Chapter Text
The rich fragrance of roses filled the studio as a light summer breeze stirred the trees in the garden, carrying the floral perfume through the open door. Standing before his canvas in the center of the room, Hannibal Lecter could hear the dim roar of London like the bourdon note of a distant organ. On a divan in the corner behind him sat Lord Jack Crawford, gazing at the incomplete full-length portrait before them.
“It is your best work yet, Hannibal,” Jack remarked, taking a drag of his cigarette. “The best you have ever done. You must certainly send it to the gallery next year.”
As Hannibal looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully captured in his art, a smile of pleasure crossed his face. But then he abruptly closed his eyes and sighed.
“On the contrary, Jack, I don’t think I shall send it anywhere,” he answered.
Jack regarded him curiously. “Not send it anywhere? Have you any reason? A portrait like this would set you far above all the artists in England.”
Hannibal shook his head. “I don’t expect you to understand, Jack, but I really can’t exhibit it. Not this one.”
He glanced back at his work as he spoke. The face upon the canvas seemed to pierce through his heart, tearing a new gash each time he looked. The young, rosy-cheeked man he had painted produced the same effect as he would if he were standing in the room with him.
“I have put too much of myself into it,” he explained. “I will not bare my soul to the shallow, prying eyes of the world.”
Jack laughed. “Too much of yourself? I really can’t see any resemblance.”
“You misunderstand me, Jack. Of course I know perfectly well that William and I do not look alike . . .”
He stopped short, realizing what he had said.
“William? Is that his name?” Jack asked, standing and moving across the studio toward him.
“It is. I did not intend to tell you.”
“But why not?”
“When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to anyone. I have grown to love secrecy. The commonest thing is delightful if one hides it. I suppose you find that foolish?”
“Not at all,” Jack said, grinning. “You seem to forget that I’m married.”
Both men laughed and stepped outside into the garden, settling in a long bamboo seat that stood in the shade of a laurel bush, surrounded by tremulous white daisies.
“Explain to me why you won’t exhibit the picture, Hannibal. Tell me the real reason.”
“I told you the real reason,” Hannibal said, crossing his legs and entwining his fingers on his lap. “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. In this particular picture, I believe I have shown the secret of my own soul.”
“And what secret is that?” Jack asked, sounding somewhat skeptical.
Hannibal paused a moment, taking extra care with his words.
“Not too long ago, I went to a party at Lady Du Maurier’s, and after about ten minutes in the room, I suddenly became conscious that someone was looking at me. I turned and saw William Graham for the first time.”
He swallowed, recalling the moment and the way he’d felt weak at the knees. There was something in William’s face that made one trust him at once. He seemed pure, as though he had kept himself unspotted from the world. An odd feeling of terror had passed through Hannibal as he stood motionless in the crowded drawing room, his heart pounding as it was now.
“I knew that I had come face to face with someone so fascinating who, if I allowed it to happen, might absorb my whole soul, my very art itself. It was like no other moment I’ve experienced before, and I had a strange feeling that fate brought me to that party that night.”
Jack seemed intrigued. “Did you speak to him?”
“Sometime later I did, when Lady Du Maurier introduced us, though we would have spoken without any introduction. I am sure of that. William even said so. He, too, felt that we were destined to know each other.”
He did not tell Jack about how much time he had spent with William in recent weeks. Nothing unmentionable had happened between them, yet he kept that to himself as though it were a closely guarded personal secret.
“In some curious way, his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art,” Hannibal continued. “I see things differently, and I know the work I have done since I met William is the best work of my life. You remember that landscape of mine I would not part with? It is one of the best things I have ever done, and while I was painting it, William sat beside me. He is never more present in my art than when no image of him is there. I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colors.”
“Well, now I must insist upon meeting this William Graham,” came Jack’s reply.
Hannibal hesitated to respond; he supposed he had delayed that meeting as long as was possible. At that particular moment, his butler appeared in the garden.
“Mr. William Graham is in the studio, sir,” he said.
Jack laughed. “Fate at work once again!”
***
They found William at the piano, already absorbed in new pages of Hannibal’s own music compositions. “Would you lend me these, Hannibal? They are brilliant; I want to learn them.”
“That depends on how you sit today,” said Hannibal with a smirk.
“I’m tired of sitting. Why should I need a life-size portrait of myself?” William muttered.
When he turned and caught sight of Jack, he abruptly stood. “I beg your pardon, Hannibal, I didn’t know you had someone with you.”
“This is Lord Jack Crawford, an old Oxford friend of mine.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Graham,” said Jack, stepping forward and extending his hand.
Hannibal watched his two friends exchanging pleasantries. It was as though a breath of fresh air filled the warm studio any time William entered. He was so wonderfully handsome, with his scarlet lips, cerulean eyes, and curled hair. Hannibal wondered if Jack could see in William a fraction of what he saw.
As Hannibal turned to prepare his brushes and mix his colors, Jack began his goodbyes, but William asked him to stay. Though he did not let on, Hannibal was surprised at the request. He had looked forward to spending more time alone with William, but it seemed the feeling was not quite as mutual as he’d allowed himself to imagine.
“Please do stay, Jack,” Hannibal said, gazing at the portrait. “I never listen well when I’m painting; it must be dreadfully tedious for my unfortunate sitters. William, go to the platform, and don’t pay attention to what Lord Crawford says. He is a bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of myself.”
William stepped up onto the dais. “Are you really a bad influence, Jack?”
“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Graham. All influence is immoral.”
“How so?” William asked, amused.
“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. To realize one’s nature perfectly, that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves nowadays. The bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. And every impulse that we strive to strangle broods the mind and poisons us . . .”
William swallowed as he listened to Jack speak, finding a bit more truth than he would have liked in the older man’s cynicism.
“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it,” Jack went on. “Resist it, and the soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden itself. Even you, Mr. Graham, must have had passions that made you afraid, thoughts that filled you with terror, and dreams whose memory might stain your cheek with shame—”
“Stop,” William muttered. “You have fascinating thoughts, Jack, but I daresay you care more for your words than for your ideas. Let me have a few moments to think, or rather, to try not to.”
William stood motionless, lost in thought. Jack had merely shot an arrow into the air, but it had hit the mark. Jack’s peculiar ideas had touched some secret chord within him that he now felt vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses. This had been the opposite of what he’d expected when he asked Jack to stay; he had wanted a distraction from the present setting, and instead felt more revealed than usual as he stood on the platform in Hannibal’s studio. How much of it had Hannibal heard? Perhaps none, he seemed so fixed on his work. William hoped he had not been listening.
When Hannibal only had the background left to finish, William wandered into the garden to smell some lilac blossoms, drinking in their perfume like wine.
“You are wise to do that,” Jack remarked, catching up to him. “Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
William smiled and regarded him cautiously, again both amused and startled by his words. He wondered if, in the short time they had known each other, Jack suspected anything unusual about his friendship with Hannibal.
The two of them took a turn around the blooming garden as Jack advised William not to waste his youth. He seemed eager to impart his wisdom; William could only estimate how many others he’d trapped in conversation with spontaneous lessons. Still, some of his words resonated with him: Live the wonderful life that is in you. Let nothing be lost on you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. With your personality, there is nothing you could not do.
After some time, Hannibal appeared in the doorway and called them back to the studio.
“It is quite finished,” he announced as they stepped inside.
“I must congratulate you, Hannibal,” Jack said, examining the picture. “It is the finest portrait of modern times. William, come and look at yourself.”
William stepped forward, coming around Jack and Hannibal. “Is it really finished?”
As he looked over Hannibal’s work, William stood in wonder, seeing himself through the painter’s eyes. The sense of his own beauty came over him like a revelation. Until that moment, Hannibal’s compliments could have been thought of as merely the charming exaggeration of friendship. But the picture made them real, gave to every word a new weight, a weight that seemed to want to crush him.
“Don’t you like it, William?” Hannibal asked at last.
“It’s magnificent,” William answered softly without looking at him. “Am I really like that, Hannibal?”
“You are just like that, dear William.”
William’s cheeks went hot and Jack’s talk of youth came back to him. “Someday, I suppose, this picture will far surpass my own beauty. I shall grow old, but it will remain always young. If only it were the other way.”
He had meant it in jest, but the humor was lost when he spoke.