"And are you aware," I asked my caller, "that your creator is here too?"
"I have known that for some hours. I looked in at your dining table tonight, from outside, and became a silent and unseen member of your party. The ivy and the decorations on the outside walls offer enough in the way of handholds and footholds to allow me to explore virtually the entire exterior of the house.
"My astonishment was very great when I beheld him alive, entering the room where you were. And yet, on reflection, I am not tremendously surprised.
I had thought Frankenstein dead because of the circumstances under which I last saw him, in the Arctic; yet it is greatly to Saville's interest, and Walton's, or they believe it is, that he should survive, and labor for them."
"What were those circumstances, then?" I asked. "The book says—"
"The book lies," he rejoined calmly. "In that scene as in much else. I fled from the vicinity of the ship under a hail of bullets, Saville having lost his temper totally at last, and decided that I must be taken, dead or wounded, even fatally so, after his repeated efforts to take me alive had all come to nothing. I headed into the north, resolved to shake off my tormentors finally or to lead them to their destruction if they still persisted in the chase. Frankenstein, who had endeavored again to save me, had been struck down on the deck, and as I thought murdered. Now he is here, and I suppose has been convinced that what happened on the ship was my fault too, or a mere accident."
"After dinner," I said, "Frankenstein spoke to me alone."
"Ah. When you walked in the conservatory."
"Precisely."
"I saw you, but could not hear what was said there between you."
"He said that he was a mere prisoner here now. He urged me not to help our hosts, and to keep you out of their control, to such an extent as that might lie in my power. The trouble, I suspect, is that I have now become a prisoner too."
"No doubt you have." The creature stood regarding me, but said nothing more for a moment;
I received the impression that he was uncertain in his own mind as to what his attitude ought to be toward the man who had created him. "Then he has changed his mind yet again." He murmured the last words without surprise.
"You have not yet told me," I persisted, "how you know who I am."
My visitor shrugged enormous shoulders. "I have said that I could hear much of what you said around the table during dinner—I heard enough to be certain of your identity.
"And what will you do now?"
"Take vengeance, upon Saville, and Walton—is there a man named Small here in the house? He is small indeed, ill-favored, and dangerous, though he prides himself upon his attractiveness to women. I have not seen him here."
"Nor I, anyone matching that description."
"—upon them for attempting to steal from me what miserable measure of a life I had. For treating me as their property, by right of conquest or discovery, to be disposed of as they choose. For killing…" Here he fell silent, staring once more into the fire.
"And Frankenstein?"
"He too should be punished, for letting himself be ruled by those… but it was he who gave me life." Again my visitor shrugged massive shoulders. "Perhaps I cannot bring myself to punish him."
"My father has been very curious about that. The bringing-to-life, I mean. How it was accomplished."
"Ah. He must ask Victor, then. I know but little more about it now than when I last spoke to your father. But I should be greatly interested to hear any explanation that Doctor Franklin can conceive."
We talked for a time of the more abstruse points of electrical science; or at least my new acquaintance talked on that subject, and I endeavored to understand. His knowledge surpasses mine enormously, but then I am sure that mine does not begin to approach yours, either. His discourse on the subject, embodying what I gather are some new ideas, may be quite intelligible to you.
My new acquaintance—I find I can no longer bring myself to write "the creature," and I scarcely know what other term to use—has said that he too has observed the light from that high window, protected by iron bars, that must show where Frankenstein's new laboratory has been established. We had just touched upon this subject when suddenly he announced a decision to go there, to confront his creator once more if he could, even though the laboratory windows are so elevated and guarded by barriers that it seems impossible for anyone to reach them from the outside. He said that he would infallibly return to my room, whatever befell with regard to the final confrontation that he sought; and would then take counsel with me, and try to help me, before he acted on his decision to seek revenge upon Saville and the others.
I am now, as I write, awaiting his return.
If his decision as to what he wants to do next strikes me as at all reasonable, I am ready to act in concert with him. I have no qualms about acting boldly against Saville, who is, I am sure, prepared to hold me a prisoner here against my will, which implies that he is also ready to do even worse. He is, besides, my political enemy and yours—and the enemy of our new country.
Later_My new friend has returned, through the window as before, to watch me pen these remaining lines. He says that the approach to Frankenstein's laboratory proved at last too difficult for him, and that we are to make our plans and act without consideration of the scientist. But he was gone for a long time, and I wonder. Meanwhile, I will seal this message, and hand it over for delivery to one who can, with little difficulty, pass the high walls and fences that make a prison and a fortress of this estate. This message will be added, he says, to a pile of letters that are already awaiting sending at the gatekeeper's lodge—and I have no reason to doubt what he says.
He will return from that errand well before morning, he says, and we shall then make our plans.
Your Affectionate Son,
Benjamin Freeman
Chapter 13
February 21, 1783 Somewhere in Kent
It is now my turn to write, whilst my short companion watches. I suppose he may very well be curious, as was Father Jacques, as to what I am so industriously setting down in my worn notebook. I did not read Freeman's letter to his famous parent, but I have assured him, as I assured the priest, that he may read in my journal if he likes. But Freeman says that he is too weary to read anything, and that the light is bad—and now I see that despite the cold and the wet he is asleep. It is almost a cave, this embrasure in the seaside rocks where we are huddled. The sound of the surf is loud, and at high tide I suppose there will be spray—but by then, if all goes well, we shall be gone.
From the moment I identified Freeman as the son of Benjamin Franklin, I was determined to make use of him somehow. But now I confess that I am coming to like him as well.
It has been an exhausting day, for man and creature alike. Too much happened for me to be able to remember it all in proper detail. Yet it is necessary that I write down what I can… though when I think of it, why should it be necessary that I write down today's events, or indeed, that I keep this journal at all? I cannot tell why. I only know that the urge to record my experiences is nearly as powerful as my desire to live. Did my brain once belong to a natural philosopher?
One thing I should certainly record as carefully as possible is my final interview with Frankenstein—I suppose that encounter under Saville's highest roof is likely to be the last meeting that my creator and I will ever have. I felt a reluctance to talk about it with Freeman, immediately afterward—I had known him only a few minutes—and so told him that I had been unable to reach Frankenstein in his high laboratory. Perhaps—who knows?_we should all be better off if that were true.