The lady too was surprised. "What is it?" she asked Victor in a whisper. Yet in her eyes, as she gazed upon my countenance, was not terror or disgust, but interest tinged with horror.
I said, "I am capable of speaking for myself, Madam."
Victor, with spasmodic arm movements that he must have thought were subtle but forceful gestures, was trying to quiet me. Meanwhile he assured his guest that she was in no danger.
But the woman only gave him a contemptuous look, and turned back to me. She too was able to decide what her own ideas were, and to express them. "Where are you from?" she asked me at last.
"Bavaria," I replied evenly. "And you?"
A stunned silence greeted this bold question. Realizing promptly that something was amiss, I hastened to offer an apology. "Forgive my lack of social graces; but you see, my education has been inadequate. No one's fault, really, I suppose, but there it is—if there is aught you would like to ask me, I repeat, I am quite capable of speaking for myself. As I see you are."
My creator was speechless. As for the lady, she shook her lovely head in silence, not knowing what to make of me. The fashion for high-piled constructions in the hair was coming in that year, but this lady would not incommode herself with such nonsense; black natural ringlets shook, tumbled, against ivory skin. I think the fact that she did not know just what to think delighted her, instead of producing a stunned or angry reaction, as it would have done in a lesser woman.
Other words were said between us on that occasion; I find that now I cannot very well remember them. I do know that our meeting ended with the suggestion, at least, that Mrs. Saville intended somehow to get to know me better.
The time came when Frankenstein's gathering of materials was nearly finished, and our stay in London was drawing to its close. I still did not exist, officially. The story put forward locally by the gentlemen to explain their activities was that they had formed a company to go into the north of Ireland, there to establish a hospital for indigent fishermen and their families. How many people in London who heard this story of the hospital actually believed it I do not know. But no one scoffed openly at the pretense, as far as I am aware. I have said that Saville was—and is—immensely wealthy.
For reasons I was not completely aware of at the time, it was decided among the gentlemen that a certain increase in staff was necessary. Mrs. Hammer somehow recruited two poor girls, Bess and Molly, both very young, sturdy and healthy, to join our establishment. They were to accompany us when we sailed (to Ireland, as they were told) and serve some role as housekeepers when we established a hospital for fishermen. I believe that both of them were country lasses, only recently arrived in London.
In private conversation Victor told me that he believed the hospital story would provide just the cover that we needed; and that the girls were really needed to serve as housekeepers, when we set up our small colony in isolation. This explanation seemed believable; both young women struck me as at least dimly respectable (How should I have been able to judge? But I could judge such matters. Even then.) and I supposed whores would have been recruited if that service were needed, and it was thought there was a shortage of them in Ireland. There was certainly no insufficiency in great London.
Bess and Molly were not members of the Hammer family, but I am sure that one of the requirements in their recruitment was tolerance for such business activities as that family practiced. Looking back, I suspect, that at least one of the two girls, country origins or not, came from a family engaged somewhere in a similar trade. I believe they were told frankly that when we arrived at our northern destination there would be some such work in progress, delivery of dead patients to a medical school perhaps.
Meanwhile, the task of gathering Victor's necessary materials proceeded quite successfully, with a stock of young female bodies accumulating in our warehouse. I observed Frankenstein, with his own hands, packing these materials in hogsheads of brine, and I wondered how they should be listed in the cargo when we set sail. It did not really occur to me—as yet—to wonder whether all of these bodies had been obtained by robbing graves, or whether the strict requirements for freshness had encouraged our new provisioners to adopt even more enterprising methods.
Walton expressed concern that the two live girls, Bess and Molly, might somehow discover the truth about our cargo. Eventually they would learn it, but preferably not until we had sailed. He employed his literary talents to develop an alternative story, that male bodies were easy to obtain in Ireland, but that there some prudish papist prohibition was in effect against research on females. Whether there was any truth to that portion of his story or not I have never had the opportunity to discover.
Small, as I have said, had attached himself to our group, though making no real contribution that I could see. But he disappeared again a month or two before we were to sail. At the time I was relieved, thinking that perhaps I had seen the last of him, for the dislike between us had been instantaneous and mutual. Later I was to discover that his detachment from our strange community was only temporary, and that Roger knew where he had gone.
By early May of 1780, our preparations were almost complete. We were in fact on the verge of sailing, when a letter arrived for Victor, forwarded from Ingolstadt, through what intermediary I never learned. The message was from my creator's father, who thought his eldest son was still in school at Ingolstadt, and it brought shocking and terrible news—William, Victor's youngest brother, only seven years old, had been most foully murdered. At the time when the venerable Alphonse dispatched his letter, no one in Geneva yet had the slightest idea of who the guilty party might be.
This horrible intelligence took everyone in our establishment by surprise. Victor, of course, was badly shaken. He insisted that he must return to Geneva at once, to see and commiserate with his surviving family, before he secluded himself in some remote place and plunged into what he expected would be months of uninterrupted work. We must wait for him in London; he would return to us as soon as possible.
Hastily the men who thought themselves my masters took counsel together. It was decided that our voyage need not be postponed; the establishment of the new laboratory, on lands also owned by Saville, need not wait for Frankenstein's presence. Saville and Clerval, with some help from Walton and his men—and from me—could manage the settlement and construction, down to the final arrangement and testing of equipment. We would sail.
I cannot continue to write of those things just now.
I must rest. And soon, somehow, I must get back to Europe.
Chapter 8
Later, the same night—
I cannot sleep. As terrible as the writing must be, I suffer more terribly with it until it is done.
On the thirtieth of May, 1780, we all boarded the Argo once again. I, of course, had returned to my cramped cabin-within-a-cabin some hours before our embarkation under cover of darkness. Argo was no passenger vessel, but the time in port had been used in converting some of the cargo space into cabins. Mrs. Hammer and the two young women were given berths in one of these new facilities, and there they remained for most of the voyage, only now and then taking a turn on deck under the watchful eye of Captain Walton. The rest of the passengers were in general accommodated as on the previous voyage, but another cabin was made for Small.
Our passage round Land's End and through the Irish Sea was mainly uneventful, though, as on our Channel crossing in the same ship, we were beset by storms. It was about a week before we reached our destination.