Margaret of the North (19 page)

"Meeting Dolores probably
helped, too."  John said, smiling.

"Yes, indeed." 
Frederick grinned with pleasure as they both looked in the direction where
their wives stood in lively conversation.

John nodded with a smile, gazing
at Margaret as she listened intently to Dolores explain something about some
figurines on the mantelpiece.  He observed with a mix of pride and concern,
"Margaret might have adapted to this society with ease, particularly with
you here."

Frederick shot him a curious
glance and replied, "I did write her to come live with us after my father
died but she was not ready for such a momentous change.  I told her she could
come any time but eventually, I think you two found each other.  I cannot thank
you enough for coming to visit.  I despaired over not seeing my sister again
and I have spent many sleepless nights wondering how she was and what would
happen to her."

"I am glad she did not come
here," John replied, hesitated a moment, and went on.  "If she had
done so, I would have invented some excuse to come for her after I found out
who you actually were."

Frederick studied his countenance
briefly and smiled.  "I do believe you would have!  You have been good for
her.  She has a radiance I have never seen before."

**************

Luncheon, frequently a heavier
repast than dinner, usually took two hours and was followed by siesta which
occupied another two hours.  During siesta hours, the sun was at its zenith in
the summer and the local people tended to stay within the comfort of indoor
spaces.  Were Frederick not on vacation, he would have returned to his office
after the siesta and worked from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the evening.  Margaret vaguely
remembered siesta mentioned in one of her brother's letters and was not
surprised at the practice but John, used to a schedule of continuous work
during the day, found it perplexing.  Frederick and Dolores were faithful to
the custom, treated those hours of repose as a necessary indulgence that they
spent in their bedroom, and left John and Margaret to entertain themselves.

John and Margaret found
themselves, on their first two days in Cadiz, too languid from the luncheon and
too uncomfortable in the heat to do anything but seek the coolest part of the
house and laze around—talking or reading, with glasses of cold water and a
fan.  After a restless quarter of an hour in their bedroom, they settled on the
verandah where ocean breezes blew enough of the heat away to make it quite
tolerable.  By their fifth day, Margaret started to dose off from reading her
book.  The verandah bed became too tempting to resist and she yielded to it.

As she was drifting off to sleep,
she opened her eyes momentarily at the stirring next to her and saw that John
had come to join her.  The following days, John submitted willingly to the
exigencies of the weather and adapted to the local custom right after lunch. 
Towards the end of their stay, he loosened up enough to banish his cravats and
vests into their luggage, roll his shirtsleeves up to his elbows, and entice
Margaret to the big verandah bed for an afternoon siesta.

On a particularly lazy afternoon,
as they lay together, he said, "I could get used to this."

She sat up, suppressing a smile,
and exclaimed, eyes wide with feigned disbelief, "What?   And how could
you survive a dull life of careless days of ease?"

He pulled her back so she lay on
top of him.  "How could you remember something I said so long ago?  What
if I would rather not be reminded of it?"

"Would you really not want
to be reminded of that remark?  Should it not flatter you instead that what you
had to say made such an impression on me that I could remember it?"

"But it offended you at that
time so I would rather that you had forgotten it."

"Well, you might think that
but, in fact, what you told us shortly thereafter about what you had to do and
endure after your father died rather impressed me.  I was mortified and began
to think I had been too harsh on you."

"A fine way you had of
showing you were impressed by refusing to shake my hand!"  He feigned
offense by scowling at her and shaking his head.

"I really was ignorant of
the practice at the time.  Anyway, I could not admit then nor let anyone see
that you had begun to interest me," she replied archly and kissed his
mouth.  Then, she lay back next to him, her head on his shoulder.

"That is not all, either. 
Do you recall when Mr. Bell asked you what you worked so hard for and when you
intended to enjoy the fruits of your labor?"

John obviously remembered and did
so with some pain.  He groaned.  "I was an ass because I was consumed by
jealousy and still stung by your rejection.  I told myself I should hate you or
at least ignore you pointedly; instead, I could not get you out of my mind. 
And yet, you sat there looking serene and unconcerned.  Mr. Bell must have
thought me irrational and irritable."

"Well, yes, he did,"
she replied.  "But I told him you were not your usual self that night,
that something was troubling you."

He stared at her, his eyes wide
and incredulous.  "You knew that.  You defended me!"

"I knew by then that I loved
you just when I was convinced you no longer cared for me.  How could I possibly
reveal how I felt?"

"Did you think me uncaring because
of my callous remark to you?"

She shrugged her shoulders and
did not answer.

He clasped her close.  "Oh,
Margaret, my love!   All I was waiting for was a look from you so I could show
you how contrite I was."

She snuggled closer to him, still
silent, thinking that all that mattered then was he had his warm, reassuring
arms around her now.

After a long silence, John
returned to the question of leisure, "Well, it is true.  Leisure normally
discomfited me.  I had always been more at ease being busy, usually with work
at and for the mill.  I rarely did anything that was in service only of my mind
or my knowledge until I started studying with your father.  But this is a
different place and, with you, certainly a different time.  You have opened up
my world and I can no longer imagine it without moments like this with
you."  He kissed her forehead and closed his eyes.  On that verandah bed
that afternoon, as he settled snugly next to Margaret, he smiled wryly at
himself and thought, "Well, Mr. Bell, you won that argument."

In pleasing Margaret, John had to
open himself up to experiences that were new and, sometimes, even strange to
him.  He initially saw some places and people through her eyes before he
discovered something in them that he uniquely found intriguing or at least
interesting.  It had been so in Paris—at the museums and art galleries where
his reactions were, at first, colored by hers; at the cafés and theater where
she translated what she heard.  Though this was her first Paris visit, she recognized
many things from Monsieur Fleury's descriptions and the books he had sent her. 
Her delight and wonder soaking in the city, pointing to monuments and places
she read or heard about was infectious, inevitably drawing him into her
enthusiasm.

This trip that took them to new
places and exposed them to people with different customs, idiosyncratic ways of
thinking and of viewing the world had, indeed, been a journey.  It had changed
them both although it seemed to have affected him more than Margaret.  Paris,
in their brief sojourn, gave him a glimpse into a culture immersed in arts and
pleasure and the pursuit of both.  Yet, it was also deeply engaged in progress
and ideas—was it not, after all, the land of Diderot and Voltaire—and was
apparently on a well-planned path of modernization to better meet the needs of
its inhabitants.  It was a culture and a people equally at home with concerns
of a nature he would consider serious and important as well as those he once
relegated to mere "appearances" or even frivolities, nonessential to
survival or comfort.  He had to reconsider, to acknowledge that
"appearances" and "careless ease" were created for a
purpose, to nourish, perhaps, some higher human need.

Cadiz was a different
experience.  It had a careworn aspect about it, not surprising in possibly the
oldest city in Europe.  It did not have the frantic rush to modernity that
pervaded Paris.  Instead, underneath the constant buzz of commerce, it had the
languid ambiance of an aging city, with its medieval churches and tree-covered
plazas.  The warm balmy climate encouraged living alfresco much of the day and
public spaces—the open plazas, gardens, and beaches where breezes flowed freely
and continuously—teemed with people, drawn out of the houses they inhabited on
narrow winding streets.

It was, for John and Margaret, a
carefree interlude—a time of playfulness, of kissing and caressing, of
strolling on beaches under clear skies to the sonorous vocalizations of gulls
and the soothing coolness of sea breezes.  It was a time they would both often
hark back to during cold wintry days in Milton, a sweet respite from events
that came before and those that were still to come.  They expected the coming
years to be trying: John, as he once again faced the uncertainties of
establishing a business and Margaret, as she assumed new responsibilities and
adjusted to a society suspicious of, probably even hostile to, her southern
sensibilities.

**************

Margaret and John had originally
planned to stay in Cadiz for only a week, after which Frederick and Dolores
would take them to other towns and cities in the region.  But before the week
was over, everyone agreed that they should postpone the visit to other places
since they were all having a pleasant time being together and getting better
acquainted in Cadiz.  Thus, the week stretched to two and John and Margaret
only had time to see the cities Andalusia was well-known for. 

The two couples went to Granada
and Seville where they stayed a few days.  When merely seen on the surface;
Seville looked like a much larger inland incarnation of Cadiz, with plazas and
numerous churches, the most famous of which was its grand cathedral, the
largest Gothic cathedral in existence.  It had been built in the former site of
a mosque whose tower, the Giralda, still stood.  They also tried to see the
Alcazar, the royal palace, but the royal family was there and it was closed to
the public.  In Granada, they visited the Alhambra, an enchanting Moorish
palace, exotic in its intricate designs, its colorful tiles, and its fountains
and pools.  Its location on a hill up above the city was, no doubt, strategic
for its defense against invaders.  Margaret vaguely recollected hearing the
Alhambra mentioned by someone and, going around its rooms a second time, she
realized it was Fanny.  She had to agree that the Alhambra was indeed a very
special place to visit.

The month with Frederick and
Dolores passed too quickly for Margaret and Frederick whose parting was nearly
as tearful as their reunion.  They all vowed to meet again, anywhere else but
England, of course.  By the time, John and Margaret boarded the boat back to
Marseilles, they agreed to meet Frederick and Dolores in Paris in two to three
years.

The passage back to England
proved demanding for Margaret.  She suffered bouts of dizziness and nausea from
the constant swaying and occasional turbulence of the ship they took from Cadiz
to Marseilles and, later, from the even more tempestuous passage on the ferry between
Le Havre and Dover.  By the time they reached England, she seemed in a stupor,
her eyes glazed and her face drained of color and brightness.  She leaned
heavily on John as she walked down the ramp and once on the pier, she felt
faint and enervated, her spirit sucked out of her.  John was alarmed and
insisted on spending the night at a hotel in Dover.  There, he asked for a
local doctor to see his wife.  The doctor found nothing to be seriously
concerned about and declared it a bad case of seasickness that should go away
in a couple of days.  In the meantime, he gave her a potion to control nausea
and put her to sleep and prescribed very light bland meals for a day or two. 
Margaret slept peacefully through the night, woke up late the next day, and felt
well enough to insist, despite John's hesitation, on resuming their journey
back to Milton.

Before returning home, they
stopped in London where Dixon waited at the Lennoxes with the remainder of
Margaret's belongings not transported on Dixon's previous trip to Milton.  They
stayed one night during which Margaret rested further and was fussed over by
Edith and Mrs. Shaw  who, remarking on her looking ill, were informed of her
troubles at sea.  Even Edith's little boy was drawn into the effort, offering his
aunt a small posy of flowers picked out of the vases all around the house and
coming to see her several times during the day to embrace her and kiss her face
all over.