Frankenstein

That day, Elizabeth agreed to marry Frankenstein. I was happy in their happiness, but also a little sad because I was in love with Elizabeth myself.
Then Frankenstein told his father about his plans to take up scientific work again - in a hut in the Arve valley. Old Frankenstein was glad about that and about the plans for the marriage in November. But Elizabeth knew that Victor and I were not telling the whole truth. She felt that she was left out, and this hurt her.
The hut was away from the road, hidden by trees, and near a fast-flowing stream running down to the Arve. Frankenstein settled down there, and I brought his supplies. Some of them came from men of a very unpleasant kind, and I did not like taking them to the hut.
We knew that Elizabeth and old Frankenstein were safe: although we never saw him, it was clear that the Monster was watching the hut.
Elizabeth often asked what Frankenstein's work was.
"I'm not a scientist like Victor," I used to answer. "I don't know what it is about."
She did not like that answer, but Frankenstein would not let me tell her the truth.
By the end of October, the New Woman was ready. For the first time, I went into the work-room and saw her.
"Make her as ugly as myself," the Monster had said. She was horrible.
The weather remained unusually sunny. Frankenstein waited for the lightning. The waiting gave him time to think; and doubts crowded into his mind.

I returned to Belrive, promising to return to the hut if the weather changed. This time Elizabeth said very little about Frankenstein and the hut. After two days, I went to Geneva to do some business for old Frankenstein. At the town gates I met a friend.
"What are you doing here, Clerval?" he said. "Frankenstein is in prison here, and they say you are mixed up in it too."
"In prison?" I said. "For what?"
"Don't you know? He killed someone, they say. A boy who was fishing in the Arve found a human leg in the water. So the authorities sent men to search, and they found an arm in a stream near a hut, and Frankenstein getting ready to leave."

I hurriedly rode back to Belrive. Questions raced through my brain.
Frankenstein's wait, I decided, had made him change his ideas. He saw that it was wrong to give life to yet another monster. He had destroyed the body and thrown the pieces in the stream.
"But the Monster will find out," I thought. "Old Frankenstein and Elizabeth are in the greatest danger."
When I reached the house I jumped off my horse, and did not even stop to tie it to the usual tree before running inside. By then I felt sure that something frightful had already happened. But as I entered the sitting room, what did I see? Old Frankenstein sitting in his favourite windowseat quietly reading a book. So the Monster had not reached the house, after all. There was still time to prepare.
In as few words as possible I told the old gentleman about Victor being in prison. He had already suffered so much, and for a minute I feared that this bad news would make him ill. However, he seemed to take it in without too much excitement, and I went on: "Victor, of course, has not killed anybody. They have made a mistake, and can prove nothing in a court of law. You will do what you can to get him out of prison. But this is not all. There is danger. I cannot tell you now what Victor has been doing. All I will say is that he has made an enemy - a powerful bloodthirsty enemy who, if he cannot destroy Victor himself, will destroy his family and friends. We must prepare ourselves for his coming; he may even be here tonight. Elizabeth must be told at once."
"Ah, my friend," said the old man, shaking his head sadly. "You have come too late. Elizabeth is not here."
"Not here?" Now it was my turn to be surprised. "Where is she, then?"
"Just after you left this morning she told me that she was going to visit Victor in his hut. She went off with our servant, Emile, at about nine o'clock."
No wonder she had been so quiet about Frankenstein and the hut! She had been planning this journey all the time. She knew that I would not take her, so she had decided to go by herself - to the hut of all places, where it was very possible that the angry Monster was waiting. I had expected the Monster to come to Elizabeth, but I had never expected Elizabeth to go to him.

There was no time to waste. While old Frankenstein got ready to go to Geneva, to try to get his son out of prison, I took a fresh horse and rode back along the lake. This time I took a pistol with me. From now on it was kill or be killed.
I left the lake road at Cologny, and followed small country roads to the valley of the Arve. There was just a chance that I might meet the Monster on the way, since he would not go by the busy road that Elizabeth had taken.
There was still a chance that he had missed her; still a chance that she would not find the hut.
However, I did not meet the Monster on the way. And when I came at last to the edge of the wood in which the hut stood, my fears increased. Two untied horses were eating the grass. These were the horses that Elizabeth and Emile had taken. Emile would never have left them to wander like this.
I tied my own horse to a tree and went the rest of the way on foot, holding my pistol ready. As I came near the hut I stopped and listened, but there was no sound except the noise of the stream. Stepping forward, I looked in through the open window of Frankenstein's work-room.
Everything in it had been completely destroyed! Only a creature of more than human strength and more than human hate could have done such things as had been done in that room: every piece of metal bent and torn; every piece of wood broken into the smallest pieces; glass beaten to powder. Only a madman could have done it, and I tried not to think of what the angry Monster might do to a living person if this was what he did to things.
I went in and searched every room of the hut, but found nobody, dead or alive. I looked all round the outside of the hut, but still found nothing.

At first I did not see Emile lying by the side of the stream. It was not exactly that I did not see him. I just did not see him as a human shape. His arms, legs and head were so unnaturally arranged that he looked like something else. Every bone in his body must have been broken. I could see at once that he was dead, but what about Elizabeth? I went up and down the stream several times and found nothing. I searched the woods near the hut. Still nothing.
I spent the rest of the afternoon looking in everwidening circles round the hut without any success. Then, just before it began to get dark, beside a path leading out of the wood on the south I found a shoe. It was Elizabeth's. With fear in my heart I searched all round this place but found nothing else. To find nothing was best, I told myself. He must surely have carried her off alive.
Just as this thought came into my mind I heard a sound behind me. I reached for my pistol, but there was no need.
"Frankenstein!" I cried.
"Have I come too late?" he asked. Then as he saw doubt in my face, he said: "Don't be afraid. I haven't escaped. My father promised to bring me in front of the judges when the time comes, and they let me out. I don't have to tell you what happened after you left me. You know my mind. You must know what I did here. Now you must tell me what happened here since."
I told my story, short as it was. When I had finished, he took the shoe from me and held it close to his heart for a long time without speaking. He looked like an unhappy child holding on to a favourite plaything. He seemed to have lost all power to do anything.

I led the way back to the hut. It was now dark and cold. I made a fire with the bits of broken furniture and we ate the small amount of food that I had brought along. What were we to do? The trouble was that we knew nothing. Was Elizabeth alive or was she no more than a broken body lying in some dark corner of the woods? We did not know. But the hope that she was alive remained. If the Monster had meant to kill her he would surely have done it here. He must have taken her with him, either as a way of making Frankenstein begin work again on a new body, or to make her his wife. The great question was where had they gone, and to that there seemed to be no answer.
In the end we cleared a corner of the room and settled down for the night. We could do nothing until the first light of day. Perhaps even then we could do nothing.  

Source: Longman Classics