The Half-Hidden (Part One)

By Marc-Yves Tumin

"The stone that was rejected has become the cornerstone."--Psalm 118

Years afterward, I was privileged to glimpse all that remained to commemorate an incident that greatly affected the course of many lives. Nestled among the argosy of knick-knacks, pictures, mementos, and family keepsakes -- borne downstream by the removal agents -- was a silk-lined hand-carved cedar box. Inside, wrapped in linen, was lodged a pressed flower, a volume of family pictures taken by several important photographers, and a silver jewelry case lined in velvet. Within that reposed a gold locket linked to a delicate chain. It cradled a ringlet of red hair intertwined with a tuft of fur.

I was informed that secluded amid the patrician collection, which boasted a bevy of society figures disporting themselves in the sumptuous mansion, was a most significant portrait. It was, at first glance, rather unprepossessing, small and faded, with scalloped edges and ivory borders, set in a delicate ebony frame.

I was asked to inspect it and encouraged to describe that which I discerned. I carried out the request with alacrity, but found nothing that made an impression, and, in return, was told that the snapshot was the confection of an amateur enthusiast, a governess overseeing a child's garden party.

In the foreground, the plein air portrait depicted a young girl, her face practically brushing against the camera lens. Most remarkably, I learned, she appeared for once to be positively ecstatic.

In those halcyon days, Danielle Elizabeth DeMontmorency, as I shall call her, never saw a great deal of her adoptive family. She was a somber child, had few friends, and rarely communicated with anybody. Nonetheless, Miss Danielle was so delighted with the miniature Waterford crystal tea set that her guardians caused to be presented to her on the occasion of her fifth birthday, she elected to preside over a soirée convened on the back lawn for her circle of imaginary friends. And when the tiny table settings were in order, she persisted in repeatedly calling to an outsized caramel-colored cat, which, according to the child, was wont to visit her in the late afternoon. No one else had observed it ever.

The phantom feline was reputed to ensconce itself behind an ancient rose hedge that sprawled athwart the high wall at the rear of the verdant sanctuary and would ostensibly vanish as though a ghostly revenant at the presence of uninvited company. Little Danielle was what a battalion of German alienists who examined her referred to in their grand rounds as "an acute case of introversion." On the other hand, according to a flock of perfervid Viennese psychiatrists, she suffered from "a morbid predisposition to melancholia, occasioned by remote ideational conflicts emanating from an undefined agitation in the naos of the sensorium" or something of that nature, if one gave credence to the ramblings of a slightly pixilated tutor.

A sympathetic Irish "Sheila" -- as she was referred to by her superiors -- described the child as "a dear desperate girl." Then again, a servant from Saragossa whispered conspiratorially that she was "The Half-Hidden One," and that beneath the surface, beyond appearances, no tenant of that dwelling possessed a true apprehension of her nature, character, and sensibility.

Indeed, Dainty Danielle could have been compassed by all three descriptions. She was an especially reserved creature, with large, sad eyes, not a little bit slinky, painfully sensitive, and preternaturally quiet. And there was an ineffable aura to her carriage, demeanor, and deportment, an indefinable quality, something beyond the application of scientific inquiry, which none could comprehend.

Wherever she moved about the listed property, Sweet Danielle seemed to glance behind her as though taking leave, trailing a certain stealthy je ne sais quoit, a canoeist tracing shadows with her fingers in the stream. And thus it was that the many earnest experts, specialists, and pedagogues who visited the stately home to ply their arts, revivify her frame, and purvey their wisdom, declared that she must needs have rare talents, ah, gifts of the first water in their respective fields, thank you.

The gentleman charged with keeping her regimen of physical exercise, as it were, maintained that she required a matutinal menu of vitamins to build her strength. Her reverend minister, however, counseled mortification of the flesh and a strict diet of fasting and prayer. By his lights, those who took their custom to the doorway of Christward importuning, and therefore inculcated the habits of regular devotions to Our Lord and Savior, were halfway along the path to mental well being, bodily fortitude, and spiritual prophylaxis.

At all events, there were many rounds of prodding and testing and much theorizing about her condition, and volleys of tisk-tisks and a shower of clucking to escort her melancholy peregrinations through the multitudinous chambers of that lagoon of high art and precious taste that was the mansion of the DeMontmorency clan. And, so, few paid heed to the under-gardener from Guadalajara who stoically observed the entire spectacle and was adamant that the only thing wrong with the mysterious child was that she was lonely.

(Continued next week)