Pigeon Feathers Read Online Free PDF Page A

little pieces will never read. You see, there, we don’t even know where the center of your chest is. Ah—may I?” From the grunts and sighs Leonard pictured Robin rising from straddling her horse and Seabright seating himself. “Dear me,” he said, “you’ve got the outlines so black they rather take my eye. However …”
    To Leonard it was one of Seabright’s charms that, faced with any problem of drawing, he became so engrossed he forgot to teach. He had had to train himself to keep glancing at his watch; else he would sit the whole afternoon attacking a beginner’s exercise, frowning like a cat at a mouse hole, while the forgotten student stood by on aching legs.
    “There,” Seabright sighed reluctantly. “I’m afraid I’ve spent my time with you. It’s just one passage, but you can see here, across the thorax, how the little elements already are turning the large surface. And then, as you’d pass into the rib cage, with these two shadows just touched in at first, you see … Perhaps I should do a
bit
more.… There, you see. And then we could pass on to the throat.… It’s a good idea, actually, on these figgers to start with the pit of the throat, and then work the shoulders outwards and go up for the head.…”
    “Yes, sir,” Robin said, a shade impatiently.
    “The whole thrust of the pose is in those angles, you see?
Do
you see?”
    “Yes, sir, I hope so.”
    But her hopes were not enough for him; he came aroundthe pedestals and his plump, solemn, slightly feline figure was in Leonard’s view when he turned and said apprehensively to the hidden girl, “You understand to use the pencil as lightly as you can? Work up the whole form gradually?”
    “Oh, yes. Quite,” Robin’s pert voice insisted.
    Seabright twitched his head and came and stood behind Leonard. “I don’t think,” he said at last, “we need draw in the casting seams; we can idealize to that extent.”
    “It seemed to help in getting the intervals,” Leonard explained.
    “Even though these are exercises, you know, there’s no advantage in having them, uh, positively ugly.” Leonard glanced around at his teacher, who was not usually sarcastic, and Seabright continued with some embarrassment; his speech impediment was less audible than visible, a fitful effortfulness of the lips. “I must confess you’re not given much help by your subject matter.” His eyes had lifted to the statue Leonard had chosen to draw, for the reason that it had all four limbs. Completeness was the crude token by which Leonard preferred one statue to another; he was puzzled by Seabright’s offended murmur of “Wretched thing.”
    “Beg pardon, sir?”
    “Look here, Hartz,” Seabright exclaimed, and with startling aggressiveness trotted forward, stretched up on tiptoe, and slapped the plaster giant’s side. “The Roman who copied this didn’t even understand how the side here is constricted by this leg taking the weight!” Seabright himself constricted, then blinked abashedly and returned to Leonard’s side with a more cautious voice. “Nevertheless, you’ve carried out parts of it with admirable intensity. Per, uh, perhaps you’ve been rather
too
intense; relax a bit at first and aim for the swing of the figger—how that little curve here, you see, sets up againstthis long lean one.” Leonard expected him to ask for the pencil, but instead he asked, “Why don’t you get yourself a new statue? That charming girl Miss Cox is doing—Diana, really, I suppose she is. At least there you do get some echoes of the Greek grace. I should think you’ve done your duty by this one.”
    “O.K. It
was
starting to feel like mechanical drawing.” To dramatize his obedience, Leonard began prying out his thumbtacks, but Seabright, his five minutes not used up, lingered.
    “You do see some sense in drawing these at the outset, don’t you?” Seabright was troubled by his American students; of the five, Leonard knew he must seem the least