The castaway

It was a thirsty afternoon. Teresa and Mary Shelley—the latter, bonneted and gloved—sat at an upper window of the palace, watching through the Venetian blinds the English residents of Pisa approaching by twos and threes the entrance below them.

Dr. Nott’s service had been well advertised, and a pardonable curiosity to gain a view, however limited, of the palace’s interior, swelled the numbers. Besides this, one of the Lanfranchi servants had had an unlucky fracas with a police sergeant which, within a few hours of its occurrence, rumor had swollen to a formidable and bloody affray: Gordon had mortally wounded two police dragoons and taken refuge in his house, guarded by bulldogs; he had been captured after a desperate resistance; forty brace of pistols had been found in the palace. These tales had been soon exploded, but the affair nevertheless possessed an interest on this Sunday afternoon.

The pair at the window conversed on various topics: Pietro, the new member of the household, and his rescue in Lake Geneva, of which Mary had told Teresa; Prince Mavrocordato, his patron, exiled from Wallachia, and watching eagerly the plans of the primates, now shaping to revolution, in Greece, his native country; Shelley’s new sail-boat, the Ariel, anchored at the river-bank, a stone’s throw from where they sat. As they talked they could hear from the adjoining study Gordon’s voice reading aloud and the sharp, eager, explosive tones of Shelley as he commented or admired.

Both watchers at length fell silent. The sight of the people below, soberly frocked and coated, so unmistakably British in habiliment and demeanor, had brought pensive thoughts to Mary Shelley of the England and Sabbaths of her girlhood. Teresa was thinking of Gordon.

Since the hour he had learned that melancholy news from Bagnacavallo he had not spoken of Allegra, but there had been a look in his face that told how sharply the blow had pierced.

If there had been a lurking jealousy of his past in which she had no part, it had vanished forever when he had said, with that patient pathos that wrung her heart: “I understand.” The words then had roused in her something even deeper than the maternal instinct that had budded when she took him wounded to Casa Guiccioli, deeper than the utter joy with which she had felt his arms as they rode through the night from the villa where he had waked her from that death-like coma. It was a sense of more intimate comprehension to which her whole being had vibrated ever since.

Not but that she was conscious of straggles in him that she did not fully grasp. But to-day, as she sat silent by the window, her heart was saying: “His old life is gone—gone! I belong to his new life. I will love him so that he will forget! We shall live always in Italy together, and he will write poems that the whole world will read. And some day it will know him as I do!”

The sound of a slow hymn rose from the floor below, and Teresa’s companion stole to the hall where the words came clearly up the marble staircase:

As Mary listened, Teresa came and stood beside her. Convent bred, religion to her had meant churchings, candled processionals and adorations before the crucifix which hung always above her bed. Her mind direct, imaginative, yet with a natural freedom from traditional constraint, suffered for the home-nurtured ceremony left behind in her flight with Gordon. But her new experience retained a sense of devotion deeper because more primitive and instinctive than these: a mystic leaning out toward good intelligences all about her—the pure longing with which she had framed the prayer for Gordon so long ago. She listened eagerly now, not only because of the priestly suggestion in the sound, but also from a thought that the ceremony below had been a part of his England.

This was in her mind as a weighty voice intoned the opening sentences, to drop presently to the recitation of the collect for the day.

While thus absorbed, Gordon and Shelley came and leaned with them at the top of the stair. The congregation was responding now to the Litany:

It was not alone Mary Shelley to whom memories were hastening. The chant recalled to Gordon, with a singular, minute distinctness, the dreary hours in the Milbanke pew in the old church at Seaham, where he had passed that “treacle-moon” with Annabel. Blindness of heart, hatred, uncharitableness: he had known all these.

One phase of his old life was lifting before him startlingly clear: the phase that confounded the precept with the practice and resented hypocrisy by a wholesale railing at dogma—the sneer with which the philosophic Roman shrugged at the Galilean altars. The ancient speculation had fallen in the wreck at Venice—to rise again one sodden dawn in the La Mira forest. The discarded images had re-arisen then, but with new outlines. They still framed skepticism, but it was desponding, not scoffing—a hopelessness whose climax was reached in his soul’s bitter cry to Padre Somalian at San Lazzarro: “If it were only true!” Since, he had learned the supreme awakening of love which had already aroused his conscience, and now in its development, that love, lighting and warming his whole field of human sympathy, made him conscious of appetences hitherto unguessed.

Gordon neither smiled now nor frowned.

The chant died while the visitors said their adieus. The feeling of estrangement had been deepening in Shelley’s fair-haired wife. For a moment she had been back in old St. Giles’-in-the-Fields, whither she had gone so often of a Sunday from William Godwin’s musty book-shop. She put her hand on Shelley’s arm.

“Bysshe,” she whispered, “let us stop a while as we go down. It seems so like old times. We can slip in at the back and leave before the rest. Will you?”

Shelley looked ruefully at his loose nankeen trousers, his jacket sleeves worn from handling the tiller, and shook his tangled hair, but seeing her wistful expression, acquiesced.

“Very well, Mary,” he said; “come along.” He followed her, shrugging his shoulders.

At the entrance of the impromptu audience-room, Mary drew back uncertainly. The benches had been so disposed that the late-comers found themselves fronting the side of the audience and the center of curious eyes. Shelley colored at the scrutiny, but it was too late to retire, and they seated themselves in the rear.

At the moment of their entry the Rev. Dr. Nott, in cassock and surplice, having laid off the priest (he was an exact high-churchman) was kissing the center of the preacher’s stole. He settled the garment on his shoulders with satisfaction. He had been annoyed at the disappearance of Cassidy, on whose aid he had counted for many preliminary details, but the presence of the author of “Queen Mab” more than compensated. This would indeed be good seed sown. He proceeded with zeal to the text of his sermon:

“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.”

A flutter winged among the benches and the blood flew to Mary’s cheek as he doled the words a second time.

With his stay in the town, the clergyman’s concern had grown at the toleration with which it regarded the presence of this reprobated apostle of hellish unbelief. The thought had been strong in his mind as he wrote his sermon. This was an opportunity to sound the alarum of faith. His face shone with ardor.

The doctor possessed a vocabulary. His voice was sonorous, his vestments above reproach. He was under the very roof of Asteroth, with the visible presence of anti-Christ before his eyes. The situation was inspiratory. From a brief judicial arraignment of skepticism, he launched into allusions unmistakably personal, beneath which Mary Shelley sat quivering with resentment, her softer sentiment of lang syne turned to bitter regret. Furtive glances were upon the pair; Pisa—the English part of it—was enjoying a new sensation.

A pained, flushing wonder was in Shelley’s diffident, bright eyes as the clergyman, with outstretched arm, thundered toward them the warning of Paul:

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world! Their throat is an open sepulcher; the poison of asps is under their lips.”

Mary’s hand had found her husband’s. “Let us go,” he said in an undertone, and drew her to her feet. They passed to the door, the cynosure of observation, the launched utterance pursuing them:

“Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, and the way of peace have they not known.”

In the street Mary turned to him. “Don’t mind, Bysshe,” she pleaded.

He half smiled, but his eyes were feverishly bright. He kissed her as he answered:

“I’m going for a sail. Don’t worry if I’m not back to-night. I’ll run up to Via Reggia. The wind will do me good.”

He crossed the pavement bareheaded and leaped into his sail-boat. A moment later, from the bridge, she saw through clouding tears the light craft careening down the Arno toward the sea.

The agitated ripple of the audience that followed their exit was not yet stilled when the discourse was strangely interrupted. From the pavement came the sound of running feet, a hoarse shout and a shot, ringing out sharply on the Sabbath stillness.

A second later a man dashed panting into the outer hall with a British marine at his heels.