Who Can Deny Love Read online

  “It’s really brilliant! You know it is! But why can you not make a painting like that yourself instead of a copy and sign it with your own name and become famous?”

  There was silence for a moment and then Frans Wyntack replied,

  “Shall I tell you the truth? Because I do know the answer.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Artists like Lochner and all those others whom you and I admire had a certain genius within them, something that made them paint as other men, however artistic they may think they are, are unable to do.”

  “I think what you are saying, Papa, is that they are like musicians who may be very musical but who cannot compose.”

  “Exactly! A composer is a genius. A painter has to have the same genius in him. If it is not there, the painting does not ‘come to life’ and that is what is wrong with mine.”

  “But, Papa, you are so clever. This painting is beautiful! I would like to keep it and look at it every day.”

  Frans Wyntack laughed.

  “You have only to look in the mirror, my dear. But this painting is going to bring us a lot of money.”

  “How?” Cyrilla enquired.

  “I am going to a new dealer, a man named Solomon Isaacs. I have heard he is eager for paintings that he can show to the Prince of Wales.”

  “You will not tell him it’s a fake?”

  “No, of course not! I am going to say that it is a painting I inherited, which has been in my family for years and I have not had to part with it until now.”

  He smiled as if he mocked at himself and then said to Cyrilla,

  “Find me my best clothes, the ones your mother always said that I looked like a gentleman in. I hope they have not all been eaten away by the moths.”

  “No, of course not, Papa,” Cyrilla replied indignantly. “Hannah will have seen to that.”

  Dressed as a gentleman, although a slightly old-fashioned one, Frans Wyntack had left the house with the ‘Lochner’ painting, while Cyrilla, even though she thought it reprehensible, prayed that he might be successful.

  Hannah was being very disagreeable about having no money to spend on food and, because Cyrilla felt that it was more important that Frans Wyntack should eat than that she and Hannah should, she often felt uncomfortably empty inside and weak in a manner that she knew quite well was due to lack of nourishment.

  When she heard his knock at the door, for a moment it had been impossible to rise to her feet and go to open it.

  She was so afraid, terribly afraid, that he had been disappointed and she would find him standing outside with the painting still under his arm.

  Instead, he walked into the house with a cry of delight, picked her up in his arms and swung her round in the same way that he had when she was a child.

  “We have won! We have won!” he cried.

  “You have sold the painting?” Cyrilla asked, breathless and a little dizzy.

  “I have sold it, provided the Prince buys it, which the agent is quite certain he will do. He wants a Lochner in his collection and Isaacs is considerably impressed!”

  “I want money now!” Hannah said sharply from the kitchen door.

  “Well, you will have to wait for it, woman,” Frans Wyntack replied, “or get things on credit.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” Hannah retorted. “If your picture’s not paid for in the next twenty-four hours, we’ll all be in our graves, you mark my words!”

  She went back into the kitchen and slammed the door.

  Cyrilla and Frans Wyntack looked at each other in consternation and then laughed quietly almost like two conspirators.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “As a matter of fact, Isaacs was so impressed with the Lochner that he gave me a few pounds on account.”

  “Oh, Papa! Why did you not say so?” Cyrilla asked. “You have upset Hannah quite unnecessarily.”

  “I was going to buy some food as a surprise, but then I could not resist coming home first to tell you what had happened.”

  Cyrilla smiled.

  It was so like him to behave in such an irrational manner. In a way she could understand that it was because he lived in a fantasy world and that was what had made her mother love him.

  She had loved him so that she had been content to make sacrifices that no other woman would have made.

  But Cyrilla swept the thought from her mind and said practically,

  “Give the money to me, Papa. I will go and buy the food. You will buy all the wrong things and I know exactly what Hannah wants.”

  Frans Wyntack was quite content to allow her to do as she suggested.

  While she slipped away to the local shops that were only round the corner from the mean street in which they lived, he went to his studio to start painting what he deluded himself into believing would be his masterpiece.

  Chapter Two

  “Really, my Lord, there’s nothing more I can tell you,” Solomon Isaacs said, throwing out his hands in an expressive gesture.

  The Marquis, very large and awe-inspiring in the untidy shop, looked at him searchingly.

  “You told me,” he said slowly, “that the owner of the Van Dyck wishes to remain anonymous and that I can understand. At the same time you realise that I cannot advise His Royal Highness to buy a painting that has no dependable history behind it.”

  He paused to add impressively,

  “It might be stolen or even proven to be fake.”

  The dealer gave an exclamation that was almost a scream of protest.

  “I’ve my reputation to preserve, my Lord, and I can assure you that after years of selling fine paintings to real connoisseurs, I can smell a fake a mile off.”

  The Marquis was not particularly impressed by his protest.

  He knew that Isaacs, while he had a good reputation in the trade, was not one of the most significant dealers in London.

  Equally he was aware that the Jew was noted as being sharp, intelligent and genuinely knowledgeable where paintings were concerned.

  “Have you had any other paintings from this particular source?” he enquired.

  There was just a faint pause before Solomon Isaacs replied,

  “No, my Lord, this is the first one.”

  He said it quite convincingly, but the Marquis knew that he was lying.

  Playing for time, he looked round the shop, which was in a side street turning off Bond Street

  There were a number of paintings hung on the walls, which were of no interest to the Marquis and which he knew would not evoke a second glance from the Prince of Wales.

  There were also a number of canvases on the floor stacked against the walls and a collection of frames.

  He walked over to the nearest pile of canvases.

  “Show me these,” he ordered.

  Isaacs hurried to obey, turning them round into the light that came from the door and a window that needed cleaning.

  He then burst into the usual patter of an art dealer,

  “The colour of this one is outstanding – look at the texture, the brushstrokes, the light in the eyes of the model.”

  The Marquis had heard it all far too often even to listen to what was being said. He merely decided that the majority of the paintings were rubbish or of subjects that he had never liked and would not have purchased however well they were painted.

  The first stack of canvases was exhausted and he turned to another.

  The same thing happened, Isaacs sometimes holding a painting for so long while he eulogised about it that the Marquis had to make a gesture of refusal before he produced another.

  Finally, when even the dealer’s volubility came to a standstill, the Marquis said,

  “Now we come back to my original question. What more do you know about the Van Dyck?”

  “What can I say?” Solomon Isaacs asked, with almost a note of desperation. “I’ve told your Lordship everything that I myself know about it.”

  “Then find out more. His Royal Highness will not accept th
e painting until he is better informed.”

  The Marquis spoke sharply and walked towards the door.

  Then, as he expected, Isaacs was by his side, pleading with him.

  “I’ll do all I can, my Lord, but I can’t do the impossible. I’ll try, that I promise you, I’ll try!”

  “Don’t be too long about it,” the Marquis said.

  He would have left, but once again Isaacs’ voice prevented him.

  “There’s just one thing, my Lord, but I don’t like to mention it.”

  “What is that?”

  “The seller is desperate to be paid. She did indeed ask me – ”

  “She?”

  The Marquis’s ejaculation was like a pistol shot

  As he spoke, he saw by the expression on the Jew’s face that he knew he had made a slip of the tongue.

  There was silence for a moment.

  “You said ‘she’!” the Marquis remarked slowly. “Are you telling me this painting belongs to a lady?”

  “The lady called here yesterday,” Solomon Isaacs conceded. “She said that her father, who owns the painting, is very ill and they need the money so that he can have proper medical attention.”

  The Marquis had the feeling that the words were being dragged out of the man, but he was not aware that Isaacs was embarrassed because he not only had no wish to reveal the source from which he had obtained the painting, but be also felt that the Marquis would not be impressed by the lady’s address.

  She was poorly dressed and arrived on foot and alone, which told Isaacs before she spoke that she was not exaggerating when she said she needed the money.

  It struck him, because he was a sharp salesman, that the lady could be forced into accepting less for the painting than she had asked and then he could make a larger profit.

  He had the uncomfortable feeling that the Marquis, for whom he had the highest respect as a businessman, might be able to circumvent this if he actually found out where the painting had come from.

  In fact, his fears materialised a moment later when the Marquis said,

  “I think, Isaacs, I would like to meet this lady and discuss the painting she is selling. She should certainly be able to tell me more about it than you have been able to do.”

  “I think that’d be impossible, my Lord,” Isaacs said quickly – too quickly for the Marquis to be deceived.

  “Why?” he enquired, although he was sure of the answer.

  “I don’t know her address, my Lord.”

  “Then how do you intend to pay her?”

  “She said she’d call here tomorrow.”

  “At what time?’

  “She didn’t say, my Lord.”

  The Marquis thought for a moment.

  “Do you think if you ask her for her address she will give it to you?” he questioned at length.

  “I doubt it, my Lord. I had the feeling that it was, as the gentleman said, the one who brought the other painting to me – ”

  ‘What other painting?”

  Isaacs was getting confused.

  He knew it was not something he usually did, but the Marquis overwhelmed him and he was also over-anxious to make the sale, which was always a mistake.

  Everybody in the trade knew quite well that if they were to obtain their money, the Prince of Wales’s purchases were usually paid for by one of his friends.

  In the case of paintings, the Marquis of Fane had obliged His Royal Highness on a great number of occasions and the money Isaacs had obtained for the Lochner had been delivered by a groom in the Marquis’s livery and the bill-of-hand had been inscribed with his name.

  “I think you told me a little while ago,” the Marquis said slowly, “that this was the first painting you had obtained from that particular source.”

  “I was mistaken.” Solomon Isaacs admitted. “I remember now that the gentleman who brought me a painting which your Lordship liked and which His Royal Highness purchased, gave me the same address as this lady. It did not strike me before.”

  The Marquis was well aware that this was a lie, but he let it pass.

  “What was his name?”

  “That, I’ve given my word, my Lord, not to reveal and it’d be very unethical of me to do so.”

  “Then what was his address?”

  “I have my principles, my Lord. I wouldn’t have my good name impaired. As I’ve said often enough – my word is my bond.”

  The Marquis looked annoyed and asserted,

  “Your story becomes more twisted every second. The picture by Stephan Lochner which you sold to His Royal Highness six months ago came, you said at the time, from a private collection and you therefore knew very little about it.”

  “That’s right, my Lord.”

  “Now this painting, about which you have been extremely mysterious, apparently comes from the same source.”

  “I got muddled, my Lord, because in this instance I’ve been dealing with a young lady and before that with a gentleman.”

  “She said it was her father.”

  “Yes, yes, my Lord. She did say that.”

  “And he is ill?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “So she is desperate for money.”

  “She is, my Lord.”

  There was a glitter of triumph in the Marquis’s eyes, although Isaacs did not notice it.

  He was feeling, uncomfortably, that he had made a fool of himself.

  The Marquis, as Isaacs had thought before, was very difficult to deal with.

  “I have a suggestion to make to you,” the Marquis said slowly. “I will buy this painting at the price you are asking for it, which I am as aware as you are is a somewhat inflated figure, only on one condition – that you give me the address at which the money is to be paid. There will be no need to give me the name, so you will not break your word, which apparently means so much to you.”

  There was a touch of sarcasm in the Marquis’s voice that Isaacs did not like.

  The dealer hesitated because he was afraid not of offending the seller of the painting but of what the Marquis might discover.

  The man who had sold him the Lochner had looked a gentleman although he was dressed in a somewhat old-fashioned manner and was obviously of foreign origin. But he had come to collect the money and only after he had been paid had it struck Isaacs that perhaps it might have been to his advantage to find out if he had any other paintings for sale.

  After all, to please the Prince of Wales was the ambition of every dealer in the whole country.

  Isaacs had, although he had not shown it, been overjoyed when the young woman had brought him the Van Dyck.

  Because she had looked poor and unimportant he had not at first paid any attention to her when she came into the shop a little hesitatingly carrying a canvas.

  He was quite certain that she had nothing of importance to offer him and he always found it good tactics to keep those who wished to approach him waiting to make a sale until they felt nervous and more anxious than they were already.

  When finally he had asked the woman somewhat aggressively what she wanted, he had been surprised at the quiet melodious quality of her voice.

  He had been even more surprised and very agreeably so, when he saw what she had brought him.

  Otherwise he had not noticed her particularly. Since it was a cold blustery day, she was wearing a long cape made of expensive material, but which was shabby and unfashionable. It had a hood which she had pulled forward over her face.

  Now, thinking of her, he found it difficult to remember exactly what she looked like.

  At the time he had had eyes only for the painting itself.

  He had seen at a glance that it was not only a Van Dyck but a particularly fine example of the artist’s work.

  There was no mistaking the skilfully painted folds of the Madonna’s robe, which reminded him of one that he had seen two years before, when he had made an exhausting but rewarding visit to Munich.

  Of course, he was well aware th
at Van Dyck had painted hundreds of pictures including portraits and a series of magnificent Biblical scenes.

  Charles I had settled an annual pension of two hundred pounds on him and presented him with two houses besides giving him a Knighthood.

  Isaacs admired Van Dyck perhaps more than any other great artist and he had always longed to have one to sell.

  This was the answer to one of his greatest ambitions and he could hardly believe his good luck as he stared at the painting which the woman in the cloak had brought to him.

  “Where did you get this?” he managed to ask at last.

  “It – it belongs to my father. He sold you a painting a little – while ago.”

  “Which one?’

  “It was by – Stephan Lochner.”

  The woman seemed to stumble a little over the words, but Isaacs had almost given a shout of delight.

  The Lochner with which the Prince of Wales had been so pleased, for which the Marquis of Fane had paid without haggling over the price, had been a tremendous coup.

  Now he had another masterpiece from the same source and he told himself that the Prince could not fail to be delighted with this really superb example of Van Dyck’s work.

  However, he thought it a mistake to show the seller how elated he was and so he managed to remark almost casually,

  “I suppose that you have your father’s authorisation to sell this painting?”

  “Yes – of course.”

  There was a little tremor in her voice and Isaacs did not understand that Cyrilla was feeling humiliated because she was certain that he thought she must have stolen it.

  “In which case I’ll take it from you and I hope to find a buyer in a reasonable period of time.”

  “You – you would not – buy it – outright?”

  He shook his head.

  “I seldom do that. What are you asking for it?”

  He thought that she might have no idea of its worth, but instead she mentioned, again hesitatingly, a figure that he knew was fair, though for a Van Dyck it was rather below the market value.

  “I doubt if I’ll get that.”

  “Will you please try? It is very – important that my father should have the money as – soon as possible.”