Page 52 of Threads that Remain

Charles wished to know whether the brother could ride, whether he had a dog, and whether, being the elder, he should have to be obeyed. Madeline asked whether he was sad. I said that I did not know, but that I thought it likely he was a good deal less sad than some persons, and that if she wished to know she had better ask him.

They are now in a condition of frantic anticipation, and if there is any further delay, I shall be a wretched woman.

S. Willoughby.

“She writes like a general,” said the Colonel.

“She writes,” said Marianne, “like a person who has had a very great deal to manage.” She read it over a second time, slowly, with her chin in her hand; and then she began, quite suddenly, to laugh. “Brandon, she says he looked as though he expected to be shot.”

Brandon thought he rather enjoyed the idea of that and smiled. “I will write to Allenham.”

Marianne added, “Say that we shall come. And say that Henry has asked for a great many sandwiches.”

Allenham stood in a fold of the Devonshire hills, a few miles from Barton Park, at the end of a lane so narrow that in wet weather the hedges met over the roof of a carriage: a low, long, ancient house of grey stone, with a great many chimneys, and a walled garden, and a mulberry tree of prodigious antiquity that had been planted, it was said, in the reign of James I. Beneath the mulberry, upon the fifteenth, at half past two, Mrs. Smith had caused to be set a long trestle table, with a white cloth, and a great silver urn; two dozen sandwiches; a large seed-cake; a bowl of peaches from the south wall; and a chair, of a very high-backed and commanding kind, in which she herself sat, in black lace, with her stick between her knees and her ear-trumpet upon her lap, like a small and implacable queen awaiting an embassy.

The Delaford party, who had driven down into Devonshire the day before and slept at Barton Park, arrived early. Marianne and the Colonel had come in the barouche, with Henry between them, in his best stiff white collar that he kept trying to pull away from his neck; and behind them, in the wagonette, Elinor and Edward, to whom the invitation was extended, and Mary, and Sarah, and Anne, with a sketch-book, and Ned, with a basket, and a stout nurse, who was very much alarmed by the mulberry. It was a fine, still, golden afternoon, with the smell of peaches and hot stone, and an occasional wasp; and it was observed by Elinor, who had known her sister for thirty years, that Marianne had, in the last quarter of an hour, said nothing whatever, and had twice adjusted a bonnet that did not need it.

“He is going to be very good,” said Elinor, quietly. “You know he is.”

“It is not Henry I am afraid for,” said Marianne.

“Who, then?”

“I do not know.” She laughed, a little unsteadily. “All of us. I think it is just that it is so large. I keep thinking that I ought to feel some particular thing, and I cannot make out what it is; I feel as though I were at the top of a cliff, and looking down, and not at all afraid, only very much awake.”

“That,” said Elinor, “is a very good way to be.”

It was at that moment that Sarah, who had taken up a position on the wall, cried out, in a piercing voice: “A carriage!”

It came up the lane at a smart trot, with a groom on the box and two large valises strapped behind; and it drew up before the gate with a great grinding of wheels, and the door was flung open, from the inside, before the step could be let down. A small boy, in a green coat and a very large hat, leapt out upon the gravel, in a single bound, and stood at attention.

He was seven years old. He had a stout and sturdy build, and was remarkably straight, with a quantity of black hair that had been brushed back with a wet comb and had already begun to spring up again in a hundred places; and he had, in the middle of his face, a pair of dark, bright, imperious, quick-moving eyes, and a small, determined chin. He looked round the garden with an air of great authority. He took in the mulberry, and the table, and the group under it, at a glance, as a general takes a field; and his gaze, having passed over the Colonel, and the two ladies, and the three little girls, and the toddler, arrived at last, and rested, upon a tall thin boy in a white collar, who was standing rather stiffly beside the trestle table with his hands behind his back.

There was a pause.

“Captain Willoughby,” said the small boy, in a loud, clear, and perfectly steady voice, “reporting.”

“How do you do,” said Henry.

“Are you my brother?”

“I believe so.”

“Papa says so. Mamma says so. I asked the coachman and he says it is a matter for the family.” He advanced across the gravel. They stood face to face. There was, between them, a matter of some three years and a head and a half; and it was a strange thing to see how, upon the two dark faces, the same expressions came and went, like two cloud shadows crossing a field, a beat apart. “Can you ride?”

“A little. I have a pony called Sausage.”

“That is a stupid name.”

“It was Sarah’s idea.”

“I have a grey called Nelson. He is fourteen hands, and he has thrown me twice, and I got on again.” The Captain looked at him sternly. “I hear that you are a great climber. Papa says you are the best climber in Dorsetshire. I have climbed to the top of the elm at Combe Magna, which is ninety feet, and nobody has done it since my great uncle.”

“I have never been up that elm.”

“No. Well, then.” He drew a long breath. He seemed to feel that something was still wanted. “I am to tell you,” Charles Willoughby said, all at once, rather fast, and rather red, “that I am very glad to see you. It is what Mamma told me to say. I did not think that I should be. But I find that I am. So, it is quite true.”

There was, for one moment, no sound at all under the mulberry. Then Henry put out his hand, with great solemnity; and the Captain, after inspecting it, shook it with a hard, brief, military grip.