CHAPTER XXXIII.
‘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.’
‘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.’
‘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.’
‘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 thesesweets 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 onedress 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, thephotographer 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 Rectordeeming 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—oneto 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, butBetty 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 thefarming 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 hasnow, 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 wehad 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 rearrangeher 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 seeonly 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 agrandfather 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 Imight 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 nothingmore. 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.