Finally, she had risen. “He will live,” she said. “I have done what I can. Time must do the rest. He will be ill for a long time, but he will not die.”
Mary had knelt beside him in the grass and cried, as she had never cried before in her life, because our Mary never cries—but she cried that day, ugly racking sobs, and her tears fell like the rain in Marazion.
“Mary.” The voice was familiar, although oh so tired!
Startled, she looked up. Sherlock Holmes was awake! He was looking at her with kind gray eyes.
“I shot you. I almost killed you.” She wanted to make sure he knew that—her culpability.
“I know. I remember.”
“I don’t expect you to forgive me. You could have died.”
He reached up and touched her cheek. “Mary.”
“If you wish me to hand in my letter of resignation, I will of course do so. I can’t imagine that you would want to work with me after—”
“Mary, come here.” He pulled her down toward him, and suddenly it seemed so natural, so inevitable, that she should lean down and kiss him with all the longing of the last few days, the last few months. His lips were soft and firm, his hand on her cheek both strong and tender. It was everything she had scarcely known she wanted in one moment of perfect, intensely felt life.
“Mary,” he said when she had pulled away again, afraid of hurting him, “I’ve never seen tears in your eyes.” He brushed them away with one finger.
She took his hand in hers. “They’re tears of gratitude, I think. But you should sleep now.”
“Yes, nurse,” he said, smiling, but his eyes were already half closed. She sat with him, holding his hand, until he fell into a deep, healing sleep.
MARY: Cat, is it absolutely necessary for you to include that scene?
CATHERINE: Yes.
Justine hesitated. Should she be here, standing in front of Dorian Gray’s elegant town house in Grosvenor Square? She still did not know what to think of Mr. Gray. And yet, somehow, she had felt that she should see him again, perhaps only to make up her mind about him.
Not certain whether she should or not, she rang the bell. Before it had stopped ringing, the door opened. She was startled to see Mr. Gray himself standing there, holding the door.
“I am short of domestic staff at the moment, Mr. Frank,” he said. “My English servants have left me, and I have sent my French staff ahead to my house in Antibes, where I intend to spend the winter. Do you wish to step over the threshold? You are most welcome, but you should be aware that you are entering the house of the most scandalous man in London. Or so my aunt Agatha calls me.”
Beatrice had mentioned a scandal of some sort, involving the playwright Mr. Wilde. But Justine never paid attention to such gossip.
“Mr. Gray,” she said, “I have come to correct a misapprehension. You see, when we met in the opium den where Mary and I were looking for Mr. Holmes, I was in disguise. I am, even now, in a disguise of sorts.” She looked down at her masculine clothes. “I am not Justin Frank, but Justine Frankenstein. Because of my height, it is easier for me to go about London dressed as a man. I apologize for the deception. I did not want our acquaintanceship to continue under false pretenses.”
“But you wanted it to continue?” he said with a smile. It was the innocent, angelic smile of a choir boy. “Come in, please come in—that is, if you wish.”
Justine stepped over the threshold and followed Dorian Gray down the hall into a parlor that made her gasp with astonishment. What would Beatrice think of this, if she could see it? The art on the walls, the furnishings, the bibelots, reminded her, more than anything else, of Irene Norton’s parlor in Vienna.
“Do you like it?” asked Mr. Gray. “I’m a collector, of sorts.” He looked as pleased as a child when you admire his new toy.
BEATRICE: I have seen his parlor since. It is magnificent, but might be more elegant if there were fewer objets d’art in it. He cannot seem to help his acquisitive instinct.
CATHERINE: And he collects people the way he collects those knick-knacks of his. I think he’s collected Justine as yet another curiosity.
JUSTINE: He most certainly has not. I know the rest of you do not like him, but Mr. Gray is my friend.
BEATRICE: We did not mean to criticize your friend, Justine.
DIANA: Of course you did.
Justine was less susceptible to physical beauty than most women. She could feel the beauty of a sunset or a flower, but in men and women, she had always admired intellect, probity, evidence of inner worth. And yet there was something about Dorian Gray—something delicate that reminded her of a porcelain figurine or a musical instrument. He was short for a man, half a head shorter than she was—quite the opposite of Atlas or Adam Frankenstein! His golden hair shone in the late morning light like a halo around his head. If she painted him, and it occurred to her that she would like to, it would be as a seraph, with wings rising from his shoulders. And yet Beatrice had warned her that he was reputed to be extravagant, profligate, immoral. “The charge of immorality is nonsense,” said Beatrice. “It is leveled by a prudish society against one who chooses not to live by its strictures. However, he is not a good man. Remember that he has abandoned Mr. Wilde, who is languishing in prison. And I have heard that both young men and women have been led into trouble, attempting to imitate his aesthetic lifestyle.” Justine had no idea what to make of all this.
“Come,” said Mr. Gray. “Let me show you my Tanagra figurine—or better yet, since you have told me that you are interested in art, come see this painting. It is by Mr. Whistler, in quite a new style.”
Justine walked over to the painting. Yes, it was indeed new—a visual nocturne, the coming of twilight over the Thames. “I am myself a painter,” she said. “But I have never attempted anything like this. Perhaps I should try. After all, this is a new era, as Catherine keeps pointing out. Perhaps I should try to be more modern.”
“Mr. Frank—Miss Frankenstein,” said Mr. Gray. “Please understand that it makes no difference to me what you call yourself, or what clothes you wear. Whether you are Justin or Justine is immaterial. It is you, yourself, that I wish to know better. Although the name Frankenstein—I have heard it before.”
“Yes,” said Justine, startled that he had recognized it. But of course he must be very well read. “It was a book by Mrs. Shelley—”
“About Victor Frankenstein. Yes, I have read it. Many believe it to be a work of fiction, but alas, I know it to be fact!”
Justine looked at him with alarm. “Why alas, Mr. Gray?”
“Because I learned it through a misadventure that happened to me in my youth—it is what started me down the road I now travel. An association with an older man, a Lord Henry Wotton, a member of the Société des Alchimistes. You will not have heard of it, I’m sure—it is a very select society of men interested in the sciences, biology above all. Lord Henry told me that Victor Frankenstein had belonged to the same society, a century before, and that Mrs. Shelley’s tale was true, at least in most particulars. Are you, then, related to the Frankenstein family? You mentioned that you were Swiss.”