“I’d have willingly supported any amount of illegitimate children,” he told Captain Pilfold. “But that he should have _married_ her . . . never speak to me of him again!”
Miss Hitchener, afraid for her reputation, had refused to make the journey with Shelley. In London he learned that Eliza had not waited for him. He reached York, tired and out of spirits, hoping to find consolation in the society of his wife and his friend. What he found was an atmosphere of embarrassment and constraint.
Eliza, shut up in her room, brushed her hair all day long. Harriet and Hogg, instead of their former gay nonsense round the tea-tray, treated each other with studied coldness. When Hogg spoke to her, she replied very shortly. There was something mysterious in the air.
The moment Harriet and Shelley were alone, “Dear,” he began, “I don’t like this haughty attitude you take with Hogg. He is my best friend. He has looked after you in my absence. That you now have your sister with you is no reason for giving the cold shoulder to Hogg, whom I look on as a brother.”
Harriet sighed. “He’s a nice sort of friend!” said she, in a tone heavy with insinuations.
Shelley, astonished, urged her to explain.
She told the story. “He has made love to me . . . twice. The first time he told me he was passionately in love with me. . . . I pretended it was a joke. . . . I made him be quiet. I imagined it was all over, and I even had no intention of speaking to you about it. But yesterday he began again. He declared he couldn’t live without me, and that he will kill himself if I don’t consent.”
Shelley felt his blood freeze. His heart seemed to stand still.
“Hogg? Hogg did this? But did you not point out to him . . .?”
“Oh, I said everything I could say . . . that he was a false friend, that he was betraying your confidence. . . . ‘What does all that matter when one is in love?’ he replied. ‘It’s all right for Percy, who is a cold and pure spirit, to talk of virtue . . . but I’m in love with you, and the rest doesn’t count. . . . Besides, what harm should we do Shelley? He need never know. Why not give me your love, and give him your affection? Does he think so much about you?’”
“Yes, and lots of other things as well. He said you mix logic with things where it has no business, that you are a flame for ideas, and ice for the sentiments which alone count in life. . . . I answered him as well as I was able. . . .”