Frankenstein's Bride

by Hilary Bailey

  From his reply, “Why would you want to know that?” I deduced that the man was here, though he was not to be seen.

  “Who is he?” I asked. “What is his name?”

  He peered at me through the swirling snow. “What's he done?” he asked.

  “I don't know,” I replied. “Who is he?”

  “We calls him Oberon,” the fellow said, “—in jest, for the King of the Fairies, you know. We don't know his name. He says nothing. He's weak in the head, but he's strong in the back and does what he's told. They keep him on, paying him in scraps of food and copper coins. He sleeps in that shed over there and acts as watchman by night. But I wouldn't go over there and stir him up. He's meek as a lamb most of the time, but sometimes he'll fall into a sudden rage, and that makes him dangerous.”

  “I must talk to him,” I said.

  “I've told you—he's feeble-witted, you'll get nothing from him. But if you want him you'll find him in the hut. I've got to get this sack of wood back to my family.” And with that he plodded along the jetty and began to climb the steps up to the road.

  In some apprehension I went to the wooden building the man had called the ogre's home and pushed open the door. The building was some ten feet square and used as a storehouse. At the back were piled crates and barrels, almost to the roof, while to the right were coils of rope, a pickaxe, an upright spar. But to the left a small corridor between stacked crates some three feet wide led to cleared space at the back, and there was what appeared to be a heap of bedding. In the dim light, I saw crouched, even cowering, rather like a child hiding in a cupboard, the vast figure of the man they called, cruelly, Oberon.

  I could not at first make out his expression, but as I took, fearfully, a step into the hut I saw his teeth, bared in fear, like an ape's. I said, “Fellow—man—whoever you are—tell me why you are spying on Victor Frankenstein.” The sound of the name made him start, which caused me to fall back a pace, thinking he meant to attack me. But then he lapsed into apathy again and his low, gruff voice started up, but he only babbled out an incomprehensible mix of sounds from which it was impossible to make out any words. Yet I thought he was trying to say something. “Come,” I said. “I mean you no harm—but I saw you in Mr. Frankenstein's garden one night and today saw you come over his garden wall. What do you want with him? What have you done?”

  I then saw him, in the dim light of that cold shed, sobbing, crying helplessly, wiping his eyes and nose on the sleeve of the black coat that he wore. Fearful as I had been of him, and still was, I felt pity too. And I thought I caught, mixed with his sobs and babblings, one word I could understand: “Bride, bride, bride,” he seemed to be saying.

  I copied this word back to him, “Bride, you say? What bride?” The hideous thought came to me suddenly that poor Elizabeth Frankenstein's death could have come about because this deluded creature, watching her comings and goings from opposite her house, had persuaded himself that she was his—had broken in and, when she resisted him, killed her, and the child with her. This vision was most terrible to me.

  And now he arose and began to shout, babbling, stumbling, yet, from the incoherent sentences I still thought I heard, “my bride, my bride.” He took a step towards me. His eyes were very large and brown. They burned. Uncertain whether he was asking my help or menacing me, I retreated from the doorway, yet thought I was beginning to understand some of his incoherent speech.

  “He—has—my—bride,” he seemed to be saying.

  Unheroically, I did not stay to question him further about what he meant. The snow was still swirling down, we were alone and already what daylight there was began to wane. I decided on retreat. As I walked backwards from the hut in the direction of the road, I still spoke to him calmly, “Who has your bride? Is that what ails you? Tell me what is your trouble.”

  He came towards me, not, I think, with menace in mind but nevertheless, his great shambling figure was menacing enough. Then, haltingly, but clearly enough, he bellowed, “Frankenstein!” and pointed again, as he had when I first saw him on the barge, throwing his arm to the left in the direction of Victor's house. And he cried again, “Frankenstein!”. This time there was no doubt about the violence of his feelings.

  At this, I confess, my nerve broke. I turned and ran along the paving of the quay, scrambled up the slippery steps to the road and, with one glance behind me at the top, to assure myself he was not coming after me, hastened homewards, sliding on the snow, now an inch deep, under my feet. Later, I again looked behind me to see if he was following. Seeing he was not, I slowed my pace and, wet and cold, continued to plod forward as fast as I could.

  Yet in spite of my retreat it did not seem to me that the poor, misshapen creature had meant me any real harm. He had done no more than chase me off and return to his lair. His pathetic babbling speech might have been more appeal than threat. And he had called out Frankenstein's name, called it out, it seemed to me, in pain and indignation. What could it mean? My head reeled, but this I knew—Victor's cold denials of any knowledge of this man must have been lies. He was no chimera, no figment of my imagination. Victor had not told me the truth. This greatly saddened me on the long, uncomfortable walk to my lodgings.

  I arrived back at Gray's Inn Road in a deplorable state. Gilmore opened the door to me and was disconcerted by my appearance, but all I could say to him in the hall, as the parlor door flung open and Mrs. Downey appeared with many exclamations, was. “Be vigilant, Gilmore. Nothing is any better.”

  Then came the usual kindly attentions from the two ladies of the house, the fire lit in the bedroom, the production of a steaming hipbath, fresh clothes and a seat at the parlor fire, feet boiling in a mustard bath like a piece of beef. Then came supper and a whisky toddy—for Mrs. Frazer never came over the border without bringing with her several stone jars of her native brew. There was, however, a quid pro quo behind these kindly female attentions. In exchange the ladies required a fuller account of the story Gilmore had told me at the inn. Evidently their questioning had got little out of him. Nevertheless, further confused by the events of the day, I felt it better to say nothing. I wished I could, for safety's sake, have commanded the whole household to move to another place, away from these mysteries. But of course, as a mere lodger in the house I could not give orders and to have attempted persuasion would have meant telling all.

  So, contributing nothing to the happiness of Mrs. Downey and her sister, I claimed fatigue and went early to bed, but not before I had surreptitiously visited Gilmore in the kitchen, telling him we must keep watch that night over the house and requesting him to rouse me at eleven o'clock, so that he might go to bed while I stayed awake watching. When he looked at me in alarm I told him that I believed I had found Victor's enemy, that he was most probably a lunatic and not far off from here. “He appears harmless, but that may not be his permanent state. We must be careful. Tomorrow I shall endeavor to make some better plan, but for tonight we must stay on guard.”

  I then retired and lay down in my clothes to get some hours' rest. At eleven Gilmore duly shook me awake and, the rest of the household having gone to bed, I went downstairs. Looking from the window of my room, I saw that the trees, the yards behind the houses with their little patches of vegetables had turned white. The looming houses, most windows unlit, were black against the snow. From their crooked chimneys smoke still streamed into the dark night sky. As far as I could see not a footprint marred the whiteness behind the house in any direction. Nor was there any sound of traffic or people in the streets, as if the snow had laid a great, quiet blanket over all.

  Downstairs, I listened out, occasionally rising from the parlor fire to look from windows, back and front, to see if there were anyone near the house. Alone, in the unusual silence snow brings to a city, I wondered if my precautions were needless. Had my imagination carried me into fantasy?

  Suppose, I wondered, that a charge were laid of slandering Victor's good reputation. The prosecution could well make a strong ca
se that I was mad—none but I had seen the ungainly, half-witted man I claimed was threatening Frankenstein. As for Gilmore, what lawyer could not easily discredit the unsupported word of a witness about what he believed to have occurred so long ago when he was a boy? Either Victor Frankenstein, my friend, was deceiving me or I was myself deluded, sorely mistaken about much in this affair. Such uncomfortable thoughts did not, though, overcome my fatigue and the warmth of the fire. I regret to report I fell asleep.

  Alas, a flinging out of my arm jolted some knick-knack from the parlor table. I heard it, but slept on. Not so Mrs. Downey, who, a woman to her fingertips, could in her sleep hear a pin drop in the cellar. I was woken by a cry from the doorway: “Mr. Goodall! What are you doing here? Why are you not in bed?”

  Mrs. Downey, a wrap over her shift, hair falling down her back, holding a candle in her hand, was a pretty sight, I thought, coming from sleep. She glanced about the room, taking in the fallen bibelot, happily unbroken, and then her eyes began to roam on, in search, I think, of the bottle or bottles she thought must be involved in the affair. I had already deduced the late Mr. Downey had not been a temperate man. Yawning and rubbing my eyes I told her I was on watch for trouble, though not, as she had discovered, conscientious enough to carry out my self-designated duties.

  She responded vehemently saying she could bear all this no longer. There were mysteries and secrets in the house, she knew I had anxieties I was not revealing to her, I was not to imagine she had not perceived Gilmore's extra vigilance or did not know I was at the back of it. She had not been told what Gilmore, her sister's own servant, had revealed to me as to his running off. Now there was danger—“I repeat,” she said, “I can bear this secrecy no longer. Surely I have a right to know what is happening? My sister's, my own and my defenseless child's safety appears threatened by a mystery. And,” she concluded, “if you believe keeping secrets concerning myself and my family to be chivalrous then I have the honor to inform you it is not. It is merely folly.”

  Like most men, I do not like to hear myself roundly abused by a woman on waking. I became a little angry. “For God's sake, Cordelia, I am doing my best,” I exclaimed—this was the first time I had used her Christian name and I was surprised to hear it burst from my lips.

  She did not comment on this use of her name, only saying gently, “Would it not be better to tell me what is happening?”

  I sighed and leaned back, feeling very weary. “It is very late, Cordelia.”

  “That does not concern you for you are on watch,” she said pertly. “I will make a little tea and butter some bread. We will call it an early breakfast and it will restore you.”

  And this she did, rekindling the embers of the fire, suspending the brass kettle on its hook above it, taking the loaf set out for breakfast and toasting slices in front of the flames; while I, fighting sleep, wondered if I should tell her all, or any of the story. If I were wrong? Could it be right to pass off suppositions as truth, frightening a woman? Such struggles availed me nothing in the face of pretty Mrs. Downey at work with a toasting-fork, her hair curling down her back. Looking as she did, she would have set a Trappist monk singing a roundelay. I asked myself were she indeed my sister, but widowed, with a child, would I have the right to keep knowledge and therefore the power of deciding her own affairs, from her?

  So—warning her that the story I had to tell was unpleasant and frightening, and that she herself would have to decide how much of it to believe, I told her all, or almost all the story. Throughout my relation, which must have taken half an hour, she sat quietly looking at me with a level gaze, moving only when she stood to offer me tea or make more toast. I was ravenously hungry. I was astonished by her calm. At some points I thought it might be she could not understand what I was telling her but, no, she understood perfectly. I concluded my tale by weakly appealing to her for a judgment: “Mrs. Downey—Cordelia—tell me, do you think I am deluded, a false accuser of my friend Victor Frankenstein?”

  Gravely she told me, “I do not think you understand everything about this, Jonathan” (she used my own first name, I noticed). “There are mysteries here. But I am sure much of what you say is correct. Remember, I have known Donald Gilmore since he first came to my sister's house as a lad. His tale concerning Mr. Frankenstein may not be accurate in every point, but not, I think, the fiction Mr. Frankenstein makes it out to be.”

  “Cordelia,” I said, and I may say the joy of using her name and having her use mine filled me. “What you say relieves my mind. I feared I was mad.”

  She said pensively. “Not that, but I am afraid I think Mr. Frankenstein a danger to you. And the singer, Maria Clementi—and very possibly her companion, too.”

  I think I have said I thought Cordelia, as I now will call her, a little hard on Maria, whom she had never met, through jealousy, perhaps, and because she had a respectable woman's mistrust of actresses and the like. “Miss Clementi is the purest and most innocent creature imaginable, as you would know if you met her,” said I.

  “Whom you last saw in a carriage, laughing with a man you describe as one of the most degenerate creatures you ever encountered—”

  I sighed. “I know. It is a mystery. And now Hugo and Lucy Feltham are at Cheyne Walk and I know not what may be occurring there. Now I have dragged you into this affair. What can I do?”

  “Wash your hands of the business now,” she told me.

  “But I fear you and your household are in danger. How can I turn my back and pretend nothing is the matter?”

  “Then go to the magistrate Mr. Wortley in the morning and inform him you have reason to believe the man who killed Mrs. Frankenstein is at the Chelsea wharf. Demand that he should be taken up and questioned,” said the lady, evidently once a keen student of her late husband, the lawyer.

  “My dear Cordelia,” I said, taking her hand. “Of all women you are the most excellent.”

  She seized back her hand. “My goodness, Jonathan,” she cried. “You are too bold. I should not be here with you at all at this hour and dressed as I am.” And with that she whisked out of the room and I heard her go upstairs. But though she had reproved me, she had called me by my given name. She had not been severe.

  Filled with a surprising joy, I might have sat on in delighted contemplation of a life to be, but I had not done my patrol for some hours now, so was obliged to take up my chilly vigil again. Until morning there was no sign of anything untoward inside or outside the house. I resolved to adopt Cordelia's suggestion. I would lay information against the man on the wharf as early as possible that morning. Some evidence concerning the attack might be got from him and, at all events, once in prison he would not be able to harm anyone.

  And it was my dear Cordelia who had clear-headedly gone straight to this solution! I began to dream of a future with her, if only she would consent to marry me. I began to imagine her at Kittering, mistress of my house, tender friend to my sisters, comfort to my father as he grew older. Would she have me? A worldly woman would not have hesitated—but Cordelia was not a worldly woman. She would do only what her heart directed.

  I went wearily to bed at six, when the loyal Gilmore took over from me. I thought of Cordelia—my head touched the pillow—I was asleep.

  Yet it was not of Cordelia I dreamed. I dreamed instead of that awful figure I had so recently encountered. In my dream he was bare-chested and barefoot on some tropical island under a strong sun. He stood on yellow sand, gazing out over a blue sea. There was the distorted figure, misshapen face, burning eyes and tangled mass of wild black hair. I felt the heart within his breast drumming, sensed the violent movements of his brain, with its capacity for sudden, violent emotion, for good or ill. And then he altered. His face softened and became more regular, his great black eyes ceased to burn like coals and took on a gentler light—he smiled. From somewhere in the trees surrounding the bay I heard a voice, singing. It was the true voice of Maria Clementi, heard in dream, though she was not to be seen. She sang some old
mediaeval tune, somberly yet with great feeling and conviction. It was a song such as one hears in holy processions in Spain and Italy. And the man stood, as if he could not hear her, looking out to sea.

  The notes of Maria's song were in my ears as Gilmore, according to my instructions, awoke me at half past seven. Not much later I was on my feet in the dining-room, having taken a cup of coffee from the hand of Cordelia (already up and fresh as a new coin, though silent to her sister on the subject of the night's doings). I intended setting off immediately for the house of Mr. Wortley, who lived only a few streets away. At that moment the doorbell jangled and in came my friends Hugo and Lucy, dressed for traveling. This was very strange for the hour was early and there had been nothing about their going the day before. Moreover, few with any choice would set off for Kent with snow on the ground and the chance of more to come.

  Invited to take some breakfast Hugo agreed with some relief and urged his wife to sit down and take something. She, however, pale, with two angry red spots on her cheeks, remained standing and shook her head determinedly. Cordelia stood up and, putting an arm round her shoulders, led her to a chair by the fire. She spoke to her softly and evidently induced her to take some cordial.

  Mrs. Frazer, at the table, gazed at this scene in surprise.

  “Well, Hugo,” I asked, “what brings you here so early?”

  Eating heartily, he said, “I apologize for this early arrival, Mrs. Downey, and thank you for your kindness. I regret there is an unhappy affair to discuss.”