Peter Ackroyd - The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

“No. Not touched.”

“The gentleman came to see you.”

“Gentleman? What gentleman?” For a moment I believed him to be referring to the creature.

Fred seemed genuinely alarmed by my response. “No need to disturb yourself, sir. It was only him.”

He handed me a card on which Bysshe had scrawled a note to the effect that he and Harriet were intending to visit me early that evening: We have something, or someone, to show you.

I prepared myself for their arrival as best I could. I took a spoonful of laudanum to calm myself, having become acquainted with the merits of that preparation by Mrs. Shoeberry who seems to have dosed me liberally during my confinement. “There is nothing like it,” she had said just before leaving me. “It is safer than the drink, and more soothing to the soul.” I had indeed found it a palliative for wounded nerves, and had regained a measure of composure when Fred announced the arrival of Bysshe and Harriet. I had not seen Harriet since the days before the elopement to the Lakes, and she seemed to be much improved by marriage. She had more vitality and assurance than I remembered, assisted no doubt by the infant she was carrying in her arms. “This is Eliza,” she said. “Eliza Ianthe.”

“Not the first of my productions, Victor, but the finest.” There was so wide a difference, between Bysshe’s creation and my own, that I felt like weeping. A young woman followed them up the stairs, to whom I was not introduced; I took her to be the wet-nurse, and indeed Harriet gave her the baby after a moment’s petting.

“You look changed,” Harriet said to me as I took them into the drawing room. “You have become more serious. You are no longer a young man.”

“I have experienced much since I last saw you.”

“Oh?”

“But nothing of any consequence. Tell me, Bysshe, what is the news?”

“The usual record of crimes and miseries. You do not read the public prints?” I shook my head. “Then you know nothing of the outrages.”

“I lead a retired existence.”

“We are advertising a subscription for the families of the frame-makers.” I must have looked puzzled. “You should begin to live in the world, Victor. Fourteen frame-makers were executed at York last week. For the crime of wishing employment.” He then went on to inveigh against the undue respect that men paid to property, and began to enlist the history of Greece for the sake of his argument. Harriet and the wet-nurse sat exchanging remarks about the infant. His soliloquy reminded me of our evenings in Oxford, and I was curiously reassured by it. “So Harriet is not my property,” he began to inform me. “Eliza is not my property. Love is free. Its very essence is liberty, Victor, not compatible with obedience or jealousy or fear.”

“I am sure your wife will be pleased to hear it.”

“Harriet understands me perfectly well. We are in unity. No. We are a trinity now. The infant child is our saviour.” He continued in the same fanciful vein for a little longer, but the events of the day soon began to render me weary. With his quick sympathy he realised that I was no longer in a suitable frame of mind to enjoy his society, and he rose to leave with good grace. “Victor must rest,” he told Harriet. “His spirits need restoring.”

“Will you not stay for supper?”

“No. Your need is greater. You look as if all the cares of the world had fallen upon you.”

“I have not slept. That is all.”

“Then sleep. Sleep is the balm for woe.”

They took their leave, with many professions of friendship, and I watched them as they made their way out of Jermyn Street in search of a carriage. The crowd surrounded them instantly and I felt a curious anxiety or fear on their behalf. It was a momentary sensation, but it left me more wretched than before. For the rest of the evening, I walked through the city. I do not know how I passed the succeeding days.

IT WAS A MORNING in November. The light of dawn filtered through an opening in the shutters, and I could discern the outlines of my shirt and jacket that Fred had folded; in the half-light they looked curiously alive, as if they had been waiting expectantly for me to awake. I slumbered again for a few minutes, in a blissful state of non-consciousness, before being aroused by the sound of horses in the street outside. I rose from my bed, and threw open the shutters. That is when I saw him, standing on the corner and looking fixedly up at my window. Yet at first I did not see him. He seemed to be part of a wooden porch there, wood upon wood, until he stepped forward. He was wearing my cloak, and my broad-brimmed hat, but I could not mistake him for a moment; the face was white, seemingly curved and crumpled like a sheet of paper, with the same blank eyes that had stared at me from the table in my workshop. He must have taken my address from the bills of exchange he had purloined, and now he had tracked me down. He stood quite still, and made no attempt to claim my attention. He simply looked up without expression. And then, very suddenly, he turned and walked away.

I was in a state of astonishment and fearfulness not to be expressed. I ran into the kitchen, where Fred was frying a veal chop for my breakfast. “Stop what you are doing,” I said, “and leave.”

He looked at me in disbelief.

“You have done nothing wrong, Fred. Here is money to keep you. I must go. I must go at once.”

“You are still dreaming, Mr. Frankenstein.”

“This is no dream, Fred. This is reality. I must leave the house as soon as possible. A terrible fate hangs over it.”

My impatience and anxiety seemed then to infect him. He ran into the bedroom, and began to pack my portmanteau, even though I did not have the slightest notion of my destination.

Within a very short time I was ready to depart. I gave Fred a set of the keys, with strict instructions to lock every door and window. “If I am not the guard-dog here I will be with my mother,” he said. “In Short’s Rents.”

“I have given you enough money to support yourself?”

“You have been very generous, sir. When will you be back?”

“I am not sure. I do not know.”

When I came out into the street I looked fearfully from side to side, in case he had returned; but there was no sign. I still had no notion of where I might travel, but then Bysshe’s recent journey came into my head. He had told me that the coach for the north left from the Angel at Islington, and on a sudden and peremptory instinct it was there I travelled. By great good fortune the coach had been delayed by a collision blocking the Essex Road, and I managed to purchase a ticket that would take me-if I wished-as far as Carlisle. I was delighted to put as many miles as possible between myself and London.

I must have seemed a strange fellow traveller, for I remained in silence and in a kind of stupor throughout the whole journey; we rested and changed horses at Matlock, and I tried to sleep in a box-seat in the parlour of the inn there. But I could find no rest. In my mind was always his image, wrapped in my dark cloak, his blank eyes staring up at my window. I alighted at Kendal and caught a local post-chaise to Keswick, to which Bysshe had once referred; during my ride the landscape did indeed seem delightful, although I was scarcely in a frame of mind to entertain its beauties. The great lake reminded me of Lake Geneva, and the mountains around it were like a smaller relic of the mountains around my native city. I was half-expecting the bell of the great cathedral to sound across the waters. I took in all this at a glance, while my anxious thoughts remained elsewhere. How could I ever be able to shake off this demon, this incubus, that haunted me?

I was directed to a small inn that lodged travellers, where I lay that night. I slept only fitfully, woken by a storm that had rolled down over the mountains and by the stirrings of my own unquiet mind, but I spent my first day attempting to tire myself by walking over the steepest ground. To be free-to live among the mountains-now seemed to me the height of my endeavours. I contemplated removing myself to my native land, and there leading a life of blissful withdrawal from the world.