The Incomplete Amorist. Эдит Несбит

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      She glanced at him. He had pushed back the hat. She saw quite plainly that he was smiling—a very little, but he was smiling. Also he was looking at her, and across the fifteen yards of gray turf their eyes met. And she knew that he knew that this was not her first glance at him.

      She paled with fury.

      "He has been watching me all the time! He is making fun of me. He knows I can't sketch. Of course he can see it by the silly way I hold everything." She ran her knife around her sketch, detached it, and tore it across and across.

      The stranger raised his hat and called eagerly.

      "I say—please don't move for a minute. Do you mind? I've just got your pink gown. It's coming beautifully. Between brother artists—Do, please! Do sit still and go on sketching—Ah, do!"

      Betty's attitude petrified instantly. She held a brush in her hand, and she looked down at her block. But she did not go on sketching. She sat rigid and three delicious words rang in her ears: "Between brother artists!" How very nice of him! He hadn't been making fun, after all. But wasn't it rather impertinent of him to put her in his picture without asking her? Well, it wasn't she but her pink gown he wanted. And "between brother artists!" Betty drew a long breath.

      "It's no use," he called; "don't bother any more. The pose is gone."

      She rose to her feet and he came towards her.

      "Let me see the sketch," he said. "Why did you tear it up?" He fitted the pieces together. "Why, it's quite good. You ought to study in Paris," he added idly.

      She took the torn papers from his hand with a bow, and turned to go.

      "Don't go," he said. "You're not going? Don't you want to look at my picture?"

      Now Betty knew as well as you do that you musn't speak to people unless you've been introduced to them. But the phrase "brother artists" had played ninepins with her little conventions.

      "Thank you. I should like to very much," said Betty. "I don't care," she said to herself, "and besides, it's not as if he were a young man, or a tourist, or anything. He must be ever so old—thirty; I shouldn't wonder if he was thirty-five."

      When she saw the picture she merely said, "Oh," and stood at gaze. For it was a picture—a picture that, seen in foreign lands, might well make one sick with longing for the dry turf and the pale dog violets that love the chalk, for the hum of the bees and the scent of the thyme. He had chosen the bold sweep of the brown upland against the sky, and low to the left, where the line broke, the dim violet of the Kentish hills. In the green foreground the pink figure, just roughly blocked in, was blocked in by a hand that knew its trade, and was artist to the tips of its fingers.

      "Oh!" said Betty again.

      "Yes," said he, "I think I've got it this time. I think it'll make a hole in the wall, eh? Yes; it is good!"

      "Yes," said Betty; "oh, yes."

      "Do you often go a-sketching?" he asked.

      "How modest he is," thought Betty; "he changes the subject so as not to seem to want to be praised."

      Aloud she answered with shy fluttered earnestness: "Yes—no. I don't know. Sometimes."

      His lips were grave, but there was the light behind his eyes that goes with a smile.

      "What unnecessary agitation!" he was thinking. "Poor little thing, I suppose she's never seen a man before. Oh, these country girls!" Aloud he was saying: "This is such a perfect country. You ought to sketch every day."

      "I've no one to teach me," said Betty, innocently phrasing a long-felt want.

      The man raised his eyebrows. "Well, after that, here goes!" he said to himself. "I wish you'd let me teach you," he said to her, beginning to put his traps together.

      "Oh, I didn't mean that," said Betty in real distress. What would he think of her? How greedy and grasping she must seem! "I didn't mean that at all!"

      "No; but I do," he said.

      "But you're a great artist," said Betty, watching him with clasped hands. "I suppose it would be—I mean—don't you know, we're not rich, and I suppose your lessons are worth pounds and pounds."

      "I don't give lessons for money," his lips tightened—"only for love."

      "That means nothing, doesn't it?" she said, and flushed to find herself on the defensive feebly against—nothing.

      "At tennis, yes," he said, and to himself he added: "Vieux jeu, my dear, but you did it very prettily."

      "But I couldn't let you give me lessons for nothing."

      "Why not?" he asked. And his calmness made Betty feel ashamed and sordid.

      "I don't know," she answered tremulously, "but I don't think my step-father would want me to."

      "You think it would annoy him?"

      "I'm sure it would, if he knew about it."

      Betty was thinking how little her step-father had ever cared to know of her and her interests. But the man caught the ball as he saw it.

      "Then why let him know?" was the next move; and it seemed to him that Betty's move of rejoinder came with a readiness born of some practice at the game.

      "Oh," she said innocently, "I never thought of that! But wouldn't it be wrong?"

      "She's got the whole thing stereotyped. But it's dainty type anyhow," he thought. "Of course it wouldn't be wrong," he said. "It wouldn't hurt him. Don't you know that nothing's wrong unless it hurts somebody?"

      "Yes," she said eagerly, "that's what I think. But all the same it doesn't seem fair that you should take all that trouble for me and get nothing in return."

      "Well played! We're getting on!" he thought, and added aloud: "But perhaps I shan't get nothing in return?"

      Her eyes dropped over the wonderful thought that perhaps she might do something for him. But what? She looked straight at him, and the innocent appeal sent a tiny thorn of doubt through his armour of complacency. Was she—after all? No, no novice could play the game so well. And yet—

      "I would do anything I could, you know," she said eagerly, "because it is so awfully kind of you, and I do so want to be able to paint. What can I do?"

      "What can you do?" he asked, and brought his face a little nearer to the pretty flushed freckled face under the shabby hat. Her eyes met his. He felt a quick relenting, and drew back.

      "Well, for one thing you could let me paint your portrait."

      Betty was silent.

      "Come, play up, you little duffer," he urged inwardly.

      When she spoke her voice trembled.

      "I don't know how to thank you," she said.

      "And you will?"

      "Oh, I will; indeed I will!"

      "How good and sweet you are," he said. Then there was a silence.

      Betty СКАЧАТЬ