. Hood showed Juan the dense thickets of alder, the fort of the brooding king, the wild deer, a rough wooden bridge; and here and there Juan could see, deep in the alder woods, an ancient Saxon disappearing into the gloom.
But Hood could scarcely suppress his impatience to show Don Juan his latest representation, still under way in a remote corner of southwest parkland. “This way!” he cried, as he broke into a gallop across a field of yellow wildflowers. “Faster! Zounds! I’ll take you to the end o’ the living world!” Juan, spurring his horse, felt the excitement of it — the irrepressible squire had a way of making you feel like a twelve-year-old boy following an adventurous fourteen-year-old brother. They dashed over meadows, slowed to a walk through narrow forest paths darkened by overhanging branches, splashed through rushing streams, startled hares and deer, burst into secret glades trembling with sunlight, until at last they came to a dark lake bordered by gloomy hills. Here Hood dismounted and motioned for Juan to tie his horse to a thick branch. Eagerly he led the way on foot along the edge of the dreary lake, which emitted a stench of sulfur. “ ’Twas said that birds flying over this noxious lake would sicken and die. Hah! What have we here?”
They had come to a high cave partially concealed by dense bushes. Above the entrance hung a stone plaque in which were carved the words FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNO. Underneath, in smaller letters, stood four lines of verse:
Smooth the descent and easy is the way
(The Gates of Hell stand open night and day);
But to return and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labour lies.
Dryden, Hood remarked — was Juan familiar with the English poet? — had taken a strong liberty by translating “Dis” as “Hell,” although the more interesting question concerned whether Avernus referred to the lake proper or, by extension, to the Underworld itself. The opinion of the learned was divided, some saying that Averno must mean to Avernus, others that it could only mean by way of Avernus. However that may be, he remarked as he led Juan into the cave, he had chosen to call this representation Avernus, for the simple reason— “Hah! Well! I see you enjoy my little effects.” Juan had drawn his sword as a hissing form half emerged from the shadows. “ ’Tis the Lernean Hydra,” Hood explained, nodding toward the retiring monster. “She o’ the many heads. In this art, Sir,” he added, “shadow is all.” In a trembling blackness lit by small fires, he pointed to shadowy creatures that half showed themselves and half withdrew. There lay a Gorgon, there a flamebreathing Chimaera, there Briareus of the hundred arms — but surely Juan knew his Aeneid? Beyond the tree of false dreams lay the shore of the river Acheron: there the souls of the dead fluttered moaning near the bank.