Roses and Lace

Chapter 5

Margaret was almost trembling as she descended into the front hall. She could hear the murmur of Edith's party guests gathered in the parlor, and she could see a few whose backs were turned, but not him. Not yet. Henry, however, caught sight of her, and he excused himself and strode over to her just as she alighted from the bottom stair.

"Your Mr. Thornton came to see me about the lease this morning. We'll be seeking a new tenant after all," Henry explained to her in a low voice. "I hope you don't mind that I took the liberty of inviting him here. I thought you would like to have some attention shown him, and one would be particularly scrupulous in paying every respect to a man who is going down in the world."

Polite, thoughtful, heartless Henry. Margaret nodded her silent understanding as she took his hand.

And then they had entered the room, and there he was, taller than all the other gentlemen and full of quiet dignity as he glanced at her and then continued his conversation.

And then within minutes he was close to her, speaking without quite looking at her.

"Are you well, Miss Hale?"

"Yes, thank you. Quite well. And your family?"

She hardly knew what she asked or what he answered. Everything quietly spoken and proper and polite.

Throughout the party he hardly looked at her, and Margaret could not help but gaze at him. He looked thinner than she remembered, but not defeated, not angry, not in despair.

He must be so strong, to lose so much of his work and still hold his head high, unhesitating.

After dinner, as the guests were mingling in the drawing room, Margaret sat near enough to hear Mr. Thornton explaining the innovations he had undertaken in his business to Edith's prize guest, a politician named Mr. Colthurst. Experiments, he called them, his projects to work with his mill hands rather than against them, to improve their lives for the good of all. Even when Henry intervened and tried to gently deflect the conversation away from the subject of the failure of Marlborough Mills, Mr. Thornton steadily brought it back.

"I have been unsuccessful in business, and have had to give up my position as a master. I am on the look-out for a situation in Milton, where I may meet with employment under some one who will be willing to let me go along my own way in such matters as these. I believe that the mill works better when masters and men understand each other, and I'll venture to say we should like each other more."

"And you think this may prevent recurrence of strikes?" Colthurst asked.

"Not at all. My utmost expectation only goes as far as this—that they may render strikes not the bitter, venomous sources of hatred they have hitherto been. A more hopeful man might imagine that a closer and more genial intercourse between classes might do away with strikes. But I am not a hopeful man."

Suddenly, as if a new idea had struck him, he crossed over to where Margaret was sitting, and began, without preface, as if he knew she had been listening all along:

"Miss Hale, I had a round-robin from some of my men - Mr. Higgins' doing, I am sure — stating their wish to work for me, if ever I was in a position to employ men again on my own behalf. ...I thought you might like to know of it, and I want to thank you again for suggesting that he seek work with me."

"Yes. Just right. I am glad of it," said Margaret, looking up straight into his face for a moment and then dropping her eyes. He gazed back at her for a minute, as if he had forgotten where he was or what else to say.

Then he murmured something unintelligible, something like a sigh, and turned away from her again.

He never looked at her or spoke to her again for the rest of the evening, until he said his last formal goodbye. He clasped her hand and bowed. But he didn't let go and he didn't speak and Margaret felt her heart beat heavily in her chest for a long moment, and then longer, and she drew in a breath to say... something. Anything.

But then he had let go her hand and he had walked away toward the street and he was gone.

Margaret, who had been quiet all evening, finally thought of something to say when Henry made his rounds of the family to bid his own good nights. As he approached Margaret he looked as though he was trying to puzzle out an algebraic equation and so far was not pleased with his results.

"Henry, do you think I could speak to you tomorrow, please? I have an idea for a business matter, and I need your help to... to understand what to do. How to go about it, that is."

"Certainly. I am at your service." His words were as smoothly polite as always, how bow faultlessly elegant, his expression as if he had just bitten into a lemon.

Margaret hardly noticed.

More liberal borrowing from the work of Mrs. Gaskell.