The theme of the dance, so the students of the Glen High were told, was "1910," the year the recently departed British monarch King George V took the throne. It was, so Mr. Grant told them, in honour of him.
"Probably because of all the scandal surrounding King Edward right now," Jack suggested cynically after school.
Gwen looked troubled, and the other Owls nodded. All of them were familiar with the difficulties in England right now surrounding King Edward's desire to marry American divorcee Mrs. Simpson.
"Why anyone would want to marry a American is beyond me," Van said. "Much less one like that hussy."
Mrs. Douglas' views on Mrs. Simpson were common knowledge throughout the Glen; Van's opinion was mild in comparison.
"Do you really think he'll abdicate so he can marry her?" Gwen asked of anyone in the group.
Mary nodded. "I think it is almost a given by now."
"Best thing for everyone, if you ask me," Jack said. "Everyone knows the king is pro-German. England and all of us are better off without him."
"So long as the new king is different," Phil said.
"He will be," Mary asserted. "Why, even our Prime Minister considered him for Governor General! He has to make a good king, if he was considered good enough for Canada." Her eyes began to sparkle. "Just think, Prince Albert has two daughters, which means that if King Edward does abdicate and Prince Albert ascend the throne, for the first time in ages there will be a female heir to the throne of England!"
"The first since Queen Victoria," Lucy added, history being her pet subject. She beamed. "Imagine!"
"What are you all talking about?" Fanny asked, joining them. Fanny was not a member of the Owls, though Gwen would have welcomed her in. Jack was still cool toward her, and Fanny herself didn't seem to like Mary very much. She often hung around them, though, and Gwen hoped that gradually she would ease her way into the group.
"The dance," Lucy said breathlessly. "Oh Fanny, isn't it exciting that all classes can go, not just the upperclassmen? Freshmen never get dances."
"You wouldn't have gotten this one if Mother had had her way," Van reminded her. "She thinks fourteen is far too young for dances."
Lucy tossed her fair head. "Thank goodness Father has more sense."
"Do you all have dates yet?" Fanny asked, trying not to sound too eager.
"Gwen is going with me," Oliver said, quietly proud.
"And I'm taking Lucy," Phil said. The only way Mrs. Douglas had agreed to let Lucy go to the dance was if she was escorted by somebody absolutely trustworthy. The Glen boys that Mrs. Douglas considered trustworthy were few and far between, and Lucy had been in despair until Phil came to her rescue. Even Mrs. Douglas couldn't think up anything wrong about Phil.
Gwen knew that Phil would rather have gone alone, or even stayed home, but she was proud of his chivalrous gesture toward sweet Lucy.
"The rest of us are fancy free at the moment," Van said. "You?"
Fanny shook her head and couldn't keep her eyes from straying to Jack. "No, I haven't decided to go with anyone yet."
"Well, I'll take you," Van said promptly. Only Gwen noticed the disappointment on Fanny's face.
"Thank you," she said slowly.
"I'm going alone," Mary said. "Most boys bore me." She grinned at the male Owls. "Except you all, of course."
"Well, I would go with you, but I've already asked Lynde," Jack said, grinning back. "She told me this morning that Grandfather is insisting she attend, so I told her we could go together in hopes that she wouldn't be too terribly bored."
"That's our Jack, always a gentleman," Oliver said, slapping him on the back. The boys wandered off, and Gwen smiled sympathetically at Fanny before following them. She was due at Aunt Ruth's for tea and sewing, or she would have lingered to talk with her friend.
Mother and Aunt Nan had been fourteen in 1910, and some of their old party dresses were still packed away neatly in Ingleside's garret. As soon as Grandmother had heard the theme for the dance, she had pulled some of them out for Gwen, and Aunt Ruth promised to help her adapt them.
"I don't know why I saved these for so long," Grandmother said, "But I'm glad now that I did!"
Aunt Nan had been small and dainty at fourteen (and still was at forty), but Mother had been built like Gwen: long and lanky. Gwen chose three dresses for Aunt Ruth's inspection, unable to settle on just one.
"Well, I like the blue lawn, I think it's a perfect match for your eyes, but I'm afraid it is a summer dress, just not fit for winter frivolities," Aunt Ruth said, sighing over the tiny tucks and perfect stitches.
"I was afraid of that," Gwen confessed. "What do you think of the canary-coloured silk?" She liked that one herself—even after twenty-odd years in storage, it was still cheerful and bright, and she loved the little bows on it.
Aunt Ruth pursed her lips and shook her head. "It is lovely—and I'm sure it looked stunning with your mother's colouring—but neither the colour nor style are quite right for you, Gwen."
"Grandmother said that blondes shouldn't wear yellow," Gwen said glumly.
"Some shades of yellow would look darling on you," Aunt Ruth corrected. "A soft buttery shade, for example. But this is too bright, and the style is a little fussy for you. No, I think the winner is this white wool."
"It's so plain," Gwen objected. She had only brought it because she thought the wool might be the most practical.
"That's what makes it so spectacular," Aunt Ruth said. "Look at these stitches! And the pure lines! Look at the gold trim just bringing out the stunning simplicity of it! If you wear this, Gwen, you'll be the belle of the ball."
"If you say so," Gwen said doubtfully.
"I do," Aunt Ruth said decisively. "Let's try it on you, and see what we have to do to it."
"Will I have to wear a corset?" Gwen asked.
"Oh goodness, no," Aunt Ruth reassured her. "Undergarments were much more practical in your mother's day than in your grandmother's, and from all I've heard, Mrs. Blythe never believed in corsets anyway. The doctor said they were unhealthy and refused to allow one in the house."
"Sensible of Grandfather," Gwen laughed.
"You will have to have something with some stiffness under the dress, something to help define your figure, but nothing to crunch your ribs," Aunt Ruth concluded.
Gwen raised her arms, and Aunt Ruth dropped the dress over her head and helped it settle into place. Then she stepped back.
"Oh my," she said softly.
"What?" Gwen asked in alarm.
Aunt Ruth shook her head. "Turn around and look in the mirror," was all she would say.
Gwen turned slowly.
Staring out at her from the mirror was a beautiful woman. There was no other way to describe it. The dress's pure, floating lines, the elbow-length sleeves, the gently rounded bodice … all served to emphasize Gwen's willowy figure and the angles in her face. Her eyes looked startlingly blue above the white wool, and her hair was almost the exact colour of the gold trim around her neck, elbows, and hem.
"Oh," she said weakly.
"You were born into the wrong generation, my dear," Aunt Ruth said.
Gwen shook her head, but the reflection remained just as lovely. "They say Grandmother Blake was a stunning beauty in her day," she said vaguely.
"Well, I think you may be growing into that inheritance of beauty," Aunt Ruth said. She circled Gwen slowly. "Goodness, this needs barely any alterations, either! You are built exactly like your mother, my dear."
"What are we going to do about my hair?" Gwen asked, touching the still-short, straight locks.
"A curling iron, a few strategic pins, and a gold band around your head will work wonders," Aunt Ruth said. She smiled, looking like a girl again herself. "This dance, my dear, is going to be your night to shine!"
Part of Gwen liked the sound of that … but the other part of her was nervous. Really, she preferred being in the background while the other girls shone.
With any luck, though, some of the other girls would find dresses just as magical, and she would be only one among many.
From the chatter around the school in the following weeks before the dance, it did indeed seem that many of the girls had found the perfect dress from raiding their mothers' wardrobes. Even Lynde got into the spirit of things after Aunt Faith offered to lend her a stunning rose-coloured silk.
"I was saving it for the daughter Jack wasn't," she laughed. "But I'd rather you have it anyway, Lynde."
Fanny was going to wear a crimson gown that had been her mother's, determined that if she couldn't go with Jack, she'd at least make him notice her. Mary's mother had never had much time for nonsense like dances, but Aunt Persis did some scrounging amongst her discarded finery of the pre-war years and came up with a lovely smoke-blue wool.
"It was always too boring for me," she confessed with a wrinkled nose. "Goodness, how vain I was!"
Lucy was too large for her mother's clothing, taking after her father more in build as well as temperament, but Mrs. Douglas found from somewhere in the dry goods storeroom a stunning piece of kelly green satin, which she bullied Miss Martin, the town dressmaker, into making up for Lucy.
All the girls were buzzing over the dance, and many of the boys were just as excited.
"Don't you usually have dances during the school year?" Gwen asked Fanny.
"Not that include the freshmen and sophomores," Fanny explained. "Usually only the juniors and seniors get to go. And with the economy being so poor these last few years, even their dances haven't been anything much. That's why the planning committee decided to make this a costume dance, so that people could wear their parents' old clothes and nobody had to try to pay for a new frock."
"Except for Lucy Douglas," Gwen laughed.
"Except for her," Fanny agreed.
A few days before the dance, King Edward did indeed abdicate with the statement: "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love."
Grandfather, listening to this on the radio in the company of many of the aunts, uncles, and cousins, snorted loudly. "That's just a fancy way of saying that if he can't play by his own rules, he's taking his toys and going home."
"Well, well," Uncle Shirley said peaceably. "All's well that ends well. England gets a king who cares for her, and Edward gets his Mrs. Simpson." He raised his glass. "Here's to Prince Albert, soon-to-be King George VI."
"Hear, hear," Uncle Bruce said gravely.
"And here's to Princess Elizabeth, now the heiress presumptive," Aunt Faith said with flashing eyes.
"Hear, hear!" Gwen, Aunt Persis, and Aunt Ruth chimed in unison.
"Oh, these suffragettes," Uncle Jem laughed.
"You are behind the times, my dear," Aunt Faith informed him. "We haven't been suffragettes since before the war!"
"And now with a new king on the throne, pray God we will be prevented another war," Grandmother murmured from her chair in the corner.
"Amen," Uncle Shirley said after a pause. Gwen noticed that Uncle Bruce, however, looked pensive, and without knowing why her heart plummeted just a little.
Grandfather reached over and switched off the radio. "No need to listen to any more of that nonsense."
"Do you suppose they'll cancel the dance now?" Phil asked Gwen hopefully on their way upstairs to bed.
Gwen considered it, surprised to find that she was somewhat in favour of the idea herself, despite her beautiful white dress. "No," she conceded reluctantly. "They might even say that it is in honour of the new king, now!"
Phil sighed deeply. "I was afraid of that. Goodnight, Gwen."
"Goodnight," Gwen said sympathetically, and they parted for their own rooms.
Changing into her pyjamas, Gwen wandered over to the desk while she brushed her hair, mulling over some details of her Viking story. It wasn't coming together very well—for one thing, she knew nothing about the Vikings. For another, she was discovering that it wasn't very easy to write a story with the hero as a real person. Her fictional Trygve kept doing and saying things that worked very well for his character, but that would sound ridiculous from the real Tryg's mouth, and then she would laugh and break her own concentration. She was starting to think she should scrap the entire thing and start a new story, one that was completely fictional, not based on anything or anyone she knew.
Thinking all this out, Gwen glanced down to see an envelope sitting atop her papers on the desktop. Lynde must have brought it up earlier, while Gwen was out studying with the Owls. She recognized the handwriting and the distinctive India postmark, and her heartbeat picked up a little.
It was Mother's response to Grandmother and Grandfather's proposal for Gwen to stay.
Gwen held the envelope in her hand for a long time before she dared open it. What would Mother say? Would she be upset, disappointed in Gwen? What if she encouraged Gwen to stay? What if she refused? What did Gwen want, really?
She didn't know at all.