Frankenstein's Bride Read Online Free

from the mending of her little daughter's stockings, and fixing me with her large,
     bright, blue eyes, “language is a simple thing, we learn it as babies, babbling and mumbling as we attempt to copy the speech
     of our elders. And that,” said she, “Mr. Goodall, is that.”
    “Then why are there so many tongues?” I questioned. “Why do we not all, from here to China, use the same language? What of
     that speaking with tongues when, as the Bible tells us, each man in the crowd at Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost, wherever he came from and whatever
     tongue he spoke, could understand the other? What of oracular speech, what of speech when we dream—whence come those voices
     when the conscious mind is not in control?”
    Well, I regret to say that Mrs. Downey offered no answer to these questions. Instead she gave a puzzled frown, followed by
     a dismissive noise—I will not call it a snort—and then turned to cutting out a small dress for her daughter. Women in general
     have little taste for the speculative, preferring the here and now of things. Yet it was those studies of mine, however arcane
     they may have appeared to Mrs. Downey, which led to my part in the sad and horrifying tale of Victor Frankenstein and, I believe,
     changed my view of life completely.
    However, at the time when my story begins I was a contented man, the times we lived in forced no great efforts on us. The
     war with France was over; the country at peace.
    As I look back, to use an image drawn from science, I see my younger self as unshaped and undefined, a mass of gases, so to
     speak, made up of my own natural qualities and of my circumstances in life, waiting only for the catalyst which would turn
     those gases into solid form—my later self. To think that these changes came through the study of philology! For that was the
     reason why, to take you to the heart of the tale, that on that November afternoon of which I spoke earlier I found myself
     walking through rapidly swelling river fog, at dusk, beside the Thames, looking longingly but with little hope for a conveyance
     I could hire to take me back to my lodgings in Gray's Inn Road.
    I had arrived by the riverside on foot to visit my friend Dr. Victor Frankenstein at his house in Cheyne Walk. I regretted
     having to make my way home by the same means, for the fog thickened, it grew ever darker and I was alone.
    There was not a soul about as I trod the road which lies beyond the northern bank of London's great river. Missing the warmth
     and hospitality of Victor and Elizabeth Frankenstein's house, I hurried on, not altogether happy about the prospect of a dark
     and foggy walk through the suburbs of London. The fields, manufactories and market gardens beside the road on which I was
     traveling were deserted at that season and hour. All were places where a footpad or some other assailant could lurk undetected—and
     I had no stick or cudgel with me.
    It was at this point that, looking down towards the strand, I spotted, by the light of a flaming torch which had been set
     up on a small wharf below the road, a massive and extraordinary figure. He stood on a small stone quay built out a little
     distance into the river. On this tiny wharf, only about fifteen feet wide and twenty across, men were unloading large crates
     and some barrels from a barge which had come from upriver. In astonishment I gazed at this monstrous figure, almost six-and-a-
     half feet tall, I judged, and correspondingly massive, clad in what seemed like a long, ragged black coat with flapping sleeves.
     He was bare-headed, and dark, flowing locks hung to his shoulders. As the barge slipped and slopped at anchorage this man
     I noted with such awe and disbelief was bending into the vessel, seizing wooden boxes from within, then, with enormously powerful
     movements, half-throwing them on to the jetty. The weight of the boxes to an ordinary man could be judged by the efforts his
     companions were making with the