Margaret
"Miss Hale." His tone was so cold, cold as ice. I could not understand his facial expression. In fact, he wore none. It looked like he hid his emotions behind a mask of nonchalance. What was wrong with him? Something terrible must have happened. As soon as he entered the house he turned away from me and went towards the staircase without uttering another word.
"What is it?" I softly asked, while I started reaching out for him with my left hand. As soon as I touched his arm he stiffened and stepped away from me as if I was a deadly disease. His actions hurt me more than I could have ever imagined.
Did Mrs. Thornton convince him not to marry me? What did she tell him? Or did he hear some of the ridiculous chatter of the ladies of Milton? They have to much time and to little to occupy their brains for their own good.
But it was John. He never listened to gossip and he would keep to his words. Even Mrs. Thornton would not counsil him to do otherwise then he had pledged. What could have happened to make him behave towards me so?
"Please tell me what happened?" I pleaded.
"I came to visit your father. We have a lesson planned today. Please dont .make me let him wait any longer. I dont like being late." He stated formal while trying with everything in his might to avoid my gaze, which must have been burning into him now.
I didn't understand. I couldn't understand what was happening in this moment. For weeks I have only thought of him alone, always longing for his embrace, his smile, his reassuring words and his kisses. And now, there he is in front of me refusing to meet my eyes. I could not keep it within me anymore.
"Look at me! I demand to know what made you behave this way!" I hissed at him. I was frustrated, but I would not yell at him. If this will turn up to be a great problem between us, father should not get to know any of it. He turned and finally looked into my eyes. At first he seemed to be caught off guard. He didn't expect me to hold on, to go further after he dismissed me. He probably thought I would let him vanish without having an explanation of any sort.
But the surprise in his eyes was quickly replaced by his emotionless mask again. "Nothing happened that you should care about. And there are no such circumstances present that would lead you to believe you had the right to demand anything from me. Not an explanation nor anything else. "
I couldn't believe this man. What has brought this change in him to come around? I knew it had been to good to be true. All those lovely weeds I must have let my fantasy unravel itself and it made up dreams of John being the perrfect match for me. Maybe I just started to see what I wanted to see in him after Freds suggestion.
No. That is not true and I refuse to believe it. He is the man I came to know after all these months. He is the man that has the power to increase my heartbeat within seconds, with him only being near me. I refuse to believe anything else. I love him, and he loves me.
"John, please. What is the matter? You changed." I started speaking more softly to him, so I might get him to talk after all. But he cut my monolog short.
"What makes you think that I changed and in what way, if I may ask? You really dont know me quite well enough, and still you already feel free to judge my character?"
"Of course I know you, John! I know you very well. Or at least thats what I thought. Although I am starting to doubt you."
Suddenly, I noticed that something flashed in his eyes like a blazing fire and his nostrils flared, as if he had to deal with a most infuriating child.
"What makes you think you can adress me so informally, Miss Hale?"
By now all I wanted was to cry really hard. What happened to my loving fiancé? I reached into the pockets of my dress and took out the ring he gave me weeks ago, when he asked me to marry him. I thrust it out in front of me for him to see and answered his question.
"This!" I couldnt keep the tear rolling down my cheek.
He stared at the ring and after some time his eyes returned to mine. Slowly his expression softened. His eyes held a lot of sorrow, he looked broken. So I hoped he would let me in, so I could help him with his burdens. But as quickly as before, his face changed into an emotionless mask again, as if to shield him from reality.
"That doesnt mean anything. Not anymore." That did it. He tore my heart apart. The only hope I held onto all these long and lonley weeks was a lie. It was gone. He ripped my heart out of my chest and trampled on it. I didnt care for anyone to hear me anymore. Any coherent thought that reminded me to be reasonable fled my mind.
"Why? Why are you doing this to me? To us?Al those weeks I only thought about you. Did you just suddenly change your mind? John I I know you! It cant be that way, you would never! You're to honorable to do something like that. You would always keep your word. Please, dont let me lose my believe in you, in us, in love!"
He was approaching me, his gaze heated his breathing uneven. He seemed furious. Whatever made him act this way towards me today, his resolve was cracking and the reason behind everything would soon be revealed to me.
"I cant believe I hear you talk about honor. Especially you!"
"What do you mean? You speak in riddles. Please just tell me!" I was nearly panting by now. And surely the argument was to be heard in the whole house already. I hope father wont come down and interfere. I haveto know the truth and from his lips.
"It was you who broke everything apart, not me, You! You were the one who wasnt honorable! I waited patiently, while you were tending to your mother. Or at least that is what you said you did..."
"What? I did tend to my mother, till her last breath! What else do you think I would have occupied myself with? And what, pray tell me, makes my efforts for my mother so dishonorable in your eyes? That I wanted to keep it a secret for her sake?"
"Yes, you did tend to your mother, but what did you do afterwards?What did you do? You acted so high and mighty, so sure of yourself, having me as your fiancé, you had secured a way to have your future financed. And what did you do, my so sadly misplaced affection in your hands, while I waited for your approval to make our engagement official? While I waited in agony and kept it a secret to your bidding?"
"What are you implying? What did I do that in your eyes seemed to be wrong? And what about me wanting to keep it a secret for a while? You werent against it when I suggested it. I just didnt want to much attention placed on me in that time."
"Oh yes, really. I wonder why that is!" he exclaimed with a bitter laugh.
"My mother needed all the attention she could have in that moment! Do you think it would have been better, if I told her how wonderful I felt, while she got worse and worse? Wouldnt that have been unfeeling of me? When I told you, you agreed with me and I dont regret anything I have done in that time!"
"No, of course you dont. And yet how could you? Gallivanting in the streets after dark with some spanish stranger, while your fiancé waits for you, knowing nothing of your affairs!" He nearly spat at me.
And suddenly I understood. Fred. He was talking about Fred. He saw us together saying goodbye at the station. Why did he have to see her? Why, he out of all people. Now I remember, the dark figure at the corner. It wasnt just a stranger, it was him.
"Outwood station." I breathed as I stumbled back a bit, shocked by the turn of events. He saw us and thinks he is my lover. He thinks I cheated. My reaction probably showed him that I was guilty of what he accused me as he continiued.
"Now, do you know what I am talking about? And dont you dare to deny it! It was bad enough that I had to save you from an inquisition about the death of Leonards, but know I want to hear you say the truth just once!" I was completely taken off guard. Leonards? Death? Inquisition? Someone had seen them... somehow...Fred could have been captured. But he stopped the inquisition. I was relieved for a second, but it was only short lived relief.
When I looked at him again, there was so much hatred in his gaze that I wished for his expressionless face to come back. I didnt want his hatred, I didnt want it directed at me. But I couldnt comprehend all that he said. But than it hit me.
"Why do you say he was spanish?"
"So you dont deny it? That you were meddling with a stranger outside after dark,while you were engaged to me?"
Suddenly all pieces fell together. He saw me with Fred that night. And the first thing that came to his mind was to accuse me of cheating. He thinks I betrayed him. Did I make him believe that I lacked sincerety? How could he distrust me like that?
Now I had to decide. Do I risk Freds safety, inorder to dissolve this misunderstanding and rescue this realtionship, which is already falling apart because of trust issues? All by telling him, the Magistrate of Milton, about my brother the wanted ringleader of a Mutiny? Or do I keep him safe and sacrifice our relationship and love, which have started to crumble, trying to fix the damage that was caused, by him questioning my fidelity?
I could not trust him after what he just has said and done, after what he accused me of. Fred was more important. Blood runs thicker. His safety is more worth saving than the scattered pieces of hope that lay on the floot between me and John.
My gaze hardened and I braved for what I must do now. I lifted my chin, showing him my confidence. I will not cower away, I have done nothing wrong. It seemed to make him uneasy I noticed. Good. He doesnt deserve to see me vulnerable. He probably expected me to cower away from him, which is exactly as I would have acted if I was indeed guilty. But no. I wasnt. Now he will get some of his own ways. He had hurt me beyond relieve and I will show him thatt he wasnt able to break me. That he was utterly wrong about me, without telling him a word about Fred. I will try to be strong, at least in front of him.
But there is something I still have to ask him.
" Tell me, Mr Thornton. Did you, just for a second, think that there might be another explaination for my behaviour? That it wasnt the way it looked like? That I wasnt secretly entertaining another man? That I couldnt have done something like that? That I couldnt have been that untruthfull? Or maybe even that my father knew of my whereabouts and had know of my activities that night and approved, because he, unlike you, knows the truth?"
Wiht every sentence my voice grew louder and more highpitched that my words didnt resemble sentences, but more desperate outcries. "Did you? Did you just for a moment try to defend me? Did you try to trust me? Tell me. Tell ME!" I was crying by now, but I wiped the tears away with the full force of my heated emotional state.
He looked ashamed, anguished even. And that told me everything that I needed to know.
"I wanted to stop keeping it a secret the moment my time for grieving for my mother would have ended. I am glad, that nobody knows. I dont know how I ever could have been so blind, so stupid to have agreed to marry a man who doesnt believe me, who thinks the worst of instead of defending me. I am so glad, that I noticed the fault in our relationship before we entered into something more permanent than an engagement. And I am so glad that you discovered your hatred for me just in time so you were able to break it off with me. Which one suits you best, Mr Thornton. You decide how you want to view it."
He was silent, looked at me in complete despair. As he didnt respond to me I went on with my speach.
"I have done nothing wrong, you can ask my father. The stranger was not my lover as you so boldly assumed he was, he wasnt and I would never even think as to stoop so low to ever have one. He has a close relationship with my family. He has a secret, and I couldnt have told you without doing him harm, and after all it isnt my place to tell anybody of it. If you woiuld have tried to believe in me, I might have found the strengh and courage to tell you, and tell you I would have sooner or later. Because I hated haveing any secrets from you. I loved you."
His eyes went wide when he noticed that I used past tense for the last statement. But I wasnt finished yet.
"You didnt even give me a chance to explain myself, him as well as my whole family, as they all were involved, not only me. So I will not give you the chance to know the truth. I would never risk his life by telling you now."
His gaze coulndt get more intense as they were when I mentioned "risk his life". He nearly burned holes through me.
"Mar...."
"I dont want to hear anything from you now. Nothing! Not that you dont believe me, not that I am still a liar in your eyes, not that you demand the truth from me - Not even that you are sorry for what you have done to me, what you have done to us. I dont want to have to do anything with you from this day on, Mr. Thornton. Not now, not in the future."
I threw the ring, which I held in my palm the whole time, towards him and watched him catch it. I didnt want to have anything from him, especially something that would remind me of him, of the possibility of happiness we could have shared.
When he looked up our eyes met again. He looked devistatingly broken now. But I didnt want to pity him. I wanted to forget him, and as quickly as possible. I turned around and tore one of the coats of the hooks, which hang next to the door and rushed out of the house. I wanted to flee from him, so I ran. I ran away from him, from the pain he had caused me by first giving me hope and than destroying it. Now I had no mother, no broher near me to help me overcome my heartbreak.
I ran, because if I didnt, I probably would have thrown myself into his arms, forgiving him everything at once and would have told him that I would never stop loving him. I couldnt. So I ran, because I wouldnt give in. I loved him still, I would probably always love him. It was true.
But I have to get over him. I have to forget him and get on with my life. That I swore to myself, I would do.
John
I watched her leave, but couldnt stop her, because I felt like my feet were frozen on the floor of the Hale's home. I held the ring in my hands, trying to remember some of the information she gave me.
"I have done nothing wrong...."
"....Ask my father, he knows everything..."
"...close relationship to my family..."
"....I loved you...."
"....I dont want to hear anything..."
"..You didnt give me a chance..."
"...I would nerver risk his life by telling you now..."
I asked myself: are you satified now? Could it be true? Did I ruin all my chances at finally being happy by being to rash? By not simply asking her, trusting her and waiting gor the explaination that would have probably showed me my grave mistake, show the simple misunderstanding?
I was ripped out of my thoughts when someone cleared their throat behind me. When I turned around I stood face to face with Richard who was shaking his head. His eyes had a grave look in them. He was like a father to me, I had the feeling that I disapinted him really deeply, probably my friendship with him was now also destroyed beyond repair.
He wanted to tell me something, but before he could utter a single word Dixon beat him to it.
She shoved her heavy form past me to walk to the downleading stairs into the kitchen when she stopped in front of my huffing.
"You should be ashaimed of yourself you unmanly coward!" She hissed at me.
"Dixon. Please." Richard said in an tranquil tone.
Huffing again, she left me alone with the deeply offended father.
"I am gravely dissapointed." That was all he said at first.
"I gathered that much." I said, my eyes downcast. I felt like a child being chatised by his father.
"I always thought well of you, Thornton." It stung that he dindt use my first name anymore as he used to do. THere was a distance between us now. He was loyal to his daughter.
"She is right you know. If your love wasnt strong enough to survive the first obsticle that popped out in your way, it is probably a blessing you never married. I know exactly what my daughter did, where she was and with whom. I wished I could trust you and tell you now, but it is as Margaret said, a risk I am also not inclined to take now. All the trust I had in you shattered, an I am sorry. To blame my pure daughter of something outragous like that! How did you even dare! You could have called her a whore and it wouldnt have made a greater insult! You really dont know her at all if you even had the thought that could be true. What she did was throuhgly honorable, and if you believed something else, than you dont deserve her. You should really be ashaimed of yourself. I am sorry to say this, as I always enjoyed your company, but who ever offends my daughter is not welcome in this house and is surely not my friend. If you knew the truth......I would bid you to leave this instant and never call on us again."