Page 3 of Through Darkened Clouds

His entire journey to Helstone had been a blinding revelation. From the moment he had taken the fly from Southampton, he had scanned the passing scenery with great interest. Although every glimpse had been new to his eyes, as he had grown closer and closer to the quiet country hamlet, his attention had become even more rapt as he had tried to see the sparkling brook, the first low farmer’s cottage, and its stately old oak as she would have seen them—imagining her bliss at absorbing all the signs of home that would spark the warm feelings of familiarity and childhood memory.

Sunlight had bathed everything there in a beauty and tranquility that seemed set apart from the common world. Certainly, he now understood why she had so fiercely clung to ideals of natural harmony and freedom. It had been the landscape of her life.

How harsh it must have been for her to be forced to settle in his world of soot and stone and darkened skies! A sense of compassion for her swept over him as he recognized how much she must have struggled to make sense of Milton ways.

It was no wonder she had wished to return to Helstone. He wished he could have stayed in that tranquil place longer and grew more somber as every mile drew him nearer to his duties.

He consoled himself with the remembrance that he carried with him a token of Helstone’s beauty in his pocketbook. He smiled at the thought of it when his attention was suddenly roused by someone calling his name.

“I thought that was you!” Mr. Bell exclaimed as he took a seat closer to his Milton tenant. “Ah, Thornton, I’m afraid I’m on a terrible mission,” he announced with some relief at having found someone with whom to share his bewildered predicament and grief. Mr. Thornton, however, only inclined his head to one side as polite acknowledgment of this intrusion upon his cherished privacy.

“I’m on my way to Milton to tell Hale’s daughter of his death.”

“His death…” Mr. Thornton echoed, his features at once stricken to reflect his grave alarm. “I don’t understand…” he uttered as disbelief struggled to quell the rising horror that clenched his stomach and made his whole body tense with foreboding.

“Hale was with me in Oxford. He came to visit. He had not been these seventeen years.”

“But…how…?” Mr. Thornton stuttered. He had only days ago received Mr. Hale’s note concerning his visit away from Milton—a note full of expectancy that their lessons together might soon resume.

“It is a hearty shock for me as well, I assure you,” Mr. Bell continued, noting the distressed confusion on the younger man’s face. “He seemed well enough these past few days. But he did not wake this morning, you see. Passed away in his sleep. There was not a trace of trouble on his face. God grant us all a similar end.”

Mr. Thornton could make no response. A deepening heaviness sank within at the awful finality of this verified report. A storm of sober consequences chased through the chambers of his mind, sweeping trails of certain suffering at every end. But one concern, above all, swiftly surfaced to grip him with terror—she would have no one to comfort her! She had already lost her mother, and now she would be without family at all. There would be no reason for her to remain in Milton!

The impending emptiness of such an outcome pressed against his heart and made him struggle for air.

“What of her?” he breathed, a tremulous catch in his voice threatening to betray his feelings.

“Margaret? How Hale was full of talk of her only hours ago!” Mr. Bell mused, shaking his head in fresh wonder that his friend should be dead. His unseeing gaze fixed upon the image of the previous evening for a moment until he returned his concentration to the present.

“She will be well provided for. There is no question of that. I suppose those Lennoxes will claim their right to her and take her to London.”

“Who are they?” Mr. Thornton pressed, the frown on his face hardening.

“Her cousin, with whom she grew up, has married a Captain Lennox. Then there’s the widowed aunt, Mrs. Hale’s sister. I’ve a notion to keep Margaret for myself. I might learn to live with a dragon if I could have Margaret in my home. Perhaps I ought to consider matrimony with that aunt.”

Neither man found humor any comfort. Silence lapsed between them for a time.

“Of course there’s that young Mr. Lennox, who may very well settle the whole affair in due course,” Mr. Bell muttered with a resigned sigh, thinking aloud.

“Mr. Lennox? Who is he?” Mr. Thornton was too agitated to take note of the impertinent manner of his hasty demand.

“The Captain has a brother, a clever barrister, who I believe will set his cap at Margaret. In fact, I’ve heard it said by one of his fellow barristers that he has had Margaret in his plans for these past few years, but was restrained by the lack of adequate income in her situation.”

A stab of fiery jealousy rose inside Mr. Thornton at this revelation of a rival. ‘Lack of adequate income!’ The words stung like a fiery brand in his very soul. How much wealth had he accumulated from naught all these long years—enough to keep a wife without a care for her circumstances of birth or fortune—and this man could bide his love for want of money!

Mr. Bell might have seen this internal struggle by the flicker in Mr. Thornton’s eyes, but the older man’s gaze rested on his own lap as he mulled over the prospects of his goddaughter’s fate.

“But money will no longer be a barrier. Margaret will have my fortune. I promised as much to Hale last night, as that is what I have long intended. She shall not lack for anything, of that you can be assured,” Mr. Bell exclaimed confidently. “If she will have him, and if he is worthy of her—which I doubt—there is nothing to stand in the way of her marrying when she chooses. Although I had so fondly wished for her to be my own charge for a time,” he added with a wistful after-thought.

Mr. Thornton made no reply. His heart sickened at the thought of her as another man’s wife. The surrounding air seemed to thin, as if it would never again provide enough life-force for him to thrive. The chasm of despair, the precipice from which he had resolutely refrained from treading near, now loomed deeper and blacker at his feet.

“The poor girl has been through trials enough. I hand over all I possess to make her pathway brighter from now on. What she has endured…” Mr. Bell said. He turned to look keenly at his companion, whose hard-won composure bore only faint vestiges of his inward battle. “Have you seen where she came from? Have you seen Helstone?” the Oxford scholar queried.

“I have seen it,” came the soft reply, while the scenes of sun-dappled, peaceful beauty burst once more into Mr. Thornton’s mind. “It was a great change for her to come to Milton.”

The travelers arrived in Milton where the northern sky, further obscured by the sooty spewing of workaday factories, promised no gleam of sunshine or clearing of accumulated gloom.

Few words had passed between the Milton-born companions in the intervening hours as the train rattled on. Roused now from their silent stupors by the cessation of motion and the din of the regular mid-day bustle at the station, the grieving friends emerged onto the platform. The steam engine hissed as the compartments were emptied of their occupants, who warily resumed the primitive ambulatory patterns of their fellow beings on foot.