Keeping the Castle - By Patrice Kindl Page 0,42

not at all. You will break it.”

“If it’s well made I won’t,” he argued.

“I trust it is not part of your duties to test the workmanship of Lord Boring’s carpenters by stressing the furniture to the breaking point?”

“My duties? No! But I hate to see things poorly made, cheap copies of good pieces and so on.” He stood up and, upending the chair, examined its underside. “Have no fear. I recall now—I chose this set myself. Look,” he thrust the chair at me so that the tips of the slender legs menaced my eyes, “see those joins? And it’s solid mahogany under that gilt.”

I waved the chair away and he replaced it on the floor and sat. I was pleased to see that he sat on it the right way ’round this time.

“But you were speaking of Miss Vincy,” I said. “Did you know she has painted my portrait?”

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “No, really?” he exclaimed. “I should like to see that.”

I smiled on him; he was playing into my hands. “I think I can ensure that you will. I have never yet seen it myself, but I know Miss Vincy is anxious for your opinion. She does not wish to exhibit it to a large crowd for the first time. However, if I ask her nicely, she may allow you to join me in our inspection.”

“Oh, pooh on asking nicely! Go and fetch her. I am quite ready.”

“Mr. Fredericks—” I began, when he interrupted me.

“Do you know,” he said, “you chide me without compunction when you think me thoughtless or rude. Yet you did not do so when Vincy spoke out of turn, or when he sat (as you thought) improperly on that chair. Why is that?”

I felt myself flush, but spoke casually, endeavoring to hide my confusion, “Why—why because I know you better than I know Mr. Vincy, of course!” But I did not meet his eyes and walked away quickly.

After all, I argued to myself, if I did not keep Mr. Fredericks in order, who would?

12

ONE THING BECAME CLEAR to me at the private viewing attended only by Miss Vincy, Mr. Fredericks, and myself: the portrait was something out of the common way.

In truth, it is quite difficult to judge a portrait of which you are the subject. One expects to meet the face in the mirror, but instead one sees a stranger. Yet when others were eventually allowed to see it, they cried, “Oh, what a wonderful likeness!” so I suppose I must accept the fact that this is what I look like to the rest of the world.

But beyond the likeness and the great skill with which a young woman and a dog sitting under a pear tree were depicted, something about the painting caught the eye and pulled it back again and again. When it was later exhibited to a larger audience, I noticed that, long after one would have expected people to have gazed their fill and moved on to other subjects, they stood before it in reverent silence. Sometimes they sat down and resumed their conversations only to go back for another long look.

In the social circles in which I move, the purpose of a portrait is to capture the face and figure of a sitter; nothing more. It is a private and personal item, of interest primarily to one’s family and friends. However, I could tell that this painting was more important in the grand scheme of things than I was. My friend Miss Vincy had given me a sort of immortality. Long after we both were in our graves, this picture would be prized by people wholly unconnected to either of us, for the sake of the almost unearthly beauty it portrayed. One might expect that I would feel flattered by this, but on the contrary I was humbled.

Mr. Fredericks was actually rendered speechless by his first viewing. He looked at it for long minutes, then at the artist, shook his head in wonder and then looked back at it again.

She had been more anxious for his approbation than for mine. Her eyes were on him and not on me as she lifted the veiling cloth, which spoke volumes about the esteem in which she held him. I was beginning to suspect that all my guesses were wrong, that it was neither the dismissed tutor nor the Baron that she favored.

“It—it’s good, isn’t it?” she asked him, her voice pleading with him to tell her, yes, it was