Margaret of the North (45 page)

"Oh, my love!  I might as
well tell you that I made this decision more for your sake than my
mother's."

"What do you mean?"

He led her towards the bed where
they both sat down.  "I had been so busy at the mill that I never had much
chance to pay attention to what goes on in this household but I did have time
for some reflection on the trip back from London.  My mother's ill regard of
you ever since I told her of my feelings for you has not been lost on me and it
saddens me deeply.  I felt helpless that I could not change her attitude and
manner towards you but, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I
could make things much better for you if my mother were to live elsewhere and
you did not have to deal with each other from day-to-day.  The old house seemed
the perfect answer.  It is available and she would be back where she wanted to
be."

She looked at him with sorrowful
eyes, "I am so sorry.  You should not have to be burdened with problems
between your mother and me.  You have so much to worry about at the mill as it
is."

"I do not deny that the mill
is important to me but if I had to make a choice between it and my loved ones,
I would abandon it in a heartbeat.  So, you see, I cannot help but be
bothered."

"I was hopeful that when
Hannah came back, we could start over again."

"I expected that she would
have grown to like you by now."  He paused, looked into her eyes and gave
her a tender impish smile, "I assumed that she would have seen all that I
love about you and would have been captivated like I have been."

She matched his tone with a
lighthearted answer.  "It is only natural that she should see something
quite different.  Love is blind and you cannot see my little follies."

He smiled, in mock ridicule. 
"But I can.  Your Shakespeare is a bit rusty, for one."

She wrinkled her nose up at him
and laid her head on his shoulders.  Some minutes of silence later, he grew
pensive and said, somewhat regretfully.  "Mother might have learned to
like you if I did not ask her to stop going to the mill."

"Or if we did not
move."  She looked up, finishing the thought for him.  "We both did
things that she was either not happy about or which hurt her.  But what are we
to do?  What do people do when what they desire clashes with each other?  We
make decisions but we cannot always have control over their consequences."

He fixed his gaze on her for a
long moment.  "My mother is a wonderful woman in so many ways, and her
strong convictions have often served her well—but, not always."

A lingering uneasiness persisted
in her mind that he still had something he was loath to tell her.  "I have
not caused a rift between you and Hannah, have I?"

"No, do not ever think
that.  Is that what you have been worried about?  We're inevitably on a
different footing, mother and I, but it would have happened in some way or
another whether I married you or not.  I had already begun to change before I
married you."  He paused for an instant.  "Well, you did start me
thinking, as did your father but, as you just said, we do not always have
control over what happens and that is just the way it is."

"It is true nonetheless that
your mother and I are both bull-headed."  She paused and then added
ruefully, "Neither of us would give in to the other, which is precisely
what we need to do to live peaceably together."

He gathered her in his arms and
asserted gently, "Perhaps.  But maybe you should just accept that you can
never live with each other."

He lifted her face and kissed her
and, in a lighter mood, said, "Come, come.  Don't worry about it." 
He pressed his lips to her temple and added playfully.  "Remember that in
marrying me, your vows only obligated you to live with me, not with my mother. 
Anyway, I can only do battle with one strong woman at a time."

She laughed softly and pretended
to slap him on his buttocks.  He exclaimed playfully, "Ouch!  Remember,
you also promised to love me."

She laughed once more, rested her
head on his shoulders and wound her arms around his chest, "I love you so
much that sometimes it hurts."

**************

That night, Margaret lay awake in
bed trying to make sense of her remaining inquietude.  Why should the fact of
Mrs. Thornton living separately continue to pester when she should be relieved
that life would be more naturally at ease?  She knew people would talk and
speculation would never stop about why, after moving to a larger house in a
good neighborhood, Mrs. Thornton set up her own household.  But that did not
bother Margaret.  She chafed somewhat at the nagging notion that she failed to
develop at least a tolerant if not a companionable relationship with her mother-in-law. 
But again, something more than that oppressed her.

Events, encounters or emotions
that unduly disturbed Margaret always induced introspection and scrutiny until
she, at least, understood them or, better still, accepted them pacifically. 
She learned much about herself from hours of reflecting over bothersome
things—what was important to her and what made her happy; what hurt her or made
her sad, what she could do to cope or prevent them from happening again.  This
self-awareness gave her the confidence to confront new, unexpected or trying
situations and eventually find some way to live with them calmly enough. 
Still, her confidence was also based on the reliable presence of older, more
mature, and affectionate adults who she could turn to.  Her mother had always
been there to provide her solace when she needed it and her father could always
be relied upon to explain matters too complex for her limited experience.  The
understanding and support of her parents and her own predisposition for reflection
nurtured her into the young woman whose strength the Hales depended on when an
ailing mother could no longer abide the near poverty of their life in Milton
and when a despondent father lost his main reason to live at the passing away
of his wife.

While at least one of her parents
lived, Margaret felt someone was there who she could rely on for wisdom or
reassurance, someone older, wiser, and who accepted whoever she was without
questions or reservations.  Had she hoped that, with them gone, she could turn
to Mrs. Thornton in the face of adversity?  Margaret found a flaw in this
manner of comprehending her inquietude.  As admiring and respectful as she was
of her mother-in-law's strong convictions and her devotion and loyalty to those
dear to her, Margaret could not trust Mrs. Thornton's judgment about many
things of importance to her; their beliefs and attitudes clashed too much for
that.

Feeling oppressed by thoughts
that could not be reconciled and emotions that remained in some turmoil,
Margaret got up, wrapped herself in her robe and tiptoed into the sitting room,
closing the door to the bedroom quietly.  She sat on an armchair by the
fireplace where only glowing embers were left of the fire that had burned
there.  They were barely enough to keep her warm and she folded her feet up
onto the chair and under her robe. 

She stared into the darkness for
some time until, without a warning, tears flowed freely but soundlessly down
her cheeks.  Her shoulders and chest heaved upwards but the only audible sounds
she emitted were occasional inward gasps of air induced by the incessant flood
of tears.  This was so unlike her, she thought detachedly, she who prided
herself on her self-control.  Even when she succumbed to the sorrow of her
parents' death, she had not allowed her tears to get the better of her. 

The few instances she let her
tears flow freely had been for happy reasons when John held her in his arms and
comforted her.  But those occasions were so different and with John, the
certainty of kisses and embraces rewarded her tears.  In the present instance,
she was crying for nebulous and confusing reasons.

In the midst of her tears,
Margaret began to form a growing sense that in crying, she was cleansing
herself, purging herself.  Of what, however, she was not too certain.  Of the
sorrow of loss or the shame of defeat?  Of the passing of a period, sometimes
innocent and even sweet?  She did not restrain her tears and they drenched not
only her face but also the top of her robe.  They were soon exhausted and after
a short period of calm, she dried her face with the sleeves of her robe.

She sat in the dark for some
minutes, her mind blank and drawn into the rhythm of her breathing.  Her body
gradually grew slack, her limbs so limp that, had she wanted to lift them just
then, she would not have been able to.  She submitted her whole being to this
stillness for some time until she began to feel the cold seep through her
robe.  The embers had nearly dissolved into dirty white ash.

She shivered and got up, her feet
searching her slippers but they were met with only the cold floor.  Hopping to
escape the chill from the floor, she ran towards the bedroom, and opened the
door as noiselessly as she had closed it.  She climbed into bed and only when
she had covered herself up to her waist with the sheets did she take off her
robe and draped it on the headboard.  She shivered again and slid closer to
John where the bed was warm.  John, halfway between sleep and wakefulness,
murmured something unintelligible, placed an arm around her waist and nudging
his face against her cheek, fell back to sleep right away.

Deep dreamless sleep claimed
Margaret's consciousness shortly thereafter.  She greeted the following
morning, refreshed, feeling lighthearted and impatient to begin preparations
for the holidays.

The day before Christmas was very
busy at the Marlborough Mills dining hall.  Deliveries of meats and produce
started earlier that week and in the morning, several women workers joined the
cooks in preparing a Christmas Eve meal to be served mid-afternoon.  The hall
had been made ready for the celebration, under Margaret's supervision and with
the help of both men and women including Annie, Marian, and Mary, the three who
had originally painted and decorated the dining hall with Margaret's help. 

The men secured a tall Christmas
tree at one corner of the room and it easily became the centerpiece of the
simple room decoration.  Gifts for the children were either hung on its branches
or arranged underneath its trunk.  The women tied the green curtains in red
ribbons and, on the middle of the tables, placed wreaths of candles encircled
with pine branches and holly berries, gathered earlier by children of the
mill.  A huge wreath that the women strung together of laurel leaves, rosemary,
thyme, pine boughs, pine cones, and more holly berries were hung on top of the
fireplace imparting aromas released by the heat and blending with both savory
and sweet smells from the pots on the hearth. 

Festivities were to start around
noon with a distribution of gifts for the children, a practice Margaret started
the year before on her first Christmas as the young Mrs. Thornton.

Workers and their families
started trickling into the mill courtyard before noon and were milling by the
dining hall entrance, their younger children playing nearby.  Shortly
thereafter, Williams opened the mill gates to a carriage bearing the Thorntons
who came to start the festivities and join the workers for the Christmas Eve
meal. 

The carriage stopped in front of
a crowd who, though curious, tried to look elsewhere when the door opened.  Mr.
Thornton descended and turned around to help the rest of his party alight,
offering his hand to Mary, the first to come out.  The driver got off his perch
as well, walked to the back of the carriage and, assisted by Williams, unloaded
a perambulator.  The perambulator was what clued the crowd into anticipating
that the proceedings in front of them were going to be more interesting than
staring at their feet or watching their children play. 

Nobody had yet seen the new
daughter and nothing had been said about her being brought to the mill that
day.  So when Margaret poked her head out with Elise in her arms, all eyes were
on them.  She handed over her daughter to Mary, took her husband's hand and
descended from the carriage.  Some workers had never seen Margaret but they had
heard stories, mostly from Annie and Nicholas Higgins, that Mr. Thornton had an
uncommonly handsome young wife with a generous heart.  The workers all knew
that it was through her kindness and enthusiastic exertions that they were all
there to enjoy a dinner together and they were consequently predisposed to like
her.

As soon as Margaret got off, she
addressed Williams.  "There are three huge boxes on the seat that need to
be unloaded very carefully.  Dixon insisted that they must remain upright. 
Please take them in and place them on a table."

Margaret took Elise back from
Mary and walked into the dining hall, greeting everyone immediately around her
with an engaging smile, sometimes a slight nod, and a "Good
afternoon."  Elise gawked at the crowd, bright eyed and curious.  John
walked alongside his wife, a protective arm on the back of her waist, occasionally
nodding at someone in the crowd but he seemed content to let his wife do much
of the greeting and smiling.  Mary followed, pushing the perambulator.