“That would account for it, I suppose.”
Then I told him about Mrs. Pardell and how she had talked to me.
“You did well,” he said. “She is not usually so forthcoming.”
“I was sorry for her. I think she really cared about her daughter.”
“She is one of those people who find it difficult to express their feelings. They always miss something, I think, don’t you?”
I said I thought they might.
“But I sensed when I was with her that she loved her daughter and grieved for her,” I said. “She talked a little about Annette. She seems to have been a very bright person.”
“Indeed, yes. She was very suited to her job. There would always be a crowd of admirers round her.”
“Dermot among them,” I said.
“You know how people talk. They said he was one of several and that she chose the right one to blame for her condition.”
“And he accepted it,” I said.
“Dermot is a kindly young man. He would do what he thought was right.”
“I daresay he was in love with her.”
“I don’t know. There is certain to be talk about that sort of situation in a place like Poldown. However, it is in the past. Let us drink to the present Mrs. Tregarland, and may she bring forth a healthy son and live happily ever after.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
He smiled at me across the tankards. “I should like to meet her.”
“And she would like to meet you.”
“You have mentioned me to her?”
“To her, but to no one else, in view of this ridiculous feud. When she is active again, she and I will put our heads together and see what we can do to break it.”
He lifted his tankard. “To your success,” he said.
I felt happy to be in his company. We rode back together and made arrangements to meet a few days later.
The Promise
I ARRIVED BACK IN Caddington in early September. I was sorry to leave Dorabella. Moreover I was finding myself more and more absorbed in the life of Tregarland’s. However, I knew my mother thought I ought not to stay too long.
My mother said: “I know Dorabella loves to have you, but she has a husband now and should be building up her own family life. Besides, it is not fair to you to be tucked away down there all the time. You have a life of your own to lead. You must not allow yourself to become just part of Dorabella’s.”
I knew what was in her mind, of course. She was planning dinner parties to which she was going to invite eligible young men. I found this a trifle embarrassing. I did not want to be put up for auction, I told her.
“What nonsense!” she replied. “You want to see a bit of life, that’s all.”
She was delighted when Edward suggested we should go to London.
He wrote: “Richard Dorrington would like you and Violetta, and Sir Robert, if he could come, of course, to spend a week with them in London. You will want to see our house. It is a little topsy-turvy at the moment because we haven’t properly settled in. You could stay with us, though, for a time. Mary Grace is going to write to you.”
“I suppose they feel they ought to ask us because Richard stayed here,” I said.
“It is a nice, friendly gesture,” replied my mother. “I’d like to go. I am not sure about your father.”
My brother Robert had gone back to school. It was a constant complaint of his that, because of school, he had to miss so many interesting things which the rest of the family could do.
“You’ll emerge from it in time,” I told him. “It has happened to all of us.”
I was rather pleased by the prospect of going to London; and it turned out to be interesting to visit the Dorrington family.
Mrs. Dorrington was charming, and she and my mother got along very well. I liked Mary Grace. She was slightly younger than Richard—a rather quiet, shy girl whose main occupation seemed to be to look after her mother.
The house was large, well staffed, and comfortable. It faced a quiet garden square and was characteristic of many in the area.
Edward’s newly acquired house was not very far away—in a row of houses in a tree-lined street. He and Gretchen seemed very happy and contented with each other, though at times I saw shadows in Gretchen’s eyes and guessed the reason. She would be thinking of her family in Germany. As far as I could gather, the situation had not changed there.
Richard Dorrington was very eager that we should enjoy our visit. He had arranged trips to the theater, and we usually had supper afterwards in a small restaurant near Leicester Square which was frequented by theatrical people. It was exciting after life in the country.
Richard and Edward were working during the day and my mother and I were able to make full use of the shopping facilities. Our purchases were frequently for the coming baby. Mary Grace was very interested and sometimes accompanied us.
She and I went to an exhibition of miniatures in one of the museums and I realized at once that she was quite knowledgeable about the subject. Her shyness dropped from her and she became enthusiastic and eloquent.
I was pleased to see her interest and listened intently; she went on talking more than she ever had before and revealed to me that she herself painted.
“Only a little,” she added, “and not very well. But…it is quite absorbing.”
I said I should like to see some of her work, and she shrank visibly.
“Oh, it’s no good,” she said.
“I’d like to see it all the same. Please show me.”
She went on: “There are some people one sees and knows immediately that one wants to paint them. There is something about them.”
“You mean they are beautiful.”
“Well, not necessarily conventionally beautiful. But there is something…I should like to paint you.”
I was astonished and, I admit, flattered.
I laughed and said: “My twin sister Dorabella would make a very good picture. We are alike in a way but she is different. She is vital and very attractive. I wish you could see her. You’d want to paint her. She is going to have a baby quite soon. Perhaps after it is born you could paint her. I am sure she would be a better subject than I.”
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 tha
t 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?”
Did I really look like that? What had I been thinking of when I sat for Mary Grace? That subject, which was always uppermost in my mind? Dorabella and Dermot…their marriage…Mrs. Pardell who did not believe that her daughter had died as it was said she had…that sly old man who was watching us all the time as though we were spiders in a basin from which we could not escape. Those were the thoughts which had dominated my mind as I sat there.
I looked at Mary Grace in wonder. Her talent really did amaze me.
I said severely, trying to introduce a light note, for she looked very emotional: “Mary Grace, you have been hiding your light under a bushel. Have you heard of the Parable of the Talents? You have been given this talent and you have hidden it away. If you have such talent you must surely use it.”
“I can’t believe…”
“You have to believe in yourself. I am going to buy this miniature from you. I am your first client.”
“No…no…I shall give it to you.”
“I shall not accept it as a gift, but I very much want it and will have it. Listen. You have solved a problem for me. It is my sister’s birthday in October—mine also. I have been wondering what I am going to give her. Now I know. I can’t accept a gift from you which I am going to give to someone else. This is a blessing. She does not see me so often now, though we were always together until she married. This will be the ideal birthday present. You and I will go out and buy a beautiful frame for it, and that shall be my birthday gift to her. She will love it. It is beautiful and it will be so unexpected. Oh, Mary Grace, thank you so much. You have made a beautiful picture of me and at the same time solved my problem.”
She was staring at me, her lips parted in sheer astonishment.
“My dear Mary Grace,” I cried. “You look piskymazed, as they say in Cornwall.”
I carried her along on my enthusiasm. She was a most unusual artist. The few I had met had an inflated idea of their own excellence and a word of criticism could make an enemy for life. Mary Grace was modest and genuinely surprised. She was that rare creature—a good artist and a modest one.
I was already imagining Dorabella’s face when she saw the miniature. She would surely want one of herself. A commission for Mary Grace, I thought delightedly.
Mary Grace and I announced that we were going shopping that morning. There were certain things we wanted to get. We took the miniature with us and went to a jeweler’s shop in the High Street. I had noticed it before because there were several unusual pieces in the window—secondhand, some of them, rare and beautiful.
A bell tinkled over the door as I pushed it open and we went in. An elderly man came toward us to stand behind the counter.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“We want a frame—a small frame—to fit this.” I laid the miniature on the table.
He looked intently at the miniature and smiled at me.
“Very nice,” he said. “An excellent likeness.”
I glanced sideways at Mary Grace, who was blushing.
“Have you anything?” I asked.
“It has to be small,” he said. “There are not too many of this size around. Small and oval-shaped, of course. Most frames are the more conventional types. A piece of work like that needs something special, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it is going to be a present.”
“It’s lovely.” He was thoughtful. “A pair of silver frames came in the other day. Excuse me a moment. Thomas,” he called.
A man appeared. He was considerably younger than the one who was serving us.
“Yes, sir?” he said.
“What about those frames that came in the other day…with the Marlon lot.”
“Do you mean those small silver ones, sir?”
“Yes. They’d take a picture like this, would they?”
The man came and looked down at the miniature.
“Beautiful,” he said, smiling at me. “You’d want something really nice for that.”
“Can you put your hands on those frames, Thomas?”
“I reckon so, sir.”
The older man turned to us. “They came in only the other day. We haven’t had much chance to look at all the stuff that came with them yet. Secondhand, you know. From a sale of one of the stately homes. Been in the family for years, then someone dies and everything’s up for sale.”
He chatted awhile until Thomas appeared with the frames.
They were beautiful.
/> “They’d be some two hundred years old,” we were told. “They knew how to make things in those days. Craftsmen. We could do with more of them nowadays. Well, I reckon we could make that picture fit. Trouble is, they’re a pair.”
I had an inspiration. “It might be that we should want the other one as well,” I said. For if Dorabella wanted a miniature of herself to match mine, the frames should be similar.
“Unfortunately,” I said, “I am not quite sure about the other one.”
“Well, you could take the one and let me know, eh? I’ll put it on one side for a while—say to the end of October? After that I’d let it go. They should go together, of course, but as it fits…”
“That would be wonderful,” I said. “Could you fit the miniature into the frame for us?”
“I think we could do that,” said the old man.
Thomas appeared again and was asked if he could fit the picture into the frame.
“Have to be trimmed a little,” he said. “Needs a bit of care, but we can manage it. It’s always like that. Pictures rarely fit the frame exactly. Could you call in this afternoon?”
We said we could and agreed on a price and triumphantly came out into the street.
Mary Grace continued to look bewildered.
Later my mother said: “Had a good morning’s shopping?”
“Very good,” I said, which she might have queried if she had not been so engrossed in her own plans.
I could scarcely wait for the afternoon.
The miniature looked more beautiful than ever in the silver frame. I wanted to show it to them all. That evening we assembled in the Dorrington drawing room for an aperitif before dinner.
I said to my mother: “I have a most lovely present for Dorabella.”
“You must have got it today,” she said.
“It was completed today.”
“What is it?”
I cut her short. “I want to show you before I explain.”
“Well, where is it?”
“Wait,” I said. I looked across at Mary Grace, who was talking to Edward and Gretchen. “I’ll get it now.”
I ran to my room and returned with the miniature wrapped in tissue paper.
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