The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

15

HE HAD FINISHED SPEAKING, and turned back towards the Thames. I could see that he was in thrall to some powerful emotion, and I could almost feel pity for his miserable state. He was doomed to wander across the earth, in search of nothing that the world could give to him-love, friendship, compassion were all denied to him. If it were true that he could not die, that the fearful terms of his existence were ever renewed, he would endure in his wilderness. “What would you have me do?” I asked him.

“Do? Once you create life, you must take responsibility for it. You are responsible!”

“I will create no more life. I pledge that to you.”

“A weak answer, sir. Do you not realise the bond between us? There is a pact of fire that can never be abrogated. I am wedded to you so closely that we might be the same person. I was conceived and shaped in your hands.” He turned around at that moment, and faced me. “I have no one except you. Will you abandon me? You are my last hope. My last refuge.” I bowed down and wept. “You weep for yourself, and not for me.”

“I pity you.”

“Spare your pity for yourself.”

“I would give everything I have to release you from your suffering. If I could reduce you once more to inanimate matter, I would gladly do so. Do you wish for that?”

We both remained in silence for a long time. I was still seated, while he paced up and down the workshop in an agony of thought. Finally he stopped beside my chair. “I can be your child. Or your servant. I can watch over you, and protect you from harm.”

“That cannot be.”

“Cannot? I know no such word. We have an adamantine bond. What is ‘cannot’?”

“That bond is a frightful one. You have become the dark agent of desolation.”

“Through your will.”

“My purpose was benign. I had hoped to create a being of infinite benevolence. One in whom the forces of nature would have worked together to awaken a new spiritual being. I believed in the perfectibility of mankind-”

“Oh, don’t speak of that. Since you awakened me, as you put it, I have witnessed nothing but fear and woe and violence.”

“You have caused them.”

“But you are the ultimate cause.”

“Listen to me. I shared with my friends a new creed of liberty and unselfishness. I had hoped to advance it.”

“Your new creed has proved to be an illusion then. Mankind is not to be improved.”

“You are mistaken in that. There will be, there must be, progress in the sciences.”

“Behold your progress. Here I stand.”

When I saw him exulting over me, my pity for him turned to anger. “I abjure you. I beg you to remove yourself to some distant place and trouble men no more.”

“You wish me to travel to some vast desert or distant island. Or perhaps to some ice precipice among the loftiest mountains?”

“Anywhere out of this world.”

“So my suffering is less important than your repose.”

“The repose of all.”

“It is an interesting proposition. In this instance, then, I would ask you to form for me a companion in this secluded life.”

“What?”

“Create me another being who can become my bride, of the same nature and the same characteristics as myself.”

“Insanity.”

“Wherefore insane? We will be estranged from all the world, but we will never be separated from one another. I do not say that we will enjoy bliss, but we will at least be free from suffering. Who can I speak to? There is no one. I am alone in the world. Do you know this affliction? I think not. You have not experienced the feeling of being utterly cast away, of being adrift on the margin of life unseen and unheard. If I cry out, there is no one to care for me. If I am in agony of spirit, there is no one to console me. It is in your power to mend my loneliness. Do not deny me this request.”

“How can I proceed with such a monstrous task? My instruments have all been destroyed-by you.”

“It is a matter of expense. That is all. You know how to conjure forth the electrical power. You can construct the machines.”

“You seriously intend me to take a female from the grave and animate her?”

“If you consent, neither you nor any other man will look upon this face again. My companion and I will lead a harmless life of simple toil. We shall find our rest on the kind earth, and content ourselves with the seclusion of a hidden island; we shall drink the waters of the brook, and eat the acorns. We shall be sufficient one to another.”

I sat in a daze of wonder and apprehension. I envisaged all the scenes of this process: the assembly of the electrical machines, the body or the parts of a woman taken from the tomb and brought down to Limehouse, the light and heat of the terrible creation. And then yet one more being to arise from the table, with all the powers I knew she would possess! Might they then not couple, and have offspring? No. The dead could not breed new life. Of that I was certain.

“She must be young and beautiful,” he said.

“I cannot consent.”

“We will leave the world to those who are happy in it. Freed from the hatred of my fellow creatures, I shall express all the benevolence that you once hoped to find in me. I will no longer curse and rage against you. I swear by the light of the sun. I swear that I will leave you for ever.”

I entertained his argument for a moment only, since I remained firm in my detestation and rejection of a proposal that might have intolerable consequences. “It is not to be contemplated.”

“You would destroy my one chance of happiness? Of salvation?”

“I would deny you the chance of wreaking more havoc and misery upon the world, with a companion your equal in strength and purpose.”

“Very well, sir. I am fearless, and therefore powerful. I say this clearly to you now, even though I am wrapped in anger and in the contemplation of revenge. Your days will pass in dread and horror, and soon enough you will repent of all the injuries you have inflicted on me. One day you will curse the sun that gazes on your misery.”

“I charge you this. Do not follow me!”

“Oh, is that the sum of your fears? Let me tell you now that you can never escape me. If you will not create for me a companion, then I choose you to be my spouse. We shall be inseparable, two living things joined together. Do you delight in the prospect as much as I do?”

“I can travel to the outermost reaches of the world-”

“Do not think of fleeing to the wilderness. The wilderness in me is greater. I will find you out.”

“Can I not reason with you?”

“Reason? What has reason to do with this? The pact between us is of fire and blood.”

“So you will shadow me, will you? Then you will be a subordinate creature, a slave to my wishes.”

“No. I will not be with you always. I will not be with you often. But when you are least ready, then I will be there. What if I were to appear on your wedding night?”

“How can there be such a thing, when I know that you are somewhere around me?”

“Precisely. I am no slave. I am your master. And remember this, sir. You are sure to be visited by me.” He went over to the door, and seemed to exult in the power of the night and the river. “Now for the estuary,” he said. “I pledge myself to eternal pain!”

I SAT, OR RATHER CROUCHED, in my chair, amid the rubble which was all that remained of my work, as the hours passed. It has been said that evils come to an end, but that fear endures for ever. I had entered a state of being which could only be curtailed with my death. And how, how, in these first hours, did I long for death to come! I sat in the workshop until dawn but then, through some brute or animal instinct, I returned home through the streets of London. There was a heavy rain to which I paid very little regard; it seemed to be no more than the accompaniment of my dread, throwing up vistas of mist and mud along every street.

When eventually I came up to my door in Jermyn Street, Fred greeted me with a most perplexed expression. “You are all water, sir. You will rush into the gutter.”

“Take me inside, Fred. I can hardly stand.”

He helped me across the threshold, and at once began to take off my boots. “There is enough water here,” he said, “to fill the Fleet.” He began wringing out my coarse woollen socks. Then he went into my private closet, and brought me several towels; with these I retreated into my bedroom where I undressed myself and lay down upon the bed.

How many hours I slept, I do not know. I was awoken by the entrance of Fred, bearing a plate of chops and tomatoes. He placed it carefully beside me on the bed, and from a pocket withdrew a letter sealed with a wafer. “This has come from a gentleman,” he said. “You know who.”

It was a letter from Bysshe, entreating me to travel up to Marlow and join him in what he called my riparian paradise. I realised, in the instant of reflection upon this proposal, that I had contracted a most curious weakness. I had lost all of my energy of mind, my animation in the affairs of life. I had in effect lost all will and sense of volition. It was the most singular sensation in the world. Out of dread, and horror, had come meekness and submission. The fear had not left me. Far from it. But it had become my perpetual partner, my double, my shadow, without which I would not exist. So I was left singularly unable or unwilling to make any decision for myself, in any matter concerning my fate. I ate the chops and tomatoes that Fred had prepared for me, and told him to pack my valise for Marlow. He asked if he could accompany me on the journey-as my “jolly” as he put it in the language of the street-and I assented without giving the matter any thought.

WE LEFT JERMYN STREET SOON AFTER, and hired a post-chaise from Catherine Street to Marlow; Fred kept up a continuous line of chatter all the while, which pleased me greatly. It relieved me of any need to talk, or to think, as we made our way out of the capital into the fields and hedgerows of Buckinghamshire. He pointed out the milestones on the way, the number of gravel pits in Kensington, the geese in Chiswick, and the bad roads of Brentford. He told me that he and his brother used to bathe in the Thames, until the filth in the river became insupportable. He told me that twelve thousand people passed over London Bridge each day, and that there were elves in the Highgate woods. He reckoned Marlow to be a “comfortable” town, and explained to me in some detail how he had found Bysshe’s house by dint of earnest enquiries among the trades men. After a short silence he volunteered the information that he also had witnessed Daniel Westbrook’s execution.

“What?” I said. “You walked to Newgate after I had left the house?”

“Yes, sir. I hope I did no wrong in that. There was nothing to mind in the house, you see. It was all neat and perfect.”

“You rogue. You led me to believe that you stood guard perpetually.”

“Nobody can be perpetual, Mr. Frankenstein. I needed the air.”

“A foul air by Newgate.”

“This it is, sir. I had never been to a hanging before. I wished to see the thing.”

“And you did.” I leaned over to him. “So did I.”

Suddenly I began to weep. I bent forward in the carriage and sobbed, the tears unbidden and unexpected. Fred passed me a handkerchief, and looked steadfastly out of the window until I had composed myself. Eventually I sat back, and put my head against the leather rest. We were travelling along a stretch of road beside the Thames, and I noticed that the current of the river was turbid and irregular. There was something lying in the water, impeding its progress. “There is the boundary stone,” Fred said. “We will be there shortly.”

We arrived at dusk. The air by the river was chill and laden with moisture, but Fred led me briskly down the principal street of the town. It was wide enough for two carriages, and muddy after recent rain, but we crossed it without any difficulty. We turned left down a smaller thoroughfare, lined with superior shops and houses. “Here we are, sir. This is the house.”

It was a two-storey villa of recent construction with a plain lattice-work porch and large windows on the ground floor. “Will you knock, Fred?” I had not the slightest energy.

The door was opened by Bysshe himself, who seemed astonished to see me so soon after he had despatched his invitation. “My dear Frankenstein,” he said, “you are like an apparition. I was just speaking of you! And here is the boy, looking as fresh scrubbed as a Tenterden apple. Come in.” We entered a narrow hallway, where there was a plentiful supply of boots and umbrellas. I had forgotten that Bysshe had a strange partiality for umbrellas, of whatever description, and an equally strong propensity for losing them. He led us into the drawing room, a brilliantly lit room with long damask curtains and comfortable furniture of the provincial style. Sitting by the fireside were a gentleman of middle age and a young lady, evidently deep in talk.

“Here is the man,” Bysshe said, “whom I was describing. It is the oddest and most singular coincidence. This is Mr. Godwin, Victor, and his daughter Mary.”

The man rose from his chair, and greeted me with great cordiality; his daughter took my hand, and welcomed me to Albion House as if she were the mistress of it. “We have been considering the name of Albion, Mr. Frankenstein,” her father said. “Bysshe believes it is derived from Alba, the Celtic word for Britain. But I believe it to be more classical. I take it to spring from albus, meaning white. Thus from the white cliffs. What is your opinion?” He was wearing a pair of pebble spectacles that seemed to emphasise his pale and almost rimless eyes. His manner was cordial, as I have said, but somewhat too intense and magisterial; it seemed to be a forced cordiality.

“I have not the least idea, sir. I am sorry-”

Bysshe brought a chair for me, and offered me a glass of Madeira wine that I willingly accepted. “You are tired after your journey, Victor.” He had noticed my listlessness and weariness. “This will revive you.”

The father and daughter looked at me with placid interest, and waited for me to speak.

“It has been a hard time,” I said.

“Of course. William and Mary know all the sad facts of the matter. You can speak freely.”

“I do not know if I can speak at all.”

“You attended Harriet’s funeral?”

“Yes.”

“And were you present at Daniel’s execution?”

I looked round for Fred, but he had silently left the room, no doubt in search of the company of Bysshe’s servants.

“Yes. He died bravely. He was an innocent man.”

“How do you know that, sir?” Mr. Godwin put the question to me in a challenging manner.

“I know it. I know-I knew-Daniel Westbrook. I saw him in his prison cell. There was no gentler being on the earth. He had nothing to do with this crime. Nothing whatever.”

“No one else was suspected,” Mr. Godwin said. “We read the public prints, even in Marlow.”

“The murderer walks free.”

“Do you have private information, Mr. Frankenstein?” Miss Godwin asked me this with the faintest impression of a smile.

“No. I have no information on the subject except that which instinct and intuition give me. I am sure that, as a lady, you will grant me that right.”

She gave me a keen glance then. “Instinct is very right and just. My father adopts more rational principles, but I have always believed in the divining powers of the imagination.”

“She has read Coleridge,” her father said. “She is an enthusiast for the divine afflatus.”

“Without the imagination, Father, the human frame is dust and ashes.”

“You cannot go so far, Mary.”

“I may trespass into the world of the ideal, may I not?”

Bysshe had been listening in silence to their conversation, and I could not help but notice the profound admiration that he evinced for Mary. It seemed to me strange that, after the recent death of Harriet, he should be so struck by another woman. Yet I was not wholly surprised by his interest. I had heard of Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. She was the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman that, as a student in Switzerland, I had read with great fervour. Yes. Fervour is the word. She had instilled in me a love of liberty in all its forms, and I believed that human happiness should be the prerogative of all regardless of sex. I hoped to see in Miss Godwin some sign or token of her mother’s genius. I soon gathered that she had quieter but no less interesting virtues.

Bysshe seemed to divine my interest because, a moment later, he led me to the other end of the room on the excuse that he wished for a “private symposium.”

“I could not have endured the funeral, Victor,” he said. “The horror of it. The senselessness of it. I still think of her as a dear, good girl. I will never lose that memory.”

“What of your child?”

“Ianthe is better with the Westbrooks. I have made arrangements that an annual income be paid to them through my banker.” He looked at me in appeal, as if seeking my approval.

“You have done what is necessary, Bysshe.”

“And what is right?”

“Of course.” I was silent for a moment. “You have mentioned Mr. Godwin to me before.”

“Did I tell you that I visited him in Somers Town? I have always admired him, ever since I read his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. I share his belief that Man can be improved and even perfected.”

“Indeed? How does he reach that conclusion?”

“You never used to be so sceptical, Victor.”

“I merely ask the question.”

“Mr. Godwin is animated by a keen sense of the natural man. The first men were not savage or cruel. In their natural state they were peaceful and benevolent. It is only the tyranny of law and custom that has made us what we are. But man is perfectible. Once we have removed his shackles, he will be capable of perpetual improvement.”

“And you also believe this?”

“It is an article of faith. There was a time, Victor, when you would also have subscribed to it.”

“I do not have all of my old enthusiasm, Bysshe.”

“Are you sure you are quite well? You seem to have lost your spring.”

“It has turned to winter, I am afraid.” I longed to unburden myself to him, to explain all that had occurred in the most exact and methodical manner, but I knew well enough that even Bysshe would deem me to be a madman.

“The deaths of Harriet and of Daniel,” he replied, “have been a monstrous blow to us. You have fallen, dear Victor, into a melancholy from which I vow to save you. You will stay with us here in Marlow until you are quite recovered. We will spend long quiet days at our ease. We will journey along the Thames. You see. Already you are returning to life. Come. Let us join the Godwins.”

It transpired, in the course of conversation, that the father and daughter had decided to settle themselves in Marlow in order to console Bysshe after the death of Harriet. They had rented a house close by but, at Bysshe’s urgent entreaty, they had agreed to take up quarters in Albion House itself. There was room for all, he said, in Albion. I gained the impression that Mr. Godwin was in straitened circumstances and, as a consequence, had welcomed the offer. I wondered, too, if he was also accepting contributions from Bysshe’s purse. Bysshe had not the slightest regard for money.

“I wonder, Mr. Shelley,” Miss Godwin said, “that you keep a boat in this dreadful weather.”

“I have asked you to call me Bysshe.”

“I know. I must learn to forget my manners.” She was a striking young woman, with a mass of black hair descending in curls and ringlets; she had a fine forehead, suggesting a highly developed ideality, and dark expressive eyes. She always looked as if she had just awoken from sleep, and in repose had a dreamy and even passive expression. She looked intently at me as she spoke to me, but would then drift back into some world of private reflection. “Will you join me, Mary, on the water?” Bysshe asked her. “I will show you the delights of the river even in dreadful weather, as you call it. There is an inexpressible comfort in seeing the rain dissolving into the water, and we can shelter beneath the branches of a willow. There is often a mist where the rain and the river are reunited.”

“Will it not be cold?” she asked him.

“Not if you have shawl and bonnet.”

“The hydrologic cycle,” Mr. Godwin said. “There is not one drop of water, more or less, than there was at the creation of the world.”

“Is that not an enchanting thought, Victor?” Bysshe had handed me another glass of Madeira wine. “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.”

“You are quoting an old prayer,” I said, “for deliverance.”

“A prayer of celebration, I think.”

“Eternity fills me with dread,” I replied. “It is not to be imagined.”

“Now there, sir,” Mr. Godwin said, “you have touched upon a great truth. Eternity is incomprehensible. Literally so. Even the angels, if such beings exist, cannot envisage it. Every creature that is made is imbued with a sense of ending.”

The conversation continued in this vein for a little longer, until I pleaded tiredness and was taken by a maidservant to my room. She told me that her name was Martha. “Where is Fred?” I asked her.

“He is in the kitchen, sir, tucking into some ham.”

“Not to be disturbed then.”

“Do you need him, sir?”

“No. Not at all. Leave him to his ham. I will see to myself.” I undressed and lay down upon the bed. It was a stormy night, and the rain lashed the windows; I found a certain comfort in the sound, and very quickly fell asleep.

I WAS STARTLED INTO WAKEFULNESS by a prolonged scream coming from some part of the house close to me. It was a shriek of the utmost terror. I took my gown and hastened into the hallway, with many dark thoughts descending upon me. Suddenly Bysshe appeared in his nightshirt, at the other end of the hallway, and beckoned me to come forward. “Did you hear that?” he asked me.

“Who could not?”

“I believe it came from Mary’s room. Here.” He tapped lightly upon the door, whispering her name.

It was opened a few moments later. “I am sorry,” she said. “There is nothing to fear.” She was wearing a white muslin nightgown, but it was not as luminously pale as her face or her trembling hands. She stood uncertainly, and the door remained half-opened. “I dreamed that I saw a phantom by the window. It was a dream. I am certain of it. There was a face.”

“Of course it was a dream, Mary. But dreams may take on the appearance of a terrible reality. You were right to scream.”

“I am sorry to have awoken you. I awoke myself.”

“Think nothing of it. Now try and sleep.”

She closed the door. Bysshe and I returned to our chambers. I had said nothing during this exchange, but it was a long time before I managed to find rest.

ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING Mr. Godwin was in fine spirits. He had slept peacefully through the night, he told us at breakfast, and was feeling “very sound.” Miss Godwin looked pale still; she could not eat, and said very little. “I have been extolling to Martha the virtues of Baxter’s beetroots,” her father was saying. He helped himself to a large portion of kedgeree. “They are sweet. They are tender. They are delicious. They surpass all others in the kingdom. You must remind Martha of them.”

“I have not seen Martha this morning,” Bysshe replied. “She will be at the market.”

“I will speak to her when she returns.”

We did not mention the incident in the night, but I noticed that Miss Godwin and Bysshe exchanged glances of a private kind: I could not help but think that my friend was growing greatly attached to her. After the meal was over Bysshe repeated his proposal for an expedition on the river. The storm had passed, and the sky was clear. What better morning for a jaunt upon the Thames? Mr. Godwin was enthusiastic at the prospect, and so his daughter dutifully assented. I merely followed the general wish.

We sauntered from the house down the main street towards the river. The Godwins walked ahead, and Bysshe took the opportunity of discussing with me the events of the previous night. “Mary has seen phantoms before,” he said.

“Do you mean ghosts? Spirits?”

“No. Creatures that seem to be of flesh and blood. But they are not truly alive. She dreams of them often.”

“She has not seen one in reality?”

“Of course not. Whatever are you thinking?”

“Thinking of nothing.”

“She knows that they exist only in her sleeping mind. But they scare her. Ah, the river beckons.”

Bysshe had hired a skiff for the duration of his stay, and he kept the vessel by Marlow Bridge. It was large enough for us all, and he took the oars with some aplomb, guiding us from the bank into the main current of the river. In his enthusiasm he began to recite a poem that I did not recognise, but that seemed to be of his own composition:

“O stream,

Whose source is inaccessibly profound,

Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?

Thou imagest my life!”

“That is very fine,” Miss Godwin said. She trailed the fingers of her left hand in the water. “Where is the source?”

“Some say that it is Thames Head. Others insist that it lies at Seven Springs. There is great debate about the matter.”

“Which do you favour?” she asked him.

“I do not understand why a river cannot have two sources. A living being requires two parents, does it not?”

“It is believed,” Mr. Godwin said, “that some molluscs are auto-generative.”

“Too painful to contemplate,” Bysshe replied. We passed a small island in the middle of the river, where two swans were resting. “Faithful until death,” he said.

Miss Godwin looked at him for a moment, and then resumed her contemplation of the water. “It used to be said that the swans greeted the ships sailing home with song,” she said to no one in particular. “But how can that be so?”

“Precisely,” Mr. Godwin said. “They are mute swan.”

“I hope to have a swan-like end, fading in music,” Bysshe replied.

“I would rather prefer swan pie.”

So we continued downriver, following the current. Miss Godwin seemed to be lulled to sleep by the movement of the water, and for a moment closed her eyes. I hoped that she was not dreaming of phantoms. “What was that?” Bysshe asked suddenly.

Miss Godwin opened her eyes very wide. “What?”

“Over there. By the bank. I thought something reared its head and then went under the water.”

“An otter,” Mr. Godwin said. “I understand that they are common here.”

“It did not seem to be an otter. It was too big. Too awkward.” I looked in the direction Bysshe was pointing, and I did indeed notice some perturbation on the surface of the river; it was as if something had gone down to the bottom leaving its wake behind. Mary took her hand out of the water.

Bysshe eased the boat forward with a barely perceptible movement of the oars; the river was muddied, and I could see where the bank had been eroded by more than usual motion. And then I felt the first drops of rain. The sky, so clear before, had suddenly become overcast. The water turned from a lucent green to slate grey, and a cold breeze brushed across us. Bysshe looked up at the sky and laughed. “You see, Mary, you are especially favoured. The river wishes you to see all of its moods.”

“It is only a light rain,” she said.

“We will recline beneath the willow boughs. Here is the spot.”

He manoeuvred the skiff beneath the trailing branches of a willow leaning over the water; it was a natural shelter, of a kind I would once have relished, and my companions seemed happy to remain secluded amid the gentle pattering of the rain around us. Then Miss Godwin spoke in a low voice. “What is that? Oh God, what is it?”

Her eyes were fixed upon a stretch of water just beyond the tree. There was a hand among the trailing weeds, apparently clutching at them; and then on a motion of the current a face broke the surface of the water. A few moments later the whole body emerged, with a white linen nightgown billowing around it. “God, God, God.” Miss Godwin chanted the word.

“What is this frightful thing?”

I do not know who spoke. The words might have come from my own mouth.

Bysshe leapt from the bench and quickly steered the skiff towards the body; then with the oars he managed to push it against the bank, where it was caught amid the roots and weeds. He jumped from the boat onto the bank, and managed to haul the corpse on shore before it floated further downstream. “It cannot be,” he said. “This is Martha.” He stepped back, and stood at a short distance from the body without saying anything further. Miss Godwin clung to her father, and pressed her head against his jacket.

“Whatever has happened?” Godwin seemed genuinely puzzled, as if he had come upon a calculation he could not settle. I clambered out of the boat onto the shore, and surveyed Martha. Her body had been pinched and bruised in death, no doubt by immersion in the water, but there were also livid marks around her neck and upper thorax. I had no doubt that she had been strangled before being consigned to the river; Harriet Westbrook had met approximately the same fate in the Serpentine.

“I saw her last night,” Bysshe said. “She was eating ham in the kitchen.”

“With Fred.”

“She was brimful of laughter, as usual. What is to be done, Victor? What are we to make of this fearful thing?”

“We will be steady, Bysshe. We will take the body back to Marlow, and alert the parish constables. We must leave the matter in their hands.”

“Why would she have wished to drown herself?”

“I do not know that she did.”

“Could she have fallen into the river in some terrible accident?”

“Do you see the marks upon her neck and body? She was held in a powerful grip.”

He looked at me in horror. “Is that possible? That she was destroyed by someone?”

“I believe so. Now is not the time to debate, Bysshe. We must act with urgency. Come. Help me with the body.”

“I cannot touch her, Victor. I cannot.”

Miss Godwin would not stay in the skiff with the corpse of Martha. But with the help of her father I managed to place the body in the boat. It was agreed that Bysshe and Mr. Godwin would take it back to Marlow, while Miss Godwin and I would walk back along the bank to the town. We watched as the skiff slowly made its way upstream with its unhappy burden. She was silent as we began our walk beside the bank. “I know it is wrong of me,” she said eventually, “but I cannot help thinking of Ophelia. There is a willow grows aslant a brook. You know it, Mr. Frankenstein?”

“Please call me Victor.”

“We have gone beyond ceremony, I think. You shall call me Mary.”

“Ophelia drowned herself, did she not?”

“Her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death. Those are the words of the queen. Not mine.”

“I am afraid that Martha may not have been a suicide.”

She stopped, and was seized with a fit of coughing. It was as if she were trying to expel something from her body. After a few moments she recovered.

“You mean that someone has killed her?”

“I believe so. Yes.”

“I knew it. I knew it when I saw her in the weeds.”

“What made you suspect it?” I was eager to hear her account, touching, as it might, upon my own secret.

“The face at the window,” she replied. “It was no dream. No phantasm. I am sure of that now. I had tried to comfort myself, and you, with my explanation last night. But it was not a face I had ever seen before in my dreams.”

“Can you describe it, Mary?”

“It seemed crumpled, creased rather, like a sheet of paper hastily thrown away. The eyes were of such malevolence that even now I shudder.”

It was clear enough to me that she had seen the creature. He had come to the house at Marlow in pursuit of me and my friends, with the object of performing another act of vengeance. “You must tell the constables everything you saw,” I said. “There will be a search for this demon.” I had conceived the hope, only half-formed, that the creature might be taken and killed by the mob-or that in some other way he might be destroyed by the forces of the law.

“Demon? No. He was a man, I believe, but one of terrible appearance.”

“We must speak to the constables as quickly as possible. They may be able to capture this man before he can flee.”

“It is possible, Victor, that he wished to murder me. Only my scream prevented him. But then poor Martha-” She said no more. We walked the rest of the way in silence.