She had not once gotten back onto her feet
after that—not once stopped losing blood. For nearly a week, now,
the woman had been delirious with fever, and yesterday Darby went
for the priest in Mallow. While the husband was on the road, Henry
had looked in on her. A woman from a nearby cottage was doing what
she could to keep the dying woman comfortable. During Henry’s
visit, the three little O’Connells had simply looked up at him with
blank expressions from the dirt floor beside their mother’s pallet.
He could see at a glance that the poor woman’s time was at hand,
and he knew that Darby would lose his mind when his wife passed
away. He didn’t want to think what would happen to the
children.
The tanner’s cottage came into view, and
Henry thought for a moment how different this thatched hut was from
the grand buildings of Woodfield House.
No, he needed to clear his mind of the words
and promises Clara had spoken to him today. She was far too
acquiescent to ever withstand the social and family pressures that
would surely pour over her if he were fool enough to broach the
subject of marriage with Sir Thomas.
Sir Nicholas Spencer had arrived to take his
prize, and there was no competing with him. Title and money spoke
loudly…and Henry had neither. She had been the wise one and he the
fool six months ago. Well, he was wiser, now, and it was best for
all to keep it that way.
Darby’s youngest, barefoot and only just
covered by his rags, was sitting against the stone wall of the
cottage when Henry came across the stream. As the parson watched,
the child dropped a dirty piece of uncooked potato that he’d been
clutching in a filthy hand into the mud. The young boy’s face was
stained with tears and dirt, and as he got on all fours and crawled
after his lost possession, a small dog darted up and gobbled down
the bit of food, running off again as quickly as he came. The child
immediately began to wail, but stopped suddenly as he noticed
Henry’s approach.
The teary eyes and dirt-smeared face turned
to the parson with recognition, and the boy raised his thin arms
into the air to be picked up. Henry leaned down and lifted the
child without a moment’s hesitation and headed toward the cottage
door.
As the boy nestled a tired head against his
shoulder, Henry knew that he could waste no more time in snug
parlors, courting young women who had never wanted for anything in
their lives.
No, he thought as he ducked his head and
stepped into the dark cottage, this was where he belonged.
Alexandra gaped for a long moment at the
dozens upon dozens of paintings stored along the walls and taking
up a large area at one end of the attic space. With cloths draped
over them, they lined the walls like battalions of soldiers. She
was simply stunned by the sight.
The young serving lass had not thought twice
about taking Lady Spencer up past the servant’s quarters to the
large space beneath the roof where Miss Jane often painted and
stored her sketches and other work. Lady Spencer was a guest, and
when she said that Lady Purefoy had encouraged her to see the older
daughter’s work, the girl had merely curtsied and led the way.
The last set of stairs, narrow and steep,
took them to a large, sparsely furnished open space with sloping
roof timbers just overhead. It was the studio of a serious
artist—
that
Alexandra could see. And a busy one, she
thought, eying the covered rows of canvases.
“Beggin’ yer pardon about the smell,
m’lady,” the servant offered, never coming further than the top
step. “I’m told ‘tis the paints. But I know Miss Jane likes
spending time here.”
“I can understand why,” Alexandra murmured
as she let her gaze travel to the two large shuttered windows on
either end of the space. At this end, a battered stool sat by an
empty easel and two work tables; while buckets, rolls of canvas,
bags of pigment, and casks of oil were stacked and spread
everywhere. “You may leave me. I shan’t touch anything that I
shouldn’t be touching.”
The servant returned Alexandra’s smile, but
didn’t retreat. “M’lady, no guest I know of has ever asked to come
and see Miss Jane’s things.”
She liked the protectiveness she saw in the
girl. “Maybe that’s because none of them know what a talented
artist she is. I paint a little, as well, and I’m thrilled to look
at some of her work.”
Alexandra’s comment seemed to satisfy her.
With a small curtsy, she turned back down the stairs, and a moment
later the guest heard the door close at the bottom. Left alone in
the room, she felt a prickle of excitement creep along her skin.
She hadn’t even seen any of Jane’s work yet, and still she felt
like a child about to open a treasure chest.
She walked down the middle of the attic
space, careful not to hit her head on the rough-hewn beams. Moving
past the tables and the easel, Alexandra opened the shutters at one
end and let the sunshine pour in. The view of the verdant
countryside from this far above was breathtaking and the light
surprisingly plentiful. Alexandra instantly understood Jane’s
preference for working here. The single chair and a simple cot she
hadn’t seen were tucked back in the shadow beneath the eaves. Jane
clearly used this end of the attic space for work and the other end
for storage.
She walked about for a few moments, admiring
the young woman’s organization and leafing through a sketchbook
that had been left on one of the worktables. These drawings
appeared to be done in haste and were mostly rough sketches of a
group of children playing. Her gaze fell on an array of brushes
filling a large bucket, and her fingers itched to touch the
carefully cleaned bristles. A board, obviously used as a palette
for mixing colors, leaned against the bucket. Like a dog trained to
pick up a particular scent, Alexandra turned, her eyes fixing on a
group of canvases leaning against a beam near the cot.
In general, women were taught to sketch,
leaving the work of painting—particularly of painting in oils—in
the more “capable” hands of men. Alexandra knew that she and
Penelope Cawardine in London were rare exceptions. Of course, she
thought, moving toward the group of canvases, it didn’t hurt Mrs.
Cawardine to have Sir Joshua Reynolds himself as a friend and
mentor.
But Alexandra found it entirely pleasant to
think of Jane Purefoy, here amid the rustic greenery of Ireland,
rebelling against such backward notions.
Pulling off the cloth covering them, she
looked quickly at the first two paintings. They were landscape
scenes and well executed with a unique style that would have made
even the great Gainsborough take note. Alexandra’s thoughts of
style and structure, of the use of light and color, dissipated into
thin air, though, when she uncovered the third landscape. As the
older woman gazed at the work, Jane’s intention began to dawn on
her.
She went back and closely studied each
picture again. They were all done from the same perspective,
looking down from an elevation into a rural valley. From the brush
strokes alone, there was no doubt in Alexandra’s mind that they
were painted by the same artist and depicted the same location. But
the three paintings did not reflect the same scene.
She brought the canvases out into the
window’s light and stood them next to each other, against the easel
and stool. As she studied them more closely, she found herself
fascinated by the deft touches that accentuated the passage of
seasons in the paintings. The young woman’s talent was obvious.
Through her use of light, Jane drew the eye to a different object
or person in each painting, but she had also created an entirely
new perspective on the same scene with only a few adroit brush
strokes.
Alexandra crouched before the first one that
she looked at—the painting most recently done—and studied the
summer pastoral scene. Cattle grazed in pastureland enclosed by
ditch and low hedges. Picturesque ruins of something—perhaps an
abandoned abbey that had once stood in the dell—could be partly
seen through the tall summer grass.
She looked at the next, a painting that
depicted the valley in spring contained a few men working along the
edge of the field. She looked back at the summer painting and then
back again. The men were digging the ditches to enclose the
pastureland. A man on horseback, his back to the painter, was
pointing at something and directing the laborers.
Alexandra moved on to study the third
canvas, a winter landscape. An impenetrable mist spread through the
lower reaches of the valley, its thick fingers of fog spreading
claw-like across a blackened field. The overall effect of the scene
was a disturbing one, and Alexandra shivered involuntarily as she
stood back for a better look.
The painting contained numerous details that
were cleverly hidden in the edges of the mist with mere touches of
the artist’s brush. The ruins that appeared so picturesque in the
summer scene now pushed through the vapor—ghostly and ominous.
Alexandra peered intently at the broken stone walls. What were
they? She found herself wanting to reach out and brush away the
mist with her fingers, as if to discover the secret beneath it.
Mist or smoke? She thought for a moment that the stones might even
be charred ruins of a building…of more than one building.
She looked over at the other two canvases
that were still standing against eaves.
Excited, Alexandra crossed over and turned
one around. A shocked gasp escaped her lips when her gaze fell on
the painting. Leaning it against the worktable, she backed up and
sat heavily on the wooden chair.
A great fire consumed the valley. Violently
alive with a shocking splatter of color, there were faces and
upraised hands, all helpless against the raging inferno. Fear and
anger silently screamed out at the viewer. With the subtle touch of
oil to canvas, the anguished faces of lost souls became part of the
flames that reached upward into the black, midnight sky.
Alexandra felt hot tears well up, a painful
knot threatening to choke her. The painting showed an entire
village being put to the torch. She stared at the images of people
running out into the night and others caught in the raging
holocaust. Depicted in the distance, groups of men looking more
devilish than human could be seen torching the fields and hunting
down the innocents.
It was a nightmarish view of evil incarnate,
and Alexandra Spencer believed no one had done it more effectively
since the passing of the Flemish genius, Hieronymus Bosch.
She looked back again at other paintings.
And now she was able to see through the mist. Now she understood
that the ruins were the untended gravestones of a terrible
tragedy.
The sadness of it all lay heavily on
Alexandra’s heart. She glanced in the direction of the last canvas
still sitting in the shadows. Forcing herself to her feet, she
trudged to the painting and turned it to the light.
A cluster of huts. Not quite a village.
Neat, well-tended cottages with thatched roofs and kitchen gardens
and two old peasant women talking by a well. Children running
happily along a sparkling brook. Men and women just beginning the
harvest of the fields surrounding the cottages, with older children
binding sheaves of golden grain. The painting bespoke the joy of
hard won prosperity, of family, of the pride of heritage.
The sense of serenity that this canvas
instilled in Alexandra was fleeting. As soon as she placed this one
beside the others, she was struck full force with the power of the
sequence. In taking in these scenes, she
felt
rather than
simply viewed the destruction of a farming community and its
people.
She pressed her fist to her lips to quiet a
sob. She’d never been affected by any work of art more than these
paintings at this moment. She’d never even glimpsed the ugly
reality of what was happening to the people of this land until this
instant. It was the kind of work that Hogarth had done in his
series of satiric depictions of London…but this young woman had
taken the work into the ethereal realms of high art.
Jane Purefoy’s ability to capture the
essence of a people’s suffering was a marvelous gift. And her work
told of someone who’d experienced this suffering—more than simply
the perceptions of an artist who had witnessed a persecution
firsthand. But how could she have?
The sound of the door opening at the bottom
of the stairs jerked Alexandra out of her chair. As Lady Purefoy
called up to her, she quickly replaced the canvases against the
eaves and threw a cloth over them. Wiping her hand over her face to
compose herself, she turned to see the woman’s head appear at the
top of the narrow steps.
“Lady Spencer, what on earth are you doing
up here?”
Alexandra turned casually to the other
woman. “Enjoying myself.”
“Here?” She glanced disdainfully around the
attic space, but didn’t climb the last couple of steps. One might
have thought it was a pit of vipers. “I wouldn’t even house the
servants here. And what is that horrid odor?”
“It is the scent of greatness, Lady Purefoy.
Don’t you recognize it?”
The mistress of Woodfield House looked
sharply at her guest.
“But I couldn’t agree with you more heartily
about this area. This is a far too wonderful a room to be used only
for sleeping quarters. For an artist, this attic offers a splendid
retreat. And I simply love the way Jane has organized the space. Is
it not absolutely grand?”
“Well, I shall defer to your judgment, of
course…” She cast a doubtful look around.
“And your daughter’s paintings!” Alexandra
made a sweeping motion over the rows of canvases lining the walls.
“There is amazing talent exhibited here! Though I have only seen a
few things, her work rivals the greats of our time.”