Читать книгу Aunt Olive in Bohemia онлайн

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And Alan had listened and taken the harangue meekly, though it had had, apparently, little effect.

Next to Alan was Paul Treherne, seated on a packing-case. He was a man well above the medium height, and with a lean-limbed look about him. He had grey eyes, sad—like his mouth, which was partly hidden by a small moustache. Fate had started him in an office, which he hated. Later she had taken him abroad, where he had lived in a tent and under the open sky, where he had experienced hardships few men of his class have known, and where he had three times been face to face with death. He had looked at sunsets across open plains, and seen mountains bathed in gold and purple, and the crimson fire of tropical evenings. He had seen the blue shadows of palm trees on yellow sand; he had seen the scarlet of pomegranate flowers, the gold of oranges against azure skies, till his whole being was saturated in colour. And lastly he had returned to England at the age of twenty-seven to find in the soft greys and lilacs of smoky London an even more wonderful charm. He had then an income of eight hundred a year, four of which he gave to his widowed mother, who lived in a little house in Hampshire. He was at last able to turn to art, which he had always loved passionately, and from his knowledge of character gained through much experience of men and women, and with his wonderful sense of colour, he took to portrait painting. He now, besides his invested income, earned, at the age of thirty-seven, about six hundred a year by his brush. He sang in an untrained mellow baritone in a way that brought tears to one’s eyes.