Noson Weu: "A Knitting Night"
Part I
Autumn, 1860. A Village outside Bala, Wales.
“You’re not going to Anna Griffiths’s?”
Margaret tied her cloak round her neck. “I am.”
Her aunt sighed. “Well, try and get some real work done, will you? Sometimes I think you young people just get together to tell horrific stories and flirt.”
“Goodness, Elizabeth, what an imagination you have!” Margaret’s mother appeared in the kitchen doorway, towel thrown over her shoulder and her apron a sight. “Have a good evening, my dear. Don’t walk home alone after dark.”
Margaret smiled. “Thanks, Mam—I won’t.”
As she hurried out, she heard her aunt tut, “That’s fine encouragement! She’ll be walking home with a sweetheart.”
Margaret scoffed to herself. “As if!”
Try to get some real work done! She always got plenty of work done at Anna Griffiths’s, whatever the other girls had to show for their evenings. That was Aunt Elizabeth’s way—just because she never saw a soul outside the house from Christmas to Easter, she wanted to spoil the fun for everyone else.
Margaret fumed the whole way to the Griffiths’s house. The glorious Autumn evening, which painted all the trees about in gold leaf and scattered its bounty even on the little rill along the lane, which in every other season was merely a grimy ditch, could not compete with her high dudgeon.
Anna’s sister Mary answered the door to Margaret’s knock; and her flutter of spirits was evident at once.
“Oh, Margaret! I’m that glad—you’ll never guess who’s come home—and now I shall be the one to tell you—what a piece of good luck I was by the door!”
“May I come in, please, Mary?” For the girl had not budged from the doorway, forgetting in the tumult of her excitement even to stand aside.
“Oh! To be sure—I’ll take your cloak—I’m to mind the door tonight, as you can see. Dad enjoined me very seriously to keep the door against brigands, but I’m more worried about the Good People.”
Margaret had on most days nothing but fondness and solicitude for Mary’s ramblings, but her aunt’s comments had put her out of humor. She wanted nothing just now but to sit, and knit, and be quiet.
“I’d better go through, now, Mary—thanks for taking my things.”
“Of course, nothing to it—oh!” And Mary hooked her afresh by the arm. “But I never told you who’s come back!”
Margaret longed to say that she would find out soon enough, simply by walking to the next room, but submitted herself to be amazed. Mary leaned in to whisper:
“It’s John!”
Margaret frowned. “John who, Mary?”
Mary looked scandalized. “John Lewis, of course! Him who’s been ever such a long time in London!”
Mary could have laughed, had she been in a better humor. John Lewis, the guest of honor! She could remember him very well as a boy, before he’d been packed off to live with his aunt in England. The memory was hardly a thrilling one. He had been known among the girls for nothing better than being an insufferable tease, and managing to be dull at the same time.
When at last she squeezed through Mary’s gauntlet into the sitting room, her eye was caught at once by a gentleman she did not recognize, standing at the opposite end of the room. He was tall and fair, and carried himself well.
“That cannot be John Lewis!” She mused aloud to Mary, who had followed her in. The latter was highly shocked.
“To be sure not! No, that is only his friend. He is only from the next village, or some such thing, and was probably never in London in his life. I can’t remember his name. No,” she said with reverence, pointing out a gentleman seated and surrounded by three or four laughing girls, “that is John Lewis.”
Margaret’s expectations were thoroughly answered. John Lewis had not grown from impertinence to sobriety. In fact he was already red-faced from drink, and seemed to have grown only into his bad qualities, rather than above them: for as Margaret watched, he leaned to whisper in the ear of one of the girls near him, whereupon she cried, “For shame, Mr. Lewis! And you a gentleman!”
She was relieved to see Anna Griffiths seated as far from this gentleman as was possible, while keeping to the same room; and Margaret at once took her seat next to her friend, who smiled at her with meaning.
“What! You do not wish to sit by the conquering hero?”
“More like the prodigal son,” Margaret said tartly, “except that he seems entirely unreformed.” She pulled a ball of silk and a half-finished lace stocking from her knitting bag, and set to work.
Anna smiled. “That’s lovely work, Margaret.”
Margaret flushed with pride. “Thank you—it’s for my sister’s wedding.”
“Lucky sister!’
In pleasant talk and work, a half hour passed away. Gradually the room filled with young people, and before long one of the men threatened to tell a ghost story. Margaret herself was not susceptible to such tales, but several of the girls cried for mercy. Anna and Margaret smiled on each other, and Margaret, glancing up, caught the strange gentleman’s eye. He smiled and nodded to her, in a cordial manner. Anna, counting stitches, did not notice; but as soon as the ghost story commenced, Margaret asked her in a hushed voice, if she knew the gentleman?
“Mr. Lewis’s friend, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Only his name—William Bowen.”
“He’s not from London, I understand?”
“No—although I believe they met there. He comes from Bala.”
“So near!”
“Yes—his father recently passed away, I believe, and he’s come into a property there.”
Margaret smiled. “Only his name, indeed.”
Anna shrugged. “I can’t help it if Dad knows everything going on for miles around.”
The ghost story was reaching its climax—the dead girl’s hand was crawling through the window, quite divorced from its body—and poor Mary was fit to be hysterical. Margaret remained stoic; but she did start slightly when a man’s voice came over her shoulder:
“That’s beautiful work, I must say.”
Margaret turned—and came face to face with William Bowen.
To be continued…