Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
When March arrived, the weather fluctuated greatly between winter chill and a gentler tease of spring. On one of these warmer days, Margaret put on her bonnet and wool shawl for a walk, leaving her mother napping while Dixon made bread in the kitchen.
Beckoned to walk farther on such a day by the beautiful weather, she strolled through the graveyard knoll rising above the town. Ahead she recognized a lone girl standing at the top of the grassy hill as the carder she had spoken with at Mr. Thornton’s mill.
She quickened her step to reach the girl and called out to her as she approached, “Hello, I believe we met—at Thornton’s mill?”
The girl raised her head, clutching her faded shawl close about her. A look of confusion melted into a measure of amazement as she recognized the lady speaking to her.
“If you remember me, I’m Margaret Hale,” the newcomer to Milton said, a little out of breath from her haste.
“Yes, I remember,” Bessy returned. A man twice her age, wearing the loose-fitting clothes and cap of a working man, sidled up and took her arm. “This is my father,” she explained.
“Hello, I’m Margaret Hale. I met your daughter a few weeks ago at Marlborough Mills. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name,” she said, directing her apology to the girl.
“The name’s Nicholas Higgins,” the man replied. “This is Bessy.” Father and daughter exchanged a knowing glance. “Yo’ must be the newcomer who took a tour through Thornton’s mill. Bess told me as much.”
“I am new to Milton, yes. Do you also work at Marlborough Mills?” Margaret asked.
“Father works at Hamper’s. And so happens today is to be my last day at Thornton’s. Father’s worried about my health and says I’m too sick to work anymore,” Bessy said.
“Oh, but you will recover, surely,” Margaret returned hopefully.
Bessy shook her head. “There’s too much fluff in me lungs,” she said and began coughing as if to verify this assessment. Her father laid a gentle hand on her back until she stopped her coughing.
“Please, if you’ll tell me where you live, I could visit you,” Margaret pleaded.
Mr. Higgins cocked his head, narrowing his eyes. “For what purpose? To drop your pity upon us and give my daughter false hope?”
“I meant no disrespect. I thought I might bring a basket—“
“We care for our own here,” he interrupted.
Bessy glanced at her father with cautious pleading.
“We live two doors north of the Goulden Dragon, in the Princeton district,” he conceded. “And whereabouts do you live?“ he asked with a rebellious twist of a smile.
“Why, we live at the end of Stoughton Road in Crampton,” Margaret replied, a little taken aback at his boldness.
“I’ll not ask to visit yo’, but yo’ may come visit my Bess if yo’ like,” he answered.
Bessy gave Margaret a hopeful look as her father took her arm and led them towards their home.
Perplexed, Margaret watched them for a moment before turning to follow the path toward her own home.
A few days later, Margaret wound her way through the dingy and cluttered alleyways that constituted the byways of the Princeton District. She had learned since her meeting with Bessy and Mr. Higgins that this area of Milton was where many of the mill workers lived.
Children in ragged clothing, some with bare feet, crouched against walls and over sodden alleys to play jacks or marbles.
Others with long faces were washing laundry.
A small girl with a dirt-streaked face held her hand out expectantly as Margaret approached her.
Margaret hesitated, calculating that to offer a coin would cause a rush of requests.
She hurried past, saddened by the sight. Aunt Shaw would be appalled to know Margaret walked into such areas of town alone. Edith would have been horrified.
The Goulden Dragon was a squalled pub, marked only by a painted image on a wooden sign. Counting the doors from the pub, she knocked on the door she hoped was Bessy’s. Another girl of about the same age as Bessy, this one with darker hair and a bigger frame, answered.
“I’m sorry, I was looking for Bessy Higgins?” Margaret inquired.
The girl said nothing, only bowed her head in deference and held the door open for Margaret to step in.
“Yo’ve come! Father said yo’ wouldn’t,” Bessy declared, rising from a straw mattress on a simple wooden frame placed near the kitchen.
Through the darkness inside the dwelling, Margaret saw Bessy’s face alight with wonder.
“I brought a few gifts. I hope it will not offend,” Margaret said, setting a basket on a table near the open hearth.
“Don’t mind Father. His mind is full of the battle set between men of means and those with little,” Bessy said as the other girl began taking the items out of the basket and storing them.
“This here is my sister Mary. She doesn’t talk much, but she’s a good lass,” Bessy said.
“Does your mother work at a factory?”
“She had done. She died o’er three years ago now. Which is why I were sent to work. Father wanted to keep Mary in her schooling.”
“I’m sorry,” Margaret said quietly.
“And now that I’m ill, Mary will need to find work. She’s not o’er bright, but she can work hard when put to a task.”
“You’ve been working in the mills for three years. How old are you?” Margaret asked.
“Nineteen this past month.”
“I too, am nineteen,” Margaret answered with a sad smile as she looked on Bessy’s pale face.
“Tell me where yo’re from. I’m tired of thinking on this place,” Bessy requested, leaning back in the bed.
“I’m from the South. My father was a vicar in a country hamlet of beautiful gardens, and fields and forests.”
“It sounds heavenly,” Bessy said. “I wished I could go there now, and get away from all this brick and smoke and fighting,” she added with a long sigh. “What brought you to Milton? I’d never have left such a place as you described.”
“My father had a change of conscience and decided to leave the Church to teach the classics to such as might want to learn them,” Margaret answered, looking down at her hands.
“There is lots of learning here, to be sure. Father goes to lectures and such whenever he can. And many of us who work in the mills can read. And those that can’t, Father tells them of their rights.
Father is a Union leader. For all his rough ways, he’s got a heart to help others.
He bands the mill workers together to fight against the masters for better wages. ”
“Why cannot the masters and workers come to terms? Does your father not meet with the masters?” Margaret asked sincerely, her brow creased with confusion.
Bessy looked at her strangely and then laughed, which quickly turned into a fit of coughing.
Margaret petted Bessy’s shoulders and back, then smoothed her arms until the fit was over.
When she had recovered, Bessy replied, “Yo’ve no notion of how it is. Masters set the rules and that’s the way of it.”
“But are all the masters the same?” Margaret asked.
Bessy studied Margaret with a growing suspicion. “How is it yo’ came to see Thornton’s mill? Do yo’ have some connection?”
“No…I mean…yes,” she stuttered. “Mr. Thornton takes lessons from my father,” she answered, hoping Bessy could not see the warmth coming to her face.
Bessy grinned. “I saw the way he looked at yo’ that day—“
“Whatever do you mean?” Margaret protested. Mary snorted from across the room.
“Ah, come now! There’s no shame in admitting it. Every girl in Milton would give their right arm to catch Thornton’s eye! There’s many that has put their plans on him. Violet Grayson is one of ’em, they say.”
“They’d be chasing him for his money, I suppose?” Margaret asked, still bewildered that a manufacturer could be the highest prize in town. It would never be so in London.
Bessy cast a sidelong glance at her sister, and they both erupted into chortling laughter. Calming herself quickly, so as not to begin coughing again, Bessy studied Margaret as if she were some foreign creature. “The money ain’t bad, to be sure, but he’s not one to make yo’r eyes sore either!”
Margaret blushed at their teasing, silently realizing that the man who had asked her to marry him was sought after as a handsome bachelor.
“Yo’d know he’s the best of the lot if yo’d see the rest of them that are masters,” Bessy added. Mary nodded her agreement.
“I know I’m very new here,” Margaret began.
“And perhaps it will seem strange to you, but a manufacturer is not thought of so highly in more genteel places in England.” Here, Margaret’s voice twisted into a tone of disdain.
“I have a strong distaste for those whose primary aim is to make money for themselves. I’m certain he never thinks about the privileges that must have enabled him to hold such a position over others. ”
“Ah, but yo’ don’t know him! They say he worked his way up to his role as Master,” Bessy countered, and then leaned forward with a mischievous grin. “Rumor has it that there’s some dark secret about his past,” Bessy said in a whisper.
She leaned back against her pillows again, satisfied to see Margaret’s expression blanch.
“Makes him even more mysterious, I should say!” Bessy declared, darting her gaze to see her sister smile.
Margaret stayed to talk with her new friend for a while longer, but her thoughts were distracted by the tumble of conjectures running through her mind as to what “dark secret” could be lurking in Mr. Thornton’s past.
The door latch clacked, and Nicholas Higgins entered his home. He stopped in his tracks at the sight of the visitor. The room went still, waiting for his reaction. He met the eyes of his ailing daughter. “Yo’ were right. I didn’t think she’d come.”
“Now here’s the wonder,” he went on, surveying the newcomer with cautious doubt. “If she’ll come again, or if she’s here just to lay pity on us and satisfy herself with having done her deed of charity.”
Bessy looked to Margaret with a yearning to know if her father’s words were too harsh, or if they spoke the truth.