The Judgement Of Love Part 1

The Judgement of Love.

Barbara Cartland.

Author's Note.

Many famous artists have painted 'The Judgement of Paris , but I personally find the one by Johann Van Aachen is the most beautiful of them all. It is now in the Musee de la Chartreuse at Douai in France.

Johann Van Aachen was born in Cologne in 1552 when the golden age of German painting was nearly over. He studied in Italy the works of Tmtoretto and Michelangelo.

On his return he was appointed Court Painter to Emperor Rudolph II. A brilliant technician, his colour and style is very inspiring. He died in Prague in 1615.

The a.s.sociation for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Part of Africa was founded in London in 1788 and later merged in 1830 with the Royal Geographical Society. The Societe de Geographes was founded in Paris in 1821.

1820.

CHAPTER ONE.

"This is a perfect room for your pictures !" Astara exclaimed. "That is what I thought you would think," Sir Roderick replied.

Astara looked around her with delight at the huge Georgian Salon.

It had whitewalls, a heavily gilded cornice and three windows opening out onto a terrace which led down to the garden.

The pale April suns.h.i.+ne coming into the room rested on damask-covered French furniture and an Aubusson carpet with a riot of cupids and flowers.

It might, Sir Roderick thought, Iooking at her, have been designed as a frame for Astara herself.

In all the long years of his life he had never seen anything quite so exquisite as her fair hair which at times seemed almost to have a touch of fire in it and framed her heart-shaped face.

Her blue eyes were the colour of a stormy Mediterranean sea, her skin like the petals of a magnolia blossom.

When she was fifteen he had left her, after her parents death, at a School in Florence and had expected that she would grow into a beauty.

But when he had returned two years later it was to find that she had exceeded all his expectations.

Now with an enthusiasm and a sparkling vitality which Sir Roderick found irresistible Astara clapped her hands. "I have found it !' she exclaimed. "Found the ideal spot for our picture."

"Which one?" Sir Roderick enquired. "We have, if you remember, collected over a hundred !"

"You know exactly the one I mean," Astara said, "and it would look perfect over that carved marble mantelpiece!

"I presume, " he said teasing her, "that you mean 'The Judgement of Paris' by a comparatively unknown German artist?"

"Of course I mean 'The Judgement of Paris '," she replied. "It is the loveliest painting I have ever seen and I would sacrifice all your Cranachs, Guardis and Poussins to possess it !"

"I only hope that some great Art Connoisseur does not hear you," Sir Roderick replied dryly. "Though I grant you Johann Van Aachen has done a very good job with this painting, which shows perhaps more than any of his other paintings that he studied the styles of Tintoretto and Michelangelo. "

He realised as he spoke that Astara was not listening to him.

She was staring at the-mantelpiece and the s.p.a.ce over it from which Sir Roderick had ordered the removal of one of the Woottons which his father had collected so arduously.

It had not been the right place for a sporting picture, though Sir Roderick knew it was an exceptionally fine one.

-He had already decided that the paintings by Wootton, Stubbs and Hondecoeter should all be rehung in the Hall and in his Library.

There was a great deal to do to Worfield Park, but on his way back to England he had looked forward to redecorating the great house with the help of Astara.

He knew that the time she had spent in Florence had given her an education very different from that enjoyed by most English girls, and he had learnt when they were in Rome how knowledgeable she was on sculpture and the ancient Temples with which Rome abounded.

She was like a G.o.ddess herself, he thought, as she moved across the room to link her arm and say beguilingly: "What fun we are going to have, Uncle Roderick. I have not had a home for so many years that everything about yours fascinates me."

"I thought it would," Sir Roderick said, "and I am only wondering how long you will stay with me so that we can enjoy it together. "

She looked at him with a surprised expression in her eyes and he explained: "Judging by the number of young men in Rome who cast their hearts, their t.i.tles and their dilapidated Palaces at your feet, I cannot help antic.i.p.ating that the same thing will happen in England."

Astara gave a little laugh and two dimples appeared in her cheeks...

"Dilapidated is the right word for most of the Palaces!" she replied, "and I have a suspicion that a great deal of their eagerness to marry me was due to the very large dowry they expected you would give me."

"You can say the same thing of the n.o.blemen who pursued you in Paris!"

"The French are very shrewd when it comes to business, " Astara replied demurely.

Sir Roderick laughed.

"As it happens I have every intention that you shall marry an Englishman. I want you to live here one day and I would like to think that when I am dead your children will be playing on the lawns and sliding along the Picture Gallery. "

"Do not talk of dying," Astara begged. "That is some-thing that will not happen for many, many years, and you know it would break my . . . heart to . . . lose you. You are all the . . . family I have."

There was a little break in her voice which told Sir Roderick that she still missed almost unbearably her mother and father.

Looking back at when he had last seen the three of them together he had thought that he had never known people so happy.

But then Astaras father and mother had loved each other in a way" that few men and women are privileged to love.

Because they had died together there had been no disillusionment and no broken-hearted widow or widower left behind.

There had only been Astara, and when he had received her cry for help he had gladly gone to her, knowing that he would devote what years were left to him to looking after and caring for her.

He had often wondered if his closest friend who was Charles Beverley, although he was a much younger man, had had a strange premonition that he and his beloved wife would not return from the journey of exploration they were I1 to make amongst the mountains of Turkey.

Il While they were there, there had been a violent earth-quake and no-one in the vicinity had lived to relate exactly what had happened.

They had provided for Astara in what was the most sensible manner possible by making her a Ward of Sir Roderick Worfield. They loved him and he was as it happened an extremely rich man.

He himself had never married.

He had been too busy when he was young in making a great fortune, and in fact the only woman he had ever loved and wished to make his wife had fallen in love with Charles Beverley, and he with her, at first sight.

A man of less fuse character than Sir Roderick might have been jealous and resented that he had brought together the two people he cared for most in the world, only in one way. to lose them both.

From the moment they met Charles and Charlotte Beverley ceased to remember that anyone else existed in the whole world.

Charles had always been a traveller and in an amateurish way an explorer.

Charlotte would have been perfectly happy to explore the moon if he had asked it of her.

Sir Roderick often thought it was quite incidental that they had a daughter. They both adored Astara who merely added to their happiness and they never found her an enc.u.mbrance for the simple reason that they never let her become one.

When they went travelling they took her with them.

By the time Astara was ten years old she had travelled in a dhow down the Nile, she had been capsized from a canoe in a crocodile-infested river, and she had encountered so many storms at sea that inevitably she had become a good sailor.

And she had seen parts of the world into which few adults, let alone children, had ever penetrated.

She was not surprisingly, by the time she came under the care of Sir Roderick, extremely intelligent and knowledge-able about many subjects of which another girl of her age would have been completely ignorant.

Sir Roderick thought what she needed was a sophisticated polish which would enable her to take her place in Society and ensure that her unusual and unique beauty acquired the right frame.

Sir Roderick was very much a man of the world and because he was so rich there was not a Capital in which he was not welcomed or a house in any country where its owner was not proud to entertain him.

The Worfields were an old and distinguished family and Sir Roderick was the seventh Baronet.

It would have been quite easy for him, since so many countries asked his advice and found they profited by it, to have acquired a number of other important t.i.tles, but he was not interested.

He was however extremely proud of the large and magnificent Mansion in Hertfords.h.i.+re, which had been in the Worfield family for nearly five hundred years.

His grandfather had added to it and the main part had been completely rebuilt by Robert Adam: It was these rooms which Sir Roderick thought were particularly right for Astara and he had spent the last two years when they were travelling about Europe acquiring pictures and other treasures with which to embellish them.

It had amused Sir Roderick when Astara was captivated in Paris by a picture by Johann Van Aachen who, a brilliant technician, had been Court painter to the exacting Emperor Rudolf II.

'He could understand Astara s enthusiasm for 'The Judge-ment of Paris because she herself resembled very closely the three lovely, ethereal G.o.ddesses who stood in front of the handsome young Trojan each one confident she would receive the golden apple he would give to the most beautiful of them.

There was something about Astara, Sir Roderick thought, that was different from any other woman he had ever met.

It 'was something ethereal and difficult to put into words, and yet he knew it was this which made men fall head-over heels in love with her the moment they saw her.

It also told him that London would be no different from Rome or Paris and he would spend most of his time fending - off the fortune-hunters.

He made no secret of the fact that he considered Astara his adopted daughter and that she would inherit a great deal, if not all, of his fortune.

It suddenly struck him as he walked across the room and out into the Hall where a number of servants were unpacking the huge cases in which the purchases they had made in Europe had travelled with them to England, that it might eventually prove more of a curse than a blessing.

Sir Roderick called to his Agent who was supervising the operations.

"I want two men, Mr Barnes, to bring that picture over there into the Salon and hold it up over the mantelpiece."

"Certainly, Sir Roderick, " Mr Barnes answered.

He followed the direction in which Sir Roderick pointed and he ordered two footmen to carry the picture into the Salon.

It was quite large and its frame was gilded and heavily carved. As they held it up Sir Roderick knew that Astara's good taste was unerring.

"It is perfect, just as I knew it would be!" she cried. "It picks up the pinks in the carpet, the blue of the ceiling and I feel as if the whole room revolves around it."

"Then it shall be hung at once!" Sir Roderick smiled, and gave the order.

They decided the position of several other paintings. Then Sir Roderick suggested it would be best to get most of them up on the walls so that they could sort them out later and arrange them to their best advantage.

"There are so many other things I wish to show you, my dearest child," he said to Astara, "that our new acquisitions will have to wait their turn."

She smiled with delight for already she was fording that England had attractions she had not found in any other country.

She had not been in England for eight years and she had almost forgotten, she told Sir Roderick, how beautiful it was.

The daffodils made a carpet of gold in the Park and there were primroses in the hedgerows as they drove from London, and in the garden the first shrubs were coming into bud.

"It is even lovelier than I imagined it would be!" she said excitedly, "and I really feel as if I have come home."

Sir Roderick was delighted, as she knew he would be. That evening as they sat in the Salon after dinner and he saw that her eyes continua4 wandered to the picture over the mantelpiece, he said: "Your appreciation for 'The Judgement of Paris' has, given me an idea!"

"What is that?" Astara enquired.

"I want you to sit in judgement not on three beautiful women, but on time handsome men!"

She looked at him in surprise and he went on: "I have already told you that when I am dead you will inherit my fortune, but as you are aware there are always penalties attached to great wealth especially where a woman is concerned."

He spoke seriously and Astara slipped from the sofa on which she had been sitting to kneel beside his chair.

"Then do not give me so much," she said. "I know that you are afraid of my being pursued by fortune-hunters, and I feel it is a mistake to put temptation in their way."

"It is certainly a case of gilding the lily," Sir Roderick agreed. "You are so lovely, my dearest, that any man would love you if you were the proverbial 'beggar maiden', but we are both sensible enough to realise that most men find wealth irresistible."

"I want to be ... loved for ... myself," Astara said in a low voice.

"And you will be, that I promise you," Sir Roderick replied. "No-one who knew you could not love you, but I wish to ensure that when I am no longer here my money is handled in the right way."