I open my mouth instead. So long as
something's open, what does it matter?"
The truth was that only in the nick of time had he, by a happy miracle
of ingenuity, invented a way of ruining the photograph. The absolute
necessity for its ruin had presented itself to him rather late in the
proceedings, when the photographer had already finished arranging
the hands and shoulders of everybody in an artistic pattern. The
photograph had to be spoilt for the imperative reason that his
mother, though she never read a newspaper, did as a fact look at a
picture-newspaper, _The Daily Film_, which from pride she insisted on
paying for out of her own purse, at the rate of one halfpenny a day.
Now _The Daily Film_ specialized in theatrical photographs, on which
it said it spent large sums of money: and Edward Henry in a vision had
seen the historic group in a future issue of the _Film_. He had also,
in the same vision, seen his mother conning the said issue, and the
sardonic curve of her lips as she recognized her son therein, and he
had even heard her dry, cynical, contemptuous exclamation: "Bless us!"
He could never have looked squarely in his mother's face again if
that group had appeared in her chosen organ! Her silent and grim scorn
would have crushed his self-conceit to a miserable, hopeless pulp.
Hence his resolve to render the photograph impossible.
Pages:
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141