'Poor words enough,' he says. 'But I have a home for you, upon my shelves. A home, and brothers, too. Tomorrow we shall see you placed there. The fleuron: I am certain we have not thought of that.— Maud, the covers are closed, and quite unbent?'
'Yes, sir.'
He draws on his eye- glasses, working the wires about his ears. Mr Huss pours brandy.
I button up my gloves, smooth creases from my skirt. I turn the lamp, and dim it. But I am conscious of myself. I am conscious of Mr Rivers. He has heard me read, apparently without excitement, his eyes upon the floor; but his hands are clasped and one thumb beats a little nervously upon the other. Presently he rises. He says the fire is hot and scorches him. He walks a minute about the room, leaning rigidly to gaze into my uncle's book-presses— now his hands are behind his back; his thumb still twitches, however. I think he knows I watch. In time he comes close, catches my eye, makes a careful bow. He says, 'It is rather chill, so far from the fire. Shouldn't you like, Miss Lilly, to sit closer to the flames?'
I answer: 'Thank you, Mr Rivers, I prefer this spot.'
'You like to be cool,' he says.
'I like the shadows.'
When I smile again he takes it as a kind of invitation, lifts his coat, twitches at his trousers and sits beside me, not too close, still with his eyes upon my uncle's shelves, as if distracted by the books. But when he speaks, he speaks in a murmur. He says,
'You see, I also like the shadows.'
Mr Huss glances once our way. Mr Hawtrey stands at the fire and lifts a glass. My uncle has settled into his chair and its wings obscure his eyes; I see only his dry mouth, puckered at the lip. 'The greatest phase of eros?' he is saying. 'We have missed it, sir, by seventy years! The cynical, improbable fictions which pass for voluptuous literature nowadays I should be ashamed to show to the man that shoes my horse . . .'
I stifle a yawn, and Mr Rivers turns to me. I say, 'Forgive me Vf Rivers.'
He bows his head. 'Perhaps, you don't care for your uncle's sub ject.'
He still speaks in a murmur; and I am obliged to make my own voice rather low, by way of answer. 'I am my uncle's secretary,' I say 'The appeal of the subject is nothing 135
to me.'
Again he bows. 'Well, perhaps,' he says, while my uncle talks on 'It is only curious, to see a lady left cool and unmoved, by that which is designed to provoke heat, and motion.'
'But there are many ladies, I think, unmoved by that you speak of; and aren't those who know the matter best, moved least?' I catch his eye. 'I speak not from experience of the world, of course, but from my reading merely. But I should have said that— oh, even a priest would note a palling in his passion for the mysteries of his church, if put too often to the scrutiny of wafer and wine.'
He does not blink. At last he almost laughs.
'You are very uncommon, Miss Lilly'
I look away. 'So I understand.'
'Ah. Now your tone is a bitter one. Perhaps you think your education a sort of misfortune.'
'On the contrary. How could it be a misfortune, to be wise? I can never be deceived, for instance, in the matter of a gentleman's attentions. I am a connoisseur of all the varieties of methods by which a , gentleman might seek to compliment a lady'
He puts his white hand to his breast. 'Then I should be daunted indeed,' he says, 'did I want only to compliment you.'
'I was not aware that gentlemen had any other wants, than that one.'
'Perhaps not in the books that you are used to. But in life— a great many; and one that is chief.'
'I supposed,' I say, 'that that was the one the books were written for.'
'Oh, no.' He smiles. His voice dips even lower. 'They are read for that, but written for something keener. I mean, of course, the want of— money. Every gentleman minds that. And those of us who are
not quite so gentlemanly as we would like, mind it most of all.— I am sorry to embarrass you.'
I have coloured, or flinched. Now, recovering, I say, 'You forget, I have been bred to be quite beyond embarrassment. I am only surprised.'
'Then I must take a satisfaction from the knowledge that I have surprised you.' He lifts his hand to his beard. 'It is something to me,' he goes on, 'to have made a small impression upon the evenness and regularity of yourdays.'
He speaks so insinuatingly my cheek grows warmer still.
'What do you know,' I say, 'of those?'
'Why, only what I surmise, from my observation of the house . . .'
Now his voice and his face are grown bland again. I see Mr Huss tilt his head and observe him Then he calls, pointedly: 'What do you think, Rivers, of this?'
'Of what, sir?'
'Of Hawtrey's champioting, now, of photography.'
'Photography?'
'Rivers,' says Mr Hawtrey. 'You are a young man. I appeal to you. Can there be any more perfect record of the amatory act— '
'Record!' says my uncle, peevishly. 'Documentary! The curses of the age!'
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'— of the amatory act, than a photograph? Mr Lilly will have it that the science of photography runs counter to the spirit of the Paphian life. I say it is an image of life, and has this advantage over it: that it endures, where life— the Paphian life, the Paphian moment, in especial— must finish and fade.'
'Doth not a book endure?' asks my uncle, plucking at the arm of his chair.
'It endureth, so long as words do. But, in a photograph you have a thing beyond words, and beyond the mouths that speak them. A photograph will provoke heat in an Englishman, a Frenchman, a savage. It will outlast us all, and I provoke heat in our grandsons. It is a thing apart from history.1
'It is gripped by history!' answers my uncle. 'It is corrupted by it! Its history hangs about it like so much smoke!— you may see it, in
the fitting of a slipper, a gown, the dressing of a head. Give photographs to your grandson: he will study them and think them quaint. He will laugh at the wax tips of your moustaches! But words Hawtrey, words— hmm? They seduce us in darkness, and the mind clothes and fleshes them to fashions of its own. Don't you think so Rivers?'
'I do, sir.'
'You know I won't allow daguerreotypes and nonsense like that into my collection?'
'I think you are right not to, sir.'
Mr Hawtrey shakes his head. He says, to my uncle: 'You still believe photography a fashion, that will pass? You must come to Holywell Street, and spend an hour in my shop. We have albums made up, now, for men to choose from. It is all our buyers come for.'
'Your buyers are brutes. What business have I with them? Rivers, you have seen them.