Chapter Text
No one ever knew why Mr. Lennox did not keep to his appointment on the following day.
Elizabeth Gaskell tells us this in the final pages of North and South. That appointment was to the meeting where Margaret Hale intends to offer an unsolicited investment in John Thornton’s business.
But could it really be true?
For, of course, Henry himself knew why he did not keep the appointment. Surely? Let us investigate.
Recall their previous meeting, on the day following the dinner party. Margaret had asked Henry to call in Harley Street so that she could speak to him about a financial affair.
At that meeting, she told him of her intention to offer all of her available money to Mr Thornton. On terms Henry had struggled to make stricter, as her initial suggestion was nearly equivalent to giving it to the other man.
He had been scandalised. After his initial shock at the idea, he began to suspect a hidden motivation: it was tantamount to a declaration of love.
When she had first told him her intention – when he had arrived, thinking that the meeting showed her increased reliance on him, that she was showing how she trusted him and wished him to direct the management of her money – which he hoped in the future to do as her husband – and she had informed him that she wanted to ensure Mr Thornton’s business did not fail – he had thought it was a girlish whim. An impulse born of a wish to deny the harsh realities of business, as they must affect the mill workers she had so unaccountably grown fond of in her time in Milton. A misunderstanding of the usual terms of loans and investments. Some notion of protecting the value of the mill property, based on a lack of knowledge of common business practice. One of these, or all of these, mixed together.
It had taken some minutes for the realisation to hit him that her suggestion did not stem from any of these but meant that Margaret felt something so intense for Mr Thornton that she was willing to step over the bounds of her usual reserve and her sense of maidenly propriety and to disregard financial prudence.
She loved Thornton. It could only be that.
Margaret sat smoothing her cuffs after asserting that her intention was firm, she did not require advice as to its prudence; she was merely asking him to help her carry it out. Her face had assumed that almost haughty look which Henry recognised. It meant that she was both fixed in her purpose and had a conviction that what she wished to do was the correct thing.
She was pliant in many ways – letting Edith organise their days, deferring to her aunt – but when she had made up her mind to something – whether to do it or to avoid it – there was no moving her. How had he ever thought that he would be able to mould her to his wishes?
With a numb feeling, Henry had found himself drawing up a draft of an agreement, altering it as he and Margaret discussed the terms, and finally making a fair copy of the short proposal.
All the while it felt as if his clenched stomach prevented him from protesting or lying himself prostrate at her feet. It was an effort to speak, and afterwards he was not sure what he had said, but Margaret did not evince surprise, so he clearly had not said anything of what he was really thinking or feeling.
When he had quitted the parlour, after agreeing to call again the following day, it was as if closing the door allowed his frozen emotions to start to thaw.
Edith spoke to him, and he told her as plainly as possible – even somewhat fiercely – that there was no hope for him with Margaret – it was as he spoke the words, he began to feel their truth.
Hurrying out the Harley Street door, he hastened away from the house, as if it were the source of the pain he could begin to feel spreading across his body.
oOo
Of course, he fully intended to keep the appointment. All the afternoon, as he busied himself with preparation for one of his cases, were two thoughts in the back of his mind – that Margaret loved Mr Thornton and that he had undertaken to be present to witness the offer she wished to make. And to see Thornton – what? How would he understand it? Would he see the other offer which lay beneath the proposition of her investment? Surely. Could it merely seem a matter of business luck, would he accept it on behalf of the workpeople he had been discussing at the dinner, on behalf of continuing as a mill master? Surely not.
Could that grave, inflexible-seeming man be drawn to Margaret? How could he tolerate her tendency to champion the mill workers – as she had expressed several times in discussions in Harley Street. Would he accept her love purely as a means for acquiring the money? Or could he reciprocate her feeling?
(Henry’s first thought: “how could any man not be drawn by such an offer of her love?”) (His second thought – more sardonic – “and her money”.)
How would she behave if Thornton only took the money as a business loan? If he did not understand or accept the offer of herself?
Was she consciously aware of that second offer?
Surely, any man of sense would wish to have her, and not just her money. She had a lively mind and decided views – which made her so much more interesting than her cousin, for example, or most of the young women of his acquaintance.
And the way she had made her small back parlour so inviting and homely. If she had a whole house to command, it would surely be a domestic haven for a man to come back to each evening.
And her looks – they had been blooming into real beauty in the last months.
The image of her at the dinner the other night came into his head – her gold gown, adorned simply with red pomegranate flowers. Her heavy, dark hair coiled up. Her eyes clear and direct. A woman who moved serenely with upheld head, without flirtatious guile or affectation.
Of course she was still young – though not as young as she had been when he had offered for her in Helstone – and had those unconventional notions about workers and the poor and helping them. He had thought that once he persuaded her to marry him, some of these ideas would be softened, especially with the introduction of the natural preoccupation with wifely duties – and, in due course, it was to be hoped, motherly concerns. He had also hoped for her to take an interest in his work – obviously not in the legal details, but in the social life of chambers. For this, she would need some introduction to the type of cases which were handled – just enough for her to provide a good listening ear to him.
Women, after all, were expected to take direction from their husbands. And he had intended to be a firm, but fair husband.
He wondered – how did Thornton feel about her impulses to champion the poor, the workers? Was he confident that he could curb them? Or did he enter into her sentiments? He remembered the dinner – when the mill master had mentioned some of the changes he had instituted in managing his workforce – Mr Colthurst had been extremely interested, and asked questions, but Henry had also caught a look exchanged between Thornton and Margaret. Could it be that agreement about these things was part of what was between them?
Would a young woman be likely to respond to a man’s business arrangements?
Henry barely remembered his own mother, who had died when he was ten years old, not long after his sister Janet had been born. After that, he and Cosmo had been at school and Janet had just been a child while he was at home in the holidays. Then he had gone to Oxford and been called to the bar and lived in the Outer Temple. All places full of other men. He had scarcely known any women at all well until he had begun to be invited regularly to the house in Harley Street.
There he had met Edith – who surely was pliable, but whose shallow interests did not make him feel much respect for her. And Margaret – who had been so quiet, but would sometimes make a remark which showed the depth of her thinking. He had become increasingly attracted to her because of her complexity, although he had also struggled when she had exhibited a propensity to stick to her own ideas rather than bend to his.
They had shared so many tastes and opinions. He had thought that augured well, but looking back, Henry could see that these had often been about theatre and books and some of the topics of the day – those that could with propriety be discussed in mixed company. It was hard to imagine that Thornton had much time for such things, but he knew the people in Milton were proud of their theatre and musical evenings. It seemed that he and Margaret had some common interest in the condition of the working classes. Could that really be a basis for forming an attachment?
It came back to the matter of trying to understand a woman. Henry felt this ought to be simple enough, as men were more complex and had greater development of character. But, he secretly confessed to himself that he found it confusing.
It still haunted him how he had misread Margaret’s feelings when he had first known her, and made that disastrous, embarrassing proposal in Helstone.
Upon her return from Milton, when he had seen her again he had, despite his strictures to himself, discovered the old attraction, his feeling for her. He had met other young women in the years in-between, but those rare ones who were interested in matters wider than domesticity or society were so often quite decided in their views. They could even be rather mannish – which Margaret was decidedly not. He had not found anyone who had sparked feelings of true admiration.
Henry had never really given close thought to the matter – as many men do not trouble to do when they are considering what woman might suit them. He had therefore never come to the conclusion to which logic might have led him, that a woman with her own opinions and an ability for deep thought and rational discussion might be unlikely to allow herself to be directed and moulded by him.
It had been during his visit to Milton to inquire into Margaret’s financial affairs that he had first met some of the mill masters. Despite the rough backgrounds of some, their energy, their power, their indomitable courage in struggling and fighting; their lurid vividness of existence, captivated and arrested his attention. Thornton was one of the most impressive – and clearly he was a man of sense. He would leap at the chance of having Miss Hale – surely. But – one never knew. Perhaps there was a young woman in Milton with whom he had an understanding?
Henry put down his pen and wracked his memory for any sign at the dinner that Thornton had shown a tender interest in Margaret. He recalled his faint feeling of surprise that evening that the reunion with someone Thornton had known well, the daughter of his tutor, and the person who was now his landlord, had been so muted and that the two had only seemed to exchange a very few words.
Now he realised that he must have missed something.
But – in all the months since she had returned to London, Margaret had almost never spoken of Mr Thornton. And then it had only been to reference her father’s regard for him, or to mention his being a tenant of Mr Bell’s – now her – property.
Clearly, though, she had had warmer feelings. The sort of feelings that all Henry’s friendship and constant presence had failed to direct to himself.
He felt the wound to his heart – and an affront to his pride.
He shook himself, and resolutely returned to his papers, most firmly banishing these thoughts, and the image of Margaret.
oOo
Just as he was thinking to finish for the day, his principal, Mr Harcourt, knocked and entered. He had come to extend an invitation for Lennox to dine on the following evening in Devon Street. It would be a small party as so many were out of town – Mr Bentham, his brother-in-law and also a barrister in Chambers, Henry, Mr Harcourt himself, and his daughter, who was his usual hostess as he had long been a widower. Even Mrs Frimley, his widowed niece who acted as his daughter’s companion, was away, visiting her sister in Wales
Henry was glad to accept. An invitation from Mr Harcourt was always an honour. But, importantly, it meant that tomorrow evening he would not be alone to dwell on what he was likely to witness tomorrow morning. (Whatever that turned out to be.)
After thanking Mr Harcourt, he bundled his papers away, and left chambers.
Tonight he would walk home, eat a solitary meal and go early to bed, not allowing himself to dwell on his thoughts or feelings.