Gossamer Cord

Mary Grace said she liked to feel that special urge to paint before she did so. So far no one had sat for her. She saw a face she liked, sketched it from memory, and then worked on it. She made life-size sketches and then got down to the intricate work.

“All right then,” I said. “You can do some rough sketches of me.”

“Oh, will you let me? Don’t tell anyone.”

“It is our secret.”

The next day I went to her room, and she made the sketches, but she would not show them to me. She did, however, show me some of the work she had done. There were several miniatures in watercolors. I thought they were charming and told her so. She was flushed with pleasure. I had rarely seen her look so pleased.

My mother said: “I am so glad you get on well with Mary Grace. She seems to like your company very much.”

“She is a nice girl,” I said, “but she is too self-effacing.”

“Not like her brother. What she needs is someone to bring her out of herself.”

That evening we went to the opera. It was wonderful to be in Covent Garden. The opera was La Traviata. Richard had known that it would be performed that evening and he had gone to great trouble to procure the tickets. From the moment the curtain went up on a scene of Fragonard-like elegance and Violetta was greeting her guests, it was pure enchantment.

We had a supper afterwards in a restaurant near the Opera House and we were quite hilarious, and much play was made of my name, which was the same as the heroine’s.

“There,” said Edward, “the resemblance ends.”

My mother said: “People laughed at me when I gave her the name, but I don’t regret it one little bit. I think it is beautiful…and don’t you think it suits her?”

They all agreed that it did.

“And,” I said, “Dorabella had the greater burden to bear.”

“Dorabella,” said Richard. “That’s beautiful, too. What a pity she is not with us here tonight.”

“I shall give her a detailed account of the evening when we meet,” I said.

It was late when we arrived home. It had been a wonderful evening. I was thinking about Dorabella, who would have loved to share in it—and I found myself wondering afresh how she would fit into life in Cornwall.

Next morning my mother said to me: “Wasn’t it a wonderful evening? I think Richard is delightful.”

“Yes,” I said. “He is very thoughtful.”

“It was so good of him to plan the opera. He said it was Traviata that made him determined to go…your being Violetta, of course.”

“The similarity ends with the name, as Edward pointed out.”

“I should hope so,” said my mother. “I should hate to think of you leading that sort of life and fading away before your time.”

I laughed and she said: “Do you know what is coming up soon? I’d almost forgotten it with all this excitement about the baby. Your birthday.”

“Of course…next month. I haven’t got Dorabella’s present yet.”

“Nor I. What would you like?”

“I’ll have to think.”

“We’ll get it while we are in London. We’ll go and look tomorrow. But think about it.”

“I will.”

There was a dinner party that night. The Dorringtons had invited a lawyer and his wife with their newly married daughter and her husband.

The conversation at dinner was mainly about the situation in Europe. The elderly lawyer said he did not like the way things were going.

“The alliance between the Italian and German dictators is an unholy one, I reckon,” he said.

“We should not have stood by while Italy took Abyssinia,” said Richard.

“What could we have done?” asked Edward. “Did we want to go to war?”

“If all the states of Europe with America had stood together against it and imposed sanctions, Mussolini could not have gone on.”

“Too late now,” said the lawyer.

I glanced at Gretchen. She was looking uneasy, as she always did when the politics of Europe were discussed. I wished they would change the subject.

They eventually did, but I think the evening was spoiled for Gretchen.

The next morning Mary Grace said she had something to show me. I went to her room. Laid out on a table was the miniature.

Mary Grace pointed at it and stepped back, looking away as though she could not face my reaction.

I stared at it. It was beautiful. The colors were soft and exquisitely blended. It was my face, but there was something there, something arresting. It was a look in the eyes, as though I were trying to prove something which I could not understand. The mouth was smiling and seemed to belie that expression in the eyes.

I could not believe that she had created such an exquisite piece of work. I turned to her in wonder and she forced herself to look at me.

“You don’t…like it,” she stammered.

“I don’t know what to say. You are a true artist, Mary Grace. Why have you kept this hidden?”

She looked bemused.

“I think it is wonderful. It really is. Everything on such a small scale and yet…it’s there, isn’t it? It is the sort of portrait which makes one pause and wonder what is behind that smile. What is she thinking?”