The Luminist (23 page)

And then Catherine emerged from the house, and everyone paused to look at her. Sir John stepped past George as if he were a low branch in his path. He held out his hands and Catherine came. She let him embrace her.

They exchanged soft words and as they began to walk together, Catherine felt the want within herself. She longed to give herself over to the sort of benign gaiety she saw in other women. Seeing Sir John again, with her now, she possessed only her struggles. So much had gone past since she'd pressed her letter into his hands and hoped that in the unseeable future, he would be within her sphere, speaking to her of science and loss. Now he was here, come halfway around the span of the world, and all she could think of was what she had lived, with no one to speak to. The qualities of the rain in the cottage. Its sound against the glass Eligius had installed. The smell of the jungle at dusk, strong despite the raw flame in her nostrils from the chemicals. Lustrous light in the emulsions she'd learned to apply from his letters. How his letters were prayer for her now.

She felt Charles' eyes, Julia's, the wives. She stared at the ground and listened to the padding feet moving towards her. Eligius.

Odd, she thought. To know the sounds of this boy more readily than anyone else's.

“It's almost time,” Eligius said. “I have a suggestion.”

She excused herself and followed him to the cottage, where he'd set up the camera and prepared solutions of collodion and water to bathe the plate. He fit the frame and operated the pulleys that swathed the roof glass in muslin, trapping the sun in the front of the room.

Last, he showed her the painting in the crate and told her of his thoughts. “If we can steal a moment out of the air,” he told her, “can we also build one of our own?”

“Painters make a life of such stagecraft. An interesting thought. Can you direct the light?”

“I know I can.”

“Then let us give Sir John an eyeful.”

She left him to his work on the roof, gauging the sun. It pleased him to see the vigor in her step as she returned to her guests.

“Have you been prying into my belongings?”

He hadn't even heard anyone approaching the cottage. George Wynfield stood in the doorway below. Julia was with him.

“The crate has been pried open,” George said. “The wood has been split. I saw for myself its condition before we left the ship.”

Eligius climbed down. “I looked at the painting. I am at fault and I apologize. I've seen your paintings in the house, and I get lost when I look. I just wanted to see more.”

He hoped that flattery would cool any anger and spare the memsa'ab from further gossip. It was enough that colonial Ceylon considered her ill-fitting.

George touched his finger to a cold smile. “Are you what they call … what was that phrase I heard in Calcutta, marvelously evocative … untouchable?”

“No.”

“What does it mean? That no one would have anything to do with you, isn't that it? Doesn't that make you one?”

“There are some who would have something to do with me, sa'ab.”

“I would suggest that you think very carefully on how you address me. Perhaps Madame Colebrook tolerates your insolence in the name of cheap labor, but I have no need. A word from me and you will be begging in the street, or in prison.”

“I beg only your forgiveness.”

Julia's presence behind him boiled the blood in his stomach to steam.

“Is something wrong?” Sir John and Catherine came to
the doorway. Behind them, Eligius saw the elder Wynfield holding court. Among them were some directors he'd seen with Charles. They were listening to the governor speak and nodding gravely.

“It seems that this servant couldn't wait for a look at my work,” George said. “Strange that he appears to be the only servant in this household. One would expect him to be too busy for prying, Lady Colebrook.”

“I offer my own apologies for my servant,” Catherine said. “I'm sure he meant no harm.”

“No, I suppose he didn't. But that's hardly the point, is it? I shall mention this to my father.”

“I'm sure there's no need,” Sir John said. “Certainly there's no harm that I can see, and no one of consequence has seen it. I think we can put it to rest, George.”

“I defer as always to your tolerance. Tell me, boy, did you even understand what you saw?”

“It's a map, sa'ab.”

“How could you possibly know that?” George's anger rose.

“Perhaps his betters told him,” Sir John said. “Young man, come here.”

Eligius approached the crate. “You've seen maps before?” Sir John asked.

“Yes.”

“But how could you see this as a map? Do you not see mere points of light?”

“Only up close. But if I make my sight wide, I see shapes.”

“Make your sight wide?”

“I learned to do it when I was little. There's a place where I go to see the sky, and I can see small or wide. One star or all.”

“I would like to see this place.”

“I will take you, sa'ab. From there, maybe you will see a map.”

Sir John laughed, a warm chime that made Eligius smile. “From there, I will see the untied end of the tapestry I have been weaving for many years. Science brings me from one end of the earth to the other so that I can map the whole of the heavens.
George here is painting my map according to my notations. He takes excellent direction.”

“Thank you,” George said quietly.

“And now I hear I'm to see yet another advance in science, isn't that right, Catherine? What of this portraiture of yours? Tell me you've found a way forward, out of the mire.”

George lifted the camera cloak and peered beneath it. “I should hardly equate portraits with what our host dabbles in, this fad of phantoms on glass.”

“Nor would I equate it,” Catherine said, “with your paintings or anything else. It is but an inquiry. Certainly nothing to seize the mind, as with your remarkable journey.”

“Memsa'ab, the sun is just right.”

“Gentlemen, I beg you to excuse us. Please enjoy the feast, and I'll rejoin you shortly.”

George let the camera cloak drop. “Julia, shall we leave your mother to her contraption and spend some time reacquainting ourselves?”

“I need her,” Catherine said. “I ask for your patience.”

“Of course. Sir John, I shall have to settle for your quite familiar face.”

“Might I stay?” Sir John asked Catherine. “I'd like to see the process.”

“Indulge me just this one time, so that I might startle your eyes. After that, you may both grind these images down with analysis.”

“Then I shall set a seat aside for you, if your husband won't mind.”

“I'll find you.”

“Bring the servant with you,” Sir John said. “I would like to hear more about the southern skies from someone who lives beneath them.”

After they left to rejoin the feast, Eligius drew the curtain closed.

“I'm only glad father isn't here,” Julia said. “It's enough that
he draws into himself at the thought of hard earned money paying your posts to another man. Must you be so obvious on his property?”

Catherine busied herself with the camera lens. “I'll not hear of this. Not now. I have been waiting a long time to show Sir John what I can do with the science he helped bring into the world.” She opened the aperture. “Do you think I simply want to seduce him? Is that as far as you can see? Outside there is an arrogant boy, and if you think no more of yourself than what men think of you, he will own you too. Now sit still and follow my instructions.”

Julia turned away. She raised a hand to her pale eyes to shield them from the sun.

Eligius put the bauble in her hand. Points of light danced across the wall. He turned it until one jewel came to her fingertips.

“There,” Catherine said. “Yes, Julia.” She opened the camera shutter.

He let out his breath as Julia's face burned into glass. In time, he tipped a clay pot and washed the glass plate. Catherine retreated with it to a shaded corner. She cradled it in her arms. In a moment, she lifted her head. “Go. I can see it.”

Eligius ran from the cottage. He saw Gita sitting on the grass near the edge of the Colebrooks' land, watching the other children make their mad dashes around her. It amazed him that she didn't cry at the chaos. Already, she had seen so much.

He found Sir John at Charles' table. “The memsa'ab asks that you come now.”

“I can see excitement in your eyes,” Sir John said. Behind them, George and his father also rose. Eligius thought of protesting, but held his tongue.

“My boy,” Sir John said. “Your hand.”

His palms and the tips of his fingers were black, save the pinprick of light glinting from the spread flesh between his
thumb and forefinger. “Sometimes, sa'ab, her portraits live on more than glass.”

He brought Sir John to the cottage door. Catherine held the plate up like a mirror to Sir John. “My God,” he whispered. “Catherine, tell me how.”

Watching the astonishment rain across this wizened old man's face, she thought that most lives, if lived long enough, came to make rational sense. Once per year happenings that filled a letter, matters of no consequence that moved each minute to the next; these made good sense. She believed this. Her life made no sense at all, or else she would not feel what she felt. She would not feel that this was worth losing everything for, to arrest a scientific heart. Such a life could not make sense to anyone.

She told him of the cotton and collodion, the amber for her arrested paintings of light and time. “Still, they escape.”

“But the glass. Such a thing hasn't occurred before. I will write a paper on this. We shall pierce the mystery.”

He drew closer, touching the plate's wooden shell. Julia's image had risen so much more. Turned away from the camera, she sat before utter darkness. The bauble's refracted light rained white jewels on the curtain behind her. They scattered meaninglessly around her, all save one – the one he directed to rest just above her outstretched hand. That one was enough to make a bedtime story of her. The girl who cradled a star.

“Before it is lost,” Catherine told Sir John, “do me the honor of giving it a name.”

“ Why does one bother putting a name to something that won't last?” Governor Wynfield stood in the doorway with his son. Behind them, guests gravitated to the cottage, drawn by the proclaimed interest of their most distinguished guest. “Paintings deserve names,” he said. “I can't say the same for this. We should hardly remember it beyond now.”

“There are many things that come to us that don't stay,” Catherine said. “You and I differ on their worthiness of memory.”

“For myself,” Sir John said, “I won't forget the moment this young woman came into the world a second time.”

Julia's face was becoming dissolute. “It will be lost in moments,” Catherine said resignedly. “I cannot fix the image long.”

“Nor can Reijlander or Talbott, your peers in Europe.”

“Peers,” George snorted.

“Bring it to the door,” Sir John said. “Quickly now.”

Catherine did as he asked. With Julia at her side, she held the fading image out for her guests to see. Sir John joined her. “A marriage of the mortal and the divine!” he announced.

The guests passed the plate. The men took first glance and raised questions of chemicals and time frames. They were analytical and practical, their comments limited to materials and labor.

“Other than time,” Governor Wynfield said loudly, “what is gained by this over a painting? It is vague and offers no more to the eye than can be seen by the average man. There is nothing divine here.”

“Nevertheless, we must find a way to fix it,” Sir John said. “Your post enables you to import from London at will, does it not?”

“It does.”

“I'll prepare a list of chemicals. Might I expedite receipt?”

The Governor's eyes narrowed. “I trust you won't be abandoning your project with my son for this. Not after so much time and money has been invested.”

“There will be due time for both.”

Sir John carried the frame into the yard. Their processional wound between the tables, and with each step they gained a following of guests. “Hurry,” Sir John said, “for those of you who wish to see. This beauty, so like a woman, is fickle!”

“Tell me,” Lady Wynfield asked Catherine when the image came to her for viewing. “How would you portray me? Or any of my friends? Would you have us grasping at stars? Would we stand interminably in your hut?”

“I would simply capture you. What the glass reveals of you
is up to the beholder. I would dare say, we might all see something quite different in you.”

“Really, madam. Do you hope to open a portraiture? Hang a shingle, as it were?”

“ Why not? Why not a new manner of portrait, and why not by my hand? While we ponder, I ask, why not more than portraiture?”

“I believe a painter's eye and a gifted brush will always speak to the soul.” Lady Wynfield tapped the glass plate with a reckless fingernail. All of Julia that remained was her shining iris.

A woman emerged from the guests to touch the frame. She was in her twilight, Catherine thought, but there had been a beauty once. “My husband arranged for me to pose for a painter in Florence. I cannot argue that his work was lovely. But should I not see it daily where it now hangs, I would not remember it at all because its details are not mine. I'm festooned with flowers I did not grow, in a room with a window view I 'd never seen before. He made a dutiful, obedient wife of me. I understand that is what every woman should be. But there was another me. If your contraption finds her, I'll happily sit in front of it. And if it finds me beautiful, so much the better.”