A Call To Arms Read Online Free

engendered just the degree of sympathy necessary for Hervey to conclude that his declining would be an unkindness. ‘I am much obliged. I can answer for my sister since we have no fixed engagements. We shall come at nine.’
    ‘Good! So let us take a little more of this wine then – for our stomachs’ sake, as St Paul would have us believe.’
    Hervey frowned, even though he surmised the show of scepticism was for his benefit. But he took another glass, and there they stayed a full hour speaking of Rome and her glories.
    Later, in his lodgings in Via del Babuino, il ghetto inglese , Hervey reflected on the morning’s turn of events. He had befriended – was it not too strong a word? – an atheist, revolutionary and libertine. Elizabeth had lost no time in reminding him of the history of Mr Shelley and his elopements (half-remembered from Henrietta’s teasing accounts), and the rest he had pieced together for himself, recalling the usual tattlers during the years that his attention hadbeen distracted by those who would destroy the kingdom by the sword rather than by the pen. Shelley had by all accounts brought to bed two if not three or even four women – girls, indeed – so that there was issue out of wedlock, unacknowledged perhaps. And this the poet would defend as a right way of living – would propagate it, even! Who knew, therefore, what were Shelley’s arrangements at present, and what dissipation he – Hervey – and Elizabeth might soon be a prey to? He could only ponder on what a journey he had made these past months, from honourable rank in His Majesty’s light dragoons (some would say a primmish captain) to supper companion of a dangerous and amoral poetaster. Was he prepared to pay any price to put Elizabeth and himself an evening’s distance from painful memories? He shrugged. He wished he had at least read some of Shelley’s poetry. It would surely tell him more of the man than mere gossip could. But his own tastes in that direction had advanced only slowly, so that hitherto he had remained devoted above all to the Milton of his schoolroom. Through Henrietta he had read Coleridge, and with her Keats, but Shelley had not so far engaged him.
    Elizabeth had not objected to suppering with the Shelleys, however. Elizabeth’s pleasure was her journal, and it had often been her lament that its pages were full of things that no one could have the least interest in but herself. Not that she harboured literary ambitions; rather was she occasionally in despair of being, at no longer five and twenty, without anything more to record than domestic trifles. If only she could write of her time at the workhouse, or in the hovels of Warminster Common, her memoir might stand as something of real consequence. But good works were one thing. To itemize the meanness and dissipation of rural life in a lady’s journal was quite another. Italy had seen her able to write infinitely more interesting pages already, but of the countryside and art; of people, her entries were as yet restricted. Save in the case of her brother, whose progress she noted with anxious attention – and of Henrietta, whom she missed so much more than any but her journal knew, sometimes through tear marks rather than ink.
    At nine o’clock they took a carriage to Shelley’s lodgings, for although it was not far, Elizabeth had been at pains to dress and Hervey had no wish to take the edge off her success by chancingto their feet. When they arrived at number 300 Via del Corso they found their host agitated. ‘I am very glad to meet you, Miss Hervey,’ Shelley replied, after Hervey’s introduction. ‘But my wife is unwell, I’m afraid, and makes her regrets. We shall go instead to Signora Dionigi’s. She holds a conversazione this evening. It will be very diverting.’
    Now Hervey was troubled. ‘But we do not know Signora Dionigi.’
    ‘That will not matter in the least. The signora likes nothing more than to meet new people.’
    Elizabeth,