The party is over; Mr Thornton walks Richard and Margaret home. He knows tonight must be the night he asks her to marry him... but last time did not go well; he is so nervous.
ooOoo
His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved and this is my friend
- Song of Solomon
Margaret was delighted that Mr Thornton had insisted on walking home with them to Crampton as it extended the joy of the evening a little more. She had enjoyed herself so much she could have stayed out all night! It had been exhilarating to be in company, and she felt she had sparkled here and there. Certainly she had noticed Mr Thornton's eyes dwelling on her from time to time with what seemed like a passionate ardency, but probably no-one else's had, they had both behaved so very well. She felt sure no-one could have noticed their attachment to one another, so coolly and properly had they played it tonight!
They walked at Mr Hale's pace, and reviewed the evening:
Margaret was bubbly with happiness, talking of the card game: "In London, Mr Thornton, we have a saying – 'to take money from a banker requires high skill or low cannon'!"
"It does that," he coolly replied, casting his eye her way, "Did you not notice that our winnings were paid in buttons?"
After a stunned moment, she dissolved into laughter. "I had not even thought of that!"
"Aye, well," he returned ironically, "that's the trick. You'd not even noticed that the very wealthy Mr Watson, despite heavy losses at cards tonight, kept every penny of his money."
"We cannot spend buttons! I am disappointed..."
"What would you want? Tell me an' I'll buy it for you," he said recklessly. Too forward, but he wanted to shower on this lovely girl every treasure the world had ever known, bundled in a silver net fretted with stars.
He already had one idea for a gift for her, having seen the little golden petal from Helstone was losing its lacquer and becoming frayed at the edges.
"I don't think riches could buy me my heart's desire, Mr Thornton..." and the smile she sent his way stopped his breath and he knew he must speak tonight.
"Did you enjoy yourself, Father?" Margaret looked up at Mr Hale, realising she had talked too much to one of her companions and given no thought to the other.
"It was a very pleasant evening indeed. I cannot remember when I enjoyed an occasion so much. Your mother does very well with her dinner parties, John!"
They were rounding the corner into the road that led to the Hale's house. Margaret was humming a little snatch of a song.
"What are you singing, Miss Hale?" he asked her curiously, not having heard her sing before. He would have loved to have taken her hand. He was, and it was not too strong a word, desperate for some contact with her, but she walked very properly with her father, her hand tucked in the crook of his arm.
"Oh!" she said, "a little tune that came to my mind as we were talking about music over dinner and I remembered one of the folk songs we would sing in Helstone. It has been in my head ever since..."
"Will you sing it?"
"No!" she denied him in a laughing voice, "I would not inflict that on you... but see how appropriate it is... " she turned her head and lifted her eyes to him, and spoke the verse in a little lilt, almost with the tune at times,
"A North Country maid up to London had strayed
Although with her nature it did not agree
She wept and she sighed, and she bitterly cried
'I wish once again in the North I could be
Oh the oak and the ash and the bonny ivy tree
They flourish at home in my own country'
She stopped – she had better not quote to him the next verse! "You see, Mr Thornton, I have seen my beloved Helstone again – and, beautiful though it was, I have learned something. You can never go back. I can never go back. In fact, Mr Thornton, I have become a north country maid."
Her smiling eyes dwelt in his. He stopped dead for a moment, then made himself walk on. They were at the door of the house and a grumpy kept-up-late Dixon was there to let them in, fussing over Margaret, taking her cape; but she did soften when she saw Margaret's shining eyes and pink cheeks.
"My, I am so glad you've had a party to go to this evening, Miss Margaret! Did it remind you of those wonderful London parties I used to dress you for? Shall you be wanting tea now, or milk?"
"It did remind me of London parties," Margaret said, "but only because I was so much happier and more at ease tonight than at any of them; and thank you Dixon, but we shall not need anything now. You may go to bed, I will look after myself tonight," and to soften any sting Dixon might have taken from that, she gave her a warm, happy hug, which was unusual but not unprecedented, and Dixon went off mollified, though reflecting that she had better not retire quite yet, in case Miss Margaret needed help with her unfastenings.
Mr Hale was covering a yawn with his hand. "I shall go to my bed too, I think! Margaret, offer Mr Thornton a port, keep him a little while, and make sure you lock the door when he leaves."
And so they had arrived at it. Alone at last, and everything between them happiness and warmth and light. He must speak now.
"Would you care for a glass of port, as Father suggested, Mr Thornton?" she asked politely, but he hardly seemed to hear her.
"John," he said, "call me John." He took a turn about the room, his fingers running nervously through his hair as he paced this way and that, and then he looked at her. "Miss Hale – sit down -" remembered his manners, "Would you sit down?"
She did so, her eyes never leaving his face.
His stomach had dived as if he were facing a long drop from a cliff. He was so nervous he felt sick. He hardly knew what he was doing, or what he was saying; moving about, restless and troubled. She remained calm, and extended him her hand to keep him still, which he took and anxiously squeezed without even realising, his eyes on her face in an agony.
"Take the time you need," she said gently.
Oh god he loved her so much! She was so lovely in the way she was trying to help him. Abandoning convention, because he had forgotten it, he sank to his knees in front of her and laid his head despairingly on her lap, his fingers clutching convulsively on the shiny stuff of her dress; he felt her light hand on his head.
"Please, Margaret," he said in torment, "Let me know if you'll have me, or if you'll not. I think I'm going insane wonderin'..."
He opened his eyes and stared at the close-up weave of silk in her satin skirt, calculating it like the master of industry he was, the disassociation keeping him safe from her reply. He knew that the shine and drape of the material was due to the high proportion of floaters, which lay freely over the weft before being caught and held by a single strand. Very different from a cotton weave. He was concentrating on this so fiercely time seemed to have stopped dead... He became only gradually aware of her insistent fingers trying to raise him. All material thoughts left him, he looked up at her, her beautiful, kind face, her shining eyes.
"You look so... Oh John! darling John. You didn't have to worry so much about it! What did you think I'd say? " and from the way she was smiling at him and stroking his hair, his face, his lips with clumsy, trembling caresses, he knew it was all right, and that it was more than all right, he had won her heart, he didn't know how as he had only been himself and awkward at times. He could see she was crying, easy tears spilling over the rim of her lower lashes and onto her rounded, beautiful cheeks.
They sat by side on the couch, not saying much. Shining eyes wandering, blissful, over wondering faces. Touching hands, no more than that. Content with it for now as they basked in the joy of the astonishing new place they had reached at last.
"Have you really agreed to marry me? I am strugglin' to believe it. Was I supposed to ask your father first?" he wondered at last, watching himself stroke her wrists gently with his fingertips.
"I don't know," she said. "Maybe. Oh no, we have done it all wrong! You will have to go through it all again tomorrow," and he smiled in response to her loving mischief, but he had something on his mind, hesitating whether to say it or not, and then spilled it out to her -
"Every time I leave you... when I'm back by myself... I fall into doubts that it was all a dream in my head and I only imagined what I thought you felt -"
Her heart ached for him, and also sang, that at last he felt safe enough with her to speak from his heart. "But you won't tonight. Tonight you will have no more doubts," she gazed at him smilingly, and all she had of love for this complex, troubled man was shining from her eyes. "Did you really think I might turn you down?" she said in wonder, but then she remembered. She had turned him down last time he had found the courage to ask. Last time she had killed all his hopes with swift cruel words and left him reeling.
Her outraged refusal as if he had suggested something actually offensive, as if he were offensive, had knocked his confidence so badly he was haunted by it - oh John, my poor John...
She vowed to herself then and there to make it up to him - by loving him so intensely he would never remember any different.
He was saying something, hesitant: "I struggle to understand why you would love me. I -"
"John! I remember your mother telling me that all the young ladies in Milton were in love with you! How can you wonder at my now being one of them? It took me a little longer than most, to be sure, but now I am right up there with them as much in love with you as any."
He could not quite laugh with her. "What those women fall in love with is that a man has wealth and influence - "
" – and that he is beautiful," – she was reaching up to stroke a black lock of his hair, gazing at him adoringly.
" – but those are very superficial things. I doubt they would actually like me, if they had come to know me. I don't know why you would."
"Oh John! You have listened too much to Fanny, making her very terrible character assessments - you are clever, and kind, and strong and brave and wise – "
"I think you really must love me. You forgot 'ill-tempered'."
"Well yes... that too... but then, because you are always very much in temper when you are with me, I love you the better for having the tendency not to be. It makes me feel you like me more than you like anyone else," she said, with a little sweet complacency.
His lips twitched. "That is because I do."
"You need not wonder any more why I like you so much and why I have fallen in love with you because I shall spend a lifetime telling you."
He was finding her utter delight in him very moving. He reached out his hands to her and she took them, feeling the tremor there. In his pacings he had pushed up the loosened sleeves of his fine shirt; she slipped her hands upwards, palms gliding over his warm forearms, caressing him gently.
He could hold back no longer. He had to kiss her. He leaned forwards... gentle, tentative at first, tender caresses of his lips like a gazelle delicately grazing. Touched her smiling lips with his, his hand slipping behind her head to draw her closer into his kiss...
... and finally, reluctantly, he rose to go, and left, and then came back for one more touch, and glance, and their hands linked together to draw each other close for one more embrace, the sweetest, most lingering kiss, their mouths meeting in desperate, yearning love.
It was nearly three in the morning before he left. He hardly noticed the walk home, his mind and his heart flying. They had created a new world tonight, opened it up and stepped through without a second thought. A man and his maid, hand in hand.
ooOoo
Note: If anyone should want to hear 'Margaret's song, the Oak and the Ash, it's on YouTube (version, English Folk Project.) What a lovely little song it is and so fitting for Margaret in this story.