Shadow in the North

Chapter Thirty-Nine - Blood and Conflict

Mrs Thornton was surprised to note that there had been no eruptions between stubborn husband and wilful wife. Certainly, she thought Isabel somewhat lacking as a wife; she did not take up responsibility for the house, she made little effort to raise her husband's status within the first families of Milton, and had scarce paid one visit to a genteel lady since becoming the younger Mrs Thornton. She did not know her place - it was entirely unsuitable for her son's wife to spend her days tending to the working poor, and her visits to Princeton to see that blasted union man and his adopted brood! Well! thought Mrs Thornton, I never did take to liking that Miss Hale, and now I must own to like her all the less, for the doctoring is one thing, but the fraternising with the poor in their hovels; I blame that entirely upon the southern do-gooder!

And it was much to Mrs Thornton's chagrin, that her son did not complain. Where once, the proud matriarch had thought her reliable son to be the very man to tame such a wayward creature, she now was loath to admit in her son, some suspected weakness. For although he sometimes gave his wife such a look as to show a vexed displeasure, or spoke a low word of warning, he never ordered her to do or not to do; he did not even say he would be obliged to her, much as he had ever said to Fanny, when coaxing her to his bidding.

So Mrs Thornton sat in her black bombazine, lips pinched in irritation, as Jane entered the drawing room to light the candles - and the afternoon had barely slipped away! Such incautious spending! - and she thought to herself, with a certain foreboding, that peace could not reign uninterrupted; that some cross words must surely come to pass. For her son ceded to his wife's wishes, and wife sought to anticipate his, but they were - to Mrs Thornton - such dissimilar creatures, that she could not see the source of their contentment, in appeasing one another in such a way. Little did she know, that the couple's first test would come upon the morrow, after some seven or so weeks of marriage.

It was a misty morning - as mornings often were, in Milton - but this day, the air - so perpetually thick with a claggy fog of smoke and soot, which billowed from the smokestacks and cloyed to nostrils, which sought out the weave of drapes (in defiance of the housewife!) - had about it, a low-lying dampness. Those clouds of mist which, from time-to-time, saw fit to descend from the skies and lurk about the lanes; amblers damp and blinded by grey, oppressive fogs, which clog up the streets in a haze of dreary dankness. The carriages were forced to slow their pace in caution, and people called out to one another in warning, for one could not see their fellow man approach them, until they stood within three paces. Many a man would fall that day; a collision of bodies, or a stumble on a disguised cobble stone, come loose. But, as Isabel saw to her last patient of the day, a far greater calamity would befall one doomed inhabitant of Milton.

Margaret walked cautiously along the way, wending her path back from Princeton. She held her straw bonnet about her head, and narrowed her eyes in an attempt to focus them through the fog. The tramp of hooves was the only warning she had that a carriage did approach her, but she could not sense in which direction, nor if their paths should meet.

'Look out, Miss!' cried a roughened voice, and Margaret spun about, only to knock shoulders with a gangly mill hand, who grunted in vexation, and pushed her from his side. 'Miss, a carriage!' called the voice again, rising in agitation. Margaret stepped to the side, in search of the voice, but had unwittingly moved the wrong way, for a thick hand reached out and grabbed her through the fog, urging her to safety. Too late! another carriage approached from the opposite direction, and - neither hearing the second set of hooves - Margaret's aide was caught off-guard, and did not know of the carriage's presence, until the horse tramped upon him, reared up with an almighty scream, and sought to charge off in fright. The carriage twisted against the horse's thrashing, and over-turned, crashing to the ground.