Page 43 of Threads that Remain

“Tregarth,” said Mr. Grant.

“Mr. Grant. I — I beg your —”

“Come in, man.” He laughed. It was not quite the laugh of an hour before; but it was, undeniably, a real one. He put out a hand, and shook the other’s, with a warmth that made the other man wince. “She is in the morning-room. She is about to say something to you. I strongly advise you to hear it standing.” He paused on the pavement, and looked back, with the sun on his face; and it was noticed by the footman that he had, in that instant, the look of a boy who has been beaten at cricket by a better player, and is a good deal too well brought up to mind. “You have just had a very great windfall, Tregarth. I hope you know it.”

“I do not know it in the least,” said Mr. Tregarth, with despair. “I have not the smallest idea what is going to happen.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Grant, and clapped his hat down on his head. “Then you will enjoy it.”

It was, of all things, a piece of granite that he had brought.

He set it down upon the morning-room table, out of its brown paper, with the extreme care of a man who has carried something a long way; and it was, in fact, no more than a small grey stone the size of a hen’s egg, with a fine white seam of quartz running across it, and a thread of black in the quartz. He stood beside it, with his hands hanging. He did not look at her. His face was working, and he was rather white.

“I have brought this,” said Mr. Tregarth, in a low voice. “I thought you might like to see it. It is the cassiterite. That is to say — it is from the Wheal Charlotte, at two hundred fathoms; it was the first piece I ever took out myself, when I was seventeen. I have had it in my pocket for some time. I do not know why. I thought you might be interested in the — in the vein.” He stopped, swallowed, and looked wretched. “I ought to say, Miss Dashwood, that I cannot think what I have done. If I have said something at dinner, if my father has — I should be extremely sorry. I have been going over it all night. I thought that possibly you had sent for me in order that I might be asked to apologise.”

“Mr. Tregarth,” said Margaret.

“Yes?”

“It is not about rocks.”

There was a pause. He looked up. “Yes, you mentioned that in your note.” It was quite remarkable to see, in the brown and angular face, something like a slow dawn of disbelief, followed, in due order, by alarm, incredulity, and a kind of speechless terror.

“I have never said this to anyone before,” said Margaret. She was standing very straight, with her hands clasped in front of her, as she went on. “I hope you will forgive me if I say it badly. I have been in love with you, I believe, since the granite. I think I was rather in love with you before that, since the ammonites, and the fish, and the letter that was entirely about the Old Red Sandstone; but I did not know it, I thought I was only fond of geology. I have been foolish.” She drew a breath. “You have been kind to me, and honest, and you never once asked me to be less than I was; and I could not, I found, go on for another week without telling you. I do not think, as I am told, that a woman ought to say it first. But somebody had to. And Marianne said that you would never do it.”

He said nothing. He was staring at her with his mouth slightly open, and there was a look on his face that she had never seen there, and would not have believed possible, a look of a man who has been walking for years in the dark, and has been suddenly, without any warning, addressed by name.

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Tregarth.

“For what?”

“I — I do not know. I beg your pardon. I beg —” He put one hand to his forehead. “I did not think. It did not occur to me. I never supposed that you could possibly — Miss Dashwood, I am a younger son. I do have a home, as my father is one of the landed gentry; I have three hundred a year from my mother, and shares in some mines. I am aware that I am not a handsome man. I thought that if I were very careful, and wrote only to the Professor, I might be permitted to go on knowing you at all. It seemed a very great deal.”

“It is not nearly enough.”

“I have been in love with you since the chimney-piece,” said Mr. Tregarth, with sudden, helpless emotion, as if the words had been forced up out of him by some subterranean pressure. “It seemed to me that they had put the ammonites there on purpose. I said to myself that you were the cleverest woman in England, and the bravest, and then you went to Niagara; and that the whole world was at your feet, and that I was not to make a fool of myself. I wrote to the Professor about the Old Red Sandstone for four pages, and addressed not one word of it to you, because I had not the right; and every line was meant for you all the same. I do not know why I thought that was any less foolish. I think I meant the whole of it to say something quite different.”

“I know,” said Margaret quietly. “I read it four times.”

He made a queer noise. It was something between a laugh and a sob. And he took two steps across the room, and stopped, as though he had suddenly remembered that he had a body and had not the least idea what to do with it.

“I have not a great deal to offer,” said he, in a low voice. “I ought to say that. I could give you a house at Penhallow, on the cliff, where the Atlantic comes in; there is a cave underneath it that goes back three hundred yards and is full of the most remarkable — I ought not to talk about the cave. I could give you time, and books, and a place to put your specimens, and someone to tell them to, for as long as I live. I could not give you London. I should never be at ease in it. I could give you —” He stopped. He said, very simply, “I would go anywhere. If you wished to see Peru, I should come. I should carry the hammer. I should not want anything else in the world.”

It was the more. She saw it, in that moment, entire, as one sees a country from the top of a hill: not a house, nor a fortune, nor a name, but a person who would say I will come too; and she found that her eyes had filled, and that she was laughing, and that she could not, for her life, say a single word.

“Yes,” said Margaret. “Yes. Please. Yes.”

It was at this point, in the most unexpected manner, that the rest of the matter took itself in hand. She had taken one step towards him; he had taken half a step towards her; and they had arrived at a distance of about a foot, at which neither of them seemed able either to advance or to retire, when she reached out, without any warning, and took him by both lapels, and kissed him, with the newness, and gentleness of a first kiss.

He appeared to be quite unable to move. He stood perfectly rigid, with his hands out at his sides, like a man who has been struck by lightning, for the space of some five seconds. Then he recovered, in a very marked manner, and it was some time before either of them said anything more.

“I should like,” said Mr. Tregarth at last, in an unsteady voice, into her hair, “to say that it was the granite.”

“It was the granite.”

“I thought it might be.”

She took the stone from the table. It was warm from his pocket, and rough, and perfectly ordinary, and it fitted her palm; and she held it for a long minute, and then, with great deliberation, slipped it into her right-hand pocket. “I have Henry’s in the left,” said she. “This one will do very well for the right.”