So naturally Daniel had left immediately, and had run all the way to Drury Lane in the hope that the play would still be continuing. By good chance, he had seen us just as we left the theatre.
Bysshe was still impatiently looking out of the window. “This is the east, Victor.” He was silent for a while, as the cab clattered and shook over the low cobbles.
“This is where we live.” Daniel pointed to a small cul-de-sac off the principal highway, and then called out to the driver, “Here we are!” Bysshe jumped out of the carriage and handed the man a sovereign before we had a chance to disembark; he was, I believe, in a furious and restless eagerness to see Harriet.
I looked back at the main street and one glance was enough to reveal its poverty to me; there must have been a market there an hour or so previously, because the area was now filled with makeshift counters and platforms, with a plentiful assortment of discarded fruit, vegetable leaves, and papers among them. Bysshe had run on to the house, and knocked upon the door, not waiting for Daniel to join him. The door was opened quickly, and Bysshe gained admittance at once.
“I trust him,” Daniel said. “He may have more efficacy than any surgeon or apothecary.”
“Upon your sister, at least.”
“Yes. That is what I mean.” We followed Bysshe into the house, small and narrow and imbued with the faint odour of damp straw that I had noticed in other London dwellings. There is an expression in English-no room to swing a cat. Bysshe had gone into a little parlour that overlooked the road, and joined two young women whom I assumed to be Harriet’s sisters. Daniel and I made our way into the room, now quite overcrowded, where Bysshe was already kneeling beside the prostrate girl.
“She has been speaking of you, Mr. Shelley,” one of the sisters whispered. “But she is quite overcome.”
Bysshe leaned over and murmured to her, “Harriet, Harriet, do you hear me?”
His voice seemed to rouse her. “I have been quite happy, Mr. Shelley. Oh, so happy.”
“And you will be happy again. Here. Let me place this cushion beneath your head.”
“It was the suddenness. I was surprised.”
“Sudden?”
“Surprised by joy. Is that not Mr. Wordsworth’s phrase?”
He bent down and kissed her hand.
I was standing by the door and, at a slight noise, I turned my head. A man of middle age was standing on the stairs. He was wearing an old-fashioned swallow-tail coat of faded black, and his cravat had come untied. I noticed, too, that his hands were clenched into fists. He came down the remaining stairs very slowly, as if unaware of my presence, and stood listening to the sounds within the room. Bysshe was asking for water.
“He will have to go to the pump,” the man said. “There is no water here.” Then he turned to me. “Your servant, sir. Look what you have brought into the house.” I did not understand what he meant, but he looked at me in what I believed to be a threatening manner.
One of the young women came out. “Pa, there is no time to lose. Will you fetch me the pail while I put on my shawl?”
“Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.”
“There is no time for this, Pa. Oh, where is my shawl?” She took up a large wooden vessel, beneath the stairs, and ran out into the street.
I followed her, not wishing to linger in the baleful presence of her father. “Let me help you,” I said.
“There is no need for help, sir. I am going to the pump for poor Harriet.”
“You are one of her sisters?”
“Yes. Emily. She has caused us such a fright, but she is calmer now. Mr. Shelley has spoken to her.” It seemed that Bysshe had by general consent become the saviour of the household. “We turn down here.” We had come into a courtyard, surrounded on all sides by the dwellings of the poorer sort, patched and peeling, with here and there a stray flower pot perched upon a windowsill. The pump had its complement of old ladies and children. “Let me through, if you please.” Emily was obviously accustomed to the scene. “My sister has been taken ill.”
“Don’t give her the water then, Em,” an ancient woman called out to the vast amusement of her companions. “A sure way to kill her.”
“It is just to cool her, Mrs. Sykes.”
“It is cold enough, I grant you. But it is ever so dirty. Plenty here have turned queer from it.”
“Who’s the fancy man, Em?” The question came from a young boy, who had been staring at me in mingled astonishment and hilarity. I tried to dress as an Englishman, but there was some undefinable difference in my costume or manner that always proclaimed me to be a foreigner. “Does his mother know he’s out?” This brought further laughter from the assembled ladies, but by now Emily had filled her pail and turned away from the pump.
“I apologise for them, sir,” she said as we walked out of the courtyard. “They are not accustomed to strangers. I do not know your name-”
“Victor Frankenstein.”
“You came as a friend of Mr. Shelley?”
“Yes, indeed. And of your brother. You say that Harriet is improving?”
“She is calmer. She is not talking such nonsense. No. I did not mean that. She is resting.”
I was surprised at Emily’s demeanour, much like that of her sister, in so unpromising a place. She had not been touched by the general filthiness. They were an unusual family. “You have another sister, I think?”
“Yes. Jane is with us. She lives with her husband in Bethnal Green, but she happened to be calling on Pa. ”
“So you and Harriet live with your father?”
“Jane was wed a few months after Ma died. We look after the house.”
“Does your father work still?”
“Oh, no. He was obliged to retire. His nerves are very bad.” I admit that I was troubled by desire for Emily, but now all such feelings were a source of distaste to me. The purity of my purpose could not be put to jeopardy by the lusts of the flesh. I held myself apart.
“Your last name confused me,” she said.
“It often does. Let me help you with the water.”
“I am accustomed to it.”
Emily took the pail over the threshold, and went into the parlour where Harriet was now sitting up on the settle. Emily knelt beside her, and began to smooth the water over her forehead and temples with such a sisterly tenderness that I marvelled once more at the presence of this family in so mean and coarse a neighbourhood.
“She is recovered,” Bysshe said to me. “It was a fever.”
“Then we should not stay.” I felt quite ill at ease in this small dwelling. It was as clean and wholesome as it could be, but the quality of the surroundings tainted it like that faint odour of straw; it left me with a feeling of depression, even of weariness, that I could not master. “There is so little room here. We will suffocate Harriet.”
“Of course. You are right. She needs air. We will go at once.” Bysshe put his hand upon Daniel’s shoulder, and told him that we intended to return to Soho.
Daniel insisted on escorting us to a busy crossroads, just beyond Whitechapel, where there were cabs going into the city. “It was very good of you, Mr. Shelley,” he said. “And of you, Mr. Frankenstein. You have brought her back to health in less time than I thought possible.”
“Not us, Daniel. Her natural strength supported her. She has her own star.” We hailed a cab, and Daniel waved us off. Then Bysshe put his head out of the window, and shouted, “Assure her that I will see her tomorrow!” He leaned back in his seat with a sigh. “We have done a good deed,” he said.
“Still, I pity her.”
“For what reason?”
“Look around you. Do you see the squalor? It would be easy, in such a place, to slip into crime and evil.”