Then there were distant shouts, the voices of those who hunted us. To forestall the fear of me that I saw growing in her eyes, I said: "They were about to kill you, Molly. As they killed Bess."
"Oh." I think she recognized the truth when I spoke it, despite her abhorrence of my person. She wanted to say more, and had trouble finding the words, and I realized that she had no name to call me by.
"Call me what you like," I said.
Molly shook her head, refusing the responsibility of being first to bestow a name upon me. She said only, "You must take me back to the village. Please." Though I was sure she had momentarily believed my warning, still she could not live with it. So she thrust it away.
I was stunned. "They will kill you."
"Take me back. Please. Let me go. I can't… live with you." She could not, it appeared, even force herself to gaze directly at my face.
"You do not understand, girl. I am not trying to kidnap you. Remain apart from me if you must. But you will not go on living if you return to them."
It was no use. Presently, after she had stood up and stretched her legs and found them limber, she tried to run away from me.
Unbelieving, I gaped after her for a moment. Then I ran and caught her without much effort, though my shoulder pained me, each stride jolting it as I ran, blood soaking through my shirt.
She ceased to struggle, wept hopelessly, when my grip closed on her arm.
"I cannot let you go back to them."
She would not answer me.
As gently as possible I led her back to the loch. I asked her to bandage my wound for me; and that service she did not refuse. Once started on the task, using a strip torn from one of my garments, she did a good and tender job of it, though weeping softly all the time.
"Perhaps there is another boat available," I said, thinking I had convinced her. "We can get in it and—"
"No. No."
I tried yet again. "I repeat, I can understand that you dislike the idea of remaining with me. I do not want to force my presence on you. But they will kill you if you go back. You believed it the first time you heard me say it. I know you did."
"Yes. But they are—"
I could not prevail upon her to finish that sentence. I think she meant that, back there, whatever they might do, they were at least human.
Later, after warning Molly yet again of what would happen if the others caught her, I yielded unwillingly to exhaustion, and fell asleep. Molly was gone when I awoke, and the day was far advanced. I understood that she had gone back to them. So be it, then.
I knew that I might go back to them too, if I chose, and that they would not kill me. Saville would be firmly in control again by now, and he still thought me far too valuable to be killed. As for lesser punishment, I thought they would probably not attempt that either. My docility and cooperation were almost as needful to them as my presence.
My revulsion at those murderers was far too great to allow me to return and live among them, yet what other choices had I? I might have fled the island, but to what destination? To what purpose? Another day I roamed about the central hills alone, unable to decide what course to adopt. Once I heard what was unmistakably Molly's voice, calling something, and I knew that they must have brought her out from the village to call after me. It was their way of assuring me that she was still alive, that I was wrong in my suspicions. They could not understand they were perpetually unable to understand that I was not a fool.
I slept a little, lightly, like a hunted animal. Late in the afternoon there came fresh, soft voices among the hills, those of Clerval and Frankenstein, calling after me as if they feared that someone else would hear. I had no name for them to call, of course, but I could tell from the tone, one they might have used for a child, that I was the intended hearer.
I approached the voices cautiously, observing first from a distance. Only when I had made sure that the two men were alone and unarmed did I go to them.
Frankenstein looked more shaken than I had ever seen him before. But joy showed briefly in his countenance when I appeared, and he hastened to report all the bad news, almost as if I were the father now, and he a child in need of reassurance.
The effort to revive Bess had come to nothing. Frankenstein had abandoned his fruitless labors toward the end in horror, when Clerval managed to convince him that he had become a party to murder.
And Molly too was now dead. At last, when she was constantly under the eyes of Seville and Small, she had begun to realize the truth. Only then had she changed her mind about preferring their company to mine, and begun—stupidly—to voice accusations and to cry for help. Both my creator and Clerval had heard the cries cut short and were convinced of the girl's death, though they had not seen it. In horror they had seized a chance to flee the village unobserved. The tones in which the two men related their story to me now convinced me of their sincerity.
I felt a great sense of relief at that, and swore my own renewed loyalty to my creator. But such joy as I felt was short-lived. We were all three of us unarmed and could not long survive a determined hunt. Walton's ship was in the bay, and his whole crew now available for hunting.
Our only chance seemed to be the abandoned boat I had found earlier, still undiscovered by our enemies. That night we departed the island, rowing a somewhat leaky boat out into darkness, mist, and uncertain weather.
Even as we fled we could see torches on the island, near the spot from which, only minutes earlier, we had launched the boat. But the searchers were too late to find us. We rowed on into the misty ocean, hoping to find our way to some less cursed land.
Chapter 10
November 11,1782—
There is much to tell. I write this in a barn, some miles south of Montreal, by the light of a stolen candle. For all I know the whole country is up in arms and in full cry upon my trail; but my good fortune holds, howling winds push snowdrifts across my tracks.
This morning I returned innocently to my job, expecting nothing but another day of dull labor shoveling snow from the streets and public places of the city. My first assignment took me in front of a printer's & bookseller's shop. I had not been at work for two minutes when I was frozen in my cold tracks by the sight of a large pamphlet on display in the shop window. Its title read: Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus.
The window contained several copies of the publication bearing that startling title. I know not for how long a time I stood there gaping at them.
Finally a remark from a co-worker, resentful that my giant's hands and arms had ceased to do their giant's share of the work, brought me back to an awareness of my surroundings.
Casting my shovel aside, I hurried into the shop, in my haste scraping my head on the beam above the doorway. For an instant the few customers inside were paralyzed by my appearance, and then they hurriedly got themselves out of my way. I threw some coins at the proprietor, and seized a copy of the publication from the display.
As I stalked out of the shop I heard a murmuring behind me. Some of the people whom I had startled inside had followed me out, and before I had gone far they were mingling with other folk on the street, commenting on my conduct, and probably on my mere existence, in a general buzz of indignation. By the time I had reached the corner and turned onto the next street, the murmur had already risen to something like a real outcry. I did not look back.