A Call to Arms

’ The Italian was without the accent of the country.

The cameriere shrugged his shoulders. ‘Un’ufficiale inglese, dicono. Ma con me parla solo francese.’

The younger man nodded. ‘Does he have any companions, Giuseppe? Ha amici? ’

The cameriere said something by reply, but fair though his Italian was, his questioner did not catch the sense.

‘He says that a young woman joined him yesterday,’ explained the other. ‘Handsome but not dressed with fashion.’

‘English too, then, certainly,’ said the younger man, raising his eyebrows.

‘But had she been German, she would likely as not have been neither fashionable nor handsome,’ replied the older one, smiling.

‘Oh, Rome is a harsh court in such matters! But in any event, an English officer reading Goethe has a sensibility I can respect.’

‘Dicono che ha combattuto nella battaglia di Waterloo,’ added the cameriere, helpfully.

The boyish-looking man’s ears pricked. ‘Now that is worth my regrets,’ he declared, glancing again at the seated reader. ‘He surely has a tale to tell. But I would not disturb his engagement with Goethe for all that. We shall see him at an assembly soon, no doubt. I am surprised, indeed, that we have not done so already.’

‘Perhaps both he and his lady companion are of an unsocial disposition.’

‘Perhaps.’ The younger man placed a few scudi on the counter. ‘Grazie tante, Giuseppe,’ he said, with an air of a man who had learned something of advantage.

‘Grazie a lei, Signor Shelley,’ replied the cameriere, as the two men turned to leave.

Matthew Hervey, for more than a year plain ‘mister’, and for more than a week an habitue of the Caffe Greco, still owned to mixed feelings at being in the city of the popes. One at least of his father’s profession — the rector of the neighbouring parish — had called the city ‘the whore of Babylon’ when Hervey and his sister had announced their intention to visit. And although there was nothing like so vehement a despising of Rome in his father’s parish, Hervey possessed the Englishman’s instincts. He did not care for the picture of black spectres pursuing temporal ambitions, especially usurping ones. His history he knew very well indeed. And yet there was no doubting that he liked the easy ways of this city. He had seen no especial excess of luxury or vice. Even in the pages of Goethe he saw little that might seriously offend an unprejudiced conscience. What he did see in Rome was gaiety in large measure, and he was most glad of it. And his sister, too, always a sure weathercock of propriety, seemed as glad as he. That he was still, himself, restrained from joining with that gaiety did not diminish his appreciation of it.

One of the things that contrived to diminish any tendency to gaiety on his part this morning was the knowledge that he must go to the post office. The Rome post office, which stood half-way along the Via del Corso from where he now sat, was to his mind a true representation of bedlam. His two previous visits, to send letters to England and to collect others restantes, had been tedious in the extreme, and he now braced himself for another unedifying morning spent in what passed for a queue in this city. He paid for his coffee, tipped the cameriere too generously (why should someone not be pleased with his day?) and said arrivederla to the Greco’s over-starched proprietor.

The sky was without a cloud, and the sun was already hot. He found it uncomfortable to walk any faster than a stroll, and he resolved to press his tailor to finish the two linen coats he had ordered a few days before. If he and Elizabeth were to stay here through July, he would need at least two more, and it was as well to know the cutter’s capabilities as soon as possible. And Elizabeth, too, would need new clothes. He wondered if he would be able to persuade her of it. As he made his way along the Corso, he saw one exquisite female after another going in and out of the palazzi. He knew he simply had to persuade her.

When he reached the post office he was at first afraid that it might be closed (innumerable saints’ days could catch out even the romani), for there was no press at its doors, only a mandolinplayer with whom an official was noisily remonstrating. Hervey edged past them carefully (it was all too easy to be hailed as witness by one or other parties in a Roman dispute) to enter the cool, marbled hall. There, he was cheered further to see only a dozen or so people waiting, and he took up his place where he judged the queue to end, deciding there was little need to open his volume of Goethe to help the time pass.

Indeed, not many minutes passed before his attention was arrested by a tall, powerfully built man in a military cloak who suddenly turned to the man beside him at the counter and said very loudly, in English, ‘What! Are you that damned atheist Shelley?’ The man to whom the charge was directed turned to face his challenger, and in that instant was struck by him with such force that he fell to the floor, stunned.

Hervey sprang forward at once, seizing the assailant’s cane with his right hand. He jabbed his left fist into the man’s face so hard that both nose and upper lip split bloodily. But still the attacker struggled violently to wrest the cane free, until Hervey drove his knee into the man’s groin and followed through with his right fist to nose and lip again. The man reeled, brought both hands up to his face and dropped the cane. Hervey snatched it up and grabbed him by the collar, threatening to bring the cane down on his head if he resisted more. The man yielded, and Hervey pushed him to his knees.

Others in the post office had remained bystanders, but someone had sent for help, and two gendarmi now arrived. A Swiss gentleman helped the victim of the assault to his feet, and Hervey, cursing himself for being so out of breath, was pleased to surrender custody of the assailant to the agents of the law. Wiping the blood from his hand, and concealing the stinging pain in his knuckles, he turned to the innocent party. ‘Are you well, sir?’ he asked, with more composure than the native bystanders could believe.

‘I thank you, sir. I am quite well enough.’ The man brushed the curl from off his forehead, dusted down the arms of his coat, and bowed briskly. ‘Shelley, sir. At your service.’

Hervey returned the bow. ‘Hervey, sir. May I enquire as to what induced that assault?’

‘You did not hear?’

‘I am afraid I did not.’

‘I stood accused of the infamous crime of atheism.’ Shelley’s face was white, there was blood about his lips and tears in his eyes. ‘I have been knocked down before, but never with so little forewarning. I wish I’d my pistols.’

‘They would have done you no good before the blow, and might have caused you trouble afterwards,’ replied Hervey, stooping to pick up Shelley’s hat.

‘I thank you again, sir. It is the very devil of a business when an Englishman is assaulted by another in a foreign place.’

The gendarmi were trying to tell them something, without success until the official from the altercation with the mandolinplayer intervened. ‘Signori, the gendarmi wish you to accompany them to the office of the questura. There are papers which must be signed.’

Shelley dabbed at his lips with a handkerchief and then at his eyes. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said to Hervey. ‘I am not given to such emotion, but the blow stung horribly.’

Hervey smiled. ‘Think nothing of it, sir. It was a brutal assault. I shall be glad to give what evidence I can.’

It took an hour and more for the questura to complete the investigation. When it was done, the two men left together. Shelley seemed recovered. ‘You will permit me to give you a glass of wine, sir?’

‘I should like that, yes,’ said Hervey. At least he did not have to go back to the post office, for the official had obligingly brought his letters to the questura. They set off back along the Corso.

‘You went at that wretch like a tiger, Hervey.’

Hervey raised his eyebrows. ‘It is the only way if one is forced to fight, I assure you. There is little profit in