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Authors: Avram Davidson

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It was well for Esau Freeman that he had spent the entire evening at the Whipple school, as it was far from well for Hannibal Nickerson, Mechanic of Tusquokum Township, that he had (as was well-proven) called that same night upon Samoset E. Hale in the matter of the overdue note for one hundred and thirteen dollars. Nickerson wanted this extended. Hale declined. Nickerson showed a proper
and edifying repentance before he was hanged, but the records do not show that he said, or was asked to say, much about the curious “magnetical irradiofusion machine” destroyed in the fire he admitted setting.
The question of the identity of the “one other” still remains “unknown.” Both Professor Bell and Mr. Edison have recently [1883—Ed.], and entirely independently, made investigations, but have not been able to find whomever it may have been in Washington City and with whom S. E. Hale was concerned in the perhaps joint invention. Still, we must ask ourselves, Who was this person of mystery, allegedly there at that time? A fragment from the correspondence of General W. Scott refers to “Cranky old Smith and his talk of Message Injines to run without wires,” but as the facts seem to be that there can be no such engine, the reports purporting to describe one man or one hundred men can after all be nothing but phantasies, however ascribed, and it is vain, were it possible, to seek for any “Smith” among multitudes. What we have collected and placed in apparent order here must be a fiction, tastefully tricked out to while away the dull night moments when the outside world cannot divert.
It is certainly true that some doubt has been cast upon parts of the testimony of both the hired man Esau Freeman and the housekeeper Emma Coolidge, these parts seeming (until not long ago) so very improbable, even phantastical; but it is unlikely that anything further will ever be learned. Emma Coolidge was drowned at sea six months later whilst returning from a visit to Nantucket. Esau Freeman (who it will be remembered was not subject to the draft) fell in an attack by Rebel sharpshooters upon United States Colored Troops in the course of a nameless skirmish somewhere in the Carolinas during the year 1865, in the month of April. May the dogwood and the crepe myrtle gently drop their fragrant flowers upon his grave.
This late Davidson gem, concerning a vanished technology considerably in advance of its time, works with characteristic misdirection and uncharacteristic concision. We might call the “irradiodiffusion machine”—created in early 1861 for the purpose of “spreading the Gospel of the Peaceable Kingdom, as well as for mercantile intelligence”—a radio. But the surviving witnesses to the fire in which inventor and invention perished have no such vocabulary to draw upon. Where R. A. Lafferty’s television story “Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen-Seventies” employs a baroque narrative of duplicity succeeding treachery, Davidson’s story seems terse and straightforward—at first. Hale might be communicating across the aether, or perhaps he is simply muttering to himself.
In the story’s final three paragraphs, Davidson cites the names Bell and Edison to send further ripples of historical suggestion that linger in memory. He undercuts the narrative we have just read, creating a sudden leap in time from 1861 to 1883, and pointing to flaws in the evidence and the death long ago of all parties directly connected with the curious events.
—
Henry Wessells
Grant lived in sin with a buxom shrew; Tumbleton was in effect director of a privately endowed museum. After Eustace Williams had somewhat slightly recovered from his second nervous attack, Doctor Douglas McFall told him straightforwardly that he must give up the cottage-studio. He told him this in the presence of Williams’s friend Tumbleton and Grant, who had come down with McFall from town on the 9:15; and of his friend Harrison, who had already been staying with Williams in the country since having learned of the attack. The sick man’s condition was of such a nature that he required and would (for a while, as yet to be determined) require constant medical attention; and McFall, regardless of the fees, could not constantly be coming down to attend him; other medical men in the neighborhood of Troy Barns there was none. The cottage-studio stood nearer to two miles from the station than not. Sometimes there was a dogcart waiting, or a trap; more often there was not. The weather was unpredictable: McFall could neither be expected to burden himself with mackintosh or oilskins nor risk exposure to pneumonia as an alternative. Troy Barns was an out-of-the-way and brutish place, no neighbors for a full mile in any direction, and the sullen groom who acted as manservant could not be expected to prepare decent food if such were always available, which was not the case; upon neither
the butcher’s cart nor the baker’s could one rely. McFall wound up this speech from, as it were, the throne, by saying he wondered Williams had not died of scurvy by now.
“Which he damned well would have,” said Grant, in his usual growl, “if Harrison had not come down ahead of us.”
Harrison said nothing, but touched his light gold beard, a gesture which often did him in place of speech. Williams gave evidence of desiring to say something, but he was still too feeble, and McFall racked on. “No chemist in case you run out of medicine, which you might, or you or that oaf Crutchett spill it, same thing it would come to: no. I want you where I can look at you and look you over as often as I think proper. You can’t go on living on bacon and bad potatoes and stale bread and stewed tea, you’ll be able to have fresh meat—chops, a joint, a nice fowl—and sprouts and greens, some decent wine, whatever I think best for your diet as we go along. If you have another of these moods in which you feel you cannot stay in the house, why, step to the curb and call a hansom or a four-wheeler—instead of rushing out into this barbarous wilderness and risk falling into an old quarry.”
Williams moved forward in his chair, his lips began to move, he licked them, moved his right hand. But McFall gave him no chance. McFall said he didn’t care how “romantic” the cottage-studio was for a painter or poet, he wanted Williams within short distance of a hospital,
if need be
(he emphasized those words), and in particular St. Olave’s, where McFall stood high, though he did not say so; what he said was that Professor Schneiderhaus of Lepzig, a man knowing more about nervous diseases than any other man in Europe, including Charcot, was spending a year at St. Olave’s. Even McFall had to pause for breath, at which Williams said something at last, but so weakly that he could scarcely be heard to speak at all.
Tumbleton it was who spoke and was heard, preening his left side-whisker, then his right: “After all, Williams,” he said, “you can paint and write in London as well as anywhere. Lots of chaps do.”
No: McFall, ignoring Tumbleton, pointed a thick finger at the sick man and said, in rolling tones, “I absolutely forbid you to touch
brush to paint or pen to paper for at least six months. You are to undergo no exertion at all. For at least six months. For at least six months you are to do nothing requiring the expenditure of nervous energy more than to dress, climb into a smoking jacket, put your feet on the fender of the fireplace, and pick up a newspaper or a magazine. You are to take naps in the afternoon. One evening a week, if one of your friends—and you may thank your good stars that you have such good friends—if one or two or all three of these gentlemen here for that matter, wish to take you out for dinner at a quiet place, or to a music hall or a concert, why, very well, I allow that. But mind you:
no drama
.”
He stopped, indicated by a rise of his tufty brows that Williams would at last be allowed to speak. After a moment, Williams did so.
“What is the alternative?” he whispered.
“Death or the straight-waistcoat,” said McFall, with quite terrible promptness.
Williams collapsed back into his chair.
“Well, there’s no more to be said,” said Grant. “We’ll pack you
up”
—he thrust the poker into the smoky fire as though it had been a mortal enemy; but still it smoked—“and take you back to
town
. You’ll live a quiet life, we’ll all see to that, we’ll all look after you, and I understand from Dr. McFall as we were coming down, that at the end of six months, when you will be much better, that there would be no objection raised if you’d wish to try the sea air; damn these coals, they aren’t proper coals at all, they’re half slate; in London you’ll have decent coals, you’ll be
warm!”
“Warmth,”
said McFall, “is of the utmost importance in illness of your sort. You
must
have a good fire.” The lamp smoked, too, in its sooty globe, but Grant, having failed to do anything with it a moment earlier, did not try now. The wavering small light of the lamp, the dim sun through the grimy windows and dusty skylight, did little to show what might be on the unfinished canvas in the corner where an armor breastplate hung askew on a tailor’s dummy and a mass of cobweb had settled on a plumed hat; or what might be written on any of the dusty sheets of paper on the desk in another
corner, loosely confined by what looked like a dictionary—something clattered in the kitchen, something smashed, somebody swore. Briefly.
“There is a problem,” Harrison said. His voice was rather high, but it was not effeminate. “I live with my father and my brother, my brother is somewhat simpleminded, a gentle soul and no trouble to
us,
we know his ways, but he is not a fit companion for an invalid. Tumbleton is a married man with a small child, and, I understand, another soon to be expected.” Tumbleton did not precisely preen, but he did straighten himself a bit. And nod. “Eustace could hardly stay
there.
” Tumbleton suddenly looked grave and slightly shook his head. “Grant has his own arrangements.” Grant lived in sin with a buxom shrew whom only Grant could manage, and then only within certain limits, and within those limits there could be no place for Williams. Grant said nothing; his face, smooth-shaven save for a moustache, did not move. Grant exported cheap bottled spirits to the Colonies under a variety of bright labels, all of which he himself had designed; now and then when the sale of one label flagged, Grant designed another: this had become the extent of Grant’s work as an active artist.
The wind wuthered down the chimney, driving more smoke into the room; Dr. McFall reproved it by coughing and waving his hands. “Very well, very well; what is the problem? Shall I tell you what is the problem? The problem is that your friend Williams is a very ill man. I have done my best for him before. Has it helped, no it has not helped. This is his second breakdown. The tonic which I prescribed after the first, I see it untouched. The elixir, on the contrary, is all over the floor, and the bottle is still where it fell. The diet pudding? In the larder, untouched, save for what the rats have mucked about. The claret, on the other hand, which should have lasted another month, is gone, it is clean gone, there are not even any empty bottles, but there is a barrel of beer which I did not order, and a case of gin, which I absolutely forbade;
that
is the problem,
that,
and the minor matter that your friend Williams had the good fortune to be found lying by the road, well-nigh insensible,
by perhaps the only police-constable to have passed this way since the Chartists marched on London; what is the time, I must not miss my train, I have a Harley Street office with patients waiting for me, I have a practice in the Borough with a rather young partner who wants being looked in on rather often, I have wards to walk to St. Olave’s—problems? problems? Do not speak to
me
of problems, Mr. Harrison.”
He glanced at his watch, raised his eyebrows, began next to put things back into his black case. Harrison touched his beard, but, nonetheless, said, “There is a problem of money. And where Eustace is to live. Not here, certainly, but—”
McFall would be butted no buts; his red face grew redder. Williams had money of his own, had he not? What? It had been somehow anticipated? There was a shortage in the last quarter’s income and there were no accounts, no hopes of recovering any of the shortage? (Things were suddenly very quiet in the kitchen.) Well, he, McFall, had not said that Williams must take rooms in the Albany, neither did he advise him to live in a doss house in Stepney. There were other places, quite livable, places respectable and yet inexpensive. “Mr. Grant and Mr. Tumbleton and I have already discussed this.” He snapped the crocodile-bag shut.
Tumbleton blinked, taken slightly by surprise, fluffed his whiskers. “Ah, yes, Williams, Harrison, we did. We did. Old Solomon, you know old Solomon, the painter’s cousin? Picturesque old fellow, ‘the artists’ friend,’ they call him, buys and sells used canvases, picture frames, easels, and such things, buys … rents out … sells … ah, theatrical costumery and painter’s props and ah—”
Grant was suddenly as impatient as the physician. “Oh, damn it, man, don’t give us an inventory of old Solomon’s business affairs. He is in the
cheap
business, and he had a
cheap
house on lease in Upper Welchman Street and is willing to rent the first floor cheap, rent not on an annual but on a quarterly basis—so you needn’t be hung up for a year’s money when you’ll likely not be needing the place for more than six months. Eustace Williams may store all his things in one of the rooms on the second floor, or in two of them,
for that matter: so long as Solomon continues to have access to his own rubble and rubbish also stored up there on the same floor. It is just the thing for you, Williams, and there is no other thing for you, Williams, and thank God for you that you needn’t depend for pennies, to say nothing of pounds, on the sale of a painting or a poem, Williams.” Williams blinked very rapidly and for a very long moment after Grant said this last.
Things did not, really, go at all badly.
Crutchett vanished without trace, and with him the possibility of a detailed explanation of the perhaps not precisely alchemical mystery of how an amount of Williams’s money had been transmuted into dross—or even how several dozens of claret had become, somehow, changed into at least one barrel of beer and a quantity of gin. But it was felt that this was a fair price to pay for a total absence of Crutchett. Old Solomon, it turned out, slightly to Grant’s annoyed surprise, was surprised to think that the gentleman had thought the furniture of the apartments in Upper Welchman Street was not included in the rent: it was; it was old furniture, but it was good enough: so
there
was a saving,
there.
And, perhaps equally surprising, perhaps even more, only Grant could have said, and Grant did not say; Kitty—whom Grant referred to, when he referred to her at all, as “my slut”—Kitty undertook to see that the apartments were cleaned, and Kitty
did
see to it that the apartments were cleaned. It was Kitty who hired the cook-housekeeper, and Kitty who swooped down at irregular and unannounced intervals to see that the cooking was done and that the house was kept, and kept as well as anyone could expect. She came usually, and departed, usually, while Williams was being taken somewhere which made very little demand on his nervous energy; Harrison once asked, curiously, “Have you ever actually
seen
her?”
“No,” said Williams, incuriously, “but I have heard her. Once.” Perhaps Dr. McFall might not have approved. But no one told him. Dr. McFall, it is true, did not come to see Williams as often as Williams’s friends had expected. Not quite as often. However, his
directions were scrupulously carried out: Williams drank the claret, and he drank it
as prescribed
. And Williams was taken regularly to St. Olave’s, where Professor Schneiderhaus asked him many questions and grunted a great deal and peered at the insides of his lower eyelids, and other things like that. Eustace had little to do, otherwise, except to thrust his feet into his slippers and place his slippered feet on the fender of the fireplace in which burned real coal, and to read the papers. The daily papers arrived twice a day; the reviews were lent by Tumbleton, who brought them himself, but did not pay for them himself, they being paid for by the Duke’s Museum, of which Tumbleton was Vice-Director. The Hon. Director was the present Duke himself, who never set foot in the Museum except for the Annual Meeting, or when there was an exhibition of Landseer. Or Bonheur. The Duke was very fond of Bonheur. “There, Tumbleton, you
see?
A woman, a mere slip of a woman, and a
French
woman, at that: and just see what she does with horseflesh. Eh? Now, why cannot our English artists all paint that sort of thing? Eh? Tumbleton?”
The Duke, of course, never dreamed of looking at the list of periodicals to which the Museum subscribed, and, to the one single member of the Board who ever had, and who had asked why the Museum subscribed to literary publications “as well,” Tumbleton solemnly replied, “Because, Sir Bascomb, it is part of the whole duty of man.” Sir Bascomb never asked again. Williams, of course, never asked at all.

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