Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors

a time. It was a fascinating sensation to suppose that, unseen, I was looking at these women in the guise of the lover of each —
even that Anne’s Antonio!
Clearly, she thought herself culpable, not in her love itself, but in
her revelation of a secret. ‘And yet, sadly, ’tis out now,’ (thus she
brushed aside further concealment) ‘and so, bating my modesty, I
fondly confess that this same Antonio hath worked such mischief with
his sighs — Heigh-ho! Well, once 1 had rather sing “So” for my lute
and mine own mastery than “Me” for the sway of an husband on my
heart; but out of the first fire of meeting eyes, love is stricken — where
’twas born, there ’tis fixed for ever, and all my study bent on right
submission.’
But alas! From this temporary elevation, Anne now abruptly took
refuge in defiantly saucy wit: ‘For Antonio is a man of such excellent
good parts,’ said she, ‘that I, having partly conned his part, wot well
that ’tis well for his part to be parting those parts . . . ’
But she was interrupted; at first, rather to my relief; for, feeling myself in some respects identical with Antonio, I could not altogether avoid blushing under Francis’s satirical gaze.
‘Foh, O filthy!’ cried the straight-nosed Bellamode — for the honour
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Yvonne Rousseau
of the seventeenth century. ‘A wife’s to be all submission! Why, then,
say ’tis better to stare honestly out of one’s eyes than to tenderly languish w ith’em, a la Chinoise . .
(here she ogled extremely);‘say,
’tis as wretched to slaughter the reputation of a dear friend, as ’tis to
be seen in public squired by one’s husband: do: say any arrant
nonsense!
‘Aye, you’d have human creatures all ice, and just the one beauteous
mind and person to rouse in each o f’em the amorous designs of toads
(that’s men!) or our own soft desires; and then you’d have us cruel and
strange to our husbands only where ’twas wisdom, ’twas reason; and
then you think yourself cherished for a pretty wit, where ’tis only a
pretty tit. Lard, child, never prattle me your country megrims
yonder!’
(Francis was lividly pale once more, and gazed at this monster of
hardihood even with a ludicrous air of pity! ‘I was right,’ he was m uttering: ‘First, Anne’s genuine sense of delicacy, and then this . . .
And she’s lost Anne’s sense of trust; her trust in men has been outraged. W hat’s to be expected, but even more prurience, even greater estrangement from men, in Clarinda’s century?’ His muttering
seemed addressed to me — he cut his words short, upon catching my
glance.)
‘But I,’ Bellamode was now asserting, T m to be a town wife: Fm to
be absolute and uncontrollable. Nay, though I strive in vain to rend
from my heart a dissembling monster, a hellish, goatish traitor — ’
(here she broke her fan, while I looked at Francis with an involuntary
question in my eye; he pointed at me, and silently nodded!) ‘ — yet 111
enslave ’em bravely, 111 be strange with my husband, 111 have ’em dote
in torments!’
‘For mercy, for pity’s sake, forbear!’ cried Clarinda, to my unspeakable relief. Stepping forward, her eyes ablaze with good sense and decorum, she approached young Anne, who was regarding the rigid
Bellamode with mingled repugnance and pity.
‘That two such pretty-bred young women should offer such a talking!’ Clarinda pursued. ‘Your amiability, your modesty; do not they shudder at your placing yourself so on a level with the men? Your very
sensibility’ (to Anne) ‘seems ignorant that it is Nature’s serious law for
a man to be your superior; it seems you have only your love to instruct
you in awe and devoted obedience. Indeed, I fear that you aim beyond
that exemption from blame which is the utmost female accomplishment; I fear you go near to being pert.’
Anne, however, seemed determined not to be improved by these
M r Lockwood’s narrative
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most true and necessary injunctions; she returned no direct answer,
but instead began to hum, and to read in a book she had by her — a
work of Chaucer’s, as I had already observed.
‘Gemini! Is that the newest play?’ cried Bellamode, and, ‘Oh, never
be a blue-stocking, child!’ cried Clarinda.
The brightly-hued lady on the sofa now sat up: ‘A household primer
is very well,’ she said, showing one, ‘O r sermons.’ (‘T hat’s Dorothea,
of the nineteenth century,’ Francis m urmured.)
I looked across at the other — Evadne. She was draped against the
doorframe, but wearing an expression of — was it agony? absent-
mindedness? ecstasy?
‘O ur companion,’ Clarinda pursued, indicating Bellamode, ‘is
aware in men of what, so unhappily, is there. Yet the frame of a
woman’s mind should be so delicate — a woman should be so exalted
— as to make men show themselves deserving of her deference, and
so to escape being murdered, past repair!’
(‘By “m urdered” she means “ravished”, ’ Francis m urm ured in my
ear.
‘Well, of course she does!’ I returned, in some amazement: nor can
I yet fathom the reason for his senseless interjection.)
‘Then, too,’ (Clarinda addressed both Anne and Bellamode) ‘you
speak of your gaining a husband as though it were a matter of course!
The woman’s only sphere is the domestic, indeed; yet, be they never
so