CHAPTER XI

HOGG (_continued_)

Shelley returned next day, sooner than was expected. He had had no success. His father had refused to see him. From very different motives to Shelley’s he too considered his son’s marriage the unforgivable crime.

“I’d have willingly supported any amount of illegitimate children,” he told Captain Pilfold. “But that he should have _married_ her . . . never speak to me of him again!”

Miss Hitchener, afraid for her reputation, had refused to make the journey with Shelley. In London he learned that Eliza had not waited for him. He reached York, tired and out of spirits, hoping to find consolation in the society of his wife and his friend. What he found was an atmosphere of embarrassment and constraint.

Eliza, shut up in her room, brushed her hair all day long. Harriet and Hogg, instead of their former gay nonsense round the tea-tray, treated each other with studied coldness. When Hogg spoke to her, she replied very shortly. There was something mysterious in the air.

The moment Harriet and Shelley were alone, “Dear,” he began, “I don’t like this haughty attitude you take with Hogg. He is my best friend. He has looked after you in my absence. That you now have your sister with you is no reason for giving the cold shoulder to Hogg, whom I look on as a brother.”

Harriet sighed. “He’s a nice sort of friend!” said she, in a tone heavy with insinuations.

Shelley, astonished, urged her to explain.

She told the story. “He has made love to me . . . twice. The first time he told me he was passionately in love with me. . . . I pretended it was a joke. . . . I made him be quiet. I imagined it was all over, and I even had no intention of speaking to you about it. But yesterday he began again. He declared he couldn’t live without me, and that he will kill himself if I don’t consent.”

Shelley felt his blood freeze. His heart seemed to stand still.

“Hogg? Hogg did this? But did you not point out to him . . .?”

“Oh, I said everything I could say . . . that he was a false friend, that he was betraying your confidence. . . . ‘What does all that matter when one is in love?’ he replied. ‘It’s all right for Percy, who is a cold and pure spirit, to talk of virtue . . . but I’m in love with you, and the rest doesn’t count. . . . Besides, what harm should we do Shelley? He need never know. Why not give me your love, and give him your affection? Does he think so much about you?’”

“He said that?”

“Yes, and lots of other things as well. He said you mix logic with things where it has no business, that you are a flame for ideas, and ice for the sentiments which alone count in life. . . . I answered him as well as I was able. . . .”

Shelley let himself fall upon the sofa. Suddenly the world seemed eclipsed behind a veil of grey. He was seized with giddiness, his head swam, he shivered with cold.

“That Hogg should have tried to seduce my wife, taking advantage of the moment that I had confided her to his protection . . . Hogg, on whose countenance I have sometimes gazed till I fancied the world could be reformed by gazing too. . . . Never was there a more shameful attempt. . . . And yet when I think of Oxford, of his nobility and disinterestedness. . . . I must talk with him, I must make him see reason. . . .”

He kissed Harriet tenderly, and begged Hogg to walk with him to the fields beyond York. Hogg knew there must be a scene. He was prepared for it. He denied nothing.

“Yes, it’s true. I’ve been in love with Harriet since the first day I saw her in Edinburgh. Is it my fault? I can’t resist beauty in women, and Harriet is admirably beautiful. I repeat I fell in love with her at once.”

“It is not love but lust. A low animal instinct. Not the exalted passion which differentiates Man from the brute. Love? Think a little, Hogg. Love supposes self-forgetfulness, and the desire for the happiness of the beloved object. You could only bring about Harriet’s misery. Therefore, your feelings are not those of love, but of egotism. . . .”

“Call it what you like. . . . What do words signify? It is, anyhow, a terrible passion, which I should have fought against had I not felt it was invincible.”

“No passion is invincible. Our will can always be victorious. Had you thought of me . . . This revelation has aged and broken me more than twenty years of misery could have done. . . . my heart seems seared . . . and then there is Harriet, do you not suppose that all this has been very painful for her?”

Hogg was pale, cast-down. He looked ashamed and unhappy, and he felt so. For he too loved Shelley and he blamed his own conduct severely. “No woman in the world,” he thought, “is worth the sacrifice of such a friend.” Then aloud, “I’m awfully sorry, Bysshe, for what has happened. I’ll try to forget, and do you and Harriet try to forgive me. Let us begin life anew as it was before. Don’t be angry with me any longer. . . .”

“I’m not angry with you, I hate your crime, but not yourself. I hope that one day you will regard this horrible error with as much disgust as I do. When that day comes, you will no longer be responsible for it. The man who feels remorse is no longer the man who was guilty. It is certainly not I who would ever reproach you, for I value a human being not for what it has been, but for what it is.”

Shelley felt such satisfaction at having trodden down his anger and his jealousy, at having discovered for Hogg the way of salvation, that the offence was almost forgotten.

But women are much less indulgent. When Shelley on going home announced that he had forgiven the criminal: “What!” cried Eliza, “you mean to go on living with that fellow? Good heavens! What will become of Harriet’s poor nerves?”

Hogg, coming in from his chambers next day, found an empty house.