CHAPTER XVIII

SECOND INCARNATION OF THE GODDESS

There were days when Shelley, recalling the sweet and childlike face of his eighteen-year-old wife, thought it might still be possible to forget and make up. In a pathetic poem he tried to tell her how miserable it was for one who had lived in the warm sunshine of her eyes to die beneath her scorn. Did the lines move her? He never knew. She shut herself up more and more in feelings of pride and revenge. He had left her on several occasions. No doubt it was as a reprisal that the moment he came back to London she set off with Ianthe for Bath.

Shelley was obliged to remain in town. He had come of age, yet his affairs were no further advanced thereby. His solicitor gave him to understand there might be a family law-suit to deprive him of his rights. Although crippled with debts himself, he persisted in trying to free others from theirs. The Juvenile Library founded by Godwin had been a failure, and the sight of this old fighter for justice, impoverished and saddened by money troubles, was inexpressibly painful to his young disciple and friend.

But three thousand pounds were needed to save Godwin, a big sum. Yet from the moment he knew of Shelley’s wish to save him, he again exhibited great friendliness, and as Shelley was now a “bachelor” in London, his “beauteous half” being in the country for an indefinite period, he was invited to dine in Skinner Street every night.

He accepted all the more readily that he wished to see the girls again, and Godwin had informed him he would find an extra one, Mary, who had at length come home from Scotland. He gave an attractive portrait of her; seventeen years old, quick and lively, a great wish to learn, and immense perseverance. Already Fanny and Jane had described her to Shelley as being as intelligent as she was beautiful. For her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley had the warmest admiration. He was greatly moved at the thought he was about to meet her unknown daughter.

He needed for his happiness to embody in the form of a beautiful woman the mysterious and benevolent Forces which he imagined as scattered throughout the Universe. Love was, for him, an impassioned admiration, an integral act of faith, an exquisite and perfect mixture of the sensuous and the intellectual.

Had Mary not appeared at that juncture, or had she proved a disappointment, the sentiment which hovered and hesitated in his wounded heart, would have dedicated itself to Fanny or to Jane, but Mary came, and his fate was settled.

Her face was very pale and pure, her golden hair arranged in smooth bands on either side of a shapely head, she had a great slab of a forehead, and earnest hazel eyes. An air of sensibility and mournful courage instantly inspired in Shelley the same enthusiasm that he found in reading Homer or Plutarch. He saw something heroic in this delicate young girl, and the mixture of the heroic and the feminine was ever that which most appealed to him.

“What seriousness and what feeling!” thought he, listening with ecstasy to her young fresh voice. A maiden standing where brook and river meet, having the grace of the woman and the intellectual eagerness of the youth, had always seemed to him one of the most exquisite works of art. He longed to put a brotherly arm round those slender shoulders, and to make those questioning eyes sparkle, as he bore her away on some astonishing gallop through the realms of aërial metaphysics.

Harriet Westbrook had only imperfectly realized his ideal. For a moment he had hoped to find in her the delightful blend of beauty and intelligence that he would so greatly have loved, but poor Harriet had not withstood the difficult test of time. She was wanting in any real brain-power; even when she had the air of being interested in ideas, her indifference was proved by the blankness of her gaze. Worst of all, she was coquettish, frivolous, versed in the tricks and wiles of woman, and this alone was sufficient to chill him to the marrow.

But Mary, of the nut-brown eyes, was slim and true as a Toledo blade. Brought up by the author of _Political Justice_, her mind appeared free from all feminine superstition; and the clear if rather piercing tones of her voice emphasized delightfully its cultivated precision. Dining every evening in the little house in Skinner Street, Shelley passed the time in looking at Mary, while he seemed to listen to Godwin, who explained the regrettable state of his own affairs, and discussed the Budget, or the laws of the Press.

Mary, on her side, was quite ready to fall in love with Shelley. The romance had been prepared by the sisters, who for a month previously had talked of nothing in their letters but the handsome poet. Yet no description of Shelley ever came up to the reality.

Mary saw, at once, how much she interested him. Although he had made no complaint of life—he never did—she realized he was unhappy, and so one evening when they found themselves alone in the room where her mother’s portrait hung she spoke to him of her own troubles. She adored her father, but detested Mrs. Godwin on whose account the home in Skinner Street was become odious to her. The only place in the world where she felt herself at peace was by her mother’s tomb in the churchyard of old St. Pancras. She went there book in hand every fine day to read and meditate. Shelley, thrilled, asked if he might go with her.

* * *

Thus, after an interval of five years, he found himself sitting again at a young girl’s side in a graveyard, but this time his companion was of a serious and impassioned soul. For the second time the Word was made Woman. But, alas, Shelley was no longer free. He felt himself drawn to Mary by an irresistible force. He longed to take her hand, to press his lips to her delicately curved ones, he knew that she desired him, as he did her, and they dared not let their eyes meet. What could he offer her? He was a married man. It is true that marriage is only a convention. When one loves no longer, one is free. He had never promised Harriet more than this; besides, believing her to be the mistress of Major Ryan, he felt no scruples on her account. But his marriage was legally indissoluble. He had nothing to offer Mary but that reprobate existence which he had not dared to impose on his first love, Harriet Grove.

Nevertheless, a love shared, even though hopeless, is better than uncertainty and moral isolation. He determined to tell Mary the whole truth about his wife. Married love, even as it dies, long holds out behind a mask of silence against the world’s assaults, but there comes a moment when a man finds a bitter joy in laying bare his wounds.

Shelley drew a picture of Harriet as he now saw her, and by an unconscious change of values lent, to his very human deception, motives of a spiritual order. He had needed a companion who could appreciate poetry and understand philosophy. Harriet was incapable of either. He took a painful pleasure, also very human, in depreciating the grapes which he had lost.

He gave Mary a copy of _Queen Mab_. Under the printed dedication of that poem to Harriet, he wrote the words, “Count Slobendorf was about to marry a woman who, attracted solely by his fortune, proved her selfishness by deserting him in prison.” Back in her own room, Mary added, “This book is sacred to me, and as no other creature shall ever look into it, I may write in it what I please—yet what shall I write—that I love the author beyond all powers of expression and that I am parted from him, dearest and only love—by that love we have promised to each other although I may not be yours, I can never be another’s. But I am thine, exclusively thine.

‘By the kiss of love, the glance none saw beside, The smile none else might understand, The whispered thought of hearts allied, The pressure of the thrilling hand.’

“I have pledged myself to thee and sacred is the gift.”

Meanwhile, these glances and smiles that none might see nor understand, had been seen and perfectly understood by Godwin. The intrigue of his daughter with a married man troubled him. He pointed out the danger to her, and wrote to Shelley in the same strain. He advised him to make things up with his wife: and he begged him to discontinue, for the present, his visits to Skinner Street.

The prohibition, kindly as it was, simply hastened on events, which, without it, might have tarried. Shelley, passionately in love with Mary and deprived of her society, determined to take a decisive step. He felt no remorse on Harriet’s account, for he persisted in thinking her guilty, in spite of the assertions of Peacock and Hogg, both impartial witnesses. “There’s just one thing only she cares about,” he thought, “and that is money. I’ll provide for her future, and then she’ll be glad to be free.” Accordingly he wrote to her begging her to come to London. She came; she was four months gone with child, and very unwell. When, calmly and kindly, Percy told her he was going to live without her and elope with some one else, but that he would always remain her best friend, the shock brought on an alarming illness.

Shelley nursed her with devotion, which made her more unhappy still, and the moment she was better he resumed his inflexible arguments. “The union of the sexes is sacred only so long as it contributes to the happiness of husband and wife, and it is dissolved automatically from the moment that its evils exceed its benefits. Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, on the contrary it is often vicious, leading one to condone the gravest faults in the object of one’s choice.”

When he wove round her these diaphanous but insuperable webs, Harriet knew she was lost, just as formerly when she had tried to defend her religious beliefs against him she had seen herself overwhelmed on every side. She knew that some answer _must_ exist; that so much anguish and sorrow and horror should find some expression, and might have found it had her mind been clearer; as it was she never knew what she ought to say. She dreamed she was struggling to free herself from invisible bonds. Her one relief was in terrible outbursts of rage against Mary. It was she who was the cause of all, she who had separated Percy from his wife, taking advantage of his romantic tendencies to entice him to meet her at a grave-side, which was just the kind of thing that would appeal to him. She had made a shameful use of her mother’s memory.

Mary, on her side, had not the slightest pity for Harriet. She had formed an odious conception of her. A woman who, having had the felicity of marrying Shelley, had yet been incapable of making him happy could only be selfish, futile, second-rate. She knew that he would treat Harriet with generosity, that he was going to give an order to his banker to pay over to her the greater part of his allowance, and this knowledge quieted her conscience. “She’ll have the money, and that’s all she cares about,” Mary said with disdain.

Shelley was in a condition of extreme nervous agitation. All sorts of contrary sentiments warred in his soul. When he saw Harriet fall into heartbreaking fits of despair, he could not forget the delicious moments passed with her long ago, but he had only to be again in Mary’s presence to consecrate himself anew to her tranquil charm.

To calm his mind he began to take laudanum as he had formerly done at Berwick, but now in stronger doses. He showed the bottle to Peacock, and said: “I never part from this.” He added, “I am always repeating to myself your lines from Sophocles:

‘Man’s happiest lot is not to be; And when we tread life’s thorny steep, Most blest are they who earliest free Descend to death’s eternal sleep.’”