Who Can Deny Love Read online

‘Gambling debts, I’ll be bound!’ Isaacs thought to himself.

  And that, he imagined, would explain why the other painting had had to be sold.

  They were always the same, these gentlemen, chucking away their money on the green baize tables and when they had a bad run their families were left with hardly a crust to eat.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, “but it never pays to be in a hurry.”

  Cyrilla had drawn in her breath. Then she said, feeling ashamed because she must humble herself,

  “Would it be – possible for you to give me – a little – just a little – on account? My father needs – medicines and the doctor has – to be paid.”

  For a moment Isaacs was inclined almost automatically to refuse. Then some compassion which he did not know he possessed was aroused by the slim figure standing beside him.

  Perhaps because the musical quality of her voice touched him in a way he had not expected, he put his hand into his pocket.

  “I don’t know why I should break my rules to please you,” he said, excusing his generosity, “but here is five pounds. I shall of course deduct it and my commission from what I obtain for the painting.”

  As he spoke, he put five golden sovereigns into Cyrilla’s gloved hand.

  “Thank you – very much,” she said. “It is – very kind of you. I’ll call in two days’ time – that will be Wednesday – to see if by then you’ve managed to sell the painting.”

  “You must suppose I’m a magician if you think I can dispose of it as quickly as that! But come if you wish and I would like to have your address. If you have anything else of the same sort to sell, you might as well bring it with you or I will collect it.”

  He spoke with an effort to disguise his own eagerness.

  A Lochner – and now this!

  He was certain that the Prince of Wales would find the Van Dyck irresistible.

  He had been thinking about what had happened for so long that he had almost forgotten that the Marquis was waiting.

  Now, to his consternation, he realised that the Nobleman was walking out the door of the shop. “My Lord! My Lord!” he cried.

  “If you are not interested in my proposition,” the Marquis said, “I quite understand. I will tell somebody in the Prince’s household to return the painting to you.”

  “No, my Lord! No, please, listen to me!” Isaacs pleaded.

  The Marquis stopped on the pavement.

  His phaeton was waiting for him with the two spirited horses that drew it fidgeting to be off.

  “Well?” he asked in an uncompromising tone.

  “It is – 17 Queen Anne Terrace, Islington, my Lord!”

  As the Marquis began to climb into his phaeton, he said,

  “You shall have the money for the Van Dyck in the morning.”

  The groom released the horses’ heads and ran to jump up behind the high vehicle, the Marquis drove off and Isaacs with a deep sigh went back into his shop.

  He had the uncomfortable feeling that he had made a mistake, but what alternative had there been?

  Queen Anne Terrace, in the poor part of Islington, was not the type of address where one would expect to pick up a masterpiece of the type of the Lochner or the Van Dyck.

  The Marquis was more and more convinced that there was something peculiar about the paintings that he should have investigated before he offered them to the Prince of Wales.

  He had felt that the gentleman who said he owned the Lochner was genuine, but the woman seemed different.

  No lady of any pretention would have come to Bond Street alone. No lady would have carried a painting in her own hands.

  He thought, as she left the shop after he had with some difficulty extracted her address, that the painting might have been stolen from someone in the country and the Police would have been notified of the theft.

  A wiser and perhaps richer dealer would have made enquiries, but Isaacs was in a hurry not only to be paid but also to please the Prince of Wales.

  The first picture he had sold him had been a real feather in his cap, but one sale was not enough, although it had at least given him the entrée to Carlton House.

  Only as the phaeton disappeared did Isaacs say to himself,

  ‘I should have given his Lordship a false address and he would then have been obliged to come back to me.’

  It struck him that the Marquis would have known he was lying just as he had known he lied when he had said he had no idea who the seller was.

  It was infuriating to have been outwitted and outmanoeuvred.

  ‘His Lordship’s too clever by half and that’s the truth,’ he muttered to himself, not realising that people of a very different class from his own had said the same words or something like them, over and over again ever since the Marquis had grown to manhood.

  At this moment the Marquis was delighted.

  He had extracted the information he wanted and he knew now he could not wait but must start out on the chase, which he was already finding extremely intriguing.

  Because life held few mysteries for him and practically no secrets, the Marquis was as alert as a hound following the scent of a fox, and he pushed his horses a little faster than usual through the crowded traffic he encountered on his way to Islington.

  This part of London had been fashionable in the middle of the last century but now had fallen on ill times.

  The houses were badly in need of paint, their elegant wrought-iron balconies draped with washing and many of the fanlights over the doors were broken and stuffed with rags.

  Queen Anne Terrace, however, comprised houses of various shapes, sizes and periods and it took the Marquis little time to find that number 17 was a house at the end, which had built onto it a strange erection that he realised might be an artist’s studio.

  As his groom ran to the heads of the horses, he threw down the reins, stepped down to the pavement and walked up to the door, which was sadly in need of paint, and raised the brass knocker that he saw to his surprise was well polished.

  There was no response and he thought that perhaps his journey had been in vain and he would not be able to solve his puzzle as easily as he had expected.

  Then, as he raised the knocker again, the door was opened and a voice said,

  “Have you forgotten your key, Hannah?”

  Then there was silence.

  Cyrilla was staring at the Marquis in surprise, having expected to see Hannah on the doorstep.

  He was looking at her with an astonishment which for a moment made him speechless.

  Cyrilla’s fair hair was silhouetted against the light at the end of the passage, which came from the open door of the kitchen and it gave her a kind of halo, while the dark walls framed her and made her appear as ethereal and dream-like as Lochner’s Madonna.

  It might have been the passing of several seconds or several hours that they stood looking at each other.

  Then Cyrilla recovered her voice first.

  “I-I am sorry,” she said. “I thought you were my maid, who has gone shopping – and I think you must have – come to the wrong house.”

  Her voice, the Marquis thought, was exactly what he would have expected the Madonna in The Virgin of the Lilies to possess and he replied, thinking even to himself that he sounded almost incoherent,

  “Not at all – I meant to come here – to find you.”

  “To – find me?”

  There was no doubt that Cyrilla did not understand what he was saying, which was not surprising.

  The Marquis swept his tall hat from his head.

  “May I come in?” he asked. “I have to talk to you.”

  Cyrilla’s eyes widened, then with a hesitating, almost involuntary gesture she glanced over her shoulder as if for protection.

  “I assure you that I will not be any trouble to you,” the Marquis said with a faint smile on his lips, “and I will leave the moment you wish me to do so. But it would be difficult to talk standing here in the doorway.”


  As he spoke, Cyrilla was aware that two people passing by were staring at the Marquis, doubtless surprised that anyone so obviously opulent should be in such a neighbourhood.

  “Yes – of course,” she answered with just a little tremor in her voice. “Please – come in. I am afraid my father is – ill and cannot – receive you.”

  As she spoke, she wondered swiftly what could be the reason for this gentleman’s visit and she asked herself if by some wonderful chance he had seen one of Frans Wyntack’s paintings and wished to purchase it.

  It was something she had often conjured up in her imagination and it would be too wonderful if it actually came true.

  Frans Wyntack had been painting for years and his works were on sale at quite a number of shops, not like the grand one to which she had taken the Van Dyck, but the smaller art shops that abounded in Islington.

  She knew that those in search of an artistic bargain often visited these shops in the hope of finding an artist who would become fashionable overnight and thereby make their purchase worth a great deal more than they had paid for it.

  The Marquis entered the small passage, seeming with his broad shoulders and elegance to make it shrink down even narrower than it was already.

  Cyrilla opened a door on the left hand side and he found himself entering the sitting room.

  It was a small room, but he recognised immediately that it was furnished in good taste even though there was nothing of any great value in it.

  The skilfully made curtains, while of cheap material, blended with the walls and matched the cushions on the small sofa and two elegant chairs.

  Almost instinctively the Marquis looked for paintings and saw that where they had hung there were only marks on the wallpaper which were less faded than the rest.

  Then, as his eyes were held by the girl facing him, he felt that he must be dreaming, for he was actually seeing what he had thought to be impossible – the model for The Virgin of the Lilies.

  She was so beautiful that he could hardly credit that she was not a figment of the dreams he had dreamt about her.

  Her features were delicate and her eyes so large and expressive that he knew he had been right in thinking that she personified a Mediaeval love ballad played to the music of a spinet.

  ‘She is lovely, unbelievably lovely!’ he thought to himself.

  Then he realised he was staring and because of it a faint colour had come into her cheeks.

  “Will you – sit down, sir?” she asked, indicating one of the armchairs.

  The Marquis did as she requested and Cyrilla sat opposite him.

  She wore a very simple muslin gown without ribbons or any trimming, but because it was so simple and yet revealed the soft curves of her figure, there was somehow a complete rightness about it.

  She might, the Marquis thought, have been the Virgin Herself, very young, innocent and untouched by the world before the angel came to Her.

  The Marquis mused that he had never seen such expressive eyes or ones that had a spiritual beauty which was hard to describe even to himself.

  Then, realising that Cyrilla was waiting for him to speak, he said,

  “I am the Marquis of Fane. I am here because I understand that you are the owner of a painting reputed to be a Van Dyck.”

  He thought she might be surprised, but he had not expected that the colour would seep over her face in a manner that made him think of the dawn sun rising on the horizon.

  There was at the same time a stricken expression in her eyes, which made him feel he had been cruel to a child or to a small defenceless animal.

  Her lips moved, but no sound came from them and, after a moment, in what his friends would have found a surprisingly gentle voice, he said,

  “I learnt your address from a man called Isaacs, who took the painting you wish to sell to His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales.”

  Cyrilla clasped her fingers together and, as she did so, the Marquis noted that her hands were exquisite, the sort of hands Van Dyck liked to portray.

  “You should not be surprised to hear I immediately recognised the face in the Van Dyck as identical to that of the Madonna by Lochner, which Isaacs sold to the Prince some months ago,” the Marquis remarked.

  Now Cyrilla looked down in what he knew was embarrassment and her eyelashes were very dark against her cheeks, which had lost their colour and had become almost translucently pale.

  “I am – sorry,” she said after a moment, her voice trembling.

  “If you had not sat for both those paintings,” the Marquis said, “I think I should have been as deceived by the Van Dyck as His Royal Highness and I were by the Lochner.”

  “It was – stupid of me,” Cyrilla murmured in a voice he could barely hear.

  “Of you?” the Marquis asked. “Did you paint them?”

  “No, no, of course not!” Cyrilla replied quickly, “It was – Papa – but please – do not hurt him

  – he is so very ill – in fact I do not think he will – live very long.”

  There was a little break in her voice that told the Marquis how distressed she was and he replied quietly,

  “Let me assure you I have not come here to make trouble, but to understand how two different artists, a hundred and fifty years apart, should have painted the same beautiful face and apparently used the same model.”

  He thought that Cyrilla seemed embarrassed by his compliment and he went on,

  “Please explain. I am not being merely inquisitive, I should be fascinated to learn how it all happened.”

  Cyrilla’s eyes were raised to his.

  “You must be – very shocked,” she said. “I knew it was – wrong – very wrong – but there was nothing – absolutely nothing else – Papa could do when Mama was so desperately ill – and we had not enough money even to buy her food.”

  The Marquis did not speak and after a moment she repeated pleadingly,

  “P-please – understand – ”

  There was something very moving in the desperate note in her voice and the Marquis said,

  “I want to understand, so could we start at the very beginning? Will you first tell me your name?”

  “It is Cyrilla – Wyntack.”

  “And your father is an artist?”

  “Yes. His name is Frans Wyntack.”

  “He is not English?”

  “No, he is half-Austrian – and half-Flemish.”

  “That would of course account for his skill. I am not paying him a polite compliment, Miss Wyntack, when I say he paints so well that I cannot believe he would ever be short of money.”

  “That is what I have often thought,” Cyrilla said, “but unfortunately no one wants the pictures he – paints.”

  The Marquis looked puzzled and she explained,

  “I think perhaps he is in advance of his time. He believes light should be portrayed in a certain way on the object he has chosen, but those who buy paintings want everything to be – conventional.”

  The Marquis was too well versed in art not to understand what she was trying to say.

  “I would like to see your father’s paintings,” he said, “but please explain to me why he painted these fakes and how he carried it off so brilliantly.”

  “It was something he did only – because Mama was so ill. He learnt how to do it many years ago when he was in Cologne and, because we had no money, he copied one or two paintings in Sir George Beaumont’s collection, altering them enough to look as if they were other paintings by the Master he had chosen – and – they sold.”

  “For large amounts?”

  “No, for very – little, because he took them to the – shops round here.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Mama grew worse,” Cyrilla replied in a low voice, “and the – doctor said only special medicines might save her – and Papa was so desperate – that he started – The Virgin of the Lilies.”

  She paused and then as the Marquis did not speak, she went on,


  “He painted it while he was doing what he called ‘pot boilers’. He had memorised the background and the figure of the Madonna as he had copied a Lochner painting before, with the man who had taught him how to paint – fakes when he was in – Cologne. But he could not do the face without a model.”

  “So you sat for him,” the Marquis said.

  He saw the unhappiness in her eyes and knew that it had gone against every instinct in her body to be part of such a deception.

  “It is one of the most beautiful paintings I have ever seen,” he said aloud.

  He saw the light come back into Cyrilla’s eyes.

  “I am so glad you think that. Because it was so – beautiful, I somehow thought it – excused the fact that Papa was – pretending it was painted by – Stephan Lochner.”

  “I do not believe Lochner, or any other artist, could have done it better.”

  “Mama died before it was finished and he would not – touch it for a long time. He – went back to – painting his – own pictures.”

  “As I said before, I would like to see them.”

  “I will show you one,” Cyrilla replied.

  She rose to her feet and the Marquis asked,

  “If you are going to your father’s studio, may I come with you?”

  She looked a little startled at the request and then she said,

  “If it – pleases you, my Lord.”

  The Marquis opened the door for her and she walked ahead and up a short flight of stairs.

  The studio had been built out on the next floor. It was large compared to the rest of the building and there was a North window which was everything any artist could wish for.

  There were the usual paraphernalia of easels, a model’s throne and canvases smeared with paint or with a few lines of charcoal.

  On one easel was a painting that Cyrilla had put there after taking away the Van Dyck on which Frans Wyntack had been working before he was taken ill.

  It was as if subtly she was inviting him to paint as soon as he was well enough to leave his bedroom.

  It was practically finished and there was, in fact, only a little of the background to be filled in.

  The Marquis looked at it and understood exactly why it was unsalable.

  It had nothing about it that the average purchaser of works of art would understand or appreciate. Yet he knew it had merit and that Wyntack was trying to express his feelings in a medium that no one else had used.