PAGE 6
Taken By Surprise
by
I heard a click, and, to my unspeakable horror, saw that he was deliberately covering me from behind the camera with a revolver–that was what I had seen bulging inside his pocket.
‘I should be sorry to slay any sitter in cold blood,’ he said, ‘but I must tell you solemnly, that unless you instantly resume your original pose–which was charming–you are a dead man!’
Not till then did I realise the awful truth–I was locked up alone, at the top of a house, in a quiet neighbourhood, with a mad photographer! Summoning to my aid all my presence of mind, I resumed the original pose for the space of forty-five hours–they were seconds really, but they seemed hours; it was not needful for him to exhort me to be limp again–I was limper than the dampest towel!
‘Thank you very much,’ he said gravely as he covered the lens; ‘I think that will come out very well indeed. You may move now.’
I rose, puffing, but perfectly collected. ‘Ha-ha,’ I laughed in a sickly manner (for I felt sick), ‘I–I perceive, sir, that you are a humorist.’
‘Since I have abandoned poetry,’ he said as he carefully removed the negative to a dark place, ‘I have developed a considerable sense of quiet humour. You will find a large Gainsborough hat in that corner–might I trouble you to put it on for the next sitting?’
‘Never!’ I cried, thoroughly revolted. ‘Surely, with your rare artistic perception, you must be aware that such a headdress as that (which is no longer worn even by females) is out of all keeping with my physiognomy. I will not sit for my photograph in such a preposterous thing!’
‘I shall count ten very slowly,’ he replied pensively, ‘and if by the time I have finished you are not seated on the back of that chair, your feet crossed so as to overlap, your right thumb in the corner of your mouth, a pleasant smile on your countenance, and the Gainsborough hat on your head, you will need no more hats on this sorrowful earth. One–two—-‘
I was perched on that chair in the prescribed attitude long before he had got to seven! How can I describe what it cost me to smile, as I sat there under the dry blue light, the perspiration rolling in beads down my cheeks, exposed to the gleaming muzzle of the revolver, and the steady Gorgon glare of that infernal camera?
‘That will be extremely popular,’ he said, lowering the weapon as he concluded. ‘Your smile, perhaps, was a little too broad, but the pose was very fresh and unstudied.’
I have always read of the controlling power of the human eye upon wild beasts and dangerous maniacs, and I fixed mine firmly upon him now as I said sternly, ‘Let me out at once–I wish to go.’
Perhaps I did not fix them quite long enough; perhaps the power of the human eye has been exaggerated: I only know that for all the effect mine had on him they might have been oysters.
‘Not yet,’ he said persuasively, ‘not when we’re getting on so nicely. I may never be able to take you under such favourable conditions again.’
That, I thought, I could undertake to answer for; but who, alas! could say whether I should ever leave that studio alive? For all I knew, he might spend the whole day in photographing me, and then, with a madman’s caprice, shoot me as soon as it became too dark to go on any longer! The proper course to take, I knew, was to humour him, to keep him in a good temper, fool him to the top of his bent–it was my only chance.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘perhaps you’re right. I–I’m in no great hurry. Were you thinking of taking me in some different style? I am quite at your disposition.’
He brought out a small but stout property-mast, and arranged it against a canvas background of coast scenery. ‘I generally use it for children in sailor costume,’ he said, ‘but I think it will bear your weight long enough for the purpose.’