Frankenstein's Bride (15 page)

I took a hasty leave of her and Mortimer, wondering if they laughed at me once I was down in the street. I walked home, cursing
myself for a fool, resolving never to see her again nor have anything to do with her. It would not take much for her to ruin
me, as she had ruined poor Victor. That innocence was false, she had deceived me, Maria Clementi was a serpent. As I walked
I began to wonder ruefully if Wheeler would succeed in mesmerizing her or would she, with those great eyes, mesmerize him?

Once home I discovered Cordelia and Mrs. Frazer were off visiting, attended by the faithful Gilmore—and was pleased for once
to find them away from the house, for I was thoroughly shaken and ashamed of myself and needed time to recover from that great
wave of sick desire and the equally strong impulse of resistance. Time, and past the time to be gone from London, I thought
I had done what I could and now it was for Mortimer and Wheeler to put their heads together and decide how the matter of the
mesmerism should go on.

Then mercifully the thaw came and by the end of February sun and wind had cleared the thaw, or most of it, and the roads were
open again. Our decision was made—we would take Mrs. Frazer's coach North. Cordelia, myself and little Flora would at last
get to Nottingham, Mrs. Frazer would spend a few days with us and then, with Gilmore as ever, proceed home to Scotland.

Late in the evening before our departure the hall was full of corded boxes, young Flora was up and down from her bed crying
out she was unable to sleep, and Cordelia busy giving instructions to her maid and cook, who were to stay behind to mind the
house. Just then a servant brought me a message from Mr. Wheeler. I opened this missive, addressed in his flourishing blue
ink.

“
Sir
,” the letter began.

“I have had a first encounter with Miss Clementi and am satisfied
she can speak! This is most wonderful and surprising to me.
But I am afraid to go further with our meetings as I am most
alarmed. Will you meet me urgently for I must discuss this matter
with you. Mr. Mortimer is all for going on with the experiments,
but I am doubtful and, alas, cannot think of anyone other
than yourself to consult. May I therefore take the liberty of calling
tomorrow at noon? Please let me know if this is not convenient
to you. At all events I beg for an early interview.”

Yet we were eagerly expected at Kittering Hall by my father and sisters and my sister's intended husband, and this was the
occasion on which I was to introduce Cordelia as my wife-to-be. Having been already detained by bad weather, I could not allow
an occasion so important to all of us to be postponed again.

I knew, too, that I must resist the temptation to have any more to do with Maria. If I did, I could lose all. Worse, I could
lose all, and not care what I lost.

Accordingly I left a note with Cordelia's servant telling Wheeler we had left for a journey and he might write to me if he
chose at Kittering. Thus we departed Gray's Inn Road next morning early, leaving behind the glooms, the frights—and perhaps,
just as importantly, the temptations—of London.

F O U R T E E N

WE MADE STEADY SPEED, with Gilmore at the reins, though the carriage was heavily laden. Flora, who had done little traveling
in her life, was full of excitement and I was pleased to see that the journey put my dear Cordelia in good heart, in spite,
perhaps, of her being a little nervous of her reception by her new family.

As we moved North in cold but sparkling weather, my restlessness and anxiety began to abate.

We decided to put up at an inn half-way and it was here, as Gilmore and I occupied ourselves with the horses in the stables,
that he turned to me and asked for more news of Frankenstein. He had heard of the attack, of course, as had all London. I
told him what I could. He said only, “I truly believe that the poor creature which the doctor kept locked up on Orkney was
a man, however degraded his condition, and that the fellow has come back for him.”

I responded I thought he might be right and we should all thank God we were away from London. To this he assented heartily.

When we arrived at Kittering my father, Arabella and Anna were there to give us a warm welcome. Also at the house was the
good Dudley Hight, who would marry Arabella in May. Mrs. Frazer stayed on with us for a few days, so we were a large and merry
party. Little Flora rejoiced in the freedom of having a large house and a whole estate to roam in, rapidly becoming a favorite
of my father's estate manager, who found a pony from somewhere and was soon taking her round with him, he in front on his
big bay, she plugging on behind on Tansy, as her pony was called. On one memorable night, not long after our arrival, they
went out to watch badgers play under the moon.

I cannot speak too highly of the warmth of the greeting given Cordelia by my father and sisters. I knew—who could not have?—that
my father had hopes of a better match for me, in worldly terms, than a solicitor's poor widow, with a growing girl of her
own. Yet he welcomed her cordially and full-heartedly, taking an instant liking to her, as did my sisters. It was no disadvantage
that my father soon discovered what neither Cordelia nor I had found out ourselves—that he had been at Trinity with her father,
John Jessop. We laughed much over dinner to hear of the capers they had had in their university days. We found the college
had rechristened Cordelia's father Radical Jack in his youth because of the nature of his views. It would seem that Jack had
kept a couple of wolfhounds in his room and a pair of hawks, which had not delighted either his fellow students or the college
authorities. There had been all kinds of roistering, gaming and running up of debts in the circles in which father and Jack
Jessop had moved, enough to make me rueful, when I recalled the many admonitory letters I had received from my watchful parent
during my college days.

So there was laughter, there were visits from neighbors and kinsfolk in the locality and comings and goings from one house
to another. Among the ladies, of course, was much exchange of patterns, discussions of the latest style and countless demonstrations
of stitchings, launderings, tuckings, ruchings and gopher-ings—all matters mysterious to men and giving some answer to the
mystery of why ladies have, mercifully, so little energy left over from their interests to devote to deep study and philosophical
speculation. So there were four days of pleasure and gaiety until some five days after our arrival, when, like a cloud coming
over a perfect day, another disturbing letter arrived from Augustus Wheeler.

That morning we were to go hunting, the hunt due to assemble at Kittering Hall. All was excitement and flurry, Flora had been
up since daybreak, having been given leave to follow the hunt on her pony from a safe distance. Dressed for riding we broke
our fast from laden tables, with whatever neighbors had arrived betimes. Meanwhile outside the house was confusion as grooms
brought up our saddled horses or held the mounts of the early-comers. It was a bright morning and we all looked keenly forward
to the day. In the midst of all, a boy came up from the village with letters.

Even as servants cleared the tables and others carried round hot punch to the mounted riders outside, even as I heard the
baying of the hounds being brought up the drive to the house, I opened Wheeler's letter, suddenly gloomy, suspecting the happy
days at Kittering had been only a respite from the affairs of Victor Frankenstein, not an ending of them.

Whatever the message, though, I declared to myself, I would not leave Kittering. The letter read:

“My dear Mr. Goodall,
“I much regret having missed you in London and now consider it
most necessary to communicate to you the strange and alarming
results of my first encounter with Miss Clementi, whom you
asked me to visit. I am sorry to disturb you in this way but you
must, and I think would wish, to hear of this, since you were good
enough to suggest I might be able to help her.

“
First I should say that in the past I have been asked to bring
my powers to bear on certain mystifying cases where there is no
seeming cause for the patient's affliction. In attempting to relieve
these conditions, much like any Physician, I have had my cures,
my failures and those apparent successes which do not endure
because, after a brief remission, the sufferer lapses back into his
previous condition. But I have never experienced anything like
what I met with on my visit to Miss Clementi, not because it was
a failure—indeed, the encounter contained promise of future success.
But it was very alarming, so much so that I am anxious
about continuing my treatment.

“I went to Miss Clementi's house in Russell Square on February
19th, the day before I sought my interview with you. I arrived
at about half past two and was welcomed by Miss Clementi herself
and her impresario Mr. Mortimer. Another gentleman, never
introduced to me, arrived a little later and was present with Mr.
Mortimer during the proceedings.

“I would have preferred another lady, some relative or trusted
companion, to be present—indeed I had assumed such a person
would be there. Had I foreseen what would occur I would have
insisted. But as it was, although I found the absence of any lady
and the presence of Mr. Mortimer and the young gentleman a little
unusual, I saw no reason to object. I recognized the unknown
gentleman as having been present at one of my exhibitions at a
private house, though I did not then know his name.

“It may have been Miss Clementi herself was not fully at ease
in this situation. At any rate she proved singularly hard to mesmerize.
My method is, in accordance with established practice, to
persuade the object of my study to sink into a trance by the
swinging of some object (I use a crystal on a silver chain) before
his eyes while speaking to him in a low voice, thus relaxing his
mind and persuading him into the necessary state of trance.

“As I swung the crystal on its chain before her, Miss Clementi
sat in one chair, while I sat opposite in a similar chair, drawn up
close. During this exercise Mr. Mortimer and his friend stood
against a wall close to the door, to witness this procedure, acting
in a most deplorable and quite unsuitable way, talking loudly to
each other and at one point calling for wine. This undesirable
atmosphere may also have made its contribution to the difficulty
I found in having any effect on Miss Clementi. She was not an
easy subject for mesmerism. The normal individual approaching
mesmerism will either be willing to comply, or adopt a kind of
nervous defiance of it, the former attitude being more common
with ladies, the latter, with gentlemen. Miss Clementi reacted in
neither of these ways but sat in her chair, charmingly, regarding
the swinging crystal with a kind of neutral interest.

“I presumed that, hardened by her own work on the stage, she
believed at bottom my scientific experiments in mesmerism to be
some form of illusion, as with a magician or conjuror. In vain I
swung the crystal to and fro before her, uttering what some have
called my ‘incantations' (in fact a mélange of suggestions to her
that she should repose herself and fall into a reverie).

“At one point, the crystal proving ineffective, I asked her to
look into my own eyes, hoping thus to influence her. This I ceased
to do, for, when she turned her gaze to mine I saw an emptiness
in her eyes which alarmed me. They were like great dark pools,
the pupils being much enlarged. They were almost, at that
moment, if I dare say it, like the eyes of an animal, quite inhuman.
I suspected for a moment, I confess, that she was turning the
tables on me—attempting to entrance me.”

Here, I think, I laid the letter down on the mantelpiece. The room had emptied. Through the long windows I could see, on the
grass outside, the crowd of horsemen and those who would follow on foot. The hounds wove in and out of the melee; there was
all the gaiety and anticipation of the moments before a hunt sets off. I could hear cries, laughter, the baying of dogs and
noted in the jostling throng, the groom holding my horse and gazing questioningly in my direction. Cordelia, who was mounted
(to follow, not to hunt), nudged her chestnut through the crush and rode close to the windows, also, mutely, asking me when
I would emerge. I gestured to her with the letter and indicated I would not be long. An unconfident rider, she turned her
horse and urged it through to where it was less crowded.

Now that I had begun to read this letter, though every line pointed towards an alarming conclusion, I thought that I had better
finish it for good or ill. As I read on I heard the horn begin to blow, the hounds go off at full cry and the thud of hooves
galloping away. I pictured the hunt streaming off over the grass towards the fields beyond. They had found a scent quickly,
as I had believed they might, for only the night before, leaning from my window, I had seen a pair of foxes playing on the
grass outside the house. I had told no one of this, thinking to give them a chance—I am great for the chase but not for the
kill, as many are, would they but confess it. As the sounds grew fainter I stood alone in the room, continuing to read Wheeler's
letter, which went on:

“Some fifteen minutes after I had commenced my efforts to
induce a trance in Miss Clementi, I believe I had worn down her
resistance for, though she herself was not aware of it, as I continued
to swing the crystal, her eyelids began to droop—the two
against the wall, I am forced to say, continuing their racket as if
they were at an inn. Ere long Miss Clementi became lethargic, I
took her two hands in mine, her eyes opened, then closed again.
She was at last in a trance.

“Mr. Mortimer and his companion, observing some change in
the situation, now stopped their banter and came closer. I then
commanded Miss Clementi to open her eyes. She did. She was
under my influence at last.

“I began by asking her a few trifling questions, to which she
did not respond in any way. I then said, ‘Maria—you know you
can speak. And now you must speak. Speak now.' She did not, but
I observed her head twitching a little, as if in agitation, and that
she breathed faster. The two men were now all attention. I knew
I must proceed slowly and with care. I recognized Miss Clementi
was an imperfect subject for mesmerism. She was one of those
rare persons who, even in a trance, retain some final controls.
And I recognized it was my reference to her inability to speak
which caused her such agitation.

“Mr. Goodall—on one occasion long ago I continued to
demand answers to questions which disturbed my subject rather
as I was now disturbing Miss Clementi. I will not describe the
consequences but they were very grave and I vowed I would never
do such a thing again. But I had witnesses urging me on as if they
were at a cockfight; I had the most intense curiosity to get to the
heart of this intriguing mystery. I took a risk I should not have
taken and repeated my words to her, telling her that she could
speak and must speak. Alas, her agitation increased. She began to
toss her head from side to side with the very motion of a woman
trying to keep strangling hands from her neck. Her chest rose and
fell convulsively as if she were about to go into a frenzy. And still
she made no sound.

“Then her mouth opened. She screamed. She cried, ‘The fire!
I'm burning! The fire!' Then she screamed again, then began
twisting in her chair as if in great pain, as if, veritably, burning.

“I reached forward, took her by the shoulders, put my face to
hers and was about to demand that she woke, for the pain she was
in seemed terrible, when her body suddenly relaxed and she
began, my face still close to hers, but completely unaware of my
presence, to sing, in French, in a childish voice—by no means
that of the Maria Clementi we have heard on the stage. What she
sang was that odious ditty of the French revolutionaries, the ça
ira, which they sang as they advanced through the streets and
countryside of France to kill and loot their fellow countrymen.
Though that song is half a century old now, it still represents that
spirit of frenzied rebellion which brings a shudder to all who
remember the past—or fear the future. ‘Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira...' she
sang, but as if—to me, it seemed—she had learned it as a child at
her mother's or father's knee. Not such a strange idea, I suppose,
for nothing is known of her past. Perhaps her parents had worn
the red bonnet of the Revolution.