Читать книгу The True Darcy Spirit - Elizabeth Aston - Страница 7

The previous evening, dining with his old friend Joachim Winter, Henry Lisser had questioned him about the family at Rosings.

Herr Winter was a retired artist of some distinction, who had been obliged to lay down his brushes on account of rheumatism in his fingers. However, he had taken on a new career, as master to the many young ladies who lived in the neighbourhood, and who wished to improve their drawing and painting skills beyond the instruction that their governesses could provide. It became quite the thing among the families to employ Herr Winter; kind, tolerant and conciliatory, he was a great favourite with his young pupils.

It was fortunate for Cassandra that her grandmother, the formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, had agreed that she might learn with Herr Winter. Lady Catherine, who had been thwarted in her attempts to make her own sickly daughter, Anne, as accomplished as she would have wished, was determined that Cassandra was going to turn out the most accomplished young lady in the country. So when the governess, Miss Wilson, came to her ladyship with the suggestion that a master might be engaged to instruct Cassandra in drawing and water-colours, she was listened to.

“Pray, why cannot you instruct the girl?” was Lady Catherine’s immediate reaction.

This was rough ground, and must be got over as lightly as possible—Miss Wilson’s brother was in the army, and she often thought of her life at Rosings in military terms. “Indeed, I can, and she has made good progress. However, there is a notable master come to live in Hunsford, a Herr Winter. He is retired, but is taking pupils: He goes to Croscombe House to teach the Croscombe girls, and Miss Emily is doing remarkably well under his tuition. The Tremaynes think so highly of him that they send a carriage over, twice a week, for him to attend at Hunsford Lodge, where he instructs Mr. Ralph, who has considerable talent in that direction, and all the Miss Tremaynes.”

“Croscombe House, you say, and Hunsford Lodge?”

“And several other pupils besides. He is so much in demand, that I fear he may be unable to take on any more at present.”

No master was going to refuse to teach Lady Catherine’s granddaughter. The amiable Herr Winter was summoned, subjected to an impolite interrogation as to his background and abilities, and informed that he was to have the honour of teaching Miss Darcy.

Fortunately, Herr Winter was possessed of a sense of humour, and he had taken a liking to this Cassandra, with her wide grey eyes and ill-contained energy. At first, he had expected no more of her than of his other female pupils, who needed to sketch and draw and do water-colours as an accomplishment and as an agreeable way to pass the empty hours of leisure, and he had been astonished to find in Cassandra a talent far beyond that of the usual run of young ladies.

Very soon discovering that there were few of his male pupils, in Germany or in London, who had ever shown more promise, he forgot about her sex and simply enjoyed unfolding to her the mysteries of his craft. “Art, I cannot teach,” he would always say. “That comes from the soul and cannot be taught.”

Water-colours and pastels weren’t enough for her, and by the time she was fourteen, she was already an accomplished painter in oils, a skill she took care to keep hidden from her mother. He would have liked her to tackle some bigger themes, but Cassandra was firm about where her tastes and skills lay: She could paint from nature well enough, for her early training with her father had made her observant, and the liveliness of her flowers and trees and landscapes made them delightful, but her real love, and gift, was for portraiture.

Herr Winter showed some of her work to young Henry Lisser, who was duly impressed. “Were she not a young lady, and born into an English gentleman’s household, she could make a living from her brush,” he said.

“Look at the upstairs parlour at Rosings, if you are able,” Herr Winter said. “She painted the panels in there; they thought I did it, but she wanted to learn fresco techniques, and so I showed her, and let her do the work. It was irksome for me to take the credit and the fee, but the pleasure and pride she took in the work were their own reward for her, and the main reward for me. It is much admired, I could not have produced anything so charming myself, and I was besieged with requests from other houses to do a similar thing. I had to say that my fingers were giving me considerable pain, since otherwise it might be noticed that those exquisite pastoral scenes did not come from my brush.”

Henry Lisser shrugged. “It is a waste of a talent,” he said, almost to himself. “However, she will marry a country squire and settle down to be a wife or mother, as is her destiny.”

Herr Winter put Cassandra’s work back in its portfolio. There was a tiny frown on his amiable countenance. “Part of me hopes that this will be the case. But, with this particular young lady, I do wonder about her future. I think it may not be as you describe. Her life at Rosings is not altogether a happy one; I only hope that she does not break out some day, tired of the smallness of her life, and perhaps take some disastrous step that she will come to regret.”

Once Mr. Lisser began work at Rosings, he saw for himself what Herr Winter meant. However, he kept his thoughts to himself, and, in truth, he was not much interested in a set of persons whom, he imagined, he would never see again, once the painting was finished. He had a good deal of reserve, and liked to keep a professional distance between himself and his clients.

Mr. Partington tried to draw him out—what was his background, what were his antecedents?—but he gave little away. He had studied in Leipzig and Vienna and Paris, before coming to London, he said, and no more could be got out of him.

Mr. Lisser had been surprised to find that the family arranged in front of the view of Rosings that he was to paint was to consist of only five members of the family. Mr. Partington chose the grouping, with him standing protectively behind his wife, who was seated with her baby son in her arms. Their youngest daughter sat cross-legged at her feet, in a foaming muslin dress with a pink sash, and her older sister, similarly attired, sat on a nearby swing.

It was a charming composition, very much in the modern taste, showing a paterfamilias enjoying the pleasures of family life, and the dutiful and fecund wife serene and contented, under his care.

“You have another daughter,” Henry Lisser said abruptly. “Is she not to be in the painting?”

She was not, Mr. Partington said snappishly, since she was a Darcy, a mere stepdaughter, not a Partington. However, Mr. Partington would be very much obliged if Mr. Lisser would include one or two of his prized Shorthorn cattle in the picture.