“Oh, David,” she said, squeezing his shoulders, “Mr. Upton really is right about you, is he not?”
“But it is soflat,Mama,” he protested.
The countess was smiling at them over the top of her easel.
“Miss Jewell,” she said, “you have been remarkably patient. Your son and I have not been scintillating company, have we? May I see your painting, David?”
She came and looked at it after he had nodded.
“Ah,” she said after staring at it for a whole minute in silence. “Youdohave an artist’s eye. Would you care to see mine?”
David dashed around to her easel and Anne followed.
“Oh, I say!” David said.
They both stood for several silent moments looking at her work.
She had painted the sea, sparkling in the sunshine and reflecting the blue of the sky and the few fluffy clouds that floated across it. But it was not aprettypicture, Anne thought. It was not merely a reproduction of the visual reality. It was hard to put into words what itwas. It somehow took the viewer under the water and up to the sky. Or perhaps it was not even that. It was more as if one were being drawnintothe water andintothe sky.
What had David said?To see things as they see themselves.How had he known to say that?
“Oh, do look who is coming,” Lady Rosthorn said suddenly, smiling warmly and raising one hand to wave. “Sydnam, well met.”
Anne turned her head sharply to look, and sure enough Mr. Butler was walking along the cliff path, dressed as he had been when she first saw him, with the addition of a hat. He doffed it even as she looked.
David collided hard with her side and shrank half behind her.
“Mama,” he whispered. It was half whimper.
“Good morning, Morgan, Miss Jewell,” he called, staying on the path. “Is it not a lovely one? I am taking a shortcut back from one of the farms.”
“And we have been painting, as you can see,” Lady Rosthorn told him. “Do you want to come and point out all the faults in my poor offering?”
It seemed to Anne that he hesitated for a few moments, but then he came. His eye met hers briefly, and she felt an absurd quickening of the pulse, as if they shared a secret. She was to meet him later. They were to go walking alone together.
How foolish to feel as if thereweresome sort of courtship proceeding. And how…horrifying.
“When did I ever criticize anything you painted, Morgan?” he asked, coming to stand before her easel while David pulled Anne out of the way. “I would not so presume.”
“You never did,” she admitted. “You were always kind and always encouraging. But I was always nervous when you of all people came to take a look.”
“This,” he said after standing in silence for what seemed like a long time, his head bent toward the painting, “is very good indeed, Morgan. You have grown immensely as an artist since I last saw any of your work.”
Lady Rosthorn smiled and moved closer to him, her head tilted to one side as she looked at the painting.
“Now I can see that perhaps itdoeshave some merit,” she said, laughing. “But I brought out a fellow artist with me this morning. Have you met David Jewell, Miss Jewell’s son? David, this is Mr. Butler, the duke’s steward here and a very dear childhood friend of mine.”
“David,” Mr. Butler said, turning to look at him.
“Sir.” David bobbed his head and pressed harder against Anne. “My painting is no good. I cannot see things that big.” He indicated Lady Rosthorn’s painting with one sweep of the hand.
“And I cannot see things that little,” the countess said, nodding in the direction of his own painting. “But big and little both exist, David, and they both show us the soul of God. I remember you telling me that once, Sydnam, when I was about your age and I was convinced that I could never paint as well as you.”
Ah, Anne thought with an uncomfortable lurching of the stomach as she stared at his back and remembered her impression that his long fingers looked artistic. He really had been a painter, then?
“May I see your painting, David?” Mr. Butler asked, and they all moved around to look at it, David still pressed as close to Anne as he could get.
“It is too flat,” David said.
