“Afraid so.”
It was possibly the most forthright analysis Lyndon had ever received.Even Will used to be a little more circumspect.Benedict, of course, kind soul that he was, had never heaped upon him anything but praise.
Side by side, Lyndon and Duchamps-Avery studied the mess of angry dark lines and swirls of colour daubed across the canvas.
“May I…um…enquire as to what it depicts, my lord?”
“That beech tree.”Lyndon pointed with the tip of his brush into the garden beyond the window.“Next to the wall.”
“Of course it does.”
“I’m toying with naming itForlorn Hope.”
“Ah.Yes…um…fitting.Am I to presume that you are the…um…artist behind some of the other equally…um…interesting works I’ve spied around the house?”
“I am.Yes.”
A tense pause ensued, during which his houseguest peered out at the tree, then more closely at the canvas, and then across to the tree again.Shielding his eyes against the sunlight, he tilted his head to one side like an exotic bird.
“It’s dreadful,” Lyndon pre-empted him.His pencil sketches were passable, his oils a perennial work in progress.“Isn’t it?”
“Not…ah…dreadfulas such.”The youth cocked his pretty head to the other side.“More that it shows…ah…depths of immense passion.”His lips shaped themselves into a pout as he further perused the monstrosity, a pout which Lyndon told himself he did not find attractive in the slightest and most definitely did not wish to plug with his own mouth.“Yes, that’s it.Passion.”
Duchamps-Avery nodded several times.The pout twisted into an even more problematically charming smirk.“I do believe, my lord, that with this artistic interpretation of one of Mother Nature’s finest arboreal specimens, you have cleverly…ah…captured the void signifying precisely the nonbeing of what it represents.Forlorn Hope.Indeed.”
A beat passed, and then he let out a booming guffaw, the likes of which Lyndon’s little oasis of calm here in the nursery at Goule had not heard since…well, since many years earlier, before Lyndon’s world had become a more hostile place in general.Even more alarmingly, Lyndon found himself briefly joining in again with that awkward, braying, unpractised sound of his own.
“Your critique of art holds as much wisdom as the chattering of a beggar’s teeth,” he growled, trying to sound firm but failing terribly if the delighted grin spread across his companion’s face was any yardstick.“I’ve never heard anything as nonsensical.”
“It’s jolly good, isn’t it?”Duchamps-Avery was not put out in the slightest.“It’s a variation of my papa’s routine response whenever he’s asked his opinion of the overrated artistic merits of others.One can adapt it to suit a painting, blank verse, or a dirge plunked on a harpsichord.”He smiled naughtily.“Most members of thetonare too proud to admit his utterings don’t make the foggiest bit of sense, in case they themselves appear foolish.”
His candid gaze left the canvas to rest on Lyndon’s, giving Lyndon the uncomfortable impression that he was reading every one of his impure thoughts.“You, my lord, by calling me out on it, have not fallen into the trap.And I expected nothing less from a gentleman as discerning as yourself.”
Lyndon did not seek this boy’s praise, nor did he need it.Neither did he require this boy’s admiration, his mirth, his pale gaze, nor his endearing, retroussé nose.Regardless, his soul drank deep from all those things anyway, and for a moment, the nursery light shone even brighter.Even his woeful painting seemed a little less woeful.
Naturally, it would not do at all to give the boy a sniff of that.
“Be that as it may, it still remains a desperate representation of the damned tree,” Lyndon muttered and added another splodge of paint as if to prove his point.
“But it has been painted with good intentions,” countered Duchamps-Avery.“So, who cares?Willoughby pens some brutal verse.Only yesterday, he sent me his latest, where gratingly, he rhymes ‘remorse’ with ‘worse’.”
Duchamps-Avery laughed delightedly again, and Lyndon experienced his own unwanted rush of pleasure at the sound of it.
“Papa adores Willoughby’s verse, of course.He’s the stoutest of his defenders.He says we’re all simply failing to see the beauty in it, that’s all.And he frequently remarks that it’s a darned sight better than anything he or I could attempt.”Duchamps-Avery pointed a slim finger to the canvas.“Just asForlorn Hopeis by far superior to any of my infantile daubs.So, bravo, Lord Lyndon.Bravo!”
Lyndon expected the boy to retreat after that.Instead, he drew up a chair and stayed put.
“You mention your twin frequently,” Lyndon observed as he considered his palette.“Granted, not as frequently as dear Papa.”
“I do.I miss him terribly.Until I came to Goule, we have scarcely been parted.”
“You are identical?”
“In looks, yes.”He lowered his voice.“Though I am far better endowed.”
Lyndon rolled his eyes.“And more childish.”
“Quite possibly.”
