No sooner, however, was the picture focussed than the sun, which made it what it was, disappeared behind a cloud—a favourite and mischievous dodge of his for the mortification of the amateur photographer.
Now, while Pinckney waited for the sun to come out again, which he saw was going to happen immediately, and while he held in his fingers the pneumatic ball connected with the instantaneous shutter, two figures appeared at the bend of the road that had been silver track a moment before. They were a man and a woman, trudging along with the width of the road between them. Pinckney watched them with painful interest. If the cloud cleared the sun at that moment they would be horribly in the way, for worse clouds were following on the heels of this one, and the opportunity must be seized. There was nothing, of course, to prevent his taking the tramps as they walked—no, it would spoil the picture. Stay, though; it would add human interest. But the cloud did not pass so rapidly after all, and the man and woman drew near the camera.
There was something peculiar in the appearance of the man that struck Pinckney at once as un-English. This peculiarity was difficult to localise. It was not in his clothes, which indeed looked new, but it was partly in his heavy face, smooth-shaven and suntanned, partly in his slow, slouching, methodical walk, and very much in his fashion of carrying his belongings. Instead of the pudding-like bundle of the English tramp he carried across his shoulders a long, neatly-strapped cylinder, the outer coating of which was a blanket. About the woman, on the other hand, there was nothing to strike the attention. Pinckney's first glance took in, perhaps, the fact that her black skirt was torn and draggled, and her black bodice in startling contrast to her white face; but that could have been all.
Back came the sun, in a hurry, to the hedge-top and the oak-tree, and the distant curve of the road. Pinckney had decided in favour of the tramps in his picture, but they were come too near. He requested them in his blandest tones to retrace a few steps. To his immense surprise he was interrupted by a sullen oath from the man, who at once quickened his steps forward, motioning to the woman to do the same.
'Thankee for nothing, and be hanged to you! Wait till we pass, will you?'
If Pinckney had wanted further assurance that the man was a foreign element, these sentences should have satisfied him; for your honest British rustic is not the man to reject the favours of the camera, be they never so promiscuous and his chance of beholding the result never so remote.
Pinckney's answer, however, was a prompt pressure of the pneumatic ball in his hand—a snap-shot at short range, the click of which did not escape the sharp ears of the strange-looking, heavily-built old man.
'Have you took us?' asked he fiercely.
'Oh no,' replied the photographer, without a blush, 'I'm waiting till you pass; look sharp, or I'll lose the sun again!'
The man scowled, but said no more. Next moment he passed by on one side of the camera, and the woman on the other. Pinckney looked swiftly from one to the other, and marked well the face of each. That of the man repelled him, as bull-dog jaws upon a thick, short neck and small, cruel-looking glittering eyes would repel most of us, even without this man's vile expression. The man was tall and broad, but bent, and he looked twenty years older at close quarters than at a distance. The woman, on the other hand, was young, but so worn, and pinched, and soured, and wearied that you had to look closely to find a trace of youth. She never raised her eyes from the ground as she walked; but Pinckney made sure they were dark eyes, for the well-formed eyebrows were blue- black, like a raven's feather. Her wrist-bone showed prominently—seeming to be covered by little more than skin —as she caught together the shawl at her bosom with her left hand; a plain gold hoop was on its third finger.
Pinckney watched the pair out of sight, still walking with the whole road between them.
'That brute,' muttered Pinckney, 'beats his wife!'
And then he exposed another plate from the same position, packed up the apparatus, and went his way.
Some hours later—towards evening, in fact—as Pinckney returned from his ruined abbey and came in sight of Gateby, the rain—which had gathered during the afternoon—came down from the leaden twilit sky in earnest. It rains violently in the dales; and the photographer, hungry though he was, and more than ready for dinner, saw no reason for getting wet to the skin when the village was within a stone's-throw, and the shooting-box half-a-mile further on. He burst into the inn for shelter; and honest Robert Rutter conducted him to the private parlour with peculiar satisfaction, having been intimate with Gateby rain many years, and knowing also a thing or two about the appetites of gentlemen from the south.
Pinckney, left alone, examined the room. It was gaudily carpeted, uncomfortably furnished, stuffy for want of use and air, and crowded with gimcracks. Foxes and birds, in huge cases, were perilously balanced on absurd little tables. The walls were covered with inflamed-looking prints, the place of honour being occupied by portraits of mine host and hostess unrecognisable. The large square centre-table was laid out in parterres of books never opened. In fact, the parlour was not what you would have expected of the remote dales. For this very reason, perhaps, that realist Pinckney took particular pains over the description which was promptly set down in his note- book. The landlord coming in during the writing, moreover, the poor man's words were taken out of his mouth and set down red-hot, and on the phonetic principle, in a parenthesis.
This visit of Rutter's resulted subsequently in a heavy supper of ham and eggs and beer, and a fire in the parlour, before which Pinckney contentedly smoked, listening to the rain, which was coming down indeed in torrents.
It was while this easy-going youth was in the most comfortable post-prandial condition that the voices in a room, separated from the parlour only by a narrow passage, grew loud enough to be distinctly audible in it. Up to this point the conversation had been low and indistinct, occasional laughter alone rising above an undertone; now the laughter was frequent and hearty. The reasons were that the room in question was the tap-room, and the fourth round of beer was already imbibed. One voice—in which the local accents were missed—led the talk; the rest interjaculated.
Mr. Pinckney pricked up his ears, and of course whipped out the insatiable note-book. Simultaneously, in the kitchen, connected with the tap-room on the opposite side, the landlord and his wife, with the schoolmaster and his, were bending forward, and solemnly listening to the stranger's wild stories, with the door ajar. Thus the glib- tongued personage had more listeners, and more sober listeners, than he was aware of.
'Sharks?' he was saying. 'Seen sharks? You bet I have! Why, when I was or'nary seaman—betwixt Noocastle, Noo South Wales and 'Frisco it was; with coals—we counted twenty-seven of 'em around the ship the morning we was becalmed in three south. And that afternoon young Billy Bunting—the darling of our crew he was—he fell overboard, and was took. Took, my lads, I say! Nothin' left on'y a patch of red in the blue water and a whole set of metal buttons when we landed Mister John Shark next morning.' (Sensation.) 'And that's gospel. But the next shark as we got—and we was becalmed three weeks that go—the skipper he strung him up to the spanker-boom, an' shot his blessed eyes out with a revolver; 'cause little Billy had been pet of the ship, d'ye see? And then we let him back into the briny; and a young devil of an apprentice dived over and swam rings round him, 'cause he couldn't see; and it was the best game o' blindman's buff ever you seed in your born days.' (Merriment.) 'What! Have ye never heard tell o' the shark in Corio Bay, an' what he done? Oh, but I'll spin that yarn.'
