The Prince and the Quakeress - Plaidy Jean (книги полностью бесплатно TXT) 📗

‘My dear Mr. Reynolds, it is exactly what I hoped you would do.’

And he had; and it had been acclaimed. His name was made. Everyone wanted their portrait painted by Joshua Reynolds. Moreover, everyone wanted to know who the outstandingly lovely subject of the portrait was.

‘Miss Elizabeth Chudleigh of Devonshire,’ he told them; and he wrote to her.

‘Your picture has created tremendous interest here in London. I think there are many who would be delighted to see the original.’

Elizabeth needed no more than that. She and her mother packed their bags and within a short time Elizabeth was in London; it was the starting-point of her extraordinary career, for she was an immediate success. Several men wanted to marry her; she selected the Duke of Hamilton as the most agreeable suitor; that romance went wrong; but Elizabeth was launched and soon had a post of maid of honour in the household of the Princess of Wales.

What had happened since then, why she had not married, was her own secret affair.

But Joshua Reynolds could imagine that it would be a startling story if it ever came to light.

And now she had been instrumental in bringing him to this strange house.

‘Mr. Reynolds, sir. Will you step this way.’

A pleasant house, comfortable, luxurious even, just the sort of house in which a wealthy nobleman would set up his cherished mistress.

He was ushered into a room, a room with a high vaulted ceiling and big windows, heavily curtained he noticed. We shall have to let in the light, was his first thought.

And she was rising to greet him. Tall, beautiful, dressed in white satin adorned with blue bows.

Charming! he thought. Beautiful...and certainly not conventionally so.

He approached her and bowed; his artist’s eye took in the oval face, the large dark eyes—some brooding secret there. The dark hair was drawn back from a somewhat high brow and she wore a cap; her dress was low cut but there was a vest of fine lace which covered her neck and ended in a frill under her chin.

Mrs. Axford, he thought. Who is Mrs. Axford?

He could not recall ever having heard the name; but that was unimportant. He knew now that he wanted to paint her.

• • •

Hannah looked forward to the visits of Mr. Reynolds. On those days when he came she would awake with a pleasurable feeling of anticipation. It was always a joy to slip into the white satin dress and she could never resist studying her reflection in the mirror and comparing it with the portrait which was rapidly growing on the canvas.

Did she really look as Mr. Reynolds saw her? She hoped so, for the effect was pleasing. She had not wanted George to see it until the portrait was completed and she was longing to show him the finished picture—yet she would be sorry, for that would be the end of the artist’s visits.

She was stimulated and perhaps a little apprehensive during sittings. Although that was not what he desired. He was always begging her to be relaxed, to imagine she was chatting with an old friend...about herself.

An old friend. She thought of chatting to Aunt Lydia or her mother. Her mother! She could never think of her mother without feelings of unbearable guilt. What a wicked daughter she had been! She pictured them now, praying for her in the dining-room where they had prayed incessantly, before all meals, first thing in the morning, last thing before going to bed.

‘Save Hannah from her wickedness. Let her repent, O Lord.’

Little Hannah would he lisping her prayers now and so would baby Anne; and she had heard from Jane that there was another baby boy named John.

Mr. Reynolds said: ‘Now you are looking too sad. We do not want sadness in the portrait, do we? At least not much. Just a little...but that is something we cannot avoid. But you are not sad all the time. Mrs. Axford?’

‘Oh no. I am very happy...sometimes.’

‘When memories don’t intrude?’

She was silent and he looked up from the canvas intently.

‘Now, Mrs. Axford, hands in lap. Have you lived long in this house?’

‘N...no. About five years...’

She would have been just past twenty when she came here. Who was the lover? Some nobleman. She was not of the Court, he knew that.

‘It is a pleasant place and not too far from London.’

‘No...not too far.’

‘I’ll warrant you visit the capital often, Mrs. Axford.’

‘No...rarely.’

‘That is strange. Most ladies cannot resist it. There is so much of interest. The theatre for one thing, do you like the theatre?’

‘I do not know. I have never visited a theatre.’

He was silent. He could not place her. There was an air of serenity about her, an air of refinement. Who was she? Who was her lover? It was necessary for him to know if he were going to paint her as he wished to. But was it? Why should he not paint her with her air of mystery, for that was how he saw her.

‘We will rest awhile, Mrs. Axford. Come and see what you think of the progress.’

She came and stood beside him.

‘Thou art a very clever artist,’ she said.

He was quick to notice the form of address. A Quakeress, he thought. Of course! Why did I not realize it before? From then on he began to think of her as the beautiful and mysterious Quakeress.

• • •

He could not tempt her to speak of herself when she so clearly did not wish to do so. Instead he found himself talking of his own life.

She was very interested and as he talked she became animated. She was living the scenes he described as surely as though she had been present when they had happened; it brought a new animation to her face.

He told her about his home at Plympton Earl in Devonshire. He talked of the beauties of Devon, the coast, the wooded hills and the rich red earth...all exciting in the artistic eyes.

‘But it was always portraits which fascinated me…people. Landscape is exciting but people are alive...I have to present one face to the world, but there is another which is perhaps truly themselves. One other? There are a thousand. A thousand different people in that one body. Think of that, Mrs. Axford.’

‘Are we all so complex, then?’

‘Every one of us. Yourself, for instance; you are not solely the charming hostess to a painter, are you? You are many things beside.’

Yes, I see. I am good and I am wicked. I’m truthful and I lie. My life is beautiful and hideous.. .’

‘And you live here in this comfortable house, a lady of fashion...’

‘Never that. How could I be when I don’t...’

He waited hopefully, but she merely added: ‘Never a lady of fashion.’

‘Yet not a Quakeress?’

‘Why did you say that?’

‘You were once a Quakeress, were you not?’

‘Yes. I betrayed it?’

‘Don’t forget I am an artist. I try to discover all I can about a sitter so that I can see her not only as the world sees her but as she really is. You look alarmed. There is no need. I am sure that I should never see anything of you, Mrs. Axford, that’s not admirable.’

‘You flatter me.’

‘I never flatter. That is not the way to produce great art.’

She fell silent and to bring back her serenity he talked about himself.

‘I always knew I wanted to be an artist. My father was a clergyman. He was master of the grammar school too. I had a religious upbringing.’

Her eyes glowed with understanding. He pictured the austere Quaker household. Poor girl, she must find it difficult to escape from such an upbringing. And what courage she must have, what a deep love she must have felt, to have risked eternal damnation—for that would be what she would have: been led to expect—by setting up house with a lover.

‘But I wanted to paint,’ he went on, ‘and at last my father understood there was no stopping me. So he sent me to London and apprenticed me there to Thomas Hudson. He was a Devon man settled in London.’