Gynecocracy

Her hair, the back of her head, looked so beautiful, she was so coquettish! Would she betray me? I was not left in doubt long. The pressure was gently returned, and if she and Mademoiselle had struck up friendship by the time we reached the station, so had I struck up a warmer one, and as we got out of the carriage had had a little glance which told me I was understood. This made me very happy. But the drive to Piccadilly extinguished it; only for the time though. I could not help feeling indignant at the calm air of possession with which the majority of the women we met had plainly contemplated me, as if I were annexed, and definitely subject to the petticoat, and they knew it.

The smiling hostess of the quiet private hotel where Mademoiselle stayed increased my dismay by her curious and intelligent looks at me.

My bedroom as at home opened off Mademoiselle's, and the landlady pointed it out incidentally and quite as a matter of course, taking it for granted it was what Mademoiselle would wish.

I should have expected her to consider it strange that a youth of my size should sleep in a room to which there was no access but through a young lady's; and should have been much gratified to find my expectation realised. But the fact that Mademoiselle was my governess appeared quite sufficient explanation to her. And if I had been but five or six years old, I could not have been treated with more indifference by these women.

I found that Mademoiselle frequently used the hotel, and was well-known there.

Miss Stormont's room was on the opposite side of the sitting room.

Of course my hands had been unfastened just before we alighted from the train. The first thing Elise did when we got in, and I was waiting in the sitting room while the apartments were being decided upon, was to tie them up again.

CHAPTER 10

Vivien

And then, with great scorn, they got Sir Dinadan into the forest there beside, and there they despoiled him unto his shirt, and put upon him a woman's garment, and so brought him into the field, and so they blew unto lodging. And every knight went and unarmed him. Then was Sir Dinadan brought in among them all. And when Queen Guinevere saw Sir Dinadan brought so among them all, then she laughed that she fell down. So did all that were there.

Mort d'Arthur

The chief effect of my treatment at the time was undoubtedly a delicious delirium of priapism which fitted me for the accomplishment of one of the reputed labours of the redoubtable knight, the Sieur Hercules, who, in the course of one night got fifty girls with child, if my memory does not deceive me.

There was a delicious contrast between Mademoiselle de Chambonnard and Gertrude Stormont.

Mademoiselle, dark and peremptory, and "capaciously serene," to use an expression of Wordsworth's, reminded me of Zenobia, Queen of the East, while Gertrude was the impersonation to me of Vivien, in the Idyll of Merlin and Vivien.

It is difficult to convey in words the multiplicity, the multifariousness of women upon me, to which, at that moment of fatigue after my journey, I felt exposed, and my effort to convey it may appear somewhat rhapsodical. With the influence of Mademoiselle and of Gertrude was joined that of my laughter-loving Venus, Beatrice, and of Maud. Agnes was an indistinct, undivided part of the potion which made me love sick.

My second feeling was an extraordinary and ecstatic exaltation of all my faculties, particularly of my memory.

I had an extraordinary envy of old Merlin always. No doubt he had Vivien towards the close of that dreadful storm before he told her the charm, and no doubt it was delicious to have a creature like she was.

I think it was Miss Stormont's light golden hair, which, as she sat on my lap, was very conspicuously placed before me, that first set my thoughts rambling on the "wily Vivien."

A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe

Of samite without price that more express

Than hid her, clung about her lissom limbs,

In colour, like the satin-shining palm,

On sallows like windy gleams of March.

And then that glance I had just as we were getting out of the carriage, lit up by the fire of her hazel blue eyes after:

She had made her little arm round my neck

Tighten, and then drew back and let her eyes

Speak for her, glowing on me like a bride's

On her new lord, her own, the first man.

How well I could imagine Gertrude saying in her petulant way:

They, ladies, never made unwilling war

With those fine eyes: she had her pleasure in it,

And made her good man jealous with good cause.

And so I longed for this beautiful gilded summer fly. Beatrice was far away. Mademoiselle would keep. Gertrude might vanish tomorrow. I longed to love them all in her, and herself above all. I longed to possess the paradise beneath her petticoats.

My heart panted as I hoped.

I felt nothing. I thought of her lovely figure in its beautiful setting of close-fitting ruddy brown, which, like Vivien's samite robe, "more express than hid her." I listened for her voice.