Loose Leaves from Milton #3
It was a shaken Margaret, though not literally, who returned to Scotland Yard.
She was outraged and disgusted by what she had seen.
This then was the way men of power treated their subordinates in The North.
It was too grim even to reveal to Mother and Father, and so Margaret dealt with a large heap of ironing, thrusting the heavy iron upon the linen as though repressing the very thought of Mr Thornton.
When her Father asked her about her visit, she told him only of her encounter with a rough but kindly man and his pallid daughter, both millworkers, upon her return journey.
Much of what they had said had been unintelligible to her, but the tone had been amicable, and the girl was much her own age.
Margaret had arranged to meet the girl, Bessy, to teach her how to hem handkerchiefs, since the one in her possession was somewhat ragged at the corners.
‘It was the least that I could do, Father. Bessy Higgins has fluff on her lungs from working in the horrid mills, and I fear that such a condition is very serious. If one has to cough up one’s lungs, far better it should be into a well hemmed handkerchief, not some rag.’
Mr Hale agreed most heartily.
Leaf Three - Tea for Two Times Two
It could not be said that Mr Hale was fending off prospective students from the doorstep, or more accurately, that Dixon was having to do so, although she announced with some pride that she had won the ‘person most likely to fend off others’ prize in the dame school she had attended in her rather distant youth.
There were a few using his tuition as a crammer, being young gentlemen whose ability to pass the entrance examination for The Universities was in doubt.
Their doting, or delusional, parents were willing to pay nearly moderate sums for additional tuition in Greek, followed by tea and cakes in the parlour.
As Margaret remarked, the amount of cake the crammer boys could cram into their adolescent forms was quite likely to mean that expenditure would exceed income from them.
Mr Hale was rather more proud that he had mature students from among the men whose affluence enabled them to dabble in the Classics they had not encountered when young.
He did not say he had invested four shillings in flyers, which he had conveniently mislaid when visiting the Cotton Exchange, and the Mercantile Masters’ Recreation and Reading Room (Strictly No Admittance To Ladies).
He also failed to mention that the advertisement hinted at tales of drapery clad goddesses, and the ‘amorous adventures of deities - with illustrations.’
Margaret came downstairs from her bedchamber, where she had changed from her ‘I am not a servant in my own home’ dress for something more suitable for partaking of tea in the parlour, and entered with a slightly fixed smile, anticipating boredom and adolescent acne.
The smile froze, instantly as cold as ice, but not of course, iced tea, since such a thing would never catch on.
There, seated, or rather perched, as his tall frame was somewhat too much for the small salon chair upon which he had been invited to make himself comfortable, was Mr Thornton - the man who had dismissed a worker, most violently, for being too eager to have his cup of tea.
He stood rather suddenly, nearly knocking over a jardiniere containing an aspidistra that was finding the grim conditions up north just to its liking, and was threatening to become an obstruction to conversation.
‘Look, my dear, Mr Thornton has come to take tea with us after his Latin lesson.’ Mr Hale smiled beatifically at his daughter, who sniffed, clearly unimpressed.
‘I am surprised he has permitted you to use your spirit kettle, Mama. Mr Thornton objects to tea. Or do you draw the line at violence towards women, Mr Thornton?’ Her angry gaze passed from her mother to Mr Thornton, who was taken aback at this verbal assault.
‘The situation is very different, Miss Hale, and I am a man who takes tea very seriously. What we have here are comestibles, rather than combustibles.’ He indicated a plate of small cakes.
They were, he decided, very soft, southern cakes, designed for people who only needed nourishment to sustain them in walking to their carriages, or in lifting their teacups from the saucers.
‘What you saw in the mill was both a huge risk to the safety of my workers, and an unforgivable affront to tea.’
‘In what way, sir?’ Margaret responded, not at all appeased.
‘The man’s name was Smoucher, and he lived up to it.
He has been selling illicit adulterated tea - the worst smouch I have ever discovered - to his colleagues.
He puts the mix in small cotton bags and tells them they can make their tea quicker by putting the bag in a tin cup and pouring ‘hot water’ over it.
Fools being taken in by this heresy has resulted in several cases of .
. .’ Mr Thornton stopped mid-sentence, and blushed.
He could not mention irritation of the bowels in Mrs Hale’s parlour.
‘“Of”?’
Margaret did not lower her gaze. It challenged him.
‘ . . .Of serious indisposition.’ He gave her look for look. ‘There,’ his own look said, ‘I did find an appropriate term that will not offend your southern sensibilities.’
Margaret was horrified, but hated to admit that she might herself have slapped the face of a man who suggested she make tea without a teapot and a strainer.
Mr Hale, now frowning at the obvious antipathy between his most able pupil and his daughter, sought to move the conversation onward.
‘Mr Thornton did not only bring his intellect to the lesson, Margaret, but has brought us a gift.’ He indicated a very thin volume upon the table, entitled ‘A Visitor’s Guide to the Manufacturing Metropolis of Milton.’
‘Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes,’ cried Margaret, scornfully, ‘or rather I fear not Greeks but overbearing masters bearing gifts.’
‘Oh no! She did it again! What have I told you about showing intelligence in public, Margaret?’ Mrs Hale, highly agitated, wafted a thin slice of bread and butter to cool her pink cheeks. ‘What will people say? You will never find a husband.’
‘I hardly think anyone in Milton would even understand, Mother,’ Margaret stuck up her chin, ‘and the last thing in the world I need is a rough northern husband, who slurps his tea and drinks it nearly stewed.’
‘I understand, Miss Hale,’ murmured J Tea, his brows furrowing, and his rather chocolatey voice dropping to a near growl, ‘I understand you completely.’
‘Oh yes, Mr Thornton, you do?’ For a moment her heart stood still.
Her outburst was a total rejection of The North, of him, and a little voice inside her was screaming at her for ruining its dream.
She admitted to herself that accusing him, by implication, of poor tea etiquette was going too far, so she turned back to his lessons.
‘You are studying Vergil’s Aeneid, not the works of Catullus?
Are you disappointed, or not up to the required standard? ’
‘Margaret!’ Mr Hale was horrified. Not only was Margaret likely to lose him his pupil, but must have been borrowing his books off the top shelf in the book room. ‘Mr Thornton is our guest. You will apologise and offer him tea.’
‘I am sorry, Mr Thornton, for having the temerity to question your learning.’ She did not sound at all apologetic. ‘Do sit down and have a small cake.’
He sat, heavily, for the chair was just a couple of inches lower than most, and it groaned beneath him. The plate of cakes was thrust before his nose.
‘Would you prefer a queen cake or a madeleine with a cherry on the top?’
J Tea nearly sighed with relief. At least he could now tell one little cake from the other. He selected a madeleine, and placed it on his small, delicately painted china plate. His hand made the plate seem even smaller, and Margaret noted his long fingers. Would he?
Would he not?
‘Circumstance, most unfortunate circumstance, curtailed my acquaintance with the Classics, Miss Hale. I find the rigour of Latin an inspiration to serious thought. I am sure we will study Catullus at some point, but I find both the Georgics and the Aeneid very interesting.’
So perhaps he was not just there for the naughty bits. She poured a cup of tea, and leaned a little down to him, sat upon that ridiculous chair. Whether she liked it or not, and her traitorous heart liked it rather a lot, their fingers touched.
‘One lump or two?’ murmured Margaret, just a little breathlessly.
‘Er . . .’ His eyes were level with her chastely muslin-encased bosom. He swallowed convulsively. ‘Er . . .er, two please.’ He did not take sugar in tea. The room felt hotter than a hob with a singing kettle upon it.
The sugar was dropped into his cup with a slightly suggestive plopping sound, and his ears went red.
He stirred the tea, the spoon making small clattering sounds like teeth chattering.
He gazed at Miss Hale - haughty, high and mighty, looking-down-her-nose-at-him Miss Hale - and he was smitten.
He took the cup and set it to his lips. It was too sweet, like her, but had a superb body to it, strong and fortifying.
That too was like her, he thought, and his heart missed a beat.
Margaret watched intently, unintentionally holding her breath.
Would he? He did - in a way. It was physically impossible for those long fingers to hold the delicate china handle between more than thumb and forefinger, and the other digits floundered somewhat, the middle finger just touching the lower edge of the cup, but the little finger was making an attempt to hold itself in the accepted curve of the ‘not near the handle’ polite tea drinker.
She sighed, and Mr Thornton, still covertly observing the muslin over the rim of his teacup, spluttered, and mendaciously said that a tea leaf had stuck in the back of his throat.