DR. NOTT’S SERMON
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:
“O spirit of the living God,
In all Thy plenitude of grace,
Where’er the foot of man hath trod.
Descend on our apostate race.”
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:
“From all blindness of heart; from pride, vainglory and hypocrisy;
from envy, hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness,
“_Good Lord, deliver us._”
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.
“From lightning and tempest--”
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.
“That it may please Thee to forgive our enemies, persecutors, and
slanderers, and turn their hearts;
“_We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord._”
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.