Frankenstein's Bride (19 page)

In the meanwhile I had seized Maria and called to Mrs. Jacoby, “Come on!” and we hustled her through the crowd and away to
the double doors at the end of the room, joining the crowds attempting to leave. I glanced about as much as I was able, trying
to glimpse Victor's poor parents, but in all that mêlée could not see them. As we tried to struggle out there were those who
gazed at Maria in horror and pushed away from her, but a vast crowd was after us, jostling and shouting questions, “Was it
real? Is it true? What happened?”

We got through the doors somehow and just outside then, to one side, was a tall, lean man in black, sane and charitable enough,
it appeared, to assist. He very quickly took my arm and gently but firmly led me, Maria and Mrs. Jacoby through the next room,
then quickly through another door to one side and into an empty corridor. Mortimer had disappeared, pushed away from us in
the crowd or deliberately abandoning us, I do not know which. The man led us down the corridor, through another door, into
an alley. “We have lost them for a while. I will get my carriage,” he said. We huddled in the alley in dark and cold until,
not long after, he came up with the conveyance.

My only thought was to get away from the place discreetly. We dared not go into the main street in front of the building,
where those who had attended the demonstration might be assembled in numbers, some repelled, some indignant, altogether unpredictable
in their responses. There were those who might think Maria's claim to have destroyed Victor Frankenstein a confession of murder—and
perhaps it was. They might try to lay hands on her for that reason and on Mrs. Jacoby and myself as her abetters. Others might
attack us from fear or from disgust. The curious would surround us. As we stood waiting, Mrs. Jacoby recovered a little and
in a calm manner, with admirable sang-froid, asked Maria, “Were you speaking the truth, Maria, or was what you said all wicked
fictions?”

Maria did not reply, for then the carriage arrived and the dark-suited gentleman who had rescued us leaned out, saying, “Get
in quickly, I pray you,” which we did and set off smartly eastwards in a direction evidently prearranged between our rescuer
and his coachman. I and Mrs. Jacoby sat on either side of Maria, the stranger opposite us. This man, I now saw, was about
thirty-five years of age, with a long, handsome, thoughtful face, very pitted with old smallpox marks. His dark hair fell
to just below his ears. He had fine dark eyes.

I said to him, “Thank you, sir, for your help. May I ask where we are going and why you help us in this way?”

“My name is Simeon Shaw. I am vicar of St. Michael and All Angels near Spitalfields. If there is any truth in this young woman's
tale, it may have much bearing on the subject of the soul.”

Beside me I heard Mrs. Jacoby, who was plainly fatigued and whose own conversations with her soul had become less and less
frequent during the day, give a weary sigh. “I think, sir, I should like to go to Russell Square,” she said. She turned to
Maria quite naturally and asked, “Maria—should you like to go home?” She displayed no surprise when Maria said, in a clear
and pleasant voice, though tired and indifferent, “It would be too dangerous. A crowd might assemble and kill me for a witch
or a murderess.” I, however, was truly astonished. If Maria had been in a trance, how did she know what she had said?

Mrs. Jacoby responded dryly. “I'm glad to find, Maria, that recovering your voice has not altered your nature. You still think
first and last of yourself.”

Maria answered, “Of whom else should I think? You have heard my story now. I have no conscience—I have no soul.”

Simeon Shaw interrupted this extraordinary exchange hastily, “I came to the demonstration today interested in finding out
if the hidden soul of a man could emerge during a mesmeric experience. For, under that influence a man might come closer to
God. What I heard, Miss Clementi, interested me deeply. I am uncertain of the precise nature of what we saw tonight, whether
sideshow, horror tale, or what, but I feel, bewildered as I am, some kind of mystical truth may have been involved.”

“A devilish truth, if that is what you want,” Mrs. Jacoby said sharply. “I should have thought it your duty as a clergyman
to avoid such things, not embrace them. Do you know all you said tonight Maria? Have you any recollection?”

But she did not reply. I felt her body, very limp against mine in the carriage. It was as though she were ill. Often enough,
my mind had pictured Maria's body close to mine. Now it was, but in these circumstances I did not know what to think or what
I felt. Mrs. Jacoby continued.

“Understand now, Maria, that what you said under Mr. Wheeler's mesmeric influence was this—that in some manner Victor Frankenstein
had created you and another, whom you called Adam—that he had attempted to burn you to death and dispatched the man to some
dreadful place far away, hoping, no doubt, that he would die there. And you claimed to be nothing and no one—and rejoiced
in Mr. Frankenstein's coming death, laughing like a maniac the while. Maria—we must know more.”

To this she made no answer. She did not care about us, I realized, nor about anything that had occurred. It was as if she
had dropped to our planet from the moon.

“Maria's tale,” said I, “tallies all too well with what I was told by Donald Gilmore, who was present as a boy on the Orkneys,
the cold and lonely sea-girt place described by Maria.”

And—“So there is supporting testimony,” murmured Mr. Shaw the clergyman to himself. Though he had rescued us, I began to like
the man less, and mistrust him more. He was plainly in the grip of some kind of theological fanaticism concerning the human
soul, researches perhaps best left alone and certainly irrelevant to our present predicament.

Meanwhile we rode on. Maria lay back in the carriage, her eyelids flickering like someone in a fit.

“Where are we going, Mr. Shaw?” I asked him. “These ladies are in my charge.”

“To my church,” he said.

“Never,” said I, with more firmness than I felt. “These ladies need fire and food, not the cold interior of a church. I thank
you for rescuing us but I think now we had better make our own arrangements.” I had no idea what these might be. It seemed
to me then it would be undesirable to go to Russell Square, equally so to Gray's Inn Road. In either place we might face arrest
or hostile crowds. Should we find some quiet suburban inn to pass the night?

Shaw offered another suggestion.

“If you will not come to the church, then let me take you to the house of my Bishop. He will see to your comfort and I will
explain things to him.”

Mrs. Jacoby asked, as if to herself, “And what will you explain?”

Meanwhile he had leaned forward and shouted up another address at the driver. The carriage turned into the road and clopped
back in the other direction.

“The soul—” Shaw began.

“I have no soul,” came Maria's dreamy voice.

Shaw said, “But this is blasphemy. Why do you say that?”

“Mr. Frankenstein told me so,” she said, then lapsed into silence again.

“Can it be possible?” questioned Shaw.

“Frankenstein is a villain,” declared Mrs. Jacoby. “I have never heard such blasphemy in my life. You are speaking now, Maria.
So speak. For the love of God, tell us everything you know.”

But whether from fatigue, illness or obstinacy, she would say no more.

A few minutes later we evidently reached our destination, the Bishop's house, for we passed through gates, drawing up on a
paved semicircle before the house. A servant let us in. Mrs. Jacoby, Maria and I were ushered into a small, fireless room
where Mrs. Jacoby and I took seats on wooden chairs while Maria extended herself on a hard leather sofa, which had seen better
days. Shaw went off to explain matters to the Bishop. Some fifteen minutes passed. We grew colder and colder and it became
more and more apparent that the Bishop was extending no welcome to Mr. Shaw, or our party.

Mrs. Jacoby expressed this first: “The Bishop will have none of us or of Mr. Shaw's theories of the soul. He sees danger to
the Church, or himself, in all this. An argument rages while we freeze. We need fire and food, perhaps a nurse for Maria.”

“And almost certainly a lawyer,” I agreed. “What to do? I think we must risk going to Gray's Inn Road and on the way I will
leave a note for my lawyer Mr. Finborough to attend immediately. We must resolve this matter of Maria's confession.”

“Made under the influence of a mesmerist, and therefore nonsense,” Mrs. Jacoby said decidedly. The godly woman of Chatham
now pushed firmly from the door, the practical woman in charge. “Very well, let's go to Gray's Inn Road. We must at least
have some shelter. When we arrive, you must descend from the carriage at a distance and scout out the house before we enter.
If anyone is encamped there, either outside or inside, you will not return and I and Maria will go elsewhere.”

“Where then?” I asked.

“That will be my business,” said she.

We left without ceremony, finding ourselves in a cold empty street near St. Paul's Cathedral with Maria supported between
us and no conveyance in sight. A sleeting rain began and I said, “We had better reconcile ourselves to walking,” which we
did. At Mr. Finborough's in Fleet Street I left a message asking him urgently to call on me. I persuaded the reluctant servant
to hasten to a nearby mews where there were carriages for hire. Meanwhile we waited in a hall, Mrs. Jacoby and I standing,
Maria on the only chair.

Mrs. Jacoby, looking at Maria, said severely, “She could speak if she would. She feigns illness.”

I admired the pragmatism of her approach but I knew, and so must she, there were grave considerations here. Had Maria's outburst
been caused by insanity, had she been put up to the entire thing by Wheeler, or had she said what she did deliberately to
mislead and cause sensation? It could not be as simple as that. I knew Gilmore's story; furthermore, Elizabeth Frankenstein
was dead, Frankenstein himself was gravely wounded, and there was the missing man-beast I had seen so close to all of us,
even now being hunted for attempted murder. It was hard to believe Maria's statements merely insane or deceitful.

It was equally impossible to believe, in a reasonable world, in Victor's conducting deadly experiments with human beings.
Yet he had done something, some terror had taken place on Orkney. But what?

Above all, I wondered what of Cordelia? I had earlier that day envisaged myself on my way back to her this very evening, undertaking
the first part of my journey home before darkness made it too difficult. Yet here I was in a carriage going back to Gray's
Inn Road, worse entangled than ever in this sinister affair.

Mrs. Jacoby now addressed the fainting Maria, in no uncertain terms. In fact she grasped her by the shoulders and shook her.
“Speak up, you bad, wicked girl. You could speak—if you would—we know it. Why did you say what you did? What is the truth?
Do you understand you must now face the charge that you killed Frankenstein? Certainly you will be suspected of involvement
in his attack. And where did you come from and what is your proper name? You must tell us now.” And with this she dealt her
a blow across the face.

Maria did not respond in any way, so Mrs. Jacoby gave her another buffet. Then Maria, with an access of strength of which
she had not seemed capable, wrenched away from her and cried out in an anguished voice, “Adam!” She leaned past me, over my
lap and grasped the handle of the carriage door. Even as I lunged to stop her, she had thrown it open and hurled herself over
me and out of the vehicle. Few could have so quickly evaded my too-late clutching hands; even fewer could have jumped past
me from the moving carriage—and landed on their feet. But this Maria did.

As Mrs. Jacoby shouted for the carriage to stop I leaned from the door, and saw her running ahead down the road, then veering
into an alley. I heard her cry, “Adam! I come to you!” Then she was lost to sight, gone into the darkness like a frightened
cat. I suppose we both realized we had little chance of finding her, though we combed the streets in different directions
for an hour, I on foot, Mrs. Jacoby in the carriage.

When I returned to Gray's Inn Road I was not surprised to find Mrs. Jacoby there with two burly men from Mr. Worley's, the
magistrate, wishing to question me about the whereabouts of Maria Clementi. Word of what had taken place at the Royal Society
had been spread quickly to all ears.

There was little we could tell these men that would satisfy them. To get rid of them I suggested Maria might have gone to
Mr. Frankenstein's house at Cheyne Walk and for the same reason Mrs. Jacoby suggested the house in Russell Square, the theatre
and certain other places. But neither of us believed that Maria would go to any of them. She was in pursuit of her Adam, whoever
and wherever he was.

The men left and we sat alone for a while, thinking of Maria roaming through the darkness, going towards, I supposed, this
Adam she was trying to find. Mrs. Jacoby told me she knew nothing of him, adding, in a tired and disillusioned manner, that
she had come to London at the demand of her conscience, but only with the gravest doubts, knowing that anything concerning
her erstwhile employer could not go healthily or right. This had proved to be the case. She said she was not a young woman,
had not slept the previous night from anxiety, had come post-haste from Chatham that morning and, though it was but eight
o'clock in the evening, she craved to end a long and disquieting day. She wished to hear no more of the business, or think
any longer about it. With my permission she would go upstairs to bed and leave early next morning by the coach to Kent, glad
to be out of it all. At least, she said, with a weary smile, she had been plunged back into the hectic and disreputable life
she had once led in such a way that she could never again doubt the wisdom of leaving it, even for her present dull and melancholy
life. And she added kindly, “Mr. Goodall, you summoned me back for the best of motives, to a life I had renounced out of shame
and remorse. I do not complain. But this affair is not over. No—it is not over—it will get its tentacles about you and drag
you to the bottom of the sea. And I note what perhaps you have not—there is no disinterested person in this matter other than
yourself. Gabriel Mortimer has profited handsomely by Maria's effort since he first discovered her in Ireland and hoped to
do better if she could speak. Wheeler put her on show to placate his rich masters and increase his own fame—after this recent
horrible display he may have failed but who can tell about that, the world is very strange. And Nottcutt—Nottcutt was a bored
degenerate in search of sensation, now, I suspect, trying to distance himself from the affair which has shocked his parents.