The Other Nineteenth Century (16 page)

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Authors: Avram Davidson

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“Oh, come now,” said Mr. Collins. “Montavarde was an artist.”
“Many artists have been pious, decent people, Lucius. There can be no compromise between good and evil.” Mrs. Collins snuffled her agreement. Mr. Collins pursed his little mouth and said no more until his good humor was restored by the maid’s coming in with the tea tray.
“I suppose, then, Wycliffe, you wouldn’t think of letting me take your picture.”
“Well, I don’t know why ever not,” Mrs. Collins protested. “After the amount of money Lucius spent on the camera, we ought to make
some
use out of it, I think. Lucius will take your likeness whenever it’s convenient. He has a great deal of free time. Raspberry jam or gooseberry, Wycliffe?”
Mr. Collins photographed his brother-in-law in the vicarage, garden—alone, and then with his curate, the Reverend Osias Gomm. Both clerical gentlemen were very active in the temperance movement, and this added a note of irony to the tragic events of the following day. It was the carriage of Stout, the brewer; there was no doubt about that. The horses had shied at a scrap of paper. The witnesses (six of them) had described seeing the two clergymen start across the street, deep in conversation. They described how the carriage came flying around the corner.
“They never knew wot’it’em,” the witnesses agreed. Mrs. Collins said that was the only thing that comforted her. She said nothing, of course, about the estate (three thousand pounds in six percent bonds), but she did mention the picture.
“How bright it is, Lucius,” she said. “Almost shining.”
After the funeral she felt free to talk about the financial affairs of her late brother, and until the estate was close to being settled, Mr. Collins had no time for photography. He did keep up the monthly payments on the camera, however, although he found them
rather a drain. After all, it had not been his income which had just been increased by 180 pounds per annum.
It was almost November before Mrs. Collins would consent to have a fire laid. The inheritance of her brother’s share of their patrimony had not changed her habits for what her husband, if no one else, would have considered the better. Although he still transferred the same amount each quarter from his personal account to the household funds, there was less and less to show for it each week. Meat appeared on the table less often, and it was much more likely to be a piece of the neck than a cut off the joint. The tea grew dustier and the pieces of butter shrank in size, and more than once Mr. Collins had asked for another bit of cake at tea and been told (truthfully, as he learned by prowling around the kitchen later at night) that there wasn’t another bit of cake in the house. (Perhaps it was his going to sleep on an empty—and hence, nervous, stomach—that caused the odd dreams which began about this time: confused scenes he could never remember, come daylight, and a voice—flat, resonant—repeating over and over,
“The life is in the light … the life is in the light.”)
He had, of course, protested, and it had, of course, done him no good at all. Mrs. Collins, with a snuffle, spoke of increased prices, the unsteady condition of World Affairs, and the necessity of Setting Something Aside For the Future, because, she said, who knows?
So, at any rate, here it was November, and a nice sea-coal fire in the grate, with Mr. Collins sitting by it in his favorite chair, reading the newspaper (there had formerly been two, but Mrs. Collins had stopped one of them in the interests of domestic economy). There were a number of interesting bits in the paper that evening, and occasionally Mr. Collins would read one of them aloud. Mrs. Collins was unraveling some wool with an eye toward reknitting it.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Collins.
“What is that, Lucius?”
“‘Unusual Pronouncement By the Bishop of Lyons’” He looked over at his wife. “Shall I read it to you?”
“Do.”
His Grace the Bishop of Lyons had found it necessary to warn all the faithful against a most horrible series of crimes that had recently been perpetrated in the City and See of Lyons. It was a sign of the infamy and decadence of the age that not once but six times in the course of the past year, consecrated wafers had been stolen from churches and rectories in the City and See of Lyons. The purpose of these thefts could only indicate one thing, and it behooved all of the faithful, and so forth. There was little doubt (wrote the Paris correspondent of Mr. Collins’s newspaper) that the bishop referred to the curious ceremony generally called the Black Mass, which, it would appear, was still being performed in parts of France; and not merely, as might be assumed, among the more uneducated elements of the population.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Collins.
“Ah, those French!” said Mrs. Collins. “Wasn’t it Lyons—wasn’t that the place that this unpleasant person came from? The camera man?”
“Montavarde?” Mr. Collins looked up in surprise. “Perhaps. I don’t know. What makes you think so?”
“Didn’t poor Wycliffe say so on that last night he was here?”
“Did he? I don’t remember.”
“He must have. Else how could I know?”
This was a question which required no answer; but it aroused other questions in Mr. Collins’s mind. That night he had the dream again, and he recalled it very clearly on awakening. There was a woman, a foreign woman … though how he knew she was foreign, he could not say. It was not her voice, for she never spoke, only gestured: horrid, wanton gestures, too! Nor was it in her clothes, for she wore none. And she had something in her hand, about the size of a florin, curiously marked, and she offered it to him. When he went to take it, she snatched it back, laughing, and thrust it into her red, red mouth. And all the while the voice—inflectionless, echoing—repealed over and again,
“The light is in the life … the light is in the life.
” It seemed, somehow, a familiar voice.
The next day found him at his bookdealer’s, the establishment
of little Mr. Pettigew, the well-known antiquary, known among younger and envious members of the trade as “the well-known antiquity.” There, under pretense of browsing, Mr. Collins read as much as he could on demonolatry in general, and the Black Mass in particular. It was most interesting, but, as the books all dated from the previous century, there was no mention of either Duval or Montavarde. Mr. Collins tipped his hat to the bookdealer (it was the same bowler) and left the shop.
He bought an
Illustrated London News
at the tobacconist’s got a seat on top of the omnibus, and prepared to enjoy the ride home. It was a bright day despite the time of year, one of the brightest Guy Fawkes Days that Mr. Collins could remember.
The
Illustrated
, he noted, was showing more and more photographs as time went on, and fewer drawings. Progress, progress, thought Mr. Collins, looking with approval and affection at a picture of the Duke of York and his sons, the little princes, all in Highland costume. Then he turned the page, and saw something which almost caused him to drop the paper. It was a picture of a dreadnought, but it was the style and not the subject that fixed his attention to the page.
“The above photograph,” read the caption, “of the ill-fated American battleship, the
U.S.S
. Maine, was taken shortly before it left on its last voyage for Havana. Those familiar with photography will be at once attracted by the peculiar luminosity of the photography, which is reminiscent of the work of the Frenchman, Montavarde. The
Marine
was built at—” Mr. Collins read no further. He began to think, began to follow a train of thought alien to his mind. Shying away from any wild and outrageous fantasies, Mr. Collins began to enumerate as best he could all the photographs known to him to have been taken by the Montavarde camera.
Barricades in the Morning proved nothing, and neither did The
Widow;
no living person appeared in either. On the other hand, consider the matter of La Manchette, the subject of Montavarde’s picture La
Messe Noire;
consider the old house in Great Cumberland
Street, and the Reverends Wilkins and Gomm. Consider also the battleship
Maine.
After considering all this, Mr. Collins found himself at his stop. He went directly home, took the camera in his arms, and descended with it to the basement.
Was there some quality in the camera which absorbed the life of its subjects? Some means whereby that life was transmuted into light, a light impressed upon the photograph, leaving the subjects to die?
Mr. Collins took an ax and began to destroy the camera. The wood was intensely hard, and he removed his coat before falling to work again. Try as he might, Mr. Collins could not dent the camera, box, brass or lens. He stopped at last, sweat pouring down his face, and heard his wife’s voice calling to him. What
ever
was he doing?
“I’m breaking up a box for kindling wood,” he shouted back. And then, even as she warned him not to use too much wood, that the wood had to last them another fortnight, that wood had gone up—even as she chattered away, Mr. Collins had another idea. He carried the camera up to the fire and thrust it in. He heaped on the coals, he threw in kerosene at the cost of his eyebrows, and he plied the bellows.
Half an hour’s effort saw the camera not only unconsumed, but unscorched. He finally removed it from the fire in despair, and stood there, hot and disheveled, not knowing what to do. All doubts that he had felt earlier were now removed. Previously he had been uncertain as to the significance of Montavarde’s presence with his dreadful camera at the Rites of Lucifer, at the foul ritual conducted by the renegade priest Duval. It was not merely as a spectator that the cameraman had attended these blasphemous parodies. The spitting on the crucifix, the receiving of the witch mark, the signing of the compact with his own blood, the ceremonial stabbing of the stolen Host while awaiting the awful moment when the priest or priestess of the unholy sect declared manifest in his or her own body the presence of the Evil One—surely Montavarde had
done
all these things, and not just seen them.
Mr. Collins felt that he needed some air. He put on his hat and
coat and went down to the street. The breeze cooled his hot face and calmed his thoughts. Several children came down the street toward him, lighting firecrackers and tossing them into the air.
Remember, remember, the 5th of November
Was gunpowder, treason, and plot
the children began to chant as they came up to him. They were wheeling a tatterdemalion old bath chair, and in it was a scarecrow of a Guy Fawkes, clad in old clothes; just as Mr. Collins had done as a boy.
I
see
no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot
ended the traditional phrases, and then the outstretched, expectant grimy paws, and a general cry of “Remember the Guy, sir! Remember the Guy!” Mr. Collins distributed some money to the eager group, even though he could see that his wife, who had come down and was now looking out of the first floor window, was shaking her head at him and pursing her lips, pantomiming that he wasn’t to give them a farthing. He looked away and glanced at the Guy.
Its torn trousers were of a plaid design, its scuffed shoes were sharply pointed. A greasy gray waistcoat, a ragged sort of frock coat, a drooping and dirty wing collar, and a battered Ascot top hat completed its dress. The costume seemed unpleasantly familiar to Mr. Collins, but he could not quite place it. Just then a gust of wind blew off the old topper and revealed the Guy’s head. It was made of one of those carven coconuts that visitors from southern countries sometimes bring back, and its carven features were a horrible parody of the face of the slender gentleman who had sold the camera.
The children went on their way while Mr. Collins remained standing, his mind a maze of strange thoughts, and Mrs. Collins frowned down at him from the window. She seemed to be busy with something; her hands moved. It seemed to him that an age passed
as he stood there, hand in pocket, thinking of the long-dead Montavarde (How did he die? “Untimely” was the word invariably used), who had purchased, at a price unknown and scarcely to be guessed at, unsurpassable skill in building and using his camera. What should one do? One might place the camera in a large sack, or encase it in concrete, and throw it in the Thames.
Or one might keep it hidden in a safe place that one knew of.
He turned to his house and looked up at Mrs. Collins, there at the window. (What had she been busied with?) It seemed to him that she had never looked so much like a rabbit before, and it also occurred to him how much he disliked rabbits and always had, since he was a boy. That, after all, was not so very long ago. He was still a comparatively young man. Many attractive women might still find him attractive too.
Should he submit, like some vegetable, while his wife nibbled, nibbled away at him forever? No. The way had been shown him; he had fought, but that sort of victory was plainly not to be his. So be it; he would follow the way which had been open to him since the moment he took the camera. And he would use it again, this time with full knowledge.
He started up the steps, and had just reached the top one when a searing pain stabbed him in the chest, and the sun went out. His hat fell off as he dropped. It rolled down the first, the second, and the third step. Mrs. Collins began to scream. It occurred to him, even in that moment of dark agony, how singularly unconvincing those screams sounded.

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