A Case in Camera

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A CASE IN CAMERA


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A CASE IN CAMERA

by

OLIVER ONIONS

Author of
"The Compleat Bachelor"
"In Accordance with the Evidence"
"The Debit Account"







New York
The Macmillan Company
1921

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1920 and 1921,
By the Macmillan Company
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1921




                                 TO
                            OLE LUK OIE




            "Our Life is like a curious Play
              Where each doth strive to hide himself.
            One Mask doth to another say
              'Let us be open as the Day'
            The better to conceal himself."




                               PART I

                   WHAT HAPPENED IN LENNOX STREET




                          A Case in Camera




                                  I


The tale I am setting out to tell has to do with the killing, on a May
morning of the year 1919, of one young man by another who claimed, and
still claims, to have been his friend. The circumstances were
singular--perhaps even unique; the consequences affected a number of
people in various interesting ways and byways; and since the manner of
telling the story has been left entirely to me, I will begin with the
breakfast-party that Philip Esdaile gave that morning at his studio in
Lennox Street, Chelsea.




                                 II


Philip had at least two good reasons for being in high feather that
morning. The first of these was that barely a week ago, with a
magnificent new quill pen, he had signed the Roll, had shaken august
hands, and was now Philip Esdaile, A.R.A., probably the most gifted
among the younger generation of painters of the pictorial phenomena of
Light.

I and his second reason for contentment happened to arrive almost
simultaneously at the wrought-iron gate that opened on to his little
front garden. We all knew that for many months past our barrister
friend, Billy Mackwith, had been tracking down and buying in again on
Philip's behalf a number of Philip's earlier pictures--prodigal
pictures, parted with for mere bread-and-butter during the years of
struggle, and now very well worth Philip's re-purchase if he could get
them into his possession again. (I may perhaps say at once that I don't
think Philip owed his Associateship to his pictures of that period. It
is far more likely that the artist thus honored was Lieutenant Esdaile,
R.N.V.R., sometime one of the Official Painters to the Admiralty.)

A carrier's van stood drawn up opposite the gate, and I saw Mackwith's
slim, silk-hatted and morning-coated figure jump down from the seat next
to the driver. Evidently Philip had seen the arrival of the van too, for
he ran down the short flagged path to meet us.

"You don't mean to say you've brought them all?" he cried eagerly.

"The whole lot. Fourteen," Mackwith replied. "Glad I just caught you
before you left."

Esdaile and his family were leaving town that morning for some months on
the Yorkshire Coast, and it was this departure that was the occasion of
the farewell breakfast.

The three of us carried the recovered canvases through the small annexe,
where the breakfast-table was already laid, and into the large studio
beyond. There we stood admiring them as they leaned, framed and
unframed, against easels and along the walls. No doubt you remember
Esdaile's paintings of that period--the gay white and gray of his
tumultuous skies, the splash and glitter of his pools and fountains,
the crumbling wallflowered masonry of his twentieth-century
_fêtes-champêtre_. There is nothing psychical or philosophic about them.
He simply has that far rarer possession, an eye in his head to see
straight with.

"Well, which of 'em are you going to have for yourself, just by way of
thank-you, Billy?" the painter asked. "Any you like; I owe you the best
of them and more.... And of course here comes Hubbard. Always does blow
in just as things are being given away, if it's only a pink gin. How are
you, Cecil?"

The new-comer wore aiguillettes and the cuff-rings of a Commander, R.N.
He was a comparatively new friend of mine, but for two years off and on
had been a shipmate of Esdaile's, and I liked the look of his honest red
face and four-square and blocklike figure. We turned to the pictures
again. I think their beauties were largely thrown away on Hubbard.
Somebody ought to have told him that their buying-in meant a good
thousand pounds in Esdaile's pocket.