Frankenstein
The morning was biting cold. A northwest wind had been busy for hours
sweeping and dusting the sky until, now that it was resting from its
labors, the blue vault was as clean and bright as our mahogany
dining-table after Uncle Ike had polished it with beeswax and rosin.
At the breakfast-table the butter splintered off under the knife, and
the milk was frozen so hard that Mary 'Liza and I sugared it and made
believe it was ice-cream. When Gilbert, the under dining-room servant,
brought in the buckwheat cakes and waffles from the kitchen, he had to
cover them with a hot plate, and then run as hard as he could go across
the yard to the house, to keep them from chilling on the way.
There are no buckwheat cakes nowadays, like those that Aunt 'Ritta
made--glossy brown, all of a size, and porous as a sponge. It was great
fun to butter them, and then press them with the flat of a knife-blade,
to see spurts and spouts rise from the surface like so many hot oil
geysers.
That was the morning when I made the eight-cakes-and-one-sausage speech
that passed into a family proverb. The night before I had thrown a
candle-end, four inches long, into the fire, and my mother had told me
it was a Christian duty to be economical, defining the word for me.
Bent, as usual, upon practising what I learned, I divided my sausage
into eight bits, and ate one with each cake.
Cousin Molly Belle and Cousin Frank Morton had stayed all night with us,
and the talk at table was so lively that nobody noticed what I was
about. We were not allowed to chatter during meals when others than the
family were present, or, indeed, at any other time if grown people were
talking, until invited by them to take part in the conversation. So I
waited for a lull in the chat to say aside to my mother at whose left
hand I sat:--
"Mother! I have made one sausage do for eight buckwheat cakes. Wasn't
that economical?"
Even Cousin Molly Belle laughed, the "aside" being more audible than I
meant to have it. True, she hugged me the next minute, her chair being
next to mine on the other side, but her eyes were lively with amusement,
and I saw that she was ready to break out again.
My poor dainty mother actually blushed. It was not fashionable then for
ladies, and little girls who were going to be ladies, to have hearty
appetites. School-girls were instructed that no well-bred young lady
ever ate more than two biscuits at breakfast or supper, and one was more
refined than two. The pinion of a partridge sufficed the Lydia Languish
of that day for the meat course of a dinner, and to be hungry was to be
coarse. My mother was a sensible matron who did not lean to extreme
views on any subject, but she did not rise superior to a mortification
such as this. When she said distressfully:--
"Molly! Eight cakes! I am ashamed that you should be so greedy!" I
comprehended that my offence was rank, and that not her taste alone, but
her sensibilities, suffered.
I got hot all over, as was my custom when self-convicted of sin, and sat
abashed, appetite and spirits put to flight together.
My father pulled his face straight.
"Never mind this time, mother! Better pay meat bills than doctor's
bills. And, on a cold day, a restless little body like hers needs a
great deal of carbon to keep the fires going. Eight buckwheat cakes and
a thumping big sausage represent just so much animal heat."
By and by, when I got a chance to speak to him alone, I asked him what
carbon was, and what he meant by the fires and animal heat. He was at
work at his table in "the office" in the yard, the Mortons having gone
home, but he put down his pen and talked to me for quite a while upon
nutrition and food values. He did not use those terms. They had not come
into vogue even with medical men and writers upon anatomy. Still, his
simple lecture made me comprehend that what I ate kept me alive and warm
and active, and how certain kinds of food made blood, and others,
muscle, and others were of little or no use in keeping up animal heat,
without which there could be no life.
I asked him if we could keep a dead thing warm if it would come to life
again. I was thinking of all my dead pets. It was pathetic,--the
familiarity of a seven-year-old with death and dissolution,--but of this
I was not aware.
He answered very gravely:--
"We cannot keep dead things warm, daughter. When animal heat goes, life
goes."
"And when animal heat comes, does life come?" I queried. "Is that what
makes things alive?"
"Yes, dear. I have not time to explain it to you now. I am very busy.
Some other time we will talk more about it."
I carried a spandy new idea, and a stirring, into the garden with me at
noon, as a chicken runs away to a corner with a crumb. The sun shone
brightly, and I easily kept comfortable by skipping up and down a long
walk, bordered on the northern side by an arbor-vitae hedge. I did not
know that resinous evergreens really give out warmth, but I had found
out, for myself, that this was the warmest nook of the grounds in
winter, and haunted it exceedingly.
"When animal heat comes, life comes," I repeated aloud, in dancing
along.
The sentence sounded important, and pleased my ears. Presently, I would
set about getting all the meaning I could extract from it, and
experiment upon my acquisition. All my mental currency went into active
circulation.
An odd-looking thing lay in the middle of the path, that was not there
when I came down awhile ago. I thought, at the first glance, that it was
a hedgehog. I had seen pictures of the animal, and knew that when hunted
so closely that it cannot escape it rolls itself into a prickly ball.
This queer object was an oblong roll, about six inches in length and two
inches thick, and covered with very coarse brown fur or wool. I picked
it up. It was very cold. Then it could not be alive. It was light as a
puffball. Then it was empty. For the rest it was a puzzle. I ran with it
to Mam' Chloe, who was getting Bud to sleep in my mother's chamber.
She cast a look at my "find," and sniffed impatiently.
"Always huntin' and foolin' long some trash or nuther! Fetchin' er ole
dade sunflower in ter show me when I'm doin' my bes' ter git this
blessed sugar-plum pie to sleep so's I ken git to my mendin'. Go 'long,
Miss Molly!"
I was used to her moods, clement and adverse, and I stood my ground.
"Are you _sure_ it's a sunflower, mammy?"
"What you take me fur, chile? Don' I know a sunflower that's run ter
seed las' summer, an' is empty an' dade as Furious [Pharaoh] now? I got
no time to steddy 'bout sech foolishness."
I walked off,--not crestfallen, but blithe. One word had shunted my
ideas upon a new track. She called this nondescript--which might, or
might not, be the dried and warped disk of a sunflower that had cast its
seeds--"dead." What should hinder me from making it alive? It looked
like a hedgehog, or some other animal. It _should_ be an animal! Food of
the right kind, and plenty of heat, were all it needed.
"Carbon and animal heat!" uttered I, consequentially, swelling with the
prospective joy of creation.
Already I foresaw, in imagination, the tremor of the coming breath
running through the uncouth body that would then put out, from
mysterious hiding-places, head and limbs and tail, as buds unfold into
flowers. I would confide to nobody what I was going to undertake. But I
would do it! I would keep up animal heat, hour after hour, day after
day, until my--Creature--breathed and moved and grew!
Without delay I hied me to the kitchen, and begged a cold sausage and a
pone of corn-bread from Aunt 'Ritta. She made no objection beyond asking
why I "wanted sassage 'n' corn-bread in de middle o' de mawnin', 'stead
o' piece o' cake, or somethin' sweet."
"Because the weather is so cold," I replied briefly, and got what I
wished with a grunt of "Dat's so, honey!" Negroes are constitutionally
averse to winter and cold, and recognize, without knowing why, the
carboniferous properties of pork and pone. I bore my treasures off to
the dining room, shut the door, and began my experiment in the hottest
flare of the fireshine.
[Illustration: MOLLY'S EXPERIMENT.
"I hied me to the kitchen and begged a cold sausage and a pone of
corn-bread from Aunt 'Ritta."]
The sunflower disk was a curiosity to me. It had curled inward upon
itself, leaving a considerable cavity within. I stuffed this with the
bread and sausage, crumbled fine, ruminating, the while, upon the
probability that the sausage and cakes I had devoured presented the like
appearance by the time they reached my stomach. When the variegated and
viscid compound was tucked away, I wound a soft string about the disk to
keep it in shape, and enveloped it, first in raw cotton, then in a bit
of red flannel. In my uncertainty as to which end would bourgeon into a
head, and from which would be evolved the tail, I left both ends open
that IT might be able to breathe when breath came. Lastly, I secreted it
under my cricket. It was what was known as "a box cricket," and the
enclosing sides came to within three inches of the floor. It stood at
the warmest corner of the hearth, and I was well-nigh roasted by the
time I had sat upon it long enough to read the chapter in _Sandford and
Merton_ that tells of poor soft Tommy's choice of the shorter end of
the pole on which the load was hung, as likely to be the lighter. I
guessed that it was now time for me to expect to hear the birth-cry of
my Creature, or at least to detect some thrill of life. Lifting a corner
of the mufflings, I insinuated a tentative finger.
IT was warm! And before I withdrew my finger from the rough brown coat I
was confident that I felt a throb like a pulse heave ITS sides. It is
not an exaggeration to say that I was faint with excitement as I
replaced the wrappings. I had never heard of Pygmalion and his statue.
It was thirty years thereafter before I read Mary Shelley's
_Frankenstein_. When I did read it I could not fail to recall the
picture of the country-bred child, palpitating with awed delight in the
belief that she had wrested Something from Nothing. Youth alone is
absolutely fearless. The presumption of ignorance is akin to sublimity.
I sat down again to ecstatic dreamings. IT would be all my own when IT
was made--a pet so much better worth the having and holding than any
that had preceded it in my affections, that I thought of them--even of
the ever-lamented Darby and Joan--with compassionate contempt. I
pictured to myself the astonishment of the household, white and colored,
in beholding the miracle; the sensation in the neighborhood and county
when the news of what had come to pass was bruited abroad. From the
outermost border of Powhatan, from Chesterfield, and mayhap from over
the river separating Powhatan from Goochland, people would flock to see
me and wonder. Grown-uppers, who had never heard my name until now,
would tell other strangers what Mary Hobson Burwell, aged seven, had
done. I should be CELEBRATED!
I sat and roasted, shifting my position occasionally that another side
might get "done," and seemed to pore over my book until dinner was
ready.
"You are eating next to nothing, Molly," remarked my mother, casually,
during the meal. "Have you been to see 'Ritta since breakfast?"
"Yes, ma'am," I answered meekly; and she did not observe that I colored
uneasily.
Back to my watch I went when the table was cleared, and the others had
quitted the room. Uncle Ike replenished the fire, and commended my good
sense in "huggin' the chimbley-corner in sech cole weather," before he
left me to solitude, to _Sandford and Merton_, and to "Frank." I had
resolved to name him for my dear cousin-in-law. When I came to read
_Frankenstein_ I marvelled at the coincidence. Frank continued warm, as
I ascertained by quarter-hourly pokes, but he did not stir. I must be
patient. Precious things were slow of growth.
Full as my mind and heart were of thoughts and hopes too big for
expression, my behavior was so nearly normal that no troublesome
questions were propounded. I had no difficulty in keeping my secret.
Imaginative children have more secrets to guard than adults ever think
of harboring.
I took Frank to bed with me, smuggling him under my pillow, and going to
sleep with my hand on him. He was getting warmer every hour.
At midnight a cry--a series of cries--aroused the slumbering household,
and drew my father and mother to my room. I had been awakened from sleep
too sound for dreams by the bite of sharp teeth upon the thick of my
thumb. Even the certainty that Frank had evolved a mouth, and that it
was in good working order, could not cheat me into forgetfulness of the
terror and pain of that awakening. I jerked my hand from under the
pillow and shook Something off upon the floor. I heard it fall, and I
heard it run. Frankenstein could not have conceived more intense horror
and loathing for his foul, misshapen offspring than overpowered me at
that terrible instant. The light in my father's hand showed blood
streaming from my thumb and dripping upon the coverlet.
"A mouse, or maybe a young rat, has bitten her," my mother pronounced
without hesitation. "And no wonder! See how greasy her hand is! Faugh!
How very careless in Chloe to put the child to bed in such a state! Be
quiet, Molly! This should be a lesson to you not to go to bed again
without washing your hands. You are old enough to think of such things
for yourself. My dear child, can't you stop crying? It is not like you
to make so much noise over a little hurt."
"She is frightened out of her senses," said my father. "And you must
admit that it was rather startling to be aroused by feeling a mouse's
teeth nibbling at her hand."
I clung to his neck, shivering with fright and cold. My sobs were
uncontrollable.
"It wasn't a mo-use!" I got out, presently. "Nor a ra-at, either!"
"Not a mouse or a rat! How do you know? Did you see it?"
"It was _Fra-a-nk_!" I gulped. "Oh! I'm afraid to stay here! He is in
the room somewhere! He will come after me again!"
The scene was ended by my going in my father's arms to my mother's bed
for the rest of the night. My mother stayed upstairs with Mary 'Liza.
"But I did not sleep well," was her grieved report at breakfast. "The
pillows smelled horribly of sausage, I suppose because Molly's hands
were so greasy. Marthy! see that the pillow-cases are changed this
morning."
Before Marthy got upstairs, I mustered and dragooned sufficient courage
to enable me to visit the room. Still trembling and full of loathing at
what I must see, I turned over the pillow. The red flannel was
there--and the raw cotton--and inside of all, IT--Frank no longer--as
cold as a stone!
I took it up with the tongs and threw it out of the window--and said
never a word about it to anybody.
[Illustration]