Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It was only Thursday, yet Margaret possessed a restless expectation which no quantity of embroidery could entirely settle.
The long June afternoon lingered over Milton. Rain had passed an hour before, leaving the gardens bright with moisture and the air strangely sweet beneath the smoke. Beyond the clipped hedges the tall chimneys of Marlborough Mills stood dark against a sky washed pale by the shower, while from the direction of the mill came the familiar murmur of the street, softened by distance until it had become no less a part of home than birdsong had once been at Helstone.

The drawing room still bore the unmistakable stamp of the senior Mrs. Thornton's taste. Its broad mahogany furniture shone from years of careful polishing; the crimson damask curtains admitted the lingering daylight without surrendering the room to it, and over the marble mantel the oversized gilded mirror reflected light across the room.

Margaret had altered little since her marriage. She added fresh flowers whenever the season permitted, while a small collection of books had quietly multiplied upon the tables, and an engraving John had purchased in Antwerp during their wedding tour now occupied a place beside the window. The room remained thoroughly Thornton in its character, yet here and there it had begun to acknowledge another hand. The only thing Margaret truly missed in the room was John.

He had been absent six weeks, having crossed the Channel to conclude commercial arrangements which had occupied several of England’s leading manufacturers throughout the spring. The uncertain American cotton harvests of recent years coupled with the rapid expansion of continental industry had made every reliable source of trade a matter of consequence. France, once regarded as a competitor, had become an increasingly valuable customer, and John had accepted the journey with the same determination he brought to every undertaking that promised security for Marlborough Mills and the families whose livelihoods depended upon it.

His letters had arrived with commendable regularity—written, Margaret suspected, at hours when every reasonable man ought to have been asleep. Each contained careful accounts of warehouses inspected, machinery admired or criticised, merchants whose confidence had been won, and always, at the close, the progress of the journey home.

Margaret scarcely needed to revisit his most recent letter to recite the remainder of his itinerary.

Le Havre on Monday. Southampton by Wednesday. Three nights in Harley Street to meet with two investors and pay his respects to the household there. Then Milton (and you, wife) by Saturday, in time to spend the Sabbath quietly before the business of another week begins.

There was comfort in such precision. John measured travel as he measured accounts, and if wind and tide behaved, she had no doubt he would arrive almost to the hour he anticipated.

"You are smiling again," said Mrs. Thornton.

"Am I?"

"You have done so all afternoon."

Margaret laughed softly and resumed her stitching.

"My thoughts are in London. I was thinking Cosmo will keep him talking until midnight."

Mrs. Thornton drew another neat column of figures beneath the household accounts before answering.

"Humph. Gentlemen with independent fortunes are forever persuaded that trade would have suited them admirably, had they only found it worth their attention."

Margaret nodded but declined the familiar argument. John had come to enjoy Captain Lennox's company far too much to resent his curiosity, and in another two days John would return home and she would hear her about the conversations over supper, along with all the glad tidings from Harley Street.

Home. There were still moments—though fewer now than during those first tender weeks of marriage—when the word surprised her by attaching itself so naturally to Milton. She had once imagined she could never belong to this town where the very air seemed coloured by industry.

Yet, she also knew that London was not her home, nor the Helstone of today. So affection for Milton had stolen upon her so quietly that she scarcely knew when the change had occurred. The mills, the household ordered with such unassuming competence, even her developing friendships with the other wives, had all become interwoven with the life she cherished.

Before the wedding there had been some discussion whether Mrs. Thornton ought not to remove herself to Fanny's establishment, as many widowed mothers did. The idea had appeared proper enough in theory, yet ultimately unjust in practice. This was the house she had governed for years, the household she had shaped, and the home from which she had helped her son build his prosperity.

Margaret had discovered, somewhat to her own surprise, that she did not dislike the arrangement. After the lonely responsibilities of Crampton, where every domestic anxiety had ultimately rested upon herself, there was comfort in sharing authority with one who exercised it so naturally. If affection between the two women had come slowly, respect had arrived first and proved a sturdier foundation than either might once have imagined.

"Perhaps he'll see the Lennoxes' new child before he leaves London," Margaret said, more to herself. "Edith has been confined these last few weeks."

"There is no greater blessing than a healthy babe," Mrs. Thornton answered almost absently, continuing her customary Thursday task of balancing the servants' wages in the great household ledger—a responsibility she still retained; Margaret knew the volume would one day become her own.

Margaret hesitated.

"There is something I have been meaning to ask you."

Mrs. Thornton blotted the ink, closed the ledger, and returned the heavy volume to its accustomed shelf.

"Then ask it."

Margaret looked down at her work, as if the padded overcast stitching would guide her on how to continue.

"Actually. I scarcely know whether there is enough certainty to justify speaking of it."

"That has never prevented you from speaking on a subject."

"You make me sound very tiresome."

"No," Mrs. Thornton replied, with the faintest suggestion of amusement. "Only very unlike myself. What is it?"
Margaret folded the embroidery into her lap.

"I believe..." She stopped, then gathered her courage. "Indeed, I scarcely know how to say it. I have reason to think our family may increase. I don’t know whether I ought to tell John immediately, or wait until I’m more certain."

Her mother-in-law did not appear surprised.

"I had thought as much."

Margaret looked up.
"You have?"

The older woman nodded, then shrugged. "Yes, but it was not my place to say anything."

"Was I so transparent?" A flush rose to Margaret's cheeks.

"To women, perhaps. The maids have noticed. You have scarcely eaten these last few weeks." Margaret opened her mouth to interrupt but closed it again. "Very little escapes notice in one's own house."

Over half a year in and Margaret was starting to consider these remarks (what others might consider slights), as endearing. One’s own house indeed. A silence settled between them. The clock upon the mantel marked another minute.

Mrs. Thornton spoke again.

"When did you first begin to suspect?"

Margaret's fingers tightened gently around her embroidery frame.

"Shortly before John left."

"So two months gone, then? And you waited?"

"I remembered last winter."

The words rested quietly between them. Mrs. Thornton's expression softened almost imperceptibly. Margaret's own mother had left her strangely ignorant of childbearing mysteries. It had been Mrs. Thornton who had explained, comforted, and remained beside her through those melancholy days when hopes scarcely learned had been taken away again. Neither woman had spoken much at the time. Yet from that shared sorrow, the elder Mrs. Thornton’s heart had begun to open to this motherless girl.

"I would not have you bear unnecessary fears alone," Mrs. Thornton said at last.

"I know."

"But neither would I have you burden John before there is reason."

"I think I wanted someone wiser than myself to tell me which course was kindest," Margaret responded, nodding slowly.

Mrs. Thornton reached across the small table and, after the briefest hesitation, laid her work-worn hand over Margaret's.

"I wish I could explain, Margaret, how it is decided that some children stay and some children go, I just know that is the way of it. It is not ours to explain or to understand. Wait a little longer, for both your sakes," she said quietly.

The afternoon had yielded imperceptibly to evening before Margaret at last laid aside her embroidery. It was to become a coverlet for their bed, worked in a pattern of intertwining vines and late-summer roses after a design she had admired during one of her visits to London but reminded her of Helstone. It was laborious work, requiring more patience than she naturally possessed, but she smiled whenever she imagined John's bewilderment that so many evenings' quiet industry had been spent upon his behalf.

Mrs. Thornton had taken up her knitting, though Margaret noticed more than once that the needles rested idle in her lap for several moments together before resuming their accustomed rhythm. She had the passing thought that perhaps her mother-in-law’s hands ached.

"I believe I shall walk as far as the cemetery before supper," Margaret said at length, rising from her chair. "The rose bush is starting to wilt from the sun, perhaps I’ll trim a few and take them with me.”

Mrs. Thornton looked up over her spectacles.

"You may admire the roses after you have had the lamps brought in. I refuse to spoil perfectly good wool because you wish to believe daylight can last forever."

The words were delivered with such matter-of-fact composure that Margaret scarcely knew whether they had been intended as affection or correction. Perhaps they were a little of both. Margaret found it easier to do as she was asked.

She crossed toward the bell-pull when another sound arrested her. The unmistakable rumble of carriage wheels entered from the street before gradually slowing beneath the windows. In a moment of ill timing, Martha entered to turn on the lamps and also had a question regarding the evening meal which gave the senior Mrs. Thornton the advantage of reaching the door to answer a familiar deep voice that was greeted by the second maid.

By the time Margaret made it to the foyer, John had not yet removed his travelling coat, nor even surrendered his hat to the servant, but was speaking to his mother in a voice too low to carry beyond the hall.

Margaret caught only the close of it.

"...within the hour, if it can be managed."

Mrs. Thornton looked steadily into her son's face. Whatever she found there caused the habitual firmness of her own expression to waiver.

"Very well," she answered. "Leave it to me."

John turned at the sound of Margaret's step upon the stair.

The gravity of his countenance altered so quickly that, had Mrs. Thornton not witnessed it, she might almost have believed she had imagined the conversation of the previous moment. His smile was not forced; it came as naturally as if he had indeed returned from nothing more serious than a successful journey abroad, and Margaret answered it before she had reached the last step.

"You have anticipated your itinerary! And surely robbed Cosmo of two evenings' conversation," she said, smiling, her spirit lifting. "I shall think very highly of myself when next I write them."

"I fear my departure was rather abrupt."

"Harley Street’s loss is my gain."

She had reached him now, and offered him both her hands with so frank and affectionate a welcome that John forgot, for one dangerous instant, every word he had spent the long train ride preparing to say. There had been many evenings in France when, after the business of the day was concluded, he had found himself picturing this very meeting with a pleasure almost childish in its simplicity. He had imagined her standing exactly where she now stood, smiling exactly as she smiled now, with the whole expression of her face brightening in that unconscious way which no one else in the world could call forth.

It seemed almost cruel that imagination should have proved so faithful in everything except the purpose for which he had come home.

"You are looking at me as though you had forgotten my face," John said softly, pulling her into an embrace.

"I was only considering whether France had improved you," she smiled, pressing a kiss on his cheek – a promise for their more private reunion she had planned for after supper.

"And?"

"I fear it has sent you back exactly as it received you."

He laughed quietly.

"I had hoped for a kinder verdict."

"I have not yet examined you properly."

She did so with the cheerful gravity of a wife who considered such things entirely her province. His cravat had shifted during the journey, and one side of his collar sat higher than the other. Without needing permission, she raised her hand to set it right, smoothing the linen with practiced fingers before brushing an invisible trace of dust from the shoulder of his coat.

"There," she said with evident satisfaction. "You may now present yourself respectably to your own household."

John looked down at her.

There had been a time—not so very long ago, though it now seemed to belong to another existence—when the slightest accidental touch of her hand had disturbed every resolution he possessed. Marriage had altered neither the pleasure nor the gratitude with which he received these little offices of affection; it had only robbed them of their uncertainty. They belonged to him now, as naturally as his own home and business, and perhaps for that very reason he valued them the more.

He covered her hand for the briefest moment with his own.

"It is very good to be home."

Mrs. Thornton, who had remained discreetly apart, took up John's travelling bag herself before the servant could reach it.

"You have had a long journey," she said. "Margaret, your husband has not the sense to remember that he is tired. See whether he can be persuaded to sit down while I attend to one or two matters upstairs."

Margaret looked after her with an expression half puzzled, half amused.

"Our marriage has only given her another child to direct."

"It has given her another person to care for," he answered mechanically, for it was not a new exchange for them. He inhaled and exhaled slowly; if Margaret detected his uneasiness, she did not show it.

They walked together into the drawing room, Margaret still keeping one hand lightly upon his arm as though unwilling to trust entirely that he had returned. The room retained the warmth of the summer evening, and the lamps, now newly lit, threw a mellow glow over the polished furniture. John's chair stood where he had left it six weeks before, an old issue of The Economist folded beside it.

"I believe," Margaret said, "that I have become quite accustomed to welcoming you home every evening. I do not recommend husbands to travel. It disorders the whole house."

"I shall remember the lesson."

"You had better. I have worked very hard to become an excellent wife."

"I have never doubted it."

She laughed, colouring just enough that he was glad to see it.

"You cannot know that. I have hidden at least one domestic triumph from you."

"Oh?"

"But I shall not spoil the surprise."

She glanced almost involuntarily toward the embroidery frame she had left beside the window, then back again with an expression that betrayed far more than she intended.

John followed her glance, though he affected not to understand it.

"Then I shall wait patiently."

"I hope you won’t have more than a week to wait, it’s nearly done!"

He thought, with a sudden tightening of the heart, that this timeline was about to be altered. Not because he doubted her ability in the new whitework embroidery technique she’d been studying, but because the future, which only a day before had seemed to contain so many quiet happinesses waiting to unfold themselves in their proper season, had contracted into the single duty that still lay before him.

"Dinner is served, ma'am."

Margaret turned at once, only catching a glimpse at Martha before she turned back to the dining room.

"There, you see? You shall eat, and afterwards tell me everything that France has done to improve the cotton trade."

John hesitated, fighting the urge to check his pocket watch.

"No, thank you."

She looked at him with affectionate surprise.

"You refuse your own dinner?"

"I'm not hungry."

She smiled still, though more thoughtfully now.

"You have been among manufacturers too long. They have persuaded you that meals are an unnecessary interruption."

"I believe they have persuaded me of very little."

There was something in his voice—not the words themselves, but the effort with which they were spoken—that caused her smile to falter almost imperceptibly.

She looked at him more earnestly. During the months of their marriage she had learned to distinguish between the various expressions that passed across his face almost as readily as she distinguished the changing skies above Milton. This was not the eager abstraction which accompanied some difficult question at the mill, nor the fatigue of a long day.

Somewhere overhead she heard the unmistakable sound of a trunk being drawn from the top of a wardrobe, corroborating that something was amiss. It brought back, with painful distinctness, a sensation she had known just a few years ago: that life had shifted around her before anyone had told her why.

"You have had bad news…something has happened," Margaret’s voice was sharp and fast.

During the whole journey from London he had mentally practiced the words which might lessen the cruelty of those he must speak; but every sentence he had fashioned dissolved the moment he imagined Margaret listening to it. There are griefs which language can neither soften nor postpone.

"Oh, it’s hard to find the words. I thought, if I came myself..." He stopped, the effort of speaking quietly had become greater than he had expected. "I could bring you back."

She scarcely breathed.

"John. Find the words."

"Edith was safely delivered of a little girl."

Hope sprang into her face with such sudden brightness that he felt, for one impossible instant, the temptation to leave her in possession of it.

"The child is living."

Margaret’s fingers tightened around his. She continued to look at him and when he did not fill the silence she pressed him, “And Edith?”

"She died this morning."

Margaret neither cried out nor withdrew her hands. She stood perfectly still, looking at him with an expression so utterly bereft of comprehension that it seemed as though grief itself had not yet found entrance. He had seen that look once before, the day she had left Milton after her father died.

He drew her gently toward him.

She came without resistance, resting her forehead against his shoulder as naturally as she had, only moments before, rested her hand upon his arm in welcome.

"I am so sorry, Maggie,” was all he could say, whispering into her hair.

He had loved her through the death of her mother, through the death of her father, through every sorrow that had diminished the little circle of those who belonged to her earliest life, while he himself stood outside it, powerless to do more than watch. Now Providence had granted him the right to stand beside her; and though it could not lessen the grief she must bear, John hoped it would spare her at least the loneliness of bearing its first weight alone.