Page 77 of Threads that Remain

He had no answer to make to this that he was prepared to examine; and it was perhaps fortunate for his composure that the subject was then allowed to drop.

It had become, in the course of a few years and without anybody’s having formally proposed it, a custom of the family that a bride at Delaford should spend her last night unmarried in the great blue bedroom, in the company of every woman she loved, and be kept from her bed until a shameful hour. Marianne had established the precedent and defended it ever after upon grounds that grew more elaborate each time: it was born from affection.

By ten o’clock the room had assembled in the familiar manner. There was a tea-tray, and a plate of cold chicken, and a very large slice of seedcake, and, upon the counterpane, in a place of honour, a small silver fork that had once belonged to Mrs. Jennings, and had attended one wedding already, and was now regarded by the whole company as a sort of household necessity.

Mary sat upon the low stool by the fire, in her white nightgown and her mother’s old blue shawl, very upright, as though she had been asked to sit for a portrait.

Sarah sat cross-legged in the middle of the four-poster with her hair down her back in its natural and unrestrained condition. “It has been in pins for a fortnight,” she had said, “and I mean to let it have its liberty until the last possible moment, and I shall thank nobody to remark upon it.”

Anne, who had contrived to smuggle a sketch-book into the proceedings, was drawing the bride from behind a bedpost, in the belief that nobody had noticed.

Elinor and Marianne, side by side upon the sofa, looked exactly as they had looked upon a great many such nights, which is to say, one of them extremely comfortable and the other extremely happy about it.

“Do not forget the gifts Henry brought from Combe Magna,” said Sarah.

There was a crate in fact, which was now in the smaller upstairs drawing-room. Earlier, Henry had one of the servants pry open the top of the crate.

Mary and Sarah lifted the top off of the wooden crate, marked Coalport & Minton, to find, well packed in straw, an exquisite, delicate porcelain tea set. The set featured a graceful teapot with a gently curved handle, matching cups and saucers, and a small sugar bowl and creamer, all decorated with fine hand-painted florals in soft ivory, blush, and sage, with a heavily gilded gold rim adding warmth and sophistication. A handwritten note was tucked inside,

My dear Miss Ferrars,

I found this set in a shop in London. Each cup is painted with a slightly different floral detail, symbolising the individuality of two people coming together (in your case, becoming a family of three), while remaining part of the same beautiful set. May it always remind you that becoming part of a set does not mean you ever have to relinquish your unique self.

I have observed that you are a person of sense, and that persons of sense generally make the best use of what they are given. I have learned that your grandmother left you a garnet brooch. These were my grandmother Grey’s. I have a daughter, and she has her own.

Yours, S. Willoughby.

P.S. You will oblige me by not sending them to the bank; I should like these to go where they will be worn and not put in a box. You will wear them on Saturday, and afterwards upon any occasion when a woman needs to feel that she is worth what she is.

There was also a parcel, wrapped in white satin and tied with a ribbon, which she pulled, resulting in the silk falling away, revealing a case of dark green Morocco, worn pale at the corners, with a little gold clasp and the lid stamped, in faded letters, with the name of a jeweller upon Ludgate Hill. Mary lifted the clasp and raised the lid. Nobody spoke for the space of a breath.

Upon a bed of white satin gone faintly cream with age lay a ring such as none of them had seen before in any shop window, and beside it lay a pair of drop earrings to match. The garnets a deep, wine-dark red, set beneath a scattering of old-cut diamonds whose facets caught the light with a soft, candlelit sparkle. The ring was an elegant oval cluster, the central garnet surrounded by small diamonds in a delicate gold setting, its shank slightly worn smooth by generations of wear. The ear bobs, fashioned to match, hung from slender diamond-set tops, each terminating in a polished garnet drop that swayed gently with the wearer’s movements.

“Oh,” said Anne, in the small reverent voice of a person who has seen a thing she will want to draw for the rest of her life; and her pencil rolled off the bed unnoticed.

“Mary,” said Sarah, and, for the first time within living memory, said nothing further.

Marianne had put both hands flat against her breastbone.

Elinor said, quietly, “Sophia,” as one names a person who has done a thing too large to be answered.

“But this is — ” said Mary, and stopped, and began again. She had gone rather pink. “I have seen what Papa has put by for my portion, and I do not think it can possibly be — I only mean that a thing of this value ought, at the very least, to go into a — ”

“Mary.” Sarah had unfolded herself from the middle of the bed. “If you say the word bank, I shall put these on myself, and go about, and refuse to be persuaded to take them off. Mrs. Willoughby has told you not to put it in the bank. She has said so in writing. It is in the postscript.”

“It is not in the postscript.”

“It is in the spirit of the postscript.”

“There, you see,” said Marianne, to her sister, in a whisper that was not in the least a whisper. “There is something to what Mrs. Jennings said. I told you that if you had given me Edward for a brother I should have been driven to distraction inside a week.”

“And yet why do I think he, for his part, would have suffered just as equally?” said Elinor smiling and raising her brows meaningfully.

Marianne laughed and nodded in agreement.

Mary’s eyes were bright, and her mouth was unsteady, and she had reached across, with a gentleness that surprised the whole room, and taken up the ear bobs, and was turning them, one by one, in the firelight.

“Well, Mary,” said Marianne, more softly. “There it is. You have got your family heirlooms. I am sorry to say we have not many; there was never anything handed down to us from Norland but unwanted opinions.”