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Taken By Surprise
by
When people tell you it is possible to hoodwink the insane by any specious show of argument, don’t believe them; my own experience is that demented persons can be quite perversely logical when it suits their purpose.
‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘you will be laughed at possibly–not I. I cannot be held responsible for the caprices of my clients. Mount, please; she’ll carry you perfectly.’
‘I will,’ I said, ‘if you’ll give me the revolver to hold. I–I should like to be done with a revolver.’
‘I shall be delighted to do you with a revolver,’ he said grimly, ‘but not yet; and if I lent you the weapon now, I could not answer for your being able to hold the horse as well–she has never been broken in to firearms. I’ll hold the revolver. One–two–three.’
I mounted; why had I not disregarded the expense and gone to Lenz and Kamerer? Lenz does not pose his customers by the aid of a revolver. Kamerer, I was sure, would not put his patrons through these degrading tomfooleries.
He took more trouble over this than any of the others; I was photographed from the back, in front, and in profile; and if I escaped being made to appear abjectly ridiculous, it can only be owing to the tragic earnestness which the consciousness of my awful situation lent to my expression.
As he took the last I rolled off the horse, completely prostrated. ‘I think,’ I gasped faintly, ‘I would rather be shot at once–without waiting to be taken in any other positions. I really am not equal to any more of this!’ (He was quite capable, I felt, of photographing me in a perambulator, if it once occurred to him!)
‘Compose yourself,’ he said soothingly, ‘I have obtained all I wanted. I shall not detain you much longer. Your life, I may remark, was never in any imminent danger, as this revolver is unloaded. I have now only to thank you for the readiness with which you have afforded me your co-operation, and to assure you that early copies of each of the photographs shall be forwarded for Miss Waverley’s inspection.’
‘Miss Waverley!’ I exclaimed; ‘stay, how do you know that name?’
‘If I mistake not, it was her photograph that you kindly brought for my guidance. I ought to have mentioned, perhaps, that I once had the honour of being engaged to her–until you (no doubt from the highest motives) invested my little gift of song with a flavour of unromantic ridicule. That ridicule I am now enabled to repay, with interest calculated up to the present date.’
‘So you are Iris’s poet!’ I burst out, for, somehow, I had not completely identified him till that moment. ‘You scoundrel! do you think I shall allow you to circulate those atrocious caricatures with impunity? No, by heavens! my solicitor shall—-‘
‘I rely upon the document you were kind enough to furnish,’ he said quietly. ‘I fear that any legal proceedings you may resort to will hardly avert the publicity you seem to fear. Allow me to unfasten the door. Good-bye; mind the step on the first landing. Might I beg you to recommend me amongst your friends?’
I went out without another word; he was mad, of course, or he would not have devised so outrageous a revenge for a fancied injury, but he was cunning enough to be my match. I knew too well that if I took any legal measures, he would contrive to shift the whole burden of lunacy upon me. I dared not court an inquiry for many reasons, and so I was compelled to pass over this unparalleled outrage in silence.
Iris made frequent inquiries after the promised photograph, and I had to parry them as well as I could–which was a mistake in judgment on my part, for one afternoon while I was actually sitting with her, a packet arrived addressed to Miss Waverley.
I did not suspect what it might contain until it was too late. She recognised that photographs were inside the wrappings, which she tore open with a cry of rapture–and then!
She had a short fainting fit when she saw the Gainsborough hat, and as soon as she revived, the extraordinary appearance I presented upside down on the mast sent her into violent hysterics. By the time she was in a condition to look at the equestrian portraits she had grown cold and hard as marble. ‘Go,’ she said, indicating the door, ‘I see I have been wasting my affection upon a vulgar and heartless buffoon!’
I went–for she would listen to no explanations; and indeed I doubt whether, even were she to come upon this statement, it would serve to restore my tarnished ideal in her estimation. But, though I have lost her, I am naturally anxious (as I said when I began) that the public should not be misled into drawing harsh conclusions from what, if left unexplained, may doubtless have a singular appearance.
It is true that, up to the present, I have not been able to learn that any of those fatal portraits have absolutely been exposed for sale, though I direct my trembling steps almost every day to Regent Street, and search the windows of the Stereoscopic Company with furtive and foreboding eyes, dreading to be confronted with presentments of myself–Bedell Gruncher, ‘Vitriol,’ the great critic!–lying across a chair in a state of collapse, sucking my thumb in a Gainsborough hat, or bestriding a ridiculous wooden horse with my face towards its tail!
But they cannot be long in coming out now; and my one hope is that these lines may appear in print in time to forestall the prejudice and scandal which are otherwise inevitable. At all events, now that the world is in possession of the real facts, I am entitled to hope that the treatment to which I have been subjected will excite the indignation and sympathy it deserves.