One Moment in Time

A/N: Could be read as a stand-alone, or as a companion to Into the Embers. Hope you enjoy!

*

One Moment in Time

*

‘It was her brother. I am glad. I may never see her again; but it is a comfort--a relief--to know that much. I knew she could not be unmaidenly; and yet I yearned for conviction. Now I am glad!’

-                          John Thornton, ‘North and South’

*

It was strange how the events of a single moment in time could change things so utterly and irreversibly. That morning, for the first time in many years he had not wanted to get out of bed to face the new day that beckoned. Before, he had had his business, the mill to strive for. And then thoughts of her had put a new spring in his step (perhaps that night, he would see her again at his lesson at Mr. Hale’s)… Even after that terrible day when these entirely new, half-formed hopes had been dashed, she was still there – still in Milton, still single – much as he strove to quash it, there was always the tiniest, most persistent fragment of hope that she might have a change of heart. Then she had gone to London, forever – he still had his business; all his efforts had gone into that. And now that was gone too.

It was therefore with great reluctance that John Thornton emerged from the protective cocoon of his sheets to go to his mill – no, not his mill anymore – to supervise the sending off of the last orders that he would ever fulfill at Marlborough Mills. It would not be exaggeration to state that he could hardly have been in a greater state of despair. Surveying his abandoned looms, for the first time, he began to understand what might have passed through his father’s mind at a time so similar to this, more than eighteen years ago now…

He stopped himself. No, he thought firmly. I am not my father. I have fulfilled my obligations. I may be penniless, but I am also free of debts and at peace with my conscience in knowing that I acted in accordance with my principles. Unconsciously he stood taller and straighter. But… he could not suppress the thought. Father had Mother, and Fanny and I. If I had Margaret by my side, I would never even contemplate…

He sighed deeply. Margaret by my side. That would never be, and there never had been a time when it might have been. She loves someone else. He had seen the look of absolute tenderness on her face as she had embraced that man – he could not have imagined that; it was burned into his brain forever. His heart had caught in his throat at that look, of such devotion and – and this was the part that hurt the most – such familiarity. How long had she loved that other man?

It took Nicholas Higgins a couple of tries before he was successful in breaking into Thornton’s reverie. As they spoke, he could not help reflecting that this friendship was due to Margaret as well – if not for her, he might never have seen other ways of running his business for the ultimate benefit of his employees as well as himself. If not for her, the woman who had questioned him, and further, compelled him to question himself, he might not be where he was today.  He would ten thousand times rather be the failed mill owner John Thornton who had loved and lost Margaret Hale and learnt a great deal along the way, than the successful mill owner John Thornton, who had never met Margaret Hale, had never known what love was, had perished holding the same, stubborn ideas about the world and his place in it.