Part Love Story, Part Travelogue Pt 10
Our
Love – Story
My Grandmother Margaret E. Winslow, 1908
BY SWEETHEART (SHARED BY J. STEWART)
( click here for other installments)
Installment #10:
Margaret communicating without words....? What an expression! ha! Photo from 1904, from one of her albums.
It tied in with her story ~ her wager with Mr. Stewart that she wouldn't speak on the boat ride across the lake ~ but she attempted to communicate with expressions and 'signing'!
One of the boys from home took you canoeing the next afternoon. He was a Princeton man and your thoughts were very much on another Princeton man whose pin you were wearing and whose image haunted you when you recalled your answer to Mr. Stewart the night before. Poor Little Girl That Was your mind was beginning to be troubled as it was for many days troubled sorely, until your heart came into its own and created this new, happy me. All your worrying, however, couldn’t keep you from looking forward to your dinner trio and wondering whether your guardian would have a new plan in store for your evening. He did, and the last smoke wreath dissolved, through whose gossamer you found him looking at you with an intent expression in his blue eyes. You were put in a car by the two boys and told you were going to Leschi. This proved to be a small lake resort whose chief asset was a fine dance floor which was not in use that night. So you took the little boat which was bound for the Fair grounds and sailed toward the wonderful spectacle. I am laughing at that short trip, Other Girl, for I remember how you made a wager with Mr. Stewart that you wouldn’t speak all the way across the lake, apropos of some teasing remark he had made with reference to your chronic state of being engaged in conversation. You won, but, as you remarked gaspingly when you set foot on the dock, it almost killed you. Mr. Smith was a friend indeed, bearing with your attempts to communicate in the deaf and dumb language while Mr. Stewart was making observations in the engine room. Later he explained the mechanism of the engine to which you responded with shrugs and manipulations causing the engineer to inquire with sympathetic concern, “Is the lady deaf and dumb?”
Arrived at the Fair, however, you strolled thru the grounds making up for your previous bottling and enjoying the scenes of splendor which you have left with me. Finally you turned homeward. Mr. Smith went on to his room while Mr. Stewart lingered to say goodnight to you. It was late but people seemed to be awake and abroad. Consequently your chief objection to Mr. Stewart embracing you, now that you believed you understood his motive, was that somebody would be turning in at your gate. So you made frequent attempts to shake hands with the fictitious alarm ~ “Here comes somebody.” But your guardian was not to be alarmed and presently indicated that he was going to kiss you. Heretofore you had been successful in dodging and resisting but now his strength overpowered. While he kissed you you struggled, even beating at him ineffectually with an imprisoned hand, your thoughts and emotions racing thru you like wild things. Finally you broke away. “You shouldn’t have done that,” you sobbed, and left him without another word. Up to your room you stumbled and even now, dear Other Girl, I don’t like to remember how alone and wicked and hurt and scared you felt all at the same time. You couldn’t sleep for your thoughts were like restless waves never reaching a shore. At last however you fell asleep, to awake with a problem to be solved.
You carried the problem next door to breakfast with you for it would not allow you to sleep late. As you unfolded your napkin at the little table where you sat alone, the boys breakfasted early, a card dropped out and fluttered to the floor. On picking it up you found it to be one of Mr. Stewart’s calling cards with the accompanying inscription, “Merry Xmas this mornin’ child.” In spite of the problem you smiled and the day grew a little too bright for you to forego the pleasure you and Mr. Stewart had planned for its evening. So you hurried downtown to the theatre where you purchased tickets to entertain Roger with the next afternoon in lieu of accompanying him to a dance which you did not care to attend. From the theatre you went out to the Fair Grounds where you spent the rest of the day. In the afternoon you listened to the entire band concert which was given in the shell-like music pavilion, after which you visited several of the buildings and culminated your day of hesitation about meeting Mr. Stewart at six o’clock in view of his previous evening’s misdemeanor, by being at the appointed place shortly after five. Ah! Other Girl how glad I am that I don’t have to conduct you again thru your mazes of thought and reasoning. If I can coin a noun they were often mazes of heartening, but wherever you are you know them and can spare the labor. So at the edge of the pool where the geyser continually mounted and crouched with a sibilant swish, you waited, consulting your watch every few minutes and attempting to digest statistics from pamphlets pertaining to Alaska and Hawaii. When the long hand had traveled a very few spaces beyond the numeral VI you were conscious of someone standing beside you. Your firm intentions to be unnaturally dignified melted like dew before Mr. Stewart’s hearty, “I fooled you, didn’t I? Well, I hope I didn’t do some hustling back to 1208, then here.” Before you knew it you were enthusiastically telling him what you had been doing all day and were seated in the terrace dining room of the New York building. As you disposed of your tete-a-tete dinner looking down over the grounds and toward the lake, your problem seemed foolish in that it made of itself a problem and you resolved to enjoy without deferring to it. So when you viewed the pictures in the old colonial rooms and walked toward the music pavilion you felt quite at ease again. Your guardian was so sane by pre-goodnight-time and so interesting and so jolly that you counted yourself fortunate in having found one who could be so disinterestedly kind to a stranger in a strange city. Consequent upon your reassured feelings you reveled in the evening you spent outside of the pavilion. The music was so appealing, some numbers martial, some soft and tender. It was during one of the latter that the lights outlining every building and scattered through the trees began to glow, brightening gradually until the nightly blaze of glory was complete. Everything seemed enchanted. Mr. Stewart was smoking, sometimes with his eyes shut where you looked up at him. He would feel that you were looking and open them upon which you would tease him for falling asleep. But I remember, Other Girl, how you liked to think that he was tired and could feel enough at home with you to give way to his desire to rest. It all seemed so natural, too, sitting there with him while the music now stirred now softened your emotions. It was such a happy night, and the homegoing by way of the boat made a beautiful close. You went to bed with its memories locked in your heart and Mr. Stewart’s deference to your goodnight wishes pleasantly stamped in your brain.