Page 7 of Threads that Remain

Mamma smiled. “I think she does.”

Henry looked back at Anne, carefully holding still so she would not let go.

Then, in a voice full of quiet certainty, he said, “I am your big brother, Anne. I will protect you.”

And he stayed right there beside her, letting her hold his finger while she slept.

Anne was observed at eighteen months to have drawn, with a burnt stick, an entire menagerie upon the nursery hearthstone. Shortly after, the Ferrars welcomed a second daughter, Sarah, later followed by a son, named after his father, but always called Ned. Mrs. Dashwood, who had begun the decade with three daughters and a small income, found herself the grandmother of five children, and declared that she had never been so happy nor so tired in her life.

Henry was told the truth by degrees, as a child may be told of things he cannot yet carry. He always remembered what had happened on that heartbreaking day when his mother had died; he even spoke of it openly, when something made him think of it. He was, as young children often are, always watching, wondering, and trying to make sense of the world around him. Sometimes it was when least expected that he added something wholly unrelated to the conversation, which made all the adults hesitate uncomfortably. Such was the case when, at four, he asked whether his father was dead too. He was informed by the Colonel, with great gravity, that he was not, that he lived a long way off, and had not been able to keep him; and that this was a great pity for his father and was something for which the rest of them were to be very thankful. Henry took a moment to consider this information and observed that he was extremely glad he had the Colonel to lead him, if he were ever to go into battle. Nobody contradicted him. More was told as he grew, never all at once, and never in anger; and if he sometimes looked at himself in the hall glass with an expression of speculative interest, nobody remarked upon it.

There was one person, however, who wished to be told a great deal more than anyone was disposed to tell her. Mrs. Smith of Allenham, the much older, childless sister of a certain Mr. Willoughby’s now deceased mother, happened to live near Barton Park, and counted Mrs. Jennings among her closest friends. This dignified lady had formerly doted on her only nephew, though she was of late known to shake her head in regret at the thought of him. She had turned him out of her house and her will some years before, upon learning what he had done to a girl of seventeen.

She had heard about the child from Mrs. Jennings, who invited her to visit at Brooks Green, her home near Delaford, an invitation she accepted after having often sat alone in a very large house, reflecting, in the manner of the old and rich, upon the responsibilities of the wronged.

She did not send word to Delaford that she wished to see him. She arrived, instead, one day during the morning calling hours in the second year, in a black carriage, without invitation. She called upon Marianne at eleven o’clock in the morning, sat for twenty minutes upon the edge of the best chair, and said, with an air of inspecting the furniture, that she understood there was a boy in the house, and supposed there was no objection to her looking at him.

He was sent for. He came in at a run, with a wooden horse and a happy countenance, and stopped short upon the carpet at the sight of a small upright old lady in black bombazine, with a stick, who studied him for a long minute without any expression at all.

“Hm,” said Mrs. Smith at last. “I have a miniature at Allenham which puts an end to any question. It is a pity, but it cannot be helped. What are you called?”

“Henry,” said Henry.

“Henry what?”

Henry thought for a moment before replying, “Usually just Henry, but sometimes I am called General Henry.” As an afterthought he held up his toy and added, “And this is my Great Stallion, Black Knight. He is the best horse a General could ask for.”

There was silence. Then Mrs. Smith, whose face had not been seen to move since a certain unhappy incident, gave a short, astonished bark, which was discovered, upon reflection, to be a laugh; and she said that she would call again. She called on a Thursday, and on every Thursday while she was staying with Mrs. Jennings; and it was observed by all the household, though never remarked upon, that within the year she had taken to bringing peppermints in her reticule and had learned to play at spillikins.

Mrs. Smith let it be known that she would not be opposed to receiving any of the occupants of Delaford who was not a fool. Henceforth, Marianne noted that a certain young General’s favourites were always included when they had tea at Brooks Green. It became an annual event for Mrs. Smith to join Mrs. Jennings, and in this way she formed a closeness to Henry, and he to her. She began to find excuses for why she and her friend should return to Brooks Green twice a year, and the astute Mrs. Jennings was always ready to oblige.

It was in the map room at Ashgrove, with hot tea and warm scones and a sheet of foolscap and Cecilia’s atlas open between them upon the floor, that the plan was first put down on paper.

After taking a sip of her tea for fortification, Cecilia said, somewhat hesitantly, “I must inform you — while Mother did say she will do everything to an excessive degree for the benefit of making our Season a success, I had to agree to only two Seasons, after which she will need a reprieve from society. I am confident one Season will be enough, for we shall make the most of it! Mother told Father and me that after that time, if I am still a member of this household, I should prepare to trek to the volcanoes — and if you, Margaret Dashwood, are not settled elsewhere, you will join us in making up a merry party.”

Surprise would be an understatement of the effect this new intelligence had upon Margaret. She found the prospect of travelling to far-off destinations perhaps even more exciting than the expectation of their coming-out Season.

During a particularly cold and windy winter it became a document, drawn up in Cecilia’s clear hand and titled, with great solemnity, A Proposed Journey, and it lay for two months in a drawer at Ashgrove, and was shown to Professor Aylmer in the third, and discussed with Mrs. Aylmer in the fourth; and by the time it was carried up to Delaford, in the spring, in Margaret’s own reticule, it had the support of every person in the Aylmer family, and the additional weight of a letter from an old colleague of the Professor’s at the museum in Naples, who wrote that he would be honoured to conduct them himself, whenever they should come.

“It is not for some years yet, Mamma,” said Margaret. “If at all. It is far more likely that I will be married and have a grand tour of Europe with a husband, as Marianne did. But I have made up my mind that, one way or another, I do want to travel. I believe it is what Papa would have wanted, for I remember his telling of how he made a good many journeys during his own youth.”

She was standing in the drawing-room at Delaford, with the whole family assembling about her, and holding the paper in both hands as if it had been a petition to the House of Lords. “It is only that we should like it written down, so that it does not get lost among the other things one means to do and never does. Professor Aylmer says that a plan not written down is only a wish, and a plan written down is a campaign. We are to have our Seasons first — mine and Cecilia’s both — and only after that, when everyone is quite settled, are we to go: by way of Calais and Paris, and over the Alps, and down through Italy to Naples, and Vesuvius, Mamma, and afterwards, if there is any justice in the world, perhaps even Peru.”

There was silence.

“Peru,” said Mrs. Dashwood.

“That part is a great many years off besides the rest,” said Margaret, with dignity.

“Margaret.” Mrs. Dashwood laid down her work. She had grown a little grey during the last few years, and softer, but there remained in her, when she was sufficiently moved, the whole of her old force. “I have not a word to say against Professor Aylmer, nor his wife, nor his daughter. I only find that my heart will not keep pace with my reason, upon the subject of Peru, however many years off it is said to be.”

“It is only a plan, Mamma,” said Margaret, more gently. “A person may love a plan without being asked to sail upon it tomorrow. I only wished you to know of it, so that when the time comes, it does not come upon you as a surprise, and so that you may say, if you find you can, that you do not altogether disapprove.”

Mrs. Dashwood looked for a long moment at her youngest daughter, the freckled and eager and stubborn child who had once cried because she was not allowed to take a large piece of slate upstairs to bed; and something in the set of that determined small chin, which she had seen before, on a night at Norland, told her, with a mother’s particular certainty, that no amount of present disapproval would come to a great deal, when the years in question had actually arrived.

“I do not altogether disapprove,” said Mrs. Dashwood, at last, with a sigh that had a good deal of laughter buried somewhere beneath it. “I only ask that it wait its proper turn. There is a Season to be got through first, for both of you; and I shall have a great many more comfortable years, my dear, if I am not made to think about the ocean before I am obliged to.”

“Then it shall wait its proper turn,” said Margaret, “upon my honour;” and she folded the paper carefully away, and it went back into the drawer at Ashgrove, beside the atlas, to be taken out again, and read over, and put back, a good many times in the years that followed, growing softer at the folds each time, like a thing that is loved rather than merely kept.