The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales Part 37

"I a.s.sure your Wors.h.i.+p--" protested the photographer. "I had some thoughts of tearing it up, but thought it wouldn't be honest."

"You did rightly," the Canon answered; "but, now that we have seen it, I have no such scruple." He tore the print across, and across again.

"Even in this," he said, with a glance at the Admiral, who winced, "we may perhaps read a lesson, or at least a warning, that man's presumption in extending the bounds of his knowledge--or, as I should prefer to call it, his curiosity--may--er--bring him face to face with--"

But the Canon's speech tailed off as he regarded the torn pieces of cardboard in his hand. He felt that the others had been seriously perturbed and were not listening: he himself was conscious of a shock too serious for that glib emollient--usually so efficacious--the sound of his own voice. He perceived that it did not impose even on the photographer. An uncomfortable silence fell on the room.

Sir Felix was the first to recover. "Put it in the waste-paper basket: no, in the fire!" he commanded, and turned to Smithers. "Surely between these two extremes--"

"I was on the point of suggesting that your Wors.h.i.+ps would find No. 3 more satisfactory," the photographer interrupted, forgetting his manners in his anxiety to restore these three gentlemen to their ease.

His own discomfort was acute, and he overacted, as a man will who has unwittingly surprised a State secret and wishes to a.s.sure everyone of his obtuseness.

Sir Felix studied No. 3. "This appears to me a very ordinary photograph. Without being positively displeasing, the face is one you might pa.s.s in the street any day, and forget."

"I hope it suggests no--no well-known features?" put in the Canon nervously.

"None at all, I think: but see for yourself. To me it seems--although hazy, of course--the kind of thing the Home Office might find helpful."

"It is less distinct than the others." The Admiral pulled his whiskers.

"And for that reason the more obviously composite--which is what we are required to furnish. No, indeed, I can find nothing amiss with it, and I think, gentlemen, if you are agreed, we will forward this print."

No. 3 was pa.s.sed accordingly, the photographer withdrew, and the three Justices turned to other business, which occupied them for a full two hours.

But, I pray you, mark the sequel.

Mr. Smithers, in his relief and delight at the Magistrates' approbation, hurried home, fished out a copy of No. 3, exposed it proudly in his shop window, and went off to the Packhorse Inn for a drink.

Less than an hour later, Mrs. Trewbody, having packed her family into the jingle for their afternoon's ride with Miss Platt, the governess, strolled down into the town to do some light shopping; and, happening to pa.s.s the photographer's window, came to a standstill with a little gasp.

A moment later she entered the shop; and Mrs. Smithers, answering the shop bell, found that she had taken the photograph from the window and was examining it eagerly.

"This is quite a surprise, Mrs. Smithers. A capital photograph! May I ask how many copies my husband ordered?"

"I'm not aware, ma'am, that the Admiral has ordered any as yet; though I heard Smithers say only this morning as he hoped he'd be pleased with it."

"I think I can answer for that, although he _is_ particular. But I happen to know he disapproves of these things being exposed in the window. I'll take this copy home with me, if I may. Has your husband printed any more?"

"Well no, ma'am. There was one other copy; but Lady Felix-Williams happened to be pa.s.sing just now, and spied it, and nothing would do but she must take it away with her."

"Lady Felix-Williams?" Mrs. Trewbody stiffened with sudden distrust.

"Now, what would Lady Felix-Williams want with this?"

"I'm sure I can't tell you, ma'am: but she was delighted. 'A capital likeness,' she said; 'I've never seen a photograph before that caught just that expression of his.'"

"I should very much like to know what _she_ has to do with his expression," Mrs. Trewbody murmured to herself, between wonder and incipient alarm. But she concealed her feelings, good lady; and, having paid for her purchase, carried it home in her m.u.f.f and stuck it upright against one of the Sevres candlesticks on her boudoir mantel-shelf.

And there the Admiral discovered it three-quarters of an hour later.

He came home wanting his tea; and, finding the boudoir empty, advanced to ring the bell. At that moment his eyes fell on Smithers' replica of the very photograph he had pa.s.sed for furtherance to the Home Secretary.

He picked it up and gave vent to a long whistle.

"Now, how the d.i.c.kens--"

His wife appeared in the doorway, with Harry, d.i.c.ky, and Theophila clinging to her skirts, fresh from their ride, and boisterous.

"My dear Emily, where in the world did you get hold of this?"

He held the photograph towards her at arm's length, and the children rushed forward to examine it.

"Papa! papa!" they shouted together, capering around it. "Oh, mammy, isn't it him _exactly?_"

THE TALKING s.h.i.+PS.

He was a happy boy, for he lived beside a harbour, and just below the last bend where the river swept out of steep woodlands into view of the sea. A half-ruined castle, with a battery of antiquated guns, still made-believe to protect the entrance to the harbour, and looked across it upon a ridge of rocks surmounted by a wooden cross, which the Trinity pilots kept in repair. Between the cross and the fort, for as long as he could remember, a procession of s.h.i.+ps had come sailing in to anchor by the great red buoy immediately beneath his nursery window.

They belonged to all nations, and hailed from all imaginable ports; and from the day his nurse had first stood him upon a chair to watch them, these had been the great interest of his life. He soon came to know them all--French brigs and _cha.s.se-marees_, Russian fore-and-afters, Dutch billyboys, galliots from the East coast, and Thames hay-barges with vanes and wind-boards. He could tell you why the Italians were deep in the keel, why the Danes were manned by youngsters, and why these youngsters deserted, although their skippers looked, and indeed were, such good-natured fellows; what food the French crews hunted in the seaweed under the cliff, and when the Baltic traders would be driven southward by the ice. Once acquainted with a vessel, he would recognise her at any distance, though by what signs he could no more tell than we why we recognise a friend.

On his seventh birthday he was given a sailing boat, on condition that he learned to read; but, although he kept by the bargain honestly, at the end of a month he handled her better than he was likely to handle his book in a year. He had a companion and instructor, of course-- a pensioner who had left the Navy to become in turn fisherman, yachtsman, able seaman on board a dozen sailing vessels, and now yachtsman again. His name was Billy, and he taught the boy many mysteries, from the tying of knots to the reading of weather-signs; how to beach a boat, how to take a conger off the hook, how to gaff a cuttle and avoid its ink. . . . In return the boy gave him his heart, and even something like wors.h.i.+p.

One fine day, as they tacked to and fro a mile and more from the harbour's mouth, whiffing for mackerel, the boy looked up from his seat by the tiller. "I say, Billy, did you speak?"

Billy, seated on the thwart and leaning with both arms on the weather gunwale, turned his head lazily. "Not a word this half-hour," he answered.

"Well now, I thought not; but somebody, or something--spoke just now."

The boy blushed, for Billy was looking at him quizzically. "It's not the first time I've heard it, either," he went on; "sometimes it sounds right astern, and sometimes close beside me."

"What does it say?" asked Billy, re-lighting his pipe.

"I don't know that it _says_ anything, and yet it seems to speak out quite clearly. Five or six times I've heard it, and usually on smooth days like this, when the wind's steady."

Billy nodded. "That's right, sonny; I've heard it scores of times.

And they say. . . . But, there, I don't believe a word of it."

"What do they say?"

"They say that 'tis the voice of drowned men down below, and that they hail their names whenever a boat pa.s.ses."

The boy stared at the water. He knew it for a floor through which he let down his trammels and crab-pots into wonderland--a twilight with forests and meadows of its own, in which all the marvels of all the fairy-books were possible; but the terror of it had never clouded his delight.

"Nonsense, Billy; the voice I hear is always quite cheerful and friendly--not a bit like a dead man's."

"I tell what I'm told," answered Billy, and the subject dropped.

But the boy did not cease thinking about the voice; and some time after he came, as it seemed, upon a clue. His father had set him to read Shakespeare; and, taking down the first of twelve volumes from the shelf, he began upon the first play, _The Tempest_. He was prepared to yawn, but the first scene flung open a door to him, and he stepped into a new world, a childish Ferdinand roaming an Isle of Voices.

He resigned Miranda to the grown-up prince, for whom (as he saw at a glance, being wise in the ways of story-books) she was eminently fitted.

It was in Ariel, perched with harp upon the shrouds of the king's s.h.i.+p, that he recognised the unseen familiar of his own voyaging. "O spirit, be my friend--speak to me often!" As children will, he gave Prospero's island a local habitation in the tangled cliff-garden, tethered Caliban in the tool-shed, and watched the white surf far withdrawn, or listened to its murmur between the lordly boles of the red-currant bushes.

For the first time he became aware of some limitations in Billy.