Chapter Text
...A brave man once requested me
To answer questions that are key
"Is it to be or not to be?"
- MASH
“He was her brother,” Thornton breathed, and Higgins’ rounded chin dipped once, a friendly gleam in his eye; he watched understanding inform the Master’s expression, lighting him with a sort of dazed warmth as he looked into the past and rewrote it with the truth
Poor old Thornton. He was a sensitive type, he felt things finely, and every one of them writ clear on his face. Higgins had caught sight of him just now, standing there stilly in the empty mill with his ghosts and his memories, and the man looked sick with sadness. He couldn’t give Thornton back his mill, but there was one other thing he yearned for to the point of distress. Well, he had gifted the man hope. Up to Thornton what he did with it.
He swung young Tom and his beloved book (this one had been a gift from Thornton, from his own bookshelf) up into his arms and then stopped at the door.
The Master was not the Master any more but just a man like himself, and one in need of a bit o’help every so often, Higgins considered. This parting gift – god knows he was like to waste it without a nudge or three. He was that hopeless sometimes. Would work all night long, often nodding off over his sprawled arms in an unheated, uncomfortable room, if Higgins hadn’t taken it on himself to just happen to pass by at about the right time and take him off for food. He made a swift decision – he turned back.
“Thornton – come along wi’me,” jerking his head sideways, “ I’m off to Dragon for a pint.”
He saw the man’s expressive face twist through various reactions, starting at god no! ...ending at well .... Higgins sealed the deal by abruptly transferring young Tom to the other man, - “’ere you go. Take ‘im for me, will ya? Long walk for little legs, and I’ve wore meself out finishin’ off that work for ya” -Thornton automatically taking hold of the child and settling him comfortably, the child’s thin legs in his gaiters dangling as they set off walking together.
“He’s tekken to you,“ Higgins remarked. “Allus askin’ if ‘Master wants to ‘ear him read - ! We’ll drop him off wi’ Mary. Time for ‘is bed.”
The smoky, dingy pub was noisy and crowded with mill workers and street workers. The former Master of Marlborough Mills was mighty out of place looking so finely bred as he did (even though Higgins had heard he was from not so different a background as the rest of’ em) and delicate-looking - also misleading, as Master – (Thornton!) – was tough as pair of workhouse boots, strong as a pit pony - Higgins sometimes saw him tossing up a bale of cotton onto a gurney as easily as any chunk of a worker – and fiery as a hellhound. At peak form anyway, but stress and under-eating had drawn some of his contrasts away and left him less defined. He had seemed like a lost soul lately... it tugged a bit at Higgins’ robust heartstrings.
“Get that down yer,” slapping a pint pot of foaming ale on the table in front of him.
Thornton tasted it as cautiously as Mary’s stew, and made a face, “How d’you drink this stuff, Higgins?”
“You persevere, man.”
Thornton, a reserved fellow at the best of times, was not in the best of times and therefore almost entirely silent. He gazed frowningly into his pot as if he might spot a pixie at the bottom of the ale-well, or perhaps an answer for all his problems. Higgins carefully guarded his somewhat precious companion in this rough environment, supped his ale, called to passing mates occasionally, spoke some words about Mary’s recipes and Tom’s schooling, and bided his time until the Mas... Thornton’s eyes had glazed over a bit.
At this point he went out for ease and on his return found the other man, highcoloured as he had never seen him, overwhelmed with women. And not just any women either, but ones who came with a price-list.
Higgins roared, “Hands off ‘im! ‘e’s not for the likes of you, nor you neither, Rosie Smith.”
“He’s a very ‘andsome gent,” she enthused.
Higgins had to move them off bodily, pulling a hand out of Thornton’s shirt-front, plucking them away one at a time. “Gent is right an he’s not just a gentleman, neither, he’s tekken. Spoken for. Got a nice young lady waiting for ‘im. Shoo!” - disconsolately, with a backwards look, they left looking for likelier prospects.
“Not so much a gentleman. She didn't think so, anyhow.”
Higgins gave him a manly punch on the arm. “No more o’that. Or I’ll be wishin’ I ‘adn’t brung yer! Now listen t’me. I’m thinkin’ Miss Hale will be feelin’ that lonely up in London. Seein’ as she’s not gone to Spain to be with her brother. I’m thinkin’, why don’t you go up there and visit her? Just callin’ round as if you was passin’. Friendly-like. “
Thornton’s head shot up, wearing an ironic, lopsided smile. “Are you mad? Go an’ see Miss Hale? She wouldn’t want to see me, Higgins. She doesn’t like me at all.”
“Well now,” Higgins said gently, “Are you so sure of that? I’m thinkin’ mebbe she does, see? She’s allus asking about yer. When I were round there for supper, never be long before she was all casual-like asking ‘ do you see much of Mr Thornton, Nicholas? Oooh he come in to see Tom did he? Did he ‘ave his best bib an’ tucker on, the one with them lovely white sleeves? O tell me his every word, Nicholaaaarse, ” and since Higgins performed this in a posh high-pitched Miss Hale voice, a small, reluctant smile pulled up one corner of Thornton’s unhappy mouth.
Higgins topped up both empty pots from a jug he’d ordered. He didn’t really have the money to spare on it and Mary would look at him with great, reproachful eyes but this felt important, so the devil with it.
“She told me straight.” Thornton picked up his pot and supped thirstily. “Do you want to know what she said, Higgins?” his speech was still quite clear, but carefully so, as if his brain knew his tongue would not keep up.
Higgins groaned. “I’d sooner not, but I’m thinkin’ yer gonna tell me - “
“- she said ‘ it's offensive of you to speak to me in this way. I do not like you and I never have!’” - obviously thought about bitterly and picked over again and again.
“My word, man, what way was you speaking to ‘er? Was you tryin’ to sell ‘er cotton to make 'er drawers out of?”” Higgins gently teased. Maudlin hadn’t at all been his intention for the man, but ale always loosened the tongue and the tears.
Thornton did not even smile (any other man would have) at the cheeky reference to drawers; his brows darkly sloped. “I asked her to marry me. I knew she’d say No. I never was good enough for her. But I had to ask, or I’d always 'ave wondered... She didn’t just refuse me, Higgins.” The fine, strong fingers twirled his pot around and around as he frowningly stared down at it. “She was disgusted by me askin’.”
Higgins said, “Well, I guessed as much. Guessed something on the sort had passed between yer. But how long ago were this? See, I’m thinkin’ it was a long time past – an’ you might find her opinions on ye had changed a good way.”
As if he hadn’t spoken, Thornton carried on, his mouth twisting into a sneer of chagrin, “She was disgusted because I dared speak to her of... love.”
“Well I’ll bet that was when she hardly knew yer. You tek a bit of growin’ on, I’ll tell you. Sneery, cold, ‘ard, an’ angry, that’s ‘ow you come across... I weren’t that fond of you meself for a long while... an’ then you thought on your wrong ideas an’ had the humility to come an’ say sorry, an’ next thing you was smiling down at young Tom an’ helping him with his readin’ and I realised you was yuman after all and more than that there was a good, kind heart in there somewhere. An’ now ‘ere we are suppin’ together in the Dragon, that’s how close we’ve got,” which he said with fond sarcasm. “Thornton, will yer listen to me? It’s important. Are ye listening’?”
The other man had his head down, and was probably asleep.
Higgins said, “Wake up a bit, man!” Reached out, grasped the man’s shoulder, gave it a little shake till his eyes opened. “ If she’s worth it to yer – you’ll risk it. Go and see her, man. You’ve got nothing to lose, ‘ave yer?” He nodded to the noisy game going on in one corner of the room – “See Sammy Hughes there? He just put his last ha’penny on a piece, last ha’penny he had in the world, an’ he won. He won dinners for a whole week for ‘is kids, and that’s a big deal round these parts. Now that’s what ye’ve got to do, Master. She’s worth it, en’t she? She’s worth one more throw of the dice.”
One hand under the Master’s warm, damp cotton armpit, the other with a firm handful of his waistcoat, Higgins guided him back to the deserted Mill. The man seemed to wake up a bit once out of the warm fug in the Dragon, and walked steadily enough, just needed a bit of steering. The large, looming house was in darkness, and Higgins didn’t feel like knocking up Old Mother Thornton, bringing home her elegant son all rumpled and smelling warmly of ale and sweat just like any working man - No Thank You. Not He. He was a brave man but not that brave. So he took him to the Master’s office, plopped him in a chair at the desk, where his former boss sank down immediately with his head on his forearms, found an old bit of holey cloth in the packing shed, and covered him up like tucking one of his kids in at night.
Thornton said muffled, “Do you really think she might care for me, Higgins?”
Higgins smiled. “I do.”
“She spoke about me, you said?”
The wistful way he said it....
“She did that. All the time. Like she couldn’t get enough of ‘earin about yer.”
“I’ve not anything to offer her now, Higgins. She’ll know I’ve lost it all.”
“By god, as if Miss Hale will care about that! Just offer her yerself, man!”
Thornton woke, stiff, aching and cold, next morning in his office, wearing a noisome, hairy blanket. It took him a few moments to work out why and where he was – little memory flashes popping up as bits of him wakened one by one – and finally when he pushed himself up to sit he remembered everything. Distantly, like looking down from a platform into a hall filled with drifting snow.
He had got drunk with Nicholas Higgins and said too much. And Higgins had said –
His eyebrows drawing in over narrowed eyes, he spotted a piece of paper on the desk, pulled it towards him with one hand.
GO AND SEE MARGARET. And on a line beneath, slightly offset as if it was an afterthought - he could imagine Higgins getting to the door and thinking again and coming back to scrawl more words - MEBBY LEAVE IT A DAY.
Which was certainly wise advice... unshaven, blurry, unwashed as he was, in rumpled unfresh clothes. After a minor wash and brush-up he evaded his mother’s questions by slipping out the back door of the house and took a train, but not to London.