A Different Kind of Woman (Mansfield Trilogy Book 3)

by Lona Manning

  “By then we had a boy and a girl. Her family, actuated by narrow-mindedness and spite, was determined to deny me my own children. They used my published writings—my avowal of atheism and my belief in Free Love—in their petition. Mr. Longdill was my attorney.”

  “I had thought that the father always received the children in the event of a separation,” replied Mary, “and undoubtedly in such a circumstance as you describe. That was why I was consulting Mr. Longdill—I went to ask him, was there any precedent where a mother retained control of her children. He said he could give me no encouragement on that head. But what of your case? Did you prevail? If your wife had a lover, how could she have retained control of your children?”

  Shelley looked away. “It was not Harriet who brought the suit for custody. By then, Harriet had destroyed herself. She was always of a melancholic temperament. Her lover abandoned her, and in her despair she drowned herself.”

  “Ah! It is very tragic.”

  Shelley nodded. “Thank you, but the blow, while shocking at first, was lessened by the reflection that I had nothing to reproach myself with.” He slid down from the fence and lay down in a dry patch of long grass, folding his arms behind his head. “I can hardly regret the chivalric impulse which led me to propose marriage to Harriet,” he said with a sigh, “but I was determined to conduct my life by the principles of truth and integrity, so that when I came to realize she did not fill my heart with an all-consuming passion, it was best that we part. The consequences have been, to me, severe.”

  Mary was on the point of remarking that the consequences were rather more severe for the late Mrs. Shelley, when her companion continued: “I look back with wonder at my youthful self—at the hopes I cherished for the reformation of England, for the emancipation of the Irish, for the rights and dignity of the common man—all of these things I was to accomplish with the eloquence of my pen and the conviction of my beliefs! But instead, I have spent all my time scrambling for sustenance, my heart lacerated and torn with vain regrets. I sent my dreams into the world, like paper boats bobbing on the stream, and there they all foundered and sank!”

  “No, no, do not say so. You are still young. You have not even begun your career. As long as you have breath and spirit within you, you can write—”

  “I write nothing, and probably shall write no more. My motive was never the desire for mere fame; and if I were to continue to write, I fear that I should desire it. Fame is nothing to me. The reviews and journals attack me, but I value neither the fame they can give me nor the fame they take away.”

  Mary wondered if he only deceived himself, or if he fancied he was deceiving her, with his protestations.

  “Speaking for myself, I rather desire to leave a name behind me,” she said, slipping gracefully from her seat. “Do not you? Do not we all?”

  Shelley drew her arm within his and they resumed their walk. “I once sought something nobler and better,” he sighed. “I am—I intended to be—a prophet and a reformer. The reform of the world, my dear Mrs. Crawford, begins with the reform of that most elemental of all social institutions—marriage. No-one with an ounce of humanity would deny that it is women who are most disadvantaged by our social institutions. The chattel and plaything of men, dependent on others for their very bread, poorly educated—how sublime life would be if men and women could meet on a basis of equality!”

  In the strength of his convictions and the fire of his eloquence, Shelley soared above the ridiculous conventions of the English, and for that day at least, Mary soared with him. The hypocrisies and restrictions of the past—they were not worth a regret—she cast off the power she had allowed them—she defied their dominion over her happiness.

  Their talk, their imaginings were so elevated that they scarcely seemed to trod the ground. Returning to the Casa Ciampi was like awakening from an enchanted dream. Mary discovered her desire to defy convention was a little shaken when she encountered the piercing eye of her landlady. She had wept in Shelley’s arms, he had bared his soul in return, and there hovered around them the intimacy of lovers.

  Inviting Shelley up to her apartments was an act of rebellion. She had brought her Celtic harp with her to Italy, and he was very anxious to hear her play and she did not object to obliging him. While she played some melancholy Irish airs, he lay stretched out on the floor, his arms folded behind his head and his eyes closed, which did not please her, as she rather liked to be looked at—her graceful attitude, her fair arm extended, her fingers moving delicately across the strings. She knew she looked exceedingly well when playing a harp.

  When she finished, Shelley was absolutely still, so unmoving that she wondered if he had fallen asleep. Then his eyes fluttered open, and he let out a long sigh. “I think my soul left my body for a time, and flew amongst the clouds.”

  He appeared to be trembling slightly when he stood up, and was struggling for speech.

  “My dear Madam, will you do me the very great honour of casting your eye over this—”

  And he drew out from inside his shirt a small volume, and pressed it into her hand.

  “It is a poem I wrote about looking for… looking for my other self, the mate of my soul.” He kissed her hand and departed.

  Mary sat up late to read the poem, entitled Alastor. Poetry, she knew, should not be read swiftly, but her eyes nevertheless flew across the page as she looked anxiously for confirmation that Shelley’s talents might entitle him to a greater renown than he had so far attained. She was encouraged; she found no ideas to disgust or outrage public opinion and the writing showed great promise.

  It was a highly sentimental and allegorical tale of a young poet who wandered the world, looking for truth and love. Wearied by his travels, the poet stretched out beside a stream to sleep, and he dreamt of a beautiful dark-haired maiden, who appeared beside him: Her voice was like the voice of his own soul.

  And she spoke to him of knowledge and truth and virtue, and lofty hopes of divine liberty, and as she waved her hands, he heard music sweeping from some strange harp.

  But suddenly his dream-lover vanished, and the poet was in despair. Mary read on impatiently as the poet wandered through ruined landscapes, set sail in a little boat, and finally found his way to a forested mountainside with a cascading stream, where he lay down and died.

  ah! thou hast fled!

  The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,

  The child of grace and genius.

  The meaning of the poem was obvious. Shelley feared he would die in obscurity; he panted for fame, he yearned for distinction. And he prophesied that salvation and enlightenment would come to him through his love for a beautiful dark-haired lady.

  Her mind began to teem with ambitious thoughts. Truth and virtue, Mary thought, were in short supply everywhere but at least she could offer knowledge. And she had a harp.

  * * * * * * *

  The entertainments and conversation of the following day were much like the last, and served to increase Mary’s conviction that Shelley was falling rapidly and deeply in love with her. Shelley often exclaimed over the way their paths had crossed more than once, in London, France, Switzerland and Italy, and how destiny brought them together. Mary remained sceptical on that point.

  When they parted that evening, Shelley reluctantly told her he was compelled to return briefly to Livorno on a matter of business.

  “Dear lady, tell me, how long will you stay here in Bagni di Lucca? Pray assure me you will be here upon my return. You are not going back to that brute, your husband?”

  “I took my lodging for the summer,” Mary answered. “I must return to England soon, for fear my children will forget I ever existed. I must manage Edmund somehow. He has all the power—the law is on his side—I must make him my friend again.”

  Shelley kissed the tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

  “Sssh, sssh, my dear one. I will protect you from his cruelty, I swear it.”

  Shelley promised to return within the week.
He left her a fragment of a poem, some lines which he said were inspired by her sufferings:

  Is not to-day enough? Why do I peer

  Into the darkness of the day to come?

  Is not to-morrow even as yesterday?

  And will the day that follows change thy doom?

  Few flowers grow upon thy wintry way;

  And who waits for thee in that cheerless home

  Whence thou hast fled, whither thou must return

  Charged with the load that makes thee faint and mourn?

  Mary was deeply moved that her sufferings had been portrayed as they ought, in such exquisite verse. Shelley’s was truly an undiscovered new voice in poetry. And had she awakened his voice from its exile?

  Her encounter with Shelley had completely overthrown her plans and views and even her sentiments. Years ago at Mansfield Park, she had been apt to roll her eyes at Fanny Price’s rapturous witterings about nature, and trees, and shrubbery. Now she found herself noticing things, like the way the slanting shadows fell across the piazza outside her hotel, and wishing she could share them with Shelley. He always seemed, in her imagination, to be at her side.

  In his absence, she passed the time with reading, riding, and going to the baths. She sometimes dined at an al fresco café beside the promenade. Gentlemen sent her significant looks and inviting smiles, but she ignored them, and spoke to no-one but the waiter. She sat with her book as the ladies all about her gossiped about the upcoming marriage of a German princess to the Duke of Clarence. Princess Adelaide was both envied and pitied, and speculation about her wedding dress and her opinion of her bridegroom, formed the chief part of their conversation. How trivial these women, how common, compared to her—the Muse of a poet!

  * * * * * * *

  A letter from Edmund arrived during this interval, which almost did not come to her hand, but fortunately, she overheard Madame Ciampi telling the postman that there was no “Signora Bertram” lodging at the villa, and she hurried forward and declared herself to be Mrs. Bertram. Her admission, of course, brought even more mutterings and side-glances from her landlady, but Mary ignored her and hastened up the stairs to her apartment. She was surprised at her own agitation, annoyed with herself, and further irritated that her loss of composure was observed by her little Italian maid.

  “May I go out, madam, so you may read your letter?”

  Mary dismissed her curtly, and took a seat by the window. She held the letter in her hands, and looked at the familiar handwriting for a moment, before opening it.

  She hoped and expected to find an apology, an acknowledgement that the errors and unhappiness of their marriage had proceeded from him; an avowal of his misery and remorse. She did not intend to return to Edmund, but it would have given her no small degree of satisfaction to know he had been properly humbled by their separation.

  “Dear Mary,” the letter began.

  “Ah, that I really did think myself dear to him at one time!” Mary murmured to herself.

  “As I did not receive a response to my last, I will assume my letter went astray in the post. In brief, I wrote that our servants gave me a good account of you, and of Bagni di Lucca, when they returned from conveying you to Tuscany. I trust you continue in good health and are well situated.

  We made a safe passage to Dover, and are reunited with my parents in Norfolk. I found my parents in tolerable health but feeling the decay which accompanies their advancing years, which confirms me in my determination to remain in England.

  If my wishes still have any influence with you, let me repeat my request that you will return to England to be nearer your children.

  Nearer, but not with, thought Mary

  Cyrus desires me to tell you he has his first loose tooth.

  With my continued wishes for your health and happiness, I remain,

  Your husband,

  Edmund

  “How like Edmund!” Mary exclaimed aloud. She could imagine the ironic smile with which he wrote “I remain your husband.”

  Return to England! Yes, the cause of their final, most bitter argument. Edmund told her he intended to resume his clerical duties at Mansfield.

  “Once again, Edmund, you have decided what we will do and where we will go, without asking me for my opinion! ‘We’re off to Mansfield,’ you announce! As always, my wishes come last. Do you care nothing for me—nothing for my happiness?”

  “Happiness is much to be desired, Mary, but there is something more important. I left Thornton Lacey in the hands of my friend—shall I likewise be absent from my pulpit in Mansfield? You know my convictions on that head, and knew them when we married. Will you at least believe, Mary, how heartily sorry I am for your unhappiness, and my own? Will you acknowledge that I sincerely wish it were otherwise?”

  “Oh—as always, you are the generous, reasonable one, and I am the madwoman. You are not going to force me to go back against my will! I am not a slave!”

  A pause. Then— “No. I have no intention of obliging you to live with us, Mary. Perhaps we were better to live apart. But I do want to see you safely established somewhere.”

  “What!”

  “The children will stay with me, Mary. And I am going to England.”

  She had truly lost her composure then, and began to upbraid him for his cruelty. And he, as usual, had walked away, and closed the door.

  Mary returned from her reverie, and looked down again at the note, in his familiar handwriting. Familiar, and yet—now she and Edmund were strangers to one another and would always be.

  Well, the children were too young to understand, but one day... One day they would be grown, and they would find her and she would explain everything. And they would forgive her and pity her wrongs.

  She decided Edmund’s letter did not require an answer—not yet. She had no news for him.

  * * * * * * *

  Ten days later Mary found a note waiting for her when she returned from the hot baths:

  My dearest nymph:

  —For I have not yet uncovered your true name, but soon some zephyr wind or fairy sprite will whisper it in my ear—

  I return on Thursday. Please come to me at our grove in the forest.

  Yours,

  PBS

  Mary set off as she had before, riding her mare up the hill to where the path led to the forest. At the outskirts of the upper village, she passed the entrance to a small piazza, where several villas stood, cheerful in fresh yellow paint. At the same moment, a young Englishwoman came out of the gateway, and started down the hill in the opposite direction, with a very young boy tugging at her arm.

  Mary reined in her mare to allow them to pass.

  The young woman’s gown was out of fashion but her carriage was proud and erect. She wore the harassed, absent-minded expression which mothers of young children often wear. Her hair was notably beautiful, fine and abundant; it was a rare shade of golden-red. No doubt she was vain of that hair and Titian or Botticelli would have clamoured to paint her and make much of her pale skin, her broad, high forehead and her large, intelligent, sad eyes.

  The sight of the boy, straining impatiently at his mother’s arm, gave Mary a momentary stab to the heart. She looked earnestly at his sweet face, his large blue eyes, and thought of her own two sons, her Thomas and her little Cyrus, and wondered how often they thought of her.

  The child, however, had eyes only for the horse, and not for the lady riding it, crying “Mama! Ride a horsie! Ride a horsie!”

  The lady told him, “perhaps another day, Will-mouse. Mama is going to the baths later. You can picnic in the garden with Claire.”

  Mary was on the point of making some pleasant remark to the lady on what a fine boy she had, but the younger Englishwoman walked on, without meeting Mary’s eye or acknowledging her in any way.

  * * * * * * *

  Shelley’s reception of her at their trysting-place was joyful and ardent— “My dear one! I am writing again!” he exclaimed, raining down kisses on her face and ha
nds. “I could hardly wait to tell you! Since I met you, I am able to write again! You have freed me from my ice prison! Perhaps you are the sun! No, no, not with those bewitching dark eyes and that dark hair.”

  He pulled off her bonnet and started to pull the pins from her hair, while she laughingly protested.

  “My dear nymph, do not suppose this faun permits his visitors to bind and confine their hair in that fashion—there, now. How beautiful you look with your hair flowing about your face.” Shelley broke off, and taking her face in both of his hands, softly exclaimed. “What shall I call you? I cannot call you ‘Mrs. Crawford.’ I will not call you ‘Mary.’ You are my deliverer. You make me feel reborn. You are such a woman as I had dreamt of, but could not believe really existed.”

  His open adoration of her awakened intoxicating sensations within Mary, especially after the cool indifference of the message from her husband. Shelley’s admiration lent animation to her countenance and elevated her spirits. Her beauty, her vivacity, in turn aroused undisguised ardour on his part. The moment, the place, the unreserve of their conduct toward one another, tended to its inevitable conclusion. For, it might be possible for a man and a beautiful lady to go for a walk alone in the forest, and it might be possible that the quilt the man carries is for the lady’s comfort, should she wish to sit and rest. But not infrequently, when a man and a beautiful lady and a quilt find themselves alone in a grove in the forest, far from any footpath, warmed by the sun and surrounded by the proofs of nature’s desire to grow and thrive and live, what follows is no surprise.

  And so it was in this case. Mary had not consciously intended it, and yet it was inevitable, as inevitable as the way the nearby stream had worn a path through the boulders, the stream to which Shelley led her, as naked as a nymph, after they had joined together.

  The water was icy cold, and she returned shivering to their sun-warmed quilt, and he caressed her tenderly, and made love to her again.