Outcasts (28 page)

Round and round her thought circled, restless, coming back always to one theme: her father. Why, after raising her to believe that marriage was a trap and that freedom of individual choice was paramount, had he cast her out and abandoned her? Had he seen some flaw in her, some imperfection? Mary knew her father had spent his life raising her to be the image of her mother, and she was content with that. To be the mirror of her strong and beautiful mother, to be created and fortified in that image, was much to
her liking. But her father had turned his face from her, leaving her cold and alone.

Separated from her lover by her sister, Mary lay alone and wakeful long into the night.

He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse with, and acquire knowledge from, beings of a superior nature: but I was wretched, helpless, and alone.

—Frankenstein,
Volume III,
Chapter VII

A
rriving early
at the Villa Diodati the next morning, Mary found Polidori on the sofa. His pale face, sweaty brow and disarranged cravat told her he was in some distress; his naked foot nested in a mound of bandages told her why.

“Let me help,” she said, advancing toward him.

He held up a hand. “Pray do not disturb yourself, Mrs. Shelley,” he said. “I can manage well enough.”

Mary eyed the torn strips of sheeting that lay crumpled on the floor. “I fear not, doctor. Do allow me to bind up your foot, lest it begin to swell. You may supervise.”

Before he could protest further, she knelt on the floor next to him and gathered the strips of cloth together.

Polidori let his head fall back; his undone cravat revealed his strong neck. He closed his eyes. “I am indebted to you, madam, for your kindness.”

“You should supervise me,” Mary said. “I would not wish to bind it wrong. Is there no one to help you? Albé seemed to be intent on providing you with pillows and every comfort.” This last was said a little ironically; Mary hoped to lighten the young man's sour mood.

A bitter smile crept across his face, though his eyes remained closed. “His lordship discovered in himself a particular revulsion for any treatment of a twisted foot,” he said. “I can understand his reluctance, but it still left me fumbling about by myself, I fear.”

Mary carefully wrapped bandages around Polidori's foot and ankle. “Did he not think to call for another physician?”

“I begged him not to,” Polidori said. “My reputation is shaky enough in this neighborhood, but to be thought a physician who cannot heal himself would be the very outside of enough.” He hissed suddenly and clenched his fist.

“I am so sorry!” Mary drew back in dismay. “I am hurting you.”

“Quite the contrary,” Polidori said. “Your touch is quite soothing. The fault lies in the joint itself. I fear that the anterior talofibular ligament has suffered a severe strain. If you will be sure to bind the foot in a flatter position—yes. Thank you. That will keep it strong while I heal.”

Winding the bandage around his ankle, Mary said, “How long will that require?”

Polidori opened his eyes and smiled slightly. “Alas, I fear that I will not be able to dance at Madame Odier's tomorrow night, as I planned. It would be best to reverse that crossed bandage—yes. Just like that. Do you waltz, Mrs. Shelley?”

Mary kept her eyes on his foot. “No, I do not. But it looks quite … vigorous.”

“I would be glad to teach you, once this ankle is healed. It is quite acceptable nowadays for married women to dance the waltz.”

Mary frowned. “You forget, sir. I am neither married, nor likely to be invited to a ball.” She glanced up and met Polidori's stricken look.

“I … I … forgive me, I pray. I did not mean to be insulting. I only thought you would enjoy it, and sought to allay any fear you might have of … of …” Polidori appeared to be lost, and faltered. He lay propped on his elbows, looking miserable.

Mary smiled. “Any fears I might have of impropriety, perhaps? Oh, we are not concerned with impropriety. And in any case, anything Shelley and I might do in the way of dancing would call forth no remarks at all, so long as we are in the company of Lord Byron.”

Polidori grinned, showing white teeth. “Very true, ma'am. Very true. Please pull the bandage a trifle more securely, if you will. Yes, that will do nicely.”

Mary tied off the bandage and stood. “It is a pity the healing will take so long. If only one could speed it up somehow.”

Polidori pushed himself to a sitting position, gingerly lifting his injured foot onto the stack of cushions. “Or replace the foot altogether. I would like a new foot, one that was stronger and more flexible. Imagine how much his lordship would pay to have his club foot replaced with a normal one.”

Mary gathered up the unused bandages and began to roll them. “Or soldiers injured in a war could gain a new arm or leg. Perhaps some day science will be able to graft on a new limb, as one grafts on a new peach tree limb.”

Polidori fidgeted with his cravat, trying to neaten it. “A novel idea, to be sure! Perhaps we could graft on extra limbs, so that we could have four arms and hands instead of two! Tell me, how would Mr. Shelley embrace such an idea? Would that fit in with his idea of the ‘perfectibility of man'?”

“Shelley would probably want to improve on the basic design,” Mary said dryly. “Perhaps we could add springs to the new leg, to facilitate jumping off of balconies.”

Polidori gazed moodily at his bandaged foot. “I did so at his lordship's urging; otherwise I am not generally given to … to demonstrations of this sort. Perhaps next time Mr. Shelley will apply a spark to me from his Leyden jar, and I will jump more readily.”

Mary closed her eyes, remembering the twitching leg stumps of the chicken galvanized by her lover. “Think of what we might accomplish with such science,” she said. “Perhaps we could revive the dead.”

Polidori stared at her. “You would so intrude upon the Creator's prerogative?”

Mary smiled slightly. “If the Creator does not intend for us to use science, why did he put it in the world? No, Doctor, I will not allow my mind to be corrupted by the lies of religion, which
uses fear to bind men to it. The truly free man will be a man of science.”

“Or a man made by science, according to you,” he said. He shifted restlessly, seeking a better position for his foot.

“Have you eaten?” Mary said.

“Only a light collation,” Polidori said. “I cannot persuade anyone in this house to bring me any meat, even when I offer to pay for it myself.”

“Perhaps a strong broth? Or tea?”

“Meat. I offer no offense, Mrs. Shelley, but truly, a man must have meat or he will fall into a decline and ruin his health.”

“Perhaps the fluid you need is of a heavenly variety. I can fetch Shelley's Leyden jar directly.”

Polidori shuddered. “I beg you, no. The demonstration two nights ago was disturbing. Did you not find it so?”

Mary stared past him. “But to return the dead to life, would that not be wonderful? Would it not mend a thousand thousand broken lives, broken hearts?” She looked not at the window, but into the haunted past, and a pale, still body, so tiny and vulnerable, so cold in her arms. “It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that one whom we saw every day, and whose very existence appeared a part of our own, can have departed for ever—that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished, and the sound of a voice so familiar, and dear to the ear, can be hushed, never more to be heard. These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. And for some, it never dies.” She looked away from the window, and caught Polidori's startled gaze. “You have heard of my mother, perhaps?”

Polidori half-bowed from his sitting position. “Who has not heard of the famed defender of the rights of women, Mary Wollstonecraft?”

“Do you know, my father keeps her portrait above his study,” she said wistfully. “It is his shrine, his altar. Every day he writes, under her gaze. I have seen him staring at it with tears in his eyes. I think he speaks to it, now and again.”

“I perceive that your father has a second wife?” Polidori said cautiously.

Mary nodded. “He married Jane Clairmont, Claire's mother, to provide us with a mother.”

“So you are half-sisters?”

“By no means. Claire, who was called Jane then, and Charles, my stepbrother, were from a previous marriage.”

Polidori tilted his head to one side, observing. “You were unhappy with the second wife? How old were you?”

“My mother died within eleven days of my birth; my father remarried as soon as possible thereafter, to assure that someone could raise me. It … it was not a felicitous choice.”

“Is this why you abjure marriage so?”

Mary smiled. “No. It is my father's teaching, from his earliest days, that marriage is only enforced prostitution. Oh, I have offended you!”

Polidori struggled to control his features. “No, no,” he said hastily—and, Mary knew, untruthfully. “I am sure he has the most, er , high-minded ideals. But is it not hard on you, on your babe, to be in so … irregular an arrangement?” He pressed her hand. “I will not burden you with unwelcome sentiments, but do consider, dear Mrs. Shelley, what the future will hold. For you, for your son, what will be the outcome? How will he grow up in society?”

Mary removed her hand from his. “Shelley has altered his will to provide for us. And when he comes into his inheritance, we shall live freely and openly as we please.”

“So your principles wait on death,” Polidori said. “To live on post-obits, is this the utilitarian philosophy your father espouses?”

Mary felt her face grow hot. “You disapprove, of course. You do not understand.”

Polidori again struggled to sit up straight. “It is not for me to disapprove or approve,” he said. “But it seems to me that this theory of open love, or free love, or what have you, is a very good idea for men, but not for women.”

Mary, troubled, looked down at her hands.

Polidori leaned near. “You know that I speak the truth. You
know what they are, these noblemen. They are raised to think only of themselves, to consider only themselves. Mr. Shelley appears to love all mankind—in the abstract. And I have observed his generosity, but it sometimes appears to me that he lives with his head inside a glass bowl, that he does not really understand the causes of the misery around us.”

Mary said hotly, “You do not understand! He understands, better than most, the misery of the poor and oppressed! He has suffered for his beliefs! He has been hounded from place to place by vile persons, he has been persecuted. His own father, as corrupt a member of the privileged caste as I can imagine, cut him off for daring to live by his own principles. He was cast out of Oxford for espousing atheism.”

“I am aware—”

Mary rose, gathering her skirts. “I have work to do with Albé. Pray excuse me, Doctor.” She swept from the room, seething.

But under the anger, she felt fear.

Oh, that I had forever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat! Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling; but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death—a state which I feared yet did not understand.

—Frankenstein,
Volume III,
Chapter V

A
s if the previous
evening had worn them all out, the households settled into a quiet, unchallenging day. In the forenoon, Mary and Claire copied out more of Byron's verses, or wrote in their journals. Byron and Shelley took the boat out, despite the unseasonably cold day. Polidori remained on the downstairs sofa, reading a book of Italian poetry and scribbling notes. Later in the day, Mary traipsed back down to the Maison Chapuis to feed William and to interview a candidate for the position of cook. This individual was so completely lacking in talent or the ability to speak English that she returned in a glum mood to the Diodati.

The day grew ominously dark as it wore on. Mary considered whether it would not be better for her and Claire to return to the Maison and stay there, but Claire demurred.

“I must be here when Albé returns,” she said firmly. “Return if you wish, but I will stay for dinner. You know we have a standing invitation.”

Mary did not want to stay, but the fact that they still had no cook of their own made it a moot point.

Shortly after noon, Byron and Shelley returned with the mail; there was nothing from Mary's father. Byron took Claire off to one of the bedrooms, and Shelley engaged Polidori in a game of chess. Mary sat alone in the big drawing room, surrounded by books, letters, and scraps of poetry. She put her chin on her hands
and stared out into the gathering storm. She felt restless and ill at ease, but put it down to worry over Claire and her state.

As the sun set, Fletcher and the chambermaid came in with lights, and then called her to an unusually early supper. Once more, bread, soup and potatoes were the order of the day. Though the hour was not much advanced, the chambermaid went around lighting candles as the sky outside grew dark with clouds. Thunder rumbled ominously across the sky as Fletcher served the soup.

Byron and Shelley were arguing over the nature of Man, apparently continuing an argument from their boat trip that morning.