Noson Weu: "A Knitting Night"
Part II
Note: In 19th century Wales, the “noson weu” or “knitting night” was a common social activity. Young women and men would gather in someone’s home to while away the evening knitting and telling ghost stories. It was also a wonderful opportunity to flirt!
Continued from Part I:
She must have hid her discomposure very poorly; for Mr. Bowen’s open, friendly countenance changed, and he seemed hesitant of having given offense.
“I beg your pardon.” He said.
“Not at all.” She replied. His smile returned.
Anna made the proper introductions, not without a look of meaning towards her friend, which rendered Margaret yet more discomfited. She was able to listen attentively enough, however, when their companion began to speak:
“I don’t mean to disturb you—but I couldn’t help noticing your lace cuff. It put me in mind of my sister.”
“Does she enjoy knitting lace?” Margaret asked.
“Oh, she’s wild after patterns of all kinds, lace especially. But I don’t believe I’ve seen her make up that pattern before.”
“Can you tell the difference between patterns, sir?” Anna asked, with some surprise.
“I can.”
“Well!” Anna said, with another significant glance towards her friend. “That is a remarkable skill in a gentleman.”
Margaret ignored this look as best she could. “I would be happy to write out the pattern for your sister, if you like.”
Mr. Bowen was well pleased. “That is very kind—I’m sure she would be glad to have it in her collection.”
Margaret will be excused, I am sure, for her inattention to her work at this critical juncture, but this lapse proved fatal to her lace. As she was looking up at William Bowen, she felt her needle slip from her fingers—she looked down at the unravelling lace in dismay—whereupon a jovial laugh alerted her to the culprit. She turned and met, with ill-suppressed wrath, the gaze of John Lewis.
“This will never do, Miss,” he said, “you are paying far too much attention to your work, and not nearly enough to Matthew’s very interesting story.”
Margaret, angry as she was, could yet call on enough composure to prevent losing her temper in words; but she could not smile, and could not help sending the offender a withering look. The general merriment, however, prevented Mr. Lewis’s noticing her displeasure, and he quickly returned to his cocoon of ladies, who spent the next ten minutes praising his keen wit and elevated sense of humor.
In the first throes of frustration, Margaret quite forgot the admirer of her lace pattern; and he, judging that any attentions from a stranger at such an impasse could be a source of nothing but vexation, quietly withdrew. Anna noticed, and was sorry for her friend. She had witnessed their conversation with the greatest of pleasure.
The second half of the gathering could not offer Margaret so much satisfaction as had the first. She spent it almost entirely in recovering her lace; and by the time she could look about her, the room was nearly empty. Remembering her mother’s injunction, she was momentarily alarmed; but Anna assured her one of her brothers could be called upon to play protector, and so saved her any real measure of anxiety.
While her older sister went to accomplish this end, Mary descended on Margaret in an instant.
“Oh! Was that story not the most shocking, the most horrid thing you ever heard? I shan’t sleep a wink all night. Every time I close my eyes I shall see that dreadful hand, coming through my window.”
Anna returned with a look of triumph. Her brothers’ services, as it happened, would not be required. She had met her father and Mr. Bowen on the way and, the purpose of her errand being made known, the younger man had absolutely insisted on escorting the lady himself; and if Margaret would only collect her things, he was perfectly ready to conduct her home without the smallest delay.
The rush of joy this produced in Margaret almost made her cross with herself; after all, she knew little enough about the gentleman, and if he were hiding a disposition like his friend’s, to be the object of his admiration could give little pleasure. She therefore tried to make herself reasonable.
Such a resolution was not helped by Mr. Bowen’s behavior on their meeting again at the door. That he was glad was evident, without his falling into raptures, and he behaved at every point in the most gentleman-like manner. Soon they had made their farewells, and were plunged into a darkness, despite Mr. Bowen’s lantern, by no means unpleasant to Margaret, since it hid her expression somewhat from his view, and allowed her to think and feel without undue scrutiny.
For a little while they walked with no further discourse than his asking her some particular or other of their way; but soon they were on the broad, straight main road, with some neat little houses scattered along its length shedding enough light by their fires to see the path; and here Mr. Bowen broke a short silence by apologizing for his friend.
“For he is a little too used to London society, and is so little disposed to work hard at anything himself, that he cannot easily understand why anyone else should trouble themselves to do so.”
Margaret, made happy by her current companion, was rather ashamed of her churlishness towards his friend, and readily declared her forgiveness of such a minor transgression.
“I hope you were able to recover your lace?”
She assured him on this point, and repeated her offer to copy the pattern for his sister, the which offer he enthusiastically accepted. Margaret gained enough courage here to look in his face, lit by the lantern; and found him gazing on her with a warmth that made her doubly glad for her relative concealment of darkness, which hid her happy confusion.
It cannot be said that subjects of greater import than these were broached during the remainder of their short walk—they did not dip into politics, or social problems, or even much poetry—yet by the time they reached Margaret’s mother’s house, they liked, esteemed, and wished to know more of one another. It was arranged Mr. Bowen would call the next day for the pattern; and with nothing more demonstrative than a smile and a look, the potential lover was on his way. Let me suppress some of my readers’ burgeoning anxieties, by declaring here and now that he was neither mauled by bears, nor set upon by robbers, on his way homewards; and besides some jesting from Mr. Lewis, he had nothing to suffer.
As for Margaret, she was safely home; and the only mortification she had to endure, was her aunt’s tsking and declaring to her mother: “I told you she’d be walking home with a sweetheart!”
Fin.