She trailed off into a silence that lasted a long, painful moment before Undine covered Eliza’s hand with hers. “Julius Elyot was a genius,” Undine said simply. “Not as great a genius as his sister, but a genius nonetheless.”
Stoker looked at Eliza. “I am sorry for your loss, Miss Elyot. I have three brothers of my own, and I cannot imagine your grief.”
I choked a little on my tea. Stoker’s relationship with his brothers had been fraught at best. The product of his mother’s affair with an Irish painter, Stoker had been the cuckoo in the nest. The law demanded that old Lord Templeton-Vane’s name was given to the evidence of his wife’s indiscretion, but that had never stopped him from observing a marked difference between Stoker and his own sons. The various entangled resentments of their youth remained with them long into maturity, and it was only in the past several months that Stoker attempted any sort of rapprochement with his siblings. I liked to think it was due in part to my influence, but hearing him speak so unguardedly about his affection for his brothers, I wondered if he had harboured far greater depth of feeling for them than I had suspected.
Miss Elyot smiled gravely. “Thank you. I think. Living with Julius was complicated. And so has living without him been.”
She paused again, and I broke the silence. “Parthenope Fleet agrees with Miss Trevelyan’s assessment of your work, you know. She says the possibilities of applying galvanic science to the domestic sphere are remarkable, capable of reshaping society. That is very exciting.”
“It would be if she could secure the proper sort of funding to carry out her researches,” Undine put in darkly.
“Surely there are grants and patrons,” I began.
She snorted. “Grants! Patrons! Yes, for men,” she said, fairly spitting the word. “Male scientists need only click their fingers and pots of money are made available to them because they are men and because they intend to put electricity to use in ways to benefit other men—ships and trains and public lighting. But explain to a man how much moreusefulit would be for a laundrymaid not to break her back over a mangle and see how quickly he buttons up his pockets. It is maddening.”
“I understand,” I told her. “Many is the time I have tried to explain to a male collector that the largest butterfly is not necessarily thebest, that one looks for symmetry and perfection of feature rather than size as the only metric of superiority. But do they listen? They do not.”
“Exactly,” Undine said, giving a small nod of satisfaction. She seemed to thaw a little more then, deigning to drink some of her tea as Stoker carried on his gentle interrogation of Miss Elyot.
“Your brother’s work was also in galvanic science?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said faintly. “He taught me everything I knew when I first started. I began as his apprentice. Apprentice! How I elevate myself.” Her little smile turned wry. “He trusted no one, you see. No one but me. It was always thus. It came from being orphaned together. And from being twins, I think. The bond is an unusually strong one. Julius’s genius was recognised very early. His intellect, his curiosity, they were remarkable, and suitable arrangements were made for his education.” She paused, appearing to choose her words carefully. “I was much like him, if it is not immodest to say it myself. Our interests were congruent, and my abilities were not far short of his. But I was not permitted to share in his education.”
There was no need for her to elaborate. Few families were willing to lavish funds and effort on the formal education of a daughter, no matterhow promising. Even in our own royal family, the Prince of Wales, stolid and slow, had always been promoted above his quick-witted and clever elder sister. It was an abominable practise to hamper the development of daughters, but it was deeply ingrained. My only consolation was the growing number of young women whose talents were being fostered by organisations such as the Curiosity Club. Perhaps with time, luck, and money enough, we could effect change.
Eliza Elyot went on. “Julius understood how much I longed to join him in his studies. He brought home books, journals, papers. He made every effort to replicate the lectures and experiments he enjoyed in order to share his education with me. It was a kindness I never forgot. And when the time came for him to leave school and establish his own laboratory, he permitted me to join his work and observe his experiments.”
“What sort of experiments?”
Eliza said nothing for a long moment, but the pain writ upon her face was eloquent.
“He was attempting to reanimate the dead, was he not?” Stoker suggested.
She reared back as if he had struck her; livid patches even rose high upon each cheekbone. But she nodded. “How did you guess?”
Stoker’s smile was grave. “Did you see the trophies below?” he asked, gesturing towards the ground floor of the Belvedere. “Row upon row of specimen, the most interesting and complex creatures in all of the natural world. Each of them is frozen in time as it was when life departed. My work is to preserve them, to give them equal dignity in death to that they knew in life—more if possible. I oil feathers and stitch hides and sculpt their expressions, and some of them are so lifelike, one might imagine them on the point of growling or purring or roaring. But they are mere shadows of what they were. However comprehensive my talents, and I am very skilled,” he added with no false modesty, “I cannotever truly capture the spark of divinity within a living being. To dothatwould be to touch God.”
Eliza Elyot shook her head, bewildered or marvelling, I was not certain which. Perhaps both. In the end, she smiled. “It is like listening to Julius speak. He believed the limits of death might be tested, the line between mortality and eternity blurred. I never quite knew if it was blasphemy or genius.”
“The greatest genius often is blasphemy,” Stoker told her.
“I think you must be right. In Julius’s case, his genius became an obsession. He began with simple things, like frogs. All experimenters with galvanic science begin there,” she said. “They all ape Volta, but Julius soon decided such things were parlour tricks, nothing more. He saw no art to making the legs of a toad twitch, but to resurrect something greater, something grander, that was his ambition. He spoke of himself in brotherhood with men like Leonardo da Vinci. There was no humility in Julius. I should like to call it confidence, but what Julius had was something more—some gift only devils in Hell know. If I believed in such things as cursed stars, I would say he was born under one, to be so single-minded in purpose, so devoted to one thing. To know such obsession is not healthy,” she said, sitting forwards, thin hands clasped around her knees. The bones of her fingers shone white through the taut skin. “One must have other interests, amusements. One must love—a pet or a person. But Julius loved nothing except his work. The meanest beggar on the street may keep a cat, some poor puss with mange, grateful for a shared crust and devoted to its impoverished master. Julius had nothing and no one—except me. And Ambrose Despard.”
“He assisted in your brother’s work?” Stoker asked as he refreshed her cup of tea, dropping in several more lumps of sugar. She curled her fingers around the cup as if to take the warmth through the porcelain and into her pale, slender flesh.
“He did. They were at school together. Ambrose’s family are famouslyeccentric, so there was nothing in Julius’s aspirations to alarm or frighten him. He is not a clever man,” she said with the cool, assessing brain of a scientist. “But he knows cleverness when he sees it. He is drawn to it, like a moth to flame, with just as disastrous a result. He was Julius’ only friend. And when Julius was sent down from university for the unorthodox turn his studies had taken, Ambrose insisted upon leaving as well. They set up house together, built a laboratory, and that is when Julius invited me to join them.”
“He did not trust Lord Ambrose?” Stoker inquired.
Eliza Elyot’s eyes flicked to the bulldog snoring at Stoker’s feet. “Your dog, what is his name?”
“Huxley.”
She looked up in surprise. “After Thomas Henry Huxley? Darwin’s bulldog?”
“Just so,” Stoker affirmed.
“Have you had him a long while?”