PHOTOGRAPHERS ABROAD.
Mrs. Morland, as may have been gathered, was in a sense an indulgent
mother, and her children lacked nothing necessary for their health or
their comfort. Her personal interest in their private concerns, their
hobbies, their undertakings, their studies, was regulated entirely
by what she estimated as social opinion--by the effect which the
particular hobby or pursuit in question might have on the position of
Frances and of Austin among their juvenile fellows, and in the eyes of
Mrs. Morland’s own acquaintances.
Thus, she had almost from the first set the seal of her approval on the
Society of the Altruists; because she observed that Frances, as founder
and leader of that energetic body, had secured a kind of sovereignty
over her comrades; also, that the majority of the better-class
Woodendites spoke well of the young people’s efforts, and gave honour
to Frances as the inspirer of all their best intentions. Greater
still was the credit given to the girl for the modesty which made her
obviously unaware of the good opinions she had won from her mother’s
friends, and for the unselfishness which made her eager to admire the
generous labours of her supporters; and Mrs. Morland was careful to
do nothing to make Frances more self-conscious, and therefore less
attractive to critical eyes.
At home, the mother was content to give an occasional peep into the
club-room when a meeting was in full swing, and to subscribe liberally
when funds were requisitioned; abroad, she was fond of allusions to
“my lassie’s up-to-date fancies,--which really, you know, are quite
amusingly altruistic”. Mrs. Morland was by no means a popular person,
in spite of her local distinction. Woodend happened to be favoured
with, for its size, an unusually large number of well-to-do residents;
and among these, by birth, by fortune, by knowledge of the world, Mrs.
Morland had an undoubted prominence. When qualities of head and heart
were considered, her claims were less readily admitted.
Yet she was, in a degree, an able woman, though her talents were purely
social, and she had no sympathy with art or with letters except in so
far as they might help to secure social consideration. Austin inherited
a share of his mother’s gifts, and was naturally her favourite child.
In Frances she detected all those qualities which had least appealed to
her in her husband’s character; but as most people seemed to find these
traits admirable, she gave them toleration on account of their value in
the eyes of others.
Christmas-day dawned in what the girls and boys of Woodend called
“proper weather”--snow under foot, clear blue sky and sunshine
overhead. Frances and Austin had worked hard on Christmas-eve at church
decorations, proving themselves Muriel Carlyon’s best allies. Their
mother viewed without enthusiasm the ornamentation of her pictures,
furniture, and walls, when the materials were holly and fir. Indeed,
she called such time-honoured greenstuff “messy nonsense”, which soiled
whatever it touched when fresh, and covered the floors with litter when
dry. In church, she found it unnecessary to disapprove of anything
which had the sanctity of tradition to support its use; and so she
willingly granted Muriel’s request that the two youngsters might be
spared to help her, and allowed to share her luncheon in order to save
the time spent in going home.
Muriel Carlyon was a popular person both in school and out of it, but
she certainly shone as a holiday companion. She was as invariably
ready to interest herself in the latest schemes of harmless frolic
as in the soberer matters of daily life and duty, and had been quite
as enthusiastic as any of her pupils over the plans for the great
entertainment, quite as delighted at its triumphant success. There were
a few among her younger friends who knew that her sympathies could go
deeper still, that she could sorrow with the sorrowing, and point the
way to seek for comfort.
The old rector, Dr. Stansby, looked on Edward and Muriel Carlyon almost
as a son and daughter. They spent with him all they could of their
scanty leisure, and held it a pleasant duty to see that a sense of
growing infirmity should not touch his peace of mind. No parish matter
could be neglected while these two workers watched over affairs, and
Edward tackled bravely the few abuses which old-fashioned prejudices
had rendered unassailable in the days when Dr. Stansby had laboured
alone.
The brightness of the Christmas morning with which my story is
concerned was reflected in the faces of Mrs. Morland’s pair of
youngsters as they ran into the breakfast-room to see what fate
had sent them. Their mother followed at leisure, her simple winter
morning-gown falling gracefully about her stately person. She never
had been known to be in a hurry; and of late years the assured comfort
of her circumstances, and the small demands made on her for sustained
exertion, had weakened further her naturally inert disposition. But
she had a smiling face for her children when they sprang back to throw
their arms about her and offer grateful kisses.
Before Austin’s place at table stood a beautiful enlarging camera,
which would surely be a priceless help in the practice of the “dark
art”; he found, too, a fine array of photographic plates and papers,
and the latest thing in “print-washers”, as a gift from his sister.
All these matters being of moment in regard to his latest hobby, the
boy was certain that no present could have pleased him better. Frances
found herself the possessor of a beautiful writing-case, fitted with
everything necessary and unnecessary. Austin had amused himself and
Max vastly by a special journey to Exham in order to select his
present, which now astonished his sister’s eyes. It was a plain wicker
work-basket of enormous proportions; and half an hour of coaxing had
induced Muriel Carlyon to line the monster with crimson silk, on which
were stitched at regular intervals great white letters:
“FRANCES THE ALTRUIST”.
The peals of laughter with which Frances received this offering, and
in which Austin joined, almost upset Mrs. Morland’s equanimity; but
just as she began to think of frowning, the lively couple calmed down
and pounced on the row of new story-books, which were to be a joint
possession.
Frances remembered for long afterwards the special peacefulness and
happiness which seemed to mark the morning of that Christmas-day. Never
had she more thoroughly enjoyed the service in the old Woodend church,
with the rector’s benign face seeming to greet each well-known member
of his congregation, and Edward Carlyon reading the familiar prayers,
and Muriel accompanying on the organ her well-trained choir of boys and
men. The choristers were recruited chiefly from Mr. Carlyon’s pupils,
so that Austin was the soloist that morning, and sang with bird-like
clearness a vocal hymn of joy and praise.
The children dined late with their mother on great occasions, and now,
after a luncheon of sandwiches, mince-pies, jelly, and cream, they
hurried out for a run which might assist digestion. Austin carried his
camera, for he pined to get a snow-effect, and thought that the view of
Woodend village from the elevation on which his mother’s house stood
would answer admirably for a subject.
“It wasn’t worth while to bring my camera-case,” announced the boy, as
he darted round from a side-door his arms burdened with impedimenta.
“You won’t mind carrying something, will you, Frances, as it’s such a
little way we’re going?”
“I always carry something,” replied his sister calmly; “and I would
have come to help you collect your baggage if Mater hadn’t called me
back to write a letter for her. It was only a little letter, but it
took time. Everything takes time. I wish the days were twice as long.”
“Well, as they’re at their shortest now, and we’ve only two hours of
light before us, we’d better scurry. There, I’ve dropped my dark cloth,
and I can’t stoop to pick it up.”
“Mercy! Are your dark slides in it?”
“No, better luck.”
“But ought you to carry them without any covering? I’m sure light will
get in and fog the plates when the sun shines like this.”
“It’s December sun,” said Austin testily. “And what’s the use of
calling the slides ‘dark’ if they let in the light?”
“I don’t know; but surely you remember last week, that waster you got--”
“If you’re going to begin by talking about wasters--!”
“Oh, never mind, dear!” cried Frances hastily, remembering that
Austin’s “wasters”, as he called his spoilt plates, were sore points.
The glory of his few photographic successes could hardly, as yet, be
said to atone for the bitterness of almost universal failure.
Austin had pulled three dark slides from under one arm, a tripod from
under the other, and had held towards Frances the racked-out camera he
had hugged to his breast.
“If you’ll carry this tricky thing I’ll be awfully obliged,” he said
piteously. “I’m in mortal fear of dropping it and smashing my lens.”
“All right!” agreed Frances. “Wrap the slides in the dark cloth and
I’ll take them also. That’s the way. Now, let’s run.”
So Austin shouldered the tripod, and off they went. Down the
carriage-drive to the gate, and then along the road overlooking the
village till they reached the desired spot. Here they cried a halt, and
Austin set up his tripod.
“No cap on the lens!” exclaimed Frances in dismay.
“Oh, crikey! Why didn’t you tell me when I handed you the wretched
thing?”
“I never looked at the lens. I thought you would have made sure you had
everything before you came downstairs. Not that I need have thought
so,” added Frances grimly. “Last time, you forgot the dark cloth; and
the time before, when Max was with us, don’t you remember--?”
“There you are again with your ‘rememberings’!” muttered Austin. “A
fellow can’t be expected to keep his wits about him with you and Max
chattering like fun.”
“Oh, I dare say!” laughed Frances. “Here, take the camera, and I’ll run
back for the cap.”
“Hang it, can’t I use my hand? I’m sure I’d cover the lens all right.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t! Wait, and I won’t be long.”
Frances scudded away, but when she had gone almost out of sight,
suddenly turned and scudded back again.
“I suppose you have filled the slides?” she inquired.
“Filled them!” ejaculated Austin. “Why,” he began lamely, “weren’t they
full? I never thought of that. And I want slow plates.”
“You dreadful goose!” cried Frances; and picking up the slides, she
raced away again.
Arrived in the dark-room, she found that only one of the double slides
possessed its piece of black card for dividing the two plates. A search
for the missing necessaries delayed her a good deal, and might have
ruffled her temper had she not become resigned to photographic muddles.
“Here I am at last!” she remarked cheerfully, as she came up to Austin,
who remained seated in philosophic calm on the top of a five-barred
gate. “There were no cards in two of the slides.”
“Oh!” remarked Austin, “I thought perhaps you’d lost the cap.”
“_I_ had lost it!”
“Well--it might have lost itself. Thank you ever so much for going.”
“Let’s make a start, Austin. The sun’s sinking down into the mist.”
“That’s all right. It says in my photographic handbook there are
‘immense possibilities in mist and cloud’; and also, that ‘there is
pictorial value in a gate or a stile carefully placed’. Now, I haven’t
been wasting my time while you’ve been away; I’ve been thinking over
what that chap wrote. And I’ve made up my mind to get the mist and the
cloud and this gate into my photograph.”
“Likewise the windmill, the group of poplars, and the whole expanse of
Nature, I presume?” observed Frances sarcastically.
“I dare say I could edge in the poplars--my lens has a wide field,”
said the photographer. “The windmill is behind our backs.”
“I thought you were going to take the village. And you can’t see the
village through the gate or over it. You must open the gate and go into
the field to get the view we wanted.”
“Humph! I believe I’ll give up the village in favour of the gate. I’m
certain I can ‘carefully place’ the gate on my ‘neg.’, so as to give it
‘pictorial value’; and a gate is easier than a whole village. Besides,
the cloud and the mist will go in of themselves, not to mention your
poplars.”
“Get your beloved gate on the ground-glass, and we’ll settle.”
This Austin proceeded to do, while Frances patiently held the cap--the
sixth which had been bought for this particular camera. Each of the
remaining five had been dropped and trodden into a shapeless mass in
what its owner called “moments of remarkable enthusiasm”. Anticipating
such a moment, Frances thought it well to watch over the survivor.
“I’m doing my best,” announced the operator from the enveloping folds
of his dark cloth, “but those poplars are awful worrying. They don’t
work in nicely with the gate when it’s ‘carefully placed’.”
“Leave them out.”
“Oh, not when I’ve promised you,” said Austin courteously. “There, I’ve
focussed the lot somehow. Just take a peep, Sis, and admire my work.”
Frances accordingly concealed the greater part of her person from view
beneath the dark cloth--which, it may be noted, was of proportions as
Brobdignagian as Frances’s work-basket, in order to elude the light
which like a fiend seemed to pursue Austin’s dark slides.
“I see the gate on the extreme left,” commented the critic, “and half
the poplars on the extreme right, and a long strip of hedge cutting the
picture nearly in two, and a foreground muddled into nothing--”
“You must have a muddled foreground,” interrupted Austin. “It’s
artistic.”
“Well, I like to tell a bush from a wall myself,” said Frances;
“but I suppose you’re an impressionist, like those people your
photographer-man writes about. There’s plenty of cloud and mist,
Austin; and if you don’t think a picture with just a gate and poplars,
and a hedge and an impressionist foreground, rather dull--”
“I’d have liked a figure or two, ‘to give interest’,” admitted the
handbook student. “Of course I can put you in.”
Frances groaned. She always was “put in”,--with frightsome results.
“Hallo!” shouted Austin just then, “here come two jolly figures for me!”
Frances looked, and saw Max Brenton and Betty Turner tramping through
the snow at a pace dictated by Betty’s aversion to undue haste. Max
lugged a big basket in one hand and a small one in the other, and was
trying to keep up his circulation by whistling vigorously. Betty was
pensive, and disinclined at the moment for conversation.
As soon as the two pairs of youngsters hailed each other from afar,
they began, after the fashion of their age and kind, to rush together
as though they had been opposing currents of electricity. They met with
a bump and a shock and a great deal of laughter.
“We were just coming to you,” said Betty. “At least, I was. Mamma has
some friends staying with her, and this morning each of them gave me
something for our Society stores--”
“How kind of them!”
“It was rather decent. So I thought I’d like you to have the things,
as it’s Christmas-day; and the servants were fearfully busy, so I just
took the basket to bring it myself. Coming up the hill I got so hot and
tired, and I just sat down on my basket--”
“And might have been sitting there yet!” ejaculated Max tragically.
“Only Max came and helped me up, and carried the basket. It was nice of
him, only he’s always in such a hurry. In the other basket, the little
one, he has some nonsense of his own--”
“That’s what she calls Dad’s prescriptions.”
“Oh, I hope they’re not ‘every four hours’ bottles!” cried Austin. “Do
look, Max. Perhaps, by luck, they’re ‘at bed-time’ potions. I want you
and Betty to be figures for me.”
“Got out the camera? My, what larks!”
The boys immediately set off at the best pace permitted by the baskets,
Austin giving a hand with the altruistic burden. The girls followed, at
Betty’s leisure.
“There’s no hurry about Dad’s things,” remarked Max, setting his
load down by the roadside and dashing at the camera. Max could be
enthusiastic with anybody. “What are you taking, old fellow? The lens
doesn’t seem to be pointing anywhere.”
“It’s pointing at a pictorial gate, an impressionist foreground, half a
group of poplars, and any amount of mist and cloud ‘thrown in’. Frances
actually says my view will be dull!”
“Let’s look.”
Max accordingly popped under the cloth, and presently emerged with a
somewhat puzzled and dejected appearance.
“I suppose it’s all right,” he remarked humbly to the owner of the
camera; “though things do seem a little mixed in front.”
“Poor Max! He doesn’t appreciate the charms of impressionism,” said
Frances, coming up arm in arm with the serene Betty.
“Ha! there’s another figure for me!” cried Austin next. “My star’s
overhead this afternoon. Fly, Max, and tell Florry to hurry up. She’s
the very thing for a photograph. There’s ‘pictorial value’ in any girl
with long hair and an animated expression.”
Max “flew” as desired; and, while he ran--by way of saving
time,--acquainted Florry at the top of his voice with the honour in
store for her. Florry naturally flew to meet the honour, reached Max
midway, caught his hand, and dashed wildly back. They landed, at full
pelt, in the middle of Frances, Betty, Austin, the camera, and the
baskets. In the result, Austin and the smaller basket became as mixed
as the impressionist foreground.
“Goodness!” said the boy ruefully, picking himself up. “I’ve squashed
your basket, Max, and all your father’s things are running out in
streams!”
The entire company precipitated themselves on the snow to examine the
ruin.
“It wasn’t medicine--it was port-wine,” confessed Max in sorrow; “Dad
was sending it to old Briggs. Janet had made him some jelly and stuff,
too. You needn’t mind, though, Austin; it was my fault.”
“Bosh!”
“You needn’t mind, either of you,” said Frances. “Mamma will give us
some more port-wine, and we’ll beg a jelly from cook.”
“Thank you,” said Max fervently. “You’re awfully kind,
Frances,--Frances the Altruist!”
“Now for the figures!” Austin sprang with recovered glee to his camera.
“You’d better all stand nicely up against my carefully-arranged gate.”
“But why should we all stand up against a gate?” objected Betty. “Let
half of us, at least, sit down.”
“Why should you sit down in the snow?” inquired Austin sensibly. “I
should say that, for choice, you’d rather stand up.”
“I could sit on my basket,” murmured Betty. But she allowed Austin to
“place” her, as carefully as any handbook could desire, exactly against
the middle of the gate, with Florry and Max on either hand.
“Aren’t we a bit stiff?” suggested Max mildly. “Mightn’t I sit on top
of the gate, instead of standing in a row with the girls? Or, as Betty
likes sitting, couldn’t she mount the gate?”
“Catch me!” cried Betty.
“I’d hold you on,” said Max accommodatingly.
“No, indeed!” said Austin severely; “Betty would block out my best
clouds. And if you held her on, Max, I couldn’t take your eyes. I don’t
fancy portraits when you can’t see the folks’ eyes.”
“I could turn my face to you,” said Max persuasively, with a lingering
fondness for his bright idea.
Austin was immovable in his determination to arrange his friends in
line, and to photograph all the eyes they could present to his camera.
Finally, after the usual agonized commands to his sitters, Austin
reached the vital moment and removed the cap from his lens. He remained
then in a state of frantic uncertainty as to when he should put it on
again; and remained uncertain so long that, before he could settle the
important point, the six eyes watching his changeful countenance and
palpitating person began to twinkle, and Betty giggled outright.
“There!” said the photographer, with the calmness of despair, “that’s
another plate done for!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” said Betty penitently.
“It isn’t as though it would have been a common picture either,”
continued Austin stonily; “we’ve lost a really good thing. Not so much
a snow-effect as a figure-study, with mist and clouds and poplars.”
Betty was overwhelmed with shame.
“If only I could have made up my mind!” broke out the artist bitterly.
“If only I could have made up my mind a moment sooner, I should have
capped the lens and saved my best picture!”
“Austin dear,” remarked Frances quietly, “you have six plates in your
slides.”
This simple speech effected an immediate transformation. Austin
remembered that his little all in the way of plates had not been torn
from him. Betty recovered her spirits, and having magnanimously offered
to “stand out, in case she spoilt another”, was warmly pressed to
remain in and be immortalized. Frances suggested that, after removing
the cap, Austin should count ten under his breath, and then do the
deed. Florry added the useful hint that if Betty did not fix her gaze
on the photographer’s worried countenance she might be better able to
control her own.
“Very well,” said Austin graciously, “you may turn your head just
a trifle, Betty, and stare at that fir-tree. But I must have your
eyes on the camera, Florry; and I’d like one or two of your curling
locks pulled over your shoulder to show in front. I want to take your
long hair and your animated expression. I believe,” finished Austin
joyfully, “this picture will be better than the other. I hadn’t
remembered the ‘pictorial value’ of Florry’s curls!”
After several agitated moments, the photographer announced that his
mission was accomplished.
“I don’t believe any of you turned a hair,” he remarked gratefully.
“I’m no end obliged to you. Let’s all tear off home and develop this
plate.”
“Oh, Austin!” remonstrated Frances; “you’re always in such a hurry! Do
let’s take some more pictures first.”
“All right. I’ll tell you what. We’ve six plates; one’s spoilt, and
one’s properly exposed. That leaves four: one for each of you. I’ll sit
on the gate, and watch you take them. Only do be a little quick, for
I’m burning to develop my beautiful figure-study.”
A chorus of thanks applauded this generosity; though, to tell truth,
Austin’s possessions were always freely at the disposal of everybody.
All the present party of friends knew enough of the photographic art to
be able to “take” something--what, they were not quite sure until their
work had gone through “development” at the hands of Austin or Frances.
Frances now announced that her choice of subject should be the village
of Woodend, from the brow of the hill whereon she stood. Betty wished
to take a portrait of Frances and Florry. Max was already focussing
Austin, as the latter perched on the gate,--“so as to give the girls
time to think”. Florry declined to disclose her purpose till her
comrades had had their turns.
Austin’s eyes beamed with good-humoured triumph, as he obligingly
turned them full on his friend; and Max “took” the eyes and their owner
without any discomfiting entreaties for attention and tiresome worry
about detail.
Betty was so charmed with Austin’s pose that she insisted on Frances
and Florry displacing him and mounting the gate.
“I shall take you large,” she observed ambitiously; “just as big as I
can get you on to the ground-glass.”
The sitters made anguished efforts to keep still while Betty, who
despised haste in photographic exposure as in everything, counted sixty
aloud.
“I’ve given my plate a minute,” she said with satisfaction. “Now
something’s sure to come up.”
Frances carried the camera into the field, and focussed her “view”.
“Oh, put in a few figures to give interest!” begged Austin. “My
handbook says they’re an enormous improvement to a quiet country
landscape.”
“Well, if Max doesn’t mind, he might just run across the field to that
stile leading to the brook. He could be crossing over it, as though he
were going to the village by the short cut.--When you’re half over it,
Max, you might stand still, and--and--just try to look like moving.”
Max ran to execute the required task, and his dramatic instincts
brought him to a pause in an attitude quite suggestive of motion.
“But he’s got his back to us,” objected Austin loudly. “We can’t see
his eyes. Hi, Max! Turn round, I say!”
“No, no!” shouted Frances. “Keep still!--I couldn’t see his eyes if
he turned this way, Austin; he’s too far off. This is a view, not a
portrait.”
“Oh!” said Austin in disgust; “you could easily have made it a
figure-study.”
Frances, however, appeared satisfied, and speedily recalled Max. To
Florry now fell the post of responsibility, and the last plate.
Florry, as dramatist, author, poet, painter, and musician, was easily
first among the artistic youth of Woodend. Her social qualities were
as naught in the eyes of Mrs. Morland, for she did not understand how
to appear “to advantage” before select circles of her elders, and
among her fellows she held her many gifts as the property of all. When
the universal voice demanded it, Florry emerged from her shell, and
wrote, painted, or played to order, without even the affectation of
incompetence. She was the sole darling of a refined and modest home,
where her talents were wisely nourished and never overstrained.
Florry, with a thoughtful brow, now delivered herself:
“I wish you would all go and look at Max’s basket again.”
“Why? What for?”
“I mean, just as you did before. Frances and Betty squatting anyhow in
the snow; Austin standing up with his legs apart, his cap pushed back,
his hands in his pockets, and looking awfully ashamed of himself; Max
down on one knee, holding the broken bottle, and with such a dismal
face.” Florry caught hold of the camera and led the way back to the
roadside. She had an idea.
“It will be a picture--we’ll call it ‘Disaster!’,” she went on rapidly.
“Frances and Betty will be showing each other the wasted jelly and
beef-tea. It won’t be acting--it will be real.”
The young people threw themselves with their usual enthusiasm into
Florry’s plan. As they grouped on the snow, Florry, who was careful of
details, requested Austin to turn up his collar in consideration of
the wintry atmosphere she wished to preserve in the composition of her
picture, and implored him to look at the ruin he had wrought, and not
to stare, round-eyed, at the camera.
“Is it a quick plate?” she asked him.
“No;--I’m sorry. My handbook says slow plates are best for
snow-effects; and when we came out, I meant--”
“Never mind! Just wait a moment, as quiet as you can, while I draw my
shutter. But when I say ‘Now!’ mind you don’t wink an eye.”
“Winking an eye,” began Austin eagerly, “wouldn’t show on a slow plate.
It--”
“Hush--sh--sh! We sha’n’t hear Florry’s ‘Now!’”
The group waited and listened.
“I’ve done,” said Florry calmly. And she capped her lens as she spoke.
“Why, you never said ‘Now’!”
“And I’m not going to. I wasn’t likely to let you all look like
statues.”
“We’ve been ‘took’ unawares!” cried Austin, dancing wildly round Max
and the basket.
“Florry’s a base deceiver!” said Frances, chuckling over the little
ruse. “Now we’ll pack our traps and learn our fate in the dark-room.”
Subsequent proceedings in the ammonia-perfumed apartment need not be
here described, but I give the result.
Austin’s developed plate revealed the distressing fact that a trifling
twist of the camera had caused the disappearance of the half-group of
poplars. There remained to him the gate, with a tin-soldier row of
diminutive figures in front of it--their backs to the fading light, and
their faces consequently indistinguishable as to eyes and all other
features; a long stretch of hedge, running aimlessly across the picture
to the right as though seeking a lost vanishing-point; a foreground
more mixed than the most ardent impressionist could have believed
possible; and a dark expanse of nothing where the mist and clouds ought
to have been.
Max had three portraits of Austin. That is to say, his figure
faithfully represented Austin at three different moments, as the model
had oscillated on his slippery perch.
Betty’s desire for size had given her two gigantic heads, which
acknowledged her leisurely exposure by deliberately fading away
before her anxious eyes, leaving her with a coal-black plate and a
disappointed soul.
Frances’s lights were a little hard and her shadows a little heavy;
but Woodend village loomed with no more than artistic vagueness on
her plate, and her short exposure had preserved her mist and clouds.
And Max’s far-off figure was quite life-like. Frances hoped that
her negative would, after all, yield a decent print, and Austin was
consoled by the thought that Woodend village had been photographed at
last.
There was no light in the dark-room save that which came from Austin’s
ruby lamp, and a flickering reflection through the red-paned window of
the waning day without. Frances developed Florry’s plate with friendly
care, and announced results to the group peering over her shoulders.
“It’s coming up!” was the first exciting news. (Don’t press so, Austin
dear; you’re shaking my arm, and I can’t rock the dish properly.)
“Oh, it’s coming up all over, quite slowly, and ever so nicely! Not
those splashes of black here and there--which just mean fearfully
high high-lights, and nothing else in particular,--and not black fog
everywhere, like poor Betty’s. Oh, it’s coming more, it’s getting
plain! There’s Austin’s furry collar, and Betty’s woolley cloud, and
Max’s black collar--I mean, his white collar showing black! And
there’s the basket, and the broken bottle, and the spoilt jelly! It’s
lovely! I think all the details have come out now. Shall I stop?”
“Oh, no!” pleaded Austin. “Make it pretty dense, then we’ll see
ourselves through the back.”
So Frances resigned herself to future slow printing, and developed a
good, strong negative, which, when fixed, rinsed, carried out to the
brightest light attainable, and examined through the back over a black
cloth, was found to reveal a delightfully natural presentment of the
agitated group round about the broken basket.
Austin gazed long, and drew a tremendous breath.
“It’s a dream!” he murmured low, and turned away full-hearted.
This triumph and Frances’s modest success were carefully consigned
to the plate-washer beneath the running tap, the “wasters” were
thrown aside, and the troop of boys and girls departed to secure the
replenishment of Max’s stores.
Then the young folks prepared to separate. It was Christmas-day, and
long absence from home was impossible. Max was due at the cottage of
old Briggs, and Frances and Austin must set him on his way. So down the
drive to the gate pelted the lively four, promising themselves many
more exciting hours with the wizard camera, which could turn a roadside
accident into a “dream”.
Frances was still standing outside the gate, giving a last wave to her
retreating friends, when she caught sight of a dark figure advancing
from the direction of the village.
“Austin,” she called to her brother, “do come here. I believe I see
poor Jim East. Yes, I’m sure it’s he. Fancy! Oh, poor Jim! Let’s stay
and speak to him.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t feel like saying--things.”
“Don’t be so unkind. Surely we can show we’re sorry?”
“Well, you do the talking, then. I’ll stick here in the shade till I
see what he looks like.”
“He’s walking very slowly. I’m sure he’s sad. Oh, poor Jim!”