“Well, I have a strong impression that there may be a connection blossoming between them. And I, for one, would be very happy to see her accept him. He has been very kind to us,” she remarked.
“Indeed, he has,” he agreed, although still doubtful of his wife’s premonition.
The more Mrs. Hale mused on the possibility, the more she liked it. And although she said not a word to her husband, she hoped she would live to see her daughter married and her future secured.
“I believe my mother looks happy,” Margaret noted as they drew nearer to her parents.
“Then I am glad we came today,” he said.
“My mother tells me you will come to our dinner party next month,” he began. “May I have the honor of escorting you in to dinner?” he asked, having wanted to claim this privilege since the plans were underway.
Surprised, she gazed up at him for a moment. “Yes. Yes, of course,” she answered, flustered by his request.
Mr. Thornton could not contain the smile that spread upon his face as the barouche jostled over cobblestones toward his home. The day had been everything he could have wished for. He re-lived every moment they had spent together, savoring the memory of her happiness, and recalling how innocent and beautiful she had looked standing in the sunshine, with the breeze kissing her face.
With a deep swell of yearning, he remembered how transfixed he had been as he had watched her descend the staircase in her home. She seemed to radiate the freshness and loveliness of nature. Indeed, she was the very picture of loveliness. And he had felt a tug of pain to imagine her descending the stairs in his own home and coming eagerly into his arms, where she belonged.
Chapter twenty-two
Addy Boucher woke in the black of night to the cry of the baby lying next to her. With her husband’s back pressed against her, she fumbled to help the babe find her breast. He clawed frantically as he suckled for a few moments and then drew back and let out a weakened wail.
Tears slid down Addy’s cheeks as she tried to shush the child. On a mattress on the floor nearby, a little girl whimpered.
Her husband stirred but did not get up or speak.
Addy continued to sob silently as she got the baby to suckle again. She knew her milk would not offer the nourishment he needed. She had had little enough to eat these past two weeks. Bread and broth were all they had eaten for supper, and a scant pot of porridge for the morning. Divided carefully amongst her eight young’uns, her husband, and herself, she gave herself the smallest portions.
Her children were hungry. She hated putting them to bed with the little ones’ pleas for a little more bread. She hated the masters for not paying her husband more. She hated the Union for their strict rules which forbade her husband from going towork during the strike. She hated this world that made her family struggle so. It was not meant to be this way, she was sure of it.
She remembered the sweet days when she was only seventeen and she and John had stolen kisses on their way home from the mill. Those days seemed like another lifetime ago. She did not regret having the children. She and John loved them all, and they were his joy to come home to.
If she had been born into a better situation, she might have had servants and all the food they wanted. It was not the children themselves that wore her out. It was worrying and scraping to keep all fed and clothed. The struggle never stopped, and the only hope was that the oldest child would soon be old enough to work. Although she hated to send him to work, they needed the money desperately.
The little one nestled against her and fell asleep. She took a deep breath of temporary relief. However, sleep eluded her, despite her weariness. Her stomach was an empty pit, but it was not hunger that troubled her. In the dark, where fears festered and grew, she felt a creeping fear that something bad would happen.
It was already past dawn when Margaret rose from her bed. It was the day of the dinner party at the Thorntons’, and the thought of it stole into her mind before her feet touched the woven rug on the wood plank floor.
She sat at her vanity table and looked in the mirror as she carefully brushed her hair—a morning ritual she had kept since girlhood. She thought at first that she dreaded going to such a formal affair where there would be no one she would know, save the hosts. But as the date approached, she recognized with somesurprise that the tug at her stomach she felt when contemplating the event was not entirely antipathy, but a well-hidden tremor of excitement.
It was not that Mr. Thornton would be there, she told herself, but that she would learn more of the vital forces that formed the soul of Milton by mingling among those whose actions and decisions pulled the levers of power here.
It seemed strange that she should find herself juxtaposed between Bessy Higgins’ world and that of the Thorntons. She had never experienced such a strong feeling of disparate classes in Helstone. She could not remember any cottager in her father’s parish openly disparaging his lot as a farmer. There had been no reason for someone like Nicholas Higgins to rise from the land.
Margaret often thought how Bessy’s life might have fared better if she had lived in Helstone. Perhaps she would be married, and happy enough. She might meet calamity or illness—as anyone might, no matter their lot—but she would certainly not be dying of cotton in the lungs.
A wave of anger passed over her whenever she thought of the countless others who had died and those who were now ill with a sickness that could have been prevented.
Nicholas Higgins paced the confines of his house, not wanting to leave Bess alone, but unable to stay still while doubts and fears plagued him. He wanted nothing more than to go to the Goulden Dragon and escape the torture of his circuitous pattern of worry.
The Union had given the masters a week’s warning to meet their demand for a five percent pay raise. And when the week had concluded with only contemptuous replies from the masters, the Union had executed its plan. Every mill worker in Milton had stopped their work and had walked out exactly anhour before the whistle blew at the end of the day. They had sent an unmistakable sign to the masters that the strike had begun.
That had been two weeks ago.
He studied the face of his daughter, peaceful in sleep—her only respite from the constriction of her lungs, which would eventually cast her into eternal sleep. By God, he would fight for her sake!—and for all those like her whose lives were cut short by the greed of the masters. She had not asked for this life, and he was almost sorry he had brought her into this suffering world. And yet, he loved her. Would love her. She had been a light for him, keeping him steady when his wife had died. He didn’t know how he would manage when she was gone.
A knock at the door made him wince. He was weary of men and women coming to tell of their hardships—as if the strike were not for their sakes! He glanced to see Bess stirring as he went to answer the door.
“Oh, it’s yo’,” he said at the sight of Margaret. He was glad but embarrassed to see that she had brought a basket with some food. He wondered how she had arrived at their door without having been begged dry of her goods.
