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Belgravia Magazine Vol 64 page 76 - March 1888

Dick Auburn was an artist: not a painter, nor a sculptor, nor a musician, nor, indeed, a devotee at the shrine of any Fine Art—yet an artist. He could draw no more than a baby; his genius was anything but histrionic; he was not even a man of letters—but he was an artist. On the other hand, he was no house-painter nor designer of ornamental friezes. Indeed, in his own opinion and in that of a few enthusiasts as bigoted as himself, Dick’s Art was a Fine Art, and he wrote his Art with a capital—a length to which your most eminent decorator scarcely goes. Though confessedly an amateur at his craft, Dick was as conscientiously painstaking as the most earnest-minded professional, besides being the technical equal and the artistic superior of most professionals. When at work he was an artist first and a man afterwards: he was only once known to allow human infirmity to interfere with the mechanism of his Art. But since that one recorded slip made an episode in his life, I take it that the events connected therewith are the legitimate and indisputable property of the faithful historian.

Besides being an artist, Dick Auburn was also—in a secondary kind of way—a jolly, genial, good-looking, and perfectly eligible young fellow. He was blessed with a mercurial temperament, a gay humour (when untrammelled by artistic anxieties), and an independent income. Worldly possession, indeed, alone deterred him from enlisting in professional ranks, and led him into a determination to follow Art for its own sake, in sublime confidence that such a course must bring its own reward. When at work Dick wore professorial spectacles: at all other times he sported a smart-looking single eye-glass. The change thus wrought in his appearance was typical of the contrast between the light-hearted young blade and the anxious, care-ridden travailer in Art—a contrast which nobody who spent a day in Dick’s company could fail to remark.

Every art demands an apprenticeship: Dick Auburn’s Art was no exception to this rule. The first stage in Dick’s apprenticeship was embodied in a course of lessons (thrown in with the necessary ‘plant’) at a certain Palace of Art in Kegent Street. The second stage entailed lonely hours spent in a cellar remote from solar beams, whence issued smells and vapours the most vile. Dick himself would follow these nasal invaders from the under-world, looking pale and careworn, and wearing on his hands the stains—not, indeed, of blood, but of some virulent chemical compound far less easy to expunge. The third and last of the elementary stages brought forth slanders in portraiture on all Dick’s relations and many of his friends, not to speak of elliptical libels on such architectural accommodation as the neighbourhood afforded. But Dick rose superior to the very frank discouragement of coldly critical relatives and the sickening chill born of reiterated failure. In six months, thanks to stubborn effort and pliable purse, he became not only an ambitious but a highly accomplished amateur photographer.

But to come to Dick Auburn’s one photographic blunder—for he persists that it is the only mistake of a gross kind he ever made, during the whole of his artistic experience: at any rate it is the only one of which (to speak very literally) positive evidence has been preserved.—There stands on the Middlesex side, somewhere between Richmond and Hampton Court, quite the most charming villa, for its size, that can be found anywhere on either bank of the Thames. It is built of red brick and is a modern version of Gothic architecture, with quaint little points and acute angles: it is surrounded by majestic cedars, which in the sleepy noontide are synonyms for shade and shelter and rest: a lawn of close-cropped, velvety grass slopes gently from the French windows to the river’s brim, picked out with brilliant flower-beds: and the villa and its grounds are the property of Major Irvine, Dick’s uncle, who spends there each summer, surrounded by a small but festive party of young people.

Thither in August came our artist, with camera, lens, tripod, and the hundred and one accessories which make up a photographer’s impedimenta. He had been at ‘his dirty tricks’ (as Jack Irvine delighted in stigmatising the artistic processes) for a year by this time, and could take a more or less instantaneous picture with more than tolerable precision and certainty; and he had determined to immortalise in his album every weir, lock, reach, and island of Father Thames ere September drove him north again. But though the amateur loves best bold landscape effects for his lens, fate and his familiar friends so rule it that groups—portrait groups—almost invariably obtain an undesirable precedence. For in the matter of groups it does seem that the amateur photographer’s lot is—to use the mildest phrase—a thankless one. He either flatters his friends, and achieves thereby a certain ephemeral popularity—which is, at best, cheap; or he does not flatter them, in which case he is covered with unmerited odium—under any circumstances extremely nasty.

Dick hated taking groups. When he had hooded himself in the velvet focussing-cloth, and wore the professorial spectacles and the preoccupied, artistic air—when he stood, watch in hand, waiting to take the cap off the lens—it irked him not a little that Jack Irvine must needs seize the opportunity to play the common buffoon. It is well known that no nerves are so easily excited as the collective risible nerves of a group posed before the camera; under such circumstances any idiot can evoke roars of laughter from a group of usually sane persons, and that with the most contemptible apology for a joke. Poor Dick would join feebly in the laugh that stayed his hand on the very brink of ‘exposure’ but it jarred terribly upon his artistic temper. Though none could be more frivolous than he—when photography was not in question—he felt frivolity on such occasions to be not only out of place but a degradation to both Art and artist. He would have dearly loved to tell Jack, in good nervous English, what he thought of him; but the presence of the girls precluded even that spice of satisfaction, and it seemed too trifling a matter to mention in cold blood afterwards, over their pipes. Dick excused himself from the uncongenial task on every plea: in the first place, his lens was only a landscape-lens, he said, and not well adapted to any other kind of photography; in the second place, groups were the most difficult things out, even with a proper lens. But no: groups only, and plenty of them, were insisted on, and by dint of coercion obtained. Groups at tennis, groups at tea, groups in the boat, fancy-dress groups, groups en tableau, groups at every hour and in every costume. If the party chanced to be dull, or tired, or from other causes unequal to the task of amusing each other, Dick was called upon to administer his infallible panacea—somebody, of course, coming down with a handsome suggestion for a new and original pose.

On the other hand Dick objected less to taking single portraits. To take a single portrait he would ‘lead his victim’ (as that ass Jack said) ‘to a lonely place,’ where, however, after the most elaborate selection and arrangement of light, shade, background, and pose, a successful negative—if not a satisfactory portrait; who is ever satisfied with his portrait?—was generally obtained.

But one there was whom Dick’s artistic soul coveted—as a model; one who turned a deaf ear to the voice of his solicitations, charmed he never so wisely. And that was his cousin May’s schoolfellow, Elsie Keswicke. She was the worst offender in every group: she was an intolerable tease during the progress of the important after-processes of developing, printing, and toning; and it was she alone who dared to clap a tiny pink palm over the aperture of the lens while he was focussing, causing thereby total eclipse of the inverted image on the ground glass. Of course, she systematically ‘came out’ as badly as possible—that was but a part of her policy of exasperation. And yet it is a solemn fact that, from the very first, Dick would have exchanged his complete apparatus for the gratification of obtaining one good negative of Elsie Keswicke. True, the artistic ambition which first led his aspirations in this direction began, after a week or two, to be gradually pushed from its position of chief motor by an even stronger influence. But Dick was unaware of this merely psychological detail: he only knew that he desired above all other things to photograph Elsie Keswicke.

One fine morning—somehow they were all fine mornings that August, when Dick would have liked nothing better than a little wet weather, bringing with it respite from purgatorial hack-photography—a venerable-looking gentleman waited on Dick with an anxious yet insinuating smile, and a request couched in deferential terms. Name was Partridge. Had been an acquaintance and neighbour of the Major’s those nineteen years. Was an old colonist; also a fancier and breeder of cattle—quite a hobby with him, that. Had heard the young gentleman took wonderful photographs. Would he—as a favour, and if it was not asking too much, and taking too great a liberty—would he mind taking just one picture of a remarkably beautiful Alderney cow and calf? If the young gentleman would do an old fellow such a kindness—though, to be sure, it would prove a picture worth having—would he come over then and there, as they (cow and calf) had just been sold and were about to be taken away?

Now Dick had not the smallest inclination to add to his collection a study of an Alderney cow and calf. But there was just this in it; he would rather take a whole herd of cows, and calves, than another group; and whispered suggestions for another group were already afloat in the morning air. So he assented to the cattle-fancier’s request, and went at once to get the apparatus. As he fitted his camera into the leather sling-case, he could not help regarding the inoffensive Honduras and brass and leather with an expression of gloomy mistrust. A morbid feeling came over him that after all it was the destiny of himself and that mahogany thing to rise to nothing better than perpetuators of grotesque buffoonery. To-day, certainly, it was bovine beauty for a change; but what was there in that to satisfy ambition—to even mitigate disgust at the whole thing?

‘So Dick has gone over to old Partridge’s, and left word he won’t be back for some time,’ said Jack. ‘The old sinner! That was such a stunning idea we had for a photo up at Hampton Court—wasn’t it, May?’

‘Rather!’ returned May. ‘I wonder what the maze man would have thought of it—of course we would have had him in it! But we must insist on it another day. However, there is no reason why we shouldn’t row up there as we had planned, even if we don’t have a photograph. Eh, Jack?’

‘None whatever. It will serve old Dick right for leaving us in the lurch. You coming, Nell?’

‘Me!’ cried Nell the youngest; ‘should think I am. Did anyone ever know me refuse a row?’

‘Then there’s Elsie,’ Jack continued. ‘She’s over here in the hammock. Of course you’ll come, Elsie?—River—Hampton Court—now.’

Elsie opened her hazel eyes just wide enough to distinguish Jack’s blazer through the network of her long dark lashes. ‘Of course nothing of the kind! Dear me, how we do take things for granted this morning! You know very well I have a headache, and that the sun makes anyone’s headache worse. I don’t intend to stir from this hammock or leave this dear old cedar for hours.

Jack went over and told May, adding sotto voce that he didn’t believe a word about the headache. May declared she would not dream of going on the river and leaving Elsie all alone behind. Whereupon Miss Keswicke vowed that if she (May) dared to stay at home, she (Miss Keswicke) would go straight to bed, and that was all about it. And as the latter young lady was known to possess a quite alarming ‘will of her own,’ May at last gave in, reluctantly and almost tearfully, and left her friend to the shade of the grand old cedar and the lotos-like luxury of the hammock.

Half an hour later back came Dick from old Partridge’s, and deposited the camera-case and telescopic tripod on the lawn. Then he complacently filled and lit a pipe, and made up his mind to develop the negative he had just taken in a thoroughly scientific manner, now that he was sure of peace for an hour or two. He went into the house, and presently returned with a heavy, unwieldy tripod, which plainly belonged to no camera. This he set up with care before bringing out a curious square box, which he fixed to the triangle at the top of the tripod by means of a screw and nut. Dick next put his hand through a small square opening which had the appearance of a miniature window, undid a couple of bolts within, and lifted off bodily one of the sides of the box. He then took up a roll of dark yellow cloth and shook it out displaying a piece of the size of a large travelling-rug, with a square opening three feet wide in the centre. The edges of the opening in the cloth he fastened with spring clamps to the edges of the open side of the box, from the top of which it hung like a curtain over the open side. Dick now inserted a ruby-coloured glass slide in the small window-like opening; and finally he held up the curtain, thrust head and shoulders into the box, wrapped-the curtain closely round his body, and satisfied himself that not a ray of white light penetrated within. For this was what Dick called his ‘dark-tent’—the product of his own ingenuity of design and skill in carpentry. It fell short in convenience of the dark-room attached to his laboratory at home; it bore no sort of comparison with the very portable tents which the trade advertises; but it answered its purpose in shedding none other than a lurid light upon the occult alchemy of that veritable wizard, the photographer, whose deeds are in truth the deeds of darkness. Moreover, this somewhat clumsy contrivance possessed one advantage which Dick believed to be unique, and which certainly is not possessed by any photographic dark-tent yet placed before the public.

Dick had made all ready for the important process technically known as ‘development’; he had carried scales and weights, graduated measures, and stoppered bottles from the house, and had placed them, together with ebonite trays and a jug of water, in readiness in the tent; he had even set some queer, crystalline stuff to dissolve in a tray half filled with water, and it was just as he was going to take from the camera-case the dark slide containing the embryo negative of Mr. Partridge’s cow and calf, that his eye caught a glimpse of delicate pink on the farther side of the old cedar at the other end of the lawn. He paused for a moment, stooping over the case; then, scarcely raising the upper portion of his body, he crept towards the tree with a feline stealth of which he would have stoutly denied he was capable—unless, indeed some sprite had seethed him in his own craft and presented the photographer with his own instantaneous likeness, literally taken in the act! As he drew near the cedar he described a wide circle and at last drew breath behind a propitious laurel some ten paces from the tree. And then it was that a dream of loveliness broke upon the artist’s eyes!

There, in a light hammock of network—there, all plastic curves and softened outline, lay his coveted model, asleep! She lay robed in palest pink that seemed to his kindled fancy, against the deep shades of the tree, like the first wan streak of dawn over treeless plains. The gold-brown hair that crowned her pale, fair face showed like amber filigree against one white hand beneath her head; the other hand hung lightly over the hammock’s side. Long lashes fringed each cool cheek beneath the closed eyelids; red lips, just parted in a smile that had been checked by slumber in its dawning, displayed one gleaming flake of white between.

Indefinite ideas took still more indefinite shape in Dick’s brain. Swiftly and incoherently he thought of the Dryads in their wooded bowers; of ‘beautiful brow’d Aenone’ amid the vales and vines of Ida; of the Fairy Queen on her bank of wild thyme. Wood-nymph, river-nymph, Fairy Queen—all faded into meagre mediocrity beside the inexpressible loveliness here. This was no exquisite vision, no conjured fancy, but an enchanting reality that a man’s eye—an artist’s eye—ah! the hour he had yearned for had come at last! A moment longer the man knelt chained to the spot; the next, the artist stole back across the lawn as noiselessly as he had approached.

Now I do not say that Elsie had never been asleep at all (to hint half as much would be to destroy Dick’s most cherished illusion), but this much is certain: no sooner had Dick slunk fairly away than the hazel eyes half opened, and the smooth face rippled over with silent mirth. Nevertheless, when, three minutes later, he sneaked back to the shelter of the kindly laurel, there seemed to him no greater change in the pose and expression of his slumbering wood-nymph than takes place in sculptured marble. He little knew that the wood-nymph was now, at any rate, acutely conscious of all that was taking place, and had determined on a subtly sweet revenge.

He placed the tripod just behind the bush, with the camera at such a height that the lens peeped inconspicuously over the dark green leaves. How his heart beat as he plunged his head beneath the velvet cloth! And then—was there ever so divine an image on focussing-glass before? Was there ever before such good reason to sit down and weep because the tints on the ground glass could not, in this era of half-fledged science, be transmitted to the negative? The image was inverted by refraction, of course, but to the practised eye that mattered nothing; besides (as Jack flippantly observed when Dick made a clean breast of the whole affair to him), it couldn’t have mattered in any case, seeing that Dick himself at the time didn’t know whether he was standing on his head or on his heels.

The focussing was over, the cap was in readiness on the lens; Dick drew from beneath his coat, very gingerly, a shallow mahogany arrangement containing one sensitive dry-plate on each side, completely protected from the light by tightly-fitting slides. One plate had already done duty at Mr. Partridge’s; the other was destined—ha! did she move? Dick slid in the mahogany arrangement, quickly but carefully drew out the inner slide, thus exposing the plate to the lens, took off the cap for half a second, and—the photograph was taken!

He crept in stealthy triumph from the scene of the deed, taking everything with him, and feeling like a successful burglar escaping with his swag. At last, at last! The yearned-for photograph had been taken at last! All that remained to be done was to develop the negative (he would do it at once in the tent), and to print the picture that should never, never fade (that must be done secretly).

Dick was on the point of finally thrusting head, shoulders, and arms into the black box, and swathing his body in the hanging cloth and thus effecting an ostrich-like concealment of his upper man, when a light footstep behind him sent his heart into his mouth, and caused him to start and turn like a thief at bay. And as he found himself face to face with Elsie Keswicke, he not only felt but looked like the guiltiest wretch unhanged!

Elsie greeted him with a chill little smile, half severity, half self-restraint, as if she wanted to laugh very badly indeed. A gleam of merriment—though he was not in a condition to perceive it—lurked in her hazel eyes as she said scornfully:

‘Up to your “dirty tricks” again—eh, Mr. Auburn?’

‘Well, I—I—’ stammered Dick—‘I’ve been taking a photo; that’s all. But—but I thought you were on the river, Miss Keswicke?’

‘Did you!’ replied Miss Keswicke, and there was something in her tone which sent Dick’s heart down from his mouth into his tennis-shoes.

An awkward pause followed, during which Dick played nervously with a corner of the curtain.

‘Tell me what you have been taking,’ said Elsie presently in a friendly, interested tone, which at any other time would have launched Dick into an exultant, enthusiastic exposition.

‘Oh, you know, I’ve been taking a cow—an Alderney cow—oh, and a calf too, by-the-by—for a friend of—’

‘Ah’ interrupted Miss Keswicke chillingly. ‘But you have been taking a photograph just now! The camera didn’t come from Mr. Partridge’s on its legs, you know,’ pointing to the tripod; ‘moreover, I can see the dark slide in it still. What is the photo of—or perhaps I should say whom have you taken?’

What a fool he had been not to put away the camera at once! Here was direct evidence that a photograph was newly taken—she might want to see the negative next! Dick shifted nervously from one foot to the other, and then she understood him to reply, though he mumbled the words rather indistinctly:

‘It’s a view.’

‘Really you are very vague! I can see you don’t want to be bothered with me, so I shall go. And it is the last time ever I shall show curiosity about your odious, contemptible Art, as you call it. Be quite sure of that.’

She managed the tone of pique with such elocutionary perfection, and finished so near to a whimper as she turned away, that it was more than poor Dick could stand. He sprang forward, and, with a sudden access of reckless foolhardiness, took her hand in his.

‘Don’t go,’ he cried excitedly; ‘please don’t go, Miss Keswicke! Stop and see me develop these negatives. I want you to see them particularly—I do indeed.’

Elsie withdrew her hand; but she looked unresentingly and with an assumed frankness straight into Dick’s honest, spectacled eyes—for they did wear an honest expression now that he had determined to have the worst out. A wicked triumph thrilled the girl’s heart. She breathed the first sweet incense of Revenge already!

‘I can’t see you develop through that horrid red glass,’ she answered, pouting.

‘But suppose I fix the thing up so that you can see—will you let me show you how to develop a negative then?’

‘I may,’ dubiously.

‘Then hold on a minute!’ And he dashed eagerly into the house.

When he was out of sight and hearing, Elsie laughed gaily to herself. Here was promise of quite a delightful little game of cross-purposes! Dick had photographed her while (as he thought) she was unconscious; and now he was going to develop the negative before her eyes, doubtless intending it as a huge surprise, if not actually to lead up to—well, never mind to what. For her part, she had resolved to let him know that it was no surprise: to smash his negative—nip in the bud the sequel he had in view—and leave him heaped with contumely and utterly annihilated! So much for her scheme of just vengeance. But Elsie had yet another end in view—an end she would scarcely have owned to herself; and that was, to find out whether Dick really cared for her—whether, after all, it was not simply his so-called Art that he was in love with! In either case he should find himself only very much the worse off for the mean advantage he had dared to take!

Dick came back carrying a dark yellow curtain with a square hole in the middle, exactly like that which already formed a part of the ‘dark-tent.’ Without a word he took off the side of the black box opposite to the already open side, and fastened the second curtain in precisely the same manner as the first: so that there was a clear passage through the box but for the curtains which fell over each open side.

‘There! That’s my own patent,’ said Dick, with jealous pride, ‘my very own! I made it up at home, so that Flo (that’s my sister) could help in the developing when we went trips with the camera, just as she did in the permanent dark-room at home. It’s the only double-dark-tent in the world!—You’ll be Flo, while I develop these two negatives, won’t you? It will only take a minute or two; and, you know, you almost promised just now.’

Elsie looked up at the windows: the Major had gone up to town for the day, and not a soul appeared to be about. The church clock in the village was striking twelve: May and Nell and Jack would not be back from Hampton Court for at least an hour. Where was the harm—when it was all for Revenge?

‘Yes,’ she said, half defiantly, ‘I’ll be Flo for a minute or two.’

Not a ray of white light came in from without. A warm ruby glow suffused everything in the ‘tent,’ bathing faces and hands in deep crimson, as though they had been dipped in liquid sunset. It was well that it was so, for it became of no consequence whether Elsie blushed or paled. And after all, it was rather an embarrassing position—to be alone with Dick Auburn in this little hole, tête-à-tête across three feet of deal! But it was only for a minute—and for Revenge!

‘Be quick,’ she said to Dick; ‘I shall be stifled if I stay many seconds. Then I shall have to wriggle out, and the light will come in and spoil everything.’

‘Now promise me that you will do nothing of the kind, that you will not spoil my negatives—or I shan’t take ’em out of the slide at all,’ said the photographer firmly.

‘Very well—I promise,’ said Elsie. In her heart she was mortified that Dick should contemplate her possible flight only as so much damage to his wretched plates; she set her teeth and inwardly vowed to smash the negative—so soon as it should be nicely finished—into atoms!

Dick looked lingeringly at the bewitching crimson face before him. He would have preferred talking with his wood-nymph to manipulating dry-plates; saying a certain something—which must out at all hazards during the next ten minutes—to plunging his fingers into his beloved chemicals.

‘Go on,’ said Elsie inexorably.

Dick took up a bottle, poured an ounce into a graduated measure, and added an equal quantity from another bottle.

‘This is the developer,’ he began didactically, ‘It contains pyrogallic acid, ammonia, bromide of—’

‘Oh, never mind the names of the chemicals. Let me see the plate.’

The artist opened the dark-slide, and drew out a piece of glass coated on one side with a thin film. In the red glow it looked like a slice of ruby marble.

‘Why, Mr. Auburn,’ cried Elsie, surprised out of herself, ‘where’s the photograph?’

‘It don’t make its appearance until I charm it with this philter,’ said Dick, laying the plate in an ebonite oblong tray, and pouring over it the solution he had just mixed. ‘You will see something on the plate directly,’ he continued, rocking the tray so that the fluid spread in even waves over the sensitive film.

‘Which photograph is this?’

‘The cow, I think. I can’t say for certain. But—but please, don’t speak to me for a minute or two, Elsie,’ said Dick in his artist’s anxious tone, bending the professorial spectacles close to the exciting tray, insensible alike to ammonia fumes and to the fact that he had called Elsie by her Christian name for the first time in his life.

‘Only one more question then—how long will it be before we see anything on the plate?’

‘Half an hour—that is, I mean half a minute,’ Dick replied abstractedly. But even as he spoke he felt a shudder of dread pass down his spinal column like lightning down a conductor!

The cogent solution had immersed the plate already for half a minute, but not the faintest suspicion of outline or detail appeared. A minute—a minute and a half—two minutes passed, in terrible suspense for Dick: still nothing was to be seen on the virgin pink of the film. Dick mixed a fresh developing solution, and applied it after pouring off the old one. Still no sign of incipient development. Something might have gone wrong with either plate or chemicals—but there was a more probable and a much more serious hypothesis. After about five minutes Elsie spoke:

‘I thought you had taken a photograph? If you have, you have utterly failed, for once in a way. I don’t think you can be much of a photographer after all. Now try the other one.’

‘Oh! Elsie, I dare not.’

‘Dare not! Why dare not?’

‘Because—because it is of—’

‘Of what?’

‘Of you!’

Elsie’s eyes flashed indignation at the unhappy photographer.

‘So,’ she began, ‘you dared to tell me it was a view—’

‘A view and of you sound so abominably alike, you see. I answered you honestly enough, only you misunderstood me.’ Dick made an ineffectual attempt to turn it off lightly.

‘Of me! yes, I have known it all along! Then develop it at once, Mr. Auburn—it is the least you can do after such an astounding impertinence!’ Her voice was cold and hard, as if she meant every word she uttered; and her eyes gleamed cruelly, like fiery coals in the crimson glow.

Oh, blessed ruby light, granting colour to Dick’s bloodless cheeks!

‘Dearest—’ he began, in an agony, trying to catch her hand in his.

She snatched her hand away, but looked him full in the face. ‘How dare you? You think you’ll drive me from the tent by insulting me! But I stir not an inch until you have developed the other plate. Begin this instant.’

Dick looked at her helplessly. Ah, if she could only know what she was about to bring down on them both! Dick saw certain shipwreck staring him in the face. Yet she drove him relentlessly onward!

‘Begin at once,’ she repeated mercilessly.

There was no help for it. Dick bent over the slide and took out the other plate with shaking hand; his forehead was bathed in perspiration; his heart rapped loudly, as if seeking exit from his miserable carcase. And as he bent fumbling with the plate, Elsie smiled a wicked little smile of triumph. Yet her smile quickly ended in a puzzled expression; for—it suddenly struck her—why should he be so afraid of letting her see the negative? But the answer came almost as spontaneously: of course, he divined her intention of smashing the plate, and was heart-broken at the prospect of losing his ill-gotten sun-picture! Poor fellow—poor Dick! There was really some little tiny reason to pity him after all—and he had called her ‘dearest,’ too. But he should not have taken a mean advantage!

Dick laid the plate in the solution, and began rocking the tray mechanically. He knew that the worst would come in a few seconds now, and he determined to be cool at the last.

‘So you dared to take me while I was asleep, did you?’ said Miss Keswicke tauntingly. ‘Ah, here I come, face and dress first, black as coals, of course, and the hammock—Great Heavens! what have you dared?’ A natural aposiopesis ended the scream to which her voice had risen, for her breath was fairly taken away!

But Dick went on mechanically rocking the ebonite tray. For it was no worse than he had foreseen, and he might as well go through with it like a Briton. So he allowed every detail to be fully brought out—indeed, he had never exercised greater technical care with a negative in his life. He tried to forget that each detail in this one was a nail in the coffin of his new-born, yet darling, hopes! But he dared not look up, and it was as well that he was not over-bold. Elsie stood speechless, quivering with passion—a veritable Pythoness!

Most conspicuous on the plate, indeed, were Elsie’s form and face—black as ink, of course, with the usual reversal of the lights. But from the shapely head protruded two great horns—from the feet hung an unmistakable tail—she was plainly supported on four cloven hoofs—her hand rested on the back of what appeared to be an ill-shapen black dog! Reader, have you ever witnessed dissolving views? And have you noted their appearance at the moment of dissolution, when the canvas is shared equally by the coming and the parting guest—when you see, maybe, Sir Christopher Wren’s colossal face working its way through the dome of St. Paul’s? The effect of Dick’s unlucky negative was precisely the same as the effect of that view when dome and face were in mid conflict. The result was a literal and compact rendering of Beauty and the Beast. The enthusiast had committed the prime blunder in photography—he had taken two photographs on one plate!

‘Monster!’ Elsie managed to gasp at length. ‘Brute!’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ murmured Dick ruefully, and hardly truthfully, seeing that assuredly nobody else could have helped it.

‘Couldn’t help it!’ repeated Elsie in a low tone of withering scorn. ‘I wouldn’t add falsehood to outrage, if I were you! Why not confess at once that you have played me a low, vulgar trick—a trick that no gentleman could play?’

‘It wasn’t a trick, it was an accident,’ said Dick doggedly.

‘And I suppose it was by accident that you persuaded me to degrade myself by putting my head into this box, just to see myself made a f-fool of! Oh! it is the worst thing I ever heard of in my life!’

‘You insisted I should develop it, when you saw I didn’t want to,’ groaned the unlucky Dick. ‘Next thing,’ he thought, ‘I suppose she’ll cry, and after that—why after that it’s all up.’

‘I meant to break the horrid thing in any case,’ continued Elsie, with a breaking voice; ‘but I shan’t now. Oh dear, no. I shall keep it to show all the world what a—what an apology for a gentleman you are!’ She seized the fatal piece of glass as she finished speaking; but a moment later it slipped from her nerveless fingers back into the ebonite tray, and she burst into a torrent of passionate sobs.

‘Oh! Elsie,’ cried Dick, eagerly seizing both her hands, ‘can’t you see it was all a confounded mistake?’

‘N-n-0-0—it wasn’t—you did it on purpose.’

‘I swear I did not!’

But Elsie struggled to free her hands from his grasp, and it was not in Dick to retain them by force. So he withdrew one of his hands, seized a measure full of filthy-looking yellow solution, raised it to his lips, and said solemnly:

‘Elsie, if you persist in leaving me before I can say what I’ve meant all along to say, I’ll drain every drop of this—this deadly poison!’

Then he put down the measure. Then, somehow, his hands relinquished hers altogether, and rested for a moment like epaulets on her soft red shoulders. Then, somehow, he leant forward and drew her to him over the three feet of glass and chemicals. Then—oh, blessed ruby light! What matters a blushing cheek in your crimson glow?

* * * * * * * * *

‘Yes, darling,’ said Dick, as they packed away the apparatus. ‘We’ll preserve the negative for ever and ever. It shall go down to posterity as an unbroken record!’

‘Oh, Dick, I never heard you make a joke before!’

‘How could I crack jokes when I was in love—’

‘With your Art.!’

‘No, my Elsie, with you! And yet—oh! it was a shocking blunder!’ added the artist with a sigh.

And when Jack asked how the ‘dirty tricks’ had been getting on, Dick replied that ‘he had spoilt a negative.’ And so indeed he had—in more senses than one.