He went away mad with grief. Through the naked, frozen woods, he wandered back towards Field Place; unconscious of the drifting snow, he paced for hours the village graveyard, which had been the background for love’s young dream.
He got home at two o’clock in the morning, and went to bed after placing a loaded pistol, and various poisons taken from his chemical arsenal, by his side. But the thought of Elizabeth’s grief on finding his corpse prevented him from killing himself.
Next day he wrote to Hogg. Against Harriet herself he expressed no resentment, none against his father nor Mr. Grove. The Spirit of Intolerance alone was responsible for the tragedy:
“Here I swear—and as I break my oaths, may Infinity, Eternity blast me—I swear that I will never forgive Intolerance! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge; every moment I can spare shall be devoted to my object. Intolerance is of the greatest disservice to Society; it encourages prejudices which strike at the root of the dearest, the tenderest of its ties. Oh how I wish I were the avenger!—that it were mine to crush the demon; to hurl him to his native hell, never to rise again and thus to establish for ever perfect and universal toleration.
“I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in poetry. You shall see, you shall hear, how it has injured me. She is no longer mine! She abhors me as a sceptic, as what she was before! O bigotry! When I pardon this last, this severest of thy persecutions, may Heaven—if there be wrath in Heaven—blast me!
“Forgive me, I have done. I am afraid there is selfishness in the passion of love, for I cannot avoid feeling every instant as if my soul were bursting. But I will feel no more. It is selfish. I would feel for others, but for myself—oh how much rather would I expire in the struggle! Yes, that were a relief! Is suicide wrong? I slept with a loaded pistol and some poison last night, but did not die. Had it not been for my sister, for you, I should have bidden you a final farewell.”
There still remained a fortnight of the holidays to be passed at Field Place, an unhappy fortnight owing to the displeasure of his father and mother, and the embarrassment of his sisters.
In spite of Elizabeth’s invitations Harriet refused to come over and see them while he was there.
People began to whisper, under the seal of secrecy, that she was engaged to someone else.
Seeking to appease his spirit in the endeavour to make others happy, Shelley had resolved that Hogg should fall in love with Elizabeth, whom he had never seen. He sent Hogg some verses written by her, which were filled with good intentions, hatred of tyranny, and faults of prosody.