'Oh, John!' she said, and she lifted his face up. Such a strange,
pallid look of gloom was on it, that for a moment it struck her
that this look was the forerunner of death; but, as the rigidity
melted out of the countenance and the natural colour returned,
and she saw that he was himself once again, all worldly
mortification sank to nothing before the consciousness of the
great blessing that he himself by his simple existence was to
her. She thanked God for this, and this alone, with a fervour
that swept away all rebellious feelings from her mind.
He did not speak readily; but he went and opened the shutters,
and let the ruddy light of dawn flood the room. But the wind was
in the east; the weather was piercing cold, as it had been for
weeks; there would be no demand for light summer goods this year.
That hope for the revival of trade must utterly be given up.
It was a great comfort to have had this conversation with his
mother; and to feel sure that, however they might henceforward
keep silence on all these anxieties, they yet understood each
other's feelings, and were, if not in harmony, at least not in
discord with each other, in their way of viewing them. Fanny's
husband was vexed at Thornton's refusal to take any share in the
speculation which he had offered to him, and withdrew from any
possibility of being supposed able to assist him with the ready
money, which indeed the speculator needed for his own venture.
There was nothing for it at last, but that which Mr. Thornton had
dreaded for many weeks; he had to give up the business in which
he had been so long engaged with so much honour and success; and
look out for a subordinate situation. Marlborough Mills and the
adjacent dwelling were held under a long lease; they must, if
possible, be relet. There was an immediate choice of situations
offered to Mr. Thornton. Mr. Hamper would have been only too glad
to have secured him as a steady and experienced partner for his
son, whom he was setting up with a large capital in a
neighbouring town; but the young man was half-educated as
regarded information, and wholly uneducated as regarded any other
responsibility than that of getting money, and brutalised both as
to his pleasures and his pains. Mr. Thornton declined having any
share in a partnership, which would frustrate what few plans he
had that survived the wreck of his fortunes. He would sooner
consent to be only a manager, where he could have a certain
degree of power beyond the mere money-getting part, than have to
fall in with the tyrannical humours of a moneyed partner with
whom he felt sure that he should quarrel in a few months.