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North and South fic bit
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stultiloquentia asked for a snippet of my North and South fic. As I find this extremely flattering and am pretty much a whore, here it is! Though I do seem to be in a rather bad habit these days of posting things only one person is going to read. Oh well.Some context: This is a work in progress, but one of those I plan to try to post and finish some time this year. It's about 80,000 words at present, and it is also crack of the worst kind.
The premise is that Margaret married Thornton after the incident at the mill. He proposed and she said no, but then gossip negatively affected her family, Thornton quietly reproposed, and she accepted. For one thing I just don't think the gossip could have gotten that bad, and for another, I think Margaret is just too proud to cave. So heaven knows why I even started writing it, but I did, and it gets worse.
Thornton is aware Margaret married him just to preserve her family's reputation, and the thought of sleeping with her when she dislikes him so disturbs him! So of course they do not have sex, and Thornton suggests she come to him when she does want of the sex. Of course Margaret does not know what he means by "wanting sex" other than "wanting to do her duty" which she already wants to do, but that he seems to find disgusting. It's very confusing to her! They sleep in separate rooms, oh lord.
In this scene, they've been married for a little bit but not having sex. They're all going to London to the Great Exhibition together: Thornton, Margaret, Fanny and the Latimers. This is on the train to London.
*
The train ride was a long one, and Margaret had not thought until it began about how she was now in several hours forced company with her husband. She thought she did not mind. If they were not friends, they were slowly growing toward it. She appreciated his quiet courtesy. She even looked forward to the mornings, finding comfort in his strong, stable presence, in the way he sounded like he wanted an honest answer when he asked how she had slept.
A train ride would really be no different from all those now serene-seeming evenings, when Fanny’s eyes grew bright and her imagination vivid, and Margaret humored her in the dancing firelight while brother and mother easily went about their evening tasks. And yet, somehow it seemed different, when Margaret realized the closeness of their compartment, and Fanny’s restlessness. Mr. Thornton did not have his ledgers to work on here.
This was a chance to draw him out, to begin to know him better. She did want to better know the man she had married, and yet at the same time, she felt reluctance. He was not what she would have chosen, and it was more than likely she was not what he wanted either. They had established a kind of peace; she did not want to break it.
This possibility presented itself to Margaret most keenly when Fanny, shortly after the train had begun its journey, announced her intention to share a compartment with the Latimers. One compartment was not large enough to seat five, and so the Latimers were across the small corridor. Fanny, after some not small amount of trouble fitting her hoops through, pushed through the narrow door and shut it with a click behind her. Margaret and her husband were now alone for the remaining five and a half hours of the journey.
They were seated across from each other. Margaret was normally not shy, but his presence seemed to fill the small car, and she felt quite hot. She felt sure that his eyes were upon her, even though she was looking out the window and so could not confirm it. The cool English countryside slipped past.
“Are you well?” he asked her after a time. There was a tone of softness in his deep voice.
“I am perfectly well, thank you.”
“I meant, regarding your friend, Miss Higgins,” Mr. Thornton explained. “Some time has passed. I’ve observed you look less pensive. You’re not suffering?”
Margaret looked at him in surprise, which changed to gratitude when she saw his concern. “Thank you.” She thought for a moment. “I think it a shame that someone of such kindness and humor, who seemed so wise at such a young age, should have to leave us all so soon. But I’m glad she’s in a better place now. She deserved to be.” Margaret looked down at her hands, and back out the window.
Mr. Thornton was still looking at her. “They really are your friends, aren’t they,” he said, more a statement than a question.
He easily interpreted the affronted look she gave him.
“You think me callous,” he concluded.
Margaret opened her mouth, then closed it. She wondered whether it was a trap, whether it was appropriate to agree with your husband when he condemned himself. But amidst all this thinking, her initial reaction faded, and she saw what he meant. “I know what you are asking.” She paused, then looked out the window. “In the South, we would bring baskets to the poor. The invalids and the farmers, who had too many children to feed.”
She turned back to Mr. Thornton. “I’ve always thought of charity as a kindness, not a way to express superiority. But in the South, things were very clear. We were fortunate, and there were those who were less so.” And it was unlikely, if not impossible, that the unfortunate could ever earn their fortunes. Margaret did not need to explain this. She also did not need to explain the way the North was different, that there were those who by working could earn a better standard of living, and yet still not quite be gentlemen.
“I knew interesting people,” Margaret went on. “Young people, old people, farmers, grandmums with folk remedies. They were gracious, and I liked them, but I knew them as a benefactor. I had a love of the race. When they went away, certainly I felt sadness. I did not feel as though a personal quality had been stripped from me.”
“It’s different in the North?”
“Yes. When we came here, we were alone. We did not know anyone, and no one cared for us. Even the people we came to know seemed foreign. Everything was so different, I—I didn’t even know who was proper to take baskets to.”
The corner of Mr. Thornton’s mouth twitched. “I can’t imagine it would go over well, with some Milton men.”
“It did not.”
Mr. Thornton smiled. “But you perservered. During the strike—”
“They came to know me,” Margaret interrupted, not wanting to argue over the feeding of children again, as they had at the Thornton's dinner. “There are some who will accept charity, if they understand the intentions behind it. Nicholas and Bessy taught me that, though they would never accept it themselves.”
“They do not want to be condescended to.”
Margaret put her head back. “And so I do not condescend to them.”
“You visit them,” he pointed out.
“I had to wait for an invitation.”
“There are not many women in your position in Milton who wait upon invitations from ha—workers. I never did understand it.”
They had discussed this before. “Bessy and Nicholas were the ones who first invited me, and the first to let me know I needed to be invited,” Margaret informed him. “They helped me all the time with understanding Milton ways. Even when I was most lonely, Bessy assured me that Milton would get used to me in short order.”
Mr. Thornton’s brows rose. “How long did she suppose it would take?”
“One or two years."
Mr. Thornton laughed.
Margaret looked out the window. The train rushed along, their car rattling only slightly. “She was a friend when I had no one else to talk to.”
She had told Mr. Thornton they might try to be friends as well. During the strike he had condemned the workers so easily, and disapproved of her charity to them. Yet even though she thought he thought less of the Higgins’s than perhaps he should, he also seemed interested in her dealings with them. He seemed to truly care about her feelings regarding Bessy.
He had also seemed interested in her father's lessons on enlightenment, which seemed a hypocrisy in light of what she saw as close-mindedness. Mr. Thornton was a contradiction: set in Milton ways, defensive of them, and yet strangely eager to learn about the rest of the world and what other people thought. She remembered what he had said about the Great Exhibition, his stated interest in seeing the new inventions and great thinkers there.
“What do you think we will see at the Exhibition?” Margaret found herself asking. The silence in the car felt so heavy, and she was all too aware of his proximity. She thought that, considering his lessons and his behavior towards her, he would not merely be interested in the pounds and pennies of business and trade, as so many other Milton manufacturers seemed to be.
Mr. Thornton spoke of seeking investors at the Great Exhibition, but rather than speaking of sums of money they might offer, he spoke of new technology and efficiency. He also spoke of examining the newest inventions that might benefit his mill. He seemed eager to see these inventions, not for the money they may bring in, but for the sheer joy in human ingenuity, and pride in progress and improved efficiency.
“What sort of inventions?” Margaret asked, to be polite.
“Pressure gauges, and engines. The main thing is that they are always improving the looms.”
Margaret frowned. “I do not know much about technology, but I have heard it said that the power loom is ‘the perfect machine’. It certainly seems to produce a great amount. And the work that goes on automatically at Marlborough Mills is indisputably impressive. How does one improve on perfection?”
Mr. Thornton gave her one of his half smiles. “By working at it. The kinds of looms we use at Marlborough Mills may be automatic, but they are only semi-autonomous. This is of course why workers are needed. The loom needs to be stopped to recharge empty shuttles. If there’s a problem—a thread breaking—the loom will also stop. Then the thread needs to be retied or pieced. The needles break as well, and need to be replaced.”
Margaret listened in surprise. No one had ever described to her the workings of machinery before. She would have supposed that she was not interested; it was the business of men, yet it occurred to her as he spoke that this was vital. The lives of everyone she knew in Milton, with the possible exception of her own family, were dependent on this technology.
In reply to some small question she asked, Mr. Thornton digressed for several minutes regarding a needle. It was a needle with a latch connecting it to the shaft, instead of held there by welding. He said that this would cause the needle to have more flexibility, which would in turn cause it to break less. It seemed like such a small thing, a needle, but he was able to determine how much time this would save them, and therefore how much more the mill might produce.
Margaret also observed that it might be safer for the workers, since it seemed that a needle, when it broke, could easily fly off a machine. Mr. Thornton agreed, and launched into discourse regarding various inventions to improve mill safety, such as gaurds for the looms, and an improved wheel to keep the dust and fluff out of workers’ lungs. He mentioned the telegraph fire alarm that someone had proposed, but he thought it was not worked out yet.
Unable to hide her interest, Margaret made little inquiries, which encouraged Mr. Thornton to continue to speak of inventions, the Great Exhibition, his hopes for Marlborough Mills, his interest in technology. He got to talking about engines, and all that they were doing with steam. At one point he spoke of Mr. Joule and a gentleman named Lord Kelvin, in an analysis of thermodynamics that was well beyond Margaret’s understanding. Yet he did not speak to her as if she was stupid, and when she made sounds of incomprehension, he was eager to simplify his terms.
Listening to him, Margaret realized she could learn much more than how many foot-pounds of ‘work’ it might take to increase the temperature of water. Gentlemen of London pooh-poohed scientific knowledge; understanding of Latin and Plato were all that mattered. At one time she had felt there was wisdom in this. Understanding ideas was more powerful than understanding gross mechanics. Bodies may be constrained by the real world, but the soul was part of the spiritual. Abstraction was key.
And yet in all these theories of thermodynamics, there could be a key to ideas. By understanding the world around them, man might better learn of the world outside of them as well. Besides, the spirit was grounded, at least for a time, in the body. Both were inventions of a higher power; seeking understanding was only another way to worship that power.
Speaking of thermodynamics, of Watts and pressure, Mr. Thornton sounded almost lofty.
Not only was the subject not base, it was complex as well. There were many men of her acquaintance in London who claimed an understanding of the classics, who Margaret knew would never comprehend these theories of work and pressure and internal force. She wondered who had determined that one form of knowledge be higher than another.
She had never much liked Plato. He seemed to her short-sighted.
Yet in the next moment, Mr. Thornton was speaking not of thermodynamics and theories of energy, but again of the intricacies of mechanics, some belt or reed he had heard of that would increase the production speed of the looms he’d described. Margaret noticed then that for all her decision that discourse of this sort was not base, Mr. Thornton was by no means speaking abstractly. It seemed obvious from his discourse that he spoke from personal experience. He not only managed the workers; he had managed these machines.
Margaret did not think other masters had such experience—or, if they did, would not admit to such. Mr. Thornton was the only man she knew who made pretensions to gentlemanliness, but in the same breath was not afraid of admitting he had worked in a draper’s shop. She knew Mr. Thornton had never worked as Nicholas did, or Bessy, but she could not imagine that he was afraid of trying his hand at it. He had a history far inferior to that of most of the other manufacturers—who, though they worked their whole lives, had more often not had to begin from the bottom up.
Just as Margaret did not know anyone else who would have spoken so freely to her of such things, she also did not know anyone who would have spoken as eagerly. The dark she so often observed in him lifted a little as he spoke of the world, technology and inventions, engineers and science and America, where they were always inventing new things.
Apathy was the height of distinction in London. One had interests “here and there”, one tried “this and that”, one dabbled in art or in business or in knowledge. If one dedicated one’s self to a cause, one became a bore, a zealot who was not refined enough to appreciate the diversity of interest in the world, and the shallowness of their scope. In London, speaking in this way, Mr. Thornton would seem coarse and boorish, self-obsessed and over-heated.
But Margaret welcomed it. Not only did she find the subjects of his discourse interesting, she was gratified to see someone who did not define boredom as a praise-worthy characteristic. She was glad to know someone who did not disguise his passions.
There was a softness and mobility to his mouth that she had not seen before. There was color in his face. His voice was deep, resonant, with a power to it that was rough, yet sensible and true. Still, under that voice, woven through the Darkshire accent that gave his words a strange lilt to her ears, there was a depth of feeling. An excitement, a fascination, a joy, and he was sharing it with her. It was for her alone, wrapped up between them in this car where only they two sat.
Thinking these things, she felt suddenly very close to him. Even though he seemed to be bringing the entire world between them, speaking of its wonders and its workings, she felt suddenly as though they spoke of intimate things.
The feeling only grew as he continued talking, until she felt as though she was stripped down out of all trappings so that all that was left was the person she was, and he was similarly stripped. They sat before each other now in this train car as equals, the equals she had spoken of when she spoke of Bessy also.
He moved his hand in some gesture, and she felt as though he were touching her in that moment, even though he was only attempting to describe a boiler system to keep cotton dry. His fingers were long, the palms broad and square.
He could seize her with those hands, and yet he never had.
She was his wife, she suddenly realized. Why hadn’t he seized her? She wondered why he had not held her with those hands, large enough to support the weight of her own head, large enough to wrap almost around her waist. He could hold her against him with those hands, pull her to him, his rough body and square chest; he could hold her and let his voice wrap around her. They could be together, equals, as men and women were supposed to be, as man and wife.
But Margaret didn’t know how it was supposed to be. She felt confused, flustered, frightened; she did not know why she was thinking these things when he spoke only of cotton. He was obviously not thinking these things of her. He did not want to seize her or hold her the way she had so suddenly imagined, or else he would have done it. He had a right to it; she was his wife. But he had never touched her in that way.
And yet he was not without passion. She could see it in him; it was part of what stirred her heart so. His eyes were bright as fire.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Thornton said suddenly. “You are bored. I should have noticed.”
The tone of his voice was changed completely.
“I—I am not bored.” Margaret spoke in a somewhat breathless voice. Her cheeks felt flushed. She realized that she had indeed become distracted; she had stopped commenting and asking questions, content to merely listen and absorb.
Mr. Thornton looked askance at her. “You have a particular interest in heat conversion?”
“Yes.” Margaret lifted her chin. “I am fascinated by—by heat in general.”
“You do not need to feign an interest for my sake.”
“I am not feigning an interest!” The accusation demeaned both her and the way he had been speaking to her. He may have merely forgotten that she was not one of his business colleagues, rather than speaking that way because he truly did respect her intelligence and ability to grasp issues that mainly concerned men.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I did not mean to suggest deceit on your part, but rather too solicitous charity.”
She looked away, feeling in some small part deceptive after all. It was true that she had lost the thread of his conversation, becoming preoccupied by his voice rather than his words. She did not know what had precipitated it, and shame coursed through her. He had not become distracted that way; his heat had been all for the ideas of which he spoke.
Even with her head down, she knew that he watched her. She knew that he eyed her keenly; she could feel that burning gaze.
“I speak of heat conversion, and completely ignore the heat in here,” Mr. Thornton said suddenly. “It’s too warm. Forgive me; I was distracted. I’ll open the window.”
“I am not too hot,” she said in strained protest, because he was standing up.
His legs brushed her skirt, and she could feel his presence looming over her. “You are flushed,” he said, and opened the latch on the window.
“I only need a glass of water.” She stood hurriedly, in order to escape him, and instead came into close proximity with him. As she moved quickly away, she stumbled.
“Margaret,” he said, and seized her arm.
Steadying, she said resolutely, “I am not faint,” and stepped away.
He still held her arm. “I’ll get the water for you.”
“Thank you,” she told him stately as she could. She allowed him to continue to hold her arm as she turned and seated herself again.
He lingered as he bent over her, so that she had to turn her face away from his, so close to her. She felt his hand travel gently up her arm, to her shoulder, her collar bone. She thought that he forgot that he had never touched her this way. His hand touched the side of her neck, under her ear. It was damp with her sweat. “You are overheated,” he told her, because now he had evidence.
“I would like some water,” Margaret repeated almost sharply, unhappy and frustrated to be made to feel this way. Resenting the very coolness of his fingers, she made the mistake of turning her head back to him in some rebuke. His face was so close, the area of his mouth lined with soft concern, his eyes hot and dark.
She could track that progress of his eyes. She knew when he was no longer staring into her own eyes, but at her mouth. “Mr. Thornton,” she said, meaning remonstrance.
She did not sound remonstrating at all. She thought she sounded pleading. She didn’t know for what she pled.
He tore his eyes away. “Yes,” he said, and straightened. “Don’t move. I will bring it to you.”
Then he was gone, leaving her to herself to wonder what had happened.
She did not think of it. Instead, she let the cool air from the window rush over her. The rocky terrain of northern England was giving way to rolling farmland. She should be happy, she thought, to be leaving Darkshire. Here was the land with which she was familiar, bright in comparison and green. There was grace in it, and peace.
The quiet dullness of it made her restless.
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I love the nerdery about the needles, and Thornton sounding lofty on the subject of thermodynamics, and the "gentleman named Lord Kelvin" and "America, where they were always inventing things". And Margaret going all pink and breathless with realization that people talking passionately and fluently about subjects they know well are REALLY REALLY HOT. And Thornton being all, "Oh, gee, have some water," and Margaret being all, "Argh!" yet not knowing how to say what she wants! Barely knowing what she wants! Oh!
Joy, I don't care how you disparage the rest of this story; I am going to NOM IT WITH A SPOON. Thank you for the taste.
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I read several patents for this fic, and there really was such a huge number of inventions coming out of America at the time. Or at least, a huge number of patents ;o)
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Ha. All right, Joy, here's the thing. I am a super good reader. I'm probably almost as sharp-eyed a reader as you are when you're reading your own stuff. I'm perfectly capable of noting, "This bit came out a little forced," and, "Whups, character just teetered into mouthpiece," and, "Avoid repetitive redundancies," and, "That's a bit Mills & Boon, there, innit?" and, "The internal rhyme in those two sentences sounds funny," and, "O hai Joy's id! Would you, um, like a sweater?"
But I'm equally prone to notice, "God, she's distilled exactly what is sexy about Thornton," and, "Oh technogeekery! I didn't know that about looms; how cool!" and, "Nooo, Margaret, jump his bones!" and, "This writer is having the time of her life and it's catching," and, "That was an elegant turn of phrase," and, "Oh! secret pun," and, "This is what I wanted out of Gaskell's Margaret: that curious mind," and, "My id is so grateful right now," and, "She's weaving her own interests into the book's themes really cleverly; I love those observations on dilettantism," and, "Nice character nuances -- they flit from 'shy' to 'grumpy' to 'baffled' to 'absorbed' as fast as people do, but I have no trouble following their thought processes."
So, you know, for future reference: when I say I like something, I'm not turning my brain off. I'm saying, "One way or another, this story got to my happy place."
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