Margaret of the North (35 page)

"Did something particularly
difficult come up in the meeting?

"Something quite sensitive
and I do not know, at the moment, what to do about it."

He paused, frowning, and she
waited patiently.

"It is about my
mother."

"Hannah!  What has she to do
with it?"

"Most of the workers object
to her coming to the mill.  They had hoped that with our move to a house away
from the mill, she would stop doing so but when they saw her with me this
morning, it was the very first topic they brought up."

He hesitated and Margaret
prompted, "And?"

He recalled vividly what was said
and repeated it almost verbatim.  "According to Higgins, most of the
workers claimed she disrupts work.  Not intentionally, of course, but she
watches them so closely that they get nervous.  The children are terrified when
she comes near and one woman said she nearly smashed her fingers once."

"Do you know if any of these
is true?"

"Higgins has no reason to
lie.  He gave an argument hard to dispute: that how much and how well workers
do their job can be seen in the product and the time it took to finish."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that the amount of
cotton they produce, its quality, and whether it is on time to fill orders show
how well and how efficiently they work.  So, they do not need someone
scrutinizing so closely how they do their work."

"That does make a lot of
sense.  But there must be good reasons to have overseers."

"Of course, there are. 
Actually, the workers do not object to having an overseer who knows and has had
experience with mill operations and can give them specific instructions and
guidance on doing the work.  They also must trust him enough that they can
report problems to him."

"They mean someone who used
to be one of them?"

"Not one of us
"masters," surely, although my mother is technically not one."

"And she is a woman."

He scowled at her remark. 
"True.  Women are expected to leave such matters to men.  But there is
something more to the point here.  She does not and cannot do what overseers
do.  She does not know the machinery nor the modern methods of cotton
manufacturing."

"I see.  You do think that
her being there is good."

He frowned.  "She sees
things that I may not.  She has made helpful suggestions based on what she has
seen.  And the workers do work harder when she is around."

"This is a very difficult
situation for you."  Margaret shook her head helplessly, hesitated for an
instant and then added.  "But my guess is the workers would not think
so."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it seems to me the
workers think the solution is simple and obvious: you ask your mother to stop
going to the mill.  But you know you will break your mother's heart if you did
that."

"What would you do in my
place?"

"I don't know.  I do know
that the mill has been her life as much as yours.  To her, it is everything,
especially now."  She stopped, uncertain if she should say anymore.

He looked at her expectantly,
"There is something more you have to say."

"Well……"  she began,
still uncertain.  Before she could answer, Mrs. Thornton came into the dining
room and the two of them paused uneasily, and smiled ruefully at her.

Mrs. Thornton stared back at
them, "You two are early for dinner.  What have you been up to?"  She
asked suspiciously.

Margaret got up and walked
towards the crib, "I have to take Elise to her room.  John, could you ask
Dixon to call the men to carry the crib back upstairs?"

"I can take it up for
you."

She picked up her sleeping
daughter from the crib and started to walk out of the room.  "It's not
heavy but it is bulky and needs two people.  Anyway, you should keep your
mother company."

At the doorway, she said, "I
will be down shortly."

After the crib was removed and
they were left alone, Mrs. Thornton sat on the chair vacated by Margaret and
motioned for John to sit down.  "You two looked so conspiratorial when I
came in.  Is there something you should be telling me?"

"No, mother," he
answered evasively.  "We were talking about going to Paris possibly next
summer."

"Again?  What is so special
about Paris that you must go again?  And so soon after?"

"It's not just Paris,
mother.  Margaret's brother Frederick will meet us there with his wife. 
Margaret misses him and wants him to see Elise."

"I see."  She nodded
and said no more.

They sat quietly, uncertain what
to say to each other until John addressed her again.  "You look rested.  I
am sorry about your visit today at the mill.  We should have gone in a
cab."

Mrs. Thornton shrugged,
"next time."

John had been distracted
throughout dinner and Margaret struggled to keep some steady chatter going so
Mrs. Thornton would not notice.  As soon as he closed the door to their bedroom
that night, he resumed the conversation he had with Margaret before his mother
interrupted them at the conservatory.  "What were you going to say before
dinner when my mother walked in on us?"

"Perhaps, we should wait
until tomorrow to talk about this.  You need to rest."

"I cannot sleep because this
problem will keep bothering me until I have some idea of what to do and perhaps
what you intended to say could help."

"All right but let us at
least get ready for bed."  She answered as she pulled the pins out of her
hair and started towards her dressing room.

Not long after, John found her
sitting by the fireplace in their sitting room, staring at the low flames,
waiting for him.  He sat on the chair across from her, "Well?"

"I am not certain this will
help you.  In fact, it might make what you have to do a bit more
difficult."

"Say it anyway.  You never
know."  She still seemed hesitant and he leaned forward, took her hand in
both of his and stroked it gently.  He smiled encouragingly and waited for her
to speak.

She threw him a glance and, after
about a minute during which she did not take her eyes off the fire, she spoke. 
"Before you married me, your mother did everything for you at home—from
running your household to organizing and giving dinner parties to help your
business and social standing.  She did all that very well and it kept her
focused on something that meant a lot to her.  Out of a sense of propriety, she
relinquished those responsibilities to me when we married."

"She was right to do
that."  He interjected.  "Those belong to you as my wife."

"Yes, I know, but don't you
see?"  Margaret faced him and looked directly into his eyes.  "Her
life revolved around you, providing you a home life that did not distract from
your work at the mill but then, she lost that focus when you acquired a
wife."

He straightened and sat back
against the chair, frowning.  "What does that have to do with worker
complaints?"

"I am not sure exactly but
since she could no longer structure her life around yours, the mill became more
important to her.  She shifted her efforts on it.  Through the mill, she could
continue to help you be the success in business she worked so hard for much of
her life."

He nodded, "It's true. 
After we married, she came to the mill at least twice as often and the
unfortunate consequence is her presence became more unbearable to the
workers."

"That is it, you see, and I
believe asking her to stop going to the mill would mean taking away from her
what matters most to her now.  Is there anything else that she could do, in
your office, for instance?"

"No, not really.  Much of it
is paperwork, more than half having to do with accounting, from supply orders
to wages to profits.  She would not have the skills to do those.  Besides, I
think those tasks will bore her."

"Well, I don't know what
more to say.  Can you bide your time about making a decision?  Perhaps you can
talk to Nicholas, tell him it is a complicated matter.  Ask if he can explain
to the workers that it will take time; your mother needs time to disengage from
the mill that she helped build."

John was skeptical, uncertain if
he had the courage to tell his mother that she could no longer come to the
mill.  He himself never thought about whether he really wanted her to stop
getting involved since she had been an asset to him in the past.  She knew much
about manufacturing cotton and had made good suggestions that helped him run
the mill more efficiently.  How could he tell her now that she could be hurting
the mill by her presence in it?  He was not even certain that was true.  He
nodded and smiled at Margaret but he did not answer and she did not press him. 
They both sat silently for some time, staring at the fire, its yellow flame burning
itself slowly to ashes.  It was later in the night than John supposed and he
was tired.  He glanced at his wife, her eyes downcast, sadly pensive.  She had
obviously given matters that concerned his mother much thought.

Margaret, in fact, needed to make
sense of Mrs. Thornton's persistent dislike of her, if only to satisfy a need
of her own to know why.  It perplexed her how the older woman could keep up her
animosity—she who was now a mother to her, if only by marriage.  Margaret
doubted that any change in her demeanor could influence Mrs. Thornton's
sentiments.  But she thought that, having made her choice about her future, it
was now up to her to try to reconcile herself to living with all that came with
that choice, including the antipathy of her mother-in-law.  The act of
resigning herself to something she could not change was relatively easier than
changing someone else's attitude—one that she could naturally realize by
understanding the reason for Mrs. Thornton's resentment.

Still, it took long hours of
struggle with her own distress and chagrin for Margaret to accept what she had
suspected: That in relinquishing duties to her son's wife—ordinary tasks,
discharged daily without much thought—Mrs. Thornton lost her raison d'être, the
concerns that gave her life purpose.  Those ordinary tasks, in their entirety,
had defined Mrs. Thornton's daily existence.  When Margaret understood Mrs.
Thornton's resentment, she also saw how profoundly depressing it would be for
someone, as fierce as Mrs. Thornton was about her interests, to lose her
focus.  At that point, Margaret felt sad and sorry for Mrs. Thornton and she
resolved to overlook the irritations brought on by their daily interactions.

Margaret kept an eye on John
closely but discreetly, regretting having revealed so much of her own
thoughts.  After her last outburst when she lamented Mrs. Thornton's
indifference towards Elise, Margaret decided she would not bother John anymore
about problems between herself and Mrs. Thornton.  He needed to focus on the
mill.  Some of those problems were uniquely hers and nobody else's, the recent
ones, for instance, when she had to confront the reality that she occasionally
still mourned for her parents and lamented the chance that could never be of
their knowing her daughter and of Elise never basking in the warmth of their
caring.

At length, Margaret said
sympathetically, "I am sorry if what I said makes what you have to do more
complicated."

He glanced at her and smiled
distractedly.  Margaret got up.  She would leave him undisturbed to mull over
this new dilemma.  With a gentle brush of the back of her hand against his
cheek, she walked past him towards the bedroom.

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

Margaret went to bed feeling sad:
For Mrs. Thornton, because she would surely be devastated by being cut off from
the mill; and for John, because what he had to do would cause him heartbreak.
For herself, her sadness stemmed from remorse that her own happiness had meant
someone else's sorrow.  Margaret lay still, biting her lips, unable to hold
back her tears.  It perturbed her that John was not there, lying calmly next to
her.  But she was also exhausted, no less from the tension of the last few
hours than from the hectic pace of her daily routine.  Exhaustion took over,
coaxing her tense muscles into immobility and her mind into quiescence.

It was a fitful shallow slumber
she fell into, disturbed by dreams of a child she could not see, sobbing
inconsolably.  She searched for the child but in vain and she started to cry in
anguish at her futile attempts while the child continued to sob.  Still
disoriented from her dream, she struggled to wake herself.  She bolted upright,
panting for breath, shivering at the darkness around her, ominous in its
stillness and silence.  She looked through the door to the sitting room,
wondering if John was still sitting by the fireplace.  The lamps there had been
extinguished and the fire had died down.  She reached out her hand to his side
of the bed and felt him grasp it as he pulled her gently into his arms.

He kissed her face and held her
close.  "You are shivering.  Were you having a nightmare my love?"

"Just hold me."  She
implored, her face against his neck.

In the morning, John woke up to
find Margaret already nursing Elise.  He had decided, the past night, to try
Margaret's suggestion to talk to Nicholas Higgins frankly and tell him that
talking to his mother was more complicated than it might appear on the
surface.  It would buy him the time he needed to reflect, figure out his own
wishes, and arrive at the right decision.  He also conjured up some excuse the
night before to keep his mother at home but as it turned out, Margaret
prevented any need for him to use it.  At breakfast, Margaret brought up the
topic of a dinner party that they had intended to give to meet their new
neighbors.  She asked Mrs. Thornton for her help and the two agreed to discuss
it further in the drawing room later that morning.