Frankenstein

It was an hour before I saw Frankenstein coming back across the glacier. If he had been any later he would have been in danger of losing his way among the cracks. But for the Monster to let him go at all must mean that they had reached an understanding of some kind. He came on so slowly that I could tell what that understanding was. It was not just because he was tired: he brought news that he was unwilling to tell.
"Did you promise?" I asked.
"How could I not have promised? He calls me 'master', but he knows very well who commands and who obeys."
"And if they have children?" I asked. "If they create a new race in South America, enemies of the human race ... ?"
"I cannot even be sure that he will keep his promise and go to South America," Frankenstein replied. "But that is a chance I have to take. What can I do, Henri? He comes and goes so secretly. His powers are more than human. He will destroy my family if I do not do what he wants. God knows how hateful this is to me, but I cannot do anything else. I just have to make another monster. And ... " He stopped, as if uncertain how to go on. "And again I shall need your help. Are you willing to give it?"

This was the question I feared. I had done little to help with the first monster. That had been Frankenstein's creation. Would the second monster be not just his, but ours? I did not think it right to make a second one. And yet, if I did not help, and the second monster was not made, I would be leaving the Frankensteins to face certain death.
Also, even after all that had happened, I had to be fair to the Monster. Did he not have a right to happiness? Those words of his kept coming back to me: "Make me happy and I will be good." The mistake had been to make the first monster; but having made it, might Frankenstein not be right to make another?
"I will help you," I said at last, "but only by keeping you supplied with what you need, by keeping you fed, and by carrying letters to and from the place where you work. But I will take no part in the work itself."
"I ask no more," said Frankenstein in reply.

We returned to Belrive the next day. The weather remained fine, and we began once more to live that happy family life which we had almost forgotten. The deaths of Justine and William were still in our minds, but they no longer hung over us like dark clouds. As for Frankenstein's promise to the Monster, he seemed to put it quite out of his mind for the next few weeks. Time passed pleasantly. We went out in the boat, we read in the garden, we went for walks in the hills. We did everything rather than begin work on the new monster. In fact, Frankenstein found so many reasons for waiting that I began to wonder if he would ever begin.
In the end two things moved him to start. First his father called him into his room one day.
"Victor," he said, "you will remember that just before your mother died she told you her greatest wish. I am an old man, and it would please me if before I died I could see that wish come true. It may be that by now you think of Elizabeth more as a sister than as a possible wife. You may even know someone else whom you like better. If so, you must say, because I am not the kind of father who forces his children to marry against their will. Please think about this: if she is not to marry you, we must find somebody else for her. She has a right to know what your feelings are."
Frankenstein knew that his father was right. Elizabeth ought to know how she stood. She had never said a word about marriage, or even let him feel that she was thinking about it. About his own feelings he was quite clear. Yes, he wanted to marry her -he had no doubts about it- but not yet. First he had to carry out his promise to the Monster.
This was one thing that made him decide to begin work. But there was another. Elizabeth was not just a simple housekeeper. She had a quick mind and a woman's natural curiosity. She knew that Frankenstein's unhappiness was not the result of William's and Justine's deaths alone. Something else was troubling him, and she wanted to know what it was. Nor was this just curiosity. She loved my friend, and only wished to learn his secret in order to help him.
However, both Victor and I had always been careful to keep the truth from her. We thought it would do her no good to know, and we did not like it when a most unpleasant happening one night gave her much to think about.

At this time we used to go to bed quite early. There was nothing to stay out of bed for in the country. Beside Frankenstein did not find it easy to talk to his father and Elizabeth. He had too much to hide, too much that he could only talk about to me. So, one windless, moonless night, a few days after old Frankenstein's talk with his son, Elizabeth lay in bed reading by the light of a candle. Opposite her was the dark square of the open window; and through it from time to time little flying things kept coming in, drawn by the light of her candle.
She looked up from her book as one of them flew in, and her eye was caught by the appearance of the window. There was something different about its shape - something that had not been there before. She looked again. Two large, brown, hairy hands had appeared at the bottom of the window. As she watched, too frightened to move or speak, the hands turned white as their owner slowly pulled himself up.
Elizabeth was prepared for the face of a thief, but not for this; not for the hanging yellow skin, the watery eyes, the knotted hair and the join lines. She let out a sharp cry, and the face dropped below the window again. The hands disappeared. Less than a minute later I was in her room and listening to her story.
I lit a lamp and went out into the garden. I hurriedly kicked soil over the marks of feet that I found in the soft earth of the flower-bed below Elizabeth's window.
" ... a dream, a bad dream ... " I could hear Frankenstein saying in the room above.
"I tell you, it was not a dream, Victor," Elizabeth replied, coming to the window. "Can't you see anything down there, Henri?"
 "Nothing," I said truthfully. I said nothing about what I had seen.
"See," said Frankenstein. "How could anyone put his hands on your window and pull himself up, as you said? It is more than three metres to the ground. Why, a man would have to be unnaturally tall to do such a thing."
Elizabeth said no more. She knew we were trying to hide something, but it was not her way to ask questions. She shut the window, and went back to bed.

Next morning Frankenstein came to my room with the look on his face of a man who has decided on action.
"I cannot leave things any longer," he said. "The creature has been watching us for weeks. Last night he must have been trying to find me and went to the wrong window. I know he will not let me alone until I have done what he wants. I cannot take the chance of another visit like last night's. Besides, who knows? Next time it could really be Elizabeth whom he has come to see. I cannot have her frightened like this. We start work at once."
"But you cannot work here," I said. "She already knows that something is going on."
"Exactly. That's why I am going to leave home. In my search for the Monster earlier this year I found by chance an empty wood-cutter's hut in the valley of the Arve. It is far enough from Belrive to make it safe from family visitors, but near enough to Geneva for me to get the supplies I need." 
"And my job?" I asked.
"It will be better if you stay here most of the time," he replied. "But you will visit me often, bringing food and letters." He stopped and thought for a minute. "There is another thing I want you to do ... "
I looked at him expectantly.
"If, for any reason, I fail to complete this work, it may not be me who will suffer first, but Elizabeth. Guard her, and be prepared for anything."

Source: Longman Classics