Читать книгу White Magic. A Novel онлайн

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Much American newspaper puffery of Americans abroad is sheer invention, designed to give us at home the pleasing notion that we are capturing the earth. But this notice of Roger Wade’s career had truth in it. He was doing extraordinarily well for so young a man. His sense of color and form was lifted toward genius by imagination and originality. His ability had no handicap of cheap and petty—and glaring—eccentricity, such as so often enters into the composition of an original and boldly imaginative temperament to mar its achievement and to retard the recognition of its merit. Thus he speedily made a notable place for himself. He could count on disposing of enough pictures to bring him in fifteen to twenty thousand francs a year; and that sum was about as much as he, simple of tastes, single-hearted in devotion to his work and indifferent to pose and pretense, could find time and opportunity to spend. He knew that in a few years far more money than he needed would be forced upon him—a prospect which he had the good sense to view with distrust when he thought of it at all. About the only thing that had stood in his way was his personal appearance. As one of his friends—Berthier, whose panels will be admired so long as the pale, mysterious glories of their elusive colors persist—said in a confidential moment: “Roger, you look so much like a man of genius that it’s hard to believe you are the real thing.”