As the months passed, Charles’s attention had become increasingly fixed on Margaret – and hers on him. By the summer, they had shared many walks and conversations. Her health rapidly improved and she started helping in the village school again and teaching in the Sunday classes at the Zion chapel.
She sat through services in the chapel on bright summer Sundays struggling to discipline her thoughts to prayer. But Charles, sitting sideways at the front of the church, was all that filled her mind and her besotted heart. She spent whole hours trying to conceal the fact that her gaze was fixed on his profile, the pale skin, dark hair and solemn expression of one who has deep knowledge of the spiritual. Charles had a way of rolling his eyes heavenwards as if possessed of unearthly visions.
‘Well, that’s a good trick,’ Annie said once, irreverent as ever. ‘I’m surprised Father doesn’t have a go at that. It makes him look awfully holy.’
‘Annie, you’re so . . .’ Margaret swallowed her rage. Annie was so cynical! She believed Charles was holy. He was the most astonishing person she had ever met. And her father was also deeply involved with Charles Barber. Charles, passionately devout, was to be the son he had lost; was to fulfil the visions of service that her father had hoped for himself.
‘Just because you’re mad about him,’ Annie retorted. ‘It doesn’t mean he’s perfect. I wouldn’t have him bossing me about the way he does you.’
Margaret had to leave the room before she lost her temper. She was so utterly caught up in Charles by now that she would have done anything he said. It was true that Charles had some odd ways with him. But she was so eager to comply with his wishes that there was never any quarrel between them.
Now that she was surfacing from her long confinement, though, she noticed changes in her father. He had aged. His face was more lined and set in an expression of granite-like severity which he must have attempted to soften when he visited the sickroom. She saw now, as she had never quite seen before, how much of a happy and gentle influence their mother had been. Leah had been kindly and open-minded, enjoyed life and laughter, even wearing the odd piece of jewellery. And their father had once been easier going. Now, something in him had hardened and become rigid.
In the summer, after a long period of restrained talk, things changed between Margaret and Charles. They were out walking one lovely June evening. It was near dusk and a warm breeze gently moved the willow fronds along the river. She had asked him to tell her more about his family. All she knew was that he was from London.
‘My mother and father are no longer with us,’ he said stiffly. ‘He died of consumption, she of influenza. My only remaining relative is my grandmother. I have no brothers or sisters.’
Margaret was surprised. She had somehow imagined him as part of a large, loving family, or at least hoped that he was. She thought he was not going to say anything else, and when she turned to look at him she saw on his face a dark expression she had never seen before, just for a second, like a passing cloud.
‘My mother was the pattern of all a woman should be,’ he said. ‘That’s the only way I can describe her.’
‘I see,’ she said, somehow feeling put down, against this woman whom no one could match. ‘And your father?’
He drew in a sharp breath. ‘In my family, the men are either lions or mice,’ he said. ‘My father was a mouse.’ There was such a bitter tone to his voice now that she found him forbidding and did not like to ask any more.
They had walked on, ascending the hill again, and paused to look out across the valley. Margaret’s heart had only just stilled from the brisk climb when Charles caught her hand.
‘Come,’ he commanded. His eyes met hers, with a new intensity. ‘It’s time.’
Puzzled, she followed him back into the line of trees, he still holding her hand, which he had done only a few times before. Once they were under the canopy, he turned to face her, laying his hands on her shoulders. Seeing the look in his eyes, her legs went weak. It was not just her own heart that was captured. She could see in his eyes that he was full of a fierce emotion and that moved her further still.
‘My dear Margaret,’ he said. ‘All this time we have been growing in friendship as godly brother and sister. You are so much younger than me but I sense that you feel as I do – that there is a bond stronger than death which has formed between us. You are mine – I am certain of it.’
The words pierced her to the core. She stood trembling, looking up into his eyes. Her future unfurled before her. They would marry, she would be the wife of a distinguished and passionate man of God. Charles had talked many times of his sense of calling to the mission field in the wider world. Her life would open like a flower, serving the Lord and caring for this extraordinary man.
‘You feel it too, don’t you?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, her pulse so fast that she almost thought she might faint. And she did feel it – sensations that vibrated through her because he was close to her and was affected by her.
Charles suddenly put his head back and drew in a sharp breath. Then he looked at her again with a strange shrewd expression, as if warily assessing her. Margaret’s blood seemed to slow for a chill second, as if she had done something terribly wrong.
‘God, woman – you have no idea just how lovely you are, do you? How alluring? You test my will every day – seeing you . . .’
He drew her to him, planting his lips upon hers so suddenly that she almost cried out. She was overpowered by his body, the sound of his breathing, his tongue, the way he pressed her close against him. Was this right? Was this what a man did? She had so little idea about anything. She and Annie had no mother to ask about such private things. But she was overcome by the emotional force of him as well as his physical strength. After all her years of sickness and uncertainty, God had answered her prayers in the form of this wonderful man and his overwhelming need of her.
‘We must marry – very soon,’ he said when he drew back, and his eyes burned into hers.
Margaret was reeling from the suddenness of this. ‘I don’t think Father will allow me to marry until I am twenty-one.’
‘Twenty-one?’ His voice was tense, almost angry.
‘But you are only nineteen, are you not? That is an age away!’
‘But if we are promised . . .’ She began to protest gently. Surely that was enough? She found herself rather afraid of his passion. They could wait two years and then marry – they had their whole lives ahead of them!
They began to make their way back down the grassy hill. Charles had gone quiet.
‘My dear,’ he said, after a while. ‘I am not sure I could bear to wait for you so long, my need of you is so great.’
Margaret was moved by this, but at the same time baffled. In her innocence she could not see what real difference it made whether they were married or not, if they belonged to each other. Even after Charles’s kiss, physical relations between men and women were a vague, distant thing to her. Animals were really the only thing she had to go on and even then, she just did not believe that human beings really did exactly as she sometimes witnessed beasts of the field doing.
‘But I must be restrained,’ he was saying. ‘Perhaps it is best if I do not touch you again. I must keep my distance, Margaret. I am a good deal older than you – I shall speak with your father and see whether he might allow us to marry sooner. I believe he has some faith in me so he might be prepared to bend.’
Within the month, without any consultation with Margaret, William Hanson conceded to Charles Barber that the two of them might marry after her twentieth birthday which would be in February the following year – 1905.
‘Do you really want to get married?’ Annie asked as they went to bed that night.
Margaret sank down on her bed. ‘He is a good man,’ she said. She was hardly acquainted with her own will. It never stood alone. It was entwined with her father’s, with Charles’s, with that of the Lord God Almighty. ‘Together we can do a great deal, I think.’
Annie looked seriously at her. ‘I know you don’t believe me, but I think he’s . . . I’m not sure. There’s something about him I don’t like. He’s too sure of himself. Too . . . I’m not sure what the word is – bossy.’
‘Bossy?’ Margaret laughed. ‘That coming from you!’ She flared up suddenly. ‘How can you say that? You saw what he was like when he came. He was a broken reed . . .’
‘If you say so.’ Annie turned away, reaching for her nightdress.
‘Well, you’d better start liking him a bit more,’ Margaret said frostily. ‘Since he’s going to be my husband and your brother-in-law.’
Even saying this sounded strange and unreal. No doubt in time she would get used to it.
Charles kept to his word for the next few weeks. The two of them still visited in the village together, walked and talked, though she was aware of a certain strain between them. He did not seem to open his heart to her in the warm, confiding way that he had done before. She wondered if Charles was angry with her. He was often moody and curt.
‘Is there anything wrong, Charles?’ she asked nervously a number of times, willing him to come back to her.
‘Not in the least,’ he would say politely, giving a forced smile that hardly reassured her. Just when they were promised to each other, when they could be at their closest and most loving, he had become cold and impossible to understand, almost as if he was punishing her for something. Miserably, she searched her memory for anything she might have done wrong.