According to the verdict of the law, the child William had been killed by Justine Moritz, the motive being the robbery of some small but valuable portrait, worn like a medallion on a chain. The appearance of the trinket among the belongings of the accused had provided the chief and almost only evidence against her.
That evening, when we were alone in the laboratory (my creator had been most anxious to resume his interrupted labors) Victor related to me his own theory of the crime—that the real killer had been some unknown man, Justine's lover, who had reacted murderously when the child had caught him trying to steal the picture; that Justine's sole crime had been to protect her man with a silence that lasted to the grave.
"Women do strange things, my friend." Franken-stein as he spoke was busy with his long-neglected work, connecting and adjusting certain pieces of his equipment. He had begun calling me his friend, I supposed, because he had never bestowed a name upon me. Nor had any of the others. Perhaps each of them was afraid that some mystical responsibility might devolve upon him who named me.
Of that I could not say, but I concurred at least partially with Frankenstein's opinion about Justine: with her unlikely story of having spent the night alone in a barn, she must be protecting someone.
"If she slept there, someone slept with her." Victor paused, and sipped some brandy, something I had seldom seen him do in London. He stared at the stone wall of the room in which we stood. "To know a woman who would do that for you, and then, more, who would lay down her life…"
He drank a little more, letting work go for the moment, and began to discuss with me the prospects of his engagement with Elizabeth. For a moment I thought he might be about to offer me a drink, even though he had said before that it would be bad for me. But no: I sat on a table while he drank and listened as he talked.
It was as if there were no one else with whom my creator could discuss this particular subject. He told me how everyone said how beautiful Elizabeth Lavenza was, and he showed me her miniature portrait, a painting probably much like the one for which young William was said to have been killed.
Bess and Molly had been pleasurably saddened by the story of that distant murder and execution, and both were intrigued by the return among us of the rather handsome young Doctor (the title was by now indisputable among us) with the haunted eyes and emaciated frame.
It was generally understood by everyone, of course, that he was engaged to be married, but he appeared perfectly ready to let matters continue in that halfway state. Were I pledged to share my bed and my life, I thought, with one who appealed to my senses as strongly as Elizabeth Lavenza evidently appealed to men of my creator's race, I would be striving at every moment toward the consummation of the pledge. Suppose Frankenstein should suddenly become eager for the wedding? What would happen to his labors in the laboratory then? It worried me that he might so easily be distracted from the project on which my whole future life depended.
On a second evening, when we were again alone together in the laboratory, he showed me the miniature of Elizabeth.
I asked: "Have you told her anything of your occupation here?"
"No, I dared not."
"Dared not? Why?"
"The… the business of creation." Frankenstein shook his head. "It is very horrible."
"Horrible?" I was not thinking of my own appearance, nor was he, I believe, at that moment. "But the result, is it not glorious?" Then I remembered that I was considered very ugly. "I mean the glory of the achievement."
"Yes. No doubt." And in the way he looked at me then I saw the depth of the fear and loathing that undermined his pride and his occasional kindness.
I did not care—not enough to be disturbed. There were times when I feared and loathed him too. I said, "Saville's woman knows. Why should not yours?"
"What Saville tells his wife is his business." Then, as if aware of the inadequacy of such an answer, he hardened his face, and looked at me as if to rebuke me for daring to take an interest in the personal affairs of my masters.
The fiction of the hospital died slowly in the minds of the sailors left on the island, and the two young women. I heard them now and then, in the early days especially, talking among themselves, wondering aloud when the real construction was going to start, and when and from whence the patients might be expected to arrive.
This despite the fact that the gentlemen discussed plans incompatible with their stated purpose, plans that I at least was able to overhear. I recall one conversation in particular, in which Saville, who happened to be sitting alone with Walton at the time, set forth in greater detail than I had ever heard some part of his vision of the future.
"Breeding alone won't do it, my friend. Not when we have to begin with only a single pair, or at best a mere handful of females. Oh, a man can breed slaves profitably enough, given time, a healthy climate, and a large number of mature females to begin with. But in our case, no; even if Victor should produce one female tomorrow, in the nature of things I suppose it would be twelve or fifteen years before she had any offspring old enough to breed, and another fifteen years before—but I see you understand."
Walton murmured something.
Saville went on, each word of his careless voice quite plainly audible to me, the unseen listener. "Ah, but there's such strength and hardihood in this thing he's made! What we must arrive at somehow, once Victor has shown the way, is the proper technique for manufacturing these creatures, males and females both, in substantial numbers. There are corpses aplenty everywhere, good for nothing now but fertilizer. And if they prove not fresh enough… well there is always Africa. A proper selection of brains ought to provide the docility we need—if not, there are ways of teaching the proper attitude, once we have more than one unique specimen that must be coddled."
"Manufacturing them," repeated Walton, quietly marveling.
"The Government has outlawed slavery in our home islands. Very well. But the invention of the living machine—"
There was an interruption, as one of the servants came tapping discreetly at their door; and I could hear no more.
Full summer—as full as it could be in those parts—came on, and the fields of the island blazed up prodigally with wildflowers, more common in the meadows than the grass. Less welcome were the swarms of midges, tiny bloodsucking insects that seemed to grow in strength and numbers as the summer progressed.
As the weeks went on, becoming months, Molly grew gradually more afraid of me, and seemingly of all else on the island as well. Bess, meanwhile, grew accustomed to me, from time to time speaking to me almost as to a friend. What might eventually have happened between us, had she remained alive, I cannot say.
The roofs and walls of all the cottages had at last been thoroughly repaired, with thatch and timbers. Some of the abandoned buildings were stripped of wood, the windows of oiled paper, and other useful items that the restoration of the others might be completed.
Saville, Clerval, and Walton, whenever the latter was ashore, shared the largest of the remaining buildings, in which each one of the three occupied a bedroom, with another common room in which they generally took their meals. The three women of course had another cottage to themselves.
Frankenstein's equipment had all been installed in the cottage selected to become his laboratory, while nearby, under the same roof, our shipments of specimens from London waited. I had rolled that company of hogsheads into the very room where I generally slept, not fearing the silent companionship of my intended brides.
At last, Frankenstein was ready to begin his real work. One after another, those large barrels began to be opened.