“Light destroys the image. But light also creates the image.”

Geist explains this carefully, as he has been explaining everything. I hardly want to blink, I am so fascinated. It is akin to a glimpse inside the magician’s top hat, or a peek inside P. T.

Barnum’s museum.

After a desultory meal of Swiss cheese, sliced pickles, cranberry nut bread, and strong Ceylon tea, Geist had thrown open the velvet curtains of his studio and risked the dubious noonday light to take my photograph. The exposure time had crawled on longer than one of Reverend Meeks’s Sunday sermons. And even in church I am allowed a scratch or two.

But I’d kept calm as marble. Chin lifted, hands folded. I had filled my mind with Will. Worked with all my power to recapture that surge of his presence, the undertow as I’d first known it that day in Geist’s sitting room. Only there was nothing. No feverish heat. No fury. No pull.

My intense concentration had its own effect. When Geist capped the lens, I was weak with yearning. Geist seemed to understand, for after he’d removed the plate, he gave me his a handkerchief before hurrying off to his darkroom. “Find me when you’re ready.”

Curiosity dried my tears, and soon I had followed him to the tiny chamber off the parlor where he worked. Its windows are papered against the light, and the trapped air is sharp with chemical solution. I watch as Geist prepares to develop the plate by pouring a vinegar solution over it and then waiting for the image to appear. “Developing a photograph is chemically similar to rubbing the tarnish off silver,” he explains. “A scrub for the treasure beneath.” Geist pours water over the plate.

“And both processes leave blackened hands.”

“Indeed. Some even call photography the ‘black art.’”

“I like that.” But in my photograph I look grim and grainy. I’m not sure what we’re hoping to find, but I don’t dare ask Geist. Not while he is working so intently. He slides the plate into a wooden box.

“Fixer…to preserve the image.” He leaves it for a few minutes to bustle about, selecting from a distracting array of bottles filled with a sharp bite of chemicals before removing the plate and washing it again with water.

Geist holds the plate over an oil lamp. “The varnish adheres best when the plate is warmed.” He tips the glass this way and that. “I’ve used a Rapid Rectilinear portrait lens, a gift from Locke. I did sense a sharpened focus when I adjusted the aperture opening. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

He warms the plate a few more minutes before returning to his worktable, where he unstoppers a decanter and flows a thin solution onto the plate’s surface.

“You added that liquid to the plate before you placed it in the camera,” I mention.

“Not quite. That was collodion a combustible blend of ether, iodides, bromides, plus a bit of my own magic.” He winks. “Collodion on the front. Then a bath of silver nitrate. Both compounds sensitize the plate before exposure. But we’re finished with exposure.”

“What are you pouring?” I sniff. It stinks.

“Varnish, to preserve the picture. It’s a delicate balance. Too much varnish destroys. Whereas too little will not protect.”

There are more steps to the process than in a Viennese waltz, and it requires such a mindful eye and steady hand that I feel shamed remembering how I’d dismissed Geist as a fraud and nothing else.

He is as skilled as a surgeon, but with his artist’s eye I’m reminded of Will, who would have found astonishing artistry in this process.

When Geist holds the varnished plate at arm’s length, my heart flutters.

“But I look…”

“Like a ghost? Not to worry, Miss Lovell; it’s only the negative image. Not the finished print. Let’s set it here until it dries. Meantime, there are some other things I want to show you.”


18.