“And you believe that it cannot be done?”
“Undoubtedly. Faraday himself could not accomplish it.”
He had not completed the work, by the end of that day, and he pledged to return on the following Sunday. I spent the intervening days in intense study of the electrical phenomena; I visited the library of the Royal Society, where I was shown the latest treatises of Hans Oersted and Joseph Henry; I studied the details of the Wimshurst Machine and the Electric Rocking Machine. In the last few months Oersted had in fact published his experiments on what he called the “magneto-electrical field,” having created trials in which a magnetic needle had moved at right angles to a current of the electrical fluid. Could the power and direction of the current thus be measured and, if measured, changed? The mighty Newton had observed that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction-could not the power of magnetism therefore change the direction of the fluid?
On the following Sunday Hayman completed the work. He had added further refinements, too, in the capacity of the voltaic batteries and in the substitution of bitumen for some of the wax and resin. “I hope you can continue your work in peace,” he said. “There are many who fear the electrical fluid. They deem it to be monstrous. An attempt to distort God’s laws.”
“I have no intention of creating a monster, Mr. Hayman. Quite the opposite.”
After he had gone I sat down upon the long wooden table restored by the workmen. Here the creature had risen from death. It was here that he would be once more returned to silence and darkness. I heard the sound of the Thames as the tide came up, lapping against the wooden piles of the landing stage, and for the first time it afforded me the sensation of expectancy and hope.
17
THE PENNY-A-LINERS had not been idle. Two days after our return from Marlow there had been reports in the London newspapers of the “unexampled tragedy” and “terrible misadventure” that had befallen Bysshe. The details of Martha’s death were recounted in some detail, with particular attention to the “foul creature” and “fiendish villain” seen at Mary’s window; but this news was swiftly followed by further and more sensational reports of Harriet’s death at the Serpentine. The coincidence of these deaths in water led some public prints to question the competence of the constabulary in London and the adjacent counties; but others, such as the Mercury and the Advertiser, had somehow acquired the information that Bysshe had been sent down from Oxford on the charge of atheism. The writers of these journals suggested, though they did not state, that the two murders might be construed as a terrible warning to the unbeliever Shelley. “How a merciful God,” Bysshe said to me on his first visit to Jermyn Street after Marlow, “could arrange the death of two young women for my benefit-is quite beyond me. It would be as good a reason for atheism as any I have proposed myself.”
“Pay no attention. These papers are forgotten in an hour.”
“I have absolutely no regard for them, Victor. I read them as comedy. I recite them to Mary, with all the actions and attitudes of the zany.”
“How is Mary?”
“How is she? She is sweet. She is lovely. She is witty. She is wise beyond her sex. Anything else you wish me to add?”
“So life in Somers Town is pure Eden?”
“Mr. Godwin is sometimes an obstacle to bliss. But we walk together in the churchyard of St. Pancras. Do you know it? Where the graves and the roots of the oaks are entangled?”
“No.”
“There is the grave of Mary’s mother. We visit it.”
“You make love in graveyards, Bysshe?”
“Make love is not the just phrase, Victor. We are friends deep in accord and in mutual harmony. We are devoted to one another’s interests.”
“Well, this is love by another name.”
“Do you think so? By the way, there is something we must attend. It will afford endless delight.” He took from his pocket a sheet of paper which, when he had unfolded it, turned out to be a playbill announcing the imminent performance of The Atheist’s Curse. It was subtitled “Two Deaths Too Many.”
“Isn’t it delicious, Victor? Isn’t it rich?”
It was clearly designed to be a drama on Bysshe and the events of the previous few months. I must say that I was surprised by his good humour. But he had a remarkable ability to rise above circumstances, if I may put it like that, and to see himself in a wholly impersonal light. “We will not tell Mary,” he said. “It will disturb her. But we must go, Victor, for the novelty of it. Do you think I will be portrayed on the stage?”
“Most certainly.”
“Then we must go tonight.”
We entered the Alhambra Theatre that same night, as he wished. We took a small box on the side of the stage, on the level of the pit, where we were subject to the usual catcalls and ribaldry of the lower classes. Bysshe was not recognised, of course, but from his appearance and bearing he was obviously a gentleman. If the fellows of the pit had known that he was the subject of the melodrama, there would have been an uproar. The small orchestra had just struck up a plaintive tune, when there was a knock on the door of our box. “Who the devil is it?” Bysshe asked me. “Come!”
“May I?” A face appeared from behind the door, fleshy but not unpleasing. “May I join you?” A young man, dressed in sky-blue breeches and a jacket of gaberdine, entered cautiously. “There were no boxes left. And these gentlemen-” he gestured to the pit-“would not have left me alone.”
“By all means, sir,” I replied. “There is a seat here.”
“So the attendants told me.”
“I know that man,” Shelley whispered to me. He could say no more. The curtain was parted, to a crescendo from the orchestra, and the stage revealed. An actor, dressed in black, was sitting within what might have been a cave, a secluded chamber or a garden retreat. He was writing on a curled piece of manuscript with an absurdly large quill. “I act in defiance of all known laws,” he announced to the audience. “I say that there is no divinity in the heavens above. There is no God!” Some of the audience jeered at this sentiment, while others cheered and clapped their hands. “I think,” Bysshe whispered, “that this gentleman is supposed to be me.” The jeers and applause were succeeded by whistles when a young woman appeared on the stage. She walked in a very stately manner to the supposed atheist, and gently caressed him. “Ah, my beloved,” she said. “You are the light of the world to me.”
“She does not resemble Harriet in the slightest,” Bysshe said.
There was some stage business of no consequence, after which the young woman stepped forward and addressed the audience. “If only I could persuade him,” she said, “of the existence of a just and merciful God. Then with good conscience I could marry him! I would give my life for him to see the truth!”
“To see your tits!” one of the pit called out.
“She can marry him,” Bysshe said, “or give her life. She cannot do both.”
There then followed a scene in which the devil-or, at least, an actor dressed in red-began to leap around the young woman to her evident distress. The atheist on stage proved incapable of seeing this demon, on the evident presumption that he who knows no god knows no devil. It was all very ludicrous, and the gentleman sharing our box began to show signs of restlessness. “It is my belief,” he said, “that men create more damage on each other than the devil ever did.”
“I agree with you, sir,” Bysshe replied.
“This is sad stuff.”
“Execrable.”