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The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales by Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch

A >> Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales






THREE PHOTOGRAPHS.


"Photograph all the prisoners? But why?" demanded Sir Felix
Felix-Williams. Old Canon Kempe shrugged his shoulders; Admiral
Trewbody turned the pages of the Home Secretary's letter. They sat at
the baize-covered table in the Magistrates' Room--the last of the
Visiting Justices who met, under the old _regime_, to receive the
Governor's report and look after the welfare of the prisoners in
Tregarrick County Gaol.

"But why, in the name of common-sense?" Sir Felix persisted.

"I suppose," hazarded the Admiral, "it helps the police in identifying
criminals."

"But the letter says '_all_ the prisoners.' You don't seriously tell me
that anyone wants a photograph to identify Poacher Tresize, whom I've
committed a score of times if I've committed him once? And perhaps
you'll explain to me this further demand for a 'Composite Photograph' of
all the prisoners, male and female. A 'Composite Photograph!'--have you
ever seen one?"

"No," the Admiral mused; "but I see what the Home Office is driving at.
Someone has been persuading them to test these new theories in
criminology the doctors are so busy with, especially in Italy."

"In Italy!" pish'd Sir Felix Felix-Williams.

"My dear Sir Felix, science has no nationality." The Admiral was a
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and kept a microscope to amuse
his leisure.

"It has _some_ proper limits, I should hope," Sir Felix retorted.
It annoyed him--a Chairman of Quarter Sessions for close upon twenty
years--to be told that the science of criminology was yet in its
infancy; and he glanced mischievously at the Canon, who might be
supposed to have a professional quarrel with scientific men. But the
Canon was a wary fighter and no waster of powder and shot.

"Well, well," said he, "I don't see what harm it can do, or what good.
If the Home Secretary wants his Composite Photograph, let him have it.
The only question is, Have we a photographer who knows how to make one?
Or must we send the negatives up to Whitehall?"


So the Visiting Justices sent for the local photographer and consulted
him. And he, being a clever fellow, declared it was easy enough--
a mere question of care in superimposing the negatives. He had never
actually made the experiment; his clients (so he called his customers)
preferring to be photographed singly or in family groups. But he asked
to be given a trial, and suggested (to be on the safe side) preparing
two or three of these composite prints, between which the Justices might
choose at their next meeting.


This was resolved, and the resolution entered in the minutes; and next
day the photographer set to work. Some of the prisoners resisted and
"made faces" in front of the camera, squinting and pulling the most
horrible mouths. A female shoplifter sat under protest, because she was
not allowed to send home for an evening gown. But the most consented
obediently, and Jim Tresize even asked for a copy to take home to his
wife.

The Admiral (who had married late in life) resided with his wife and
young family in a neat villa just outside the town, where his hobby was
to grow pelargoniums. The photographer passed the gate daily on his way
to and from the prison, and was usually hailed and catechised on his
progress.

His patience with the recalcitrant prisoners delighted the Admiral, who
more than once assured his wife that Smithers was an intelligent fellow
and quite an artist in his way. "I wonder how he manages it," said Mrs.
Trewbody. "He told baby last autumn that a little bird would fly out of
the camera when he took off the cap, and everyone allows that the result
is most lifelike. But I don't like the idea, and I think it may injure
his trade."

The Admiral could not always follow his wife's reasoning. "What is it
you dislike?" he asked.

"Well, it's not nice to think of oneself going into the same camera he
has been using on those wretched prisoners. It's sentiment, I daresay;
but I had the same feeling when he stuck up Harry's photograph in his
showcase at the railway station, among all kinds of objectionable
persons, and I requested him to remove it."

The Admiral laughed indulgently, being one of those men who find a
charm, even a subtle flattery, in their wives' silliness.

"I agree with you," he said, "that it's not pleasant to be exposed to
public gaze among a crowd of people one would never think of knowing.
I don't suppose it would actually encourage familiarity; at the same
time there's an air of promiscuity about it--I won't say disrespect--
which, ahem! jars. But with the prisoners it's different,--my attitude
to them is scientific, if I may say so. I look upon them as a race
apart, almost of another world, and as such I find them extremely
interesting. The possibility of mixing with them on any terms of
intimacy doesn't occur. I am aware, my dear," he wound up graciously,
"that you women seldom understand this mental detachment, being by
nature unscientific, and all the more charming for your prejudices."


At the next meeting of Justices Smithers the photographer presented
himself, and produced his prints with a curious air of diffidence.

"I have," he explained, "brought three for your Worships' selection, and
can honestly assure your Worships that my pains have been endless.
What puzzles me, however, is that although in all three the same
portraits have been imposed, and in the same order, the results are
surprisingly different. The cause of these differences I cannot detect,
though I have gone over the process several times and step by step; but
out of some two dozen experiments I may say that all the results answer
pretty closely to one or another of these three types." Mr. Smithers,
who had spent much time in rehearsing this little speech, handed up
photograph No. 1; and Sir Felix adjusted his spectacles.

"Villainous!" he exclaimed, recoiling.

The Canon and the Admiral bent over it together.

"Most repulsive!" said the Admiral.

"Here indeed,"--the Canon was more impressive,--"here indeed is an
object-lesson in the effects of crime! Is it possible that to _this_
Man's passions can degrade his divinely inherited features? Were it not
altogether too horrible, I would have this picture framed and glazed and
hung up in every cottage home in the land."

"My dear fellow," interrupted Sir Felix, "we cannot possibly let this
monstrosity go up to Whitehall as representative of the inmates of
Tregarrick Gaol! It would mean an inquiry on the spot. It would even
reflect upon _us_. Ours is a decent county, as counties go, and I
protest it shall not, with my consent, be injured by any such libel."

Mr. Smithers handed up photograph No. 2.

"This looks better," began Sir Felix; and with that he gave a slight
start, and passed the photograph to the Canon. The Canon, too, started,
and stole a quick glance at Sir Felix: their eyes met.

"It certainly is singular"--stammered Sir Felix. "I fancied--without
irreverence--But you detected it too?" he wound up incoherently.

"May I have a look?" The Admiral peered over the Canon's hand, who,
however, did not relinquish the photograph but turned on Smithers
with sudden severity.

"I presume, sir, this is not an audacious joke?"

"I assure your Worship--" 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 Worships 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 assure 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 pass 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 passed 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
pass 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 passing 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 muff 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 passed for furtherance to the Home Secretary.
He picked it up and gave vent to a long whistle.

"Now, how the dickens--"

His wife appeared in the doorway, with Harry, Dicky, 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 SHIPS.


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 ships 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 _chasse-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 worship.

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 passes."

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 ship,
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.

He had long been aware of some serious limitations in his nurse: she
could not, for instance, sail a boat, and her only knot was a "granny."
He never dreamed of despising her, being an affectionate boy; but more
and more he went his own way without consulting her. Yet it was she
who--unconsciously and quite as if it were nothing out of the way--
handed him the clue.

A flagstaff stood in the garden on a grassy platform, half-way down the
cliff-side, and the boy at his earnest wish had been given charge of it.
On weekdays, as a rule he hoisted two flags--an ensign on the gaff, and
a single code-flag at the mast-head; but on Sundays he usually ran up
three or four, and with the help of the code-book spelt out some message
to the harbour. Sometimes, too, if an old friend happened to take up
her moorings at the red buoy below, he would have her code-letters
hoisted to welcome her, or would greet and speed her with such signals
as K.T.N., "Glad to see you," and B.R.D., or B.Q.R., meaning "Good-bye,"
"A pleasant passage." Skippers fell into the habit of dipping their
flags to him as they were towed out to sea, and a few amused themselves
while at anchor by pulling out their bags of bunting and signalling
humorous conversations, though their topmasts reached so near to the
boy's platform that they might with less labour have talked through a
speaking-trumpet.

One morning before Christmas six vessels lay below at the buoy, moored
stem to stem in two tiers of three; and, after hoisting his signal
(C.P.B.H. for "Christmas Eve"), he ran indoors with the news that all
six were answering with bushes of holly at their topmast heads, while
one--a Danish barquentine--had rove stronger halliards and carried a
tall fir-tree at the main, its branches reaching many feet above her
truck.

"Christmas is Christmas," said his nurse. "When I was young, at such
times there wouldn't be a ship in the harbour without its talking-bush."

"What is a talking-bush?" the boy asked.

"And you pretend to be a sailor! Well, well--not to know what happens
on Christmas night when the clocks strike twelve!"

The boy's eyes grew round. "Do--the--ships--talk?"

"Why, of course they do! For my part, I wonder what Billy teaches you."


Late that evening, when the household supposed him to be in bed, the boy
crept down through the moonlit garden to the dinghy which Billy had left
on its frape under the cliff. But for their riding-lights, the vessels
at the buoy lay asleep. The crews of the foreigners had turned in; the
_Nubian_, of Runcorn, had no soul on board but a night-watchman, now
soundly dozing in the forecastle; and the _Touch-me-not_ was deserted.
The _Touch-me-not_ belonged to the port, and her skipper, Captain
Tangye, looked after her in harbour when he had paid off all hands.
Usually he slept on board; but to-night, after trimming his lamp, he had
rowed ashore to spend Christmas with his family--for which, since he
owned a majority of the shares, no one was likely to blame him. He had
even left the accommodation-ladder hanging over her side, to be handy
for boarding her in the morning.

All this the boy had noted; and accordingly, having pushed across in the
dinghy, he climbed the _Touch-me-not's_ ladder and dropped upon deck
with a bundle of rugs and his father's greatcoat under his arm.

He looked about him and listened. There was no sound at all but the lap
of tide between the ships, and the voice of a preacher travelling over
the water from a shed far down the harbour, where the Salvation Army was
holding a midnight service. Captain Tangye had snugged down his ship
for the night: ropes were coiled, deckhouses padlocked, the spokes of
the wheel covered against dew and frost. The boy found the slack of a
stout hawser coiled beneath the taffrail--a circular fort into which he
crept with his rugs, and nestled down warmly; and then for half an hour
lay listening. But only the preacher's voice broke the silence of the
harbour. On--on it went, rising and falling. . . .

Away in the little town the church clock chimed the quarter. "It must
have missed striking the hour," thought the boy, and he peered over the
edge of his shelter. The preacher's voice had ceased; but another was
speaking, and close beside him.

"You'd be surprised," it said, "how simple one's pleasures grow with
age. This is the twelfth Christmas I've spent at home, and I assure you
I quite look forward to it: that's a confession, eh?--from one who has
sailed under Nelson and smelt powder in his time." The boy knew that he
must be listening to the _Touch-me-not_, whose keelson came from an old
line-of-battle ship. "To be sure," the voice went on graciously,
"a great deal depends on one's company."

"Talking of powder," said the _Nubian_, creaking gently on her
stern-moorings, "reminds me of a terrible adventure. My very first
voyage was to the mouth of a river on the West Coast of Africa, where
two native tribes were at war. Somehow, my owner--a scoundrelly fellow
in the Midlands--had wind of the quarrel, and that the tribe nearest the
coast needed gunpowder. We sailed from Cardiff with fifteen hundred
barrels duly labelled, and the natives came out to meet us at the
river-mouth and rafted them ashore; but the barrels, if you will believe
me, held nothing but sifted coal-dust. Off we went before the trick was
discovered, and with six thousand pounds' worth of ivory in my hold.
But the worst villainy was to come; for my owner, pretending that he had
opened up a profitable trade, and having his ivory to show for it, sold
me to a London firm, who loaded me with real gunpowder and sent me out,
six months later, to the same river, but with a new skipper and a
different crew. The natives knew me at once, and came swarming out in
canoes as soon as we dropped anchor. The captain, who of course
suspected nothing, allowed them to crowd on board; and I declare that
within five minutes they had clubbed him and every man of the crew and
tossed their bodies to the sharks. Then they cut my hawsers and towed
me over the river-bar; and, having landed a good half of my barrels,
they built and lit a fire around them in derision. I can hear the
explosion still; my poor upper-works have been crazy ever since.
It destroyed almost all the fighters of the tribe, who had formed a ring
to dance around the fire. The rest fled inland, and I never saw them
again, but lay abandoned for months as they had anchored me, between the
ruined huts and a sandy spit alive with mosquitoes--until somehow a
British tramp-steamer heard of me at one of the trading stations up the
coast. She brought down a crew to man and work me home. But my owner
could not pay the salvage; so the parties who owned the steamer--
a Runcorn firm--paid him fifty pounds and kept me for their services.
A surveyor examined me, and reported that I should never be fit for
much: the explosion had shaken me to pieces. I might do for the
coasting trade--that was all; and in that I've remained."

"Owners are rogues, for the most part," commented the Danish
barquentine, rubbing against the _Touch-me-nots_ fender as if to nudge
her. "There's the _Maria Stella Maris_ yonder can tell us a tale of the
food they store us with. She went through a mutiny once, I've heard."

"I'd rather not talk of it," put in the Italian hastily, and a shudder
ran through her timbers. "It's a dreadful recollection, and I have that
by my mizzen-mast which all the holystone in the world can never scour."

"But I've had a mutiny, too!" said the Dutch galliot, with a voice of
great importance; and this time the boy felt sure that the vessels
nudged one another.

"It happened," the galliot went on, "between my skipper and his _vrauw_,
who was to all purpose our mate, and as good a mate as ever I sailed
with. But she would not believe the world was round. The skipper took
a Dutch cheese and tried to explain things: he moved the cheese round,
as it might be, from west to east, and argued and argued, until at last,
being a persevering man, he did really persuade her, but it took a whole
voyage, and by the time he succeeded we were near home again, and in the
North Sea Canal. The moment she was convinced, what must the woman do
but go ashore to an aunt of hers who lived at Zaandam, and refuse to
return on board, though her man went on his bended knees to her!
'I will not,' she said; 'and _that's_ flat, at any rate.' The poor man
had to start afresh, undo every one of his arguments, and prove the
earth flat again, before she would trust herself to travel. It cost us
a week, but for my part I didn't grudge it. Your cliffs and deep-water
harbours don't appeal to me. Give me a canal with windmills and
summer-houses where you can look in on the families drinking tea as you
sail by; give me, above all, a canal on Sundays, when the folks walk
along the towing-path in their best clothes, and you feel as if you were
going to church with them."

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