The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume I Part 31

_6th July._

MY DEAREST FRIEND--Your few melancholy lines have indeed cast your own visionary veil over a countenance that was animated with the hope of seeing you return with far different tidings. We heard yesterday that you had left Leghorn in company with the _Bolivar_, and would a.s.suredly be here in the morning at 5 o'clock; therefore I got up, and from the terrace saw (or I dreamt it) the _Bolivar_ opposite in the offing. She hoisted more sail, and went through the Straits. What can this mean? Hope and uncertainty have made such a chaos in my mind that I know not what to think. My own Neddino does not deign to lighten my darkness by a single word. Surely I shall see him to-night. Perhaps, too, you are with him. Well, _pazienza_!

Mary, I am happy to tell you, goes on well; she talks of going to Pisa, and indeed your poor friends seem to require all her a.s.sistance.

For me, alas! I can only offer sympathy, and my fervent wishes that a brighter cloud may soon dispel the present gloom. I hope much from the air of Pisa for Mrs. Hunt.

Lord B.'s departure gives me pleasure, for whatever may be the present difficulties and disappointments, they are small to what you would have suffered had he remained with you. This I say in the spirit of prophecy, so gather consolation from it.

I have only time left to scrawl you a hasty adieu, and am affectionately yours,

J. W.

Why do you talk of never enjoying moments like the past? Are you going to join your friend Plato, or do you expect I shall do so soon? _Buona notte._

Mary was slowly getting better, and hoping to feel brighter by the time Sh.e.l.ley came back. On the 7th of July she wrote a few lines in her journal, summing up the month during which she had left it untouched.

_Sunday, July 7._--I am ill most of this time. Ill, and then convalescent. Roberts and Trelawny arrive with the _Bolivar_. On Monday, 16th June, Trelawny goes on to Leghorn with her. Roberts remains here until 1st July, when the Hunts being arrived, Sh.e.l.ley goes in the boat with him and Edward to Leghorn. They are still there.

Read _Jacopo Ortis_, second volume of _Geographica Fisica_, etc. etc.

Next day, Monday the 8th, when the voyagers were expected to return, it was so stormy all day at Lerici that their having sailed was considered out of the question, and their non-arrival excited no surprise in Mary or Jane. So many possibilities and probabilities might detain them at Leghorn or Pisa, that their wives did not get anxious for three or four days; and even then what the two women dreaded was not calamity at sea, but illness or disagreeable business on sh.o.r.e. On Thursday, however, getting no letters, they did become uneasy, and, but for the rough weather, Jane Williams would have started in a row-boat for Leghorn. On Friday they watched with feverish anxiety for the post; there was but one letter, and it turned them to stone. It was to Sh.e.l.ley, from Leigh Hunt, begging him to write and say how he had got home in the bad weather of the previous Monday. And then it dawned upon them--a dawn of darkness. There was no news; there would be no news any more.

One minute had untied the knot, and solved the great mystery. The _Ariel_ had gone down in the storm, with all hands on board.

And for four days past, though they had not known it, Mary Sh.e.l.ley and Jane Williams had been widows.

END OF VOL. I