The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales Read Free Page B

passages, secret stairways, secret motives, secret murders, tracks of blood from secret persons, moans from secret chambers, from secret nightmares, Italian secrets, Italian love, Italian hate and revenge.
    At one point Emily sees the wax replica of a corpse with a worm-eaten face which she takes to be real. And it might as well have been. Eventually Emily is rescued by Valancourt, delivered from Udolpho, and not long afterward the pair are married. But complications arise.
    Emily and Valancourt seem made for each other. Both have been through quite a lot but neither has been poisoned by their sorrow, their suffering, or by months spent deep in the midst of vice. Their simple, everyday natures remain unharmed and intact.
    At night, however, Valancourt lies awake in bed, eavesdropping on the things Emily whispers in her sleep: secret things. After a few weeks of this, Valancourt is looking very haggard. In a matter of months he is hopelessly insane, and one day goes running off for parts unknown.
    Emily now spends much of her time alone. To occupy herself she writes poems, as she has always done, atmospheric little pieces like “To Melancholy,” “To the Bat,” “To the Winds,” and “Song of the Evening Hour.”
    Sometimes she cannot help asking herself if she was not deceived from the very start about the virtues of Valancourt. Why, he was no better nailed together than that crumbling old castle of Montoni’s. That awful, terrible place.
    What was its name again? Ah, yes…Udolpho.
     
    The Irreproachable Statement of the Governess’ as to the Affair at Bly
     
    The governess is writing an account of her experiences at Bly, where she had charge of two parentless children named Flora and Miles. She was hired for the job by the children’s uncle following a rather perfunctory interview at his office in Harley Street. Despite the brevity and formality of this encounter, however, the governess fell deeply in love with her employer. Or so it seemed to Mrs Grose, the housekeeper at Bly, when the governess told her about the meeting.
    Among other things, the governess writes of her amazement at the two beautiful children and of her resolve to devote herself body and soul to their upbringing in hopes that someday her devotion would be appreciated by the man in Harley Street. At least so much we are led to believe.
    The governess now writes of the horrors at Bly. These are dire events involving the ghosts of two former retainers, Miss Jessel and Peter Quint, whom the governess suspects are trying to possess the souls of the children and through them perpetuate the unholy romantic alliance they carried on in life. However, this situation is not spelled out in so many words. Due to her subtle and indirect prose style, it is often difficult to tell what the governess is claiming.
    During her time at Bly, the governess writes, she saw the fiendish figures of Quint and Jessel standing outside windows and upon high ledges, lurking in the shadows at the foot of a stairway, and poised unmoving across the serene waters of a pond on the expansive estate. But she conquers her terror of these visitations, she tells, because at all costs she must protect the children. They are innocents after all. No matter what debased acts they have been led into committing, so the governess says, they may still be saved and, under her ever-watchful supervision, be returned to a sinless state. Accordingly, she packs up Flora and sends her to London, because, as the governess asserts, “Bly has ceased to agree with her.” Now it only remains to challenge Miles regarding some awful secret. The dead, however, are very tenacious and do not easily give up the pleasure of unexpectedly appearing at windows and preventing secrets from being told.
    One overcast day, the governess confronts Miles and begins her interrogation of him. What wickedness had he committed, she wonders, if any? Staring at them through the paned windows of a pair of French doors is the