In Consequence: A Retelling of North and South

by Trudy Brasure

  Stepping toward the platform’s edge with heightened trepidation, he peered over to find the perpetrator, a gangly drunk clothed in the garb of a railway porter. The remembered whiff of gin now caused the Master to grimace in disgust. A low groan came from the inert, crumpled form below before his head lolled to one side and he began to come to life.

  John’s heart battered wildly beneath his ribs as he rushed to tell the station-master of the injured man. “You will please look after one of your porters. He took a fall off the platform after accosting a passenger. He smells strongly of gin,” he managed to explain with a forced air of calm authority while his arms and limbs trembled uncontrollably.

  “Of course, Sir! I’m sorry, Sir … shall I call the police?” the station-master asked in flustered obedience.

  “No! The gentleman has departed and I must be away,” Mr. Thornton replied as he sped to return to the cab awaiting his return.

  Once inside, he slumped against the leather cushion in the black privacy of the small compartment. His mind whirled in countless directions until it rested upon two points: Frederick would be safely out of the country in a matter of hours, and any babbling about a mutineer from a drunken sot would stand as nothing against his own word. His pulse resumed a more normal pace and the tension slackened from his tightened muscles. Resolved to make no mention of the frightful encounter at the station, Mr. Thornton had gained the better part of his solid composure by the time the cab pulled up to the Crampton house.

  Margaret noted the tension that tinged his reply to her welcoming inquiry, but supposed it was only begotten of the questionable nature of his accomplished mission. She bowed her head with a trace of shame and a swell of meek gratitude that he had sacrificed his position and principles to safeguard her brother.

  *****

  The day of the funeral arrived. No sunlight pierced the murky clouds above the bustling town as a black-plumed carriage from Marlborough Mills jostled over cobbled streets toward Crampton. Unable to bear being abandoned in the barren spaciousness of her new home, Margaret accompanied her husband in her best black crape, determined to offer her father her aid as far as it was required.

  Mr. Hale moved in a haze of helpless despair under Margaret’s fluttering attentions. A gentle entreaty from Mr. Thornton, stating that the hour had come, seemed to penetrate the mist of self-inflicted suffering. The former vicar’s eyes rose to follow the calm behest of his son-in-law. The older man leaned on the arm of the younger, as John led him to the waiting carriage.

  Margaret watched them leave partly in relief but with a whisper of discontent to be banished by custom from the ceremony that would be the last acknowledgement of her mother’s brief part in this earthly existence. Nevermore would she see her mother’s face. All alone in the quiet parlor, she sank to her knees and covered her face with her hands as she allowed the flow of tears, so bravely withheld, to come freely.

  Between the anchoring support of his new son-in-law and his old Oxford friend, Mr. Hale endured the ritual proceedings, softly muttering the vicar’s lines in time, the cadence of words giving meager comfort even if their import rose beyond the grasp of desperate grief at the moment of this official sundering.

  Margaret was dry-eyed and composed when the mourners returned. Standing in the window with her Bible in hand, she set it aside to go to the door.

  With Mr. Bell on one side, and her husband on the other, her father was guided into the house by his loyal friends. The internment of his wife had stricken him nearly blind with grief, and he now tottered between the stronger men as some frail old man. Margaret’s face paled to witness it.

  With glances of worried thanks given to his helpers, she kissed her father and led him to his easy chair, forthwith busying herself preparing refreshments.

  When all had eaten, very little having passed through Mr. Hale’s lips, he expressed his desire to retreat to his chambers.

  “Why don’t you go home,” Mr. Bell proposed to the careworn daughter, when her father had disappeared up the stairs. “I will stay here as long as necessary. Do not overburden yourself today, my dear,” he finished, receiving a grateful glance from the newly married husband.

  A knot of sadness pulled tight and heavy in Margaret’s stomach as their carriage returned to Marlborough Mills. Torn between caring for father and husband, she felt an oppressive futility in rising to fulfill the role of serving either with the wholehearted devotion she desired to give. She swallowed to fend off the tears of despair that sprang to her eyes.

  John escorted her into the drawing room, where Fanny and his mother offered their appropriate condolences to Margaret. Aggrieved that duty called him to leave her in her suffering state, he explained to his wife in his most tender voice that he must tend to a few things at the mill and would return as soon as he was able.

  The new wife nodded her compliance, reluctant to let him go, but knowing all the while the burdens of his obligations. Ever gentle with her, he had patiently born the weight of compounded responsibility for days. How could she object to his faithful accomplishment of every task? Loneliness wrapped around her like a shroud as soon as the echo of his footsteps faded away.

  When he returned later to the same room, his wife was not in the room. “Where is Margaret?” he asked with an anxious tone that pricked his mother with annoyance.

  “She has just gone to her sitting room. She wished to write to her cousin in London, I believe,” Hannah answered pointedly, letting him know the girl had not been abandoned by his family. Indeed, he would never know what a trial it had been to keep company with the grieving girl for the hour or so he had been gone. When to speak, what to say, how to keep her engaged and yet give her time alone with her thoughts? All of these concerns had become a hard-worn chore for the normally taciturn matriarch. All her efforts were unmarked by him, she supposed as he rounded past her with a scant acknowledging word before he made haste to his bride.

  The door to Margaret’s sitting room was ajar. He spoke her name as he pushed it gently open and entered the room where pink and mauve flowers blossomed on the walls in patterned profusion and green carpeting imitated the lushness of a garden setting. Elegantly wrapped wedding packages of various sizes were arranged in piles by the walnut secretary. But there was no occupant in the expected seat.

  His heart leapt as he saw standing as still as a statue, head bowed, in the middle of the room. “Margaret!” his whispered in panicked concern, sweeping to her side to discover her cheeks wet with tears. “Margaret,” he said again, this time in comforting tenderness as he wrapped his arms around her. She melted, sobbing, into his embrace.

  He cursed himself for leaving her, damning all the obligations that would keep him from tending to this one precious object of his life. “What is it?” he asked with helpless gentleness, feeling a fool for knowing, in part, the answer.

  Margaret swallowed her sobs and took a long breath to make some reply. The sight of the neatly stacked gifts had reminded her of her mother’s smiling image outside the church only days ago. “She was so happy,” she endeavored to explain.

  “At our wedding?” he guessed. She nodded.

  “She was … was it not right that she should be?” he asked, softly imploring.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “I am sorry. Can you ever think of it with some measure of content —knowing she was happy in those last days?”

  “Yes, but it is so hard.…”

  “I know, I know,” he soothed, caressing her back with his hands.

  “And father…” she began.

  “You are troubled to leave him alone,” he responded. “He must come live here … with us.”

  She raised astonished eyes to his. “Are you in earnest?” she breathed, incredulous that he should propose a solution she had scarcely dared to divine herself. “Your mother….” She shook her head in doubt.

  “My mother will accommodate my wishes. It is my … our house. We are free to choose the occupants. There are sev
eral empty rooms. He may have a study as well to keep his privacy and to meet with pupils.”

  The oppressive weight of silent anxiety lifted at his words. He was in earnest, and had thought it all through! Fresh tears formed in her eyes as her heart swelled with love for the man she had married. She relaxed further in his hold even as doubts began to gather again in her mind. “He will not wish to be an inconvenience.…”

  “Do you think I have befriended your father this long and do not yet know him?” he returned with a cajoling smile. “I will convince him that he does us a great kindness to come here. I shall enjoy taking up the classics with him — every night, if we so choose. And you shall not need to divide your time between your former home and Marlborough Mills. It will be a great comfort to have him near, will it not?”

  “Yes … yes, of course,” she replied with brightening face.

  “It is settled, then. Will you trust me to talk to him about it?” he asked, a wavering uncertainty remaining in his voice.

  She nodded, assuring him with a smile, as she reached up to wrap her arms around his neck and rest her head against him in gratitude and relief. He clasped her close.

  The brief moment of conjugal felicity, a ray of sunshine in the gloom, was interrupted by a steady voice.

  “You must excuse my intrusion, but there is a police-inspector come to the house who asks for John,” Hannah Thornton announced summarily as she stood in the open doorway. Her eyes flickered with caution to her son.

  John’s muscles froze as he recalled the night of Frederick’s harrowing escape.

  He loosened his grasp around his wife’s waist. “I am called as magistrate. I will return as soon as I am able,” he explained to her with forced calm. He let his hand drop at her acquiescence and turned to go.

  He moved swiftly through the house. His pulse beat a tempo of warning as a frantic chain of questions chased through his thoughts. Had Leonards spoken the fugitive’s name? Had Frederick been somehow apprehended? Mr. Thornton struggled to conquer his rising panic and resolved to meet any circumstance with firm trust that the highest justice would prevail.

  He stepped outside the main doors to find a small man in police uniform who had once been a packer in his warehouse.

  “I’m sorry to bother you at such a time …” the waiting visitor began.

  “Matson, isn’t it? How can I help you?” Mr. Thornton interrupted, taking command of the situation at once.

  “I would have come another time, but I need a statement from you to close a case. You see, it involves the death of a man, and I must be careful to know all,” Matson confided to the Milton magistrate who had first commended him to police work.

  An electric tingle of fear charged through Mr. Thornton’s every nerve at the annunciation of death. Cold, stabbing terror demanded he know what had happened. “Who is dead?” he asked, his breath quickening in impatience.

  “The railway porter that you reported to the station-master on the night of the fourth — the name is Leonards,” Matson responded, consulting his notes.

  Mr. Thornton let out a breath of relief that Frederick was unnamed, but felt prickles of remorse that he should have caused the death of any man. “I saw him move … I did not think him hurt so badly….”

  “Indeed, the station-manager says he got up and clamored in some drunken rampage for money to catch another train. He was sent away by all, of course. He was found, badly ailing, along a footpath the next day and was carried to the infirmary where he died shortly thereafter,” the police-inspector explained.

  “Did he say anything? I don’t understand….Was there an autopsy?” the Master questioned, straining to keep his voice from betraying the anxious confusion that roiled beneath his outward calm.

  “He spoke incoherently of Navy ships and men from his past — the unintelligible mutterings of the dying, I suppose. The coroner found a liver ailment — in an advanced stage that would have taken him ere long. But the fall he took hastened his death. This is why, you understand, I had to come and get your account of the incident. You saw him take the fall?”

  Mr. Thornton took a long breath and cast his gaze downward as he solemnly concentrated on the facts he should reveal. “I accompanied an associate, a stranger to Milton, to the station that night. I directed him to wait at the platform while I procured his ticket. When I had done so, I turned to see this Leonards assailing my friend. I was, naturally, very alarmed. I ran to stop this attack, pushing the porter away from my friend. I did so with some force. Leonards staggered back and lost his footing. He fell off the platform onto the cinder path below, opposite the arriving train. I hastened my friend to his train as it was the last of the evening, I believe. When he had safely gone, I looked to see if the porter was injured. He appeared to be recovering. I did not think him badly hurt, so I told the station-master of his errant employee and made my way home.”

  “His fall was an accident, then, sustained from your attempt to ward him off as an attacker.”

  “Yes,” the Master hasted to confirm, his nerves tensing as his eye caught the movement of a figure crossing the empty mill yard. His breath released at the recognition of one of his clerks. The mill owner nodded briefly at the passing employee.

  “By all other accounts, he was drunk and looking for money. Was this your impression also?” Matson inquired.

  “Yes. There is no doubt he had been drinking,” Mr. Thornton confirmed.

  Matson looked up to the Milton magistrate. “Thank you for your time, Sir. I consider this case closed. It was an unfortunate incident for all concerned. I hope your friend was not troubled too greatly. Once again, I’m sorry to have interrupted you at such a time….”

  “Not at all, it was your duty,” Mr. Thornton returned, feeling the tension relax in his shoulders.

  The uniformed man’s mouth curved into an admiring smile. “May I wish you congratulations on your marriage, Sir? I wish you very happy … despite the lady’s recent sorrows,” Matson added with a measure of solemnity.

  “Thank you,” the newly married man answered with a softening smile that swept away the crease on his brow.

  Mr. Thornton had kept silent concerning Frederick’s narrow escape from the train station. Margaret carried enough burdens of sorrow and worry. He would not add to her store. She was told only that the police had come in connection with the death of Jane’s betrothed, which accounted for the servant’s pitiful wailing in the upper chambers.

  Margaret brushed the waves of her long chestnut hair in the lamp-lit quiet of the great bedroom that evening as the Master prepared for bed. The weight of tension and grief lifted with the unfastening and removal of the binding clothes that defined him to the world beyond these walls. His heart beat strongly in anticipation of doffing all pretense of unyielding power and confidence to meet his wife under the bedcovers simply as a man in need of the love that seemed to pour forth from her gentle being.

  Only a handful of nights, each one of them unspeakably precious, had passed wherein they had shared a bed as husband and wife. Tonight, after such trying ordeals as this day had brought, he would find peaceful bliss merely to hold her body close to his.

  She shed no tears this time as she nestled her head to his chest, finding her rightful resting place in the safety of his embrace. He stroked her hair and let his lips caress its silken softness. He did not know who derived the greater comfort from this loving contact: the mourner or the comforter. But he knew without a doubt that he would endure any hardship, suffer any agony of tribulation required to hold her in his arms at the close of every day.

  *****

  The first pink glow of the coming dawn began to lift the night shadows from the empty mill yard outside the Master’s bedchamber. The faint sound of clanking metal and hissing steam from the distant engine room penetrated the sleeping bride’s dreams as the solid form she was nestled against began to stir at the call of duty.

  “Don’t,” Margaret called out in hazy desperation, clutching at her hu
sband’s nightshirt to keep him close. “Stay with me a little longer,” she whispered softly into his chest, feeling a twinge of shame for her outburst. She could not bear his withdrawal yet from this perfect haven of peace. The wakening dread of another grieving day loomed ahead of her. The impending loneliness of the hours without him caused her to cling to him.

  She was weary of the heaviness in her heart; she wished to stay in the safe comfort of his arms forever. Margaret traced her fingertips over the thin-clad chest in front of her, in fresh wonder of her privilege to touch him in such a way. The exuberance of their newly wedded bliss had been marred by tragedy, the natural joy of such an occasion cut short by affliction. He deserved so much more.

  He had patiently borne the vicissitudes of this trial and had offered gentle comfort at every turn. A surge of profound love filled every fiber of her being and flowed out through her fingers as they continued their hesitant exploration of his strong form. She wished to give him all her tender affection.

  His slowed breathing and perfect stillness gave her courage to touch the bare skin exposed below his neck. Then, with daring purpose, she stretched her neck to place two feather-light kisses along his throat.

  The tightening grip at her back sent a sensual thrill coursing though every nerve. She ceased her gentle assault with pounding heart, the blush of sudden shame stilling her hands and keeping her eyes closed.

  Seconds passed until he moved to bring his face to hers. She felt the touch of his lips and moved her own in loving accord.

  The gentle fervency of his hesitant kisses turned every tired fiber in her body to tingling energy. She slid her arm around his neck and kissed him with more abandon to let him know she was in no fragile, untenable state. She wished to lose herself in the exaltation of love, to cast aside the shroud of mourning to know and feel what it was to be alive.

  He groaned at her inviting response and rolled to trap her beneath him, kissing her with matching ardor until he remembered that only yesterday her mother had been put to her final rest. He tore his mouth from hers. “Are you certain this is what you wish?” he rasped, hovering over her with trembling longing to love her as he had not done in days, starved for that intimate bond of affection only so recently gained.