Reeducating Mr Thornton #2
“Ask Frederick. He is behind you and will be here in a few seconds.” Mr. Thornton watched Frederick running toward them, leaving his wife behind. He scowled. He would never have left Margaret standing all alone in a crowd.
He heard his wife suck in a sharp shallow breath. Still scowling, he turned to see her falling into her brother’s arms.
Neither said a word. They clutched each other tight as tears rolled down their cheeks.
Mr. Thornton stared, drawn into the drama of the reunion of brother and sister yet also astonished by such an open display of emotions.
It took a while before Frederick raised his head and held Margaret at arm’s length.
They gazed long at each other before he pulled her back into his embrace, kissing her cheeks over and over.
She returned each kiss mixed with her tears.
Minutes later, her hands trembling, Margaret dabbed her face with a handkerchief she pulled out of the pocketbook hanging around her wrist. Frederick, still holding her, was not trembling any less. He threw his sister’s husband a quick glance and swiped his red eyes with the back of his left hand.
Averting his eyes, Mr. Thornton gritted his teeth. Were they still mourning their parents? Why now? She should have unburdened her grief on me. Why didn’t she?
He sighed. They grew up together, shared intimate family concerns—maybe even secrets—that an outsider, including me, might never understand.
“Hello.” The hesitant trill of a girlish voice made him turn to peer into midnight-blue eyes on an olive-skinned beauty.
Dolores. She stood before him, her abundant wavy tresses cascading over a red shawl draped on her shoulders and down her flowered skirt.
Mr. Thornton arched an eyebrow and failed to suppress a smile that lifted one side of his mouth.
Looking closer at the design on the skirt, he realized that it was embroidered, not woven in.
He heard Dolores introduce herself in accented English and, in a move that brought blood rushing to his face, she clasped his shoulders, stood on her toes, kissed his cheeks and offered hers for him to kiss in return.
He planted a quick buss on one cheek as words stumbled out of his mouth.
“I’m John Thornton, Margaret’s husband.”
Dolores said, “I know. I’ve heard much about you.”
Bemused at the unexpected warmth of Dolores’s greeting, Mr. Thornton shifted his gaze back to Margaret and her brother who had stepped back from his sister. His eyes red and puffy, Frederick smiled tremulously at his wife. “Forgive me for leaving you behind?”
Dolores did not answer. She grasped his tear-stained face with both hands and kissed it over and over as she wiped his face tenderly with her fingers. She pulled him into her embrace. Frederick rested his cheek on her head.
Watching her brother and his wife, Margaret’s eyes were once again welling up with tears. She wiped them before they fell down her cheeks. Mr. Thornton took a step towards her to comfort her, but he heard Frederick call out his name.
Frederick and Dolores had broken apart. His face drier and a smile playing on his lips, Frederick approached Mr. Thornton, his open hand reaching out to him.
Mr. Thornton grasped the offered hand. In a quick gesture—another he did not anticipate—Frederick clasped him in his arms. “May I call you John? I feel as if I’ve known you a long time from Margaret’s letters.
Welcome to our family. Muy encantado, as we say in Spanish. You have met my wife Dolores?”
Having gently extricated himself from Frederick’s embrace, Mr. Thornton grinned. “Yes. She has already taught me one of your charming customs.”
“Good. You’ve been introduced to the Gaditano spirit. I hope it doesn’t bother you. It’s nothing like you’d find in England.”
Frederick turned to his wife. He placed an arm around her waist and presented her to his sister.
Margaret raised her face from drying her eyes with her handkerchief and smiled at Dolores.
Aware of Spanish customs and predisposed to like Dolores, she embraced her sister-in-law and kissed her on both cheeks.
“I feel I know you quite well. Fred’s letters are often short and straightforward but when he talks about you, he fills pages. ”
Dolores blushed. “I hope I meet your expectations.”
“You’re more beautiful than I imagined, and you make English sound lovelier and more musical.”
Her eyes twinkling, Dolores hooked her arm with Margaret’s. “Fred—he does not explain well. Like most men, you know. He said, my sister, she is strong and her spirit …formidable.” She hesitated, glancing at Margaret.
Margaret nodded. “Yes?”
“He made me anxious I do not meet your approval. Now I see you. You are sweet and kind, and you have the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen, bluer than his.”
“I can see we’ll get along well, for we’re both anxious to like each other.”
Arm in arm, the two women started to walk on.
Frederick said, “Shall we join our ladies?”
“Yes, of course.” Mr. Thornton strode in step with Frederick. As they kept pace behind their wives, he thought with both wonder and envy: How easily women make friends. Margaret need not have worried. She and Dolores seemed to have charmed each other.
He, on the other hand, had been thrown off balance from the moment he set foot on the quay.
The sunlight that flooded the city even in late afternoon overwhelmed him.
Though diffused, it intensified the vibrant colors all around him and made him more aware of the heat.
His cravat was too tight. He tugged at it although he did not dare loosen it.
He tasted the salty tang of Atlantic winds, so unlike the metallic effusion of industrial machines, dyes, and textiles he inhaled daily in Milton.
He looked one way, then another, his attention riveted by the cacophony of harbor sounds—the rhythmic splashing of waves against the hulls of ships arriving or leaving, the grating shrill of seagulls, and the disorienting buzz of strange tongues that he was sure were not all Spanish.
Frederick broke into his thoughts. “You know we’ve seen each other before.
At a train station at night, I believe, more than two years ago.
You looked mysterious, hidden by shadows.
Now that I see you better under our Andalusian skies, I have to say I like your smile. A smile says a lot about people.”
Uncertain what had passed between brother and sister when they talked about him, Mr. Thornton forced himself to smile. “I’m sure I was scowling at you. But you must understand—to me, you were a stranger embracing the woman who meant the world to me.”
Frederick chuckled and laid a hand on Mr. Thornton’s shoulder. “I do understand. I hope you weren’t left out of our family secret for too long. We all had a difficult time with it, especially my mother.”
Mr. Thornton shrugged. “I would have liked to have known about you earlier, not only that you exist but also about the trouble you had at sea. Well, I am here now, and that’s all that matters, I believe.”
They followed their wives in silence for a couple of minutes before Frederick spoke again. “We’re relieved and thankful when difficult times are over and done with. Sometimes, though, their consequences can haunt us forever.”
Surprised at his remark, Mr. Thornton cocked his head toward Frederick. He started to ask which consequences Frederick referred to, but the question died in his throat. If Frederick had a new disclosure to make, he believed Frederick should share it freely.
An easy smile had lingered on Frederick’s lips since they started to walk together.
It faded, and the flush on his face crept back up.
His eyes cast down, he said, “I have these pangs of guilt, sometimes agonizing, that I might have hastened my mother’s death.
You know that she had often suffered from one little ailment or another.
What if they worsened enough to kill her because of what happened to me? ”
Mr. Thornton reached out and rested his hand on Frederick’s shoulder. Frederick glanced at him, a small grateful smile on his lips, though his eyes remained clouded.
It dawned on Mr. Thornton that his brother-in-law had a vulnerable side.
Frederick had seen more of the world than he had and endured life-threatening challenges.
He had expected Frederick to have been toughened by his past. But this man walking next to him, with his ready smile and confident air, knew the agony of guilt and blamed himself for his mother’s death.
Mr. Thornton was acquainted enough with the Hales to be certain that they would never have thought Frederick responsible in any way for Mrs. Hale’s passing. However, he was also aware that, in his anguish, Frederick might not be swayed by anyone contradicting his belief.
“You’re right about some lasting effects of tragedy and how helpless they make us feel. All we can do is live with them. But surely there are many more good times with people we love that we can celebrate or at least be grateful for.”
Frederick’s smile widened and his eyes brightened the way Margaret’s did when she was pleased. “Yes, surely you are right. I have actually told myself that once or twice. It reassures me, though, to hear you say it.”