Chapter Text
John woke in a dimly lit room—heavy curtains were drawn across his windows, as they always were at night, but streamers of sunlight were forcing their way past the gaps in the cloth. He shook his head, disoriented at waking up when the sun was so high in the sky. His headache was fearsome.
“Good morning, John.” His mother had entered the room. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“I’ve overslept. I have to get on to the mill. I must call on Miss Hale.” He sat up and swayed—his mother, it appeared, had been expecting this, because she had quickly bent down behind him to place a pillow behind his back.
“You’ve been very ill, John, you need to rest.”
“I need to get to the mill—” but through the window floated the clanks and jolt that spoke of smooth operation. “Miss Hale—”
“Miss Hale is not to be called on today. The mill is fine—your brother Watson has appointed a manager for you. Your job today is to rest, my boy.”
“But—brother? Is Fanny married already? How long have I been ill?”
“About six months it is now,” Hannah Thornton told him with a resigned gleam. “You had a bad knock to your head—an accident with a carriage. You’ve been a bit of a noodle, as that Nick Higgins likes to call it. But,” she put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him severely. “You are on the mend. Your job now is to get well, my boy.”
“But, mother—” He stopped himself. “Have we had this conversation before?”
“Yes, a time or two,” his mother said, severe, amused. “Now, close your eyes while I open these curtains, and I have a bite of gruel for you to breakfast on.”
“I can’t stand gruel,” he said, blinking and squinting as the room filled with searing light.
“And yet you will eat it. You know I will spoon feed you if you won’t,” she said in a warning tone.
An invalid’s life was a dull and monotonous thing—John needed only a day of it to know that. His mother made him dress in soft light invalid’s clothes and took him for a turn about his room—it worried him both how little strength he had in his limbs, and how easily she could support his weight. His reward for his effort was to sit in his armchair while she read the newspaper aloud, before she put him back to sleep until his dinner.
“How many days of this life have you lived, mother?” he asked, as he turned over the pabulum on his plate with disinterest.
“Enough,” she said grimly. “It isn’t always the same—you’ve only been getting up to dine for a month or so. And Fanny comes to sit with you once a week, so I can get out to do my errands. I don’t mind a bit of fresh air, I will admit.”
“I am sorry to burden you so,” he said humbly.
“You are my son,” she said stoutly. “You’ve done many a kind thing for the people of Milton; now it comes back to you, as is only just.”
He nodded, wondering how badly things were left—the state of his finances had not been rosy, when last he had had time to review them.
“Mr Bell has forgiven you rent for a year,” his mother told him, reading (remembering?) his thought. “Your bankers, too, have deferred interest for a twelvemonth. They know the name Thornton is a good one—they wish you back with a sound business to transact with when you have your wits again. Dr Donaldson thought we would know where things will stand after a year.”
“So I have six months more of grace, then,” he nodded in understanding. “I will do my best, mother.” A thought, urgent, returned. “I need to call on Miss Hale.”
“Miss Hale has been to see you,” Hannah Thornton said shortly, and that was the end of that.
***
John woke in a dimly lit room—heavy curtains were drawn across his windows, as they always were at night, but streamers of sunlight were forcing their way past the gaps in the cloth. He shook his head, disoriented at waking up when the sun was so high in the sky. His headache was fearsome.
“Good morning, John.” His mother had entered the room. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“I’ve overslept. I have to get on to the mill. I must call on Miss Hale.” He sat up and swayed—his mother, it appeared, had been expecting this, because she had quickly bent down behind him to place a pillow behind his back.
“You’ve been very ill, John, you need to rest.”
“I need to get to the mill—” but through the window floated the clanks and jolt that spoke of smooth operation. “Miss Hale—”
“Miss Hale is not to be called on today. The mill is fine—your brother Watson has appointed a manager for you—”
“I missed Fanny’s wedding,” he said with a grimace. “I hope she was not too cross with me—was it a very ridiculous circus?”
“Not too badly done,” his mother told him, eying him with interest. “The bride was very happy.”
“Have we had this conversation before?”
“Not quite the same one. How is your head, my John?”
“Splitting,” he admitted. “I have to call on Miss Hale,” and she sighed.
***
He got the truth out of Hannah Thornton a few days later, when she had become convinced that he would remember it.
“Miss Hale came to see you at first, all tricked out in black for her father, as is fitting. Oh, she cried very prettily, a few times, when she thought no one could see her. Then—” Hannah shook out the table cloth she was mending with a hard snap, her mouth set in a harder line “—then she found out your brains were addled and did not linger in Milton long enough to wipe the dust from her boots.”
“But—she does not live with her father anymore?”
“Oh, dear John, I’m sorry, it were six months ago now, and I’ve been forgetting. Richard Hale is dead—in his sleep, they say. I stopped telling you because you took it so hard, every time.”
It should distress him, in his invalid state, to know how easily he could cry. He was too fatigued, too fragile now to let it worry him, and he let the tears flow freely until his mother finally took him up to bed.
The next day, she decided he was strong enough for his inheritance—an old, finely bound edition of the writings of Plato, an old familiar volume brought out often in his lessons as a treat for a well performing student. It had been owned, John now could see, not just by Hale but by several other men, learned professors, he supposed, who had passed down their thought in fine pencil notations in an unbroken line of scholarship. He hoped to be worthy of it. There was a note tucked in among the fly leaves and he squinted to read it:
Dear Sir, — The accompanying book I am sure will be valued by you for the sake of my father, to whom it belonged.
Yours sincerely,
Margaret Hale
“I have to see Miss Hale,” he said again, tears rolling down his cheeks, and his mother, for the first time showing a disturbance in the placid calm with which she had faced down many difficult weeks, finally groaned in exasperation.
***
It was when John was so bored with sitting about in the shadows of his house that he had taken to interrogating his servants as they gamely tried to work around him that he realised it was time to go out. He did so deliberately, selecting his familiar black wool garments, donning them as armour, telling himself that he would not let fear quell this project. His hands trembled tying his cravat, but he would not demean himself by asking for help, and eventually got it done on his own. His watch he weighed in his hands for a long time, running the cool silver through his fingers. He opened it by habit—it had stopped, of course—and he closed it without resetting the time, tucked it into his vest pocket as a memory of former days of power.
It took him a long time to open his front door. At the top of the steps, he staggered as if at a great blow: the late autumn sunshine was no match for the last days of August, the stink of angry mob, stones and hard wooden clogs flying through the air, a falling girl slumping against his chest. He blinked—hard—gripped the rail tightly, and let the scene resolve into the normal busy function of a mill yard. He used the hand rail, and his stick, and stumped down, only slowly aware as he concentrated on his balance that the busy knocks and buffets and shouts of a working mill were quieting. He looked up to see a mosaic of faces turned towards him—“Measter!” a voice called. “Measter, it’s hotpot, today!”
“Then I will bring my penny,” he said gravely and waved at his hands to get back to their work.
The stairs to his counting house were another challenge, but his balance was better now, and he stumped grimly to the muffled murmur of his office, more faces turned his way. “And here’s the man himself—” Watson, Fanny’s fiancé, no, husband now, turned and stood.
Thornton reached to shake his hand, gripped as firmly as he could. “I have you to thank for still having a mill, I think.”
Watson was magnanimous. “We’re family now, man. And I’m flush with a speculation that paid out—I can afford a bit more time nosing about seeing how you run things. Here’s my young sprig who wants to make partner—he’s been proving himself at Marlborough Street.”
The younger man—the appointed manager, Thornton supposed—was half standing out of his chair. John took one of the visitor’s chairs and leaned his stick against his leg, this bare short walk had exhausted him. “No, no,” he told the young man, “I’m not quite ready for that seat yet.”
“Yes, sir. I’m Andrew Hughes, sir. I was just giving Mr Watson a report…” Hughes presented him with a sheaf of papers, which made Thornton’s eyes cross and he waved it away.
“Just tell it me. The mill sounds about right, that’s the important thing.”
“Sir?”
Thornton waved his head in the direction of the window, the hum and jostle familiar to his ears. “You know, it sounds right. You might go to the spinning room by and by, but it’s not urgent quite yet.”
“The spinning room?”
Thornton nodded. “The number three spinner gets itself unseated when the line shaft runs too fast. You want the overlookers to check it every now and then.”
“Yes, sir.”
His brother-in-law chuckled. “That’s how you get to be partner, Hughes. Pay attention to the Bulldog.”
Thornton sat with his eyes closed, listening to the verbal report. At last he asked: “why did you sign a contract with Hampers? He was laying off work last year, wasn’t he?” He hoped that he had not already been told this answer.
“Hampers is trying to get into the China market, sir. He wanted to go in double on some orders to block out some of the American manufacturers.”
Thornton nodded, thinking it through, aware he was skirting too close to a headache. The stopwork whistle shrieked and he jerked his head at the assault. He stood then. “Thank you for the update, gentleman, it’s good to know this mill is in safe hands. I’m promised to the canteen…”
“The hands’ll think you’re soft, you spend too much time palling about with them,” Watson said with disgust.
Thornton shared with him a smile of great bliss and sweetness. “Gentlemen.”
***
In the canteen, the rowdy dinner time chatter dimmed a little as he entered. Nick Higgins and two of his cronies, other hands with whom Thornton had formed—not an intimacy, exactly—but a careful friendship built on a shared human interest, had staked out the table nearest the cooking stove and waved at him. He took his seat gratefully and dug into the meal set before him. “This is good,” he said, “this is very good.”
“Hey Mary!” Jackson called. “Measter likes your cookery.”
“That’s Miss Mary to you,” Higgins defended his daughter’s character with his elbow.
Thornton felt the corners of his mouth drag up. “My thanks, Miss Higgins,” he said to the girl. “This is the best stew I’ve ever tasted.”
“Listen to him, wi’ his fancy dinners. Yo’ll be cooking to the Queen, next, Miss Mary.”
Thornton shook his head and took another spoonful. “I’ve been eating invalid food for a sixmonth. Best meal of my life. I like it very much, Miss Mary.”
“Yo’ll take your mutton wi’ us on Sunday,” Higgins told him. “Our Mary makes a wicked toffee pudding.”
“I’d like that very much, Higgins, Miss Higgins.”
The room was still quieter than it should be, he could feel the sliding glances of workers, checking him then glancing away, men who needed their work assessing their livelihood. He turned to one of the younger men, sitting down the table. “And how is your wife, Riley? She was with child, was she not? Did she come to her time safely?”
“She did, measter, I have a little boy now.”
“I’m glad. You must be proud. And you, Hargreaves,” he nodded to another man. “Young Hughes says that he’s made you leading hand. Well done.” He nudged a little, with small words here and there, until conversations began to rise up around him and he could let some of his concentration go.
***
Princeton was too far to walk, which infuriated him. His mother had hired horses to take him the two miles that Sunday, and it irritated him more to know that she was right.
“I’ll be back for you in three hours.” The carriage had pulled to a stop.
“I’m not five, mother.”
“I know, John. Enjoy your dinner.” She fidgeted with his collar.
“Will you be alright on your own, this evening?”
“Oh yes, I’m off to one of my gossips next, and we’ll have a comfortable coze.”
The ghost of a smile crossed his lips and he kissed her on the cheek.
***
It was disorientating to be in the Higgins’ house. A pack of children he had come to know well had grown in height and vigour in, seemingly, but a few weeks, and they clung to his knees with interest and intrigue. He was led to the room’s one armchair, and sat gratefully, accepted ‘lile Jack’ onto his knee and looked about the room. He had been interested in these children’s education, once upon a time, and was pleased to see there were books about the room: he smiled genially to see Mary Higgins sitting with the oldest boy, Tommy, carefully working on a piece of writing, both sounding out their words under their breath. “It’s good you’re teaching young Tommy to read, Mary. He’s a sponge, isn’t he?”
“Was there really a hole in your head?” Tommy asked. “Uncle Nick says they drilled a hole in your head.”
John bent forward and parted his hair to show the thick slab of scar. Infants crowded around him to gawk.
“Would you say you are better now, sir?” Mary asked.
“I’m a little better. I still get headaches when I read—I might need you and Tommy to come work for me as secretaries.”
She folded away the paper carefully and pocketed it. “I have to start the gravy.”
In the little space of time between dinner being cleared away and the teacups being brought out, Higgins solemnly produced two clay bottles of beer.
“It’s not quite Sunday, then,” John said with his ghost of a smile. He pulled the stopper out and took a judicious sip.
Nick shrugged, noncommittally. He raised his bottle: “to the parson. He were a gent.”
“He was.”
“Do yo’ remember much o’ your’n accident?”
“Nothing at all,” Thornton said frankly. “Nor the few weeks before it for that matter. I know I must have gone to France—I can remember packing, and I have notes in my appointment book—but there and back again are pretty much mysteries. It’s times like this I wish I’d kept a diary to save up for my old age.”
“Gi’s me the willies, thinking o’ waking up and six months is gon.”
“Hmm. I found some flowers in my pocket-book of all things, and I’ve no idea how they got there. Did I pick them? Did someone give them to me? Were they important?” He shrugged. He thought he might have picked them; he had the idea of himself standing at a hedgerow teasing them out of the brambles, but why, or even if he had, instead of fancying a situation that would fit the observable facts was beyond his book.
“I wondered,” Thornton said quietly, “if you had heard any news of Miss Hale.”
Nick shook his head. “Not for months. Hoo were down at Marlborough Street most days, right at first, helping to nurse you. Whiter than a sheet, hoo was—no, one o’ em statues yo’d see in a museum, and as still as one. Hoo mighta done a harm to herself, if hoo hadna had someone to take care of, I could see that right enough.”
“And then what happened?”
“Her fancy London aunt swooped down and swept her off South. Oh, you should ha' seen Mrs High and Mighty Shaw with her ringlets tighter’n a spring, and the Hale house tighter’n a barricade. Oh, that Miss Dixon wonnut let the likes o’ me in the house with some toffee-nosed London servants to impress, when it’s my Mary was th’only soul our Miss Marget would have her cry out with.” Higgins dug the old tobacco out of his pipe in disgust, tossed it into the bin, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, face twisted in old rage. “We munnot be able to say good bye, even, m’appen we thought to go camp out at the train station.”
“I see. And did you hear anything after that?”
Higgins shook his head sharply, and puffed a few times to draw the smoke. “How’s this, my lovelies?” he addressed the younger Boucher children and, sucking in air mightily with rounded cheeks, puffed three smoke rings in a row out into the air, to general acclaim. John sat in his chair and silently watched the smoke drift through the room. He had not yet suffocated the panic, the fear, no, the certainty that with respect to Margaret Hale he had committed some grievous breach of conduct. And he had no idea what it was.