Stormy weather does not vex the calm of the Park
Lover, for 'the rains of Marly do not wet' when one is in love.
By
a clever manipulation of four arms and four hands they can manage an
umbrella and enfold each other at the same time, though a feminine
macintosh is well known to be ill adapted to the purpose, and a
continuous drizzle would dampen almost any other lover in the
universe.
The park embrace, as nearly as I can analyse it, seems to be one
part instinct, one part duty, one part custom, and one part reflex
action. I have purposely omitted pleasure (which, in the analysis
of the ordinary embrace, reduces all the other ingredients to an
almost invisible faction), because I fail to find it; but I am
willing to believe that in some rudimentary form it does exist,
because man attends to no purely unpleasant matter with such
praiseworthy assiduity. Anything more fixedly stolid than the Park
Lover when he passes his arm round his chosen one and takes her
crimson hand in his, I have never seen; unless, indeed, it be the
fixed stolidity of the chosen one herself. I had not at first the
assurance even to glance at them as I passed by, blushing myself to
the roots of my hair, though the offenders themselves never changed
colour. Many a time have I walked out of my way or lowered my
parasol, for fear of invading their Sunday Eden; but a spirit of
inquiry awoke in me at last, and I began to make psychological
investigations, with a view to finding out at what point
embarrassment would appear in the Park Lover. I experimented (it
was a most arduous and unpleasant task) with upwards of two hundred
couples, and it is interesting to record that self-consciousness was
not apparent in a single instance. It was not merely that they
failed to resent my stopping in the path directly opposite them, or
my glaring most offensively at them, nor that they even allowed me
to sit upon their green bench and witness their chaste salutes, but
it was that they did fail to perceive me at all! There is a kind of
superb finish and completeness about their indifference to the
public gaze which removes it from ordinary immodesty, and gives it a
certain scientific value.
Chapter VII. A ducal tea-party.
Among all my English experiences, none occupies so important a place
as my forced meeting with the Duke of Cimicifugas. (There can be no
harm in my telling the incident, so long as I do not give the right
names, which are very well known to fame.) The Duchess of
Cimicifugas, who is charming, unaffected, and lovable, so report
says, has among her chosen friends an untitled woman whom we will
call Mrs. Apis Mellifica. I met her only daughter, Hilda, in
America, and we became quite intimate. It seems that Mrs. Apis
Mellifica, who has an income of 20,000 pounds a year, often
exchanges presents with the duchess, and at this time she had
brought with her from the Continent some rare old tapestries with
which to adorn a new morning-room at Cimicifugas House.
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