One trouble alone disturbed her peace of mind upon that delightful
journey. Alan entered their names at all the hotels where they
stopped as "Mr. and Mrs. Alan Merrick of London." That deception,
as Herminia held it, cost her many qualms of conscience; but Alan,
with masculine common-sense, was firm upon the point that no other
description was practically possible; and Herminia yielded with a
sign to his greater worldly wisdom. She had yet to learn the
lesson which sooner or later comes home to all the small minority
who care a pin about righteousness, that in a world like our own,
it is impossible for the righteous always to act consistently up to
their most sacred convictions.
At Milan, they stopped long enough to snatch a glimpse of the
cathedral, and to take a hasty walk through the pictured glories of
the Brera. A vague suspicion began to cross Herminia's mind, as she
gazed at the girlish Madonna of the Sposalizio, that perhaps she
wasn't quite as well adapted to love Italy as Switzerland. Nature
she understood; was art yet a closed book to her? If so, she would
be sorry; for Alan, in whom the artistic sense was largely
developed, loved his Italy dearly; and it would be a real cause of
regret to her if she fell short in any way of Alan's expectations.
Moreover, at table d'hote that evening, a slight episode occurred
which roused to the full once more poor Herminia's tender
conscience. Talk had somehow turned on Shelley's Italian wanderings;
and a benevolent-looking clergyman opposite, with that vacantly
well-meaning smile, peculiar to a certain type of country rector,
was apologizing in what he took to be a broad and generous spirit of
divine, toleration for the great moral teacher's supposed lapses
from the normal rule of tight living. Much, the benevolent-looking
gentleman opined, with beaming spectacles, must be forgiven to men
of genius. Their temptations no doubt are far keener than with most
of us. An eager imagination--a vivid sense of beauty--quick
readiness to be moved by the sight of physical or moral
loveliness--these were palliations, the old clergyman held, of much
that seemed wrong and contradictory to our eyes in the lives of so
many great men and women.
At sound of such immoral and unworthy teaching, Herminia's ardent
soul rose up in revolt within her. "Oh, no," she cried eagerly,
leaning across the table as she spoke. "I can't allow that plea.
It's degrading to Shelley, and to all true appreciation of the
duties of genius. Not less but more than most of us is the genius
bound to act up with all his might to the highest moral law, to be
the prophet and interpreter of the highest moral excellence. To
whom much is given, of him much shall be required. Just because
the man or woman of genius stands raised on a pedestal so far above
the mass have we the right to expect that he or she should point us
the way, should go before us as pioneer, should be more careful of
the truth, more disdainful of the wrong, down to the smallest
particular, than the ordinary person. There are poor souls born
into this world so petty and narrow and wanting in originality that
one can only expect them to tread the beaten track, be it ever so
cruel and wicked and mistaken. But from a Shelley or a George
Eliot, we expect greater things, and we have a right to expect
them. That's why I can never quite forgive George Eliot--who knew
the truth, and found freedom for herself, and practised it in her
life--for upholding in her books the conventional lies, the
conventional prejudices; and that's why I can never admire Shelley
enough, who, in an age of slavery, refused to abjure or to deny his
freedom, but acted unto death to the full height of his principles."