Chapter 2
Chapter two
Heavy brocade draperies and a thick Persian carpet of rich-toned colors created a silent space in the back drawing room of Edith’s London home.
No evidence of any other wakeful occupant in the Harley Street house could be heard as Margaret sat at a mahogany secretary.
It had become a favorite morning site for quiet reflection.
Here, the first beams of the sun angled in through the scrubbed panes of glass to illuminate the objects confined within four walls.
Sunlight spilled across the pages of the book laid open before her.
Outside, a sparrow chirped greetings to its companions.
“There you are,” Edith announced as she swept through paneled doors to invade the sacred stillness.
Margaret placed a leather marker in the crevice between pages of her reading and lifted her face to regard her cousin. “Good morning, Edith,” she replied brightly, although she knew well that her time for peaceful solitude was now at an end.
“Do you wish me to decline our engagement to dine at Helen’s tomorrow evening?” Margaret inquired, pulling out the tray of stationery used to attend to the constant flurry of her cousin’s social correspondence.
“Whatever for?” Edith’s face was a picture of innocent puzzlement.
Margaret smiled inwardly to see how easily the despair of the previous evening was utterly forgotten. “I thought you wished to avoid the company of a certain gentleman,” she reminded her companion gently, as she pushed the retrieved tray back in its place.
“What? Oh, no. Ned Harrelson is an annoyance to be certain, but it doesn’t signify that I shall ruin my own plans for entertainment.
I was a little tired last evening. There was no one of particular interest in attendance.
Only some balls are a delight, and others are more tedious.
It cannot be helped, I suppose…oh!” she exhaled this last sound as her countenance revealed her sudden consternation at having caught her words working contrary to her forthcoming purpose.
“The next dance will be far more entertaining, I expect,” she added quickly with a winsome smile.
“Margaret, are you certain you will not stay for the whole of our very first season? You could delay your return home. There are only a few gala events remaining for us to attend before everyone abandons the city.”
Although Margaret was commonly swayed to submit to her cousin’s childish imploring, this time the Helstone-born girl held firmly to her own will. “The arrangements have all been made, and I will not have them changed. I believe you know how much I relish the summer at home.”
“But there is no opportunity of meeting gentlemen in such a remote place. You need but stay a trifle longer and then you could come away to the seaside with us. The air will be refreshing there, perhaps even more so than in your country hamlet. And one meets so many people on such a sojourn.”
Margaret smiled at her cousin’s hints. Edith could not comprehend Margaret’s negligence in attracting a husband, nor would she ever understand the grand freedom that could be gained in roaming the forest alone and surveying the open heather with unscheduled abandon.
“There will be time enough to meet new people. I shall be away for merely two months. Besides, you know how it was that my parents were first introduced to each other. The most fortuitous circumstances are often not the device of human planning,” the country girl of eighteen offered with a sagacious air.
Edith sighed in reluctant acquiescence. “You must do as you see fit. But perhaps next summer you can accompany us.” Margaret only blinked in reply, as she maintained her pleasant composure in the face of her cousin’s pleading.
“Now I have quite forgotten…there was another reason I sought you,” Edith muttered aloud.
“Oh, yes. Will you dash a letter to Verity Chattleworth for me? Tell her I will ride with her on Tuesday. I would write it myself, but I must go show Newton which gown to prepare for tomorrow’s dinner.
And I must dress before Laura comes to call.
” Her request made known, she exited the room as swiftly as she had entered it.
Margaret bore no ill regard toward her cousin’s hasty manners but was rather bemused by them.
Pulling out the japan tray of fine paper, she prepared the desktop for writing the requested social missive.
The quill in her hand remained still for a moment, however, as she considered the conversation that had just ensued.
There was no hesitation on her part about her choice to go home to Helstone for the summer.
Nothing could prevail upon her to give up her one chance of living the idyl of beauty and freedom for a season.
The longing to roam the shaded forest paths and pass through sunny, open fields of endless green called to the inmost chambers of her soul with a power she could scarcely explain to a city-dweller.
She would not miss attending any forthcoming balls—except for the possibility of encountering once more the tall, sympathetic man from the North.
The flitting image of him distracted her train of thought as she remembered the pleasing elements of the previous evening’s last dance.
There was no one of particular interest in attendance.
A secretive smile slowly curved on Margaret’s lips as she recalled Edith’s casual summary.
Her cousin’s commendations and attention to personages were often as whimsical as her loyalty to a new dress.
Wealth, display, social charm, and privilege seemed the high marks of her cousin’s standard.
She could hardly be expected to note the stranger of no consequence who had garnered Margaret’s attention.
It was a singular happenstance to have taken such a curious interest in someone whom she would likely never meet again. Margaret relished the lingering pleasant remembrance of the chance exchange but knew it would serve no purpose to dwell upon it for any length of time.
She shook her head at the uselessness of all Edith’s social contrivances.
Margaret considered herself a practical girl, and held no grand illusions concerning the ways in which men and women sought and selected their life-match.
However much Edith might wrap herself in the tangled web of eligibility and aggrandized hopes for finding a perfect husband, Margaret brushed aside such belabored designs and set her faith on God’s ways.
Her aunt’s marriage to the aging but wealthy General Shaw had been carefully arranged and could not be counted in any way an affair of the heart, but it had bestowed upon her aunt the life of luxury and ease she and her daughter now took for granted.
Margaret much preferred to trust Providence to secure circumstances leading to the sacred bond of marriage. As she turned her gaze to a twittering pair of wrens perched outside her window, she thought of her parents’ unlikely match.
As the young new Helstone vicar, her father had traveled north to Rutlandshire to bolster a fellow Oxford scholar in his new capacity as curate of Oakham.
Seldom away from his beloved country parish before or since, her father had taken this opportunity to aid a friend and see more of the English countryside.
Returning home on foot from a spring picnic, her mother had stopped to rest upon a low stone wall while the remainder of her company had flocked to admire a blossoming garden nearby.
Set apart from the rest and looking the very picture of delicate feminine beauty—so her father had always said—the young Maria Beresford had attracted the attention of the handsome Rev.
Hale, who had been enjoying a solitary walk through the verdant grounds near the Oakham church.
Thinking her quite abandoned, her father had approached the lone girl to inquire if she was well, and offered her water from his canteen upon hearing her reply that she was weary.
It was the kindness in his eyes and the warmth of his honest smile, her mother had told her, that had won the belle of Rutlandshire’s affection from the start.
That warm June afternoon, the pair had fallen into pleasant conversation for a short time until Miss Beresford was reclaimed by her parting company.
Rev. Hale had found himself invited to dinner at Sir John Bereford’s estate before the week had passed, and the destiny of the couple had been thereby sealed.
The memory of a particular smile stole again into Margaret’s mind with a glowing trace of renewed pleasure.
This morning, she felt she could better comprehend her mother’s attraction to such a simple gesture.
Surely it is possible, Margaret believed, to discern the essence of a person’s character in a matter of moments from the internal light (or darkness) emanating from his or her nature.
She knew it must have been so in her parents’ case, although she was certain no further parallels could be drawn between her mother’s history and the incidental encounter she had experienced at last night’s ball.
The brief exchange with the kind gentleman from the North merely proved to her that hearts and minds of a similar bend would naturally illuminate with revitalizing and comforting joy upon recognizing a fellow soul among the countless earthly wanderers.
The cherished story of how her own parents met reinvigorated her belief that love found its own way to proper ends, and this naturally instilled a lingering, childlike faith for her own future.
The sunlight that now bathed the room further encouraged her cheerful and calm mood. She set her quill to paper to begin her task, with the glad recognition that her days in the city were numbered.