Frankenstein's Bride (6 page)

Mrs. Jacoby had said nothing would persuade Maria to write more than the odd scribbled word—and that she could do. He added,
“Cannot—will not—I do not know. Sweet-natured and good as she appears, I wonder if there is not something hard, uncooperative,
obstinate about the girl.”

For my part, I wondered if, like many a teacher, in the momentary frustration of making no progress with a pupil, Victor was
not resorting to blaming his student, instead of devising a method to encourage her.

“You cannot mean that she is a fraud—could write but will not and therefore—could speak but will not?” I asked wonderingly.

“No,” he said. “But there must be something—some machinery—which would make her speak.”

I saw in him the ever-enthusiastic, ever-able student unable to believe there are those in the world who cannot learn. This
was to him a battle which he must win. Mercifully at that moment in came his charming wife and offered us tea; Victor became
more easy and the atmosphere more cordial. We began to talk rationally about finding some method to make Maria talk, deciding
that one course would be to ask Maria to start by singing, then induce her to say the words of the song instead of singing
them. It was a simple plan, but simplicity is sometimes effective.

We did not begin that week, or the week after, for Maria was studying a new operetta,
Hera's Revenge
by Maestro Valli and encountering difficulties with the work. Rehearsals were prolonged and, as she was also performing daily
at die playhouse in another piece it was not until that gloomy afternoon in November, which I have previously described, that
we met again at Cheyne Walk in the same small parlor as before.

Though the fire burned, fog from the river crept through the drawn curtains making the atmosphere in the room obscure. Once
again, Mrs. Jacoby, now in a thick Paisley shawl, sat by the window. Maria was in her old position by the fire, with Victor
again opposite her and I between them.

Victor explained to Maria the plan that she should begin with song then modify the song into speech. She appeared to understand
what was said, though she frowned a little, whether because she disliked the idea or because she secretly believed it would
not work. I do not know. I said, recalling the happy evening at Old Hall in Kent when we had all so merrily sung “Youth's
the season made for joys” from Mr. Gay's
The Beggar's
Opera
, that I would dearly love to hear Maria sing some of the work and she cheerfully agreed.

I shall never forget, even after all that occurred later, the spectacle of that small, slender figure, standing at the fireplace
as, in that thrilling voice, she began to sing the simple air, forget her beautifully shaped face and great, sad eyes turned
slightly upwards, the fall of her black curls, the perfect oval of her opened mouth giving out such a glorious, effortless
sound in the dull, foggy room.

Dance and sing, Time's on the wing,
Life never knows the return of spring
Let us drink and sport today,
Love with youth flies swift away.

Perhaps it was then I became fascinated by her, doomed to fulfill the dark suspicions I thought Cordelia Downey harbored concerning
my motives in wishing to assist Victor in his work with Maria Clementi. I sat entranced, wishing that this perfect, untouched
creature—for so she seemed to me at that time—could be mine.

A part of me, recognizing danger, tried to insist it was the artist, not the woman I admired. But this was not true. I felt
hopeless longing. When she finished her song I sat in awe, knowing how few men can have been so privileged as to have sat
on a drab afternoon, in an ordinary room, hearing Maria sing. But I yearned for her at that moment and whatever occurred later
I cannot swear I ever lost that longing. Bluntly, she was an actress; she was mute. Both in terms of society and because of
her disablement I knew she could have become unconditionally mine. I am a man. I think as men do and I am no better than the
others.

Then, our efforts had to begin. The song had been well chosen for our purposes, and it ought to have been easy enough to eliminate
the music from it, gradually turning the song into speech, rather like operatic recitative. Or like a chanted psalm, half-speech,
half-song. This exercise, as I say, should have been easy—but was not. Maria would sing a line with perfect purity, would
sing it in a minor key if required to do so, but what it seemed she could not do was take the song word by word, or make the
words sound like ordinary speech. It was as though she saw words and music as one single entity and could not separate the
two. Asking her to break up a phrase into its component parts was as if one required a bird to stop its song at a certain
point or slow it, or repeat a phrase of its cadence. A bird could not do this; nor, apparently, could Maria.

All afternoon we labored, altering from song to song, then attempting some psalms. But Maria could not “drone” psalms any
more than she could “speak” songs, though her voice rose and fell like an angel's. An hour passed, then another. Victor's
demands grew sharper and Maria, I thought, began to tire. At one point I glanced at Mrs. Jacoby and her face told me she was
regretting the exercise. As Victor felt doubt and fatigue overwhelming hope he grew ever more determined, while my role became
less that of the helper and witness of the attempt, more that of one trying to contain the worst elements of the struggle.
It was then that Maria, unprompted, embarked on the lament addressed to Aeneas by the deserted Queen Dido in Purcel's opera,
Dido and Aeneas
, wherein she sadly sings: “When I am laid in earth, may my wrongs create no trouble in thy breast. Remember me—but forget
my fate.”

I was entranced. I glanced at Victor who was strained and pale. He looked like a man who had been struck. Then he rallied
and broke into the song, chanting unmelodically the words for her to imitate, “My wrongs create no trouble—Remember me . .
.” And Maria tried to copy him—and sang, her voice soaring to the ceiling. And “Remember me,” said Victor in a speaking voice,
and “Remember me” sang Maria. They went over and over it until Maria followed Victor, who had once more said-sung “Remember
me,” by bursting triumphantly out with the rest of the song—and concluding it. Victor sprang from his chair with an exclamation
of impatience he could not control—at which poor Maria sat down abruptly, put her hands to her face and broke into dreadful,
soundless sobs. Victor was at her side in an instant, kneeling at her side with his arms around her, soothing her, apologizing
for his behavior: “I have pressed you too hard. I am a villain. Forgive me—I have asked too much of you.” These were the muttered
words I heard.

This scene, I must admit in my brutal Saxon way, struck me at the time as “foreign,” over-emotional, lacking in restraint.
This, at any rate, was how I explained these outpourings of emotion on Victor's part, and the fact that Maria, whose tears
had ceased continued to sit bent in her chair, apparently listening to his explanations and apologies. But his words were
extreme and the situation hardly suitable between a man and a woman, the man married. This was quickly perceived by the already
uneasy Mrs. Jacoby, who was soon close to the pair, urging Victor to his feet. She then confronted him, saying stiffly, “I
am sure Maria knows you are doing all you can to help her, but she is tired and has a performance tonight. I must take her
away to rest.”

Which she did. Farewells were made and, as they left, I saw Maria turn back in the doorway fixing those great luminous eyes
on Victor's with the expression, I thought, of a loved, and loving dog—then she was gone.

That look of hers alarmed me. I then told Victor I must leave myself, but he scarcely heard, I think, for he was standing
by the window looking out, not down to the road, where Maria and Mrs. Jacoby were departing in their carriage, but through
the darkening air, across the river.

Elizabeth Frankenstein was in the hall as I left. I raised my hand to her in farewell as I walked off, but in that light,
with snow falling, I saw her only as an obscure, monochromatic figure standing in her own doorway, like a ghost.

Not three minutes later came the moment when I observed that monstrous figure on the wharf, who, later, raised his accusatory
arm towards the house in Cheyne Walk, howling out his grief. You may well imagine how disturbed I was at this scene, following
so hard on the earlier events at Cheyne Walk.

So shaken was I by my afternoon—for, though there was superficially nothing in it truly to disturb a young healthy man with
strong nerves, I
was
disturbed—that after my diversion at the Voyagers' Club on my return home, I quietly took my place by Cordelia Downey's parlor
fire, saying nothing about the events of the afternoon. What I might have told her was too nebulous and too disturbing. And
she herself was tired after a trying domestic day and her daughter's invalid demands, for little Flora, was in bed with a
cold.

So we chatted for a little time and then I took my candle up to my room. There the idea came to me that if we, Victor and
I, were really to assist Maria to speak, then I would do well to keep a record of our procedures. Whether Victor himself were
doing this or not, I reasoned, in such a cases, two accounts can be more useful than one. So, taking a pile of paper and a
pen I sat shivering (for my fire had not been lit) and, heading the first page of my account with the date, November the eleventh,
I then solidly set down, in every detail, what had occurred that day. And throughout the horrible events I shall go on to
describe I continued to make this daily record; which is why I am now able to give a complete account, from my point of view,
of what passed. You may picture me, during that winter of 1825 in my small sitting-room on the second floor, furnished barely,
with table, chair, chest, and sometimes without a fire, often chilled cold, sometimes shivering with horror and incredulity,
as I made my recording. Many times as I wrote, I thought I was mad.

F I V E

IWOKE UNREFRESHED after a troubled night, my sleep penetrated by repeated strains of music, by the anguished face of Maria,
by the howls of that great creature on the quay. Just before I woke, I dreamed that the sad expression of Maria as she tried,
hopelessly, to speak, and the twisted, beetle-browed face of the creature on the quay changed places. On Maria's face I saw
ferocity and torment, while the great savage man's expression as he pointed North and howled was replaced by the pleading
countenance of Maria. Unable to sleep longer, I rose, dressed and was downstairs before the sun was fully up.

Yet evidently I had not risen before Victor, for not long after, I was handed a note which had been delivered earlier by one
of his servants. It said only, “Come to me early, I beg you. I must speak to you.”

“I must go early to Mr. Frankenstein's,” I told Cordelia, who was pouring tea.

She mused, “Mr. Hathaway is waiting for your dictionary.”

True enough, for, as I have remarked, my friend David Hathaway, respected bookseller and printer, was very desirous of having
my dictionary of Aramaic to print and publish and I had all too often put forward the date on which I was to deliver it to
him. Perhaps I ought to have seen Mrs. Downey's criticism as a warning rather than a reproach. In general I lack the usual
masculine ability to ignore the voices of women. Men ask, why listen to the voices of those ill-educated creatures, whose
limited intellectual capacity leads them to concern themselves only with bonnets and the dishonesty of laundry women? True
enough—yet in practice I cannot always ignore the comments of women for they can often come to wise conclusions based on no
experience or information whatsoever. I have often wondered how this can be. However, this time I accepted neither reproach
nor warning.

“So, Mrs. Downey, you disapprove still of the attempt to help Maria Clementi?” I enquired.

What woman asked for a comment will deny you one? She instantly responded with a question, “Would you be so concerned for
her if she were a nasty old man with a beard?”

At this I laughed and she crossly added, “You know nothing of the past.”

“Miss Clementi, being mute, is hardly in a position to account for her past life,” said I.

“I did not make myself clear. I spoke of the past life of Mr. Frankenstein,” said she.

“Mrs. Downey,” I answered her, “I do not think, with all respect, that you know at all what you are talking about.”

Happily this exchange ended when a maid came in to announce the coalman had arrived bringing the wrong supplies.

As Victor's note was urgent, I went straight to Cheyne Walk in a hired carriage. There the butler, a reliable-looking middle-aged
man, led me straight to Victor's study. He turned from the window where he had been standing with a paper in his hand and
declared, in great agitation, “See this! It is a letter from Mrs. Jacoby saying Miss Clementi will come here no more! The
visits are tiring, says the woman, and each defeat plunges Maria deeper into despondency. Maria cannot mean it! She is under
the influence of her foul companion. It may be she does not even know what that woman is doing in her name. We must go to
her, Jonathan.”

This vehemence bewildered me. I did not find it so strange that Maria had become discouraged by our lack of progress. And
Victor's impatience at the end of the last meeting had caused her distress. It seemed all too probable she had decided to
discontinue the efforts to help her regain or discover her powers of speech. I attempted to reason with Victor, saying, “Victor—Victor—my
dear fellow—let us think calmly what to do.”

“We must go to her immediately,” was all he said.

“Victor,” I said, “we cannot assume that this letter does not convey Miss Clementi's own decision.”

“That is nonsense—nonsense,” he said passionately. “She has been influenced. We must go to her.”

As I have said, I saw ample reason why Miss Clement! might herself want to end her lessons, not least of which was the very
ferocity of passion about them that Victor now demonstrated. Nor was she a lady of leisure who might spend the afternoon with
Victor and consider herself as well entertained as if she had spent the time visiting on other ladies for tea and conversation.
Each night Maria Clementi faced an audience to whom she was a goddess—and knew no doubt that if she began to disappoint her
worshippers they would soon enough become her revilers. Such is the nature of fame. But Victor's agitation was so dreadful
that, to calm him, I unwisely agreed to go with him to call at Maria's house.

To my alarm he proposed to start immediately. It was barely nine o'clock. I pointed out that it was too early to call, and
that a stage performer may sleep later into the morning than other folk, but he would have none of this. He ordered his carriage
to be brought to the door and only half an hour later we were at the tall house in Russell Square that Maria had taken, I
assume, because of its proximity to the theatre. This was an imposing dwelling, and very well furnished. As I had anticipated
Maria had not yet risen and we were shown into a handsome dining-room decorated in the Chinese style, with an oriental carpet
on the floor and many charming vases in niches round the room.

Mrs. Jacoby, who was arranging a handsome lacquer table for breakfast, greeted us with some surprise. She was beginning, politely,
to offer us some hospitality when Victor, still standing in the doorway, (the manservant behind him vainly asking if he might
take his coat,) immediately burst out, “Mrs. Jacoby—what is the meaning of this letter? Do you know what you are doing? I
will not accept the termination of my efforts to help Miss Clementi!”

Mrs. Jacoby, plainly trying to contain anger at his tone, replied coolly, “Mr. Frankenstein. I wrote to you because Miss Clementi
indicated to me that she no longer wishes to continue to visit you. She does not feel your efforts are helping her and she
finds your manner unsympathetic.”

“How can you tell?” he demanded. “You put words into her mouth because she cannot speak. Let me see her.”

“She is in her room,” Mrs. Jacoby told him.

“Then I shall wait until she descends,” he said and sat down at the table. I began to regret very much I had not prevented
Victor from making this assault on the house in Russell Square. I had believed that once we had arrived he would moderate
his behavior, but this was certainly not the case. I could not comprehend this rude and bullying behavior; he seemed a different
man. I suggested we might leave and find a better time to talk to Maria.

Mrs. Jacoby regarded me with some scorn, as Victor responded instantly, “No. This matter must be settled now.”

Then she allowed her anger to show. “There is no ‘must' about it, Mr. Frankenstein. Miss Clementi does not wish to continue
her meetings with you. I wrote on her behalf to inform you of that fact. You have come here, uninvited, at an early hour and
settled down to wait for her without invitation, and I must confess I find your behavior unseemly. Mr. Frankenstein—Miss Clementi
is a young woman without family, unprotected in the world, whose only resources come from what she earns, by her own talents,
which she must preserve. Her mental equilibrium is therefore essential to her. She has told you her wishes. Please respect
them.”

“You wish to keep her away from the world, no doubt,” Victor said. “Her talents are your fortune, and I suppose you want to
keep them to yourself. Perhaps it would be unfortunate for you if Miss Clementi recovered her voice and were able to meet
the world on equal terms. I must see her, to learn from her what she truly wants.”

Victor's language was shocking and I opened my mouth to restore him to order, only to find Mrs. Jacoby before me, and perfectly
equal to the task.

“It appears you have parted from your reason, Mr. Frankenstein, and I hope for your sake the condition is temporary. But while
you are in this state I do not want you in this house. You will kindly leave.”

And at that point Maria, fresh in a simple morning gown of pale yellow, her short curls piled on her head, entered with a
charming smile, apparently unaware of any troubling situation.

She went to kiss Mrs. Jacoby, then offered her hand to Victor and myself. As she did this, and before Victor could speak,
as he evidently wished to, Mrs. Jacoby said to Maria in a gentle voice, “Maria, my dear. Mr. Frankenstein has come to ask
you to reconsider your intention to break off your lessons with him. Will you let him know in some manner that your decision
not to continue is firm, and your own?”

But Maria did nothing, only gazing at Victor, gently smiling while he stood still, his eyes fixed on hers, his face very pale.

“Maria,” said Mrs. Jacoby, “please indicate your wishes to Mr. Frankenstein.”

As this went on I heard the front door bang and then some steps in the hall. The dining-room door then opened and in stepped
as obnoxious a fellow as I have seen for many a long day. They say you should not judge a man by his appearance, but one glance
at this person said all there was to say about him. He was clad from top to toe in a dreadful shade of burgundy. His trousers
were too tight, his boots too glossy, the black hat under his arm too high. His face was long and sallow, his head covered
with oiled black curls. He had weary dark eyes, of the kind which have looked on too many dawns without benefit of sleep.
He showed very white teeth as he stood, smiling, or rather, posing in the doorway, as if for his portrait. This was Gabriel
Mortimer, Maria's impresario, fop, dandy—and villain.

He looked very coolly at Victor and myself as Mrs. Jacoby introduced us. She did not mention the reason for our presence.
Mortimer nodded to each of us and told Mrs. Jacoby, “I have come with information about Maestro Valli's
Hera's Revenge
. The composer wants the order of three scenes changed and nothing will persuade him to leave matters as they are.”

Victor, ignoring Mortimer completely, urged Maria, “Please, Maria. Come to me again next week. I implore you—for your own
sake, do as I say.”

And Maria—nodded!

“Maria!” cried Mrs. Jacoby in reproachful tones. Could it be true, as Victor believed, that she had indeed attempted to force
a separation between the poor mute woman and the man who might save her from perpetual silence?

“Thank God,” cried Victor. “Oh—thank God!”—and Maria smiled.

Some chilly adieux followed and Victor, nodding briefly at Mortimer, left the room. Having said goodbye to Mortimer myself,
I was bidding Mrs. Jacoby farewell when she went with me to the door, saying in a low voice, “Will you be at Frankenstein's
when Maria next goes there?” and I replied that I hoped I would.

“Try,” she said then. “I would be most grateful if you would attend.”

Uncertain within myself, I agreed I would do my best to do what she asked. But as I joined Victor in the street I wondered
what role Captain Jacoby's widow was playing in this strange affair. Victor, as we parted outside the house, questioned nothing;
he was all happiness, overjoyed that Maria had come back to him.

Nevertheless, I was puzzled. Was Mrs. Jacoby a female villain, controlling the life of Maria for her own reasons? Or had Maria
told her at some point that she did want to cease her lessons with Victor and then simply changed her mind? Where did the
unsavory Gabriel Mortimer figure in the affair? If Mrs. Jacoby were indeed a villain, and Mortimer pretty certainly another,
in what dreadful situation was Maria placed, helplessly, between that pair? I thought Maria's innocence must have been preserved,
despite daily contact with this dreadful fellow, only because she could not converse with him.

As I walked back to my lodgings, another thought occurred to me. I am a virtuous man now, to the extent of my poor powers
and even at the time of which we speak I was not indulging myself in dalliance with women. In fact I had made a resolution
that before the hot blood of youth turned to the thin blood of debauchery I would make what efforts I could to mend my ways,
for no sight is more repellent than an aging man creeping about after women when he should be at his work or his own fireside.
Yet I recalled how often in the past I had played the old game of creeping downstairs from a bedroom, shoes in my hand, then
opening the front door from the inside, slamming it as if I had just come in, and then—on with the shoes and—lo—entering the
parlor comes honest young Jack Trueblood, calling with an open smile just as if he had not spent all night in that very house,
upstairs in bed with Polly Perkins.

I could not be sure Gabriel Mortimer's entry that morning had not been an appearance of the kind I have described. I had not
heard the bell ring or the knocker knock. I had not heard a servant go to the door. Perhaps, then, he had a key to the house
but that would hardly be suitable—a man with the key to a house inhabited by two ladies? But if he had been in the house all
along and only crept down from upstairs? What a picture that raised in the mind! My chivalrous soul—or, rather, my jealous
soul—roused up on Maria's behalf. Was Mortimer Mrs. Jacoby's lover? That would make her predicament, mute and unbe-friended,
except by that pair, even more frightful, her position as pawn in their game more frightful still.