Having called her attention, he then struggled to voice what lay on his heart. “Are you… do you still mourn?”
He felt her lashes brush his cheek as she opened her eyes, but she did not draw away to look at him. “I believe I always shall, but it is… different. You said something like that to me once. I will never cease to think of Mother, and Father, and our child. Never will come the day when I do not wish they were here, nor regret the sorrow and pain inspired by their loss, but… it is well.”
He tipped his head down to look into her eyes. “How?”
Her fingers played along the edges of his ear as she thought. “I suppose I realised that I was losing that which I did still possess, the one I loved above all the others I had already lost. I had to decide to live the life I was given, and I knew I could not do that without you.
“I see now that I must have wounded you terribly—oh, how ungrateful I was! I will own the truth; there was a time when nothing you could do would please me because I was so determined to make myself unhappy. It was not because I wished to be so, or that I relished the distinction of grief, but because I did not feel it right to be otherwise. If I had turned to you, truly leaned on you… it would have seemed irreverent, somehow. I do not know how better to explain it.”
“I was grieving as well, Margaret. Did you think I did not? It was more than seeing the pain I had cost you—I could not share the burden of my own loss. You already carried too much grief and refused to release it. I would have helped you bear that.”
“And in the same way—” she brushed the hair that lay over his brow—“you would not share with me your troubles at the mill, when I would have rejoiced at the prospect of caring for you in that way. We are two stubborn, prideful people, John. How shall we ever learn to go on?”
“I imagine we will stumble often, but I hope we never again require such a painful lesson. I am stronger with you than I am apart from you.”
“What are we to do now? Where to begin again?”
He sighed. “I shall have to find work. We may need to remove to another city. After that… I do not know. Everything seems a loss before me now; all those years of building and working forward—simply gone. I can hardly recall what it was to start from nothing, nor what it was to have a vision for the future, but I thank heaven I am not alone.” He kissed her meaningfully on her forehead and released a long breath.
“I wished….” Her brow pinched, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth as she began to blink.
“You wished what?”
Her shoulders lifted, and she offered another faint smile. “I had wished to give you a family. Something else to build, that would stand as a testament to our lives, years after we had both gone. I could not help but think what satisfaction that would have given you, and what comfort it would be now, to know some part of us, at least, shall remain.”
“Love, it is not the machinery standing in that building, nor is it a daughter with your beautiful eyes or a son with my rather less beautiful nose which will be our legacy. Can we not stamp our imprint on all those others around us? Leave this world somewhat better by our passing? We have not been idle, for we have already begun on one another.” He smiled, a mirthful spark kindled once again. “Why, only think how clever you have become at business, and is that not my influence?”
She laughed, low and melodious—music to a man who had heard none in far too long. “And are you not so much more the refined gentleman than you used to be? I understand you are quite the Classic. I believe I can claim the credit for that.”
“No, indeed. That was your father’s doing. You, my love, have made me happy. None other has done that.”
She seemed to hesitate. “Have I, John? That was always my desire, but I feared I had failed.”
He splayed his fingers over her flesh, revelling in the simple pleasure of feeling her body close to his. When he spoke again, his voice was deep and hoarse. “Love, my happiness was never your responsibility, and you must not assume so much. Had I chosen to remain a solitary ogre and nothing more than an industrial magnate, it would have been my own fault, not yours. Blessed was the day Providence saw fit to give me you, and to open my eyes to all I lacked. In you, I find my joy.”
A tension seemed to drain from her chest, a breath she might not have known herself to be catching. “There is nothing dearer to me than that.” She stiffened again, her hands tightening over his shoulders. “John, I believe I owe you one more apology before I can be easy.”
“You owe me nothing, love.”
“But I do—an explanation, at the very least. I wounded you in London. I see that now. I knew it then, but I could not seem to change my actions. My family… they were determined to be displeased in everything about our marriage, and I had not the courage to stand against them. I had never lacked that before! Though I was often uneducated and perhaps even wrong, I was never hesitant to defend what I thought was right, nor to speak what I believed when first I met you.”
“You have suffered more of late, and they are your family, after all—not strangers lately brought to your notice who confronted all you had ever held dear.”
“That was what made it so much worse. My own relations refused to accept a reasoned, conscious decision; a choice for life that cannot simply be undone by their expressions of displeasure. They only spoke of what they had wished for me, and I was too much afraid to confess my true feelings. John! You must know—I would have you know—I never cared for Henry Lennox.”
His chest rose sharply beneath the steadying hand she had placed there, his breath feathering unevenly through the silken crown of hair under his chin. It was a moment before he found his voice, but when he did, the cracking of his tones betrayed more of his insecurities than he would have liked. “I am glad, love.”
“Oh, what a fool I have been!” she whispered, and slid her arms tightly round him again to burrow her head into his shoulder.
“Come, Margaret,” he soothed, “let us put this in the past. I do not care to think on it longer. You should know I have ever been one to look ahead rather than behind.”
She sniffled, attempted a light laugh, and drew back enough to wipe her eyes. “And what is before us? The mill you have spent your lifetime building has failed, we shall never have the children we longed for, and both your family and mine are put out with us. Precisely what are we looking forward to?”
He lifted her from the bed, caressing her cheek and drawing her under his arm. “Everything.”
28 June 1853
“Margaret, can this be real? Are we truly leaving Helstone and all we love behind? Oh, what can your father be thinking?”
Mrs Hale had not ceased trembling for a se’nnight, causing all about her to tend her with a concern which might have been better applied to their present troubles. Margaret, in particular, had felt the burden of her mother’s grief, for it was she who had most earnestly wished to be of some comfort, but her assurances which had been found the least desirable by their object.
Mrs Hale quaked now as they neared the train. The iron behemoth belched out a cloud of coal smoke and hot steam, and the press of passengers all about drove them relentlessly forward. She sought Dixon’s arm, but Dixon was occupied in demanding the services of a porter to take their smaller luggage.
“It will be well, Mamma. You know Papa has spoken with Mr Bell, and he has recommended a place for us—and he has a tenant in Milton who has pledged to help Papa.”
“But to leave Helstone! Oh, it does not bear thinking of. I see it now, though it is too late, what a haven it has always been! I never thought I should have to leave my home for an industrial city. Could we not have gone anywhere less horrid? Oh! Is the entire journey to be like this?” She shook anew as the great steam whistle cried out for passengers to board and grasped Margaret’s arm at last.
“Mamma, hold my hand,” Margaret soothed. “We will see that you are well settled and comfortable. And you know, Papa had set aside a sum for you and
Dixon to take a few days at the coast while we look for a house—will that not be like a holiday? I am sure it will do you good.”
But her mother was shaking her head. “Nothing good is to be found in this, Margaret. It is all a waste. Your father has been a fool, and he has ruined us all!”
Margaret made no reply to this accusation. She could not so readily abuse her father’s object, nor fail to applaud the sense of dignity which had forced him into this decision, but there was that lingering sense of disquiet. Once having settled his choice, he did not appear satisfied with it, nor confident in his direction.
He passed by them now, his eyes on the ground rather than the door of the train, and his mouth fallen into that habitual melancholy which bespoke his reluctance to do the thing he had determined. Margaret wished to stop him there and again ask if this was truly his desire, for if it were not, might not he speak again with the bishop? Might not some other situation be found which would not require her mother to spend her later years in a noisome black hole of a city? But Mr Hale appeared no firmer in resolve than his wife and only kept up the motions out of a seeming sense of pride.
Margaret tried to smile back at her mother. “Papa has gone ahead to take our seats. We shall have our own private little box, and you can sit beside me, and we will look out on all the sights as we pass.”
At this moment, Dixon reclaimed Mrs Hale’s other arm, and Margaret’s mother pulled away her hand so that she might draw out a handkerchief. Into this article she wept as she mounted the train.
The journey north was broken into stages; they took a London hotel, but there was no visit to their Harley Street relations to comfort Mrs Hale or to mortify her husband. Margaret had gazed longingly out at their usual stop as the train rolled away north. Edith would be in Corfu by now, and her aunt on her way to Italy. She sighed and stared down at her own rose-embroidered handkerchief, held ready in her lap in case her mother had need of an extra, but Dixon had kept Mrs Hale well supplied.
At last, the engine steamed into Heston, and the family took their lodgings for the night. Mrs Hale and Dixon had a small room not far from the shore, but it did not overlook the ocean.
“Mamma, see how close it is? It is only a short walk. I daresay you could be there in less than ten minutes.”
“Oh, Margaret, how could you think of it? I cannot walk so far. Am I not at least to have the pleasure of seeing the water before I spend the rest of my life looking at smoky, dirty city?”
Margaret could say little more, but she again offered her mother her handkerchief and was refused.
Dawn of the following day found Margaret and her father already on a train bound for Milton. Their ride was short, a mere half hour, but the scenery was that of another world. Margaret leaned close to the window and stared in silent awe. Cities, she had seen, but there was something to the raw, earthy quality of Milton which rendered it somewhere between the grit and mire of a destitute farm and the dark hopelessness of a coal mine, all splattered upon tall buildings that blocked the horizon. It looked to her like… like the fourth circle of Dante’s Inferno.
“Papa—” she nudged him gently to rouse him—“we are here.”
Mr Hale twitched—he had not truly found the comfort of sleep, but a pitiless daze had claimed his consciousness, in which he had no rest but a constant sense of helpless dread. He roused himself now and his gaze took in the charred buildings all round as the train drew into the station.
He did not speak, but Margaret was watching his manner, hoping to draw her courage from his resolve. She found instead a certain frailty of expression, in the slight twinge about his eyes and the nervous workings of his mouth. Perhaps in that moment, she understood. The course he had set upon terrified him as much as herself, and though it had been his determination, it was she who must carry him to it.
“Come, Papa—” she patted his arm—“the doors are starting to open. Where shall we go first?”
He looked down to a bit of paper drawn from his pocket, worn and soft from countless perusals and re-foldings. “A hotel on New Street. There is a room reserved for us.”
“Already? Mr Bell must have sent word?”
“No, it was the Mr Thornton I spoke of. I expect we shall meet him today. Mr Bell speaks highly of him and says he will prove a valuable friend in the city.”
She smiled and took her father’s arm, rather than waiting for him to offer it. “A friend would certainly be welcome.”
Yes, any friend, if it gave her father hope. Even a… what was Mr Thornton? A cotton manufacturer, if she remembered correctly. A shabby little king in a filthy little kingdom. She wrinkled her nose as they made their way to a cab.
Christian charity aside, the figures she saw lining the streets were ragged, dismal, and grey… everywhere she looked, from the stone buildings to the drab clothing and the colourless expressions on the faces of the people, it was all one shade of coal-blackened ambivalence.
“It seems a pleasant enough city,” she lied, squeezing her father’s hand. “We ought to do well here, Papa.”
29 April 1856
There was no fanfare announcing Marlborough Mills’ last day. No crowds of mourners lined the streets, no fellow mill owners commiserated with the failed master. The same workers came, and when the cotton ran out, they collected their final pay and went.
Had Margaret not come to know each face so intimately, she might have missed the darkened countenances, might have presumed them for a general malaise rather than blighted prospects. But she did know them, and her heart broke in pity as she looked on. They left in family groups, with husbands seeking out their wives and children clinging to their mothers.
Higgins, as something of an acting overseer, would not leave his post until the final, bitter moment. Nor did Mary, for John had insisted that on this last day, what remained of the food purchased for the yard kitchen be cooked up and served, and no one paid for their meal. Margaret had looked on Mary’s frantic haste with fascination and had finally persuaded the girl to allow her to help in bringing bowls of stew to the hungry workers as they left Marlborough Mills for good.
Not one worker pushed his way in front of another. Strange, how human nature often inspired a rabid quality in its bearers when something was offered without cost, but it was curiously absent on this occasion. Perhaps it might have been her own presence, the master’s wife, which gave them some pause, but all were reserved and gracious. Margaret could not help but marvel.
At last, the food ran out. Margaret went away with the larger group, but her steps carried her not towards the gates, but up to the master’s office. John had sunken into his chair, his elbow propped upon his desk and his weary eyes hidden in his hand.
She observed him a moment in concern as she hung her bonnet and shawl. “John?” He raised his head when he heard her, and she hungrily sought his expression for any symptoms of despair.
“Love,” he sighed, and rose from his desk. “That is the end of it. The last worker paid—I have but to wait on payment for the final orders, and then find someone to take the remnants, and we are finished.” He extended his arm, and she came to nestle into his embrace, leaning her head close until his breath tickled her hair.
“I found a house we might take. It is not so large as yours in Crampton was, but there is a place for Dixon. It should serve until I have secured another permanent position. I am to speak with Slickson tomorrow, for his nephew has a new mill in Leeds and is seeking an overseer. They have offered me the position, but I have not yet accepted it.”
Margaret pulled closer into his arms and rested her hand upon his chest. “An overseer.”
He stroked down her back. “Are you now affected by pride, Mrs Thornton? Shall it distress you to be an overseer’s wife?”
“No—” she twisted to smile up at him—“but I wondered about you.”
“I do as I must and thank heaven for the opportunity. I will confess, however, the prospect seemed all the more daunting yesterday than it do
es today.” He tightened his arm around her and rested his cheek upon her hair. “I only wish I could have done something more… look at them, Margaret.”
She looked to where he had gestured and could see that Nicholas Higgins and his family trailing through the yard, on their way home at last. Mary leaned upon her father, and the eldest of the Boucher children, who had recently come to work at the mill, held his far hand.
“Do you know where else they will find work?”
He shook his head. “I told Higgins I would have him on if I should go to another mill. Margaret! You have not seen this.” He pulled from her and turned to his desk, drawing out a long sheet of paper.
“Higgins brought it earlier. It is a round robin, signed by most of the hands; all stating their wish to work under me again, should I ever be in the position of hiring. This—” he scanned over the page, pride gleaming in his eyes—“this is something of a victory, I believe. I can think of no failed master who has received such a resounding endorsement of his labours from his workers.”
Margaret took the paper into her own hands, smiling at each name she recognised. “A victory it is—it is just right. You have not failed, John. You are simply going on to another opportunity.”
She returned the page, and he carefully put it aside to form the beginning of a stack of items he intended to carry away from the now useless desk. Margaret watched him with a growing swell of affection. Every movement was clear and determined. The set of his face, if not optimistic, was far from morose. She observed in silence, her heart full of memory and resolve, and so invested was she in his labours that she started when the door opened behind her.
John looked up before Margaret could turn. “Mother.” His face flickered in an instant of pain, then pleasure.
Hannah Donaldson’s grave expression swept over them both. Margaret’s presence she acknowledged with a faint softening about her eyes, a twitch of welcome upon her lips, but her concern was all for her son. “What is to be done?” she asked, with characteristic brusqueness.
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