A Comedy of Masks - A Novel by Arthur Moore;Ernest Christopher Dowson
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page 4 of 362 (01%)
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invitation to make his property the point of view from which he
could most conveniently transfer to canvas his impressions; and he worked hard for months, with an industry that came upon his friend as a surprise, at the uneven outlines of the Thames warehouses, and the sharp-pointed masts that rose so trenchantly above them. He had generated an habit of coming and going, as he pleased, without consideration of his host's absences; and latterly, in the early spring--whose caprices in England Rainham was never in a hurry to encounter--the easel and painting tools of the assiduous artist had become an almost constant feature of the landscape. Now, towards the close of an exceptionally brilliant day in the finish of May, he was putting the last touches to a picture which had occupied him for some months, and which he hoped to have completed for Rainham's return. As he stood on the wharf, which ran down to the river-side, leaning back against a crane of ancient pattern, and viewing his easel from a few yards' distance critically, he could not contemplate the result without a certain complacency. "It's deuced good, after all," he said to himself, with his head poised a little on one side. "Yes, old Rainham will like this. And, by Jove! what matters a good deal more, the hangers will like it, and if it's sold--and, confound it! it must be sold--it will be a case of three figures." He had one hand in his pocket, and instinctively--it may have been the result of his meditation--he fell to jingling some coins in it. They were not very many, but just then, though he was a young gentleman keenly alive to the advantages of a full purse, their |
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