No Darkness for Love

Chapter One 1880-2

‘There must be at least half an hour left,’ Atalanta thought ‘before Mama will be expecting me.’

Paul Beaulieu was already picking up his easel and carrying it with a heavy leather bag further into the wood.

“Where are you going to paint me?” Atalanta asked.

“Against the fir trees,” he answered. “I want you to look as if you have come from the sunshine into the cool of the pines.”

He found a place where there was a felled tree covered with moss on which Atalanta could sit.

A shaft of sunlight slanting through the thick branches just touched the pale gold of her head, haloing her curls and lighting up her eyes so that they seemed no longer blue but to reflect the green of the trees.

Paul Beaulieu set up his easel a little way from Atalanta and then he walked towards her, narrowing his eyes as if to put her into perspective and noting the way that she sat naturally on the tree trunk with a grace that could never be taught.

She had linked her fingers together in her lap and now she looked up at him, her eyes enquiring and curious and at the same time a little shy.

It was as if she suddenly realised how big he was, how different in his dark handsome way from any man she had ever met before!

“Voila! That is perfect,” he said gently.

He went back to his easel, moved it slightly so that in the distance to the right of Atalanta there was just a glimpse of The Castle brilliant in the afternoon sunshine.

He drew a new canvas from his leather bag and picked up his palette.

“Talk,” he said. “I don’t want you stiff or self-conscious. Tell me about yourself. Why do you say you are the poor relation?”

“My Uncle Lionel, the present Earl of Winchcombe, is Mama’s half-brother,” Atalanta answered. “He is a rather frightening person, but very important and very rich. Papa and Mama fell in love with each other and after long years of waiting they were allowed to get married. But we are very poor!”

“Do you mind being poor?” Paul Beaulieu asked.

“Not really,” Atalanta answered. “I have almost everything I want except new dresses. But my brother, Bernard, minds as he wants to go into the Army, which Papa cannot afford and the twins mind terribly.”

“It would surely be very easy for you to be rich,” Paul Beaulieu remarked.

“Me? How could I?” Atalanta enquired in surprise.

“You could marry a rich man!”

“Nobody asked me, sir!” Atalanta laughed, “And I have no wish to marry for money.”

“You would rather marry for love?” Paul Beaulieu questioned.

“But of course,” Atalanta’s voice was very positive.

“And supposing you never fall in love?”

“Then I must die an old maid!” Atalanta replied.

“Never! Never! It would be a crime against nature,” Paul Beaulieu cried, “but let me predict your future. One day you will fall in love and you will love passionately, deeply and irrevocably!”

“How do you know that?” Atalanta asked almost in a whisper.

“I can tell it by your mouth and by your eyes,” he answered. “Women with lips like yours are ‘givers’ and you will give your heart, your body and your soul to the man you love.”

There was a note in his voice that made Atalanta draw in her breath and her eyes dropped as the blood rose in her cheeks.

“You should not be painting me, but my cousin Clementine,” she said quickly in an effort to change the subject. “She is lovely, really lovely!”

“Is it possible that she could be more beautiful that you?” Paul Beaulieu asked.

He spoke in such a matter-of-fact tone that Atalanta was not embarrassed.

“You are teasing me,” she replied, “I am not beautiful. But Clementine has perfect features, classical like a statue and her hair is the colour of ripened corn and her eyes are really blue. Pale blue like a thrush’s egg.”

“You certainly admire her!” Paul Beaulieu remarked. “Are you also fond of her?”

There was a little hesitation before Atalanta responded,

“She is older than I am and, as she moves in the very best Society, we have little in common. It is Cicely whom I love.”

“And who is Cicely?” Paul Beaulieu enquired.

“She is Clementine’s sister – Lady Cicely Combe. She had a riding accident a year ago and has to lie flat on her back. The doctors hope she will be able to walk again, but there is always the fear that she may not be able to do so.”

Atalanta gave a little sigh.

“Poor Cicely! It is very hard for her! You can imagine what it must be like at sixteen to have nothing to do but lie flat and to think of other people riding and dancing and doing all the things that one longs to do one’s self,”

“And so you go and talk to her?”

“We gossip! Cicely likes to collect information about everybody inside and outside The Castle,” Atalanta said. “And we read together. Cicely has a good brain. I think really she ought to have been a boy. She enjoys Latin, I am teaching her Greek and we read Molière, Balzac and Goethe together and, of course, the novels written by Dickens and the Brontës.”

“I am glad of the last two authors,” Paul Beaulieu smiled. “I was beginning to be afraid that you and Cicely were bluestockings!”

“Would that shock you?” Atalanta said. “Mama always says that men hate clever women. She tells me that when I go to parties I must not show off my knowledge, but appear quiet, feminine and admiring to the man I am with.”

“And do you do that?” Paul Beaulieu enquired.

Atalanta smiled and he saw her irrepressible dimples.

“I very seldom go to parties,” she answered, “but when I do I usually forget to be quiet and admiring. Perhaps that is why I have so few beaux.”

“Are all the men in this part of England blind?” Paul Beaulieu asked.

“No, they are too busy looking at Clementine,” Atalanta smiled, “just as you would be if you saw her. Then you would not want to paint me – you would want to paint her.”

“I very much doubt it,” Paul Beaulieu said. “And may I say, little Goddess, that I am very content and very grateful that you have been kind enough to sit for me.”

“Perhaps an Impressionist would not do Clementine justice,” Atalanta remarked seriously as if she was following her own train of thought.

“I am sure that she needs a proper Academician,” Paul Beaulieu said. “He would paint her in white satin with a string of pearls and a bunch of pink roses in her hand. The golden hair and the blue eyes would, of course, be best against a draped curtain of blue velvet.”

There was no mistaking the sarcasm in his voice and Atalanta laughed.

“That is exactly how she has been painted! Not once, but twice. The pictures are hanging in The Castle. I would so much like to show them to you!”

“I would love to see them,” Paul Beaulieu said. “They would I am sure, be an excellent example to a young artist of how to get himself hung in the Royal Academy and make his fortune.”

“Do you want to make a fortune?” Atalanta quizzed him.

“Not particularly, but I would like more people to understand the message the Impressionists are trying to convey. The Master under whom I have studied had a picture accepted by the Salon last year, but he is so impoverished that he has pawned almost everything he owns.”

“How tragic!” Atalanta exclaimed. “What is your Master’s name?”

“His name is Claude Monet,” Paul Beaulieu answered.

“Oh, but I have seen one of his pictures!” Atalanta cried. “I mean I have seen a photograph of it. It was sent to Papa by one of his friends who was visiting Paris. It is called Spring Landscape.”

“Monet painted it in 1874, six years ago,” Paul Beaulieu said. “You like it?”

“I thought it very very beautiful,” Atalanta answered. “Now I can understand how with what seems only a few strokes of the brush you can make The Castle seem so mysterious and make me feel that the daffodils in the Park are alive.”

Paul Beaulieu put down his palette and stared at her.

“You know,” he said, “you are a very remarkable person, besides being utterly and completely lovely.”

His words seemed to startle Atalanta or perhaps it was the way he spoke in his deep voice. She clasped her fingers a little tighter and stared at him, her eyes very large.

Then it seemed to her that something passed between her and the man looking at her – something she did not understand, yet which seemed to her to comprise the magic of his picture and the picture she had seen by Claude Monet.

There was something compelling and fascinating about it and at the same time a little frightening.

Without really meaning to do so, she rose to her feet.

“I must – go,” she stammered. “I am sure – it is getting late – Mama will be – expecting me.”

“Will you come tomorrow?”

“I don’t – know,” Atalanta answered. “It may be difficult – and I shall not have so much time.”

“Please make time,” Paul Beaulieu pleaded. “That is what my Nanny always used to say, ‘You must make time’ and somehow I always managed to do so.”

He drew nearer to her as he spoke and now she found herself looking up at him.

He was so much taller than she was and she had the extraordinary feeling that, although they had just met, she had known him before. He did not seem a stranger and there was a familiarity about him as if he had been in her life for a long time.

“Please come!” he said softly, his eyes searching her face. “I cannot lose you now. Perhaps this picture of you will bring me fame and fortune. If it was never finished, you would have it on your conscience forever that you had denied me those two rewards.”

He spoke with sincerity and yet there was a twinkle in his eyes.

“You are flattering me into believing that I am important,” Atalanta replied. “Have I not told you that I am just the poor relation?”

“On the contrary you are undoubtedly a Goddess sent to bemuse poor mortals like myself. Will you bring me a gift from Mount Olympus?”

She smiled up at him.

“I will do my best,” she answered, “and I will come tomorrow, although I may not be able to stay long.”

“I will be waiting,” he said and she had the feeling that the words were important.

He put out his hand as he spoke and took hers.

She thought they would shake hands, but instead he raised it to his lips and she felt the pressure of his mouth against her skin.

It was not what she had expected and her heart gave a frightened leap.

Then she had turned and hurried away from him through the woods, twisting her way through the thick trunks of the trees until finally she vanished into the shadows and he could see her no longer.

He stood for some minutes staring after her and then he sat down again in front of his easel and began to paint feverishly with a fierce concentration as if every stroke was etched strongly in his mind before he put it on the canvas.

Atalanta ran from the wood onto the narrow dusty road that led into the village.

The clock on the small grey stone Church told her it was nearly a quarter to five o’clock and she knew that her mother was sure to ask why she had stayed so late at The Castle.

Atalanta seldom told a lie, but she was determined if possible not to reveal the reason for her tardiness or to mention the presence of a stranger in the wood.

There would not only be innumerable questions as to who he was and what he was doing, but she was also quite certain that the twins would not miss the opportunity of making the acquaintance of a foreigner.

At fifteen they were both incurably romantic and what was more they were determined, as Atalanta had never been, to escape from the confinement of village life and the poverty of the Vicarage.

As she thought of the twins, Atalanta gave a little sigh as she slipped through the gate into the Vicarage and, instead of going towards the house, went to feed the chickens in the orchard behind the stables.

‘If only one of Papa’s books could be a success!’ she said to herself.

It was a sentiment that had been expressed over and over again by Lady Evelyn Lynton.

She had braved her father’s wrath and the contempt of her half-brother when she had insisted on marrying not one of the important suitors who had paid court to her when she was first taken to London for the Season, but the third and impoverished son of Sir Perquine Lynton.