Shadow Conspiracy (31 page)

“Thank you, Cook. Please don’t leave us, Cook. I shall be lost without you.”

“Ileen, if you would help Mrs. Penderby here, I will remove the orangutan while his jaws are occupied.”

“Why, not one cook in all Paris could have rescued Marguerite!”

“Oh, well, them foreign cooks!”

“But the shock to your nerves! You require restoratives! I prescribe sherry! Unless there is brandy?”

“Spirits, Ileen? Before she has prepared dinner?”

“Cook is equal to anything, M’sieur Soames!
Voyons,
the boy has come back from the stable, and the kitchen will be tidy in one blink of the eye. Now you must lie down for one little hour, Cook.”

“I won’t say no. Come on, Margie, you foolish girl. You can give notice all you like, but first you’ll help me make dinner.”

“Mrs. Penderby, if you can spare me in the drawing room, I think I should assist the boy with excavations.”

“Would you, Soames? Oh, dear, I don’t know what Dr. Penderby will say. Another cook gone, and a kitchen maid, too.”

“I think Cook may decide to stay.”

“Yes, more sherry, thanks. Well, if she does, it’s only because you flattered her to death. That was very clever, Ileen. But he’ll be furious. He’ll say I can’t manage the household. He threw me out of the laboratory. He built Soames, and he’s never home, so why does he need a wife?”

“You are his conscience, Madame.”

“A most unwelcome one. More sherry, please.”

“No, a necessary conscience. Men like to move forward always in one direction of their own choosing. A woman is always pulled in two directions. She is aware of considerations. She must wait for all to be revealed.”

“I dread it.”

“Dread? But what, Madame?”

“I don’t want all revealed. I’m so afraid he has a mistress. Someone who tells him he’s always right. He used to listen to me. Now he hates my work. And I am afraid of his work.”

“I must believe he respects your work, Madame. That is why he hides from you, and hides his work. Men are such
enfants.
He fears your censure, for that has great power over him.”

“You think? You detect shame in him?”

“I detect a passionate heart, Madame.”

“Oh, I hope you are right!”

“Mrs. Penderby, what’s this I hear about Cook giving notice—ah, there you are. I’ve had a letter from—Great Scott, it’s a mess in here.”

“Horace!”

“I regret to report that the ape forgot himself with the kitchen maid, sir. However, Ileen has convinced Cook to rescind her notice.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good, I suppose. Here, Gwendolyn, I’ve heard from Clewis in Lake Geneva. I told him all about Ileen’s arm and everything and he’s coming across to London for the weekend. He’s keen as anything on Promethean experiments, and I shall finally get a chance to show him what I’ve done with synthetic tissues. We’ll open you up, Soames. Show him what the English side of things has been up to.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“C-Clewis? M’sieur Penderby?”

“Ileen, are you well? Allow me to take the sherry decanter—oh—”

“Hell, she’s fainted. Just as I’ve been telling Danton. These Prometheans haven’t the stamina of man-made automata.”

“Ileen. Ileen, wake up. Ileen.”

“
Ah, non! Quoi
—M’sieur Soames?”

“You have been screaming in your sleep, Ileen. The other maids summoned me. Here. Sit up. Drink some water.”

“Mon Dieu,
I thought—but I was dreaming.”

“What was it you thought, Ileen?”

“It makes nothing, M’sieur Soames.”

“Pardon me, Ileen, but something has frightened you. Is it—is it because of the arrival of this man Clewis?”

“Yes! He
looks
at me, when we pass in the upper rooms.”

“You are quite sure it was he, then, from Lake Geneva?”

“I have no memory before waking in that cold room, on a bed of stone. Two men talked in English who spoke of using a machine that would put a soul into the clay. The clay! They meant me!”

“I see. Then they must have recovered the body from the lake before—but do go on.”

“I waited until they went out of the room for one moment and then I ran away. For two years have I been running! Ah, but now he finds me, and I am lost!”

“I must apologize. My thoughtless words to Dr. Penderby led him to write to Mr. Clewis. My only thought was that he might recall the death of a young woman who, I am nearly convinced, must be you.”

“But M’sieur Soames, what if he does remember me? It is more than I myself can do.
Du vrai
, no one wants a blue princess with a false arm. An
amnesiac
blue princess with a false arm.”

“On the contrary. I am persuaded that your royal nature manifests in everything you are and do.”

“M’sieur Soames is a royalist then! My royal hand feeds a raw chicken to the crocodile every week, and dresses Mrs. Penderby’s hair, and shakes the tea leaves onto the floor for sweeping. No, I cannot be royal now, if ever I was.”

“But, Ileen! Your duty!”

“A fig for duty, M’sieur Soames.”

“I’m afraid I cannot sympathize with such sentiments. I was created to serve. It cannot be but that if one serves faithfully in one’s proper place, one will be happy.”

“Vraiment?
And are you happy? Well, M’sieur?”

“No. No, I am not happy, Ileen. My—my mandate troubles me.”

“Quoi?”

“The instructions Dr. Penderby gave me when he built me. I must serve him and Mrs. Penderby equally. He is a great admirer of Miss Wollstonecraft. Mrs. Penderby appreciates it. But—”

“They trap you between them in their quarrel.”

“Yes. He instructs me to keep secrets from her about his guests and his comings and goings. She demands that I spy upon him for her. It causes me acute discomfort.”

“But it must be terrible.”

“Dr. Penderby theorizes, you know, that not all human beings are born with a soul, but that they must labor to achieve a soul by suffering irreconcilable moral dilemma. Often have I heard him speak of it, in the library with his fellow scientists. I had no notion it would hurt so much.”

“For shame! That is too bad of him, to create you in such a way as to cause you pain! How fortunate that I have been encouraging Madame to think better of her husband.”

“Good heavens, Ileen, I beg you, do not interfere in their private affairs! The impropriety!”

“What impropriety? She is a woman, I am a woman. Her suffering must interest me. Besides, if they will only reconcile their differences, it will not matter if I am a dead princess of Wittgenstein or a live housemaid of London. This Clewis, brrr, he terrifies me. I had thought
Docteur
Penderby might protect me—but you say he will not. Yet if Mrs. Penderby can persuade him, or merely work her female mystique upon him, I can be truly free of fear! I shall instruct her in the arts.”

“No! A servant must never, ever intervene in the affairs of the employers.”

“But this is precisely what
Docteur
Penderby wishes you to do! And he himself put this foolish mandate in your head. It is his own fault that you suffer pain. He does not deserve your obedience!”

“Ileen! You shock me!”

“I am a good republican, me! If I have died, I have at least been reborn a free woman. If I serve here it is to make a living. Not to prove the mad theories of some
égotiste
!”

“But, Ileen, you have died. The rules change.”

“Yes, the rules always change for the convenience of the victor,
non
? Do you think the victor will acknowledge
your
soul? No, for it is not convenient to him! You are just his soulless lackey!”

“Ileen—!”

“And how can you promise to protect me if you cannot interfere with your master’s private affairs? Oh, you are the perfect servant! You do not even have the soul of a servant! He created you without a soul!”

“Alas, I fear I have a soul where soul I had none. And it has just slammed the door in my face.”

“M’sieur Soames! Wait. I have been impertinent.”

“Unkind, but not impertinent, Ileen. You are right. I think—we two dwell in a different England, different even from our fellow servants. You and I are pioneers of a new class.”

“I did not mean to be unkind, M’sieur.”

“Ileen—bother, I wish that I had another name. You may call me Soames in private. It is not right that here, between ourselves, we may not observe our own class in—in parity.”

“Is it so difficult to say ‘equality’? Perhaps that goes too far. The mechanical butler and the zombi maid?”

“You are still a princess, Ileen.”

“Hush, Soames. You see, I can still be impertinent, if I try.”

“We should not be talking on the stairs. Someone will hear.”

“No, they are arguing. Do you not hear? Master and Madame.”

“Oh, dear. Don’t go down any further! We should not—”

“There is a reason why servants listen at doors, Soames. Our security is too much in their hands.”

“But—”

“Hush!”

“—Why do you want to help me? The laboratory is dirty. And full of corpses.”

“You know very well what you are doing with them. And it’s wrong, Horace.”

“Then
why
do you wish to join me in the work? You madden me, Gwendolyn!”

“Because—because we have parted, Horace. Wherever you have gone, it is into the laboratory first. I had thought you must have taken a mistress, but I—I am now persuaded you are innocent of that.”

“But guilty of crimes against humanity. Sorry, sub-humanity.”

“Wait, please. Listen. I can’t bear this silence between us. If I can moderate how I speak of your work, may I not see it, learn about it—join you? I—I want that more than anything, Horace.”

“I think you cannot do that, Gwendolyn. You’re a passionate woman. I honour you for it. But I fear you will not feel moderately if you know what I—”

“What you are doing? Or, no.
What you have done
. That’s it, isn’t it? Horace, what have you done?”

“I knew you would take that tone.”

“If I—if I could conceive—would you love me again?”

“Gwendolyn, if
I
could conceive, would you forgive me?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know.”

“What do they do, Soames? Your ears are sharper than mine.”

“Nothing. They are not moving. Let us go, before the door opens.”