‘Read in Senec, and read eke in Boece,
There shall ye see express, that it no drede is,
That he is gentle that doth gentle deedes.’
Crosby looks a little surprised at finding Susan here.
‘How d’ye do?’ again says he.
Susan, without enthusiasm, gives him her hand. She is busy wondering
what could have brought him in here, of all places. Fond of chocolates,
perhaps.
‘Why, there you are, Bonnie,’ says Mr. Crosby gaily. ‘No wonder I didn’t
see you in that nice big chair. How d’ye do, Miss Ricketty? I hope you
have been behaving yourself properly since last I saw you.’
‘Oh, Mr. Crosby!’ The old maid shakes her head at him with delight.
‘No fresh flirtations, I trust.’
‘Oh, hear to him!’ Miss Ricketty is laughing like a girl.
‘And how is the giant?’
‘Me brother is very well, thank you, sir. An’ he wants to see ye badly
about that cricket match in the park. They say that Tim Murphy is goin’
to be very troublesome over it.’
‘Not a bit of it. Tell your brother that I’ve squared the militant Tim,
and that he will turn up all right. What charming sweets, Bonnie! I love
sweets; don’t you?’
He has made a sign to Miss Ricketty, who is now making up a splendid
parcel.
‘Bonnie has had a cake,’ says Susan. She would have said a great deal
more if Tommy had been in question. Indeed, then she would have refused
distinctly; but Bonnie’s little lovely smiling face, and the joy she
knows it will give the gentle child to share Mr. Crosby’s gift with his
little brother, stops her. She says nothing more, though it is actual
pain to her to have to accept these sweets for her brother from Crosby.
It is a debt she owes to Bonnie to suffer thus. But, then, what does she
not owe Bonnie?
‘L’appétit vient en mangeant,’ says Crosby. ‘Miss Ricketty, don’t be in
such a hurry to tie up that parcel. Bonnie and I want something out of
it first.’ He puts a delightful box of chocolate creams on Bonnie’s knee
as he speaks, then turns to Susan.
‘I suppose I daren’t offer you anything,’ says he, in a low tone. Miss
Ricketty becomes at once absorbed in a bottle of bull’s-eyes.
‘No,’ says Susan gently, ‘thank you.’
‘Not even an apology?’
Susan glances quickly at him, and then hesitates. Perhaps she would have
said something, but at this moment Miss Barry, with Betty and Dom and
Carew, enter the shop.
‘We saw you through the window,’ cries Betty; and suddenly Susan’s
thoughts run riot. Had he seen her through the window? ‘And so we came
in. We must hurry, Susan; all the world is going to have its picture
taken—even Lady Millbank, though goodness alone knows why. And such a
guy as she looks in that velvet mantle—that heavy thing—’
‘A regular overmantle,’ says Dom.
‘Bless me!’ says Miss Barry suddenly, breaking off her conversation with
Miss Ricketty over the proper treatment of young fowls when they come to
be three months old. ‘Susan, you and Betty are wearing the same frocks.’
‘Yes, it was I who arranged that,’ says Betty calmly. ‘In some way,
Susan and I have never worn these frocks together before, and I have
heard that those old Murphy girls—’
‘Not the Murphys, Betty—the Stauntons,’ says Susan.
‘It doesn’t matter; they are all old maids alike,’ says Betty lightly.
‘Any way, I have heard that some of the weird women of Curraghcloyne
have said that we were short of clothes, because Susan and I had only
one dress between us. This’—smoothing down her pretty serge frock—‘is
the one in question. So I’m going to be photographed with Susan in it,
if only to upset their theories, and give them some bad half-hours with
their cronies; cronies never spare one.’
‘You and Susan are going to be photographed together!’ says Miss Barry,
who is getting a stormy look in her eyes. ‘You will not, then, be taken
separately?’
‘Oh yes,’ says Betty airily. ‘Separately, too. I hate double pictures as
a rule, but when duty calls—’
Miss Barry is now making wild pantomimic signs to Susan. ‘Stop her!’ her
lips are saying—‘stop her at all risks, or we shall be eternally
disgraced!’
And, indeed, the poor lady had not another penny to spend beyond what
she had already arranged for. If this double picture that the rash and
reckless Betty speaks of becomes an accomplished fact, who is to pay for
it? Not Miss Barry, certainly, because she has nothing with which to
pay. And, naturally, the photographer will demand his just fees, and
then all will come out, and—
She is on the point of appealing to Miss Ricketty, when Dom nudges her.
‘It’s all right,’ whispers he. ‘I have enough for that. I’ve settled it
with Betty.’
Miss Barry gives him a grateful look, greatly interspersed with rebuke.
Such a throwing away of good money! As if that conceited child could not
be satisfied with one representation of her face! She must really speak
to Dom about his folly later—a little later—on.
It doesn’t seem folly at all to Dominick, who is a most generous youth,
if extravagant, and who would give a great deal more to this
photographic business if it was in his power. But a great deal has been
spent of late on cartridges for the murdering of Mr. Crosby’s rabbits—so
much, indeed, that cigarettes have grown scarce and pipes a luxury,
spite of even the small sums that Carew has thrown into the common fund.
Carew has generally a shilling or two in his pockets, the Rector deeming
it advisable to give to his eldest son, out of his terribly inadequate
income, a certain amount of pocket-money, to prepare him for the time
when he will be thrown on his own resources; to teach him to economize
now, so that when he is gazetted, and has to rely on his own slender
allowance, he will be able to understand how to make money go as far as
it can.
All through the boy’s educational course, he had felt it a sort of
madness to put him into the army at all—a boy who must necessarily live
entirely on his pay—a forlorn arrangement in these fast days, and one
out of which only ten per cent. rise successfully. But the last wish of
his dying wife had been that Carew should enter the army. She had come
of a good fighting stock herself, poor soul! to which she remained
faithful, having fought her own fight with poverty most bravely until
she died; and the Rector, who had cared less and less for earthly things
since she had gone to heaven, had not the heart or the strength to
refuse that dying wish.
‘You’re sure you have it?’ whispers back Miss Barry to Dom.
‘Certain.’
‘Then’—sharply—‘it would have been much more to your credit if you had
kept it.’
‘To my credit, yes,’ says Dom.
‘A more disgraceful display of extravagance—’ Miss Barry, either from
the forced whispering or indignation, here grows hoarse, and coughs a
little, whereupon Miss Ricketty, who is now intensely interested, and is
listening with all her might, holds out to her a jar of jujubes; but
Miss Barry waves them off.
‘I suppose it is the last penny?’ asks she, still addressing Dom in a
whisper, but with a magisterial air.
‘Yes—nearly,’ says he.
The ‘nearly’ is a concession to the truth. He has, indeed, three
shillings left out of his monthly allowance, but these are already
accounted for. They are to buy three copies of Betty for his own special
apartment—one to be hung up over his gun, one over his bookcase, and one
over his study table.
‘That’s the one you’ll never see,’ Betty had said to him tauntingly, and
most ungratefully, when he told her of the decision he had come to about
his last three shillings.
Miss Barry, now turning away from him with a heart decidedly heavy,
directs her conversational powers on Crosby.
‘I congratulate you on being in good time,’ says she. ‘When Betty and I
started, we had great trouble in getting Carew and Dominick to come with
us. They were dreadfully late, and we said then—Betty and I—that you
would surely be late. But you’—smiling and wagging her curls—‘have
behaved splendidly. I do appreciate a young man who can be punctual.’
Susan glances quickly at her. ‘Young man!’ Is she in earnest, and after
all that Betty had said?
‘Young man!’ Is he a young man? Well, she has often thought so—she had
even told Betty so. Here she glances at Betty, but Betty is now enjoying
a word-to-word dispute with Dominick.
Any way, she had told her. But Betty—what does she know? She has
declared a man once over thirty, old. But Aunt Jemima thinks otherwise.
And really, when one comes to think of it, Aunt Jemima at times is very
clever—almost deep, indeed; and certainly very clever in her
conclusions.
‘Look! there are the Blakes coming out,’ cries Betty suddenly; she is
standing on tiptoe at the window, which commands a fine view of the
entrance to the photographer’s. ‘Auntie, Susan, let us go, before any
other people come.’
With this they all in a body cross the road, Carew having caught up
Bonnie, who is all eagerness to see this wonderful thing that will put
Susan’s face on paper.
Upstairs they march in a body, to find themselves presently in a most
evil-smelling corridor, out of which the studio opens. Here they wait
perforce, until at last the studio door opens, and some people of the
farming class, and very flurried and flushed, walk nervously down the
little lane between them.
‘Now is your time!’ says Betty, who is really quite irrepressible
to-day. She takes the lead, and they all swarm after her into the
studio, to find there an emaciated man in highly respectable clothes
regarding them with a melancholy eye. Collodion seems to have saturated
him.
‘Aunt Jemima, you first,’ says Susan.
‘Yes, certainly,’ says Dom. ‘First come, first served. And, you know, in
spite of Betty’s well-meant endeavours, you entered the room first.’
‘Besides which it is the part of the young to give way to their elders,’
says Miss Barry, striving to keep up her dignity, whilst dying with
terror. The photographer and the great big thing over there with dingy
velvet cloth over it have subdued her almost out of recognition.
‘Now, auntie, come on. He’s looking at you.’ ‘He’ is the photographer,
who has now, indeed, turned a lack-lustre eye on Miss Barry.
‘We are rather pressed for time,’ says he in a lugubrious tone. ‘Which
lady wishes to be taken first?’
‘Answer him, auntie,’ says Susan.
‘What impertinence, hurrying us like this!’ says Miss Barry. She has
recovered something of her old courage now, though still frightened, and
turns a freezing eye upon the photographer, who is so accustomed to all
sorts of eyes that it fails to affect him in any way.
‘Really, auntie, you ought to have yours taken first,’ says Dominick
seriously, ‘and as soon as possible. There’s murder in that man’s eye.
Don’t incense him further.’
The photographer is now standing in an adamantine attitude, but his eye,
entreating, cries: ‘Come on, come on!’
But no one stirs.
‘A most insolent creature,’ says Miss Barry, who has unfortunately taken
a dislike to him. ‘Look at him; one would think we had to have our
pictures taken by law rather than by choice. Susan, did you ever see so
villainous a countenance? No, my dear, I—I really feel—I couldn’t have
my picture sent to your uncle if taken by an assassin like that.’ She
holds back.
‘Nonsense, Miss Barry!’ says Crosby gaily. ‘You have too much spirit to
be daunted by a mere cast of countenance. And we—we have no spirit at
all—so we depend upon you to give us a lead.’
‘I assure you, Mr. Crosby, had it been any other man but this....
However, I submit.’
Whereupon, with much outward dignity and many inward quakings, she
approaches the chair before the camera and seats herself upon it.
‘A little more this way, please, ma’am,’ says the photographer.
‘Which way?’ asks Miss Barry, in a distinctly aggressive voice.
‘If you would pose yourself a little more like this,’ and the
photographer throws himself into a sentimental attitude.
‘Mercy! what ails the man?’ says Miss Barry, turning to Crosby. ‘Do you,
my dear Mr. Crosby—do you think the wretched being has been imbibing too
freely?’
‘No, no, not at all,’ says Crosby reassuringly. ‘You must sit like
this’—coming to the photographer’s help with a will—‘just a little bit
round here, d’ye see, so as to make a good picture. That will give a
better effect afterwards; and of course he is anxious to make as good a
photograph of you as he can.’
At this Miss Barry condescends to move a little in the way directed. She
clutches hold of Susan, however, during the placing of her, and whispers
thrillingly:
‘I don’t believe in him, Susan. Look at his eye. It squints! Could a
squinter give one a good photograph?’
‘Now, madam!’ says the camera man, in a dying tone. He has heard
nothing, but is annoyed in a dejected fashion by the delay. ‘If you are
quite ready.’
‘Are you?’ retorts Miss Barry.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He comes forward to rearrange her draperies and herself,
her short colloquy with Susan having been sufficiently lively to disturb
the recent pose. He pulls out her gown, then steps back to further study
her, and finally takes her head between his hands, with a view to
putting that into the right position also.
If the poor man had only known the consequences of this rash act, he
would, perhaps, rather have given up his profession than have committed
it.
‘How dare you, sir!’ cries Miss Barry, pushing him back, and making
frightful passes in the air as a defence against another attack of his
upon her maiden cheek.
‘Carew, where are you? Dominick! Susan, Susan, do you see how I have
been outraged?’
‘Dear auntie,’ says Susan, in a low tone, Carew and Dominick being
incapacitated for service, ‘you mistake him. He only wants to arrange
you for your picture. It is always done. Don’t you see?’
‘I don’t,’ says Miss Barry stoutly. ‘I see only that you are all a silly
set of children, who do not understand the iniquity of man! This
creature—’ She points to the photographer, who has gone back in a
melancholy way to his slides, and is pulling them in and out, by way of
exercise, perhaps. ‘However, Susan, I’ll go through with it, insolent
and depraved as this creature evidently is; coming from a huge
metropolis like Dublin, he scarcely knows how to behave himself with
decent people. I must request you to tell him, however, that I
refuse—absolutely refuse—to let him caress my face again!’
Thus peace is restored with honour, for the time being. And the unlucky
man who has been selected by an unkind Providence to transmit Miss
Barry’s face to futurity, once again approaches her.
‘Now, ma’am, if you will kindly sit just so, and if you will look at
this—a little more pleasantly, please’—holding up a photograph of Lord
Rosebery that he has been carrying about to delight the Irish people.
‘Ah, that’s better; that earnest expression will—’
‘Who’s that?’ cries Miss Barry, springing to her feet. ‘Is that the
Radical miscreant who has taken old Gladstone’s place? God bless me,
man! do you think I’m going to be pleasant when I look at him?’
The wretched photographer, now utterly dumfounded, casts a despairing
glance at Crosby, who is certainly the oldest, and therefore probably
the most sensible, of the rest. The noise of the feet of impatient
customers in the passage outside is rendering the poor man miserable.
Yet it is impossible to turn this terrible old woman out, when there are
so many with her waiting to be taken, and to pay their money.
‘I assure you, sir, I thought that picture would please the lady. I’m
only lately from England, and they told me—’
‘A lot of lies. Ah yes, that’s of course,’ says Crosby, interrupting him
sympathetically. ‘But what they didn’t teach you was that there are two
opinions, you know. You can show Lord Rosebery to the people who have
not a shilling in the world, and not a grandfather amongst them; but I
think you had better show Miss Barry a photograph of Lord Salisbury, and
if you haven’t that, one of the Queen. She’s quite devoted to the
Queen.’
‘I wish I’d been told, sir,’ says the photographer, so wearily that
Crosby decides on giving him a substantial tip for himself when the
sittings are over.
‘Now, ma’am,’ says the photographer, returning to the charge with
splendid courage, seeing Miss Barry has reseated herself in the chair,
after prolonged persuasion from Carew and Susan. Betty and Dominick, it
must be confessed, have behaved disgracefully. Retiring behind a huge
screen, and there stifling their mirth in an extremely insufficient
manner, gurgles and, indeed, gasps, have come from between its joints to
the terrified Susan.
‘And now, ma’am, will you kindly turn a little more this way?’ The poor
man’s voice has grown quite apologetic. ‘Ah, that’s better! Thank you,
ma’am. And if I might pull out your dress? Yes, that’s all right. And
your elbow, ma’am, please.’
‘Good gracious! why can’t he stop,’ thinks poor Susan, who sees wrath
growing again within Miss Barry’s eye.
‘It is just a little, a very little, too pointed. Ah, yes. There! And
your foot, ma’am—under your dress, if you please.’
Here Miss Barry snorts audibly, and the photographer starts back; but
hearing is not seeing, and he rashly regains his courage and rushes to
his destruction.
‘That’s well, very well,’ says he, not being sufficiently acquainted
with Miss Barry to note the signs of coming war upon her face; ‘and if
you will now please shut your mouth—’
Miss Barry rises once more like a whirlwind.
‘Shut your own, sir!’ cries she, shaking her fist at him.
There is one awful moment, a moment charged with electricity; then it is
all over. The worst has come, there can be nothing more. Miss Barry is
again pressed into her chair. The photographer, having come to the
comforting conclusion that she is a confirmed lunatic, takes no more
pains over her, refuses to adjust her robe, to put her face into
position or revise her expression, and simply takes her as she is. The
result is that he turns out the very best photograph he has taken for
many a year.
After this things go smooth enough, until at last even Betty—who has
proved a troublesome customer, if a very charming one—declares herself
satisfied.
‘No more, sir?’ says the photographer to Crosby, whom he has elected to
address as being the principal member of the party. To speak to Miss
Barry would have been beyond the poor man.
‘Oh yes, one more,’ says Crosby.