by John Kessel
“I don’t need your help.”
“Yet I offer it. No one cares more for you than I. Do not forget that I am the reason you do this.”
He laughed bitterly. “I cannot forget that.”
I took the spade. “Hold the lantern high. She may not be buried in a coffin, and I would not wish to damage her.”
He held the lantern while I set to work. The earth was loose, and the dirt flew. I enjoyed the working of my excellent body. I began to feel almost giddy with the thought that soon, very soon now, I would no longer be alone.
I was near to reaching the body, and had slowed down to take more care, when a voice called out, “Halloo! Who is there?”
Frankenstein ducked, raising his arm to cover his face. A big-bellied man in slippers and a robe stood there, hair wild from the pillow, brandishing a gnarled walking stick. I threw down the spade and rushed him, meaning to knock him insensible before he might wake the whole parish.
“No!” Victor cried. “Let him be!”
I stopped. The old man’s face was rigid with fear, and the thought of striking him sickened me. I turned and ran for the churchyard wall, taking it in a single leap. I loped through the town, cursing myself for a coward. I had thrown away our chance.
By the inn I waited in an alley, hoping Victor had managed not to be apprehended. Finally he came down the street, walking rapidly, stiff-legged, the extinguished lantern clutched in his hand. I stepped out in front of him and he almost ran into me.
“Fool!” I said. “You’ll never retrieve that body now. You should have let me silence him.”
“I’ll not have another death on my conscience.”
“You’ll have more than the death of some vicar on your conscience if you fail to keep your vow.”
“Begone!” he hissed, and shouldered past me toward the inn.
It would not do for me to remain here this night, should the vicar alert the constables. I snuck out of town and made my bed in the woods near the river. I lay awake listening to the trickle of the waters, telling myself that Victor was wrong, that in silencing the old man I need not have killed him. It was some time before I was able to sleep.
An hour before sunrise, after slaking my thirst and eating some mushrooms I found, I crept back into the town and took up my watch. Our lost opportunity weighed on my mind. I considered trying to steal the body again, but I knew nothing of what Victor needed to complete his task and so could not act without him.
Two days later I watched as a chaise driven by liveried servants, the same carriage that had taken the women away, arrived at the inn, and Victor and Henry left in it. Each carried a single portmanteau, so I knew they were not leaving Derbyshire. They must be going to spend a short period of time at some estate. I did not know what Victor was about, but I suspected it had something to do with his connection to these women, this boy who looked so like his dead brother, and their family. Miss Bennet.
As quickly as I could without being seen, I escaped Matlock and followed the road the carriage had gone down. It hugged the course of the Derwent upstream, twisting through the woodlands. Once in the countryside, I began to run.
Frankenstein had given me an excellent body. I let myself go, stretching my legs, swinging my arms, head up, hair flying, breathing deeply and regularly. The blood thrummed in my ears. I raced along, each footfall lightly and precisely finding the exact, even place in the rutted road, and felt something akin to joy. When any traveler approached in the distance, I broke off into the woods, hardly slowing my pace.
It was not very long before I spied the chaise ahead of me. I swung off the road and kept pace with it, at a distance.
The chaise turned off the river road down a second, private road onto what I later learned was the estate of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. It snaked up and down hills, then rose gradually for half a mile before opening on a prospect of the largest country house I had ever seen, set against a background of high, forested hills. The road descended to cross a stone bridge over the Derwent and circled gracefully, lined with great trees, around green lawns up to the great buff two-story, many-windowed stone mansion. I did not follow the carriage onto the open ground, but found a place of cover and watched as it climbed the slope before the house and stopped in front of the entrance. Henry and Victor were greeted by two men and a number of women; at this distance I could not tell if I had seen any of them before.
I waited through the afternoon. Once night had fallen, I crept up to the house and spied through windows upon a party of people, among them Victor, Henry, and the three women I had seen in Matlock, sitting at a great table laden with food. Miss Bennet sat beside Victor. To my astonishment, one of the other men was the vicar who had thwarted us two nights ago. What Victor made of his presence there, I could not imagine.
I dared not linger for fear of being seen, but later that night, after all had retired, I made a survey of the exterior of the house, its grounds, the stables, and the outbuildings. I stole a sack of oats from beneath the sleeping horses in the stable and carried it out to the woods, where I feasted.
I would never experience a dinner like the one I had seen. If I let it, envy as bitter as that of fallen Lucifer observing Adam and Eve would torment me. I did not need to live in a house like this—it seemed absurd even to call it a house. This Darcy was a rich man. He was a product of the world that had invented property only to divide and hoard it, the world of immense wealth and squalid poverty, of rank, descent, and noble blood. Two years ago I had envied the condemned and destitute De Laceys the miserable hut where they lived and the fire that warmed them. I would be content still to live as they, if only I had a companion for my loneliness, a sympathetic soul who might comfort me, and whom I would dedicate myself to making happy.
As I huddled beneath a tree and thought of the difference between my condition and that of the people in this mansion, rage grew in me. They ate of every fine thing nature might provide and civilization prepare; I ate fodder meant for beasts. I seized the sack of oats, swung it about me, and hurled it into the woods; I tore off a limb and dashed it against the boles of the trees, staggering in the dark, howling, until I fell to the earth again, holding myself in my arms. I wept and moaned like the animal I was.
For a moment in that graveyard, as I had dug away the mould covering some dead girl, I had felt hope. I was unearthing my love; she was within reach, inches away—and then she was stolen from me by cowardice and that fool vicar. I might have torn him to pieces had I not, against every instinct to do justice to myself, been held back by compassion—which apparently, despite all that had been done to me, I still felt.
The next morning threatened rain. Though the weather was much colder than it had been, I went down to the riverside and bathed myself. I scrubbed my face, rubbed my teeth with a twig, combed out my hair with my fingers, and resumed my shabby clothes, making myself as good a semblance of a human being as I might. Just as I finished, I heard voices coming through the woods from the direction of the great house. I hastened to hide myself beside the path.
Two women came along the pathway. They wore long dresses, had shawls over their shoulders against the chilly morning, and were deep in conversation. I recognized them: they were two of the three women with whom Victor and Henry had been in town, one of them Miss Bennet. They stopped and sat on a fallen limb not twenty feet away. The other woman, who seemed to me extraordinarily beautiful, and whom Miss Bennet called Kitty, spoke with great emotion. I listened.
The one named Kitty told of a romance she had carried on with a married man. She spoke with great feeling of her desperate love, of the sexual favors they had exchanged, and how, soon after it had begun, the man had rejected her. Now she feared that her reputation would be ruined, and that she might even be with child. My heart was moved to pity by her plight, and to anger by his behavior. I could not understand how a man, blessed by God with a wife, still further blessed to receive the regard of this beautiful woman willing to surrender to him what all society sa
id was her greatest possession, her maidenhood, and the pleasures that came with it, would spurn her so heartlessly once he had taken what he wanted.
It should not have surprised me. It was of a piece with every cruelty I had seen practiced by one human on another. I had seen the De Laceys persecuted. I had seen how Safie’s father had used his daughter to escape imprisonment. The desire for those physical affections that draw men and women together against all barriers could be perverted to any use. Here was another example. How I would have bled, and fallen to my knees in grateful prayer, to be in that man’s place. Kitty leaned on her sister’s shoulder, sobbing, and Miss Bennet embraced her. Tears formed in my own eyes.
Above the treetops, thunder rumbled and it began to rain. Soon the trees were drenched and a downpour was falling on the women. The light had diminished until I could hardly see. Unconsciously, in the simple desire to protect them, I crept closer.
Lightning flashed and a great peal of thunder rolled across the sky. Miss Bennet, who had been facing me, gasped and pulled her sister closer.
She had seen me. I had forgotten myself, and was now brought brutally back to reality.
“What is it?” Kitty said.
“We must go. Now,” said Miss Bennet, pulling her sister up by her arm. They stumbled away, back toward the manor house. I followed, not knowing what I did. I only knew that the drastically contrary emotions I had felt in the last days overwhelmed me, and that the pain this woman was undergoing was like my own. I longed to comfort her. “Arrêtez!” I croaked after them. “Stop!”
They ran from me. Despair washed over me like the rain, and my steps slowed. Ahead, some figures appeared out of the gray—two men hurrying to help the women. They threw a cloak over Kitty; Miss Bennet gestured toward where I stood stupidly in the rain.
One of the men broke away and took some steps toward me. I did not bother to run. It was Victor. He came within ten steps of me in the gloom. The sound of the rain battering the foliage drowned out all other sounds. His eyes locked on mine. A look of unutterable revulsion crossed his face, as if he were sick unto death and fatigued beyond speech. Then he turned and went back to the others. I could barely make out the words of his report over the din of the storm:
“No one is there,” he said.
NINE
Kitty developed a fever and did not leave her bed for the rest of the day. Mary went back up to sit with her. When Kitty awoke, Mary tried, without bringing up the subject of Jonathan Clarke, to soothe her. Kitty, face flushed, looked as if she wanted to speak, but with Lizzy or Jane in the room, she kept her peace. Mary was not sure Kitty could have spoken coherently anyway.
By the late afternoon she had fallen back to sleep, and Mary went down to join some of the others in the saloon, including Darcy, Jane, Bingley, Lizzy, Clerval, and Frankenstein. The housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds, had prepared tea with pastries and seasonal fruit. The conversation was subdued; Lizzy explained to Mr. Clerval how Kitty had always been susceptible to maladies of the lungs. Normally these were cured by rest, a good diet, and country air.
Victor Frankenstein looked up when Mary entered. Jane asked after Kitty, and Mary told them simply that she was sleeping. The maid poured Mary some tea, and she gratefully accepted it and sat on the seat before the window, gazing out on the hillside that rose to the forested hills. For a moment the rain had ended and the rag ends of clouds moved across the sky.
Mary pondered what she should do about Kitty’s affair. If the world were just, Clarke would be publicly exposed, but of course that was out of the question. In the eyes of God his sin and Kitty’s were equal, yet if it became known, he would be subject to gossip, but Kitty would be ruined. The world said one thing and did another. It had taken Mary years to learn that, and she felt a fool for believing differently for as long as she had—though she sympathized with the naive girl she had been and at some level still was. No matter how silly she had been, she had never wished anyone ill.
More important was what might be done to heal Kitty’s heart. When she recovered, Mary would try to persuade her to let her feelings for Clarke go. Could Mary trust her own counsel? She considered telling Lizzy what she knew. Lizzy might not trust Mary’s judgment, but she was a person of sense with a full understanding of the world, and to whatever degree was appropriate, an open heart. But it was not time to say anything yet.
Her thoughts turned to the man they had encountered in the woods. Though she had seen his face for only an instant, the impression it had made lingered. There was nothing malformed about his visage, but it had seemed somehow false, as if his face, however completely human, were not real. Yet it had borne an expression of deep, naked longing. She could not put together the two opposing impressions, other than to recognize the result as horrifying in a peculiarly disturbing way.
She would have appreciated the validation Frankenstein’s testimony would have provided to prevent her looking like a fool. But it would not be fair to hold the fact that he had seen nothing against him. Had she been so wrong in her estimation of his regard for her? Upon his arrival he had seemed pleased to see her, but since last night’s dinner he had treated her with reserve, if not wariness. If he were as indifferent as his current behavior indicated, why would he have accepted the invitation to come to Pemberley?
She decided to engage him in conversation. She moved to sit nearer him, but once she was there was miserably unable to think of a single thing to say.
Mary cradled her cup with its inch of lukewarm tea in her hands. At last, Frankenstein broke the uncomfortable silence.
“Mr. and Mrs. Darcy are gracious to ask Henry and me to stay, but I know that worry about your sister must weigh heavily on your mind. And let me apologize for the blunt way in which I contradicted your testimony about the man you saw in the woods. But I do believe you were mistaken, and I hope you will consider the possibility. There was no one there. Perhaps you heard some animal in the underbrush? Or the tossing of the tree limbs in the darkness of the storm may have misled you.”
She was unable to read his intent. “Thank you for your sympathies, Mr. Frankenstein. However, I do not see how the tossing of branches in a storm might have called to us to stop, in French.”
Frankenstein averted his eyes. “Perhaps, then, I was the one mistaken. My thoughts were for your welfare, and that of Miss Catherine, and I did not search the woods. It is curious that this stranger spoke French.”
“Curious indeed.”
He cleared his throat as if about to speak, and then said nothing.
“I am sorry that your visit has not provided more in the way of entertainment,” Mary said.
Frankenstein seized upon the change of subject. “Mr. Darcy suggests that should the weather clear tomorrow, we might try fishing. If your sister is still ailing, however, it would seem more a distraction than a pleasure. I think, despite your family’s amiability, Henry’s and my presence here may be de trop.”
Mary studied the sullen ruins of her hopes in the dregs of her teacup. Although she protested that what Victor said was not true, and though they spoke idly for another few minutes, all Mary could draw from Frankenstein’s manner was an overwhelming sense that he did not want to be there. Mary could tell herself that the change in his manner was because of Kitty’s illness, but the evidence of his distance after last night’s dinner suggested otherwise.
When, after a subdued supper, the party retired for the evening, Mary stopped in to see Kitty. She had managed to take some broth, after which she had fallen back asleep, and though her fever had not subsided, it had not increased. Her breathing was still labored. It was hoped that a night’s rest would see her feeling better in the morning.
Rain still sounded outside the windows when Mary retired. Her maid had set a fire that threw gentle light about her darkened room. She lay awake wondering what dreams Kitty was experiencing at that moment, and she hoped they were peaceful ones. Eventually she slept.
In the middle of the night Mary was awakened by
the opening of her door. She thought it might be Jane or Lizzy come to tell her some news about Kitty. But it was not Lizzy. She watched silently as a dark figure entered and closed the door softly. The remains of her fire threw faint light on the countenance of the man who approached her.
“Miss Bennet,” he called softly.
Her heart was in her throat. “Yes, Mr. Frankenstein.”
“Please do not take alarm. I must speak with you.” His low voice was charged with emotion. He took two steps toward her bed. His handsome face was agitated.
“This is no place for polite conversation,” she said. “Following on your denial of what I saw this afternoon, you are fortunate that I do not wake the servants and have you thrown out of Pemberley.”
“I am afraid that nothing I have to say to you tonight shall qualify as polite conversation.” Desperation sounded in his whisper. “You are right to chide me. My conscience chides me more than you ever could, and should I be banished from your family’s company it would be only what I deserve.”
Mary said, “Add another log to the fire.”
He started to speak, then thought better of it and did as she asked. While he poked the coals into life, she drew on her robe and lit a candle. She made him sit in one of the chairs by the hearth. When she had settled herself in the other, she said, “Go on, then.”
“Miss Bennet, please do not toy with me. You know why I am here.”
“Know, sir? What do I know?”
He leaned forward earnestly, hands clasped and elbows on his knees. “I come to beg you to keep silent. The gravest consequences would follow your revealing my secret.”
“Your secret,” she said flatly.
“About—about the man you saw.”
“You do know him!”
“Your mockery at dinner showed me that after hearing the vicar’s story, you suspected. You played with me, offering every teasing sign of your surmise. Raising the dead, you said to Henry—and then you tormented me with your tale of Aldini and his College of Surgeons demonstration. Do not deny it.”
