The Feminine Future: Early Science Fiction by Women Writers (Dover Thrift Editions) Page 6

  Suddenly I determined to destroy it. I turned it over ready to dash it in pieces, but it cost me a struggle to destroy this work of my life, and while I stood irresolute a small green-and-gold beetle crawled out of it and dropped like a stone to the floor. The insect was an electric flash to me, that dispelled the black gloom through which I had been battling. It had likely fallen into the instrument down in the church-yard, or when I laid it upon the window-sill, and the rasping of its wings, magnified, had produced the sounds which resembled the strange grating noise uttered by the deaf-mute.

  Instantly I put the trumpet to my ear. Once more the music of the past surged in. Voices, leaves, water, all murmured to me their changeful melody; every zephyr wafting by was filled with broken but melodious whispers.

  Relieved from doubts, relieved from fears and threatening dangers, I slept peacefully, dreamlessly as a child. With a feeling of rest to which I had long been unused, I walked out in the soft, clear morning. Everything seemed to have put on new life, for the sky was not gray or sober, and the leaves, if they were brown, trimmed their edges in scarlet, and if many had fallen, the squirrels played among them on the ground. But suddenly the sky and the leaves and the squirrels might have been blotted from existence. I did not see them, but I saw—I saw Mother Flinse come through the college gateway and walk slowly down the road!

  The large faded shawl pinned across her shoulders nearly covered the red flannel petticoat and the orange-and-black spotted muslin was wrapped in a turban on her head. Without breathing, almost without feeling, I watched the figure until at the corner it turned out of sight, and a long dark outline on the grass behind it ran into the fence. The shadow? Then it was not a ghost. Had the grave given up its dead? I would see.

  At the churchyard the briars tore my face and clothes, but I plunged deeper where the shade thickened under the thorn-trees. There in the corner I stooped to lift the broken slab of a tomb, but all my strength would not avail to move it. As I leaned over, bruising my hands in a vain endeavor to raise it, my eyes fell for an instant on the stone, and with a start I turned quickly and ran to the church; then I stopped—the narrow fissure that cut zigzag across the slab on the tomb was filled with green moss, and this window was nailed up, and hung full of heavy cobwebs.

  And my instrument?

  Suddenly, while I stood there, some substance in my brain seemed to break up—it was the fetters of monomania which had bound me since that evening long ago, when, by the river in the oak-forest, I had heard the robin trill.

  No murder stained my soul: and there, beside the black waves of insanity through which I had passed unharmed, I gave praise to the great Creator—praise silent, but intense as Miriam’s song by the sea.

  ELY’S AUTOMATIC HOUSEMAID

  Elizabeth W. Bellamy (1837–1900)

  After the darkness of the previous stories it is time to have something a little more light-hearted. The end of the nineteenth century saw a rapid growth in the number of new inventions, thanks in part to the industry of Thomas Edison, who is credited with over a thousand patents alone. Inevitably, as with all new technology, things do not always work as they should. So the same period saw a rise in humorous stories looking at madcap inventions that go awry. Automatons and clockwork toys had long been a fascination, but the idea of mechanical beings created to undertake housework was relatively new in fiction. In effect the housemaids in the following story are robots, though that word did not pass into the language until 1921 with the premiere of Karel Capek’s play R. U. R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots).

  The humor of this story is a far cry from the life of its author. Elizabeth Croom came from a prosperous merchant family. She was born in Florida but the family settled in Georgia, partly so that she and her brother could benefit from a better education. She married her cousin, Charles Bellamy, in 1858 and they had two children. However tragedy struck during the Civil War. Both her children died within months of each other in 1862 and her husband died of typhoid the following summer. Her parents’ cotton plantation in Alabama was ruined during the War and her father was declared bankrupt in 1868. The now widowed Elizabeth turned to teaching to help support them. Thankfully her brother had good work as a lawyer and he encouraged her to write. Although she had little financial success she did achieve a certain national reputation, notably with the idiosyncratic Four Oaks (1867), written under the alias Kamba Thorpe. After her father’s death, Elizabeth settled with her brother and his family and continued to write, though her main income came from teaching. After his death in 1884 from bronchitis, aged only 45, Elizabeth stayed with his widow Mary and ran a school from their home.

  Somehow she found the time to produce a steady stream of fiction. The following story was one of her last, written when her health had deteriorated and she was suffering from kidney failure. She died just four months after it was published in The Black Cat. She was four days away from her sixty-third birthday.

  IN ORDER FOR a man to have faith in such an invention, he would have to know Harrison Ely. For Harrison Ely was a genius. I had known him in college, a man amazingly dull in Latin and Greek and even in English, but with ideas of his own that could not be expressed in language. His bent was purely mechanical, and found expression in innumerable ingenious contrivances to facilitate the study to which he had no inclination. His self-acting lexicon-holder was a matter of admiring wonder to his classmates, but it did not serve to increase the tenacity of his mental grasp upon the contents of the volume, and so did little to recommend him to the faculty. And his self-feeding safety student-lamp admirably illuminated everything for him save the true and only path to an honorable degree.

  It had been years since I had seen him or thought of him, but the memory is tenacious of small things, and the big yellow envelope which I found one morning awaiting me upon my breakfast-table brought his eccentric personality back to me with a rush. It was addressed to me in the Archimedean script always so characteristic of him, combining, as it seemed to do, the principles of the screw and of the inclined plane, and in its superscription Harrison Ely stood unmistakably revealed.

  It was the first morning of a new cook, the latest potentate of a dynasty of ten who had briefly ruled in turn over our kitchen and ourselves during the preceding three months, and successively abdicated in favor of one another under the compelling influences of popular clamor, and in the face of such a political crisis my classmate’s letter failed to receive immediate attention. Unfortunately but not unexpectedly the latest occupant of our culinary throne began her reign with no conspicuous reforms, and we received in gloomy silence her preliminary enactments in the way of greasy omelette and turbid and flavorless coffee, the yellow screed of Harrison Ely looking on the while with bilious sympathy as it leaned unopened against the water-bottle beside me.

  As I drained the last medicinal drop of coffee my eye fell upon it, and needing a vicarious outlet for my feelings toward the cook, I seized it and tore it viciously open. It contained a letter from my classmate and half a dozen printed circulars. I spread open the former, and my eye fastened at once upon this sympathetic exordium:

  “Doubtless, my dear friend, you have known what discomfort it is to be at the mercy of incompetent domestics—”

  But my attention was distracted at this point by one of the circulars, which displayed an array of startling, cheering, alluring words, followed by plentiful exclamation points, that, like a bunch of keys, opened to my enraptured vision the gates of a terrestrial Paradise, where Bridgets should be no more, and where ill-cooked meals should become a mechanical impossibility. The boon we had been sighing for now presented itself for my acceptance, an accomplished fact. Harrison Ely had invented “An Automatic Household Beneficent Genius.—A Practical Realization of the Fabled Familiar of the Middle Ages.” So the circular set forth.

  Returning to the letter, I read that Harrison Ely, having exhausted his means in working out his invention, was unable to manufacture his “machine” in quantity as yet; but th
at he had just two on hand which he would sell in order to raise some ready money. He hoped that I would buy one of his automatons, and aid him to sell the other.

  Never did a request come at a more propitious moment. I had always entertained a kindness for Harrison Ely, and now such was my disgust at the incompetence of Bridget and Juliana and their predecessors that I was eager to stake the price of a “Household Beneficent Genius” on the success of my friend’s invention.

  So, having grasped the purport of the circulars and letter, I broke forth to my wife:

  “My dear, you’ve heard me speak of Harrison Ely—”

  “That man who is always so near doing something great, and never has done anything?” said she.

  “He has done it at last!” I declared. “Harrison Ely is one of the greatest geniuses the world has ever seen. He has invented an ‘Automatic-Electric Machine-Servant.’ ”

  My wife said, “Oh!”

  There was not an atom of enthusiasm in that “Oh!” but I was not to be daunted.

  “I am ready,” I resumed, “to invest my bottom dollar in two of Harrison Ely’s machine-servants.”

  Her eyes were fixed upon me as if they would read my very soul. “What do they cost?” she mildly asked.

  “In comparison with the benefits to be derived, little enough. Listen!” I seized a circular at random, and began to read:

  “The Automatic Household Genius, a veritable Domestic Fairy, swift, silent, sure; a Permanent, Inalienable, First-class Servant, warranted to give Satisfaction.”

  “Ah!” said my wife; and the enthusiasm that was lacking in the “Oh!” made itself eloquent in that “Ah!” “What is the price?” she asked again.

  “The price is all right, and we are going to try the experiment.”

  “Are we though?” said she, between doubt and desire.

  “Most assuredly; it will be a saving in the end. I shall write to Harrison Ely this very night.”

  The return mail brought me a reply stating that two Electric-Automatic Household Beneficent Geniuses had been shipped me by express. The letter enclosed a pamphlet that gave a more particular account of the E. A. H. B. G. than the circulars contained. My friend’s invention was shaped in the likeness of the human figure, with body, head, arms, legs, hands and feet. It was clad in waterproof cloth, with a hood of the same to protect the head, and was shod with felt. The trunk contained the wheels and springs, and in the head was fixed the electric battery. The face, of bisque, was described as possessing “a very natural and pleasing expression.”

  Just at dusk an oblong box arrived by express and was duly delivered in our hall, but at my wife’s urgent entreaty I consented not to unpack the machines until next day.

  “If we should not get the knack of managing them, they might give us trouble,” said this wise wife of mine.

  I agreed to this, and having sent away Bridget with a week’s wages, to the satisfaction of all parties, we went to bed in high hopes.

  Early next morning we were astir.

  “My dear,” I said, “do not give yourself the least concern about breakfast; I am determined that Harrison’s invention shall have fair play.”

  “Very well,” my wife assented; but she prudently administered bread and butter to her offspring.

  I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side, their hands placidly folded upon their waterproof breasts, and their eyes looking placidly expectant from under their waterproof hoods.

  I confess the sight gave me a shock. Anna Maria turned pale; the children hid their faces in her skirts.

  “Once out of the box,” I said to myself, “and the horror will be over.”

  The machines stood on their feet admirably, but the horror was not materially lessened by this change of position. However, I assumed a bold front, and said, jocosely:

  “Now, which is Bridget, and which is Juliana—which the cook, and which the housemaid?”

  This distinction was made clear by dial-plates and indicators, set conspicuously between the shoulders, an opening being cut in the waterproof for that purpose. The housemaid’s dial-plate was stamped around the circumference with the words: Bed, Broom, Duster, Door-bell, Dining-room Service, Parlor Service, etc. In like manner, the cook’s dial-plate bore the words that pertained to her department. I gave myself first to “setting” the housemaid, as being the simpler of the two.

  “Now, my dear,” said I, confidently, “we shall see how this Juliana can make the beds.”

  I proceeded, according to the pamphlet’s directions, to point the indicator to the word “Bed.” Next, as there were three beds to be made, I pushed in three of the five little red points surrounding the word. Then I set the “clock” connected with the indicator, for a thirty minutes’ job, thinking it might take about ten minutes to a bed. I did not consult my wife, for women do not understand machinery, and any suggestion of hesitancy on my part would have demoralized her.

  The last thing to be done was to connect the indicator with the battery, a simple enough performance in itself, but the pamphlet of directions gave a repeated and red-lettered “CAUTION,” never to interfere with the machine while it was at work! I therefore issued the command, “Non-combatants to the rear!” and was promptly obeyed.

  What happened next I do not pretend to account for. By what subtle and mysterious action of electricity, by what unerring affinity, working through a marvellous mechanism, that Electric-Automatic Household Beneficent Genius, whom—or which, for short—we called Juliana, sought its appropriate task, is the inventor’s secret. I don’t undertake to explain, I merely narrate. With a “click” the connection was made, and the new Juliana went up-stairs at a brisk and business-like pace.

  We followed in breathless amazement. In less than five minutes, bed number one was made, and in a twinkling the second was taken in hand, and number three also was fairly accomplished, long before the allotted thirty minutes had expired. By this time, familiarity had somewhat dulled that awe and wonder with which we had gaped upon the first performance, and I beheld a smile of hopeful satisfaction on my wife’s anxious countenance.

  Our youngest, a boy aged three, was quick to feel the genial influence of this smile, and encouraged thereby, he bounced into the middle of the first bed. Hardly had he alighted there, when our automaton, having finished making the third bed, returned to her first job, and, before we could imagine mischief, the mattresses were jerked about, and the child was tumbled, headforemost on the floor!

  Had the flesh-and-blood Juliana been guilty of such an act, she should have been dismissed on the spot; but, as it was, no one of us ventured so much as a remonstrance. My wife lifted the screaming child, and the imperturbable machine went on to readjust the bed with mechanical exactitude.

  At this point a wild shout of mingled exultation, amazement and terror arose from below, and we hastened down-stairs to find our son John hugging his elbows and capering frantically in front of the kitchen-door, where the electric cook was stirring empty nothing in a pan, with a zeal worthy a dozen eggs.

  My eldest hopeful, impelled by that spirit of enterprise and audacity characteristic of nine-year-old boys, had ventured to experiment with the kitchen automaton, and by sheer accident had effected a working connection between the battery and the indicator, and the machine, in “going off,” had given the boy a blow that made him feel, as he expressed it, “like a funny-bone all over.”

  “And served you right!” cried I. The thing was set for an hour and a half of work, according to the showing of the dial-plate, and no chance to stop it before I must leave for my office. Had the materials been supplied, we might have had breakfast; but, remembering the red-lettered “caution,” we dared not supply materials while that indefatigable spoon was gyrating in the empty pan. For my distraction, Kitty, my daughter of seven years, now called to me from up-stairs:

  “Papa, you better come, quick! It’s a-tearin’ up these beds!”

  “My dear,” I sighed, “there’s no
way to stop it. We’ll have to wait for the works to run down. I must call Harrison’s attention to this defect. He ought to provide some sort of brake.”

  We went up-stairs again. The B. G. Juliana stood beside the bed which she had just torn up for the sixth or seventh time, when suddenly she became, so to speak, paralyzed; her arms, in the act of spreading the sheets, dropped by her sides, her back stiffened, and she stood absolutely motionless, leaving her job unfinished— the B. G. would move no more until duly “set” again.

  I now discovered that I was hungry. “If that Fiend in the kitchen were only at work about something substantial, instead of whipping the air into imaginary omelettes!” I groaned.