“Get out of my house!” Higgins growled, thrusting his arm towards the open door.
“Stop it! I can’t stand it anymore!” Bessy cried out, covering her ears in great distress.
“I’ll not have anyone disturb my girl no more! I’ll give yo’ what I can, but don’t bring your wailing here!” Higgins warned as he bade the Bouchers leave.
Bessy rocked back and forth in her bed as Margaret rubbed her back to soothe her.
Nicholas observed the care Margaret gave his daughter, and his heart swelled with a bittersweet pain. “I’ll not forget yo’r kindness to my daughter,” he said softly in the silence after the tumultuous scene.
Margaret nodded her acknowledgment of his words but kept her attention on the pitiful girl at her side. “They’re gone now, Bessy. I’ll have my father send the Bouchers a basket of food. Do not trouble yourself with worry. I’m certain the strike must be over soon,” she said hopefully, coaxing Bessy to lie down again. Nicholas retired to a corner of the house for some quiet.
“Shall I read you some Scripture?” Margaret offered, reaching for the worn leather book on a wooden chair.
“Aye,” Bessy sighed, folding her hands to rest on her stomach. “I like to think on the new heaven and earth promised in Revelation. I’m sorely tired of this old world.”
So the vicar’s daughter read from the back pages of that old familiar book, as she had done many a time in Helstone with cottagers who needed comfort. After a time, she closed the book quietly in her lap when she saw that Bessy was asleep. She studied the peaceful face of the girl whose life had been filled with hardship. Her heart twisted with deep affection and sorrow.
Gently shutting the door behind her, Margaret set off toward home, a heavy sadness in her breast which was not alleviated by the haggard faces she met along the dusty pathways in the Princeton district. Men and women sat on the ground outside their doors to commiserate and escape the stilted and gloomy air of their dwellings.
She passed by outstretched hands with a weak smile. She had given all she had to the Higgins.
She walked more briskly to avoid the plaintive looks until she reached the hill that led closer to her own area of town. She stopped to take in the expansive view of rooftops, steeples, and chimneys that reached into the sky, but without their usual black offering. From up here, all seemed peaceful. But she knew that below, there was a great mass of humanity that seethed with fomenting anger, resentment, and desperate fear.
How could she dress up in fine clothes tonight and be served a lavish meal when there was so much suffering here?
Chapter twenty-three
Arriving home from her melancholy walk, Margaret entered the house to find her father sitting in the front parlor with a lithe, gray-headed man who smiled at her as if she ought to know him. She recognized him as someone who had visited their home in Helstone years ago.
“Mr. Bell!” she declared with a warming smile. Mr. Bell had been the groomsman at her parents’ wedding; a friend of her father’s from his days at Oxford College. She was pleased to see him, remembering his jovial manner—which she hoped would be an antidote of cheer to the somber pall currently cast over the town.
Mr. Bell stood, taking her hand fondly between both of his. “Ah, so you’ve remembered me!” he said.
“You have not changed much, to my recollection,” Margaret replied.
“Indeed, I was an old codger when I last saw you, and here I am again, the very same! But you, my dear, have absolutely transformed!” he told her with his contagious smile.
“I say, Richard, you didn’t tell me what a handsome girl your Pearl has become. The last time I saw her, she was quite excited to show me the toad she had found!” Mr. Bell enthused.
Taken aback by his bold compliment, Margaret knew not how to reply. She saw the twinkle in his eye and smiled. “What brings you to Milton?” she asked, still bewildered by his sudden presence.
“What brings me to Milton, she asks. Why, you and your family, of course! I received an invitation to the Thornton dinner party as I usually do, being their landlord. But instead of offering my excuses, I thought it an excellent opportunity to stop and see how my old friend Hale was faring in the town of my childhood.”
“You are from Milton?” Margaret asked.
“Look how she is surprised, Richard! ‘Are you from Milton?’ she asks. I have finally wrested myself from any appearance of belonging to this place. I’ll take that as a compliment, my dear. And yes, I was born here. But I must say it is an altogether a different place from what I knew. The place where Thornton’s mill sits was my father’s orchard.”
“Oh,” was all she could reply, unable to imagine how such a transformation could be made in a few decades.
“Margaret has made friends with some of the mill workers. I believe that is where she has just been this morning,” Mr. Hale told his old friend.
“Has she?” he answered, taking a more comprehensive and approving look at the young woman standing before him. “Fascinating. I suppose theirs is not a very happy state at present with the prolonged strike.”
“Indeed. I took a basket of food, but of course it is only a small gesture when so many children are starving. It’s a terrible situation with both sides adamant to outlast the other,” Margaret replied.
“Yes, I am never happier to live far from Milton than when there is yet another strike. I don’t suppose masters and men will ever learn to come to terms, eh?” Mr. Bell posed.
“And I don’t see why they shouldn’t sit down together, man to man, and find a way to understand each other!” Margaret exclaimed, her fresh anger with the suffering she had seen breaking to the surface.
