~Chapter 4~
Margaret was gratified upon returning to the house to find that Mrs. Thornton had gone to visit Fanny and would not be back for dinner or supper. Feeling free for the first time since hearing her wedding vows spoken, Margaret gathered her cloak, bonnet, and gloves, and set out to visit Mary Higgins and the Bouchers. No sooner had she descended the stairs into the mill yard than the carriage rolled up and Mrs. Thornton stepped out.
"I thought you had gone to the Watson's," Margaret stated in surprise.
"My daughter forgot about our engagement and had gone out," Mrs. Thornton sniffed, lifting her skirts to hold them out of the dust. "I see that you thought in my absence you would ignore my wishes and again risk your character by traveling alone through the town."
"I-," Margaret began and then stopped, twisting the gloves she had been about to don. She had intended to go alone, not thinking of the wishes expressed by her mother-in-law the previous afternoon. "I did not mean it as disrespect to you," she finished. Mrs. Thornton nodded curtly and swept past Margaret up the steps and into the house. Margaret, unsure what else she could do at that point, followed, imagining the sound of shackles with every movement of her legs.
Hannah strode determinedly into the navy and scarlet sitting room and attacked her needlework, trying to drive out her anger before it again poured out at the woman – girl, really – who had the impertinence to first defy her and then shadow her through the house. Her needle flew through the cloth, stabbing through the fabric with an intensity born of the strength of her emotions. Hannah felt her heart hardening against the beautiful but obstinate and ignorant girl who sat across from her.
Mrs. Thornton's icy glare and tight lips, which both showed to advantage over the midnight blue cloth she embroidered, quickly drove Margaret back to isolation. She ascended the stairs, lack of proper food for the past two days making her head spin. Crushed by hunger and sorrow, Margaret climbed into her bed fully clothed and pulled the lavender coverlet over her head. Sleep, it seemed, was her only escape. She drifted listlessly in and out of dreams until a firm knock at the door forced her to rise.
John Thornton did not know whether it was unhappiness or stubbornness that led his wife to again forego two meals, but dutifully carried another plate up the stairs. He knocked firmly at the door and was about to enter when Margaret opened it, looking disheveled from sleep, the crease from a pillowcase evident on one cheek. His irritation immediately disappeared and he found he had to force back a smile.
Margaret had risen too quickly and against felt dizzy. She breathed deliberately deeper in an effort to erase the darkness that clouded her eyes despite the brightness of the room. Instead, her knees buckled and she heard the muffled clink of china breaking against carpeting and then felt Mr. Thornton's strong arms about her waist.
"Margaret!" he cried in alarm.
She shook her head as the feeling faded, and then stated, "I am fine."
Ignoring her, John half-supported, half-carried his wife over to the bed where he seated her. "Do not move," he commanded. "I will send Edward for the doctor."
"No," Margaret protested. "It is only hunger that has my body so betraying me."
"Then why do you not eat?" he returned, his frustration mounting again as his worry, too, increased. Silence. "Margaret." She made again the nervous movement of her fingers, which he was coming to associate with discomfort or perhaps fear; her small hands worked the cloth of her skirt between them. "Margaret." This time, he tilted her face up so that her eyes met his.
"Mrs. Thornton is – unkind in such close quarters," she finally admitted.
He sighed, releasing her chin then. So it was not his presence that she avoided. "I will speak to my mother," John promised, "She does mean well."
"Mean well?" Margaret's voice and color rose at this. "Your mother takes every opportunity to demean my family, upbringing, and character. Why yesterday she spent our entire journey into town berating me on the way that I walked!"
John laughed then, and Margaret stared up at him in surprise, both because of the unexpectedness of it in response to her anger and the way that it brightened her mood momentarily. Mr. Thornton smiled down at her, the uneven twist of his lips distracting her from her emotion.
"She did the same thing with Fanny," John explained, "Claimed it was meant to improve her 'step and expression'." He frowned then, "But since it makes you upset and uncomfortable, I shall speak to her at once. I will also try to determine a means of improving the dining situation." He turned to go but her next words arrested him.
"Why are you being so kind now?" she asked, bewildered by his transformation from earlier.
"When have I ever been unkind?" he asked, her words stabbing him.
"This very morning I brought your dinner to the mill and you told Mr. Williams to remove me!"
"I never-" John stopped. The basket appearing. Annie's presence despite his words. "I'm afraid there has been a terrible misunderstanding," he admitted, returning to the bed, seating himself upon it, and taking Margaret's hand in apology. He explained the details of his day as he had seen it and Margaret filled in her own experience. This shared moment refreshed Margaret. She smiled up at Mr. Thornton, who was taller than her even when seated. He returned the expression. Suddenly, the close intimacy of their situation struck Margaret and she dropped her gaze.
Watching his wife's expression change, John realized that she reacted to his nearness and quickly excused himself, saying he would speak to his mother immediately. She does not love me, he reminded himself as he strode down the hall.
Margaret touched a hand to the creased coverlet where just moments before Mr. Thornton had sat, smiling at her. How quickly he had gone. But then, she allowed, he does not love me. She rose and began to clean the broken china and spilled food from the carpet, thinking it was just another thing that Mrs. Thornton would hold against her.
Hannah Thornton held a firm belief that children would eat when they were hungry and since Margaret acted like a child she found it infuriating that John took up a plate each night. Had it been anyone but John, Hannah would have rebuked him for his actions, which she considered to be rewarding the errant girl. Therefore, she was surprised when her John entered the sitting room with a look of worry on his face and crouched before her, taking her hand in his own.
"What is it, John?" Hannah asked, putting her needlework aside.
"Mother," he stated, "Margaret almost fainted merely walking from the bed to the bedroom door just now."
"She gives herself airs," Hannah declared, disgusted with the feminine wiles of her daughter-in-law. Oh, that she had never counseled her son to burden himself with saving that girl's reputation.
"No, mother," John pressed, "she did not act. Margaret has not been eating properly."
"And whose fault but hers could this be?"
"She said, mother, that you are especially unkind to her at meals." Hannah opened her mouth to protest, but John raised a hand. "I do not wish to hear either the blame of Margaret or defense of yourself. As your son, I know you seek to better her into a woman you see as my equal, but please believe me when I say that she is already my superior and I must strive to improve myself."
Hannah could not help but protest then, laying a hand on the ebony hair of her boy. "John, that is not so."
"I would beg you to consider your words before they are uttered. To treat my wife with the kindness that she deserves," he continued. "Please mother, do not make me choose between you, for it would break me." John squeezed her hand, rose, and strode out of the room and towards the back of the house.
Margaret carried the broken china down the upstairs hall, heading towards the stairs and hoping against hope that she would be able to slip past the sitting room and into the kitchen unseen by her formidable mother-in-law. From the top of the stairs, she could hear the conversation that spilled through the open door of the sitting room. "As your son, I know you seek to better her into a woman you see as my equal, but please believe me when I say that she is already my superior and I must strive to improve myself." She listened silently, standing still as a shadow, to the man whose ring she wore on her left hand. He appeared unexpectedly and headed back toward the kitchen, so Margaret returned to her room, absorbed by the conversation on which she accidentally eavesdropped.
John woke early, even for him, and found himself immediately depressed by the empty spot in the bed beside him. He dressed quickly, ate quickly, and headed to the mill, all the while so consumed with fear that his plan would not be well received that when he opened the door to a downpour of rain, it caught him completely off guard. Would it stop in time? Should he cancel? Undecided, he pulled on an overcoat and headed out across the yard.
Margaret woke and was sorry to be greeted by a grey morning complete with a drenching rain. She had felt quite brave enough to risk Mrs. Thornton's fury after John Thornton's words the night before and planned to finally visit the Higgins home. Now, it appeared that unless she took the carriage, which would deprive Mrs. Thornton of transportation, the visit was off. Selecting a black skirt and white blouse with blue and green pinstripes, Margaret dressed, although she felt more like crawling back into bed. She descended the stairs and entered the dining room only to find Mr. Thornton's dinner basket sitting on the table. Did he often forget it? She sighed. Perhaps by dinner time this horrid rain would stop. Otherwise, it might be a rather damp excursion to try once again to deliver his mid-day meal.
John sat in his office nervously counting off the minutes and glaring at the weather, which now included a driving wind that shoved the raindrops insistently against his window as if trying to push them through the slightly distorted glass. Perhaps she would not come. She should not in such weather. But he selfishly wished she would.
The grandfather clock in the hall chimed: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Margaret glumly set down the book in which she had been absorbed and considered again the drops raining down in seemingly unending succession. Perhaps she could send Julia. No. Margaret dismissed that thought immediately. She would not order anyone to go out in this weather. She quit the yellow settee, retrieved the basket from the dining room, and pulled on her coat and bonnet, thinking what little use they would be against such weather. It took two tugs on the moisture-swollen wooden front door to open it. Then, Margaret stepped out onto the marble slab steps, careful not to slip on the slick surface.
John spotted a figure leaving the house. Margaret. She was coming! His heart leapt. She would be soaked. Jumping from his chair so fast that he banged his knee on the desk before which he sat, he flew down the stairs and out across the yard with no thought to donning either coat or hat. "Margaret, stop!" he cried, causing Margaret to arrest herself still under the cover of the porch. He ran up the steps and halted before her, water soaking his hair and shirt and running down his face in rivulets. "I should not have-" he started, winded from the sprint. "I thought you would care to join me rather than my mother for dinner and so left a basket for two, but I did not mean for you to come out in such weather."
Margaret smiled, touched by his thoughtfulness. "It appears that I am at least better prepared for the rain," she pointed out.
He returned the expression, thinking how the tendrils of hair that freed themselves and whipped about her face and the pink of her cheeks from the cold only added a wildness to her beauty. "I fear in my selfishness I only realized at the last moment how ungentlemanly such a forced excursion would be."
"Nonsense," Margaret returned. "Shall we move our picnic indoors?" She shoved open the front door and stepped inside, removing the articles of clothing that she had only just put on. John, on the other hand, was forced to take off his shoes and stockings so as to avoid tracking muddy or wet footprints across the floor. Margaret realized, looking at his bare feet, that there now remained only one section of her husband that she had not viewed. She felt the flush creeping up her neck and across her face, quite unable to cease its journey to the top of her head.
John watched his wife go crimson as he, yet again, displayed his lack of refinement by baring his feet before her. Embarrassed, he hurried up the stairs to change and fought the urge to stay in his room and out of sight. But Margaret waited.
Determined to have a real picnic, in fact, excited by the thought, Margaret immediately headed in the direction of the library, her sacred space in the house. She pushed back the settee and chair from the center of the room and began unpacking the dinner basket before the fireplace. A creaking floorboard caused Margaret to turn. Her smile disappeared at the sight of Mrs. Thornton, staring horrified at the disarray.
"What-" Hannah caught herself. She longed to ask why the perfectly good table in the dining room would not suffice, but swallowed her words. "I will be going to the Watson's for the afternoon," she declared.
Margaret nodded from her place on the floor, still mute in surprise, and Mrs. Thornton swept away.
John walked down the stairs and into the dining room. Empty. The sitting room. Empty. Of course! The library. He walked into a transformed room, the chair, settee, and side tables removed to the edges of the space and the center bared but for the food spread out like a buffet. He lowered himself a bit awkwardly to the floor across from Margaret, who sat elegantly with her skirt in a perfect circle.
"Would you care for some food?" Margaret asked.
"Yes. A bit of everything would do just fine."
So she filled his plate and handed it to him, daring to tease, "Be careful. We would not want to break a plate." They grinned conspiratorially at one another.
A knock on the front door echoed down the hall. Margaret made as if to rise. "Edward will answer it," John assured her, beginning to shovel food into his mouth in what he could only imagine was a very rude manner. He knew already that the message Edward recited would take him from his meal and Margaret's company.
"Sir," Edward reported, stepping into the room with a slight bow. "Mr. Williams calls to inform you of a fight which has broken out among some of the workers which he fears cannot be stopped without your authority."
"I will be right there," he replied, and then hearing a small gasp escape Margaret's lips, he turned to her. "I am afraid I am needed back at the mill. Please do not wait for me."
"Should you return there without any support?" she asked. "Should you not fetch the soldiers to divide the men?"
"I cannot wait," John explained, rising. "They might damage the cloth, or worse, the looms." She reached out a hand as if to hold him there. "I will be careful," he assured her. But Margaret did not find peace in his words. Instead, her fear mounted as he hurried out of the room.