~Chapter 3~
Margaret woke, again alone in the dark room, and dressed in a black shirt and skirt, knowing it was considered proper to put her mourning aside in celebration of her wedding but not feeling the celebration to outweigh the grief in her heart. She walked down the stairs and met Mrs. Thornton, feeling herself caught in an unending cycle. She ate very little and hurried out of the breakfast room before Mrs. Thornton could find something else to critique about her new daughter-in-law. Instead, Margaret fetched her bonnet and gloves, determining that a trip to see Mary Higgins and the Boucher children would brighten her mood.
Mrs. Thornton, on the other hand, had spent much of the prior evening tossing John's words about and had decided that she needed to give her daughter-in-law a proper chance.
"Just where do you think you are off to?" Hannah Thornton called, spotting Margaret heading towards the front door and thinking that they might visit Margaret's destination together in order to become more comfortable in each other's company.
"I am going to take a turn through the neighborhood," Margaret stated, careful not to mention her plans to visit some of the mill workers.
"If you are going out," Hannah qualified, crossing from the front room into the hall where Margaret waited, "you are to be attended by one of the maids or myself. As it stands, I am available to come with you."
Margaret sighed, feeling the cage tightening around her. Indeed, the walk through town could not have been more unpleasant, with Mrs. Thornton dividing her time between finding fault with the townspeople and their lack of upkeep and laying down edicts for Margaret: Her steps were too loud and fast for a refined lady. Her hat was a disgrace. She held her chin too low. Now too high. Her hair had been done exceedingly poorly. She smiled too much. She must not seem to sulk so. Margaret's head spun with the ever-changing directions she received.
Mrs. Thornton thought the walk went well. She was pleased that Margaret took her coaching in stride where Fanny would complain at her every suggestion and make no attempt to correct her posture, step, or expression. Indeed, Margaret's step was much improved and her expression amiable but not too friendly after only a few corrections on Hannah's part. When, after visiting the drapers, Margaret timidly requested the chance to visit Mary Higgins, however, Mrs. Thornton stopped in her tracks. Had this girl no concept of social propriety?
"Will your ill breeding present itself at every occasion?" she hissed. "Members of the working class are far from our equals and while as the daughter of a preacher you could pass such a connection off as charity, as the wife of their master, you no longer can."
"You cannot ask me - I will not abandon those who have shown themselves to be my true friends," Margaret declared, brown eyes flashing but voice and expression carefully contained, taking heed to the number of eyes now watching them from the drapers and the tea room. She nodded in their direction and continued walking, her heels keeping time with the harsh beating of her heart.
Mrs. Thornton followed behind, her mouth drawn into a fierce scowl and all thoughts of a growing relationship with her daughter-in-law gone. Any threat to John required immediate and total annihilation. "I will not see you ruin my son's reputation and with it his livelihood. You have already forced him into a marriage in which you were not his equal."
Margaret turned, causing her black skirts to swirl around her. "Not his equal?" she cried.
"Oh, aye," Mrs. Thornton continued. "You are the daughter of a gentleman. But a gentleman who left his profession, and a poor one at that, and died practically penniless. My son is not only a gentleman but one who built his business from the ground and by working hard has created a plentiful life in which you now take part."
"I would a hundred times over be at home with my penniless father than in your cold home subject to your cold tongue and your cold son!" Margaret declared, then left Mrs. Thornton gaping and walked back to the house. There, she shut the door to the master bedroom and did not respond to the summons for dinner or supper.
Again returning from the mill later than he wished, John found his mother supping alone. "Mother," he greeted her, kissing her cheek, "Where is Margaret?"
"She did not come to supper. I assume she is in your room," she responded, but would say no more, her silence one of righteous indignation. John ate quickly and excused himself, taking a plate up to the master bedroom. He knocked, but received no answer and opened the door.
Margaret had thrown open the heavy curtains so that the fading daylight stained the dark carpets and draperies with the colors of sunset. She stood framed by one of the windows, her own black dress similarly colored and one small, pale hand pressed against a pane of glass as if willing it to disappear.
"Margaret," John began.
"Mm," was her only response. She did not turn away from the window.
"Mother said you did not come to supper."
"Dinner or supper," she corrected, still with her back to him.
He took a step towards her. "Are you well?" he asked.
"I am not ill," she responded.
Pushing her hairbrush aside and setting down the plate on the vanity, John crossed the space between them and placed a hesitant hand on her shoulder. "Will you not tell me what is wrong?"
She finally looked at him, a strange emotion on her face, a mix of sorrow and anger.
"Margaret," he tried again.
"How can I," she burst out, "when it is this house, this life, this prison that poisons me?" She knew at once that without further qualification her statement implied John Thornton as the cause of her unhappiness, but the words were spoken and the damage done. In any case, her day had been so trying that she could not think of any way to lessen the harshness of her statements that would not have been a falsehood.
He jerked back as though slapped. "I had not realized two days as my wife could be quite so horrendous," he spit, his voice growing at once as cold as his mother's. "I will see to it that your things are removed to another room. Perhaps you would prefer one of the smaller ones that is farther from my own. Or better yet, allow me to remove myself from this room so as not to inconvenience you."
"I will not displace you," Margaret replied, wearily. And found herself watching as Julia and Edward and another maid she did not yet know carried her belongings down the upstairs hall.
The new room would have more sunlight, with its eastern view and gauzy shades. She approved of its mint and lavender coloring. Yet, Margaret found it even more disconcerting to lie alone in the large, cold bed than she had to lie beside Mr. Thornton the night before. She tossed and turned and finally rose to fetch a book from the library, pulling on a light green robe and slippers and tiptoeing past the master bedroom. Reaching the stairs, Margaret continued with more confidence but halted at the sight of the library door swung wide open and lamp light spilling out into the hall.
This is my house now, too, Margaret reminded herself, I have the right to be here. So resolved, she tightened the tie of her robe and entered the library. Mr. Thornton sat, still clothed, in the same brown chair that he had occupied the night before. One hand marked his page, but his head had tilted to the side and his lips were slightly parted in sleep. Margaret passed him, found her history of the West Indies, and would have left if Mr. Thornton had not shifted and shivered slightly before settling himself. She pulled the afghan off the adjoining sofa and covered him with it, careful not to jostle and wake him. Then, she returned to her room and found herself calmed enough by the rhythm of reading to fall asleep.
John woke, stiff but warmer than he expected after falling asleep in the library chair. Stretching, he realized that one of the maids must have come across him in the early morning, for a blanket had been pulled over him. His heart warmed at the kindness, but cooled quickly as he recalled his own bedroom waited, unoccupied. Rising, he folded the blanket, returned it to the sofa, and headed upstairs to prepare for the day. Through washing, shaving, and dressing, John carefully avoided looking over at the pristinely made, empty bed. He did not feel like breakfast and so, descending the stairs, did not turn into the dining room but walked straight through the front hall and out the door. Sunlight and blue skies greeted him, unusual for this time of year in Milton. For a moment, John pushed aside his hurt and frustration with his wife and breathed in the cool spring morning air. Everything was not quite so bad as it had seemed the night before. The mill was running smoothly. The cash shortage had been solved thanks to Mr. Bell's generous dowry for Margaret. And Margaret had only one – at most two – days on which to base her dissatisfaction. Surely she could learn to love him or at least to accept his love. Thus refreshed, he continued down the steps and across the mill yard.
The sunlight poured through the windows on the east side of the house and slowly crept across the blanket that covered Margaret. She woke warm and refreshed, delighted to find the sunbeams brightening the room. She dressed quickly with the help of Samantha, the maid whose name she had not recalled the night before. Margaret chose a black skirt and picked up the matching blouse, but sighed and put it back down again. Instead, she donned a blouse in the lightest shade of pink. Trekking the now familiar path through the hall and down the stairs, she turned left and entered the dining room. Mrs. Thornton was not there. Counting her blessings, Margaret sat down, determined to do justice to the delicious spread that waited. She had just poured herself a steaming cup of tea when footsteps in the hall alerted her to someone's presence. Margaret could not help but hold her breath and will the person to continue. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Only a few more steps would take them past the dining room. It did not work; the footsteps paused and then came through the doorway. All Margaret's good spirits fled. She simply could not face down Mrs. Thornton this morning. Turning to leave, she found that she faced Julia and not Hannah Thornton.
The maid, dressed in the traditional black and white of a house servant, bobbed a curtsey. "G'morning mistress," she said.
"Good morning, Julia," Margaret replied, a wide smile replacing the frown that had taken hold of her countenance only moments before.
"Beg your pardon for interrupting your breakfast, ma'am," Julia continued. "But Mr. Thornton appears to have forgotten his dinner." Here she displayed a basket covered by a white cloth that Margaret had not noticed she carried.
"Oh," Margaret replied, not knowing what was expected of her.
The two remained motionless for a moment and then Julia hurried on, "Would you like me to take it to him, then, mistress?"
Margaret now understood that Julia had expected Margaret to take charge of the basket. For a moment, she considered how easy it would be to simply answer 'yes' and have no contact with Mr. Thornton. Stop being such a ninny, she counseled herself, You might as well see him now. It is not as though you can avoid him forever. "No, Julia," she replied. "I will take it."
John Thornton's day, which had started off well, grew steadily worse with each passing hour. The shipment of finished cotton cloth due to Mr. Bradley in London in two days which waited in the store room had been stained by a leak in the roof and would have to be redone at John's cost and quickly or he might lose the man's future business. Then, two of the best mill workers, Garrett Boxer, who worked three looms, and Blanche Hastings, who worked two, had been discovered to be too ill with fever to continue without danger to themselves, the machinery, and the cloth they worked. John easily selected five others desperate for work to take their place for the day, but the payment of five inferior workers was still more than two superior workers. In addition, the new workers would be slower and their cloth of lower quality than those they replaced. To prove him right, one of the new workers, a woman named Annie, caught her cloth in the gears of the loom she worked and it ground to a halt. God Almighty, she was working one of the new looms! John hurried to fix the mess himself, unwilling to risk the new machinery to the hands of anyone else. He made it a priority to know his machinery inside and out from the moment it arrived. He crawled beneath the loom for a look at how deep in the gears she had managed to snag the cloth. Several words that his mother did not know he possessed in his vocabulary poured out. The cloth wound its way through almost every bit of the machinery, a feat he had not even thought possible.
Thus, after she broke her fast, Margaret took Mr. Thornton's dinner in hand and walked across the millyard and up the steps to his office …only to find it empty. She stood for a moment in the empty room, unsure how next to proceed, but then caught sight of Higgins on the floor beneath and went to ask him where the master was.
"Miss Margaret, or rather Mrs. Thornton," Higgins called in pleasure at the sight of Margaret walking towards him. He had to call rather loudly, as the machines hummed so that he heard it for hours after leaving work and it sometimes played in the background of his dreams. "What brings you here?"
"Just Margaret, please, Nicholas," she corrected him, and then asked, "Do you know where Mr. Thornton is?" Higgins shook his head and put a hand to his ear to signal that she had spoken too quietly. "Mr. Thornton?" she tried again. He nodded and pointed further down the row of looms, unable to accompany her because it would mean leaving the two machines he ran unattended. She smiled and touched his arm in thanks.
The woman, Annie, wailed in fear at the prospect of losing her place for her mistake and had to be held up by the overseer, Williams, so that she would not fall to a heap on the cold floor. As it was, her dirty blonde hair came free of its tie and spilled over her face. "Be calm, woman," John cried, half vexed at her noise and half at the mess he was confronted with. Her crying only added to the irritating thrum of the machines which grated a rhythm into his very bones. "Be silent or you will lose your place!" he threatened once more before disappearing again beneath the loom.
Continuing, Margaret realized almost at once where Mr. Thornton must be, for Williams, the overseer, and a crying woman stood sentry over one of the far machines from which protruded a pair of shiny black shoes. She walked up to the loom and Williams shifted the weeping worker so that he could touch his cap to the mistress. She smiled and nodded her greeting. Mr. Thornton did not seem to notice her arrival.
"Mr. Thornton," she called loudly, so as to be heard over the machinery and the sobs of the woman, "I have brought your lunch."
"Get that woman out of here!" Mr. Thornton raged, not having heard Margaret and having had his fill of Annie's headache-inducing weeping.
Margaret straightened in shocked anger, her face going pale and then blushing bright. She set his basket lunch down on the top of the loom and stormed back to the house. Williams looked on, unsure of his duty in such a situation. Did he need to inform Mr. Thornton of his wife's mistaking Thornton's meaning? How could he without interrupting the man as he worked on delicate machinery? Instead, Williams ignored the matter, hushing Annie and waiting for the master to finish.
An hour later, John Thornton gave a triumphant cry and emerged from beneath the now-functioning loom. Annie stood quiet by Williams. Hadn't he told the man to remove her? And Thornton's basket lunch, which he had forgotten, sat atop the machine. "Where did this come from?" John wondered aloud, but not loud enough to be heard.