3.5
Comment(s)
83
View
33
Chapters

He was an orphan blessed with a small competency. His income, to use his own formula, consisted of a hundred a year and an uncle. During the first four months or so of the year he spent the hundred pounds, during the rest of the year he squandered his uncle; that is to say he would have squandered him only for the fact that Mr James Hancock, of the firm of Hancock & Hancock, solicitors, was a person most difficult to "negotiate."

Fanny Lambert PART I CHAPTER I MR LEAVESLEY

"You may take away the things, Belinda," said Mr Leavesley, lighting his pipe and taking his seat at the easel. "Nobody called this morning, I suppose?"

"Only the Capting, sir," replied Belinda, piling the tray. "He called at seven to borry your umbrella."

"Did you give it him?"

"No, sir, Mr Verneede's got it; you lent it to him the night before last, and he hasn't brought it back."

"Ah, so I did," said Mr Leavesley, squeezing Naples yellow from an utterly exhausted[Pg 2] looking tube. "So I did, so I did; that's the fifteenth umbrella or so that Verneede has annexed of mine: what does he do with them, do you think, Belinda?"

"I'm sure I don't know, sir," replied the maid-of-all-work, looking round the studio as if in search of inspiration, "unless he spouts them."

"That will do, Belinda," said the owner of the lost umbrellas, turning to his work, and the servant-maid departed.

It was a large, pleasant studio, furnished with very little affectation, and its owner was a slight, pleasant-faced youth, happy-go-lucky looking, with a glitter in his grey eyes suggesting a touch of genius or insanity in their owner.

He was an orphan blessed with a small competency. His income, to use his own formula, consisted of a hundred a year and an uncle. During the first four months or so of the year he spent the hundred pounds, during the rest of the year he squandered his uncle; that is to say he would have squandered him only for the fact that Mr James Hancock, of the firm of Hancock & Hancock, solicitors, was a person most difficult to "negotiate."

[Pg 3]

Art, however, was looking up. He had sold several pictures lately. The morning mists on the road to success were clearing away, leaving to the view in a prospect distant tremulous and golden the mysterious city of attainment.

He would have whistled as he worked only that he was smoking.

Through the open windows came the pulse-like sound of the omnibuses in the King's Road, the sleigh bells of the hansoms, the rattle of the coster's barrow, and voices.

As he painted, the sounds outside brought before him the vision of the King's Road, Chelsea, where flaming June was also at work with her golden brush and palette of violet colours.

He saw in imagination the scarlet pyramids of strawberries in the shops. The blazing barrow of flowers all a-growing and a-blowing, the late-June morning crowd, and through the crowd wending its way the figure of a girl.

He was in love.

In the breast-pocket of his coat (on the heart side) lay a letter he had received by the early morning post. The handwriting[Pg 4] was large and generous and careless, for no man living could tell the "m's" from the "w's," or the "t's" from the "l's." It ran somewhat to this effect:

"The Laurels, Highgate.

"Father is worrying dreadfully, and I want your advice. I think I will be in the King's Road to-morrow, and will call on you. Excuse this scrawl.-In wild haste,

"Fanny Lambert.

"How's the picture?"

Occasionally as he painted he touched his coat where the letter lay, as if to make sure of its presence.

Suddenly he ceased working. There was a step on the stairs, a knock at the door. Could it be?--

Continue Reading

Other books by H. De Vere Stacpoole

More

You'll also like

The Billionaire's Cold And Bitter Betrayal

The Billionaire's Cold And Bitter Betrayal

Clara Bennett
5.0

I had just survived a private jet crash, my body a map of violet bruises and my lungs still burning from the smoke. I woke up in a sterile hospital room, gasping for my husband's name, only to realize I was completely alone. While I was bleeding in a ditch, my husband, Adam, was on the news smiling at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. When I tracked him down at the hospital's VIP wing, I didn't find a grieving husband. I found him tenderly cradling his ex-girlfriend, Casie, in his arms, his face lit with a protective warmth he had never shown me as he carried her into the maternity ward. The betrayal went deeper than I could have imagined. Adam admitted the affair started on our third anniversary-the night he claimed he was stuck in London for a merger. Back at the manor, his mother had already filled our planned nursery with pink boutique bags for Casie's "little princess." When I demanded a divorce, Adam didn't flinch. He sneered that I was "gutter trash" from a foster home and that I'd be begging on the streets within a week. To trap me, he froze my bank accounts, cancelled my flight, and even called the police to report me for "theft" of company property. I realized then that I wasn't his partner; I was a charity case he had plucked from obscurity to manage his life. To the Hortons, I was just a servant who happened to sleep in the master bedroom, a "resilient" woman meant to endure his abuse in silence while the whole world laughed at the joke that was my marriage. Adam thought stripping me of his money would make me crawl back to him. He was wrong. I walked into his executive suite during his biggest deal of the year and poured a mug of sludge over his original ten-million-dollar contracts. Then, right in front of his board and his mistress, I stripped off every designer thread he had ever paid for until I was standing in nothing but my own silk camisole. "You can keep the clothes, Adam. They're as hollow as you are." I grabbed my passport, turned my back on his billions, and walked out of that glass tower barefoot, bleeding, and finally free.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book
Fanny Lambert Fanny Lambert H. De Vere Stacpoole Modern
“He was an orphan blessed with a small competency. His income, to use his own formula, consisted of a hundred a year and an uncle. During the first four months or so of the year he spent the hundred pounds, during the rest of the year he squandered his uncle; that is to say he would have squandered him only for the fact that Mr James Hancock, of the firm of Hancock & Hancock, solicitors, was a person most difficult to "negotiate."”
1

PART I CHAPTER I MR LEAVESLEY

17/11/2017

2

CHAPTER II A LOST TYPE

17/11/2017

3

CHAPTER III A COUNCIL OF THREE

17/11/2017

4

CHAPTER IV HANCOCK & HANCOCK

17/11/2017

5

CHAPTER V OMENS

17/11/2017

6

CHAPTER VI LAMBERT V. BEVAN

17/11/2017

7

CHAPTER VII THE BEVAN TEMPER

17/11/2017

8

CHAPTER VIII AT THE LAURELS

17/11/2017

9

CHAPTER IX WHAT TALES ARE THESE

17/11/2017

10

CHAPTER X ASPARAGUS AND CATS

17/11/2017

11

PART II CHAPTER I A REVELATION

17/11/2017

12

CHAPTER II THE GOD FROM THE MACHINE

17/11/2017

13

CHAPTER III TRIBULATIONS OF AN AUNT

17/11/2017

14

CHAPTER IV THE DAISY CHAIN

17/11/2017

15

PART III CHAPTER I AN ASSIGNATION

17/11/2017

16

CHAPTER II THE EMOTIONS OF MR BRIDGEWATER

17/11/2017

17

CHAPTER III AN OLD MAN'S OUTING

17/11/2017

18

CHAPTER IV A MEETING

17/11/2017

19

CHAPTER V THE ADVENTURES OF BRIDGEWATER

17/11/2017

20

CHAPTER VI A CONFESSION

17/11/2017

21

CHAPTER VII IN GORDON SQUARE

17/11/2017

22

PART IV CHAPTER I THE ROOST

17/11/2017

23

CHAPTER II MISS MORGAN

17/11/2017

24

CHAPTER III A CURE FOR BLINDNESS

17/11/2017

25

CHAPTER IV TIC-DOULOUREUX

17/11/2017

26

CHAPTER V THE AMBASSADOR

17/11/2017

27

CHAPTER VI A SURPRISE VISIT

17/11/2017

28

CHAPTER VII THE UNEXPLAINED

17/11/2017

29

CHAPTER VIII RETURN OF THE AMBASSADOR

17/11/2017

30

PART V CHAPTER I GOUT

17/11/2017

31

CHAPTER II THE RESULT

17/11/2017

32

CHAPTER III THE RESULT-(continued)

17/11/2017

33

CHAPTER IV JOURNEY'S END

17/11/2017