United States or Antigua and Barbuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He accompanied her down the narrow lane that led past her uncle's house. When the lighted windows came in sight he halted. 'Good night, lassie, he said kindly. 'Do ye give ower distressin' yeself. 'Good night, Mr. Garstin, she answered, in the same low, rapid voice in which she had given him her answer up on the fell. 'We're man an' wife plighted now, are we not? he blurted timidly.
But as time went on, despite the sallies of Dick Garstin, the bloodless cynicisms of Enid Blunt, who counted insolence as the chief of the virtues, the amorous sentimentalities of the Turkish refugee from Smyrna, whose moral ruin had been brought about by a few lines of praise from Pierre Loti, the touching appreciations of prison life by Penitence Murray, and the voluble intellectuality of Thapoulos, Jennings and Smith the sculptor, Miss Van Tuyn began to feel absent-minded.
"With you if you are painted," continued Arabian, "it will be the same. Dick Garstin must see bad in us all." He laughed and his laugh was oddly shrill and ugly. "It is an idee fixe," he said. "You see, I am frank. I say what I think, Dick Garstin." "No objection to that!" said Garstin, with a mischievous smile. "But if you don't like your picture you won't want to have it.
Canvas, easel, brushes, and paints were all purchased according to a list which Garstin supplied him with. He wanted, he said, everything of the best. A pupil is a pupil, especially when he pays in advance, and when pictures are not as saleable as they should be, so Garstin did all he could to further this particular pupil's desire.
Only the few portraits on easels and on the pale walls looked at her with the vivid eyes which Garstin knew how to endow with an almost abnormal life. Evidently Garstin had stopped below for a moment in the ground floor studio, but she now heard his heavy tramp on the stairs behind her and turned almost angrily. "Dick, is this intended for a joke?" "What do you mean by 'this'?" "You know!
And he smiled as he went striding downstairs. But when he opened the door he found standing outside in the foggy darkness a tall, soldierly old man, with an upright figure, white hair, and moustache, a lined red face and dark eyes which looked straight into his. "Who are you, sir?" said Garstin. "And what do you want?" "Are you Mr. Dick Garstin?" said the old man.
"You hear!" said Arabian to Garstin. "It is your friend who says this." "I can't help that," said Garstin, totally unperturbed. "I'm going to exhibit that picture." "No! No!" said Arabian. And as he spoke he suddenly bared his teeth.
They mounted to the lantern room, and nowhere was there any sign of Garstin. They lit the lamps. The first thing they saw was the log. It was open and the last entry was written in Garstin's hand and was timed 3.40 P.M. It mentioned a ketch reaching northwards. The two men descended the winding-stairs, and the cold air breathed upon their faces. The brass door at the foot of the stairs stood open.
It appeared from their account that Garstin took the middle day watch, that they themselves were asleep, and that Garstin should have roused them to light the lamps at a quarter to four. They woke of their own accord in the dark, and at once believed they had slept into the night. The clock showed them it was half-past four.
Rather late in the afternoon of the same day, towards half-past five, Dick Garstin, who was alone in his studio upstairs smoking a pipe and reading Delacroix's "Mon Journal," heard his door bell ring. He was stretched out on a divan, and he lay for a moment without moving, puffing at his pipe with the book in his hand. Then he heard the bell again, and got up.
Word Of The Day