CHAPTER 1
There are very few things in life about which one can be certain. As I sat in my room preparing for a party that I would never attend had it been a choice of mine, I went over thoughts in my head that I, in my own mind could be certain about. I realized a long time ago, that I never fit in anywhere. Not the way I was supposed to anyhow. Turn of the century New England had rather strict social standards for their society elite. I did my best to fit in for my mother's sake, but never did I try as hard as I knew was expected. I found myself too shy for society life like my mother.
My family was different than many others from this area, but none the less wealthy or highly looked upon. My mother and father, like so many others, married not for love, but for the connections they could receive from a life with one another. Their lives on the outside were happy and contented, but there was no love between them and I've always doubted if their marriage was ever even consummated. After many unhappy years together, my mother announced that she wanted a child. Three weeks later, my father brought me from Chicago, where I was born to Maine where they lived. I had always suspected that I was not really of blood relation to them. My mother, Elizabeth, was very tall and almost olive complected. Although her hair was pale blonde, she had deep brown eyes and very plain features. My father, Joseph, had been a bright red headed child, that thankfully faded slightly with age. He also had brown eyes and a brown beard that I really never liked much. Though he was in his mid forty's, even now, he seemed to have freckles that never faded away from his youth.
I was very different from both of them. I had very light skin, "like cream", the girls at school used to remark. My hair was mahogany brown, which seemed to have red undertones in the sunlight, and appeared jet black at night. My eyes were a bright green, which my father said inspired him to buy an emerald ring and matching earrings for my thirteenth birthday. Furthermore, unlike either of my parents I was rather short and petite. When I was ten, I asked them both straight out. They were shocked with my boldness and weren't sure how to answer except to blurt out the truth that I had been adopted. It seems to bother them much more than it ever bothered me. Even though I wasn't their child, it didn't matter to me really. I loved them, they were my family.
I'd blossomed into womanhood early and from the moment I'd turned fourteen, suitors by the dozen started turning up on my doorstep. My mother was thrilled that my, "ravishing beauty," as she'd called it on more than one occasion, was attracting boys and men from miles around. It did nothing more than embarrass and annoy me. My mother's joy didn't last long, she soon realized that my maladroit personality kept them from coming back more than two or three times. By the time I was sixteen, they had completely stopped coming, much to my relief. I would be eighteen in a few months, and according to my mother, had secured a position for myself as an old maid by turning all those men away. Apparently I'd labeled myself as the unattainable and uninteresting beauty. I'd never minded being alone, in fact, I preferred it. I was that, 'one in a million' girl that spent her days and nights nose deep in books of all kinds. I loved the rush of excitement from a decent plot line, and especially knowing I myself didn't have to endure the trials and tribulations that came with doing it all in real life.
Needless to say, I was very well read. Mother found no point in books, she said they got me nowhere. My father hadn't much to say. I'd always been his pride and joy, I don't think if I'd had webbed toes and feathers he would have seen anything at all wrong with me. To him, whatever I did was just perfect. I think he secretly was glad that he wasn't having to fight men off his only daughter with a stick. He knew none of that interested me.
Although I would never admit it to anyone, I knew that the gnawing feeling I got sometimes while I lay alone in the darkness of my room, was regret and loneliness. Though none of the men that had ever come to call had interested me, I wondered secretly to myself if I truly would, always indeed be alone. That thought haunted my dreams on rare occasions, waking up an old woman, alone in my room, no family, no friends, surrounded head to toe, with stacks of dusty books. I shuddered at the thought and pushed it to the back of my mind.
Charlotte our house worker had finished fixing my hair, which now hung in ringlet curls more than half way down to my waist, and helped me into my dress. I was always thankful to have her around, especially when getting ready for parties. The dresses that were supposed to be worn to parties like this always seems to need more than one person to get into. Sadly, this made those dresses vastly more uncomfortable than the ones I liked to spend my days around the house in, Those at least, didn't require a corset and an army of helpers to put them on. This dress in particular was from a shopping trip my father had taken me on in New York City. He always wanted me to have the finest clothes in the newest fashions, and my mother also insisted upon this. Again, I think this was in her hope that would finally attract a potential husband.
Although I usually never cared, this dress was definitely one the favorite ones I'd ever had. It was a white floor length silk bodice with a dipping 'V' neck and no sleeves. It had a lace sash that went across one shoulder around my breast and connected at the hip. Around the hips was another silk piece that billowed out slightly to accentuate my petite waist line. It gathered in the back making a train that flared out slightly behind the dress. My favorite part was starting under the arm of the right side of the dress were various shades of hand embroidered blue flowers. Each one having tiny sliver beads in the center. They must have taken hours to make each one and they flowed down the side of the dress that cascaded like a waterfall to the floor.
When Charlotte had helped me finish dressing, I sat down at the vanity and put on the new shade of lipstick that I'd bought. I stood up, taking one last look in the mirror before picking up my white mesh wrist length gloves and slipping them on my hands. I began to feel overwhelmed an I slowly descended the stairs to the hall where my mother and I departed out the front door and stepped into the carriage.
Sitting quietly absorbed by thoughts of dread mixed with the rush of my brain to try to think of topics I could talk about with no inept lapse in the conversation, I realized that we soon had pulled into the drive of the Johnson's house.
"Mother? Remind me again what this party is for?" I didn't want to seem foolish if someone mentioned it and I had no idea why I was truly there.
"It's more of a duel event," she remarked without looking at me. "We are trying to raise money for a new wing on the hospital, and there is a new family in town that may be willing to help with the donation toward that. The charity committee I'm on would like them to feel as welcome as possible."
"Here were are," stated the driver as he pulled open the door for us to get out. My mother stepped out first and I followed. We walked quietly and gracefully up the front steps and the butler held the door open for us as we entered. Looking inside, it took every particle of restraint in me, not to be sick all over the oriental rug.
As was typical for me at these parties, as soon as we arrived I would try to find myself a group of girls that would carry most of the conversation, so that I wouldn't have to think up things to say. I was not a socialite like my mother, who spent almost everyday involved with her friends catching up on the local gossip. I much preferred my own company and the company of a few people close to me.
I stood for at least a half and hour with the same group of chatty girls, some of who left to dance periodically, others who had empty dance cards but so much to say that it never bothered them. I didn't dance, ever. It's not that I couldn't, quite the opposite, I just detested the contact of strange men who seemed to stare at all the wrong places and times. The men who knew me knew better than to ask.
I pretended to listen as Mary Johnson and Rebecca Hadley gossiped and chatted away. I never had much to input, but sometimes I found it funny. I really couldn't understand sometimes why they cared so much about idle things. As the music played and the night wore on, I found it harder and harder to ignore the stares from a young man across the room I didn't know. Try as I might to stare at the floor and not notice, every time I looked up, he was staring right at me and every time I noticed my face went flush. I'd never seem him before tonight, which was strange to me. In the wealthy community my parents engaged themselves with it was very rare to find a newcomer, As I looked around further, I noticed a few more faces I didn't recognize, Four other than himself if my count was correct. All together in a group. One couple side by side, in their mid twenties I would guess, and two younger girls both around seventeen or eighteen I would guess. One girl seemed very happy, smiley, with dark shoulder length hair. She was short, even shorter than I am, and she had deep chocolate brown eyes. The other was beautiful strikingly so. She had long strawberry blond hair that if not intricately woven in an elegant style would have easily reached past her waist. She unlike the girl at her side, had blue eyes a half smile graced her lips. Without me knowing, suddenly the raging gossip turned and I was the focus.
"Madalyn, that boy is staring at you. He has been all night," Mary said with a soft giggle.
"Beg pardon?" I questioned quickly, mostly because I hadn't been paying good enough attention to realize anyone else had noticed.
"Right there, look," she stared straight through the crowd of dancers, her eyes focused on the young man that I had noticed but not recognized. Quiet giggles were now coming from all directions of the circle as Christine, a girl to my left said, "He's handsome." In shock, embarrassed and shy I wondered for about half a second what I should do before my nerves took over. My face immediately flushed bright pink and again I began to feel a sick nervousness in the pit of my stomach. All the girls around me seem to now have focused their attention on him. I began to comfort myself in the fact that maybe it hadn't been me he'd been looking at after all.
I was, in fact in a very large crowd of girls. Then, rather loudly, Martha Kent said, "He's coming over here." Soft squeals of delight and feverish giggles surrounded me and then I realized somewhere in my mind, that it WAS me he was looking for. This had me ever so quickly moving through the crowd away from those girls. I politely dodged and weaved my way through at least a dozen groups of people before stopping to pause for a moment. My face toward the wall, I slowly turned around, anxious to see if I was still being watched or followed. My face was toward the floor and when I looked up, to my shock, I stood face to face with the young man from the crowd.
I was stunned. He was breath taking. Nothing like I had ever seen before. I gasped audibly taken aback with his beauty. His deep bronze almost chocolate colored hair was a color I'd never seen and his eyes were golden with flecks of deep green. They were golden like topaz, or fields of wheat, maybe something in between, but they were not a color with a name. I was completely lost for an amount of time that I am not totally aware. For a moment, I'd lost all anxious feeling and was deadlocked in awe. I must have looked ridiculous standing there staring, but I'd lost all coherent thought, I had never been over taken by emotion for another person before and it was shocking to me. I think I'd forgotten to breathe for a moment and then he broke my trance when he said something, but I had no idea what it was he said. I stood there saying nothing too nervous to speak up, too embarrassed to admit I had been so smitten I hadn't heard.
Like a strike of lightening in a black night, suddenly dawned on me what he had said when he quickly but politely took me by the arm and moved me about three feet out further into the crowd. He'd asked me to dance, and in my stupor I hadn't heard him. Should I turn to run? I couldn't panic without looking insane. It was too late now, we were in the middle of a group of quick moving dancers and before I could protest, I was dancing. My hand in his, his other on my waist. His hands were warm. The one on my waist seemed to be boring heat in through my dress. After a few seconds I figured it wasn't so bad after all, I began to relax until I realized that he was doing most of the dancing. My feet very rarely were touching the floor. I was grateful for this because I'd been so taken aback, I didn't know what dance this was, and I was too flushed by his presence to remember steps even if I had known. I look up at him and our eyes locked. He stared into my eyes as if he was looking through me and into my soul.
The part that was the most bizarre to me was when the dance was over, it was as if he'd disappeared as quickly as he'd materialized in the first place. We'd bowed to each other quickly, as you do when a dance is over, and when I looked up he'd vanished. I'd looked left, then right and saw him no where. I couldn't believe that I felt slightly hurt, I wondered what I'd done wrong. I was shocked with myself because I spent the rest of the night, trying to look casually through the crowded room, around corners and even outside for a glimpse, never seeing him again. I spent the rest of the party hoping I hadn't made a fool of myself and wishing I'd meet up with those golden eyes again. To no avail, I left the party at quarter past midnight having seen no sign of him again and knowing nothing about him. I was at a loss for words.
