True Tilda by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Author:Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
Publisher: eBooksLib
Published: 2004-05-11T00:00:00+00:00

"Do you 'appen to know, sir," she asked, coming back, "if there's a young woman employed 'ere?"

"There is," answered the artist. "I happen to know, because she won't let me paint her, although I offered ten dollars."

"That's a good sign," said Tilda.

"Oh, is it now?" he queried, staring after her as she marched boldly towards the house and was lost to sight between the willow-stems.

CHAPTER XVI - ADVENTURES OF THE "FOUR ALLS" AND OF THE CELESTIAL CHEMIST

"'Friend Sancho,' said Don Quixote, 'this Island that I promised you can neither stir nor fly.'" - CERVANTES.

"Now what precisely did your sister mean by that?" asked the artist, withdrawing his gaze and fixing it on Arthur Miles.

"She is not my sister," said the boy.

The artist - he was an extraordinarily tall young man, with a keen hatchet face, restless brown eyes, and straight auburn hair parted accurately in the middle - considered for a moment, then nodded.

"That's so. It comes out, soon as you talk . . . Well, see here now, we'll start right away. That's how Art hits me - once I take hold of a notion, I must sling in and get going. It's my temperament; and what's Art - right there, please - what's Art, after all, but expressed temperament? You catch the idea? You're the Infant Shakespeare, the youth to fortune and to fame unknown - "

'His listless length at noontide would he stretch' -

"Stretch what you have of it - "

'And pore upon the brook that babbles by.'

"But I don't want you to paint me," rebelled the boy.

"Goodness! Why not?"

For a moment or two Arthur Miles faced the question almost sullenly.

"I don't want my likeness taken," he explained at length.

"My young friend," the artist cheerfully assured him, "if that's your trouble, dismiss it. I can't paint a likeness for nuts."

"You are sure?"

"Well, I should say I have a grounded expectation, seeing that I claim a bigger circle of friends than any other fellow that ever studied with Carolus; and apart from their liking for me, their conviction that never under any circumstances could I catch a likeness is about the only thing they have in common. I don't say it's the cement of their friendship; but, anyway, it's an added tie."

"If Tilda doesn't mind - "

The boy hesitated, with a glance over his shoulder.

"We'll consult the lady when the portrait's finished. If she recognises you, I'll destroy the canvas; and I can't say fairer than that . . . No, I shan't regret it. We'll call it an offering to the gods . . . And now," pursued the young man, flinging in a charcoal outline in fiery haste, "we'll consider the brakes open."

It took him perhaps thirty seconds to block in the figure, and at once he fell to mixing his palette, his fingers moving with a nervous, delicate haste. He held a brush between his teeth during the operation; but no sooner was it over, and the gag removed, than his speech began to gush

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