He put out his hand without speaking and Ilitta handed him the canvas, saying as she did so,
“That is my horse. I have had him since he was a foal and I love him more than anybody else in the whole world!”
The Duke found himself looking at a small but remarkable painting of a young horse.
The main point of the composition was the vigour that he could sense in the way the horse was moving. And this surprised him because it was so unusual.
Portraits of animals were traditionally poised and stiff and painted, as humans were, as if they had a stick to support their spines.
It was difficult to think of them doing anything except staring stiffly out of the canvas.
Ilitta’s horse on the contrary was just breaking into a gallop and the Duke could feel that the animal was sensing his freedom after being cooped up in his stable and was longing to stretch his legs.
Every muscle seemed to be strained for the speed he intended to move at.
The Duke did not speak. He only looked at the picture, knowing that there were mistakes in the painting, which, of course, was due to inexperience.
At the same time he was aware that Ilitta had captured movement on canvas in a way that was rare and almost unique.
He did not say anything, but merely held out his hand and beckoned Ilitta to show him another canvas.
This was altogether different.
It was a study of rabbits in a wood and it was obvious that two of them were suddenly alert to danger. They were sitting up tense and ready in a split second to scamper away, while the others were for the moment blissfully unaware of what was about to happen.
It was a clever idea and the sunlight percolating through the branches of the trees and turning the bark to gold was skilfully painted.
Again the Duke held out his hand and Ilitta said,
“Oh! These are the only two canvases I have with me. The other pictures I painted that I would have liked to bring with me were framed by one of my Governesses and it seemed a pity to remove them from where they were hung.”
“You have nothing else?” the Duke enquired.
He was speaking for the first time since Ilitta had given him the pictures.
She looked down at the canvas bag.
“You may be – surprised at what else I have – brought with me.”
The Duke smiled.
“I enjoy being surprised!”
“Very well, but perhaps I should explain. What I have here are portraits which I have done, of course secretly, of people I have seen or who have been guests at my home.”
She pulled out a piece of thick drawing paper and handed it to the Duke.
Now he understood exactly what she meant when she said that she thought of him as a stag.
What she had drawn was a caricature.
But while the man in question was in evening dress, which was quite well sketched, his head was that of a foxhound.
It was skilfully drawn and the Duke thought that if he had ever met the man he would have recognised him, although the dog’s head was undoubtedly copied from life.
Ilitta did not ask for his approval, but merely handed him another drawing.
This was of an elderly man with a large paunch and ill-fitting clothes, who had the head of a benign rather ageing bull.
It was brilliant and at the same time very funny and the Duke laughed aloud.
As if the sound relieved the tension that Ilitta was feeling, she said quickly,
“You are – not shocked?”
“Of course not. It’s very clever! How on earth did you learn to do anything like this?”
“I have not been taught, that is the trouble,” Ilitta said. “I begged Papa to let me have proper drawing lessons but he insisted that it was a waste of money.”
She spoke bitterly and the Duke said,
“I hardly think you need very much teaching.”
“But of course I do!” Ilitta contradicted sharply. “I am well aware that my paintings are not good enough and, although I draw what I feel and see, I am sure that technically I have a great deal to learn.”
“And when you have done so – what then?”
Ilitta smiled.
“When I say I would like to sell my pictures it is not quite true. It would only be to pay a Drawing Master. However I would like to feel that I am doing something worthwhile. I mean if I can portray on canvas the animals I love and which mean so much to me, perhaps it will encourage people to worry more about cruelty to horses and especially to the animals they shoot just for amusement.”
The Duke looked at her in consternation.
“You are not one of those new thinkers,” he asked, “who I hear are ranting against the killing of animals as if they were Buddhists and think the whole population should eat grass!”
Ilitta laughed.
“No, not that,” she said. “It’s just that if an animal is killed for a reasonable purpose, then it must be done humanely and cause as little pain as possible. I don’t think it matters if any of us die, because death is immaterial. What is wrong is suffering and pain! An animal or a bird that is wounded suffers in the same way as we do.”
The Duke looked down at the pictures he was holding on his knee.
Then he said,
“I follow your argument. At the same time there are different sorts of suffering. I wonder if you have considered what these men you have sketched so skilfully and somewhat cruelly would think if they could see the way you have portrayed them?”
“People have been lampooned and made fun of by the cartoonists since the days of the Prince Regent.”
“I am aware of that,” the Duke said, “but I don’t expect they enjoy it.”
“But I only draw men who should be taught the error of their ways!”
“In your judgement!” the Duke added a little sarcastically.
“Now you are being unkind,” Ilitta said quickly, “and I suppose that you are going to tell me I am wasting my time.”
“I could not in honesty say anything of the sort!” the Duke replied. “I am astonished by your drawings and find it hard to believe it when you say you have had no instruction and have not been assisted in any way by a professional artist.”
Ilitta stared at him.
“Are you saying you think they are good?”
“Very good indeed, in fact outstanding!”
For a moment she still stared as if she thought that he was teasing her.
Then she clasped her hands together and said,
“I cannot believe it! Are you really saying this to me?”
“I think your picture of the horse is a brilliant effort to depict movement and the same applies to the study of the rabbits. I am just a little nervous of the way you use your talent on human beings!”
Ilitta smiled and it seemed to illuminate her face as if there was a light inside her.
“I have told you that I see you as a Royal and what could be more complimentary than to be likened to the King of the Moors?”
“I appreciate that,” the Duke said. “Equally you are a woman and nobody of importance will like being made to look a fool by a member of the weaker sex!”
There was a sudden flash in Ilitta’s eyes and he knew she wanted to argue with him.
Instead she drew out another piece of drawing paper from her canvas bag and the Duke saw that this time it was a study of a woman.
One glance told him that she had been devastatingly critical in her own inimitable manner.
The woman was exquisitely dressed in the latest fashion, her full skirt billowing out from a tiny waist, her lace bertha falling softly over her sloping shoulders.
But on the long swan-like neck there was the head of a cat!
It was a cat with a woman’s eyes and a woman’s lips parted provocatively. There was greed, jealousy and a very feline expression of desire for revenge portrayed in the face, which at the same time contrived to be very attractive.
It was so cruel and yet
so clever, that the Duke thought it must be a cartoon by Gillray or Rowlandson.
He found it impossible to believe that anybody as young as Ilitta could possibly have drawn anything so remarkable.
Then it flashed through his mind that perhaps he had been deceived and that, because he was noted as a Patron of the Arts, Ilitta was really an actress who had been paid to enlist his interest on behalf of an artist who had hitherto passed unnoticed.
Then he reasoned that nobody could possibly have been aware that there would be a fog or that he would stay at this particular inn.
Besides, he had only to look at Ilitta to know that she was not only what she appeared to be but so transparently truthful that he felt as if he could read her thoughts.
He put down the picture of the woman with the head of a cat and asked,
“Have you anything more in ‘Pandora’s Box’?”
She shook her head.
“I came away in a hurry and snatched up things I had just finished. Perhaps it was silly of me not to bring more.”
“I think you have quite enough here to convince anybody in the world of art that you have an exceptional talent.”
“How can you say anything so wonderful?” Ilitta asked. “It is what I have been longing to hear, but everybody at home is so scathing about all my drawings that I began to doubt myself.”
“Then you need not do so in the future,” the Duke said. “But I think you are going the wrong way about it. You must persuade your father to let you go to London properly chaperoned and find you the right sort of teacher.”
He saw by the expression on Ilitta’s face that she was quite certain this would never happen and, although he had meant to keep out of the whole problem, he found himself saying,
“I am sure I can recommend the right person to teach you the points of technique you need to learn in order to fulfil your talent.”
“And you think I could – sell my pictures?”
It flashed through the Duke’s mind that any magazine would undoubtedly be prepared to accept her caricatures if she drew them of famous people.
They would cause a sensation and, although she would undoubtedly be ostracised socially, she could certainly earn money.
Then he told himself that it would be very reprehensible for him to suggest anything like that to so young a girl. He was, moreover, certain that she was a Lady and it would cause a great deal of trouble both for herself and for her family if she embarked on anything so provocative.
On the other hand her oil paintings could make her one of the new artists for whom he was always searching to exhibit their work in the Royal Academy.
At the last meeting he had said forcefully,
“I am sick to death of portraits of women who look like iced cakes and of men so stiff with medals that they would clank if they moved.”
The other members had looked down their noses at his outburst.
“We must keep up our standards, Your Grace,” one of them had said a little reproachfully.
“I am aware of that, Sir Joshua,” the Duke replied. “But nothing can be more wearisome than seeing the same portraits by the same artists of the same people hanging on every wall! By all means retain the traditional, but also open the doors to new ideas, new names, who have not yet been allowed to cross the threshold.”
He knew as he spoke that everybody would oppose him, simply because they clung jealously to what had always been done and had no wish to strike out into the unknown.
Just as the Duke had always wanted to conquer mountains whose peaks had never previously been reached and find the source of rivers that had never been discovered, so in everything else that interested him he wanted something new, something different, even though he was not quite certain himself what it might be.
He was thinking now how difficult it would be to help Ilitta to do anything unless she had the approval of her parents.
He felt that she could not survive alone in London without that anymore than a frail canoe could steer itself down the Victoria Falls.
“What are you thinking?” she asked and he realised that she was trying to read his thoughts.
“I am thinking of you.” the Duke answered truthfully, “and while I can say honestly and without exaggeration that you are quite exceptional as an artist, as a young woman of gentle birth you have to go home and find your way to London by a different route.”
Ilitta did not answer.
She merely lifted her pictures, one by one, from the Duke’s knee and put them back in her canvas bag.
Then without speaking, she rose to her feet.
He looked at her and thought that with her fair hair falling over her shoulders and in her blue dressing gown she seemed very young and, as if he had just realised it for the first time, very lovely.
He could understand how seeing her alone the man downstairs had desired her and assumed that she would be an easy conquest.
She had not the classical features the Duke had always associated with beauty and the majority of women he admired had not, being older, the frailty and slenderness of the girl standing in front of him.
She seemed insubstantial, ethereal and at the same time, when she smiled and showed her dimples, there was something mischievous in her face that made her either very human or else elfin-like, he was not quite certain which.
Now in the silence she merely said,
“Thank you very much for being so kind to me and for the encouraging words you have said.”
“You are going back to your room?”
“I am sure you wish to sleep and I shall be – all right – now.”
There was a little tremor in the words that the Duke did not miss and, after a moment, he said,
“I think as the lock on your door is broken you will find it hard to rest. May I therefore suggest that you move into this room and I will sleep next door?”
As he spoke, he surprised himself.
It was not often that he was so unselfish or went out of his way to assist somebody whom he had just met.
But somehow he felt protective towards this foolish child, who had already run into trouble and, if she continued in such a wayward manner, would run into a great deal more.
“No – of course not,” Ilitta said quickly. “I could not accept such a generous offer from you.”
She paused, then added,
“But – I should be grateful if I could – sleep next door – and perhaps there is a key or a bolt to the door.”
“I am sure there is,” the Duke agreed, “but I am perfectly prepared to let you stay here if you wish.”
“You have been very kind,” she said, “so kind that I am very thankful that when I came here you did not – send me away.”
“I would not think of doing such a thing!” the Duke said. “But I still beg of you to return to your home.”
Ilitta looked away from him.
“I cannot do that,” she said. “I promise you there is a very good reason why I must not go home at the moment.”
The Duke had not moved from his chair and now, almost as though somebody was putting the idea into his mind, he felt it was as if it had been spoken in his ear.
“Do you see everybody you meet in the same penetrating manner in which you have portrayed the characters of those two men and the woman?” he asked.
“Usually I can,” Ilitta replied. “But sometimes I have to force myself to see below the surface of the face they assume for outsiders.”
She gave a little laugh and said,
“Yet without trying it is often most disconcerting.”
She looked to see if the Duke was listening, then went on,
“But more often the idea comes to me quite instinctively and sometimes as I say in a most disconcerting manner. The other night I was talking to the man sitting next to me at dinner and quite suddenly and unexpectedly I realised that he was a camel!”
She laughed again and it was a very young and joyous sound.
“I had n
ever met a camel before, except in the zoo, but there he was, sitting beside me, chewing in that funny way that camels do and looking incredibly stupid!”
The way she spoke made the Duke laugh and he remarked,
“I suppose you did not tell him of your discovery?”
“No, of course not! I would not be so rude or so unkind! But I shall never be able to look at him in the future without thinking of him clopping across the desert sands!”
“I have an idea,” the Duke said slowly, “which you may think impossible. In which case I want you to say so immediately.”
“What is it?”
She spoke unaffectedly and was obviously not nervous of anything he might suggest and the Duke thought once again that this was something that showed how innocent she was.
An older woman would have been acutely aware of what he might be about to say to her.
Then, as Ilitta looked at him enquiringly, her eyes very large in her pointed face, he said,
“I have a very important reason for coming to this part of the country. I have, in fact, been asked to do so by some men who wish to interest me in a financial proposition.”
Ilitta did not speak, but sat down again on the hearthrug at his feet, her face turned up to his.
Although the Duke was intent on what he was saying, he noticed how the light from the fire brought out touches of the same colour in the fairness in her hair.
“I was just wondering if instead of going directly to London as you intended, you would come with me for the next two days. With your strange perception you could tell me if these men with whom I have had only a very brief acquaintance are people I can trust in matters of business.”
“I understand what you are saying to me,” Ilitta said, “and, if you will trust me, I am quite certain I can help you.”
She paused before she added,
“You may not like what you hear, but you will realise that I have to be completely and absolutely honest.”
“That is what I want you to be,” the Duke said, “and that is the reason why I have asked you to help me in this matter.”
He thought as he spoke that most of his friends would not believe for a moment that he was interested only in Ilitta’s powers of perception rather than in her as a woman.
The thought struck him that, if she accepted, as she obviously intended to do, he would have to make some explanation to Captain Daltry.
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