PAGE 5
Taken By Surprise
by
Presently he returned with something which bulged inside his velvet jacket, and a heap of things which he threw down in a corner behind a screen.
‘A few little properties,’ he said; ‘we may be able to introduce them by-and-by.’
Then he went to the door and, with a rapid action, turned the key and placed it in his pocket.
‘You will hardly believe,’ he explained, ‘how nervous I am on occasions of importance like this; the bare possibility of interruption would render me quite incapable of doing myself justice.’
I had never met any photographer quite so sensitive as that before, and I began to be uneasy about his success; but I know what the artistic temperament is, and, as he said, this was not like an ordinary occasion.
‘Before I proceed to business,’ he said, in a voice that positively trembled, ‘I must tell you what an exceptional claim you have to my undying gratitude. Amongst the many productions which you have visited with your salutary satire you may possibly recall a little volume of poems entitled “Pants of Passion”?’
I shook my head good-humouredly. ‘My good friend,’ I told him, ‘if I burdened my memory with all the stuff I have to pronounce sentence upon, do you suppose my brain would be what it is?’
He looked crestfallen. ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘I ought to have known–you would not remember, of course. But I do. I brought out those Pants. Your mordant pen tore them to tatters. You convinced me that I had mistaken my career, and, thanks to your monitions, I ceased to practise as a Poet, and became the Photographer you now behold!’
‘And I have known poets,’ I said encouragingly, ‘who have ended far less creditably. For even an indifferent photographer is in closer harmony with nature than a mediocre poet.’
‘And I was mediocre, wasn’t I?’ he inquired humbly.
‘So far as I recollect,’ I replied (for I did begin to remember him now), ‘to attribute mediocrity to you would have been beyond the audacity of the grossest sycophant.’
‘Thank you,’ he said; ‘you little know how you encourage me in my present undertaking–for you will admit that I can photograph?‘
‘That,’ I replied, ‘is intelligible enough, photography being a pursuit demanding less mental ability in its votaries than that of metrical composition, however halting.’
‘There is something very soothing about your conversation,’ he remarked; ‘it heals my self-love–which really was wounded by the things you wrote.’
‘Pooh, pooh!’ I said indulgently, ‘we must all of us go through that in our time–at least all of you must go through it.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted sadly, ‘but it ain’t pleasant, is it?’
‘Of that I have never been in a position to judge,’ said I; ‘but you must remember that your sufferings, though doubtless painful to yourself, are the cause, under capable treatment, of infinite pleasure and amusement to others. Try to look at the thing without egotism. Shall I seat myself on that chair I see over there?’
He was eyeing me in a curious manner. ‘Allow me,’ he said; ‘I always pose my sitters myself.’ With that he seized me by the neck and elsewhere without the slightest warning, and, carrying me to the further end of the studio, flung me carelessly, face downwards, over the cane-bottomed chair to which I had referred. He was a strong athletic young man, in spite of his long hair–or might that have been, as in Samson’s case, a contributory cause? I was like an infant in his hands, and lay across the chair, in an exceedingly uncomfortable position, gasping for breath.
‘Try to keep as limp as you can, please,’ he said, ‘the mouth wide open, as you have it now, the legs careless–in fact, trailing. Beautiful! don’t move.’
And he went to the camera. I succeeded in partly twisting my head round. ‘Are you mad?‘ I cried indignantly; ‘do you really suppose I shall consent to go down to posterity in such a position as this?’