Frankenstein's Monster

by Susan Heyboer O'Keefe

  “It is beautiful, is it not?”

  Winterbourne laid his candlestick on a table, pulled one of the leather armchairs toward me, and, as if he were the visitor and not I, sat.

  “It was my father’s desk.” He brushed his fingers along one edge. “He often said a man needs a solid place from which to make solid decisions.”

  Again, as on the night of the party, I had the sense of both Winterbourne’s power and his peace. I was also filled with overwhelming confusion. To do what I must, I needed to create an idea of a Winterbourne who was worthy of hatred. The idea fell before the man.

  He leaned into the silence, a peculiar expression on his face.

  “I had asked you to tea, Mr. Hartmann. I was disappointed when you did not come.”

  “You still expected me? Truly? Tell me, how is Mrs. Winterbourne? Did she wish to take tea with me as well?”

  “I’m sorry. You finally come to us for help and—”

  “Help?”

  “Of course. Why else would you be here, except for my brother-in-law? I confess I did not realize who you were at first because I have so discounted Robert’s fantasies. The Waltons have a family tendency toward mania. My poor wife suffers from it. My daughter, too, already shows signs, I fear. And, of course, Robert. But I never imagined that his fixed ideas sprang from reality, that he was tormenting an actual person. You see, I know who you are. Or at least, I understood it when you told your tale of the Patchwork Man.”

  “You know who I am?”

  Winterbourne knew, he knew, and still he sat and talked to me! After the wonder of how he treated me at the party, his respect here was almost too much for my spirit to bear.

  “Yes, you are the unfortunate whom my brother-in-law has pursued these many years. I apologize, however little recompense that is. I mean, it’s surely misery enough for you to have suffered through the unspeakable calamity that left those scars. And then, besides, to have had a, a madman—there, I have said it—create his own frenzied explanation for those scars and hunt you down because of it.” Winterbourne paused to calm himself, disturbed by what he perceived as my situation. “Mr. Hartmann, it is beyond human understanding how you have not become as deranged as my brother-in-law. I promise you: I will do whatever I can to make him stop. I only wish I had learned of your existence earlier.”

  I nodded, too disappointed to speak. I was made of such obviously mismatched pieces that I had silenced an entire ballroom and would have sent its occupants into a stampede had Lily not been on my arm. Despite this, Winterbourne had prettified the monster into the victim of an accident. By doing so, he no longer flinched at the sight of me and, thus, was able to discourse with me as an equal.

  That in itself was as dizzying as strong wine, and for that, I would accept his ignorance or the lie that made it possible.

  He pulled his chair closer. “Obviously, Mr. Hartmann, you related the story of the Patchwork Man to reveal to me who you were. It is Robert’s mad invention. Still, as you told the creature’s tale, I sensed sympathy in your voice.”

  “It has been ten years,” I said. “I’ve worn the Patchwork Man’s identity so long I have become the thing I am accused of being.”

  “I understand.” He stood up to pour two glasses of liquor. Opening a humidor, he asked if I smoked. When I shook my head, he took out a cigar for himself, then set a glass before me on the desk. “Men often become what they are told they are,” he said. “If you repeatedly tell a man he is a slave, he will eventually forget how to think as a free man, although I am optimist enough to hope that there is something in a man that will always remain free.”

  “And if you repeatedly tell a man he is a monster?”

  Winterbourne took the still-unlit cigar from his mouth and studied it.

  “Mr. Hartmann, you did not come for tea as I invited you. Why tonight, like this?”

  “Calling on you is impossible.” I took the glass and cupped it between my huge hands. “Besides, I’m more used to the darkness.”

  I sipped the liquor and let it warm me. How easily I had become a man.

  “Still, I might have come in here with my pistol,” Winterbourne said, with not threat but curiosity in his words. “I might have thought you were a thief.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because you had much to say that had not yet been said, and I sensed that you would appear at an unexpected time to say it.”

  “I would speak with your daughter again, too,” I said carefully. “I offended her.”

  “You wish to apologize?” He dismissed my request with a curt wave. “Regarding my daughter, it is best if you neither take offense nor think that you give offense. I would say nothing to a suitor, but to you who know her uncle, I may speak the truth. Her erratic behavior may be from the family weakness. It may be from her own overly strong will. The result is the same: she is uncontrollable. She gives me much cause for worry, yet should I lock her room each night? I believe she would climb down the trellis to have her freedom.”

  “I find her fearlessness admirable.” It would also give me, I knew, sufficient opportunity to take her when the time was right.

  “It is not admirable. It is foolish and unseemly. Women have been put in Bedlam for far less.” Winterbourne shook his head in sadness. “There are other ways she reveals that she is not well. Nightly she runs with the hounds past exhaustion. When she returns, she is wild eyed, as though she had been chased by demons. She brings home strangers of all sorts. Men who are dirty beggars.”

  Like Lucio? I thought.

  “And beggars of another sort as well—men with no income, not even dignified employment. They have nothing to show but their poor breeding.”

  “Which is all I can show.”

  “Mr. Hartmann!” Winterbourne exclaimed, mortified to remember that I, too, was part of this group. “You are not like the others. But Lily met you as a stranger, while alone, and invited you, as a stranger, to her party. You told her you know Walton, but I assure you, it would have made no difference if you hadn’t. She still would have invited you.”

  “Perhaps she acted from kindness,” I suggested.

  “When you walked into the ballroom, did you feel that she’d been kind? She possesses a coldness of heart I find disturbing.” He shook his head with vehemence. “She also believes herself mistress here. See how she even dressed as a queen for the party.”

  I thought it harsh that he would invest so much meaning into a mere costume.

  “As I have told her many times, she will never inherit this.” He encompassed the house with a single gesture. “She is not a son. She is not even a natural daughter. The property is entailed. Without a son, I have only a life estate in it. On my death, everything passes to my nephew. And while I’m alive, I am restrained even in the property or revenue I may give her. Despite this, she believes that the house is hers, in fact, is hers already, even though I have told her many times it is not and can never be.”

  Closing his eyes, sighing, Winterbourne let go of the forcefulness in his speech and spoke more gently.

  “It is one thing for me to cancel orders and repeatedly return goods, but she has also, on numerous occasions, engaged servants without my knowledge. What then? I cannot maintain her every hire, but these are hardworking people who have left good situations to come here. What is to be done with them? They cannot be treated like a divan about which one changes one’s mind.”

  Winterbourne had already redeemed his life many times over. Now his last statement tormented me with how much suffering my revenge would cause him.

  “Your daughter’s behavior,” I said. “You attribute it to the same illness that makes Walton pursue me?”

  I could not excuse the man that easily.

  “Yes, and that bedevils my poor Margaret as well. I’m sure the inconstancy of my wife’s affections adds to Lily’s own flightiness; thus, the illness feeds on itself. At times Margaret treats her daughter with such fierce jealousy as to defy understanding
. Other times, she acts as if the mere sight of the girl grieves her, as if she were an object of censure. And she will be, if the truth is ever revealed.”

  Again Winterbourne had to calm the heat in his words.

  “Illness or not, I blame everything on Walton,” he said stiffly.

  “Have you ever met him?” I asked.

  “Once. And I do confess that, although I have the deepest affection for my wife, if I had met her brother first …”

  Sensing Winterbourne’s reluctance to say more, and his possible regret that he had already said too much, I stood up. Sitting so long in a chair was new to me. The discomfort was pleasing.

  “I thank you, sir,” I said, “for speaking with such candor. Your mere welcome has been more than I ever thought I would receive.”

  “You deserve much more from us than hospitality, Mr. Hartmann. Whatever you need, I will see that it is yours. If you need funds—for you must find employment under such conditions impossible—I will give them to you gladly. I only wish I knew I had been funding your tormentor as well.”

  He turned away as if his next words embarrassed him.

  “And then, too, there is your face.… There is something in it that elicits a reaction from me I cannot explain. With so many scars, with your features rearranged, your expression has gone quite beyond human feeling.”

  “I do feel,” I protested.

  “I do not deny it,” he said. “It’s just that I see no sign of it. Neither do I see signs of condemnation or of judgment of any sort. It was as easy to speak to you as if speaking my thoughts out loud in an empty room.”

  I stepped toward the door.

  “I’ve offended you,” he said.

  I held up my hand lest this good man apologize to me once more.

  “No, you haven’t. But the hour grows late. I should leave before our speech wakens your wife or daughter.”

  “Tell me first what I may do for you.”

  “I must have time to think.”

  Perhaps there is a solution here I did not see, a solution to my entire life.

  November 5

  Tonight I heard the hounds baying close by. Knowing Lily would be with them, I climbed the cliff and walked toward the house. The dogs soon caught my scent and led their mistress on.

  “Victor Hartmann. You left my party without dancing with me.”

  “You ran from the salon, physically sickened. I thought you were running from me. I thought you might run from me now.”

  “It was nothing. That nauseating cigar smoke made me ill.”

  “And not my story?”

  “Should I care so much about anything you could say?”

  “Tell me”—for the question had been in my mind since the party—“later that night, you said you were ‘sorry’ and that you ‘never meant to’—but you weren’t able to finish your words. What were you sorry about? What did you never mean to do?”

  “I am never sorry,” Lily said, her eyes defiant. “And whether I have done something or not, then I meant to.”

  “Why did you rush out when your mother screamed? Another daughter would have hastened to her mother’s side.”

  She laughed, it seemed with anger.

  “So many questions! And from someone who has no right to ask them.”

  Would I ever have such a time and a place as this? I grabbed her upper arm more roughly than I intended. My fingers extended beyond the edge of her cape and were shocked by the feel of her soft, bare flesh. She did not try to pull away.

  “Have you not considered the dangers of being out late alone?” I asked. Menace must have been in my voice; the dogs growled.

  “You are too like my father!” she said with annoyance. The comparison to Winterbourne, while my heart nursed such evil, sent a flush to my cheeks. “What can befall me here?” she asked. “If misadventure strikes, it is only because I have invited it and am willing to pay the price.”

  “How dear a price are you willing to pay? An expense to your own person?”

  “Even more than that.” She bared her teeth as the hounds had.

  I pulled her closer. “The story you heard that night, the scars round my neck that you touched … What would you think, what would you feel, if I said that is truly what I am?” I tightened my grasp lest she recoil.

  “I have heard the tale many times from Mother,” Lily said, gazing up at me. “You are the Patchwork Man, Victor Hartmann. You have been created from the dead.”

  There was no horror in her eyes, no fear, yet neither acceptance nor understanding. She might have just said, “You are very tall, Victor Hartmann.”

  I dropped her arm and, while thoughts of her father still protected her, said she should return home at once.

  November 6

  You are the Patchwork Man, Victor Hartmann. You have been created from the dead.

  If only I had not discovered my father’s journal!

  I was still unable to read when I discovered it. I did not know what reading was, nor words, nor letters. I did not know that meaning could be captured in seemingly insignificant marks, nor that it could transform one’s life forever. Not knowing any of this, I should have thrown away the journal.

  I did not.

  How different my life might have been if Gregory Winterbourne had been “a student more of philosophy than medicine.” He would not have abandoned me. He would have trained me with patience and affection in the ways of life and instilled goodness in my soul. He would have helped me recognize that I am free.

  November 7

  Tonight I climbed the cliff to speak with Winterbourne again. On my way to the house, I passed the site where I had last met Lily. There, wedged in the fork of a tree trunk, was my cloak. I had left so abruptly the night of the party I had forgotten it, and now there it was. I had passed over my previous opportunity to take Lily and now had missed another entirely. I could no longer hesitate, I told myself, even as I sought out her father.

  It was eight o’clock. Staying downwind of the dogs, I circled the building quietly, but did not catch sight of Winterbourne. Then I smelled the lingering scent of a cigar and followed it to the garden. The man whose company I desired stood by a bench, one foot up on the seat, looking out across his estate with great satisfaction.

  He turned when I cleared my throat.

  “Is that you, Mr. Hartmann?” he said without surprise. “It’s a pleasant night, is it not, despite the incessant wind. I see your cloak has been returned to you. Good. Lily said she would put it where you were sure to find it.”

  “I would have preferred that she returned it in person. I have not seen her since her birthday,” I lied. “Has your daughter spoken of me?”

  “Beyond the matter of your cloak, no, she has not spoken of you. Don’t feel slighted. She treats all men heartlessly, including her loving father.”

  “Is that, too, a family characteristic you fear? Or is it merely the frivolity of any young woman?” I spoke as if I were well accustomed to the frivolity of women.

  He smiled and gestured for me to join him as he walked along the white graveled paths. “Though my mood tonight would have me say it lightly, Mr. Hartmann, do not minimize the cruelty that flows in Walton blood. You of all men know this truth too well.”

  I nodded. “Yes, but my own mood is also light.”

  Winterbourne turned to me eagerly. “Then you’ve decided how I may help you?”

  “No, I have given it no thought. I am pleased enough to have your conversation. However, what you might do is tell me the circumstances of when you met Walton. It may give me insight into his behavior.”

  Winterbourne said he met Walton years ago while he and his wife were touring the Continent. They had never had a proper honeymoon, delaying it so long that he began to think of it as a gift for their first anniversary, then for their second, then for their third—with not a single plan ever made. At last, Winterbourne made his resolve and saw to the details that would allow them an extended stay, including arranging for
an additional governess for Lily, who would remain behind.

  Margaret was overly excited about the possibility of meeting her older brother, as she had not seen him since they lived together with their family. Winterbourne had the impression that Walton had been sent away in disgrace just weeks before his sister’s marriage to her first husband, Mr. Saville, and had been forbidden to return home. Their father had vowed to kill him if he did. Margaret refused to explain further, although Winterbourne asked several times. Later she angrily denied saying even this.

  Walton had gone to sea a novice and advanced with incredible speed until he was captain of his own ship. Margaret’s good opinion of him and her affection were all that really mattered. He somehow became convinced that, if he were the first to discover the North Pole, he would redeem himself. Again, when Winterbourne asked her about it further, she angrily denied saying anything about redemption.

  From what Winterbourne could piece together, Walton lost his ship to an iceberg, lost his men to exposure, and, in a way, lost his own life to the journey itself: even though he was rescued from a floe by another ship, he was never the same. He suffered a long febrile illness, which gave birth to his new mission: his “sacred debt to his truest friend to rid the world of a monster.”

  With a shrug, Winterbourne smiled his apology to me.

  “Thus, knowing all this family history, I prepared to meet my brother-in-law.”

  Margaret sent Walton their itinerary as soon as it was decided on. Over the years, despite her many letters, he rarely wrote back, so when he responded to this, she was beyond joy. His reply was terse: September 13. The whaling museum near Mainz. Three o’clock. I will not wait for you. If my quarry flees, I must follow.

  What new absurdity was this? Winterbourne thought. Whales in the Rhine? Margaret wept with such happiness that he said nothing.

  Since the Winterbournes would be in Mannheim on the twelfth, the extra day’s travel to Mainz was no hardship, and they arrived in late morning. Winterbourne hesitantly asked for the whaling museum. To his surprise, it existed. A local boy had broken his father’s heart by running away to sea. Two decades later, he returned as a captain, laden with mementos. The father was overcome with emotion at the reunion and had a cottage museum built just to exhibit them.