“The friend with whom I’ll be staying is an artist and has secured an introduction to him,” I said. “She hopes to be included in his upcoming exhibition.”
Miss Hetherington sniffed. “Then she must indeed be talented. It is said that he has a poor opinion of women painters. He is of the old school—that women belong in the home, raising children. Such an outdated notion, as I used to tell my students. I used to say ‘I am educating you to be more than a beautiful adornment to your husband. I am teaching you to think for yourselves and to believe that the whole world is open to you.’”
“Quite right,” Miss Pinkerton said. “I told my students the same thing. But it was usually the same outcome. They left our establishment determined to become doctors and writers and explorers and six months later they were engaged to some vacuous young man and considered themselves happy and blessed.”
“If only it were possible to be happily married and have a career,” one of the widows said and sighed.
“Of course it’s not. How can it ever be possible,” the other widow snapped. “Unless one is Madame Curie.”
I stayed silent.
“Speaking of the young girl in the Reynold Bryce paintings,” the other spinster, a Miss Schmitt, joined in the conversation for the first time, “wasn’t there some kind of scandal or rumor about her?”
They turned to Miss Hetherington, the resident expert. She nodded and leaned closer to us, lowering her voice and looking around before speaking. “I gather, although this has not been confirmed, that she is shut away, of unsound mind.”
“Shut away? In an institution, you mean?”
Miss Hetherington shook her head. “No, I understand that she is cared for at home. I am told, on good authority by someone who knew the family in Boston, that she was always a little—shall we say—strange—remote, unworldly. The person who told me said that she couldn’t put a finger on it but there was something not quite right about her. Well, one saw it in the paintings, didn’t one? As if she wasn’t quite of this world. Angelic, almost. That’s why he called her Angela, of course. I believe her real name was something quite different. However one gathers that she had some kind of brainstorm or mental collapse and now is a pathetic creature of strange fits and fantasies who needs constant care.”
“How terribly sad,” I said, thinking that the face that had looked out to sea in that painting had been full of hope and interest for what lay over the horizon.
“That must have been the reason that Bryce stopped painting her,” one of the widows said. “She was sliding into madness and her face no longer had that luminous angelic quality.”
“One gathers he was very generous to the family,” Miss Hetherington said. “Of course he was born to money. That’s how he funded his painting for many years until he made a name for himself. The Bryces are an old Bostonian family, you know.”
“We must make it our quest during this voyage to find out who this young girl is,” Miss Schmitt said with great animation. “Was she with anyone?”
“Yes, an older woman who could have been a companion,” I replied.
“Ah, then we must seek her out.” The women exchanged a glance and nodded conspiratorially.
Nine
We met at dinner that night and my table companions reported that they had had no success, except to determine that she was not traveling second class. Since a cold wind had been blowing on deck, she would probably have stayed in the first-class lounge. That cold wind was now accompanied by a decided swell.
“Oh, dear,” Miss Schmitt exclaimed as the ship crested a wave then fell again. “I do hope I’m not going to be seasick. I don’t think I’m a very good sailor and one has heard that the Atlantic can be so rough.”
“It’s all a question of mind over matter,” Miss Pinkerton said. “You simply tell yourself that you are not going to be ill. You eat hearty meals and take plenty of exercise.”
“Quite right,” one of the widows exclaimed. They were a Mrs. Bush and a Mrs. Cowper but I hadn’t worked out which was which. Then she added, “And I always bring ginger pills to suck. Most effective. I’ll give you one after dinner, Maude.”
I had crossed the Atlantic twice before and hadn’t experienced any seasickness so I hoped for the best this time. Liam seemed to think the whole idea of rolling side to side was quite fun. In fact he had been no trouble at all this first day at sea. I fell asleep watching two dressing gowns swing like pendulums on the cabin door.
Next morning we awoke to clouds racing across a pale sky and a noticeable swell to the ocean, making it hard to walk straight along the passageway. We breakfasted, I played with Liam, and after I put him down for a morning nap, I decided to venture out on deck. As I stepped out into the wind, I had the door wrenched out of my hand and slammed shut. It was lucky that I wasn’t wearing a hat or it would have gone sailing over the side. There were whitecaps on a slate-colored ocean and no sign of any living thing. It made me realize how small and insignificant even the largest ocean liner really is. I stared out to the north, looking for icebergs. A young officer passed me and smiled. “You are brave to come outside when it blows such a gale,” he said in such a charmingly French accent that it could almost belong on a stage. “You must be an American demoiselle. The French ladies, they do not venture forth when it blows like this. They worry about their coiffure, their hats, and that the wind will make their faces red.”