Peter Ackroyd - The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

“Whatever is the matter?”

“It is Harriet. She has been taken ill. She is asking for you.”

“What? What has happened? What is the matter with her?”

“She collapsed just before we reached home. She was talking wildly.”

Bysshe ran out into the road, and hailed a cab that had just turned into Drury Lane. Hurriedly we stepped in, as Daniel called out the destination in Whitechapel High Street, and the sudden jolt of the carriage threw us all into the back seat. “Is this your arm or mine?” Bysshe asked as he extricated himself and sat on the wooden seat opposite to us. “Is she in a fever? We must get ice. The fever will break. Can we go no faster?” All the time he was looking out of the window, which was covered with linen and not glass, as if he were estimating the speed of our journey. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

Daniel explained that he and Harriet had left Poland Street, and walked eastwards down the Oxford Road. Daniel had been telling Harriet that we were about to visit Drury Lane for the performance of Melmoth the Wanderer , and she had expressed a wish to see the theatre herself. “There are so many things,” she said to her brother, “that I would now like to see!” He said that her eyes had filled with tears, but that he had taken her hand; together they had crossed the city by way of St. Paul ’s and Cannon Street, and had come out in Aldgate High Street. She had stopped him by the pump there, he said, and exclaimed to him, “I am so happy, Daniel! I could die now!”

They had walked down Aldgate High Street and crossed into Whitechapel-into the main street, as he put it. They had come within a hundred yards of their home when, looking around at the shops and tenements, she had cried out to Daniel that, “I feel as if I am suffocating. I am afraid my heart will burst!” Then she collapsed into his arms. In his distress and alarm he managed to carry her back the short distance to their house. She was placed in the parlour where she began a most unusual rambling speech in which she called upon “Mr. Shelley” several times. “If Mr. Shelley will come,” she said, “then I will be at rest.”

So naturally Daniel had left immediately, and had run all the way to Drury Lane in the hope that the play would still be continuing. By good chance, he had seen us just as we left the theatre.

Bysshe was still impatiently looking out of the window. “This is the east, Victor.” He was silent for a while, as the cab clattered and shook over the low cobbles.

“This is where we live.” Daniel pointed to a small cul-de-sac off the principal highway, and then called out to the driver, “Here we are!” Bysshe jumped out of the carriage and handed the man a sovereign before we had a chance to disembark; he was, I believe, in a furious and restless eagerness to see Harriet.

I looked back at the main street and one glance was enough to reveal its poverty to me; there must have been a market there an hour or so previously, because the area was now filled with makeshift counters and platforms, with a plentiful assortment of discarded fruit, vegetable leaves, and papers among them. Bysshe had run on to the house, and knocked upon the door, not waiting for Daniel to join him. The door was opened quickly, and Bysshe gained admittance at once.

“I trust him,” Daniel said. “He may have more efficacy than any surgeon or apothecary.”

“Upon your sister, at least.”

“Yes. That is what I mean.” We followed Bysshe into the house, small and narrow and imbued with the faint odour of damp straw that I had noticed in other London dwellings. There is an expression in English-no room to swing a cat. Bysshe had gone into a little parlour that overlooked the road, and joined two young women whom I assumed to be Harriet’s sisters. Daniel and I made our way into the room, now quite overcrowded, where Bysshe was already kneeling beside the prostrate girl.

“She has been speaking of you, Mr. Shelley,” one of the sisters whispered. “But she is quite overcome.”

Bysshe leaned over and murmured to her, “Harriet, Harriet, do you hear me?”

His voice seemed to rouse her. “I have been quite happy, Mr. Shelley. Oh, so happy.”

“And you will be happy again. Here. Let me place this cushion beneath your head.”

“It was the suddenness. I was surprised.”

“Sudden?”

“Surprised by joy. Is that not Mr. Wordsworth’s phrase?”

He bent down and kissed her hand.

I was standing by the door and, at a slight noise, I turned my head. A man of middle age was standing on the stairs. He was wearing an old-fashioned swallow-tail coat of faded black, and his cravat had come untied. I noticed, too, that his hands were clenched into fists. He came down the remaining stairs very slowly, as if unaware of my presence, and stood listening to the sounds within the room. Bysshe was asking for water.

“He will have to go to the pump,” the man said. “There is no water here.” Then he turned to me. “Your servant, sir. Look what you have brought into the house.” I did not understand what he meant, but he looked at me in what I believed to be a threatening manner.

One of the young women came out. “Pa, there is no time to lose. Will you fetch me the pail while I put on my shawl?”

“Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.”

“There is no time for this, Pa. Oh, where is my shawl?” She took up a large wooden vessel, beneath the stairs, and ran out into the street.

I followed her, not wishing to linger in the baleful presence of her father. “Let me help you,” I said.

“There is no need for help, sir. I am going to the pump for poor Harriet.”

“You are one of her sisters?”

“Yes. Emily. She has caused us such a fright, but she is calmer now. Mr. Shelley has spoken to her.” It seemed that Bysshe had by general consent become the saviour of the household. “We turn down here.” We had come into a courtyard, surrounded on all sides by the dwellings of the poorer sort, patched and peeling, with here and there a stray flower pot perched upon a windowsill. The pump had its complement of old ladies and children. “Let me through, if you please.” Emily was obviously accustomed to the scene. “My sister has been taken ill.”

“Don’t give her the water then, Em,” an ancient woman called out to the vast amusement of her companions. “A sure way to kill her.”

“It is just to cool her, Mrs. Sykes.”

“It is cold enough, I grant you. But it is ever so dirty. Plenty here have turned queer from it.”

“Who’s the fancy man, Em?” The question came from a young boy, who had been staring at me in mingled astonishment and hilarity. I tried to dress as an Englishman, but there was some undefinable difference in my costume or manner that always proclaimed me to be a foreigner. “Does his mother know he’s out?” This brought further laughter from the assembled ladies, but by now Emily had filled her pail and turned away from the pump.

“I apologise for them, sir,” she said as we walked out of the courtyard. “They are not accustomed to strangers. I do not know your name-”

“Victor Frankenstein.”

“You came as a friend of Mr. Shelley?”

“Yes, indeed. And of your brother. You say that Harriet is improving?”

“She is calmer. She is not talking such nonsense. No. I did not mean that. She is resting.”

I was surprised at Emily’s demeanour, much like that of her sister, in so unpromising a place. She had not been touched by the general filthiness. They were an unusual family. “You have another sister, I think?”

“Yes. Jane is with us. She lives with her husband in Bethnal Green, but she happened to be calling on Pa. ”