He heaved aside the heavy door on rails to reveal a cavernous space filled with rows upon rows of clattering and clacking machinery. Mr. Hale watched the arms and looms in their monotony of motion, while Margaret noticed the living humans whose daily labor was to tend to these monstrosities. The noise was deafening.
After gaining a full view of this cavernous room and all the cacophonous operations therein, she studied the Master. He walked with head erect, surveying his realm as a sovereign—ashe rightly was in this place. And she saw the cautious looks from the workers that he garnered as he passed by.
She could not help but admire how commanding his figure appeared amid this seeming chaos. He was a man of power, and he knew it. But her awe was tempered by a sense of uncertain dismay at his apparent control over so many lives. How did he treat those who worked for him?
He walked his guests to the far side of the vast weaving shed, when Mr. Williams hurried to his side to inform him of something unheard by the visitors.
Mr. Thornton then begged apologies for the abruptness of his coming and going, but added that he hoped they had enjoyed seeing how cotton was made into cloth in his mill, and explained that he was obliged to leave them.
The overseer who had first met them, now led them to an exit near the great steam engine that powered the entire factory. Margaret looked up at the high-reaching chimney and the plumes of smoke dissolving into the mottled gray winter sky.
A boy, not yet a man, with a soot-stained face and blackened gloves shoveled coal into an opening in the brick wall, his breath visible as puffs of gray in the frigid cold.
Margaret shivered and drew her coat close around her. Inside the factory had been warm, and she realized how the mill might offer many people inside their warmest hours of the day.
Mr. Hale wondered at the magnificence of such an operation as they hurried home—while Margaret remarked upon how many lives were affected by their daily work there. The sight of so many women at work made her wonder who was tending their homes? It was all a far cry from the cottage life in Helstone, where hearth and home were central. Here, work for pay consumed the better part of the day. And to think that they worked six days from dawn to dusk. She was glad to thinkthat the winter hours were shorter, for the early coming of dark allowed these workers more time to be home with their families.
Home life in Milton followed less invigorating and engaging patterns for Mr. Hale’s family. Without parishioners to look after, Mrs. Hale and Margaret were left with much less to occupy their days. Margaret read to her mother most mornings, and noticed with not a little anxiety that her mother languished much more often than not. She was glad that Dixon could be a companion of sorts for her mother, but Dixon had grown bitter with all the housework and cooking that fell upon her, for they had found it difficult to hire enough suitable help. The girls they had seen demanded more pay and were less willing to live under Dixon’s strict rules.
Margaret missed the solace and joy of taking walks in the fields and moors of her childhood hamlet. She needed to feel a part of the larger world and escaped the confines of her home nearly every afternoon to take long walks and observe all she could in her new surroundings.
Free to go where she would, she was glad her mother put no strictures on her roaming as her Aunt Shaw had done in London. She had sometimes felt a prisoner in her cousin’s grand home. How astounded Aunt Shaw would be to know that Margaret walked the streets of Milton alone.
Her soul found beauty in the streaming life on these streets. The energy of brisk movement and people engaged in purposeful activity lifted her flagging spirits on days when her home seemed desultory and empty. Here, there was always hope for the future, a decided air of reaching for progress.
But progress appeared a sham in the boroughs where poverty was mired in the dregs left by those most successful in seeking their own profits. How could such disparity live side by side?
Margaret looked up at the tall chimneys that cluttered the skyline. All these towering factories proclaimed to play a part in making England renown. But what of all the hundreds of workers who toiled long days, stationed at the mechanical marvels that made other men wealthy? Were these people not worthy of taking part in the country’s splendid success? It disturbed her to think of how unfairly the balance of justice hung, when so very few seemed to enjoy the benefits.
The spacious, perfectly furnished drawing room at the Thorntons'—with thick brocade curtains, glistening mahogany, and pristine ornamentations—contrasted sharply with the harsh environment of the factory that sat across from such comfortable luxury.
Her jaw tightened to imagine that the Thorntons never gave a thought to their mode of living, and how it compared to the lives of the workers who made their wealth.
In the evenings, it seemed to Margaret that Mr. Thornton was a frequent topic of conversation at dinner. She knew that although her father had acquired a few other students, Mr. Thornton remained his favorite. And her father’s fascination with all he was learning about Milton led him to share something Mr. Thornton had told him.
“Were you aware that Mr. Thornton is a magistrate?” he asked his family as he buttered his bread one evening. “I was surprised to hear it from one of my new students. Although perhaps it ought not to be so surprising. He certainly has a very fine capacity for discernment and logical reasoning, and Ibelieve his sense of moral justice is firmly fixed to carry such a role in the town very well. I can only imagine how busy he must be if he works all day overseeing his mill and is called to cases occasionally,” he said, taking a bite of roast.
“He’s rather young for a magistrate, is he not?” Mrs. Hale wondered, still in the process of sipping her soup.
“I should say so. I don’t think we have quite understood the standing he has in this town. I’m very glad to have him come to me for his learning. It is an honor for me to call him my pupil.”
Mrs. Hale’s expression was one of confusion. “But you are the Oxford scholar,” she returned.
“Yes, but how one is esteemed in society is different here. Accomplishments in business account for a great deal in Milton society.”
“Would Mr. Thornton then be considered something comparable to a gentleman in Milton?” Mrs. Hale queried in some astonishment.
“In some regards, I believe so,” her husband answered.
Margaret followed the conversation in silence. Conflicting opinions rose and fell within her as she considered how much esteem Mr. Thornton should be given.
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?”
