Page 51 of Threads that Remain

It had been her own wish. She had asked him a fortnight before, in the library. He had looked at her. And then he had said, in a voice that was not at all like his own, that there was nothing in the world that would have made him prouder; and had gone abruptly to the window, and stood there with his back to her, and been very busy with the curtain-cord.

He walked, now, quite slowly, with his head up. She wore a gown of ivory satin, cut very plain, with sleeves of Honiton lace, and a wreath of Cornish heath and white clover in her hair; and there was in her hand a small nosegay that Sarah had gathered, at dawn, in the meadow.

At the porch, an instant before they entered, a small hand had been thrust into hers.

“Something borrowed,” said Henry, in an urgent whisper. He was in a blue suit, with a white sash, as page; and his brows were furrowed. “I have put it in a handkerchief. It was very good to you. It has been to Ohio.”

It lay in her palm: a small, round, banded pebble, warm from his pocket. She closed her fingers.

“Thank you, Henry,” said Margaret.

“You are to give it back after.”

“I promise.”

“There is a paper,” said Henry grinning, “if you forget.”

She felt the Colonel’s arm tremble very slightly under her hand, and she looked up, and saw at the end of the aisle, a man looking at her as though he had never seen anybody before. His hands were shaking. He was, she saw, in a state of most complete and uncomplicated terror; and it seemed to her that she had never in her life seen a sight that she loved so well.

“Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” said Edward Ferrars.

“I do,” said the Colonel.

The service went forward. It was noticed by all that Mr. Tregarth, whom his family had feared might stammer, spoke his vows in a clear, low, deliberate voice, without one false syllable; that Margaret answered him in one that was very much the same; and that when the bridegroom, at the proper place, put the gold band upon her finger, and said, “With all my worldly goods I thee endow,” the small grizzled man in the front row was heard to whisper, in a voice like a pistol-shot, “That includes the mine, boy!” and to be, in consequence, promptly but quietly reprimanded by his daughter. Mrs. Smith, at the back, put up her ear-trumpet, said “What?” and was told; and gave a short, dry, delighted cackle. And then Edward Ferrars, with a slight, subdued, and infinitely happy smile, said, “I pronounce that they be man and wife together,” and closed the book, and several persons, some of them very large and red, could be heard blowing their noses.

They drove away at three, in a hired chaise, in a shower of rice, and rose-petals, and old shoes; and it was noticed that Sarah, who had thrown the largest of these, had struck the coachman.

Mr. and Mrs. Fanshawe’s gift had arrived that morning. It was a large parcel, in brown paper, very carefully done up, and it had been left upon the hall table with a card; and it proved, when opened, to contain two volumes of the History of Persia by Sir John Malcolm. It was the most beautiful book the newlyweds had ever seen, with heavy paper, bespoke maps, and fine leather binding, fit for the most exclusive libraries in England.

There was a slip pinned onto the marker, in a big, careless, sprawling, and rather pleased hand.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Tregarth (I am writing it to see how it looks; it looks very well).

We saw this and thought of the many adventures you will have in international travel and foreign exploration. Do enjoy political history with its vivid travelogue.

Yours in perpetuity, Mr. and Mrs. F

She laughed, then she put it in the chaise, on the seat beside her, upon her father’s Captain Cook.

They were to go, for a fortnight, to Lyme Regis. It had been his idea. He had said, upon the morning that they settled it, with his ears very red, that he thought there might be a person there who would sell them something; and she had said that she would not go anywhere else; and it was understood in both families that they should arrive at Penhallow by the end of August, and that a small cave was to be prepared. Mrs. Dashwood stood upon the steps, in her best lavender, holding her handkerchief in one hand and Ned’s in the other; and Elinor beside her, with her arm through Edward’s, and Marianne, with her head on the Colonel’s shoulder, and Henry, upon the mounting-block, waving a large white cloth with every appearance of being about to fall off.

She leaned out, at the turn of the drive. She looked back at them all until she could see them no longer.

And then, with her hand on the granite in her right pocket, and her left upon a small round pebble, which she had promised to return, and a man’s arm about her shoulders, which had every intention of remaining there for the rest of its life, she turned her face to the road ahead of them, where the dust rose, and the hills fell away, and the whole wide world began.

Chapter XXIX.

Between the first of June and the second week of August, Henry wrote seven letters to Mr. Willoughby and received six.

They were not long letters. Henry’s ran to a page, in a large upright hand with a great many capital letters and were chiefly concerned with the condition of the duck at the Round Pond, the progress of Aunt Margaret’s honeymoon, and a mystery connected with a missing tortoise-shell cat. Mr. Willoughby’s ran to two and were of a very different character. They were full of horses. They were full of the Captain, and the Captain’s latest exploit, which had been the construction of a raft; and of Madeline, who had informed the curate, in the middle of the Communion service, that she did not care for his hat. There was a good deal about a pointer named Dido. There was nothing at all about the past; every one of them ended in the same manner, upon a fresh line, in a rather uneven hand: Your affectionate, J. W.

And it was on a warm and cloudless morning in the last week of August that there came to Delaford, by the ordinary post, a letter in a small, quick, upright, extremely legible hand, which the Colonel laid upon the breakfast table before his wife.

Madam,

I have had a letter from Mrs. Smith, of Allenham, addressed to my husband and myself, informing us that she will receive the family at her house upon the fifteenth, at three o’clock, that she wishes to see her great-nephew and great-niece before she is too old to do it properly, and that she dislikes a fuss. I have accepted for us all. I trust that this is agreeable to you.

I have told the children. I did it on Tuesday, after breakfast, in the library, with the door shut, and without any assistance from their father, who sat in the window seat and looked as though he expected to be shot. I said that they had a brother, ten years old, who lived in Dorsetshire; that his mother had died; that their father had not known him for a very long time, through no fault of the brother’s; and that they were to be civil.