Until the Colours Fade Read Online Free PDF

solve: not just technicalities involving light and mass, but a way to make others see things through his eyes. He remembered the individuality of the men on the platform and yet their anonymity. To convey the tragedy of that paradox … that was something to be dreamed about. His recent failures had left him afraid that he had been trying to attain standards beyond his abilities, and this had terrified him. When his work had been rejected not just by the Academy and the British Institution, but by the lesser private galleries too, he had found it hard to produce anything. His sustaining hope had been then, and was still, that with the fair chance which a modest level of security would bring, he would be able to confront his terror of failure and prove that his faith in himself was grounded upon solid rock.
    If George Braithwaite should say disparaging things about Crawford, Tom knew that he would not contradict him; if need be, he would add criticisms of his own. Joseph Braithwaite’s patronage meant more to him than money – far more. If he succeeded in securing Lord Goodchild’s commission too, he would have his long-awaited chance within sight. Nobody could divert me then, he told himself, not Crawford nor an army of such men.
    Soon they were crossing the iron bridge over the river, the horses’ hoofs ringing out on the macadam. Tom clenched his teeth. A man in the ‘fly’ had started to scream; the agony of the sound mocked by its echo returning from the black cliff-like walls of the mills on the far shore.

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    The elaborate wrought-iron gates with their tall flanking piers and heraldic griffins lay behind him and, ahead, the drive described a gentle curve across a mile of level parkland. Driving the Braithwaites’ new dog-cart with its high red wheels and wasp-like body, Tom Strickland smiled to himself as he gained his first sight of the honey-coloured stone of the east front of Hanley Park.
    In the centre a fine portico – four slender Corinthian columns supporting a pediment – was crowned by a statue of Juno or Diana, and on each side, symmetrical wings, in the same neo-Palladian style, were topped with an elegant balustrade, its limits at each end marked by massive stone urns. The peaceful park and the formal grace of this classical building, glowing in the pale morning sunshine, contrasted so strangely with the industrial town five miles away that Tom, in spite of being nervous and very well aware of the purpose of his visit, could not escape a powerful sense of unreality – as though he were driving towards no real house, but through the frame of an eighteenth century painting into another world: an impression enhanced by the ornamental lake to his right and the green dome of a temple, glimpsed through the bare branches of a screen of beech trees.
    If Tom had once been tempted to suppose that the elegant spaciousness of such surroundings must produce a corresponding self-development in their possessors, George Braithwaite had done his best to disabuse him of the idea. Lord Goodchild, George had assured Tom, would neither humiliate him with educated talk and scintillating wit, nor even shock him with refined scandal – his lordship’s pleasures, as befitted one of the leading sportsmen of the age, being entirely physical. A year ago, on a snow-covered road, he had beaten Lord Shrewsbury’s four-in-hand team, driving twenty miles in less than an hour. In his youth, it was said that he had been able to give any pugilist in the country a good fight, and had often amused himself by taking friends to pot-houses in London’s dockland and starting brawls. Marriage had mellowed him somewhat, but George had relished telling Tom that Goodchild still enjoyed heavy gambling, liaisons with married women and riding in steeplechases.
    On the subject of Lady Goodchild, George had been less forthcoming . That her reputation as a beauty was not exaggerated, he had admitted but had then confessed his failure to discover