Jane sang, and her voice carried him momentarily away from his tragic memories, and the chilly rectitude of his home. Just as formerly, when Harriet wounded him, and he read in Mary’s eyes all the consolation they promised him, so now he contemplated in Jane’s an image of the Antigone whom he had surely known and loved in a previous existence.
But he no longer considered it necessary to destroy in order to rebuild, to abandon Mary in order to fly with Jane. She was married to a good fellow, whose friend he wished loyally to remain, and it was necessary also to consider the feelings of Mary, poor unhappy woman. He was in love with Jane, but it was an immaterial love, without hope, and almost without desire.
She lent herself cleverly to the romantic business, would pass her hand through his hair, smooth his forehead, try to cure his sadness by her personal magnetism. She and her husband were as a marvellous fountain of friendship, at which a poet, weary of suffering, could cool his fever. Jane and Edward were Ferdinand and Miranda, the splendid, princely couple, and Shelley was their faithful Ariel. . . . Round the happy lovers flitted a captive and guardian Spirit serving their will and doing his spiriting gently.
The Williamses had often spoken to Shelley of one of their friends, Trelawny, an extraordinary man, corsair and pirate, who at twenty-eight had already led a life of adventure all the world over, on land as well as on sea. He now desired ardently to be admitted to the Pisa circle, and he overwhelmed the Williamses with letters: “If I come, shall I be able to know Shelley? Above all, shall I be able to know Byron? Is it possible to approach him?”
Williams, in daily intercourse with the two Poets, no longer held them in any awe, so he replied with a touch of impatience, “Of course you will see them. Shelley is the simplest of men. . . . As to Byron, that will depend entirely on yourself.”
Trelawny reached Pisa late one evening and went at once to the Tre Palazzi on the Lung’ Arno where the Williamses and the Shelleys lived on different stories under the same roof. He and the Williamses were in animated conversation when he perceived in the passage near the open door a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on his. Jane going to the doorway laughingly said, “Come in, Shelley, it’s only our friend Tre just arrived.”
Shelley glided in, blushing like a girl, and holding out his two hands gave the sailor’s a warm pressure. Trelawny looked at him with surprise. It was hard to believe that this flushed and artless face could be that of the genius and rebel, reviled as a monster in England, and whom the Lord Chancellor had deprived of his rights as a father. Shelley, on his side, admired Trelawny’s bold, wild face, raven-black moustache, handsome half-Arab type. Both of them were so astounded they could find nothing to say. To relieve their embarrassment Jane asked Shelley what book he had in his hand.
His face brightened and he answered briskly: “Calderon’s Magico Prodigioso. I am translating some passages in it.”
“Oh, read it to us!”
Immediately Shelley, shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents that could not interest him, began to translate from the open book, in so masterly a manner with such perfection of form that Trelawny no longer doubted his identity.