Mischances
Nicole Clarkston
“Yes! he knew how she would love. He had not loved her without gaining that instinctive knowledge of what capabilities were in her. Her soul would walk in glorious sunlight if any man was worthy, by his power of loving, to win back her love.” - Chapter XXXIII, North and South
“Thornton, I’d have a word with you.”
John Thornton glanced up from the desk in his office, his pen hovering in the air. “Good afternoon, Hamper. What can I do for you?”
“Oh, aye, civil as you please,” snorted the other. “I’ve come about the contract you stole from me.”
Thornton raised a brow. “If you are referring to the Regimental contract, I did nothing more than quote a fair price per bolt.”
“You knew very well that you were undercutting me. How am I to keep my mill solvent when you quote ten shillings less per lot?”
John set aside his pen and folded his hands on his desk. “Everyone was asked to bid on it, so the contract was not yours by right. I do as is right by Marlborough Mills. We are all suffering after the strikes, but they are ended now, largely at my expense.”
Hamper shook his finger. “If you’re looking for gratitude, Thornton, you’ll not find it from me. You brought the Irish on yourself, and I had nothing to do with it.”
“You benefited as well as the next mill.”
“So that’s how it is!” cried Hamper. “Cutting other mills to fill your own sheds? You think we owe you?”
Thornton sighed and rose from his desk. “I cut no one. It was merely business, and you said last week that you were behind on orders.”
“No more than you are. You know as well as I that a contract like that is easy profit. No man in his senses would run small custom lots through his looms first when he could bring in nearly a quarter’s earnings with a large plain one. You did this on purpose!”
“And you know very well that I never bid what I cannot do. My hands are better trained, and my looms are newer than yours. I can afford to cut price where I see fit, and I am not to blame if you cannot.”
Hamper stepped close with a sneering growl. “Damn you, Thornton. You’ve been as charming as a bull with a hornet on his back since the riots. What’s got into you? We mill owners have always stuck together.”
Thornton turned away, resting his hand against the frame of the window and looking out over his looms. “I do not have breath to waste on the matter, Hamper. I regret that you feel slighted over the affair, but I daresay there is enough work to keep us all busy.”
Hamper gathered his hat with a hiss and a clatter of the hat tree. “High and mighty now, are you? I see how it is. You think you own this town, but you’re no better than the rest of us. You deserve to be put back in your place—boy!”
“Boy!” John spun back, glaring at his associate. “Take care, Hamper. My mill would make two of yours. And who is it you turn to whenever you have troubles with the Union?”
Hamper was quaking now in rage, and he shook his hat at John like a stick.
His voice, when he collected himself to speak, was dangerously low.
“I’ll warn you this once, Thornton. Don’t do anything you will regret.
” The door slammed a moment later, and John turned slowly round to survey his now-empty office.
Hamper could not know that his warning had come too late.
Regret and the searing agony of failure already haunted John’s steps and darkened his thoughts.
Yet, it was not in business where he had met his greatest ruin.
No! Not on his own turf, which had been his to master and command these eight years.
It was in the only area of life that truly did matter—that core of self that found breath and hope in the being of another.
That sliver of him, always before unacknowledged and undervalued, was now decayed and rotting his frame from the inside.
And yet he carried on, working as he had ever done, and hoping that no one would notice there was no life in him.
Some hours later, dusk heard his clipped and measured strides sounding at his own threshold. His mother looked up at his entry, then set her needlework aside. “You are home very late.”
“Forgive me, Mother,” he said as he hung his hat. “I trust you kept a tray for me?”
“Jane will bring it. John…” She waited for him to turn back at the hesitant tone to her voice.
“Yes?”
“Dr Donaldson was here this evening. He had just come from the Hales.”
He went to her and lowered himself into the chair just opposite. “Is it going poorly for Mrs Hale, then?”
Mrs Thornton looked down. “I cannot imagine anyone recovering from her kind of ailment.”
John leaned forward. “I took fruit this morning, but I was not invited in. I understood that to mean that matters were grave, indeed.”
“The matter has been grave from the beginning, I understand.”
“But she has not refused company before. You saw her only a few days ago. You told me that she asked for you.”
His mother stiffened, and a mask fell over her features. “Nothing to concern yourself about. She only wished to commend that daughter of hers to my good offices. I told her I would advise the young creature as I saw fit, but I promised no more.”
“Mother—”
“Nay, John, it is enough that I was able to comfort the woman somewhat in her last days.”
He was silent a moment. “What did Donaldson say?”
Mrs Thornton sighed. “She has lapsed into a death sleep, and dawn will have settled it.”
“Then I am very sorry for her!” he cried and covered his mouth with a trembling hand.
“Sorry for her! She feels no more pain and shall be more blessed than we when she awakens again. To be sure, she was too young to go in such a way, but many are younger. Grieve for her, certainly, but she is not to be pitied.”
His cheek flinched as he raised his eyes to his mother’s in faint annoyance. “I do pity Mrs Hale, but it was not she who…Mother, I am going upstairs.”
“What of your supper?” she protested as he rose abruptly away.
“Have Jane bring it up. I have work to do,” was his distracted answer.
In his own room, he cast his coat on his bed and sank into a chair.
His mother’s tidings were hardly a surprise, but he had hoped…
no, that was not right. He had willed, in vain it seemed, but such was the strength of his resolve that it had rarely been challenged in his adult years.
Fortune, commerce, public opinion and sheer luck–he had held all these in his sway.
But the almighty hand of death would not be denied, and now one dearer to him than life would mourn.
His forehead fell to his hand and, if his eyes blurred with feeling, the darkness blotted it out. Margaret…
There had been some terror in her that morning—more than the hushed tones, the fragile way of moving—as if any sound would disturb the sufferer two floors above.
No, it was something in her eyes—a gathering doom, a desperate apprehension.
He had seen it, and wondered at the cause, until he saw a man’s hat by the door.
Not Mr Hale’s worn felt, nor Donaldson’s brown silk.
She had flinched at his notice—he was sure of it.
Perhaps it belonged to someone she did not want him to see.
A relation, he wondered? Someone come to bring the family comfort?
But there were none in Milton who would trouble themselves to call nor be welcome above himself in that house of death.
His understanding was that there were precious few elsewhere, either.
The fearful and distracted way Miss Hale had greeted and then dismissed him troubled him more than he cared to confess. It had hovered over the rest of his day, and now it would rob him of sleep. His hand strayed over his desk, touching the cover of Mr Hale’s copy of Plato.
He would not be the only sleepless soul this night.
“Fred, have you never been to bed?”
Margaret paused at the doorway of the sitting room.
The coal was long spent; the curtains drawn against the dim morning light, but her brother’s white shirt glared from the darkness.
He stirred, lifted his head, then dropped weary eyes to knead them with his fingers.
“Margaret? I’d no idea you were up. Have you slept at all since the day I came? ”
“A little,” she confessed. “When Father finally went to his bed a few hours ago, I tried to sleep.”
Frederick Hale moved aside on the sofa to offer his arm, and Margaret sagged into his embrace. “It took him long enough. I was afraid at first that he would not permit the undertaker to—”
“Please!” Margaret whispered. “Do not say it.”
He lapsed into silence, his arm settling comfortingly round his sister’s shoulders. “I wish to heaven I had been here sooner.”
“It was wonderful of you to come at all.”
“Little good it did!” was his bitter retort. “What had we, a few hours at the end of her life? That little to make up for the last ten years? And now I must leave again when I have scarcely arrived. You heard what Dixon said about Leonards. He would be sure to recognise me if he saw me.”
“Then you must not go out. Not even to the funeral tomorrow. Who can harm you here? It is not as if Leonards will force his way through our door.”
He shook his head. “Every moment I spend here in England kills Father a little more. Leonards may talk, or ask questions, and…no, my dearest sister, it will not do. Father will never sleep until he knows I am safely away from these shores. I doubt he will sleep even then, but I will not prolong his suffering. How shall you bear up? It all falls to you, I fear.”
She wetted her lips and looked away. “Dixon and I shall manage.”
“You could come to Spain. I have a good place there, and I know that Father would—”
“He would never leave Mother,” Margaret breathed. “He has already said it—he wishes to be buried beside her.”
Frederick sighed. “What of you? You cannot do it all alone. And what of your happiness? I’ll not see you sacrifice everything in this filthy excuse for a city. Come to Spain, Margaret!”